Russell Banks - The Sweet Hereafter

With the Hamilton, Prescott, and Walker kids safely aboard, I drove slowly past my own house, where I could see from the light in the kitchen window that Abbott was on his second cup of coffee and listening to the radio news — he likes the National Public Radio news from Burlington, which is one of his sources of unusual facts. He listens to the radio the way some people read the newspaper — he looks right at it, his brow furrowed, as if committing what he hears to memory. He hates television. Which is unusual in an invalid, I understand, but may account for the fact that he is rarely depressed by his condition. He always had more of a radio personality than a television personality anyhow. I gave him a blast of the horn, as I always do, and rolled past the house.

By now there was some noise in the bus, the early morning sounds of children practicing at being adults, making themselves known to one another and to themselves in their small voices (some of them not so small) — asking questions, arguing, making exchanges, gossiping, bragging, pleading, courting, threatening, testing — doing everything we ourselves do, the way puppies and kittens at play mimic grown dogs and cats at work. It’s not altogether peaceful or sweet, any more than the noises adults make are peaceful and sweet, but it doesn’t do any serious harm. And because you can listen to children without fear, the way you can watch puppies tumble and bite and kittens sneak up on one another and spring without worrying that they’ll be hurt by it, the talk of children can be very instructive. I guess it’s because they play openly at what we grownups do seriously and in secret.

There was enough light, a predawn grayness, so that I could by this time see the lowered sky, and I knew that it was going to snow. The roads were dry and ice-free — it had stayed cold and hadn’t snowed for over a week — and because the temperature was so low, I figured that the new snow would be dry and hard, so was not concerned that I had not put chains on the tires that morning. I knew I’d be needing them for the afternoon run, though, and groaned silently to myself — putting on chains in the cold is tedious and hard on the hands. You have to remove your gloves to snap the damned things together, at least I do, and the circulation in my fingers — due to cigarettes, Abbott tells me, although I quit fifteen years ago — is not good anymore.

But for now I was not worried. You drive these roads for forty-five years in every season and all kinds of weather, there’s not much can surprise you. Which is one of the reasons I was given this job in 1968 and rehired every year since — the others being my considerable ability as a driver, pure and simple, and my reliability and punctuality. And, of course, my affection for children and ease with them. This is not bragging; it’s simple fact. No two ways about it — I was the most qualified school bus driver in the district.

By the time I reached the bottom of Bartlett Hill Road, where it enters Route 73 by the old mill, I had half my load, over twenty kids, on board. They had walked to their places on Bartlett Hill Road from the smaller roads and lanes that run off it, bright little knots of three and four children gathered by a cluster of mailboxes to wait there for me — like berries waiting to be plucked, I sometimes thought as I made my descent, clearing the hillside of its children. I always enjoyed watching the older children, the seventh and eighth graders, play their music on their Walkmans and portable radios and dance around each other, flirting and jostling for position in their numerous and mysterious pecking orders, impossible for me or any adult to understand, while the younger boys and girls soberly studied and evaluated the older kids’ moves for their own later use. 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 — they 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 to do was slow down a little and then pass 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.