The Sweet Hereafter Read online

  Bear was ready and waiting for me, and the second I swung open the door he jumped straight into the bus from the ground, as if he had been planning it, and grinned in triumph and held out the flat of his hand for a high five, like a black kid from the city. I slapped it, and he said, “Yo, Dolores!” and bounced back down the aisle and sat in the middle of the last seat with his legs stretched out, raiding his lunchbox and waiting for the other boys. He had a round burnt-orange baby face with a perpetual peaceful smile on it, as if someone had just told him a terrific joke and he was telling it over again to himself. His hair, which was straight and coal black and long in back, hung in bangs across his broad forehead. Bear was supposed to be only eleven, but because of his size he looked thirteen or fourteen. A stocky boy, but not fat, he was built like one of those sumo wrestlers. Numerous times, in the quick bristly quarrels that boys like to get into, I had seen him play the calm, good-natured peacemaker, and I admired him and imagined that he would turn into a wonderful man. He was one of those rare children who bring out the best in people instead of the worst.

  The Ottos were what you might call hippies, if you considered only their hair and clothing, mannerisms, politics, house, et cetera—their general life-style, let us say, which was extreme and somewhat innovative. But in fact they were model citizens. Regular at the town meetings, where they offered sound opinions in a respectful way, and members of the voluntary fire brigade. They even took the CPR training and the emergency first aid courses offered at the school, and they always helped out at the various fund-raising bazaars and carnivals in town, although they were not themselves churchgoers. They both were tall and thin and moved and talked slowly. Vegetarians, they were.

  Hartley, who was a furniture-maker for a company up in Keeseville, had a thick, unkempt beard and wore his hair in a long ponytail, which to me was a little pathetic-looking, now that he was turning gray. Wanda, who made pots with sticks and straw stuck into holes in the clay and baskets with tubes of clay in the straw—very original items, which she sold at fairs around the state—wore old-fashioned spectacles and had hair like that woman Morticia, the mother on The Addams Family TV show. Their house was a dome, half buried in the side of Little Hawk. They had built it themselves, a peculiar-looking structure, although people who have been inside tell me it is quite large and comfortable, if dark. Like the inside of an army field tent, I’m told. The Ottos had a special interest in protecting the environment, as you might expect, and were from someplace downstate and I believe were college educated. There were persistent rumors that they grew and smoked marijuana, which, as far as I’m concerned, was their business, since nobody else got hurt by it.

  I keep saying “was,” as if they are no longer with us, like the Lamstons, who have moved to Plattsburgh. But in fact the Ottos are still here in Sam Dent, living in their dome, Hartley making his Adirondack porch chairs up in Keeseville and Wanda her straw pots and clay baskets at home. She has delivered her baby safely, thank God, a healthy little boy (whose name I don’t know, since I don’t see them much anymore and don’t keep track of those things as much as I used to). But I’m telling about life in Sam Dent before the accident, and so much has changed since then that it’s difficult for me to describe people or things concerned with the accident, except in terms that put them into the past.

  Beyond the Ottos’ and over the crest of Bartlett Hill, the road drops fairly fast, and I made three stops in short order, so I barely got the bus out of first gear before having to hit the brakes and pull over again. These were the Hamilton kids, the Prescotts, and the Walkers, seven in all, little kids, first, second, and third graders, mostly, the children of young couples living in small houses that they built piecemeal themselves on lots cut out of a tract of land that had once belonged to my father and grandfather.

  The acreage, along with the old family house and barn, passed to me and Abbott when my dad died back in 1974 (my ma died early, when I was nineteen), and then in ‘84, when Abbott had his stroke, we sold off most of the uphill land that fronted on the road. Sold too cheaply, it turned out, as it was a few years too soon to take advantage of what they call the second-home land boom. But we needed the money right then and there, for Abbott’s hospital bills and so on, since his insurance had run out so fast, and those young couples needed land to build their homes to raise their children in.

