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“Right. Right.”
With that he walked down the hall and into the
kitchen.
The kitchen had big windows that let in a spill of sun.
It was the only fairly light room in the Barneses’ house. I
could see the shadows of Connor and his mother stretching
out halfway into the hall, enveloped in that wide beam
of light, as he said hi to her and she said hi back to him.
Connor’s ice cream was already starting to drip. It
didn’t seem right to lick it, so I let it drip onto my hand
and then licked it off my hand before it could drip onto
the rug.
“So, hey, Mom,” I heard him say. Timidly, I thought.
“You know anything about something that happened a
long time ago with a lady named Zoe Dinsmore?”
Silence. I moved down the hall a few steps in case she
was speaking but too quietly for me to hear.
“You’re not saying anything,” Connor added after a
time. “Why aren’t you saying anything? Was that some-
thing I shouldn’t have asked?”
“Oh, honey,” she said, and paused. Her voice sounded
as though the question had rattled her. Or just weighted
her down too heavily. I couldn’t tell which. I just knew
she didn’t like it and was trying to wiggle past it and squirt out the other side. “I do wish you wouldn’t ask me about those kinds of things. You know I don’t like to talk about
things that are so sad like that. Life is sad enough without dredging up the worst of the past. Those poor families
probably never got over it. The whole town never really
got over it. But it was before you were born, so can’t you
just grow up and be happy?”
If Connor answered, I couldn’t hear him. But it
struck me while I was waiting—and licking—that it
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was a ridiculous question. Of course Connor couldn’t be
happy. He hadn’t been happy a day that I’d known him.
And I’d known him since we were three.
I looked up suddenly to see him walk out of the
kitchen and down the hall to where I stood.
I reached out to hand him back his cone.
“You didn’t lick it,” he said. “Did you?”
“No. I didn’t lick it. That would be gross.”
“Okay. Thanks. You’ll have to go to the library, I
guess.”
“Thanks anyway,” I said. “You know. For trying.”
* * *
Mrs. Flint was an interesting character, I thought. She
seemed to have studied books and old movies and absorbed
every possible stereotype about small-town librarians—and
then imitated them to the letter.
She had mousy brown hair, pulled back into a bun.
Oversized tortoiseshell reading glasses. She wore gray or
brown skirt suits over starched white shirts with button-
down collars. She looked like the fictional librarian in just about every film or television show ever made.
I stepped up to her desk, and she whispered to me.
Because you whisper in the library.
“Lucas,” she said. “I don’t see you in here very often.
Can I help you with something?”
“I need some information,” I whispered back.
All of a sudden I felt deeply in touch with how uneasy
it made me to ask about this situation. Whatever it was.
“That would be my department, yes.”
“I need to know about something that happened in
town before I was born.”
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“Okay. Do you have the date?”
“Um. No. I just know it was before I was born.”
“If we’re looking in the microfilm of the county
newspaper, we’ll need a date.”
“I know the name of the person it happened to.
Or … I don’t know. Because of. Or something.”
She made a discouraging little noise in her throat and
shook her head.
“It’s not like we can scan every paper for years’ worth
of articles just looking for one name. Although … if it’s
important enough to you, I can leave you in there and
you can hunt around as long as you like. What’s the name?
Maybe I already know something about it.”
“Zoe Dinsmore,” I said.
The silence that followed was a stunning thing. It
seemed to zoom around the room. Bounce off the walls.
I watched her face get a little whiter and her lips set into a long, tight line.
“December 18th, 1952,” she whispered.
“You know the date?” I might’ve said it too loud.
“Hard to forget that date. It was exactly one week
before Christmas. It was the last school day before the
children went out on their holiday vacation.”
I opened my mouth to ask her to tell me about it. But
she got up from her desk.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. And walked away.
I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
I felt my heart bang around in my chest, but I wasn’t
even sure why. I mean, this whole thing had nothing to
do with me. Did it? I hadn’t even been born yet in 1952.
Still I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in it chest
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deep now, whatever it turned out to be. Whether I liked
it or not.
I looked up to see Mrs. Flint motioning me into the
back room.
I stepped inside and sat down in a hard chair in front
of the microfilm machine. It was a big white box that
projected one page of the newspaper onto a vertical screen
in front of my face. It had a crank on either side to move
the film from one reel to the other, a page at a time.
