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WEDNESDAY BLED INTO THURSDAY. Green and blue bins lined Pentz Road for trash day. Campaign signs bristled in front yards. Parents dropped their children off at Ponderosa Elementary, then commuted to Chico, driving past the Ace Hardware, whose windows advertised that night’s Christmas preview, and past the seasonal ice skating rink in Bille Park. Employees brushed ruddy leaves off the ice and pasted promotional posters on the bumper board, including for Adventist Health, whose $5,000 donation made it the biggest corporate sponsor. Less than a mile away, the Starbucks parking lot was full, though old-timers could still be seen at Dolly-“O” Donuts, whose sour brew they preferred.
Kevin McKay rolled his cherry-red Mustang through the Paradise Unified School District’s gated parking lot. He clocked in at 6:45 a.m. and exchanged his keys for those to Bus 963. The vehicle was at the back of a long line of buses—at twenty-two years old, the most senior of the fleet. Kevin, forty-one, lifted himself into the driver’s seat and began pulling levers and pushing buttons, making sure the brakes were lubricated and the engine purred. A tone pinged from the dashboard. The precheck list had twenty-five items, with another nine for the brakes. You could never be too careful when children were involved. Kevin dutifully checked off each box on the page, then pulled out of the lot and headed toward Magalia.
It had been a rough week. The night before, Kevin had euthanized his Bordeaux mastiff, Elvis. The dog—slobbery and loose-skinned—had been dying of cancer, though that hadn’t made the veterinarian appointment any easier. Afterward, his twelve-year-old son, Shaun, had come down with the stomach flu. Kevin had been up with him all night. The boy was too sick to attend school, so Kevin’s mother was taking care of him at home. Kevin planned to relieve her when he finished his route at 9 a.m.
He cranked open the small driver’s window. Thick ponderosa pine and rows of squat homes decorated for Thanksgiving flashed past. Scuffed-up trucks with tall wheels zipped by in the other lane. Sometimes Kevin had to pause—to remember how he had wound up wearing a dark gray uniform behind the wheel of a two-decades-old school bus, to remind himself that the sacrifice was worth it. He worked part time and made $11 an hour shuttling raucous children from one end of the Ridge to the other. BE SAFE, RESPECTFUL, KIND, RESPONSIBLE, read the laminated yellow sign taped above the bus door. It fluttered in the breeze from the opened window.
The other drivers had warned him that these days, Magalia kids were particularly tough. Within the first month, a nine-year-old had punched his classmate in the nose, spraying blood across the seatback. But Kevin had a good way with children. He knew they often fought because they wanted to be seen, or because they hadn’t eaten breakfast, or because they had learned aggressive behavior from their parents. He was firm, but sometimes all he had to do was listen. He made the nine-year-old sit in a seat near him, and after a week, the boy stuck around, confiding in Kevin about issues at home and showing off his homework assignments. His classmates followed suit. After school, they flooded the bus and clamored to give Kevin high-fives and pepper him with questions. Their mothers learned his name and waved hello during pickup and drop-off.
When the kids got too rowdy—throwing candy wrappers across the aisles or hitting each other with their backpacks or wedging gel pens in each other’s ears—Kevin would whistle through his teeth. As his chocolate-brown eyes darted across the wide mirror nailed above the windshield, the bus would momentarily quiet.
Kevin had wanted to do more with his life. He’d moved to the Paradise area when he was twelve, relocating with his family from the historic logging town of Felton, near Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, about seven miles inland from Santa Cruz’s surfing scene. His parents were high school sweethearts who married the day after his mother’s eighteenth birthday. They had ended up on the California coast after living in San Jose, where his father worked as a heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning technician, in an effort to give their sons a quality education. But the class sizes at the local school district in Felton still seemed too large, so they returned north to raise their children in their hometown.
The boys adored living in the foothills, where they had 11 acres to roam. Kevin and his brother fished for salmon in the Feather River, camped with their cousins in the woods, and shot BB guns at pine trees that oozed sap. When their parents traveled to Reno to play the slot machines—their father’s idea of a vacation—they stayed home alone. Magalia was safe. Residents didn’t bother to lock their doors.
