The Bus Camera Told the Whole Truth
“Thank you.”
“There was a boy outside my window this morning.” She hesitated. “I won’t say more. I’d like to say it when somebody in a chair is listening.”
“Cardinals sweatshirt,” I said.
She was quiet a moment. “You saw him.”
A woman I barely knew had carried my paper across a parking lot on her lunch.
Bud Flynn, the transportation director, called at twenty to three. “Bus 14 is pulled onto a separate drive, in my safe. The policy says a parent can view footage of their own child, but only with an administrator in the room. No copies, no phone pictures. It doesn’t say which administrator. I’d rather it be Mr. Dornan. He’s the one who has to live with it. I’ve been around school buses twenty-six years, ma’am, and I’ll set it up. Friday at eight.”
Everyone in Macon knows that Pat Dowd’s bus waits in the school lot until ten past three. At ten to, I crossed the gravel, and Pat stood by the open door of Number 14 in her blue fleece and cap, doing her walk-around with a flashlight. She saw me coming, and something in her shoulders came down.
“Clara. I know why you’re here. I can’t show you anything, and I won’t name a child I’m not supposed to. But I’ll tell you what I wrote, because that’s mine.”
I waited.
“There’s a box on the incident sheet that says describe in your own words. I filled it. Bryce L. took a medical device out of another student’s hand. Another student stepped between. Bryce swung first. Nate A. held his arm to stop it. Bryce hurt his own mouth pulling away. Blue ink, with the time. I checked the box that says altercation, because there was contact. And that box is the only thing that office ever reads.”
“He didn’t read the rest?”
“He called me at four on Tuesday and asked one question. ‘Did Nate lay hands on Bryce?’ I said, ‘Well, yes, but.’ He said, ‘Thank you, Pat, that’s what I needed.'” She looked at the gravel. “I wrote Bryce Lanning up last September for throwing a smaller boy’s cap out the window. Seven times since. Every one went to the office. I’ve got a feeling that folder’s thinner than mine.”
“Pat.”
“I’m not a brave woman. I’m fifty-seven months from my retirement. But I haven’t slept. If Mr. Dornan wants to know what I saw, I’ll tell him to his face. I’d have told him already, if he’d asked.” She clicked the flashlight off. “Call your pew neighbor. I’ll say no more.”
I did not get the chance to call Edith. She called me, Thursday night at a quarter past eight.
“Clara?” Edith Kimball is seventy-nine and has sung alto in the First Baptist choir for sixty years. “I’d like to bring my grandson over, if it’s all right.”
“Keith?”