The Sweet Hereafter (3 page)

I liked the way the older boys slicked their hair back in precise dips and waves, and the way the girls dolled themselves up with lipstick and eyeliner, as if they weren’t already as beautiful as they would ever be again.

When they climbed onto the bus, they had to shut their radios off. It was one of the three rules I laid down every year the first day of school. Rule one: No tape players or radios playing inside the bus.

Headsets, Walkmans, were permissible, of course, but I could not abide half a dozen tiny radio speakers squawking three kinds of rock ‘n’ roll behind me. Not with all the other noises those kids made.

Rule number two: No fighting. Anyone fights, he by God walks. And no matter who starts it, both parties walk. Girls the same as boys. They could argue and holler at one another all they wanted, but let one of them strike another, and both of them were on the road in seconds. I usually had to enforce this rule no more than once a year, and after that the kids enforced it themselves. Or if they did hit each other, they did it silently, since the victim knew that he or she would have to walk too. I was well aware that I couldn’t ever stop them altogether from striking each other, but at least I could make them conscious of it, which is a start. Rule number three: No throwing things. Not food, not paper airplanes, not hats or mittens nothing.

That rule was basically so I could drive without sudden undue distraction. For safety’s sake.

I’m a fairly large woman, taller and heavier than even the biggest eighth grade boy (although Bear Otto was soon going to be bigger than I am), and my voice is sharp, so it was not especially difficult, with only these few rules, to maintain order and establish tranquillity.

Also, I made no attempt to teach them manners, no moves to curb or restrain their language-I figured they heard enough of that from their teachers and parents and I think this kept them loose enough that they did not feel particularly restricted.

Besides, I have always liked listening to the way kids talk when they’re not trying to please or deceive an adult. I just perched up there in the driver’s seat and drove, letting them forget all about me, while I listened to their jumble of words, songs, and shouts and cries, and it was almost as if I were not present, or were invisible, or as if I were a child again myself, a child blessed or cursed (I’m not sure which) with foresight, with the ability to see the closing off that adulthood would bring, the pleasures, the shame, the secrets, the fearfulness. The eventual silence; that too.

At Route 73 by the old mill, I banged a left and headed north along the Ausable River, picking up the valley kids. There was always a fair amount of vehicular traffic on 73 at this hour, mostly local people driving to work, which never presented a problem, but sometimes there were downstate skiers up early on their way to a long weekend at Lake Placid and Whiteface. Them I had to watch out for, especially today, this being a Friday hey were generally young urban type drivers and were not used to coming up suddenly on a school bus stopped at the side of the road to pick up children, and the flashing red lights on the bus didn’t seem to register somehow, as if they thought all they had ss me by. They thought they were up in the mountains and no people lived here. To let them know, I kept a notebook and pen next to my seat, and whenever one of those turkeys blew past me in his Porsche or BMW, I took his number and later phoned it in to Wyatt Pitney at state police headquarters in Marlowe

Wyatt usually managed to get their attention.

Anyhow, this morning I was stopped across from the Bide a Wile Motel, which is owned and operated by Risa and Wendell Walker, and Risa was walking their little boy, Sean, across Route 73, as is customary. Sean had some kind of learning disability he was close to ten but seemed more like a very nervous, frightened five or six, an unusually runtish boy and delicate, with a sickly pale complexion and huge dark eyes. He was a strange little fellow, but you couldn’t help liking him and feeling protective toward him.

Apparently, although he was way behind all the other kids his age in school and was too fragile and nervous to play at sports, he was expert at playing video games and much admired for it by the other children.

A wizard, they say, with fabulous eye hand coordination, and when sitting in front of a video game, he was supposed to be capable of scary concentration. It was probably the only time he felt competent and was not lonely.

It had started to snow, light windblown flecks falling like bits of wood ash. Risa had her down parka over her nightgown and bathrobe and was wearing slippers, and she held Sean by the hand and carefully walked him from the motel office, where they had an apartment in back, to the road, which, although it’s only two lanes, is actually a state highway along there, the main truck route connecting Placid and the Saranac region to the Northway.

