The Half Mile to the School Bus

Tuesday and Wednesday

Tuesday the trailer was still there. Dorothea slowed at our lane, sat a long minute with her brake lights on, and went on. I knew the route sheet would not change until Thursday, and I had no car. Eli missed another day.

I went over again. I did not knock this time. I stood at the end of her drive, where she could see me from her kitchen window, and after a while she came out on the porch with her coffee.

“He’s six,” I said across the yard. “He’s in first grade. He’s learning to read.”

“Then your husband can drive him,” she said, “when he’s home.” And she went back inside.

Wednesday the trailer was still there.

I sat Eli at the kitchen table that day and we did school ourselves. His teacher, Mrs. Yoder, had sent home a packet when I called her, and we worked through it. Sight words. Counting by fives. A page where you color the things that start with B.

He colored a barn and a ball and a bus. He colored the bus yellow and then stopped.

“Is the bus mad at us?” he said.

“No, honey,” I said. “The bus isn’t mad at anybody.”

“Is Vonda mad at us?”

I thought about how to answer that. Eli knew Vonda. Before Lavon died, she used to give him sugar cubes for the horses and let him stand on the bottom rail of her gate.

“Vonda is sad,” I said. “Sometimes when people are sad they do things that don’t make sense.”

He thought about it. “Like when I kicked the cat when Grandpa’s dog died.”

“Like that,” I said.

That afternoon the man from the transportation office called back. He had been out to look. The sight line over the rise was fine. Starting Thursday, the stop for the Selk lane was the blacktop at the mouth of the lane, seven twenty in the morning and three fifty in the afternoon.

“It’s a half mile walk for him,” he said. “I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “We have legs.”