  I’ve never especially regretted it. I’d rather watch the little tatty Capes and ranches of local folks, people I’ve known since they were children themselves, going up on that land than the high-tech summer houses and A-frame ski lodges with decks and hot tubs and so on built by rich yuppies from New York City who don’t give a damn for this town or the people in it.

  I’ve got nothing against outsiders per se, you understand. It’s just that you have to love a town before you can live in it right, and you have to live in it before you can love it right. Otherwise, you’re a parasite of sorts. I know that the tourists, the summer people, bring a load of seasonal cash to town, but as Abbott likes to say, “Short … term … profits … make … long … term … losses.” Which is true about a lot of things.

  With the Hamilton, Prescott, and Walker kids safely aboard, I drove slowly past my own house, where I could see from the light in the kitchen window that Abbott was on his second cup of coffee and listening to the radio news—he likes the National Public Radio news from Burlington, which is one of his sources of unusual facts. He listens to the radio the way some people read the newspaper—he looks right at it, his brow furrowed, as if committing what he hears to memory. He hates television. Which is unusual in an invalid, I understand, but may account for the fact that he is rarely depressed by his condition. He always had more of a radio personality than a television personality anyhow. I gave him a blast of the horn, as I always do, and rolled past the house.

  By now there was some noise in the bus, the early morning sounds of children practicing at being adults, making themselves known to one another and to themselves in their small voices (some of them not so small)—asking questions, arguing, making exchanges, gossiping, bragging, pleading, courting, threatening, testing—doing everything we ourselves do, the way puppies and kittens at play mimic grown dogs and cats at work. It’s not altogether peaceful or sweet, any more than the noises adults make are peaceful and sweet, but it doesn’t do any serious harm. And because you can listen to children without fear, the way you can watch puppies tumble and bite and kittens sneak up on one another and spring without worrying that they’ll be hurt by it, the talk of children can be very instructive. I guess it’s because they play openly at what we grownups do seriously and in secret.

  There was enough light, a predawn grayness, so that I could by this time see the lowered sky, and I knew that it was going to snow. The roads were dry and ice-free—it had stayed cold and hadn’t snowed for over a week—and because the temperature was so low, I figured that the new snow would be dry and hard, so was not concerned that I had not put chains on the tires that morning. I knew I’d be needing them for the afternoon run, though, and groaned silently to myself—putting on chains in the cold is tedious and hard on the hands. You have to remove your gloves to snap the damned things together, at least I do, and the circulation in my fingers—due to cigarettes, Abbott tells me, although I quit fifteen years ago—is not good anymore.

  But for now I was not worried. You drive these roads for forty-five years in every season and all kinds of weather, there’s not much can surprise you. Which is one of the reasons I was given this job in 1968 and rehired every year since—the others being my considerable ability as a driver, pure and simple, and my reliability and punctuality. And, of course, my affection for children and ease with them. This is not bragging; it’s simple fact. No two ways about it—I was the most qualified school bus driver in the district.

  By the time I reached the bottom of Bartlett Hill Road, where it enters Route 73 by the old mill, I had half my load, over twenty kids, on board. They had walked to their pl
aces on Bartlett Hill Road from the smaller roads and lanes that run off it, bright little knots of three and four children gathered by a cluster of mailboxes to wait there for me—like berries waiting to be plucked, I sometimes thought as I made my descent, clearing the hillside of its children. I always enjoyed watching the older children, the seventh and eighth graders, play their music on their Walkmans and portable radios and dance around each other, flirting and jostling for position in their numerous and mysterious pecking orders, impossible for me or any adult to understand, while the younger boys and girls soberly studied and evaluated the older kids’ moves for their own later use. I liked the way the older boys slicked their hair back in precise dips and waves, and the way the girls dolled themselves up with lipstick and eyeliner, as if they weren’t already as beautiful as they would ever be again.

