The night went silent again. I returned to bed and was almost asleep when I saw the headlights canvassing the walls of my room.
Out of bed again and over to the window, I watched James slide by, his brown Buick meandering down the silent neighbourhood streets. I felt like I was witnessing a secret ritual, one I could not explain or comprehend, a silent spectacle, a statement of sorts, a lonely man’s prayer when there were no more words to offer up.
Mesmerized, I watched him—so unhurried, so without purpose—just driving, round and round the block.
I do not know how many times he circled the block. What I do know is other nights filled with this same lonesome ritual followed. Sometimes I only noticed them in the dregs of sleep and barely woke at all; other times, I went to my window and wondered at a man who had traded the prospect of human contact for the solitude of the night.
I think there was a time when I was young, that I forgot James, or maybe didn’t understand him, his past, the way a person blooms like a tree and the wind and the sun and the ground feed it or starve it by turn, and it becomes rotten and it becomes strong, growing deep roots in the soil through no fault of it own.
Of course I was twelve and wouldn’t understand such abstractions. And even at twenty-two, living in that little apartment, I had only a vague notion of what might become of a human neglected. It took me seeing James as a boy in my class, and then remembering his life to understand how James became an adult.
(James off the grid)
As the years passed, and I grew older and began to get caught up in the struggle of defining my own life, James became to me just another neighbourhood landmark—a mailbox, an old car that did not run, a fencepost in the back of the yard untouched by the feel of human skin—until I had no cause to notice him anymore.
I believe now, this is what he wanted. I believe this is why his eyes never focused on any of his neighbours, why they always drifted away to the horizon, that place outside of us; he had once raged against it, but was now only too glad to let it suck him away because trying to fight against the pull had hurt too much, and there comes a time to stop fighting and stop hurting and just let the world have its way.
Or perhaps, James did not go so passively. Perhaps he defined himself outside of us all? Perhaps he was a man apart, a man who found the opening in the fence, nudged his nose in the gap and found there was nothing holding him back from a place where the rest of us could never follow. I like this version better.
I did not learn the rest of James’s story until I was in my thirties. After James with the Ferrari, but before James in my class.
Both my parents died in my mid twenties, so I hadn’t been back to Montgomery for several years when I ran into a guy, Andy, who had grown up next door to me. I wasted little time asking about James.
“Whatever happened to that guy?”
Andy, who always reminded me a little of Robin Williams, smirked slightly and said, “Now that’s funny.”
“Funny?”
“Yeah, Mom and Dad were just talking about him the other day.”
He went on to tell me a story I will never forget. After years of living in our neighbourhood in absolute solitude and silence, James walked across the street to Andy’s parent’s house and knocked on the door. Andy’s parents were surprised to say the least, but they invited him in, eager to see what had brought about his visit. He got to the point quickly, telling them he would be going away for a while and asking them to pick up his mail while he was gone.
“Did he say where he was going?” I asked Andy.
“Wouldn’t say. Just told them he had to go away for a while.”
“And?”
“And, he did. He went away. Dad went over and got his mail every day. That was over a year ago. He’s never come back. Never called. Nothing. Dad’s filled up an entire plastic trashcan full of his mail. They haven’t heard one peep from him.”
I didn’t know what to make of this. For the next few years, this mystery haunted me, held me as much as I held it. I wanted to know where he’d gone, when he was coming back, but lately, at least since meeting James in my class, I have realized the real question is not where, but why. Why did his roots slip the soil? Why did he resign himself to the horizon? Why did he drive away from the world in a big brown Buick?
But like all great mysteries, this one has no easy answers. I can piece together fragments from my own life, call them James. I create a chain of events that is not there. I can do this and make some sense out of James. I can add some causality to his life, force the pieces together, ignore the missing ones, and admire the half-formed creation.
James.
Perhaps I never knew you at all.
Maybe I only thought I did.
In my mind, I still see him. He’s behind the wheel of that big Buick, or he’s in his Ferrari, the top down, easing down a dark road. Or maybe he’s on the bus now, a sole passenger, riding cross-country at a snail’s pace, windows down, night breeze across his face, tangling his hair. I see him happy and free from whatever demons drove him to the periphery of life, beyond the circle of family and friends. He’s out past the fence now, the one that holds us all. From here on, the road is clear. From here on, he can really open her up and fly.
Litany
It was better in prison. Now that I’m free, I can’t go an hour, a minute without thinking of them. And the dog. The damned little dog.
It’s funny how life can get away from you. Thirty years of the good life, eight years in the joint. Now I’m forty and I don’t have anything, just a body that won’t sleep, a mind that won’t rest.
I see their names when I close my eyes. They are the wild lights that cling to my eyelids, the flash of synapses in my brain.
Matthew Litton.
Kevin Funderburke.
Ann Lawson.
Demetria Thomas.