Kevin grew into a barrel-chested and athletic teenager. He didn’t take any flak—not even from his older brother’s friends, who often stole his basketball to play keep-away. He was not one for mean-spirited jokes. To his parents’ delight, he and his brother attended their alma mater. His senior year, Kevin’s teammates voted him captain of Paradise High’s football team. He dated a pretty brunette in his class and earned good grades, particularly in math and science, receiving an academic patch for his varsity jacket. He graduated in 1995 with the same aspirations his father had held dear: to purchase a house, get a good job, raise a family. He longed to attend the University of Oregon, where he had gone for summer football camp. But even with a partial scholarship to play on the team, his parents couldn’t afford the tuition. He and his girlfriend enrolled at Chico State University.
Kevin was two years into a pre-med degree when they realized that she was pregnant. They married soon after, and their daughter was born in October 1997. Kevin named her Isabelle, choosing the French spelling, which seemed more proper. He nicknamed her Belle. He worked the graveyard shift at Safeway, stocking shelves while the rest of the world slept, then rushing straight to his 9 a.m. class, usually arriving late. He was resentful of his classmates, who enjoyed college in a way he couldn’t. No one else was juggling the responsibilities of fatherhood. Within six months, Kevin dropped out, having failed zoology and psychology. It was difficult to study with a baby at home. Besides, school didn’t put food on the table.
A few years later, he was hired at Walgreens and was soon promoted to store manager. The company deployed him across Northern California, to places like Red Bluff, Yuba City, Redding, and Chico, to fix problem stores. He drove twenty-five thousand miles annually for his new gig. Kevin didn’t believe in firing troubled employees and relished helping them realize their potential. He knew how to inspire people. He was always on the road, and it didn’t matter where he lived, so he bought his first home down the street from his parents’ cabin in Magalia. The mortgage was $800 a month—comfortably affordable.
The travel was draining, but no matter how often he asked, the company refused to transfer him to its store in Paradise. It needed his skills elsewhere. To make the eighty-mile round trip drives less torturous, he listened to audiobooks. Historical nonfiction carried him across the Sacramento Valley, past almond orchards and olive groves, past rice paddies that reflected the clouds, past deadly car crashes on Highway 99. He listened to William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands. He was amazed by what human beings were capable of doing to one another, and for one another. Kevin had visited only one other country—on a road trip to Canada as a child—but in the car, it felt as if he was circling the globe.
He finished the Game of Thrones series and Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, spellbound as the author explained that the most terrifying person to confront was the one in the mirror. Kevin wondered what he would see if he were brave enough to really examine his reflection. The audiobooks always clicked off too soon. Sometimes he took a few precious minutes to idle in the parking lot and finish a chapter. More often, he clocked in early to help the pharmacist fill prescriptions before the store opened at 8 a.m.
Kevin had studied to get his pharmacy technician license and encouraged others to do the same, as the title came with a bigger paycheck. In 2009, as an economic recession continued to shake the country, Walgreens re
duced staff positions, and Kevin’s workload grew. More was expected from every employee—particularly those who worked the pharmacy counter. The number of prescriptions was rising; the bulk of them were for opioids. Sometimes Kevin caught doctors refilling prescriptions before their end date. Sorting the white pills, his plastic knife clicking on the work tray, sickened him. His location in Red Bluff dispensed ten thousand narcotics prescriptions each week to an impoverished community of fifteen thousand people. He was witnessing the opioid epidemic unfold pill by pill.
The long commute and work responsibilities took a toll on his personal life. Kevin had by now married and divorced twice. He had two children by two different mothers and a new girlfriend, Melanie, who worked in the accounting department for the City of Chico. He had bought a foreclosed home in Paradise for $116,000 and spent nearly $80,000 fixing it up. The lot was overgrown with cedar, oak, and pine. Insulation tufted from the walls. Kevin finished the master bedroom, replaced the siding, and retiled the bathrooms. Once a year he took a week off from work to trim the trees, the scent of pine sap permeating the air.