  When they climbed onto the bus, they had to shut their radios off. It was one of the three rules I laid down every year the first day of school. Rule one: No tape players or radios playing inside the bus. Headsets, Walkmans, were permissible, of course, but I could not abide half a dozen tiny radio speakers squawking three kinds of rock ‘n’ roll behind me. Not with all the other noises those kids made. Rule number two: No fighting. Anyone fights, he by God walks. And no matter who starts it, both parties walk. Girls the same as boys. They could argue and holler at one another all they wanted, but let one of them strike another, and both of them were on the road in seconds. I usually had to enforce this rule no more than once a year, and after that the kids enforced it themselves. Or if they did hit each other, they did it silently, since the victim knew that he or she would have to walk too. I was well aware that I couldn’t ever stop them altogether from striking each other, but at least I could make them conscious of it, which is a start. Rule number three: No throwing things. Not food, not paper airplanes, not hats or mittens—nothing. That rule was basically so I could drive without sudden undue distraction. For safety’s sake.

  I’m a fairly large woman, taller and heavier than even the biggest eighth-grade boy (although Bear Otto was soon going to be bigger than I am), and my voice is sharp, so it was not especially difficult, with only these few rules, to maintain order and establish tranquillity. Also, I made no attempt to teach them manners, no moves to curb or restrain their language—I figured they heard enough of that from their teachers and parents—and I think this kept them loose enough that they did not feel particularly restricted. Besides, I have always liked listening to the way kids talk when they’re not trying to please or deceive an adult. I just perched up there in the driver’s seat and drove, letting them forget all about me, while I listened to their jumble of words, songs, and shouts and cries, and it was almost as if I were not present, or were invisible, or as if I were a child again myself, a child blessed or cursed (I’m not sure which) with foresight, with the ability to see the closing off that adulthood would bring, the pleasures, the shame, the secrets, the fearfulness. The eventual silence; that too.

  At Route 73 by the old mill, I banged a left and headed north along the Ausable River, picking up the valley kids. There was always a fair amount of vehicular traffic on 73 at this hour, mostly local people driving to work, which never presented a problem, but sometimes there were downstate skiers up early on their way to a long weekend at Lake Placid and Whiteface. Them I had to watch out for, especially today, this being a Friday—they were generally young urban-type drivers and were not used to coming up suddenly on a school bus stopped at the side of the road to pick up children, and the flashing red lights on the bus didn’t seem to register somehow, as if they thought all they had to do was slow down a little and then pass me by. They thought they were up in the mountains and no people lived here. To let them know, I kept a notebook and pen next to my seat, and whenever one of those turkeys blew past me in his Porsche or BMW, I took his number and later phoned it in to Wyatt Pitney at state police headquarters in Marlowe. Wyatt usually managed to get their attention.

  Anyhow, this morning I was stopped across from the Bide-a-Wile Motel, which is owned and operated by Risa and Wendell Walker, and Risa was walking their little boy, Sean, across Route 73, as is customary. Sean had some kind of learning disability—he was close to ten but seemed more like a very nervous, frightened five or six, an unusually runtish boy and delicate, with a sickly pale complexion and huge dark eyes. He was a strange little fellow, but you couldn’t help liking him and feeling protective toward him. Apparently, although he was way behind all the other kids his age in school and was too fragile and nervous to play at sports, he was expert at playing video games and much admired for it by the other children. A wizard, they say, with fabulous eye-hand coordination, and when sitting in front of a video game, he was supposed to be capable of scary concentration. It was probably the only time he felt competent and was not lonely.

  It had started to snow, light windblown flecks falling like bits of wood ash. Risa had her down parka over her nightgown and bathrobe and was wearing slippers, and she held Sean by the hand and carefully walked him from the motel office, where they had an apartment in back, to the road, which, although it’s only two lanes, is actually a state highway along there, the main truck route connecting Placid and the Saranac region to the Northway.