Over and over, I see the names. I hear them. I whisper them in secret to my godforsaken soul. I would rather still be in prison than here, this morass, this flooded valley of guilt.
Matthew Litton.
Kevin Funderburke.
Ann Lawson.
Demetria Thomas.
Picture a warm May day. Cinco de Mayo perhaps. You’re a schoolteacher, happy, blissfully unaware of life and its catastrophes. You’re like a child who picks up a snake in the back yard and is bitten. You pick it up because nothing else in the back yard bites; so why should the snake? But it does, and that changes everything.
You drive a bus. It’s money that you need to supplement your salary, which isn’t much, right? I’m not going to lie to you; it isn’t anything. But you’re happy. Did I mention that you have a wife and a daughter? Don’t worry about their names. Names only make everything harder in the end.
Are you with me so far?
Good.
It’s after school. You’re sitting behind the wheel of the bus. The kids climb on, all ages. It’s a small rural school, kindergartners and high school students all in the same building.
It’s a good route. Thirty-five minutes in the morning. Thirty flat in the afternoon. For about an hour a day you’re making an extra twelve, maybe thirteen grand a year. There is always something to spend it on: groceries, gas, furniture, bills, your daughter’s college fund.
Money mattered then. It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters. No, that’s not right. You have to understand this before anything else: All that matters is the litany.
Matthew Litton.
Kevin Funderburke.
Ann Lawson.
Demetria Thomas.
Those names. Maybe you think of the names so much because you can’t bear to think of the faces.
Lord, help me.
I’m sorry. I digress. You would understand if you were me. Maybe you can understand. God, I want you to understand.
Listen:
You hear the happy noises of children while the bus coughs and jumps onto the highway. A few years before, each stop had been a test of memory, but now, the drive is automatic.
Today you are thinking about your wife. It is her birthday. You are in a hurry because you have plans.
Hurry.
That’s another word you will turn over and over in your mind one day. What does it mean? Why do we bother? A piece of advice: there are no answers.
Your wife? She is everything. Go ahead and imagine her, I won’t care. She’s spectacular. Fit and tan. A shine in her hair like the girls in shampoo commercials. Undress her, I don’t care. You could fall in love with her for all I care. You’ll never understand me, because when it’s all said and done, you didn’t kill anybody. I did.
But let’s pretend. Let’s pretend anyway that you did.
So, you can’t wait to get home. There’s a babysitter. Your daughter is out of the house. You’ll go out, to a quaint little cafe, then back home for a tumble in the bed.
No, you won’t.
But try to pretend anyway. Try to imagine.
You feel the steering wheel rumbling in your hands. It is never still. You make hard turns and don’t slow down much. Your wife’s at home. You've done this hundreds of times.
The first stop. Four kids get off. You can’t remember their names. They’ve gone on with their lives. You’ve gone on too, only you had to leave your life behind.
At the next stop something happens that you will never forget. The dog, a little miniature schnauzer—hell, you think about that dog nearly every day—is under the bus.
One of the kids says, “Don’t go anywhere. There’s a dog underneath the bus.” It’s Demetria Thomas. You don’t pull away, terrified that you might run over the dog. You have always loved animals, dogs in particular. Your family never had pets because your mom was allergic to them, but your grandmother always had them around.
You used to love going to your grandmother’s. She always believed in you. Had high hopes. Sometimes, while you were in prison, you could think of the mint tea she used to make and your problems seemed to float away, smooth and soft like sunlight on a hazy summer day.
None of that stuff works anymore. You think of your grandmother’s mint tea and you think of the names again.
Please, God. No.
But they have been written on your soul . . .
Matthew Litton.
. . . like verses of the Bible.
Kevin Funderburke.
They have their own cadence and rhythm.
Ann Lawson.
They do not heal . . .
Demetria Thomas.
They only bind.
I suppose I did it again. You’re no doubt rolling your eyes at me now. Roll them. You won’t bother me.
I must tell you about the dog. If I get distracted again, simply grab me by the shoulders and shake me as hard as you can. My brother did that to me the other day. He came in to visit me from—
You didn’t shake me. Are you even listening? Hell, nobody’s ever listened to my side before. Oh, they heard it in court, but nobody really listened. Nobody wanted to know how it was only a mistake, an honest mistake.
It doesn’t matter. I’m going to tell you anyway. Are you the kind that listens to killers? I’ve heard that you are. Then listen. Listen well.
The dog. The little dog. He’s under the bus. You put the bus in park. The kids are all standing up, craning their necks hoping to catch a glimpse.
“He’s clear!” someone shouts. You don’t know who, but later you like to imagine it was Ann Lawson. She is a sweet girl. You can trust her. But you don’t. You are too concerned for the animal. You are too concerned that you might roll over the little thing and kill it, leave it pasted to the road. You climb off the bus to verify that the dog is indeed clear. You see the little thing: shiny silver, a cute face. And your heart breaks. You would never have forgiven yourself if you had run over that.
