The Seat on the Branson Bus

The mug

The bus was due back at nine-thirty. At nine-fifteen, Jake and I loaded a half-asleep Kaylee into the back of the truck, still in her fox pajamas with her coat over them, and drove to the church lot to pick up Bev.

The bus came in at nine-forty, lit up inside like a little house.

The ladies came down the steps slow and stiff, carrying shopping bags and leftover boxes from the buffet, and calling goodnight across the lot.

Bev was one of the last ones off. Lori came down the steps right in front of her, turned around at the bottom, and held up her hand for her mother. Bev took it and came down one step at a time.

Lori saw us in the truck. She looked at me for a long moment over her mother’s hat. Then she lifted one hand, not quite a wave, and walked to her car.

Bev climbed into the back seat of the truck next to Kaylee, who woke up enough to say, “Grandma, did you see the show?” and then fell back asleep against her grandmother’s red cardigan.

“I saw the show,” Bev whispered. She had a little paper sack in her lap. She held it over the seat to me. “This is for you,” she said. “Don’t you dare say I shouldn’t have.”

Inside was a coffee mug, white with a painted picture of the lake and the hills and Branson in curly blue letters across the front.

It was the kind of mug they sell by the hundred in every gift shop on the strip.

I’ve had that mug on my kitchen windowsill ever since. I don’t drink out of it. I’m afraid I’ll chip it.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“It’s a mug,” Bev said, “but it’s what I could carry.” She sat back. “Jake, honey, take the long way home. I’m not ready for this day to be over.”

So Jake took the long way, out past the old Hendricks place and around by the low-water bridge, and Bev told us about her day.

What the daughters said

She said for the first hour on the road, Cheryl and Lori sat in the third row and didn’t come up front.

Marlene talked her ear off the whole way, which she said was fine, because Marlene knows everybody’s business and some of it was news.

At the rest stop, Cheryl came and found her by the vending machines.

Bev said she could tell Cheryl had been crying, though she’d fixed her makeup. Cheryl stood there a long time before she said anything at all.

“She told me about the money first,” Bev said. “That’s Cheryl. She always starts with the numbers.”

The summer buses had been half empty. People had gotten tight with money, and the heat kept the older ladies home.

Cheryl said the charter company charged for the whole coach whether the seats were full or not.

In July they’d had twenty-six riders on a bus that needed thirty-five to break even, and the two sisters had paid the difference out of their own pockets.

Seven hundred and sixty dollars between them. Their husbands didn’t know the full amount.

“So she got scared about October,” Bev said. “She started counting anybody who’d ever said maybe. She put Amanda down because she figured family wouldn’t say no to paying.”

“I did say no,” I said. “Twice.”

“I know you did, honey. She knows it too. She said so.” Bev was quiet a minute, looking out at the dark fields. “And then she told me the rest of it, which was harder for her.”