Supporting his growing family had always been his priority. He wanted to be like his father, who for years had commuted to the Bay Area to work. Though he had missed huge chunks of Kevin’s childhood, the family had never struggled to pay their bills. His father, who always aimed to achieve one goal a day, had built their home by hand, his biceps as thick as the tree trunks he split. Kevin took pride in what he could provide—he did make good money—but inside, he felt a gnawing emptiness. “Walgreens pays you just enough to give up on your dreams,” a colleague had told him. The exchange haunted him.
In late 2016—as Rachelle and Chris were marrying in Reno—Kevin’s father was diagnosed with a rare cancer that mutated his cartilage-producing cells. Only six other adults in the country had the same type of cancer. Soon after, his mother was diagnosed with full-blown melanoma. She had had a small tumor removed from her thigh two years before, with assurances that there was little chance the cancer would return. Now tumors budded in her lymph nodes. The McKays were fixers, and if it couldn’t be fixed, they flew into a rage. Kevin could never remember what the stages of grief were, but he knew that anger was one of them—and his father was angry.
Kevin and his brother, a construction worker in Santa Clara, coordinated schedules to drive their father to appointments at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, a sprawling campus of steel and glass buildings near the city’s ballpark. They met halfway, in Vacaville, transferring him between their cars. The sickness whittled their father to a shadow of his former self. Doctors nearly amputated his muscled right arm, the one that had once gripped an ax with resolve, then settled on excavating the disease-riddled bone and replacing it with a titanium rod. He would never use his arm again, they said.
The surgery didn’t work. Neither did radiation. Kevin knew what was coming. The cancer’s mortality rate was measured in years—not in percentages marking the likelihood of survival.
On one of their early morning drives to the hospital in San Francisco, his father rested in the passenger seat. The seatbelt pressed against his sunken chest. It was now 2017, and cancer had invaded his lungs and brain. The windshield wipers thrummed against the late January rain as they passed the toll plaza on the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge, the undulating roller coasters of Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in the distance. Kevin fiddled with the radio. “Hey, man,” he said, as casually as he could, because no one ever told his father the way something was going to happen. “I don’t think we should do this anymore. I think we’re done.”
“I don’t think we should either,” his father finally responded.
He died thirty-five days later, at sixty-six years of age. The man who had chopped firewood every weekend, who had inspired Kevin with his profound determination, was gone. He had taught his son to stay out of debt, to love and provide for his family, to dream. Kevin felt his absence everywhere. His mother, alone after forty-seven years of marriage, moved into Kevin’s guest bedroom, where she kept her husband’s ashes in a polished oak urn. Kevin reflected on his bad job and his good paycheck. A year later, he quit Walgreens.
By early 2018, Kevin had finalized plans to enroll in Butte Community College to “reactivate his brain,” then transfer to Chico State for his diploma. He wanted to teach history at his alma mater, Paradise High. But first he needed to find a way to support his family.
He noticed the advertisement on a highway exit one morning as he drove to Red Bluff. The blue banner was plastered on the side of a school bus. Paradise Unified School District was looking for drivers.
Kevin had driven nearly four hours each day for years. Doing it in a bus couldn’t be that hard. Plus, if he was employed by the district, he thought, the administrators might be more likely to hire him full time as a teacher after graduation. He invested $500 in training and paperwork for his commercial driver’s license. The California Highway Patrol ran background checks. An instructor taught him to make seven-point turns in a 35,000-pound vehicle and listen for oncoming trains where the road intersected with railroad tracks. He completed first aid training. That summer, his new license landed in the mailbox.
The job interview was at the district office in Paradise. Kevin wore slacks and a button-up shirt. No tie, because he thought that was a bit much. The panel asked him why he wanted to be a bus driver. He told them about Karen, who had driven Bus 3 when he and his brother were in middle school. She always had a smile on her face when she picked the boys up. They lived a half mile from the last stop, and rather than make the boys walk, she asked the superintendent to list their driveway as the final stop on her route. Karen was the sweetest woman, Kevin said, but strong enough to throw a wheezing ten-speed bus into gear. She even handed out bags of chocolate candies at Christmas.
