Ty-Ty shot up from his seat.
He stepped past Davy and into the aisle.
Seconds later, Champ was hollering: “Get back in your seat! Get back in your seat!” Ty-Ty gave no indication that he heard. The bus ground to a stop. Champ slung his seatbelt off and stomped to the back. “You got a hearing problem, son?”
Ty-Ty just stared at him, snarl stretching his face.
“I’m going to give you two options, son. Number one, you sit down. Number two, I sit you down.”
Ty-Ty said nothing. He only stared.
Champ got really mad then. His face turned red and he seemed to grow larger. He towered over Ty-Ty, burning with anger, but Ty-Ty did not even flinch. That’s when Champ began to look a little confused. He glanced at me and said, “What’s wrong with this boy?”
I shrugged. He glared at me hard. I sat up and said, “I don’t know.”
He looked at Davy. “This boy related to you?”
“Yes sir. He’s my cousin.”
“What the hell’s wrong with him?”
Davy studied the seat.
Champ turned his attention back to Ty-Ty. “One more chance, son.”
Ty-Ty remained silent.
Champ picked him up and thrust him down into the seat. Ty-Ty popped right back up. Champ stared at Ty-Ty like a man might stare at a disaster. His face registered disbelief, and I could see beyond that there was fear. It seemed strange to me that a man like Champ could be afraid of a boy like Ty-Ty. Scrawny and short, Ty-Ty looked like a straw compared to Champ, but in that instant I saw that size didn’t matter at all. It was a façade, a fool’s way of judging the world, a mistake of the undetermined.
“You want to do this the hard way? Be stubborn? Son, you don’t know stubborn.” He nearly ran back up the aisle, leaving Ty-Ty, scrawny, little Ty-Ty, still standing beside his seat, still snarling, still staring at the world through defiant eyes.
Champ snatched up the CB and put a call in to the school. He explained the situation and a voice said Ty-Ty’s parents would be contacted.
“You tell them to get over here and pick up their son. He’s not welcome to ride my bus anymore.”
So we waited. Champ stepped off the bus and lit a cigarette, maybe to affect nonchalance, maybe because he was a damned addict like most of the male figures I’d ever known growing up. A few kids told Ty-Ty to sit down, so they could go home, but nobody really seemed to have their heart in it. There was something frightening about Ty-Ty standing there, braver than he had any right to be.
Finally, Davy said, “Your dad is going to be so fucking pissed.”
“Dad can kiss my ass, just like Champ.”
A few kids ooohed and aaahed over this. Most of them just looked out the window, perhaps wishing for Champ to get back on to keep this strange, stubborn boy away from them.
I closed my eyes, still trying to be cool, still trying to appear unbothered.
A few minutes later, I became aware of Ty-Ty’s voice. “See, I told you I wouldn’t chicken out. Me and you, we would crash in a game of chicken.”
I opened my eyes and saw that he was looking right at me, grinning. It was the first time I had ever seen him grin, and it came off as more of a leer than a true smile. I had to play it cool: “I’d still beat you. You did all right with Champ, but you’d chicken out in a car.”
The grin disappeared. He narrowed his eyes and seemed to study me, inch by inch. I felt my scalp tingle, my skin crawl. I was afraid of him, not because he was strong or imposing, but because he hated me, and, worse, he hated himself. I looked away, to the window. Outside an old Ford pulled up alongside Champ. A man got out. He was wiry and wore big shit-kicking boots and a belt buckle the size of a saucer. He pulled his sunglasses off and squinted at Champ. The two exchanged a few words, Champ obviously struggling to keep himself under control. He gestured at the bus, and Ty-Ty’s father stuck his two lips together and nodded slowly. Champ led him onto the bus.
“Come on, Tyler,” his father said. I was surprised by the calmness in his voice. I noticed his eyes, so set, so dead level, that I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to beat the shit out of Ty-Ty later or now if necessary.
Ty-Ty didn’t move. He still had the scowl of defiance on his face. He didn’t look at his father.
“Boy, you got about four seconds to get your ass off this bus, or I’ll throw you off.”
