Russell Banks: The Sweet Hereafter

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 Wendell was a pleasantly withdrawn sort of man who seemed to have given up on life, but Risa, I knew, still had dreams.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 repainting the signs, while Wendell stayed inside and watched baseball on TV. They had a lot of financial problems — the 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 rumbling 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.