Bus Ten

Bus 10

For ten years, Bus Ten was mine from four-thirty each morning until noon, when I handed the keys over to Mikey, who was divorced and used her paycheck to keep horses.

In my rearview mirror, I can still see the faces of my clients—they weren’t “riders” or “customers” or “patients”—we called them our clients.  I would take my clients, in wheelchairs and walkers or just shuffling along, to dialysis and adult day care, to doctors’ appointments and hair salons and shopping.

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Ina Kahn was pushing ninety, rode to dialysis three times a week, except on Jewish holidays, when she walked the three miles, both ways.  Her pick-up truck was named Geronimo, but she couldn’t drive it anymore because when they tried to take her license, she hid it away and couldn’t remember where.

Ina’s neighbors worried about her whenever she trimmed the ten-foot hedge in front of her house.  They told her she was going to fall off that ladder and hurt herself.  So at two in the morning she would put on a flashlight hat, take out the clippers, and climb up the ladder in the dark.

Her family wanted her power of attorney.  Their lawyer told her, “Ina, you can’t write checks anymore, you’re just mostly blind.  You can’t even see my face right now, can you?”

“I can see your mustache and the dollar signs in your eyes.”

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Skip Cofey would drive Ina back home in his Bus 7.  She called him “Drink Tea.”

Skip drove a guy from Milton who needed a kidney.  Skip offered to give him one of his.

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Steve Kahn was no relation to Ina.  I’d take him to stock shelves at Healthy Living, down on Dorset Street.  Every morning Steve would say, “Driver,” and he’d pretend to go for my driver’s seat.  That got the both of us laughing, every time.

Steve could say words but he couldn’t build them into sentences.  He said to me, “Birthday,” and I gave him mine.  He said, “Year,” and when I told him, he said, “Thursday.”  I checked.  He was right.  He could do that every time.

Steve had all the World Federation Wrestling videos, Volumes I through XVII.

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Bill Noeltz knew his I Love Lucy.  Ask him about Lucy’s neighbor Ethel Mertz, he’d tell you Vivian Vance played her, where and when Vivian was born.

“Bill, do you watch them on DVD?”

“Dick van Dyke?”

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Benjamin Ford-Harris couldn’t talk and he couldn’t move, but he was smart and funny and at peace with the way things were.  I’d sing Willy Nelson for him as I drove him to middle school. “Ben, you’re the only one who never complains about my singing.”  The little muscles around his mouth and eyes would start grinning.

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Maida had been a Vermont farm wife her whole life.  Simple, quiet, proud.  A print house dress and a face out of Robert Frost or Rockwell.  When a cop car pulled up beside us at a light, she said, “Look who’s here.  You can smell him.”

Like some punk on a street corner.

So I wasn’t surprised when she asked the other three farm wives going to adult day care, “Have you ever wanted to punch someone in the mouth as hard as you could?”

I thought the question was rhetorical, but all three started telling their stories about punching someone in the mouth.  I was the only one without a story.

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Donald’s father had been the Vermont Golden Gloves Welterweight Champ.  Each late November he would take Donald, along with the over-under and a pocket of shotgun shells, and they’d go out hunting in the Vermont woods.

For Christmas trees.

They’d spot a twenty-foot spruce and blast off the top six feet.

Donald used to be town constable, but if he saw any trouble, he’d just go home.

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I drove one guy just this one time, one way.  To the respite house out at Taft’s Corners.  Where was his family?  He told me jokes the whole way.

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Mr. Sayre never spoke a word, two rides a week, for years.  I thought he was mute.  One day on Joy Drive he called to me from the back, “Bob Hope died.”

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I heard that Bill has Alzheimer’s now.  The others have all died.  That was the only bad thing about the world’s best job.  Nobody lived long enough.

They’re still sitting back there in my rearview mirror, their faces reversed and smiling up at me.  I try to keep my eyes on the road as I call back over my shoulder, “Let me know if I missed any bumps.  I’ll go back and get them for you.”

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