The Bus

Through darkness he could hear the school bus pulling away from soft, wet sand and gravel. The air was hot and held itself like a hand over his face. He could feel straps digging into his frail frame, gluing him in place as the rickety yellow machine built momentum over the dirt road.

And it was loud. Voices like sirens grew louder with every step he took down the aisle. The drone of the diesel motor shook his uneasy feet along the floor.

His weak arms tested the void ahead as he fumbled for a seat. More yelling. More sirens.

Then his outstretched hand found refuge in another, and it pulled him close.

“Danny?” an angelic voice shouted through the chaos.

“Me! I’m Danny!”

“It’s your sister.”

“Margeaux!”

“I thought we were going to lose you there for a second,” she said jokingly, cradling his small head against her shoulder as the bus bounced over tree roots and potholes.

“Is it like this every day?”

She laughed and patted his hand.

“I promise you’ll feel better once we get there.”

He took no solace in the unyielding darkness of the early morning hours. With his eyes clinched shut, he pictured the blurry tapestry of oak, pine and moss as it had whizzed by him so many times under an overcast sun. His sister weaved her hands through his tangle of blonde hair, and he imagined the thick, damp Louisiana air blowing it around as it had on so many trips to town with his mom in her beige, wood-paneled station wagon.

He smiled and his grip loosened. His sister held firm.

“No, I’m here with you,” she said, and squeezed his hand.

“Okay.”

“Think about our first road trip. To Auntie’s house. You were only four years old.”

It felt like so long ago. He focused through the noise and the shaking and imagined an open road cutting through gently rolling hills and pastures of farmland. The road was black and smooth—just like in town—and it stretched on for miles and miles and hours and hours. There were big, brown, silly cows lazily grazing over acres of green grass.

“Remember racing that train?” His sister asked with a hint of sadness in her voice.

“I said ‘race it, race it!’” he replied with a big smile.

“That’s right,” she choked.

There was a pause.

“I love you, Margeaux.”

“I love you too, Danny. It won’t be long now. Just stay with me. Stay with us.”

He thought of his mother, and his sister, and his whole family, and his dog, Barkley, and kept going. He remembered his first day of school, and meeting a very pretty girl on the playground. He thought of his friends and throwing his cap high into the air at graduation. He thought of throwing a white veil over the soft brown hair of that pretty girl and kissing her like it was the first time. He thought of her face, beet red and glistening, as they held their newborn daughter.

He released these thoughts and smiled one last time before he drifted to sleep.

...

The old woman said nothing to the paramedic. He gently removed the oxygen mask from the old man’s face. Tubes and cords swayed back and forth around them as the drone of the diesel motor finally came to a stop.