The Bus Driver Who Bought Her House

Jess was the quiet one. She sat on the counter, which I have told her for nineteen years not to do, and she kept looking over at the pantry.

“If we have to move,” she said finally, “what happens to the door?”

Nobody answered her. Tyler got up and went and stood in the pantry doorway and looked at the frame for a long time. His mark at seventeen is up near the top. He was standing next to it with his head bent, because the ceiling in there is low.

“We’re not moving,” he said.

On Thursday at ten, Dale and I met at the title office in the county seat. It was in an old bank building with a tin ceiling and a counter where the tellers used to stand.

A woman named Kim had drawn up a simple purchase agreement. Eighty nine thousand dollars, buyer financing through the farm credit, closing on or before October twenty seventh.

Dale came in wearing a corduroy jacket. He looked tired, more tired than I had ever seen him. He signed the agreement without reading it twice. Then he took a folded paper out of his pocket and handed it to Kim.

“That’s the letter,” he said. “Eighteen years. Never late.” He looked at me. “That part’s true.”

He didn’t say anything else. He left. Kim watched him go and said, “Is he all right?”

“I don’t know,” I said. And it was the first time I wondered.

That afternoon I sat in the district business office with the business manager, a kind, worried man named Jeff who has handled every payroll question I’ve had for nineteen years. He printed out the hardship withdrawal form and a copy of the purchase agreement went in with it.

“You know about the penalty,” he said.

“I know.”

“And the taxes.”

“I know, Jeff.”

He looked at the form, then at me. “My mother rented her whole life,” he said. “She used to say a landlord’s house is a house you can be asked to leave.” He handed me the pen. “Seventeen thousand?”

“Seventeen thousand,” I said.

I signed it. My hand shook. I am not ashamed of that. Fifteen years of fifty dollar paychecks went out of my old age with one signature, and I felt every one of them.

Jeff said the plan company usually took seven to ten business days to send the money. I said I had seventeen.

The appraiser came on day eleven. He was a young man in a quarter zip pullover who walked through every room with a tablet and a tape measure and said almost nothing.

He measured the kitchen. He opened the pantry door and stood looking at the pencil marks for a second longer than he needed to. Then he closed it and went outside.

The report came back on day seventeen. Ninety one thousand dollars, which was good. But it had two conditions on it, which was not.

A section of gutter on the north side was sagging and pulling loose from the fascia. And the trim on the south windows had peeling paint, which on a house built in 1958 meant the lender wanted it scraped and painted before they would close, in case of lead.

“It has to be fixed and re-inspected before we close,” Pam told me on the phone. “Can you get it done this week?”