The Half Mile to the School Bus

The Gate

Pete was home the next weekend, and on Saturday he went out with his post driver and his fencing pliers and he did something I had not asked him to do.

He put a gate in the fence. A twelve-foot pipe gate, halfway down the lane, swinging out onto the strip.

Then he walked across the road and knocked on Vonda’s door and told her that come spring, when the grass greened up, she could lead Duke and Penny over and turn them out on that strip any evening she liked. The calves would be in the barn lot by then anyway.

He told me she cried. He told me she shook his hand with both of hers. I believe it. I have seen her cry since. It does not bother me anymore.

What Happened After

Vonda comes to the end of her drive some mornings now. Not every morning. She stands by her mailbox with her coffee, and when we come down the lane she lifts her cup to us.

Because yes, we still walk it.

The bus comes up the lane again, and on bad mornings, sleet or zero degrees, Eli gets on in the yard. But most mornings, when it is only cold and not cruel, he asks to walk. So we leave at seven and we walk the half mile down to the blacktop.

The bus office let us keep both stops. Dorothea looks for us at the end of the lane first, and if we are not standing there, she comes on up to the yard. She says it is no trouble. She says the half mile of lane is the best part of her route.

Eli counts the posts. He gets a hundred and twelve about half the time now. He is getting better at it, the way children get better at everything whether you want them to or not.

At Christmas he made Vonda another drawing. This one had three people in it, a tall one and a short one and a little one in a red cap, standing by a fence with two horses behind it. She put it on the refrigerator next to the first.

In April, when the grass came back, Vonda led Duke and Penny across the blacktop and through Pete’s gate on a Sunday evening after church. She stood with them on the strip in the long light, with her hand on Penny’s neck, and Eli stood on the bottom rail of the new gate and fed them sugar cubes out of his flat palm, the way she had taught him before.

I watched from the lane. I did not walk over. It was theirs.

Pete says I should have fought her harder. Then he says no, I did it right. He goes back and forth.

I do not go back and forth. A six-year-old missed three days of first grade because a grieving woman had nowhere to put her grief, and I could have made it a war. Instead I put on my coat and took my son’s hand and walked.

The trailer moved in December, and we still walk it most days because he likes the posts.