The headline of the article caught my eye immedi-
ately, along with the photo. It was the front page of the
morning paper, the Taylor County Gazette. December 19, 1952. The day after the incident.
The photo was black and white and printed large. It
was a school bus, partially submerged in the river. Upside
down. It made me queasy to look at it.
I remembered a handful of nonredacted words from
my brother Roy’s letter.
“…in the trees, upside down…”
The font of the headline was huge and bold. “Tragic
School Bus Accident Claims the Lives of Two Local Children.”
“This should be everything you need,” Mrs. Flint said,
her eyes averted. From the news, and from me. Both. “I’ll
just leave you alone with it.”
She walked out, closing the door behind her. Leaving
me in a darkened room lit only by the glow of the screen
against my face. Leaving me to learn what I had been so
sure I wanted to know.
To say I was no longer sure would be an understatement.
I began to read. How could I not?
Yesterday tragedy struck the town of Ashby
as a bus serving the Unified School District
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veered off River Road and rolled down an em-
bankment, landing upside down in the river.
The driver, Mrs. Zoe Dinsmore, suffered only
minor injuries, and managed to pu
ll most of
the children to safety, diving back in again and
again and wading to shore with them two at
a time. But two children did not survive the
crash.
They are: Wanda Jean Paulston, 7, of Ashby
and Frederick Peter “Freddie” Smith, 6, also
of Ashby.
One child whose name has been withheld
is hospitalized in stable condition and seven
others were treated and released with injuries
ranging from minor to moderate.
Mrs. Dinsmore has been driving a school bus
route in Taylor County for well over twenty
years. “Everybody loves her,” said Charlene
Billings, the superintendent of schools, when
reached for comment. “Students and parents
alike, everybody looked forward to saying
good morning to Mrs. Dinsmore. And she
had a spotless driving record. Not even so
much as a parking ticket.”
Mrs. Dinsmore was held at the Taylor County
Sheriff’s Office for several hours, where she was
subjected to questioning, as well as tests to as-
sure that her blood showed no signs of alcohol
use or other impairment. No such impairment
was found, according to Deputy Leo Brooks.
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Mrs. Dinsmore told sheriff’s deputies that
her two young girls, Katie, 4, and Delia, 5,
had influenza, and she’d been up most of the
night caring for them. She said she thinks she
fell asleep behind the wheel of the bus for less
than ten seconds, and that it was the shriek-
ing of the children that woke her. But by then
the bus had begun to roll down the river’s em-
bankment, and there was nothing she could
do to bring it back under control.
The Gazette attempted to reach Mrs. Dinsmore
for comment, but was told she had gone into
seclusion and was speaking to no one.
The crash has been officially ruled an accident,
and no charges will be filed.
The Gazette will announce the dates and times
of the funerals and/or memorials for Wanda
Jean Paulston and Freddie Smith when such
information becomes available.
I read it completely through a second time. I really
couldn’t say why.
Then I sat back and turned off the machine. The room
went completely dark. There were no windows in the
microfilm room, and the darkness all around me was a
good match for my insides.
In that moment the whole world felt dark.
68
CHAPTER FIVE
You Know Now. That’s Too Bad.
When I returned the dogs to the cabin the following
morning, I got into quite a back-and-forth with myself
over whether I should knock.
I had run with them at least a mile each way up and
down the River Road, and I was pretty convinced that
Zoe Dinsmore’s daughter had gone home again. Because
there had been no parked rental cars anywhere to be seen.
I was worried about the lady. You know, whether she
had everything she needed. Whether she was feeling well
enough to get everything she needed. That sort of thing.
I stepped up onto the porch. Walked boldly to the door.
In that moment I was the very picture of decisiveness.
I was actually proud of my courage. Noticeably proud.
Briefly.
I raised a hand to knock, then lost my nerve and turned
away. Strode two steps to the edge of the porch. Stopped
myself and turned back. Walked to the door. Raised a
hand again. Spun away again.
I turned back to the door one more time, and this
time I planned to force myself all the way through the
thing. But I never got that far.
A sudden voice from behind made me jump out of
my figurative skin.
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“Make up your mind. You want to knock on my
door or don’t you?”
I knew it was Zoe Dinsmore because no other voice
sounded like that one.
