First day on the job.
The main bus yard was miles away from my house, but the company was okay with drivers parking wherever we liked so long as the bus was safe. I had staked out a parking spot down my block near a condemned home. Not the best idea, in retrospect.
That first day was radiant, sunlight washing the alley running behind the boarded-up house; the alley opened into a field shared by two elementary schools, one Catholic and one public. I saw older kids clustered in groups while the younger kids clung desperately to their parent’s pantlegs.
I jacked up the bus hood. Checked the dipstick, hoses, wires, fluid levels, the battery connection. The bus fired up with an earthy rumble. Interior check. Exterior check. All go. Emergency exit operational. Rock and roll.
I steered the busette onto the street. Schoolkids were knotted down the road waiting for their buses. As I slowed down through a school zone, I noticed a teenage boy take a pronounced step away from the curb as the bus got closer.
Whoa, dude, his body language said. I do not ride that bus, no way no how.
My first stop was for a high-schooler named Vincent. Grade 12. He was a big kid; he would have made a decent football linebacker, if he’d had the aptitude. Vincent’s jeans were perpetually worn beltless; all year long he’d hitch them up. Often they sagged dangerously low, leading one of his bus-mates to chant: I see London, I see France! This never fazed Vincent, who, while no exhibitionist, wasn’t terribly embarrassed about showing a little skin. His face was perfectly round, his hair neatly trimmed and brushed forward. Every day I would stop in front of his house and wait a minute, sometimes longer, for the front door to open and him to come rumbling down the drive. That first morning he sat directly behind me and said, “I call dibs on thiiiis seeeeeat.” It was his regular seat the rest of the year; he sat alone, his body taking up most of it.
“Vincent, right?”
“Yep, thaaaaat’s me.”
He gripped the padded rail behind the driver’s seat and pulled himself forward. He smelled faintly of red licorice. His monotone voice reminded me of Steven Wright, the comedian who told deadpan jokes like, “How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn’t live there?”
“Ask me aaaaaanything about Star Waaaars,” Vincent said, stretching his vowels like taffy. “I know it aaaaall.”
In time I’d discover that Vincent really did know it all: he had an encyclopedic recall of pop culture, from Star Wars to Family Guy to The Simpsons to Star Trek to shows I was too old to know much about, such as Pokémon and Gundam Wing. If you ever needed to know what Homer Simpson said at the fifteen-minute mark of the tenth episode of the seventh season of The Simpsons, Vincent was your man.
I swung back down the street, hung a left and then a right and pulled up in front of a large house. Oliver was waiting. Thirteen years old, with Fragile X Syndrome. I’d already read up on it: an anomaly in the X chromosome; specifically, a failure to express the FMR-1 protein. This can lead to delayed development—physical, intellectual, emotional, or any combination of the three. Oliver’s own signifiers certainly seemed to draw a little from columns A, B, and C. Kids with FXS are prone to hyperactivity and anxiety, and can be hypersensitive to tactile stimuli, often withdrawing from even the lightest touch. I would soon notice that Oliver constantly pulled his shirts away from his chest, tweezing and tenting the fabric ritualistically. Individuals with FXS can hit a state of hyperarousal—the fight or flight instinct kicking in—in a heartbeat, often for reasons that aren’t noticeably apparent.
As Oliver stepped onto the bus, I felt a palpable crackle of electricity. This boy was alive in a quick-twitch, hair-trigger way. I figured a thirteen-year-old with FXS could be a handful, sure, but thirteen-year-olds usually were.
Oliver carried many of the physical traits of FXS. He was short, with protuberant ears and a vaguely elongated face. He had long, thin fingers. Up close, the skin at the edges of his eyes and the corners of his mouth seemed prematurely seamed: in some physical ways he appeared quite a bit older than his age. Other features were simply hereditary, having nothing to do with Fragile X. His eyes were a dark liquid brown. His brilliant blond hair was combed forward in iridescent layers.
