The Bus My Son Came Home On

What I did with my anger

Denise texted at 12:10 that night. “He get in okay?”

I wrote back, “He’s home.” It was true, and it was all she had coming from me at midnight.

In the morning she sent a long one, about eight kids in a three-bedroom cabin, and groceries at four hundred dollars a trip, and how Caleb was a sweet boy who did not really fit with the group.

I did call her then. I had slept on it, what sleeping I did, and I stood in my kitchen at half past six and kept my voice where I keep it for customers.

“Denise, I’m not going to argue with you,” I said. “You put my son out alone with four dollars in his pocket. He’s home and he’s fed. You owe him three hundred dollars and an apology, and both of those go to him, not to me. That’s all I have to say.”

She started in on the grocery bill. I said, “I heard you. I’ve said mine,” and I set the phone down easy.

It took under a minute. I did not shout, and I did not call her again. I was not going to fight about my son over a telephone, where he would end up the subject of an argument instead of a person. Whatever was left to say was going to be said to faces.

Rick called at seven, from out on the dock by the sound of it. He drives a propane route out of Lee’s Summit and is one of the steadier men I know. He did not say hello.

“Mike, I didn’t know. I got back from the marina at five and there was one less kid at the table. She told me you’d called and wanted him home, that he was homesick. I believed it. Megan told me the truth at eleven o’clock last night out on the dock.”

“I figured you didn’t know.”

“I’d have driven him to Salina myself. You know I would have.” His voice was rough. “I’m sending you the three hundred today.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Mike.”

“I appreciate it, Rick, and I mean that. But it isn’t yours to hand back. It’s hers. And it isn’t mine to take, it’s his. That money was for a boy’s supper.”

He was quiet a second. “I hear you,” he said. “Is he all right?”

“He ate a whole chicken at midnight.”

“Good,” Rick said, and I could hear that he meant it all the way down.

Then I went to work on my real job for that week, which was the list.