What Linda Ames Said at the Door

Jeff said, from the sidewalk, “Eleven hundred and forty. Dale can’t count.”

“I can count,” Dale said. “I put in the forty.”

I started to laugh, and then that is where I found it, the crying I had not been able to find for five weeks. I stood in Linda Ames’s front hall in my funeral dress with a white envelope in my hands and cried until I had to sit down on the stairs.

Steve sat down on the step below me with his cap in his hands and waited. He did not pat my back or say anything. He was a man who had worked beside my husband for nine years and he knew how to wait.

When I could talk I said, “You found him, Steve.”

“I did.”

“Was he awake?”

“He was,” Steve said. “He was awake till the helicopter. He asked about your van. He said the fuel pump was on order and to tell you not to drive it to Wichita till it came.” He turned the cap over in his hands. “I never did tell you that. I’m sorry. You drove it anyway.”

“I drove it anyway,” I said.

“That was Travis,” Steve said. “Worrying about the fuel pump with a broken back.”

The bus barn

The drivers came at ten.

There were seven routes in our district and seven drivers, and five of them came to Linda’s door, and Kim, who drove route two, had a clipboard. She had already called the transportation director. She had already made a chart.

“We each take one of your afternoons,” Kim said. “Through Christmas. The director says your route pays you either way, he’ll sort it with the board. You come back when you come back. Not before.”

“Kim, you’ve all got your own routes.”

“I can run two and four back to back if I go out the county road,” Kim said. “Brenda can do Tuesdays. Pat’s retired but she’s still got her license. We figured it out on the phone. Sign here so the director knows you said yes.”

I signed. I had no idea what I was signing. It was a piece of notebook paper with a grid on it in purple pen.

Kaylee came out and stood at my elbow and read it.

“That’s your route,” she said. “That’s old Mr. Hensley’s mailbox stop. Pat doesn’t know about the dog.”

“Then you’ll tell her about the dog,” Kim said, and handed Kaylee the pen, and Kaylee wrote at the bottom: Watch for the dog at Hensleys, he is nice but he chases. It is still on the wall at the bus barn.