Oliver was one snappy dresser. A real clothes horse. American Eagle jeans, Puma sneakers, and a hoodie made up his typical outfit. He kept the hood up most mornings, which gave him the look of a determined little druid … that, or a Benedictine monk disillusioned with the Orthodoxy.
“Good morning, Oliver. Nice to meet you.”
“Hey.”
Vincent and Oliver had ridden the same bus last year. They exchanged gleeful greetings.
“Heeeeeey,” Vincent said to Oliver, “are you aware that the Desert Eeeagle is one of the most powerful handguns ever made?”
“Coooool,” said Oliver, drawing the word out in admiration and not in mimicry of Vincent’s speech. “What are you doing tonight? Sitting at home by yourself?”
“Yeeeah, probably.”
After a beat, I realized Oliver wasn’t being the slightest bit sarcastic.
The third rider, Nadja, lived in a condo complex on the southern edge of the city. An East Indian girl with eyes and skin the colour of camphorwood, she wore pink on the first day of school. I would soon discover that Nadja wore pink every day. Pink coat, pink shorts, a pink barrette in her straight dark hair. Other than a slight speech impediment—which I noticed straight away, but quickly learned was being addressed through speech therapy—and a certain repetitiveness in regard to her word choices, Nadja looked and sounded like any other seventeen-year-old.
She smiled at me. “How are you? I’m very nice. It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”
Before long I would discover that almost everything in Nadja’s world was “nice.” Dogs were nice, princesses were nice, days—even rainy ones—were nice, people were nice (unless they weren’t), kittens were nice, the drive to school was nice. Everything was nicey-nice, which was … uh, nice. It was fun to talk with someone who saw the sun behind every dark cloud and whose emotive palette was dabbed with vibrant oranges and sunny yellows and lip-smacking reds. Which isn’t to say that Nadja wasn’t capable of registering darker shades, too—she would paint with grim blacks and browns from time to time—but her default setting was happy, easygoing, nice.
We drove past big box stores and fast food restaurants. This same exact route, these same potholes and train crossings, would be mine for the rest of the school year. Vincent and Oliver were playing a rousing game of “guns.” Their unflinching goal was to vaporize as much of the city as possible, innocent bystanders be damned. Nadja gave them a look as if to say, Boys. So weird.
“Hand me another uuuuuzi clip,” Vincent said to Oliver.
“How’s this?” Oliver reached across the aisle with an imaginary clip.
“Oooooooh yeah. See that Canadian Tiiiire? Acka-acka-acka. Gone.”
“Can you make me a scope for my rifle?” Oliver asked.
“With infinite range?”
“Can you do that?”
“Of course,” Vincent said. “I’m a technomancer.”
Oliver sat stunned, waiting for the older boy to elaborate.
“It means I’m a wiiiizard of technology. Hey, did you know that the Gaaaatling Gun was named after a doctor?”
“Cool.”
The thought crossed my mind: was it morally correct to stand by as two boys blasted the city to smithereens, even in an imaginary context? But hey, I was their bus driver. My job was to get them from point A to B in one piece; so long as they weren’t being cruel to each other, the rest could slide.
Gavin was my final pickup that first morning. He was the same age as Oliver; they both attended the same middle school. The route sheet said Gavin was autistic. Where he sat on the spectrum I could not tell. His mother stood at the front step and waved as her son made his way to the bus. He wore camouflage pants, black Velcro shoes, and sported a majestic mushroom cap of sandy-blond hair.
“Morning, Gavin.”
Not once during the entire year did Gavin respond to my unfailing “Morning, Gavin.” He wasn’t being rude. It was that Gav, as we all came to call him, was basically non-verbal. He managed to express himself in other ways, however; he boasted an expressive lexicon of trilling birdlike noises, whistles, and the occasional whoa. He also boasted a collection of “poses,” you might call them. He shaped his body into positions such as “The Scarecrow”—holding his arms out, crucifixion-style—or “The Double Crab,” where he flexed his biceps like Jack LaLanne.
