The Grandmother Who Drove Bus 12

“Don Keller pulled my dad’s combine out of a mud hole in ninety-three,” he said. “Wouldn’t take a dime for it. Dad sent Mom over with a pie.”

“Cherry,” I said. “I remember the pie.”

“That truck have air brakes?”

“Hydraulic. I’d have to learn the air.”

“And you never held a commercial license.”

“A farm truck didn’t call for one.”

“No ma’am, it didn’t. A school bus does.” He ticked it off on his fingers. “Class B commercial license with a passenger endorsement and a school bus endorsement. Before that, a physical from a certified examiner, a drug screen, and a background check. Then four written tests for your permit. General knowledge, air brakes, passenger, and school bus. You hold the permit fourteen days at the least before the state will let you take the driving test, and you finish my training course before you take it. On top of that the state wants a first aid and CPR card and a defensive driving course out of every school bus driver. The district pays for all of it, and pays you for your class hours.”

“How old is too old?”

“There isn’t one. There’s no birthday in the rule book.” He leaned back. “There’s a physical, and there’s tests. You pass them or you don’t. I’m nine drivers short, Mrs. Keller. I’ve got a mechanic driving Bus 7. I am not going to tell a woman who backed a tandem over a pit for thirty years that she can’t try.”

“And if I can’t pass?”

“Then I’ll tell you so myself, to your face, and I’ll drive you home.”

“When does the class start?” I said.

“Monday. Seven o’clock.” He glanced out the window at the empty lot. “How’d you get here this morning?”

“I walked.”

He waited.

“My daughter sold my car last week,” I said. “She feels I’m too old to drive.”

Bill did not say one word about my daughter. He just wrote something on his pad and tore the sheet off.

“That’s Kim’s number. She drives Bus 4 and she lives on Poplar. She’ll bring you in.”

Class

There were five of us in the back room. Two young mothers, a college boy, a retired railroad man named Dale, and me.

It took six weeks, start to finish, classroom in the mornings and the bus in the afternoons. Nobody handed me anything.

The physical came first, at the clinic. Blood pressure, 128 over 78. Eyes, 20/25 in each with my glasses. The nurse stood behind me at five feet and whispered numbers and I said every one of them back to her. I am not ashamed to tell you I had prayed over that hearing test.

I studied the state manual at my kitchen table every night and made flash cards out of recipe cards. I can still tell you that you stop a bus no closer than fifteen feet and no farther than fifty from the nearest rail.

Kim picked me up at six-thirty every morning in a pickup that smelled like dog and peppermint, and she quizzed me the whole way in.

Bill drove all five of us up to the exam station in the district Suburban for the written tests. I missed two on general knowledge and none on the other three.

Then came the bus itself.

I will tell you the truth about the first time I climbed up into that seat. It was a seventy-one passenger Blue Bird, forty feet long, and when I looked in the mirror the back of it seemed to be in the next county. My mouth went dry. For one minute I thought, Lisa is right, I am an old woman playing at something.