His wife, the physician’s assistant, “the African Princess,” would say, after a fulfilling day of executing that which she studied for in nursing school and then in graduate school, “You’ve a more important role than you realize.”
“Nobody goes to college to become a bus driver,” he’d respond.
“Are you not happy?”
“I’m not unhappy.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she would say, whipping the sheets of their bed open and pulling him to her. “You’ve a lot to be happy about.”
He’d rest his head on her chest as she fell asleep and mumble, “They say I look like Emmitt Smith. They think all black men look like Emmitt Smith.”
In his sleep, he’d swivel open the folding door of the leather smelling bus for students, both the eager and unenthused alike. They’d walk their khaki pants with pockets near the knees down the twelve sets of alligator skinned seats. They’d pinch open the securely fastened windows and a breeze would move through their delicately combed hair. They’d sing along to pop music on the radio and, on occasion, fist fight after a long day of being cooped up in classrooms. The Bus Driver would demand order like a judge’s gavel, but in reality, the Friday afternoon fights were exciting moments among an otherwise monotonous existence.
After the bus was emptied in the mornings, for instance, he would spend his lunch calling 1-800 numbers to “add variety to his days.” He’d never forget the day Damien Christiansen brought a pornographic photo onto the bus. Through the oversized rearview mirror, he watched three boys whisper and giggle intently in a small group, their necks stretched like giraffes to see that which would make men of them. He’d notice when girls started doing their own makeup, and he would imagine stories that would have them heroines or damsels to be saved. They would write notes to each other and eventually to boys.
Otherwise he called them “throw away days,” and they were starting to catch up to him. The habitual lead to ritual, ritual to mindlessness, mindlessness to carelessness, and that carelessness, he feared, would soon define him. It wasn’t until the day he was fired that the Bus Driver realized the rewards of enduring such mundanity.
Winter break was within reach and a thin layer of snow blanketed the street. Students were especially excited and understandably so—so was he—yet there was a thick tension in maintaining the order of things on that day. Loud voices reverberated off of the low vaulted ceiling and they echoed throughout the long, pubescent-smelling bus as if surrounding him. Holding his breath, he drove diligently, his face molded forward and jaw tightened stiff, determined to drive the students home without murdering any or all of them.
Young boys were yelling to each other from opposite ends of the bus and taking turns punching each other in the arm. And just when Darren Stelter lunged at Stanley Mead from the other side of the bus, the Bus Driver violently punched the breaks at a yellow light quickly changing. There was a collective explosion—their voices seemed to coalesce into a sudden eruption of silence and a slick, red corvette, new and vulnerable, smashed into the back of the bus. Low to the ground, the corvette slid neatly under the hind bumper and into the rusty underbody of the bus like paper through the crack under a door. Slowly, the bus settled atop the hood of the corvette, and the Bus Driver took a deep breath before proceeding.
“Everybody alright?” he asked.
Most of them nodded before he continued.
“What do we do now?” he mouthed through the review mirror to Benjamin Jackson who shrugged his shoulders in the front seat.
Strangely, and this is what he was ultimately fired for, he followed his first instinct, which was to instruct all of the students off of the bus into a cold single file on the closest sidewalk. They were curiously obedient when he yelled, “Alright, everybody off the bus.”
As they stretched down the tall steps, the Bus Driver watched through the emergency exit a young black man emerge from the wobbly door of his newly disfigured corvette. He put both hands on his head and squeamishly examined the damages—certainly insurmountable. The man was much younger than the Bus Driver. He wore a suit and overcoat and had shiny shoes.
The Bus Driver redirected his attention to the students, locking eyes, as in slow motion, with each student who exited. He radioed in that there had been an accident, nobody appeared to be hurt, but they would need additional transportation to finish his route and a police officer to document the situation.
Benjamin was the last student, and as he stepped off the bus, the Bus Driver imagined Benjamin to be his own son. He’d have the Bus Driver’s thick curly hair and deep dimples in his cheeks. With that, the Bus Driver followed Ben down the steps and approached the driver of the corvette.
“Only an asshole would trail so closely to a school bus! What were you thinking?”
Closing in on the man, the Bus Driver noticed his more subtle characteristics. The man was older than he first thought—older than twenty—and his facial features, like his attire and mannerisms, were confident and deliberate.
He let out a painful groan directed more to his car than his body or the accident itself, looked the Bus Driver in his face, and said, “You should have run the light.”
At this, the Bus Driver’s blood could have melted the layer of snow now forming atop the small space where the bus ended and the corvette began.
“Look at my car, man! Totaled!”
“Your car?” the Bus Driver yelled. “You put kids in danger!”
The irony was not lost on the Bus Driver: not two minutes before he was mentally threatening their lives and now in defending them, the years of incessant back and fourth were being interrupted by a moment of agency, an agency that would later bring a fulfilling smile to his face in a hospital bed reflecting on life before his death. Able to perceive that future, he took another step toward the man.
“They’re fine,” said the man, looking up at the children with unapologetic eyes and down at his car with a squinting face of sorrow.
The Bus Driver, dumbstruck by the man’s unflinching arrogance, moved closer to his face, as if they were heavyweight fighters before a bout.
“I could tear you apart, old man,” he said, “Get out of my face.”
It was true. He could tear the Bus Driver apart, and the Bus Driver hadn’t thought this far in advance. His last fight, thirty years ago (appropriately situated in front of a school bus), had not ended how he imagined, nor would this one. As he traced his imagination for a response, the most honest and revealing reply came to him, and he was satisfied with what he said next: “Apologize.”
“Excuse me?”
“Apologize to those kids.”
“Or what?”
The Bus Driver could feel the air from the man’s nostrils on his own lips now, and he said without regard, “Apologize to those kids, or I will drop you.”
The man inched closer to the Bus Driver so that their noses were now touching—hardly a snowflake would fit between them—and he peered down at the Bus Driver, not withered, but graying, still strong, but far past his prime.
The Bus Driver waited a second longer, and a siren sounded in the distance triggering a swift swing at the man’s face. The younger and more aggressive man easily evaded the Bus Driver’s attempt and stepped back only to advance the stumbling Bus Driver.
A single punch brought the Bus Driver from his feet, and as he fell to the ground, before his head collided with the cool concrete, he saw the students upside down. He saw them clearly, as individuals rather than a collective route, and he imagined them as if soldiers, defending his honor by charging the man. Instead, they stayed stiff and shivering on the sidewalk.
Police lights reflected in the windows of the bus, the corvette, the houses nearby. A collective gasp reignited the murmur of life surrounding the scene. Gentle flakes fell to the sidewalk as the students slowly gathered around the Bus Driver, a snow angel, smiling in the bloodied gutter of mid-life, anxiously awaiting his first breath after a coma.
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Next time on The Hindsight Bridge: Paul Walter Hauser presents the gripping conclusion of his two-part short story, “Out of the Ordinary.” Idle hands and empty pockets are about to bring Chris to the devil's playground. Check back on June 13, 2011 for more!
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