Most days he seemed pleased to gaze out the window, absorbed in his own thoughts—but if the radio was playing, as sometimes it was, Gav was known to drop a kick-ass air-drum solo. I was always struck by how clean Gavin smelled. He’d hop on board smelling of soap and fabric softener and, through some kind of sorcery, would board the bus that same afternoon smelling the same. Most kids, especially the younger ones, tended to smell of dirt and sweat and the residue of whatever bacterial microsites they had diligently investigated that day. Not Gavin. The boy rarely met my eyes head-on (he rarely looked anyone full on), but I’d often catch him looking at me in the riot mirror; if so, he would smile a little wider—he was always smiling—and duck his head sheepishly behind the seat. Most days he seemed to occupy his own happy hospitable world, which evidently shared a permeable barrier with my own. It was a lovely moment when the sun split through those particular clouds, allowing Gavin and me to truly see one another.
I drove down Gavin’s block and onto the main drag. The CB crackled: drivers radioed dispatch about late pickups and no shows, traffic jams, the odd Code Yellow. Apprehensive about their first day at school, the kids rode in silence. I dropped Vincent and Nadja at the high school. Afterwards I took Oliver and Gavin to their middle school. Their teachers were waiting outside when the bus arrived.
“Have a good day, huh? See you guys after school.”
Driving home, I found myself assessing my performance as one might following a first date. Had I come off too strong? Too … what, needy? Nosy? For some absurd reason I was worried that the kids would find me dull and give me a Roman Coliseum-style thumbs down. Our driver is a crashing bore. Have him fed to the lions at once!
I shook my head disbelievingly. Had I really spent the morning trying to impress kids? Truly, mine was a rich and satisfying existence.
The fifth student on the bus was Jake.
He was sixteen the year I drove him. That would make him what, twenty-two today, as I write this? Hard to imagine. An adult. Old enough to vote, smoke, drink—though I’m pretty sure he doesn’t drink, not now, likely not ever.
Jake has cerebral palsy. The medical designation for his classification of CP is called spastic quadriplegia, the result of an upper motor neuron lesion that prevented the spinal cord receptors from receiving a key amino acid. Symptoms included hypertonia (involuntary spasms), muscular rigidity and abnormal muscle tone. “Quadriplegia” means all four of his limbs are affected. It’s progressive, which is to say that it gets worse over time. The year prior to us meeting, Jake had started to use an electric wheelchair. Until then he had been mobile enough to get around on his own.
Calvin, Jake’s father, was the last parent I had spoken to during those introductory phone calls. He said his family had recently been in the local paper. Then he told me why.
“Four months ago, my son Jake and my wife were struck by a drunk driver not far from where we live,” Calvin said. “They were out for a walk. My wife was killed. Jake’s injuries were extensive. One of his lungs collapsed. The other had a hole in it. There were lacerations to the liver, bruising to the heart and kidneys. He suffered damage to his pancreas and lost two-thirds of his spleen. Two pelvic fractures. Broken nose. Cuts and bruises all over. If it were you or me? We’d be dead.” Over the following weeks I’d pieced together the family’s recent history. They had moved to Calgary from Cornwall, England, drawn by the prospect of improved health care for their son. They had bought a house in the burbs. Calvin, a carpenter, found employment with a kitchen remodelling company. His wife maintained household affairs and kept a running dialogue with Jake’s doctors about his treatments.
Other information I was able to cobble together from local news reports and Internet searches. At 8:20 pm on a weeknight in 2008, Jake, his mother, his younger sister Molly and a family friend were out for a walk, something they did many nights. A black 2006 Dodge Durango tore down the street, skipped the curb and collided with them. Jake was struck glancingly and thrown from his chair. The family friend absorbed serious injuries. Molly was largely unhurt. Jake’s mother was hurt very badly. The truck veered back onto the road and accelerated away. Jake’s wheelchair remained embedded in its grille.
The driver—a man who lived in the same suburb, and who had been drinking in a bar not far from his home—parked his damaged vehicle in the alley behind his house. He covered the truck with a blue plastic tarp, the kind used to keep firewood dry—a half-assed job, since he was three sheets to the wind. Witnesses helped police locate the residence. The man refused to submit to a Breathalyzer test. Evidently he’d wet himself—but whether that had happened before, during or after the collision remained unclear. His licence had been suspended because of a prior DUI. He eventually had eleven charges brought against him, including Impaired Driving Causing Death and Failure to Stop at the Scene of an Accident (knowing that a person had been injured).