I spun around to face the voice and saw, to my embar-
rassment, that she was just leaving the outhouse. She was
wearing an old pair of men’s green plaid pajamas. Her
hair was pulled back into a gray braid.
“Yeah,” I said, making my voice sound stronger than I
felt. “Yeah, I was going to knock. Just to … you know…”
While I was stalling, she walked right up to me and
stared directly into my face. It made me nervous, which
made me lose my train of thought.
“No, I don’t know,” she said in that deep signature
voice. “I barely know my own mind, kid. I wouldn’t even
pretend to know somebody else’s.”
She looked even more deeply into my face for a mo-
ment, as if running after something she thought she’d seen
there, and I averted my gaze to the point of stressing my
neck muscles. As if I could run away from her without
ever moving my feet.
“Oh,” she said. And she was disappointed in me. I
only needed that one word from her to know it. “You
know now. My daughter said you didn’t know. But now
you do. That’s too bad.”
“I don’t know why you say that.”
“Because it’s true.”
“But I mean … how do you know that?” I realized,
the minute the words were out of my mouth, that I had
just admitted she was correct. I stood there with my neck
craned away and felt my face burn.
“You think after seventeen years I don’t know the
look on somebody’s face when they know? I wish I didn’t,
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kid, but I know it better than I know the inside of my
own eyelids. And when I close my eyes, most times
I don’t even see the inside of my eyelids, I see those
looks. Well, if you came here to ask me about it, or offer
your opinion on it, you’re out of luck. I’ve been there
and done that, and I’m not going there again for anybody.
It may be news to you, kid, but to me it’s anything but.
I don’t exist to help you get things settled in your own
head.”
When I was sure she was done, I adjusted my neck into
a more normal position, nearly facing her, and defended
myself with the truth.
“I didn’t come for that. Not at all. I was only about to
knock on your door because it looked like your daughter
had left again, and I was just going to ask if you were
okay or if you needed anything.”
I waited, but she didn’t speak. I didn’t dare look at
her face to try to get a bead on what she was thinking
or feeling.
So I added, “Did she go back?”
“Yeah. She’s gone. Not that I blame her. She’s got
an eighteen-month-old son. Babysitting me hardly fit in with her plans. So, okay, I’m not the best at apologies.
Not my strong suit. But anyway, sorry I didn’t give you
credit for trying to be helpful. Hope you can see your
way clear to let that go by.”
“Yes, ma�
�am.” I felt all the tension leave my body, and
I was stunned by how much tension it had been. I felt
like I could float away after it lifted out. “So … do you need anything?”
I braved a glance at her face. Fortunately, she was
looking away. Off toward the cabin, as though it helped
her think.
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“Milk was sour when I got home,” she said. “It was a
little close to the line when I left, but if I’d been home, I could’ve finished it. And if I was feeling better, I could’ve gone out for more.”
“I could bring you back a quart of milk.”
She looked right at me, and for a split second I looked
right back. And in that second, something was established.
Some wall was broken through. We were no longer two
wild animals who would spook and flee at the sight of
each other, or try to claw each other apart for our own
safety. We had made the initial connection on the as-
sembly line of trusting each other.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll go inside and get you a
dollar.”
* * *
When I got back with the milk and her change, she took
it from me, but didn’t say much. I mean … she did say
thank you. But not much more. She carried it inside. To
put away in the fridge, I guess.
I waited on the porch with the dogs, but I wasn’t sure
why. And I wasn’t sure if she’d meant for me to. I had
asked her what she needed. She’d told me. I’d brought it
to her. That should have been the end of it.
It wasn’t.
I sat down on the edge of the porch, poking around
inside myself for the reasons I didn’t feel like I could leave.
It was a sort of generalized paranoia. Something bad
would happen to the lady if I left. And then for the rest
of my life I’d have that thought in the back of my head.
Or maybe it would be a ball of feelings in my gut. What
if I’d played that day differently? What if I hadn’t left her alone?
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For the first time I truly understood how Connor felt.
Also it might’ve been a look through the window
into what the lady had been going through for seventeen
years. What if I’d called in sick that day? Had that extra cup of coffee? What if I’d pulled the bus over, even though that would’ve made the kids late for school?
I heard her footsteps on the porch boards behind me,
and I glanced over my shoulder. The dogs jumped to
their feet and wagged at her in greeting.
“I can’t help noticing you’re not gone,” I heard her
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