The Nine Kids on Coon Hollow Road

“Miss Sandy,” Jaylen said. He had come up the aisle and was standing by my seat. “We got you something. It’s from all of us. Hannah’s mom showed us how.”

He put it in my hand. It was a key ring, the kind children braid out of that nylon cord, green and white, with a knot at the end. Strung along it were nine plastic beads, each one a different color.

“There’s one for each of us,” Macy said from her booster. “I’m the pink.”

“It’s because you gave your keys away,” Jaylen said. “Grandma told me you gave your bus keys back so you could come get us. So we thought you needed something to put the new ones on. When you get some.”

I am fifty-five years old. I have buried both my parents and I sat dry-eyed through a superintendent telling me I was worth twelve dollars an hour. I put my head down on the steering wheel of that church van, in the car rider line, and I cried so hard that Carly Hobbs unbuckled and came up and patted my back and said, “It’s okay, we can make you a different one.”

I still had Dale’s little leather tag with the 7 on it in my purse. That afternoon I put it on the new ring, next to the nine beads. It was all I had to put on it.

What I did not know was that Kyle had gone to see Dr. Whitfield that same day.

He told me about it later, at the feed store, leaning on the counter and looking at the floor. He had gone in after his route and asked for five minutes.

“I told him I rode Coon Hollow in the dark,” Kyle said. “I told him about the creek and the log truck. I told him there’s a nine-year-old up there with a flashlight.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “And I told him I’d finish out till break, but I wasn’t going to drive Route 7 after Christmas the way it was drawn. I said I couldn’t keep opening my doors at that sign. I put my keys on his desk.”

“Kyle Bender. You did not.”

“Same spot you did, I figure.”

“What did Amber say?”

“She said she didn’t marry a man who’d drive past them.” He almost smiled. “Then she asked how we were going to pay for diapers.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he pushed the keys back across to me and said, hold on to these until I have seen it for myself.”

The first Monday of January, I pulled into the church lot at six o’clock to warm up the van, and there was a car already there, idling under the sweetgum with its lights on.

Dr. Whitfield got out. He had on a wool overcoat and dress shoes and no hat, and it was nineteen degrees.

“Mrs. Krause,” he said. “Is there room for one more?”

“There’s room for six more,” I said. “Get in. Those shoes are going to be sorry.”

He sat where Kyle had sat. He held his gloves in his lap. For the first few miles neither of us said anything, and then he started talking to the windshield.

“The state cut our transportation money by thirty-one thousand dollars last spring,” he said. “The board gave me the number the week I was hired. Find thirty-one thousand, or we lose the art teacher and two classroom aides. Those were the choices on the table.” He turned his gloves over. “I thought, I will not cut people. I will cut miles. Miles do not have families.”