Jake was transported to the hospital with serious, non-life-threatening injuries. He was put into a medical coma and remained in that state for two weeks. By the time he woke up, his mother had passed away.
I first met Jake on the second day of the school year; his father had driven him on the first. The accident that took the life of Jake’s mother had occurred four months ago. I pulled up beside the house in a new subdivision, the sort where every tree was a sapling and some of the lawns had been laid down so recently that the sod hadn’t knit together yet. The pickup truck in the driveway had a bumper sticker that read: MY KID CAN KICK YOUR KID’S ASS.
I angled the bus’s front tires into the curb, as was mandatory on any downhill park. Flicked on the hazards, set the parking brake. Then I swung the doors open—I loved cranking the mechanism to swing those double doors wide, the ultimate bus-driver move—hopped out and dropped wooden blocks under the back wheels as a final precaution.
The garage door rattled up. Calvin—athletic, handsome, with the sharkish face of a career criminal from a Guy Ritchie film—came down the wooden ramp connecting the garage’s elevated inner door to the floor. He waved and said:
“He’ll be out in a minute.”
I lowered the wheelchair ramp. Jake was still getting ready inside the house. His father held the door open, making an Arriba, arriba! Ándale! gesture. A young girl—Jake’s sister, surely—was hurriedly brushing his hair.
Soon Jake was rolling down the ramp. He piloted (that’s the only word to describe Jake’s driving style: he worked that joystick like a fighter pilot banking his jet into a tactical turn, desperately fighting the wind shear) a sleek electric wheelchair with heavy-duty springs. Satchels carrying books and binders hung off the back. He accelerated at breakneck speed and took a corner poorly, one tire clipping the wall.
Jake was a teenager with dark hair, expressive eyebrows, brown eyes, and a face that seemed too threadbare for our country’s winters. At sixteen, he was slender—as he will likely be his whole life, not because he watches his weight, but because for him eating can be a chore. His face hinted at future handsomeness: it was there in the prominent cheekbones and aquiline nose. But his eyebrows were too wild and his hair still possessed that baffling teenage tendency to stick up in unruly cowlicks; no matter how many times Jake’s father or caregiver ran a comb through it, Jake usually rolled out of his house with at least one sprig jutting at a quizzical angle, like the mast of a sunken ship slanting above the waterline. He wore a tee-shirt, loosely tied sneakers and tear-away athletic pants. A neoprene-padded splint was fastened around his right arm.
I cannot say what I expected. A teenager so worn down by an accumulation of losses that he was glasslike? Brokenhearted and defeated and shell-shocked? Writing this now, I can say that, yeah, some days Jake was glasslike. Other days he raged. And into any conversation, no matter how innocuous, there would seep traces of a soul-deep broken-heartedness. But in the hundreds of hours we eventually spent together that year, on the bus and off, Jake never once seemed defeated. No, not once.
“This is your new bus driver. His name is Craig,” said Calvin by way of introduction.
“Good morning, Jake.”
Jake smiled. “Well, good morning, Craig.”
Have you ever met someone and immediately thought: the two of us, we’re gonna get along like bandits? That’s how it happened when I met Jake. I felt an instant, almost audible click.
“He’d like to be at the front of the bus,” Calvin told me. “His last driver went over railroad crossings and rattled him all to hell.”
I’d already installed the wheelchair straps to the right of my own seat. Once Jake’s chair was secure, Calvin crouched beside his son. He slipped his hand round the back of Jake’s neck and pressed their foreheads together.
“Stay positive, Jake. Positive, positive, positive.”
After Calvin left, I pulled onto the street. Dispatch radioed for my whereabouts.
“Running a few minutes behind,” I radioed back.