Yes, you would.
In fact, you wish now that you had run over the damn dog twice. Three times.
But you don’t. Instead, you climb back aboard the bus, buckle up, release the air brake, and put that death trap in drive, rumbling on down the road toward the seconds that will be the most important of your life.
Imagine a country road: clear, the sun shining bright. You’ve flipped the visor down because you forgot your sunglasses again. You remember hearing somewhere (bus school, maybe?) about a driver that wrecked a school bus because he didn’t have sunglasses. He had been driving west at four in the afternoon; he didn’t see the dump truck coming the other way. That could be me, you think. Except it won’t be. Not now. Because there’s a visor. They put them on all buses because bus drivers forget things like sunglasses. It’s no big deal. People forget. They make mistakes, right?
Say yes. It’s normal. The best of us make mistakes, all that garbage. Believe me, you’ll need it later. You’ll wear it as if it were a bulletproof vest. But nobody’s shooting bullets and even the best armour can’t stop glances, or murmurs, or a heaviness in your chest that sends your heart into your kneecaps and makes it difficult to walk.
But you don’t know any of this yet. All you know is your wife at home, waiting for you, just waiting to love you. You know your daughter—God, she’s beautiful. You know the damned little dog, the joy of saving its insignificant life. You know the beauty of the day, the next turn in the road, which is a doozy—hold on.
You swing the bus expertly around the turn. Three years of driving and you’ve never had a close call.
Through your windshield, you see the moon: a ghostly sliver in a clear blue sky. It’s beautiful. The last beautiful thing you remember seeing. See it now. You will need its solemn wisdom later. Even in the daytime, the moon is a good listener.
And you, too, have been a good listener. I’m sorry for doubting you earlier. We’re here now. We’ve come this far. You can’t turn back.
You hear the blare of the train before you see it. The sound hardly registers. What’s a snake to a child who’s never seen one? Nothing, absolutely nothing . . . until it strikes.
One more bend and you see the tracks. A little blue house sits beside the road, and you think of how the trains must shake the walls, rattle the dishes, rouse the children. But also, how it must feel to lie in bed and listen to the trains speed past, like noisy flames, burning, burning, and then . . . gone, extinguished by the night.
You slow as you approach the tracks, thinking again of your grandmother’s mint tea. Hell, you can almost taste it, but that’s not too unusual. It’s a hot day, you’re thirsty, and you’re in the country. It’s natural you would think of your grandmother. Her mint tea. You realize it’s been a long time since you’ve seen her. You realize you won’t ever see her again.
And then the train.
You follow procedure, opening the door as you approach the tracks, and you feel the first tinge of impatience creep into your veins. You really hope the train is not too close. Waiting takes so long. But there it is.
See it.
The smoke, coming out white and billowy like clouds. The wheels turning insistently. So many tons of steel. It is a long way off.
If there is a thought, you don’t even remember it. You only remember a complete confidence. You have done this before. Other drivers have done this before. What are the chances? You close the door and drive over the tracks. Most of the bus clears the tracks before the engine coughs and grinds and sputters and then dies completely.
You waste far too much time, unmoving, thinking about what just happened. Is it possible, you wonder, really possible that the bus just stalled?
The first surge of fear grips your body like a hard freeze.
You force your hands to move, jam the gear s
hift into neutral, twist the key hard, give a hard stomp of gas.
Sputters, kicks, dies.
And so do you. You are stricken immobile.
Right then. Right there. You don’t believe it could happen like that? I lived it. It happened like that.
It is the screaming that makes your blood move again, kick-starts your heart.
You stand. Look at the train. You would never say it was far away now, not with a busload of kids on the tracks and panic coursing through you like adrenaline, but this is not adrenaline, it’s not fight or flight. It’s something more like dying.
That thought gets you moving again, gets you thinking. Suddenly, you are screaming at kids, directing them off the bus via the emergency exit in the back and through the main door. You plead with them to hurry. They seem to move so slowly. The engineer is blaring that horn like the world is ending, and somewhere behind the screaming kids and the impending steel, you know that it is.
By the time you think of saving yourself (oh, did you think you were going to be some kind of hero?), the train and the bus are only a dozen yards apart. The kids are still spilling out of the exits, running like water.
All at once, you know absolutely that everyone will not get off the bus. There is a logjam at the back door. No one in the front where you are. All you have to do is jump off and get clear. You take a long look down the aisle. You see
Matthew Litton
Kevin Funderburke
Ann Lawson
Demetria Thomas
at the very back. You shout: “Come to the front! There’s time!”
But then you look at the train again. These kids are small. Kindergarten, maybe first grade. They’ve panicked. There’s not time.
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