The Minute I Held the Bus

On Friday Arlene Olsen’s daughter, who had the place now, walked a cup of coffee out to the bus. She did not say why. I drank it standing in the road.

So there I was on the Tuesday, with a thermos and a spotless bus and a head full of nothing, pulling out of the barn at 6:34 like I’d done since the day I started.

First stop on the route is the Halloran place, a half mile out on the north road. I pulled up to it at twelve minutes to seven.

Marty Halloran was standing at the mailbox.

Not the boy. A man. Thirty-seven years old, six foot two, in a canvas work coat with the power district’s name stitched over the pocket.

He had no child with him and no lunch pail. He had on his lineman’s boots and a pair of leather gloves tucked into one back pocket.

He was looking at his wristwatch.

I put the bus in park and opened the door.

He did not get on. He looked up from his watch and held up one finger, like a man telling you to wait.

So I waited. I sat there with my hand on the door lever and the engine running, looking at Marty Halloran, who had once asked me why we always waited for Danny.

I counted it off on the dash clock. It was a full minute. I know a minute. I have spent more of them than any man in Valley County.

When the second hand came around, Marty put his arm down. He took off his cap and climbed up the three steps, and he looked at me, and I saw that his eyes were wet.

“Morning, Mr. Boyd,” he said.

“Marty. What was that for?”

“You were coming,” Marty said.

I did not understand it yet. I thought maybe he wanted a ride, though his pickup sat in the yard behind him. He went down the aisle and folded himself into the fourth seat on the left, the one he’d had in the third grade, with his knees jammed up against the seat in front.

I sat a second longer than I needed to. For twenty-nine years I had been the one waiting at a mailbox with the door open, and I had never once been on the other side of the minute. I did not know what to do with my hands.

Then I put the bus in gear and drove to stop number two.

It was a fine May morning, the kind that makes you forgive the winters. The wheat was up green on both sides of the north road, and the windbreaks were leafed out, and a hawk sat on every third fence post, looking for breakfast.