The Last Run of Route 7

Stop 31

The Van Wyk place is the last lane on Route 7, where the gravel runs out and the blacktop starts toward town. Their house sits back from the road behind a row of old cottonwoods, and the lane is long and straight.

Evie Van Wyk is 6. She started riding Dad’s bus in kindergarten, the year after he went back, and she has sat in the seat right behind him every morning since, the one I was sitting in, chattering at him all the way into town.

He never said she was his favorite. He didn’t have to.

I saw her first. A small girl at the end of the long lane, standing next to her mother, holding something flat against her chest with both arms.

Then I saw who was standing on the other side of her.

My brother.

Neal was standing at the end of the Van Wyks’ lane with his hands at his sides, very straight, the way he used to stand in the church Christmas program when we were kids and he didn’t know what to do with his arms.

Behind us, thirty families pulled their trucks and cars over onto the shoulder of the gravel road, one after another, and turned off their engines. The dust settled. It got very quiet.

Dad brought the bus to a stop. He set the brake. The red stop arm swung out one more time.

He didn’t reach for the door lever right away. He sat there with both hands on the wheel and looked out the windshield at his son.

“Dad,” I said.

“I see him,” Dad said.

Then he opened the door, and stood, and stepped down onto the bottom step with his hand on the grab rail, the way he had at the Dekkers’ two hours before. We were almost half an hour behind his usual time, and Neal had waited.

Neal took one step toward the bus.

“Dad,” he said. His voice cracked on it, the way it did when he was thirteen. “Before you park this bus for good.”

He was holding an envelope. He held it out with a hand that wasn’t quite steady, and Dad looked at the hand and then at the envelope and then at his son’s face, and he didn’t take it right away.

“What’s this,” Dad said.

“It’s a cashier’s check,” Neal said. “For ten thousand dollars. It’s the first ten. I sold the boat, and I sold my truck, and Robin picked up extra shifts at the hospital. I’ll have the rest by next May. I wrote it down.”

He held out a folded piece of yellow legal paper with his other hand.

“I’m not asking you to believe it,” he said. “I know I already wrote you one of those. I’m asking you to let me try again.”

Thirty families were standing on that gravel road behind us. They didn’t know what the envelope was. They couldn’t have heard much. But they knew a son standing in front of his father with something to say when they saw it, and not one of them made a sound.

Dad looked at the check for a long time.

“I didn’t drive this bus for the money, Neal,” he said finally. “I want you to know that. I needed the money, but that isn’t why I drove it.”

Neal’s face was working. “Then why?”

“Because I wanted you to see a man pay his own way without complaining about it,” Dad said. “I figured if I just kept driving, you’d figure out what you were supposed to do. It took you a little longer than I’d hoped.”

“I’m sorry, Dad,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t look at you. Every month it got worse. I almost lost the house, and I couldn’t tell you, because then you’d know I lost your money too.”

“I knew,” Dad said quietly. “I’m old, son. I’m not blind.”

He reached down then and took the envelope and the yellow paper. He folded them together, once, and put them in the pocket of his tan zip-up jacket, and zipped the pocket shut.

“I’ll take it,” he said. “Not because I need it. Because you need to have given it.”