The Driver Delano Mills Refused To Lose

For six years I drove that bus and never took a dime for it. I kept my commercial license current, I kept my physical up to date every two years like the state required, and every August I sat through the same defensive driving refresher with kids half my age who called me Sergeant Combs because somebody’s father had told them I earned it. I loved every mile of it. I loved the sound of forty teenagers falling asleep against bus windows after a loss, and I loved the sound of them screaming the fight song after a win even louder. I loved being the last steady thing between those kids and a dark road, because thirteen months in a jungle taught me exactly how much a person’s life can depend on who is driving.

I still remember the night the year before, coming back from a playoff loss in Ozark, when a sophomore named Beckett cried quietly two seats behind me the whole ride home because he had missed a field goal in the last minute, and I pulled the bus over at the county line, walked back, and told him about a night in 1969 when I had done something I was far more ashamed of than missing a kick, and lived to drive a bus full of teenagers home safe because somebody had once shown me the same mercy. He straightened up in his seat and thanked me, and I drove the rest of the way home thinking that was worth more than any paycheck the district had ever handed me.

So when I found that letter taped to my wheel instead of spoken to my face, I did not feel angry first. I felt like the Army had told me I was surplus equipment, which is a feeling I had hoped I would never have to carry twice in one lifetime.

I called the district office that morning and got a secretary who sounded almost as confused as I was. She transferred me to Mrs. Kirsch, who came from a much larger district up near Springfield and had been hired that summer to, in the school board’s words, modernize our operations. I asked her what medical certification she meant, because I had renewed mine that spring, same as always, at the clinic in town.