Murder on the Class Trip

Maya knew lots of people in their mid- to late seventies who were still active and spry, youthful, full of vim and vigor. Unfortunately, Clancy Rodick was not one of them. Clancy had been a bus driver for the South Portland school district for decades. Maya’s earliest memory of him was when she was in the fourth grade and he yelled at her for talking too loud in the back of the school bus. She had shrunk down in her seat, embarrassed, and had never dared to speak again for the remainder of the school year on the two-mile ride from home to school and back. Most of Maya’s memories of Clancy after that terrifying first day involved him yelling and screaming, losing his cool, demanding the kids remain in their seats and keep their mouths shut, every morning like clockwork. She didn’t blame him. The kids on her bus route to school were a rowdy bunch, and as they all got older, Clancy was no longer so scary to them, until finally, by the time she was a sophomore, when Clancy was transferred from driving the middle school students and assigned to drive the high school students, they stopped taking his roaring orders and threats seriously. He’d still pop a gasket every morning when the kids got a little out of control, but by then her peers mostly ignored him. In fact, his shouting had just become background noise like music on the car radio as she flirted with the new transfer student, a senior with his own motorcycle.

Now, watching Clancy behind the wheel of the school bus, driving them from Portland, Maine, to Washington, DC, Maya barely recognized him. He was hunched over in his seat, a tiny man, a fraction of the size that she had remembered. He had seemed so towering and formidable when she was a little girl. Now he looked almost fragile. His bony, cracked hands gripped the wheel, and his glazed-over eyes remained squarely fixed on the traffic in front of him. Fern had been disappointed to find out Clancy was the only driver available, mostly because he had already been put out to pasture, only called in when another driver was sick or on vacation. But after the Herculean struggle to secure the necessary number of adult chaperones, Fern was not about to question Principal Williams’s decision to recruit old Clancy.

Clancy had obviously mellowed over the years. After two messy divorces, a bout with prostate cancer, and a lingering estrangement from his only daughter, who had fled Maine for the warmer climes of Florida’s panhandle, life’s blows had finally taken their toll. Clancy lived alone in a small apartment behind a funeral home, venturing out to buy groceries once a week or to grab a beer at his local watering hole. He had slowed down considerably. And so had his driving.

Maya had noticed when they piled onto the bus early that morning at five for the eight-and-a-half-hour drive to DC that Clancy’s faculties were not what they used to be. He nearly sideswiped a parked car as they pulled out of the SoPo High parking lot and as they crawled up the on ramp to Interstate 95 south toward Boston, he kept a steady tortoise-like pace, never tipping over fifty miles an hour as the surrounding cars around the yellow bus zipped past faster, some at seventy-five, eighty miles an hour.

Clancy turned on the blinker to change lanes when a car behind them honked loudly, annoyed they were going so slow. Clancy glanced in his mirror and then violently swerved the bus, nearly colliding with a tractor trailer that was in the other lane, which caused that driver to angrily lay on his horn. The irate drivers didn’t seem to rattle Clancy at all, or maybe, more worrying, he just didn’t hear them.

“Look, Clancy’s advanced age may be an issue, his eyesight and reflexes aren’t what they used to be, but I’m afraid if you ask him to speed up, you might take him out of his comfort zone and he could take some risks that would jeopardize the safety of the kids . . . not to mention us.”

Maya looked around. The kids were all totally oblivious, excitedly chattering away. Way in the back, Maya spotted Ryan and Vanessa sitting together, mashed up against each other, probably holding hands, although Maya couldn’t see for sure. She certainly liked Ryan, but they were so young, and she was concerned they were getting way too serious too soon. She wondered if Sandra felt the same way.

Sandra sat in the seat behind her, but they had barely spoken since leaving SoPo High because their fellow chaperone Coach Lucas Cavill, who was seated directly across from her, had been singularly focused on keeping Sandra engaged in a conversation. Sandra pleasantly answered his barrage of questions, politely laughed at his wisecracks, and seemed genuinely appreciative of the attention, but Maya knew her friend and partner well, and Sandra was trying very hard not to give the amorous young man the wrong impression. She would turn away when there was a lull in the conversation, staring out the window at the passing scenery, only to be drawn back by Lucas’s efforts to get to know her better. When one of the boys wanted to pump the coach about the upcoming baseball away game schedule, Sandra seized the opportunity to get up from her seat and slide into the one in front of her next to Maya.

Fern whipped around. “I was hoping to tour a few of the big-ticket items today before we checked into the hotel. I have the Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson monuments on my list that I want to check off today, but at this rate it’s already going to be dark by the time we get there.”

By the time they exited the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to New York Avenue, they had been on the road for eleven hours and nineteen minutes. It was almost four thirty in the afternoon. Fern, a stickler about her schedule, insisted they make a beeline for the monuments, dismissing Coach Cavill’s suggestion that they go straight to the hotel and tack on the monuments to the following day’s schedule.

The stops were more abbreviated than planned. In fact, they decided to just drive by the Washington Monument with everybody cramming up against the windows to get photos with their phones. Then Clancy deposited them off at the Lincoln Memorial, and Fern herded everybody up the steps to see the grand, majestic, giant sculpture of our nation’s sixteenth President. Fern prattled on about his consequential presidency, peppering in a few personal details, promising to discuss more when they went to Ford’s Theatre, where he was assassinated. Unable to find parking, Clancy just circled around the area until Fern called him on his phone and he pulled up, cranking open the door, watching listlessly as the kids piled on the bus while Fern did a quick head count.

Maya had to admit, Sandra was a born teacher. She gathered the kids around, reading the words inscribed in a frieze below the dome: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Then she launched into a compelling story about Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. At least the kids seemed interested. Coach Cavill certainly was laser focused on Sandra, although Maya couldn’t be sure whether it was her impromptu history lesson or the top button of her blouse that had come undone. Maya mostly tuned out, calculating how many more hours were left on the trip before the journey home.