There were no cars or trucks in sight as Risa brought her son across to the bus. He was Risa’s and Wendell’s only child and the frail object of all their attention. Wendell was a pleasantly withdrawn sort of man who seemed to have given up on life, but Risa, I knew, still had dreams. In warm weather, she’d be out there roofing the motel or re-painting the signs, while Wendell stayed inside and watched baseball on TV. They had a lot of financial problems he motel had about a dozen units and was old and in shabby condition; they had bought it in a foreclosure sale eight or ten years before, and I don’t think they’d put up the No Vacancy sign once in that time. (Sam Dent is one of those towns that’s on the way to somewhere else, and people get this far, they usually keep going. ) Also, I think that the Walkers’ marriage was shaky. Judging from what happened to them after the accident, it was probably just that motel and their love for the boy, Sean, that had bound them.

I flung open the door, and the child, because he was so small, stepped up with difficulty, and when he got to the landing he turned and did an unusual thing. Like a scared baby who wanted his mother to lift him up and hug him, he held his arms out to Risa and said, I want to stay with you.

Risa had large dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept well, or at all, for that matter, and her hair was tangled and matted, and for a second I wondered if she had a drinking problem. Go on now, she said to the boy in a weary voice. Go on.

The kids sitting near the door were watching Sean, surprised and puzzled by his behavior, maybe embarrassed by it, since he was doing what so many of them would sometimes like to do but did not dare, certainly not in public like this. One of the eighth grade girls, Nichole Burnell, who was sitting next to the door and has a wonderful maternal streak, squinched over a few inches and patted the seat next to her and said, C’mon, Sean, sit next to me.

With his large eyes fixed on Risa’s face, the boy edged sideways toward Nichole and finally sat, but still he watched his mother, as if he was frightened. Not for himself but for her. Is he okay? I asked Risa.

Normally he just marched on board and found himself a seat and stared out the window for the whole trip. A very private boy enjoying his thoughts and fancies, thinking maybe about his video games.

I don’t know. He’s fine, I mean. Not sick or anything.

It’s just one of those mornings, I guess. We all have them, Dolores, don’t we? She made a wistful smile.

By Jesus, I sure do! I said, trying to cheer the woman up, although in fact I almost never had those mornings myself, so long as I had the school bus to drive. It’s almost impossible to say how important and pleasurable that job was to me. Though I liked being at home with Abbott and had the post office and mail carrier job to get me through the summers, I could hardly wait till school started again in September and I could get back out there in the early morning light and start up my bus and commence to gather the children of the town and carry them to school. I have what you call a sanguine personality. That’s what Abbott calls it.

Are you okay, Risa? I asked.

She looked at me and sighed. Woman to woman.

You want to buy a good used motel? she said. She looked across the road at the row of empty units. Not a car in the lot, except their Wagoneer. It’s the Holiday Inns and the Marriotts that keep folks like the Walkers from making a living.

‘Winter’s been tough, eh?

No more than usual, I guess. The usual just gets harder and harder, though.

I guess it does, I said. A big Grand Union sixteen wheeler had come up behind me and stopped. But I got enough problems of my own, honey, I said. Last thing I need is a motel. We were talking finances, not husbands or at least I was. I suspected she was talking husband, however. I got to get moving, I said, before the snow blows.

Yes. It will snow some today. Six to eight inches by nightfall.

I thought about the chains again. Sean was still watching his mother with that strange grief stricken expression on his small, bony face, and she waved limply at him, like she was dismissing him, and stepped away. Shutting the door with one hand, I released the brake with the other, waited a second for Risa to cross in front of the bus, and pulled slowly out. I heard the air brakes of the sixteen wheeler hiss as the driver chunked into gear and, checking the side mirror, saw him move into line behind me.

Then suddenly Sean shrieked, Mommy! and he was all over me, scrambling across my lap to the window, and I glimpsed Risa off to my left, leaping out of the way of a red Saab that seemed to have bolted out of nowhere. It had come around the bend in front of me and the truck and hadn’t slowed a bit as I drew back onto the road, and the driver must have felt squeezed and had accelerated and had just missed clipping Risa as she crossed to the other side. I hit the brakes, and thank God the driver of the truck behind me did too, managing to pull up an inch or two from my rear.

