The Nine Kids on Coon Hollow Road

“Twelve dollars an hour,” Dr. Whitfield said, “and you would keep your insurance. I want you to hear that part, Mrs. Krause. You keep your insurance.”

He slid a single sheet of paper across his desk and turned it around so it faced me. It had my name typed at the top and the words Transportation Aide under it.

It was the second Monday in August, nine days before the first day of school. I had come in thinking I was there to sign my route sheet, the same as I had every August for nineteen years.

“An aide,” I said.

“A bus aide. You would ride Route 7 mornings and afternoons. Help the little ones with their seat assignments, keep order, walk the aisle.” He folded his hands. “We would like to keep your experience on the bus. Just not behind the wheel.”

He was a tidy man, maybe forty-five, with a new haircut and a district polo shirt that still had the fold lines in it. The board had hired him in April out of a big district up near Kansas City. He had been in the building four months and I had spoken to him twice.

“Who’s behind the wheel?” I asked.

“Kyle Bender. He finished his training in June.”

I knew Kyle. He was twenty-six. I had been the one who rode with him for his practice hours in the spring, up and down Route K with an empty bus, teaching him how to feather the brakes on gravel.

“Kyle is a good boy,” I said. “Can I ask why?”

Dr. Whitfield did not squirm, I will give him that. He looked right at me.

“You are at the top of the driver scale. Nineteen dollars and forty cents. Mr. Bender starts at fifteen and a quarter. I am combining two routes into one longer one, and the longer one costs me less with him on it.” He lifted one hand off the desk and set it down again. “It is arithmetic, Mrs. Krause. It is not a comment on your driving.”

I did some arithmetic of my own. Twelve dollars was less than the girl at the Dollar General made. I said so.

“The state minimum does not apply to school districts,” he said. “I looked it up. I wish I could offer more.”

I had not known that. I believed him that he had looked it up.

There was a big map of the district pinned to a corkboard behind him, the new routes drawn on it in colored marker. I had been looking at it over his shoulder the whole time, the way you cannot help reading a thing with your own road on it. Route 7 was the green one.

The green line came down Route K from the Flat Creek bridge, and it went straight on past the mouth of Coon Hollow Road without turning.

I stood up and walked around his desk, which I do not think people did in that office.

“Where’s the hollow?” I said. I put my finger on the place. “The bus turns in right here. It goes up a mile and four tenths to the wide spot by the Pruitt mailbox and turns around.”

“Those students will meet the bus at the highway,” he said. “There is a stop at the mouth of the road.”

“That’s nine children.”