Ty-Ty didn’t move. His father didn’t even wait half of the four seconds before he was rushing down the aisle, shit-kickers and all. He slapped Ty-Ty once before picking him up and tossing him over his shoulder. Ty-Ty kept his body stiff all the way back down the aisle. His father slipped on the steps, righted himself, and was gone.
Champ returned to his seat to crank the bus. In the rearview mirror, I saw fear on his face.
Ty-Ty was suspended from school for a couple of weeks and from the bus for over a month. During this time, I got my car back, got drunk, and wrecked it into a ditch at three in the morning. Mom didn’t have to take the keys this time. The car was gone. I got lucky, at least that’s what most people kept telling me. I had to get six stitches above my right eye and three more on my left cheek. The wounds healed and I thought the scars made me look tough. I went back to the bus bragging to Davy, who sat across the aisle from me by himself without Ty-Ty.
Ty-Ty came back quietly. Champ grunted something at him the first day back. It might have been, “That’ll teach you,” or maybe, “Son of a bitch,” or even, “Oh Lord, here we go again.”
And if he had said the last, he was absolutely right. Three days later, Ty-Ty stood up to open a window. Champ, who must have been waiting on that moment, roared at him to get back in his seat. Ty-Ty froze.
The bus stopped so fast that Ty-Ty fell over. He hit his head pretty hard on the floor, but popped back up like a jack in the box. His ear was bleeding. He waited for Champ to get there, lips turned in a crooked parody of a smile.
Champ picked him up and started to the door. “Your dad told me I was to leave you on the side of the road next time. And you know what else? You’re done on this bus. Two suspensions equals no more bus riding!” He took two of the steps before tossing Ty-Ty out the door. Ty-Ty hit the ground and sprang back up. Too late. Champ had already slammed the door in his face.
Champ pulled off as fast as the old bus would go. I turned and watched Ty-Ty grow smaller as the bus left him behind.
I felt like Champ had won, and despite my own inert pseudo-rebellion, I was glad that order had been restored. Champ was supposed to be able to handle problems. The idea that he couldn’t scared me. The idea that Champ had been scared frightened me even more.
I fell into the old routine of lying about my toughness. I beat up a college guy last weekend when he caught me with his girlfriend. I played poker with some of the men down at the City Bar, and won so much money they accused me of counting cards. They kicked me out on my ass, and threatened to shoot me if I ever came back. Was I scared? Hell no, I wasn’t scared. Most people talk a bigger game than they act, I informed my hapless listeners (Davy had been joined by a couple of eighth graders who listened with absolute, unquestioning awe). Last weekend, I had sex with Marci Crawford and Beth Smitherman on the same day. Beth squealed like a stuck pig. Marci was the silent type until I made her come; then her lungs opened up like a marching band at half time.
The boys listened to me while Champ drove the bus, grunting at us when we got too loud, scowling at us beneath his moustache, pointing fingers that worked like magic, causing us to scurry back to our seats. And I thought about Ty-Ty. How the magic of authority that Champ held over us, suckled us like infants; how we liked swaying listlessly beneath the yoke of his fingers, his scowls, and his inaudible grunts. How I felt like things were right in the world again. How I couldn’t imagine what had caused Ty-Ty to become the scrawny, defiant ninth grader that he
was.
“You ever see Ty-Ty?” I asked Davy one day when my other admirers had already gotten off the bus.
“I see him everyday,” he said. “He lives with us now. His father’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“He got shot. Or shot himself. That’s what my mom says.”
“You’re kidding.”
Davy shook his head. He seemed a little disoriented by this line of conversation, especially coming from me.
“Is he any better?” I said. “You know . . . why does he act like he does?”
Davy puckered his lips. He looked like he had a headache. Squinting, he said, “Don’t know. I guess because he was always getting beat up when he was little. He was so scrawny and all. And his dad liked to beat on him too.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, did you call that guy about your car?”
“No, I didn’t call him.”
“But you said you were going to call him and tell him that if he didn’t have your car ready—”
“I didn’t call him!” I exploded from my seat and shoved Davy against the window. His head thunked against the metal frame and he winced at me, tears streaking his face.