“Sorry,” Jake said in his lilting British accent. I came to love the Briticisms he’d work into our conversations: his cellphone wasn’t hung on a strap, for example, but rather a “lanyard.” When his wheelchair broke, he didn’t need to get it fixed, but rather “seen to.” He also used the word “lovely”—a word that my grandfather, an expat Brit himself, had been fond of.
“What are you sorry for?” I said. “I ought to know how to strap your chair in. It’s my fault we’re running late.”
He smiled gratefully. I noted the bump on Jake’s nose where the broken bone had healed but otherwise, I thought, he looked good. A lot better than I would have.
We retraced our route from the day before. I had thought that would be the most terrible part of the job: the same route, every day. I used to watch bus drivers or subway conductors and think: Lord, what misery! Tracing one paved loop every damn day, or shunting a big metal worm full of commuters through dark tunnels under the city. What I found was that, yes, the monotony of the roads was deadening. But what happened on board the bus kept the boredom at bay.
The second day, Vincent brought a Simpsons comic book on board. This led to a rousing debate, everyone chiming in on their favourite episodes.
“The Cape Fear one,” Jake said eagerly. “The one where Sideshow Bob keeps stepping on rakes.”
“Oh I liiiiike that one,” said Vincent.
“Did you guys ever see the one where, uuuhhh, where uhhh …” Oliver’s face morphed into a frown. “The one time where, uuhhh, when, when, that one show where Peter Griffin gets into a fight with a chicken?”
“That’s Faaaamily Guy,” Vincent corrected him.
Oliver laughed. “Oh yeah. Ha! That was great!”
The Simpsons and Family Guy were beloved by everyone except for Nadja, who much preferred Hannah Montana and (archaically) West Side Story. Oliver was a video game nut. Jake was an obsessive fan of Homestar Runner and a British show called Red Dwarf. Vincent was hooked on The Transformers, Japanese anime, Monty Python and anything to do with World War I or II—plus the conceivable outcomes of world wars III, IV, V and beyond, which Vincent assured us would be fought by technomancers, cyborgs and flesh-eating robots who would enslave however many hapless humans were still shambling around.
The realization dawned on me. I was driving a bus full of … nerds.
I could say this with utter conviction because I am one of the biggest nerds you’ll ever meet. We nerds can smell our own. I could chime in about every pop culture touchstone those kids brought up. And not just old-timey stuff: Oh, so you kiddos like wrestling, do ya? In my day I’d watch Whipper Billy Watson tussle with Haystacks Calhoun; I’d buy a bag of horehound candy for a hay penny from the concessionaire, etcetera and so forth. The truth was, I still watched wrestling. If I’d been your stereotypical bus driver, the kids may as well have been speaking Sanskrit. But their conversations lay squarely in my wheelhouse. Hallelujah! Rarely has a case of arrested development as profound as mine paid such handsome social dividends.
That second morning, I pulled into the high school and let Vincent and Nadja off. Then I unstrapped Jake’s chair and let him guide it onto the lift. As I lowered it for him, my gaze drifted over to the football field. A quartet of goths were tossing a Frisbee around. There was something hilarious about guys with flowing hair and black trenchcoats engaged in athletics. They resembled pasty long-shanked bats with their unbuttoned coats flapping around their ankles.
“Oh, man. That right there,” I said, angling my chin towards them, “is a YouTube sensation waiting to happen.”
That was the first time I got a laugh out of Jake. He had the most wonderful, infectious laugh—it bubbled up from the soles of his feet, a total body event. From that moment on, Jake’s laugh became the equivalent of auditory cocaine: I’d do just about anything for a fix. Jake, bless him, was the most generous dealer an addict could ask for. Sometimes when I really got on a roll, Jake would be clutching his sides, heaving, begging me: “Please, stop it. I can’t … I can’t breathe.”
“Are they friends of yours?” I asked, nodding towards the goths.
“Everyone’s my friend.”
He didn’t say this with pride; he was stating an obvious fact. Of course everyone was his friend. Duh. He was the kid in the wheelchair whose mother had died. Who except the most towering prick wouldn’t be his friend?