Chapter Forty: Hey Bus Driver (Christmas Version)

Chapter 40: Hey Bus Driver

I am almost half-way through the school year, and the hiring, firing and quitting of bus drivers continues at break-neck speed.

Transportation coordinator Shasta reports Quentin, a bus driver, is overdue for his required physical and is dragging his feet on getting it. I ask why. She obfuscates. Is it the cost? She says she does not know, but she will ask him. I am still not proficient in Shasta-speak and wonder what she is really trying to tell me.

Shasta returns to my office an hour later. She thinks Quentin is reluctant to see a doctor because he has a heart condition and he is afraid he won’t pass the physical and if he doesn’t pass the physical he won’t be able to drive and since this is his livelihood... I translate. In Shasta -speak she is asking me to overlook the medical requirement for Quentin. “How will we feel when Quentin has a heart attack driving our students home and we have not one death but 50?” Shasta agrees to tell Quentin he must have the physical.

Shasta returns to my office at the end of the day. She tells me that Quentin told her he is going to quit. No, she doesn’t know why. I speak with Quentin. He tells me his aunt died and she was a pastor and now he has to take over her job as preacher. Being a pastor is a full-time job and, no, he can’t be a preacher and a bus driver.

Quentin is off the bus.
We hire bus driver Kelli’s friend, Quaneshia to replace Quentin, the driver cum preacher.

Bus driver Audra has been screaming and cursing at her students. Parents and students are complaining; the children often confess they cursed at her first, but they are indignant that the driver should “cuss” back. Shasta talks to her, but clearly Audra is losing her grip. She tells Shasta she and her husband want to start a business selling vending machines and she gives her two weeks’ notice.

Audra is off the bus.
We hire new bus driver Quaneshia’s friend, Tashanna.

Ellie is missing-in-action. She doesn’t phone and doesn’t show. Shasta knows something but she isn’t saying. On a hunch I phone Rocky, the director of ESAK, the other local Ebencorp program. Yes, Ellie is driving for him. Didn’t she tell me? He is so sorry she didn’t tell me. He takes full responsibility. Good ‘ole Rocky, so unctuous, and so well liked by Henry and the community.

Ellie is off the bus.
We hire new bus driver Tashanna’s friend, Erika.

Erika informs Shasta her other part-time job will require her full-time for at least thirty days, maybe longer.

Erika is off the bus.

Shasta interviews Bill to replace Erika. She has him ride Kelli’s bus, incontrovertibly the worst bus. He not only survives, he is upbeat and amused. His background check is clean, we hire him. He will start tomorrow.
We never see him again. Shasta leaves voice messages.

Bill, who was never really on the bus, is off the bus.

Shasta and I analyze the BBB (bad bus behavior) referrals and find Kelli’s bus has the most referrals while Carolyn’s bus has the fewest. Kelli’s riders throw more objects out the windows and at the driver, they bring more lighters to set fires or, in one case, to try to light a peer’s neck on fire. The boys on her bus are more often out of their seats grabbing girls, and her girls are out of their seats kissing boys. Shasta believes the problems are due solely to the children who ride the bus: Kelli has the bad kids. I am skeptical and I suggest we swap routes. Shasta refuses. She is adamant, Kelli must not drive Carolyn’s route in the Fort McCoy neighborhoods. Why?! Shasta explains:

Last year Quaneshia found a house she loved in Fort McCoy. She walked around the property, left, then came back with her real estate agent. She stepped out of her car to a black faced dummy hanging from the oak tree in the front yard of her dream home . Scrawled on the shirt were the words: “Nigger go home.” Carolyn, my only white driver, will keep the Fort McCoy route.

Sometimes my school bus anguish “leaks out” into the community. Late one evening in late autumn, a man I don’t know phones to tell me his profanity-riddled tale of woe. After some therapeutic active listening (“I can tell you are very upset sir”), I learn about a pothole in the parking lot of his business. He kept filling it in but it kept reappearing. He didn’t know where it came from so he “played Dick Tracy” and stayed late one night. He spotted one of our busses using his driveway as a turn around. He informed Shasta weeks ago but, according to him, she has been less than prompt about returning his calls or making restitution. I guess he hasn’t mastered Shasta-speak. I ask, “What will it take to make you happy sir?” I agree to pay for gravel to fill the hole and ask the driver to turn around elsewhere.

A few months later, bad bus behavior gets us in trouble with more than just one neighbor. In early December Rosie called Interfaith (a charity organization) to ask for food donations. Many of our children survive on only the breakfast and lunch we serve. They arrive at school starving and leave hungry. The two-week winter break portends raw hunger for these children. Interfaith, like so many charitable organizations, has more need than donations. But they are able to give us some canned goods. Karla’s mother admits she has no money for, or plans to obtain any, Christmas gifts or holiday food. We buy Karla some clothes and shoes we know she wants and put together a box of food for her. Mom can’t or won’t come pick up the items, so before Christmas break, we hand the wrapped gifts and box of food to Carolyn, the bus driver, asking her not to give it to Karla until she gets off the bus.

Enroute home, Perry spots the canned goods and reaches to take one. Carolyn admonishes him “hands off, those are Karla’s.” This is news to Karla who leaps from her seat to check out the situation. The other students on the bus are shouting and angry, “How come she gets food?” Karla decides the fair thing to do is to divvy up the canned goods. Mission accomplished, she returns to her seat. Perry, suspended several times this year for throwing paper and pencils at the driver and from the bus, can’t resist. Out the window goes his can of cooked carrots. Before Carolyn can stop the onslaught, canned goods are flying out the bus windows. Cling peaches in heavy syrup, French cut string beans, tuna fish, pearl onions in cream sauce all are bouncing along the highway, one can hits a car, another lands in the back of a pick up. One can, I believe stewed tomatoes, smashes the mirror on a public school bus unlucky enough to be idling next to our bus at a red light. By the time Karla arrives home there are no canned goods left. My phone is ringing. Citizens want to report dangerous projectiles. Strangers curse at me. We owe the public school for the broken bus mirror.

The canned food is off the bus.