“What’d you do that for?”
“Tell Ty-Ty something for me.”
“What?” Davy said, wiping snot from his lip.
“Tell him, I said he ain’t no chicken.”
Davy nodded and continued to cry.
The spring came, and the reality of being a senior hit me hard. I got depressed about having to ride the bus to school while most of my friends drove new cars. I got down about not having a girlfriend. Despite my lies to Davy, I had never even had sex. The closest I had ever come was junior year with Rebecca Sturgeon. Just before I put it in, I came all over her belly. I tried hard to get her to let me try again, but she wouldn’t. After a while she stopped returning my phone calls, and asked Mrs. Morris if she could move to a new seat away from me in science class.
I thought about Ty-Ty far too much—his snarl mostly, and sometimes those level eyes—and it almost seemed as if I knew then that it wasn’t over yet. A tragedy was spinning out before me like a spool of thread, and I was powerless to stop it.
I ran into Ty-Ty at school one day. I had been cutting English, so I was behind the gym, out near the dumpsters, tipping back a flask of Wild Turkey I’d filched from my mother. I had learned to hide my alcoholism pretty well by this point. I took a few nips between nearly every period. Whenever I felt like the coast was clear, I skipped English altogether and got good and numb before going on to sixth and seventh periods.
I was taking another slug when somebody walked up. I nearly dropped my flask trying to get it back into my pocket before I realized it was Ty-Ty.
“Hey,” I said. “Have a taste.”
Ty-Ty cocked his head at me and frowned, but he took the flask and drank some anyway.
We stood in silence for a while. I was drunk and didn’t care. I took another drink. I said, “I’m sorry about your dad, Ty-Ty.”
He didn’t say anything for a while. Then he said, “You still play chicken?”
I shrugged. “Nah. I don’t have a car. I totalled the damn thing. I never played that much anyway, Ty-Ty.” I tipped the flask back again. “I’m just a damn liar.”
“I’ve been playing.”
“You can’t even drive a car,” I said.
“Been playing without one.”
“You mean like you played with Champ.”
“Fuck Champ. He’s chicken of me, anyway.”
I held the flask up. “Damn straight, Ty-Ty. Damn straight. But, you gotta admit, in the end he won.”
“I’m not scared of him.”
I nodded. I didn’t doubt it. “Ty-Ty, does anything scare you?”
He seemed to consider this, a look of deep concentration covering his normally melancholy face. “Yeah, being scared scares me.”
“You’re a champion chicken player, Ty-Ty. A champion.”
He reached for the flask and took another swallow. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said and walked off. I sat down against the dumpster and drank myself silly.
“I saw Ty-Ty yesterday,” I told Davy as the bus lumbered off. It was raining hard and steam clouded the windows. Champ was moving slowly, wiping the windshield with an old rag so he could see.
“He stayed home today,” Davy said.
“Skipping?”
“Sick. Woke up throwing up. Said you gave him some whiskey.”
I smiled. I wanted to ask if Ty-Ty was doing all right, if he was managing. Losing his dad the way he did had to be hard. I had lost mine a few years ago when he left my mom and me. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to lose your father to suicide. I didn’t ask because I knew that Davy or the other kids that gathered around me thought I was tough. And tough guys don’t ask questions like that. So I sat in silence, ignoring the eyes on me, appealing to me to tell them more lies.
By the time the bus pulled up to Davy’s house, the bottom had dropped out of the sky. Visibility was bad, and the only sound was the kettledrum rain on the roof of the bus. There were only a few of us left: Davy, me, a couple of seventh grade kids in the front, and Pete Turner, a sophomore nobody liked. Champ stopped and opened the door. A gust of rain blew in, soaking him. “Damn it,” he muttered in his deep voice.
This was when I usually made my way to the front each day. My stop was only about a mile or two away, and I usually anticipated it by sitting in the front seat, waiting impatiently for Champ to get to my house. Davy told me bye, and I nodded to him. The seat nearest the door, where I usually sat was wet with rain, so I climbed in right behind Champ. Champ started to close the door when I heard him say, “Son of a bitch.” He took his towel and rubbed the glass, though by this point the steam was not really a factor, the rain was. So I couldn’t blame him for doing a double take when he saw the figure standing in the road.