Sean! Sit the hell down! I yelled. She’s okay! Now sit down, I said, and he obeyed.

I slid my window open and called to Risa. You get his number? All I’d caught was that the car was a tomato red Saab with a ski rack on top.

She was shaken, standing there white faced in the motel lot with her arms wrapped around herself. She shook her head no, turned away, and walked slowly back to the office. I drew a couple of deep breaths and checked Sean, who was seated now but still craning and peering wide eyed after his mother. Nichole had him on her lap, with her arms around his narrow shoulders.

There’s a lot of damn fool idiots out there, Sean, I said. I guess you got a right to worry. I smiled at him, but he only glared back at me, as if I was to blame.

Again, I put the bus into first gear and started moving cautiously down the road, with the Grand Union truck tumbling along behind. I said, I’m sorry, Sean. I’m really sorry. That was all I could think of to say.

There were half a dozen more stops along the valley, and then I turned right onto Staples Mill Road and made my way uphill to the ridge, where you get a terrific view east and south toward Limekiln and Avalanche mountains.

It’s mostly state forest up there, not many houses, and the few you see are old, built back before the Adirondack Park was created.

The snow was falling lightly now, hard dry flakes floating on the breeze. There was enough daylight that I could have shut off my headlights, but I didn’t, even though they weren’t helping me see the road any better. In fact, it was the time of day when headlights make no difference, on or off, but they let the bus itself be seen sooner and more clearly by oncoming cars. Not that there was any traffic up on Staples Mill Road, especially this early. But when you drive a school bus you have to think of these things. You have to anticipate the worst.

Obviously, you can’t control everything, but you are obliged to take care of the few things you can. I’m an optimist, basically, who acts like a pessimist. On principle.

Just in case.

Abbott says, Biggest… difference… between…

people… is … quality… of… attention. And since a person’s quality of attention is one of the few things about her that a human can control, then she damn well better do it, say I. Put that together with the Golden Rule in a nutshell, and you’ve got my philosophy of life. Abbott’s too. And you don’t need religion for it.

Oh, like most people, we go to church First Methodist but irregularly and mostly for social reasons, so as not to stand out too much in the community. But we’re not religious persons, Abbott and I. Although, since the accident, there have been numerous times when I have wished that I was. Religion being the main way the unexplainable gets explained. God’s will and all.

The first house you come to up there on the ridge is Billy Ansel’s old cut stone colonial. I always liked stopping at Billy’s. For one thing, he used me as an alarm clock, not leaving for work himself until I arrived to pick up his children, Jessica and Mason, nine year old identical twins. I liked it when the parents were aware of my arrival, and he was always looking out the kitchen window when I pulled up, waiting for his kids to climb into the bus. Then as I pulled away I’d see the house lights go out, and a mile or two down the road, I’d look into my side mirror, and there he’d be, coming along behind in his pickup, on his way into town to open up his Sunoco station.

Normally he followed me the whole distance over the ridge to the Marlowe road, then south all the way into town, keeping a slow and distant sort of company with the bus, never bothering to pass on the straightaways, until finally, just before I got to the school, he turned off at the garage. Once I asked him why he didn’t pass me by, so he wouldn’t have to stop and wait every time I pulled over to make a pickup. He just laughed. Well, he said, then I’d get to work before eight, wouldn’t I, and I’d have to stand around the garage waiting for the help to show up. There’s no point to that, he said.

Truth is, I don’t think he wanted to move through that big empty house alone, once his kids were gone to school, and I believe it particularly pleased and comforted him, as he drove into town, to catch glimpses of his son and daughter in the school bus, waving back at him. Their mother, Lydia, a fairy princess of a woman, died of cancer some four years ago, and Billy took over raising the children by him self-although believe me, there are plenty of young women who would have been happy to help him out, as he is one fine looking man. Smart and charming.