The Grandmother Who Drove Bus 12

When The Tires Go Quiet

The second Thursday in January the forecast said thirty-four degrees and rain.

Thirty-four and rain is a wet morning and nothing else. No district calls a delay for that. I pulled out at 6:20 with the wipers going.

By seven it had dropped to thirty-one, and nobody had told the blacktop.

My husband taught me a thing my second harvest, coming home late one night in a March sleet with the truck empty. He reached over and turned the radio off and said, “Listen to the tires, Jo. Wet road hisses. When the tires go quiet, the road’s froze, and you’d better already be going slow.”

I was north of the creek bridge with thirty-one children on board when the hiss stopped.

I looked in my left mirror and there was no spray coming off my back duals.

I came off the gas. I did not touch the brake. I let her come down from forty to twenty on her own, and I picked up the radio.

“Bus 12 to base. Bill, the blacktop north of the creek just glazed over. I’d tell everybody.”

“Copy, 12. All buses, all buses, this is base. Roads are icing. Slow it down and take your time. I don’t care how late you are.”

Tyler was in the seat behind me.

And a quarter mile behind me, with her headlights on, was a little silver Chevy that had pulled out of the gravel drive right after I did. Lisa had looked at the weather that morning and decided to follow the bus to town. She told me that later.

The corner where it happened is where the blacktop crosses a county sand road. I have the right of way there. The sand road has the stop sign.

There was a pickup coming from the west.

I saw him a long way off across the wheat stubble, and I knew from how fast those headlights were moving that he had not heard his tires go quiet.

He would see his stop sign and stand on his brake, and nothing at all would happen, because he was on glass.

“Everybody sit back and hold on to the seat in front of you,” I said. I did not raise my voice. “Right now, please.”

I did not stomp the brake. If you stomp a brake on ice, the wheels quit turning, and you cannot steer on wheels that are not turning. I put my foot down steady and firm and let the bus do what it was built to do, and I felt the pedal chatter under my shoe.