38
Mr Andre Stanley
Outward appearance
Aging football coach? American letterman's jacket with beige sleeves, black trunk. OSHKOSH INDIANS it announces, NUMBER 22. White Levis jeans, white socks, black shoes, salt and pepper hair, healthy pink complexion. A young person into retro fashion would kill to know where Andre finds his clothes.Inside information
A minister from a Episcopalian diocese in Wisconsin. He's on a fact finding mission on changes to theology. Andre is particularly bemused by the debate about gay priests. Why the fuss? There are none.Andre served in Vietnam. He is baffled by all the talk of post-traumatic stress disorder. He piloted helicopters and saw the worst the war had to offer -- the blasted bodies of young men -- but he has no trouble accounting for the deaths, the destruction. God leaves everyone free, everyone responsible, even Nazis. We are free to wage mistaken wars, mistranslate the Bible, commit rapes. And we are free to fight back.
Andre wants to write screenplays for Jesus... and reclaim the media from barnstorming fundamentalists. He is working on a screen treatment now, about helicopter pilots in Vietnam.
What he is doing or thinking
Trying not to breathe. The man next to him stinks beyond belief. It is an inhuman smell, very pungent, like scorched hops. It reminds Andre of his one visit to the Annhauser-Busch brewery in Los Angeles, which was like a sewer. Do all English people smell like this? Don't they wash? Maybe they just don't know how about dry cleaning.Then a woman says in exasperated, fruity tones: "This is unbearable! Can't you use a deodorant?"
Previous passenger
Next passenger
Car 2 map
Journey Planner