  There were no cars or trucks in sight as Risa brought her son across to the bus. He was Risa’s and Wendell’s only child and the frail object of all their attention. Wendell was a pleasantly withdrawn sort of man who seemed to have given up on life, but Risa, I knew, still had dreams. In warm weather, she’d be out there roofing the motel or repainting the signs, while Wendell stayed inside and watched baseball on TV. They had a lot of financial problems—the motel had about a dozen units and was old and in shabby condition; they had bought it in a foreclosure sale eight or ten years before, and I don’t think they’d put up the No Vacancy sign once in that time. (Sam Dent is one of those towns that’s on the way to somewhere else, and people get this far, they usually keep going.) Also, I think that the Walkers’ marriage was shaky. Judging from what happened to them after the accident, it was probably just that motel and their love for the boy, Sean, that had bound them.

  I flung open the door, and the child, because he was so small, stepped up with difficulty, and when he got to the landing he turned and did an unusual thing. Like a scared baby who wanted his mother to lift him up and hug him, he held his arms out to Risa and said, “I want to stay with you.”

  Risa had large dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept well, or at all, for that matter, and her hair was tangled and matted, and for a second I wondered if she had a drinking problem. “Go on now,” she said to the boy in a weary voice. “Go on.”

  The kids sitting near the door were watching Sean, surprised and puzzled by his behavior, maybe embarrassed by it, since he was doing what so many of them would sometimes like to do but did not dare, certainly not in public like this. One of the eighth-grade girls, Nichole Burnell, who was sitting next to the door and has a wonderful maternal streak, squinched over a few inches and patted the seat next to her and said, “C’mon, Sean, sit next to me.”

  With his large eyes fixed on Risa’s face, the boy edged sideways toward Nichole and finally sat, but still he watched his mother, as if he was frightened. Not for himself but for her. “Is he okay?” I asked Risa. Normally he just marched on board and found himself a seat and stared out the window for the whole trip. A very private boy enjoying his thoughts and fancies, thinking maybe about his video games.

  “I don’t know. He’s fine, I mean. Not sick or anything. It’s just one of those mornings, I guess. We all have them, Dolores, don’t we?” She made a wistful smile.

  “By Jesus, I sure do!” I said, trying to cheer the woman up, although in fact I almost never had those mornings myself, so long as I had the school bus to drive. It’s almost impossible to say how important and pleasurable that job was to me. Though I liked being at home with Abbott and had the post office and mail carrier job to get me through
the summers, I could hardly wait till school started again in September and I could get back out there in the early morning light and start up my bus and commence to gather the children of the town and carry them to school. I have what you call a sanguine personality. That’s what Abbott calls it.

  “Are you okay, Risa?” I asked.

  She looked at me and sighed. Woman to woman. “You want to buy a good used motel?” she said. She looked across the road at the row of empty units. Not a car in the lot, except their Wagoneer. It’s the Holiday Inns and the Marriotts that keep folks like the Walkers from making a living.

  “Winter’s been tough, eh?”

  “No more than usual, I guess. The usual just gets harder and harder, though.”

  “I guess it does,” I said. A big Grand Union sixteen-wheeler had come up behind me and stopped. “But I got enough problems of my own, honey,” I said. “Last thing I need is a motel.” We were talking finances, not husbands—or at least I was. I suspected she was talking husband, however. “I got to get moving,” I said, “before the snow blows.”

  “Yes. It will snow some today. Six to eight inches by nightfall.”

  I thought about the chains again. Sean was still watching his mother with that strange grief-stricken expression on his small, bony face, and she waved limply at him, like she was dismissing him, and stepped away. Shutting the door with one hand, I released the brake with the other, waited a second for Risa to cross in front of the bus, and pulled slowly out. I heard the air brakes of the sixteen-wheeler hiss as the driver chunked into gear and, checking the side mirror, saw him move into line behind me.

  Then suddenly Sean shrieked, “Mommy!” and he was all over me, scrambling across my lap to the window, and I glimpsed Risa off to my left, leaping out of the way of a red Saab that seemed to have bolted out of nowhere. It had come around the bend in front of me and the truck and hadn’t slowed a bit as I drew back onto the road, and the driver must have felt squeezed and had accelerated and had just missed clipping Risa as she crossed to the other side. I hit the brakes, and thank God the driver of the truck behind me did too, managing to pull up an inch or two from my rear.