Through the slashing rain, I could tell that it was Ty-Ty. He was just standing there, looking at Champ through the rain streaked glass.
Champ rubbed the window with the towel again. Then he turned to me. “Is that somebody in the road?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think so.”
He sat on the horn. “You’d think they’d have sense enough to get out of the rain not to mention the road.”
I didn’t say anything. I waited, holding my breath.
When Ty-Ty didn’t move, Champ crept closer. “Motherfuck,” he said beneath his breath. “That little punk.” He stepped on the accelerator. Ty-Ty didn’t flinch.
“He won’t move,” I said.
Champ barely turned his head. “Huh?”
“He won’t move. He’ll just stand there.”
“We’ll see about that,” Champ said again. He floored the bus, and the wheels ground the wet asphalt for purchase. We lurched forward. Almost as soon as we moved, Champ slammed the brakes again. He whipped his belt off, set the emergency brake and leaned out of the door into the sheets of rain. “Get out of the way, you stupid kid!”
Ty-Ty shook his head slowly. Champ lost what little self control he had left then. “Kid thinks he can stand me down. I’ll stand him down.” He looked back at me. “He’ll move this time, by God.”
“No,” I said, weak, barely audible, easy to ignore. I should have stood up and said it loudly and with swagger—that’s how I’d told all my lies about being tough, but I said it softly, inaudibly even.
Champ didn’t floor the bus this time. Instead he put it in gear and moved forward gradually, increasing his speed as he closed the twenty or so yards that lay between the bus and Ty-Ty.
As the bus got closer, I could see Ty-Ty’s face better, how he was really only a boy with a snarl, how his blonde lick of hair had at last been tamed by the hammering storm, how beneath his tough
exterior, back in the depths of his eyes, he was as afraid as the rest of us.
More afraid, I think.
I closed my eyes just as Champ hit the brakes again. I was thrown forward, and since I had been standing up, I went up and over the seat. My head hit Champ’s head, and I landed in the aisle near the step well.
The bus came to a rough stop. “Jesus,” I heard Champ saying. “Sweet Jesus.”
He stepped over me out of the bus, into the rain. I pulled myself to my feet and followed.
“Get back in the bus,” Champ said, but he didn’t look at me, and there was no conviction in his voice.
I watched as he knelt to look under the bus. He collapsed to his knees and began to crawl underneath. I heard him sobbing. He stayed under the bus for a long time, so long that I gave up waiting for him to come back out. Since I was only a mile or so from my house, I began to walk. If I felt the rain on my shoulders that day, I do not remember it. Later, people talked about the storm and how hard it had rained that day. Some people even believed, for a short while, that the rain had played some part in Ty-Ty’s death. Champ put an end to that. He never tried to hide what had happened, never tried to sugar coat it. I saw him interviewed once or twice on the local news after he got out of jail years later. He told it like it happened. He seemed, even then, to be baffled by Ty-Ty’s behaviour and how he had ended up running the boy over with a school bus. Most of all he still seemed frightened.
I was frightened too.
I am still frightened, thirty years later, even though I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in nearly ten years, nor have I lied to anyone about how tough I am for even longer.
My wife asked me the other day what I was afraid of. I thought for a while before remembering Ty-Ty—my mind always seems to turn back to that scrawny ninth grader with the defiant sneer, and the way he looked just before the bus hit him. I must have been silent, pondering this for a long while because my wife had to poke me in the ribs and say, “Hello, Trent. I asked you a question.”
“I am afraid of people who are so scared they don’t care anymore,” I said. “I’m afraid of apathy, defiance, and . . .” I paused not even sure what I was trying to say. Ty-Ty, that’s what I wanted to say. That look in his eyes. Whatever can make you look like that. That’s the thing that scared me, still scares me. Only this was too difficult to explain, so I simply trailed off, leaving a sentence that I would likely never finish.
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