The Bus Driver Who Bought Her House

I put on my navy fleece, because it was colder than it looked. We drove across town, me in my car and the three of them in Tyler’s pickup behind me, down the elevator road to Dale’s place.

Dale and Arlene had moved out to that brick ranch house on the east end of town in 2007, when the stairs to the basement laundry in my house got to be too much for her knees. Before that, they had lived in my house for twenty six years. I had always known that. I hadn’t thought about what it meant.

It was a late October afternoon, the kind with the sun already low by three. Dale had a big maple in his front yard, and it had dropped half its leaves, red ones, all over the lawn. Nobody had raked them.

My kids got out and stood together on the grass. They didn’t come up to the porch. Tyler had told the girls in the truck, I found out later, that this was Mom’s to do and we just stand here.

So they stood there, all three of them together in the leaves, watching.

I walked up the porch steps and knocked.

It took him a while. I heard the television go off. Then the door opened, and Dale stood in the doorway in a brown cardigan, his gray hair combed flat, the way he wore it to church.

He looked at me. Then he looked past me at my children on his lawn. Then he looked down at the envelope in my hand.

I took the check out and held it out to him.

“Day twenty nine, Dale,” I said.

That was all I said. I had thought on the drive over about saying more. About saying I’m a bus driver, and here it is. I found out on his porch that I didn’t need to say it. It was already said.

He didn’t take it right away. He leaned forward and read the number. Then he read it again.

Then he looked at Tyler, Morgan and Jess for a long time.

His hand shook when he finally took the check. Not a lot. Enough.

“Arlene’s place costs seven thousand eight hundred dollars a month,” he said quietly.

I didn’t say anything.

“I’ve been through the savings,” he said. “I’ve been through the cattle money, what there was. That house was the last thing I had that would bring cash fast.” He swallowed. “When that Omaha man wrote, I thought, there it is. That’s the answer.”

“You could have told me,” I said.

“I know it.” He looked down at the check. “I’ll tell you the truth, Lori, since you drove all the way out here. I gave you thirty days because I figured you’d fail. And then I could take that man’s cash and tell myself I’d given you a fair chance. I wouldn’t have to feel bad.”

He said it plainly. He didn’t make an excuse of it. I have thought since then that it was one of the most honest things a grown man has ever said to me.

“I told that Omaha fella he’d have the house Wednesday,” Dale said. “I told him you couldn’t do it.”

He reached into his cardigan pocket and pulled out a folded letter. I knew it before he opened it. It was the same letter he’d held up on my front step a month ago, with the man’s company name printed across the top.