The hiring committee had wet eyes. Unbeknownst to Kevin, the administrators and bus drivers had plans to join Karen, now retired, that day for lunch.
Kevin got the job—it paid far less than Walgreens, but it gave him the time he needed. He and his girlfriend, Melanie, celebrated at the Panama Bar Café in Chico, which boasted thirty-three varieties of $4.00 Long Island iced teas. He ordered a Mai Tai; she ordered an orange cream. They split an order of potato skins.
As the school year began in August, the district assigned a small bus of special needs students to Kevin. They wanted to ease him into the gig. He triple-checked the route every morning, rereading the stops and familiarizing himself with the roads. The bus rattled as he drove. “Good morning, y’all,” he shouted to the students, the doors squeaking as they opened. “Time to get some kiddos to class.” He was a large man, still built like a quarterback but soft with middle age. He slicked his dark hair back with gel and had a goatee. Blue-gray knots were inked around his right forearm, next to a tattoo of his last name, visible beneath his shirtsleeve. He greeted the students with a smile, just as Karen had done. The children revered him. In September, his boss reassigned him to Magalia. She knew Kevin could handle the tough kids.
Some days were encouraging. He finished his morning route early and made it to his macroeconomics class on time, even nabbing a parking spot in Butte Community College’s crowded lot. On other days—when traffic caused delays, or the kids were particularly rowdy, or he was too exhausted to complete his own homework—his goals felt out of reach. This morning felt like such a day. He was tired. He ached over how much he already missed Elvis’s wet nose.
A breeze rippled the water in Magalia Reservoir. The sky was an endless blue plane against the autumn foliage. Kevin twisted down backroads through the Sierra Nevada foothills, the wind pushing through his window. He had sixty children to pick up. He didn’t want to be late.
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ACROSS TOWN, as dawn blushed on the horizon, Rachelle nursed her newborn in a private birthing suite. The lights were off, and the cabinets
lining the wall were dark outlines. Her son’s bassinet sat next to her. The baby’s face puckered as he nursed, one fist clenching and unclenching. She and Chris had named him Lincoln. He was warm in her arms, all of six pounds and five ounces. Nearby, Chris lay slumped in a teal armchair, exhausted but awake. He had passed a sleepless night at their home on Pentz Road, where his mother was also staying.
Their son had arrived at 8:33 the previous evening, sticky with vernix and blood. The minute that Chris and Rachelle laid eyes on him, all their trepidation over a new baby dissolved. Lincoln completed them. Instead of referring to his children or hers, Rachelle and Chris could use new words: us, ours. After surgery, when Rachelle cradled the baby against her chest, Chris had snapped a photo on his cellphone, overcome. He had dropped his stepchildren, Vincent and Aubrey, off at their father’s house after school, anxious not to miss his son’s birth. Rachelle was clear-headed enough to insist that the surgeon remove her fallopian tubes, demanding to see them, pink and bulging, in a glass jar. This was their family now.
Chris and Rachelle made plans to finally slice open the packages stacked in the entryway, coat the nursery in fresh paint, and assemble the high chair. They would decorate the wall with baseball decals and fold the onesies—blue for the Dodgers, orange for the Giants. Lincoln would pick his own favorite team one day, they promised each other, though they were already making bets on which one he would favor. Rachelle stroked the soft curve of his head. The baby was a marvel, his fingertips as delicate as pearls and his skin faintly sweet-smelling. He was premature, but he was healthy.
Nurses changed shifts at 6:45 a.m., and Rachelle and Chris overheard the murmur of hallway conversations. A woman from Redding, ninety miles to the northwest, had arrived and was scheduled to be induced. The fluorescent ceiling light flicked on. A nurse’s aide tapped on Rachelle’s door.
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