The Last Run of Route 7

Stop 1

The bus barn door rolled up at 6:20. Dad backed the bus out slow, both hands on the wheel, watching his mirrors, and turned left onto the gravel.

Stop 1 is the Dekker place, a quarter mile down the gravel, a white farmhouse with a windbreak of tall old trees along the road and green fields running out on both sides of the lane.

The sun was just above the trees. Dad slowed, flipped on his flashers, and I saw him see them.

At the end of the lane stood Jenny Dekker in a green fleece, with her two kids. Lily, who is 6, had her hair in two braids. Her brother Cole is 9. Jenny was holding a pan of cinnamon rolls out in both hands like it was a trophy.

Lily was holding a bunch of purple lilacs nearly as big as she was. They had been cut off the bush by the house that morning, and I could smell them the second the door opened.

Dad stopped the bus. The red stop arm swung out. He reached for the door lever, and his hand found it the first time, and the door swung open.

Then he did something I had never seen him do on a route. He got up out of his seat and stepped down onto the bottom step, one hand on the grab rail, and he looked down at them.

“Well,” he said. “What’s all this.”

“These are for you, Mister Hal,” Lily said, and pushed the lilacs up toward him. “Because it’s your last day. Mom says you’re 79.”

“Your mom’s been talking,” Dad said. His voice did something on the last word.

“Thank you for driving us,” Cole said, very formal, pointing at the pan. “Mom made two pans. One’s for you and one’s for the barn.”

Dad took the lilacs. He stood there on that bottom step with the lilacs in one hand and the grab rail in the other, and his eyes were wet, and he was smiling in a way I hadn’t seen since before Mom.

“You tell your mom thank you,” he said. “You tell her those are the best-smelling lilacs on this road.”

“I’m right here, Hal,” Jenny said, laughing and crying at the same time.

“Well, I know that,” Dad said.

Then he looked past them, down the gravel road, and he went very still.

At the next lane, a couple hundred yards down, another family was standing at the end of their drive. A mom, a dad, three kids. Even from there I could see the kids jumping.

Dad looked at that for a long time. Then he turned his head, slow, and looked at me sitting in the first seat.

I didn’t say anything. I just held out my hands for the cinnamon rolls.