From the moment the boy burst onto the school bus, scanning the seats like a wary cougar, his pants hanging below his bum and a skater’s cap balanced sideways on his head, the other children turned to look at the stranger in their midst. Eldon Sheridan observed him uneasily in the rear-view mirror. His name was J.J, according to the list the bus company gave him. Jay-jay? What kind of a name was that?

            “He got on without a backpack,” the elderly bus driver said to his wife that night. “Who goes to school without a backpack?”

            Eldon was asking Merle in the middle of Jeopardy so she didn’t answer, didn’t actually hear him in fact. Later, when they were getting ready for bed, Eldon said, “there’s just something not right about that kid.”

            “What kid?” Merle said. But by then Eldon had turned on his electric toothbrush and the topic of J.J. was momentarily forgotten. Their conversations have gone like this for almost five decades.

 

            When Eldon Sheridan proposed to Merle Crawford, he’d had to clear his throat three times to make the words come out. 

            “I have twenty head of Hereford and a hundred acres of land…”

            Merle had burst out laughing. “Oh, Eldon. Where did you get your sense of romance?”

            Eldon reckoned she knew by then he wasn’t one for words. He’d fished a ring from his sport jacket, a family stone he’d inherited along with a healthy herd, and offered it to her.

            “A hundred acres is a lot of bush to clear on your own,” she’d said solemnly.

            For a moment Eldon had worried she was turning him down, and his face must have shown it, because she whacked him playfully on the shoulder.

            “Of course I’ll marry you, silly man. Let’s have a spring wedding.”

 

Though Merle adored Eldon, she was wary of living so far from civilization.

            “It’s not that far from town,” Merle had insisted, but the truth was Eldon’s beautiful plot was almost in the next county. It suited him fine, since he’d lived there all his life. In the early days, with small children, Merle didn’t mind the isolation. But when their eldest began school, she found the winters long. Lucky for Merle, her loneliness coincided with the construction of the new Valley Public School. One after another the rural schoolhouses closed. A notice arrived in the mail that their son would be picked up by a school bus the following September.

            “A bus is going to come all the way out here?” Merle mused.

            “It’s not that far from town,” Eldon protested.

            His wife and children burst out laughing.

 

In the end, the new bus company had a hard time finding drivers. Eldon was in McKinnon’s hardware buying chains for his old tractor when he overheard about the job. 

            “See, I need someone who’s up early, knows his way around a big vehicle and can get out of a laneway come wintertime,” the bus company man said.

            McKinnon had nodded but Eldon saw he wasn’t entirely sympathetic to the man’s woes. Owning a bus company was a lucrative business. McKinnon wasn’t convinced the new school was a good idea. 

            “What was wrong with the old school?” he complained as his wife, Lois, rang in Eldon’s purchase.

            “It costs a fortune to pay one teacher to teach a dozen kids out in the sticks,” she’d replied, a tone of irritation creeping into her voice. “Excuse him. My husband isn’t known for his modern leanings.”

            Her comment made Eldon blush. His kids had benefitted from the small brick school across the cornfield. The neighbour in grade seven had taught his eldest how to read at age five. Merle would have spoken up, but it took Eldon longer to form his thoughts. Usually by the time he’d polished up a notion, people had moved on to the next thing. But while he’d been thinking, the bus company man had been studying him. He followed Eldon into the parking lot and made him a proposition. That September Eldon took on rural route number eight, the longest bus ride of the fleet. 

From the beginning he kept the vehicle at the farm – that was part of the deal. He enjoyed taking his son, and later his daughters, to school on the huge yellow bus. Once the cows were milked, he’d start it up so it was nice and warm when they stumbled out of the farmhouse. They’d eat their toast in the front seat right behind him. Merle loved the free rides to town, too. She’d get her hair set early on Mondays, do her groceries on Tuesdays and so on. If Eldon had a crisis, like a breech calf or a leak in the milk lines,  Merle could do the route herself. When the owner found out there was a lady driver he was fit to be tied, but he couldn’t bring himself to reprimand gentle Eldon. If Eldon thought his wife could drive a bus, who was he to argue? He only ever called a snow day if Eldon couldn’t get out of his laneway. Truth be told, he made plenty of business decisions based on what the wise old farmer suggested. Eldon’s route never had the kinds of troubles the other routes had. Until J.J. 

Each day, as the gangly teenager lurched onto the bus, he hollered obscenities, taking up more space than one child should. Eldon understood what it meant to ‘disturb the peace’ as soon as the boy stepped onto the platform. He vibrated with some kind of nervous energy that put the other youngsters on edge. When Eldon drove over the bridge, J.J. would open the window and spit into the river. Whether he did it for luck or just to attract attention, Eldon didn’t know but he hated spitting. Only hicks spat on the ground. J.J. was a poor influence on the other kids, too. Suddenly there were windows open all the time, and the wind whipped the children’s hair around giving them a slightly feral appearance. Little ones he’d known since they were babies no longer said ‘goodbye Mr. Sheridan’ at the end of their ride. J.J. certainly never did. And what about the way the boy ogled the girls? He’d mutter a number as they passed by his seat, rating each blessed child older than twelve. It made Eldon sick.

For decades now, the bus drivers from the valley have met up for coffee at Samira’s on Fridays after morning drop off. They parked their busses in neat rows by the river’s edge and trickled in one by one into their usual spots. Lorne, the owner of Valley Hardware, crossed the road to join them more often than not. The drivers often asked him for advice on their various projects and Lorne discovered he could sell more having coffee with farmers at Samira’s than waiting for them to come into his store on their own. Today, however, he wasn’t thinking about sales. He spotted his favourite driver, Eldon Sheridan, one of the old-timers, hunched over his coffee looking deflated and upset.

Lorne walked over and took a stool next to his friend. The farmer acknowledged Lorne with a slight nod.

“How’s your family, Mr. Sheridan?” Lorne asked.

“Doing well,” Eldon replied.

“Glad to hear it,” Lorne said. “And you? Still having fun driving those rascals around?”

Eldon Sheridan stared straight ahead and did not answer Lorne’s question.

“Sir?” 

The older man turned to look at Lorne. “You have a teenager, don’t you?” 

“Yes. Just the one. Ella.” Now Lorne was confused. 

“What kind of music does your daughter like?”

Lorne played guitar in a local band and Ella often suggested new songs for them to try but she was an old soul. The kids her age might be into the Smashing Pumpkins or No Doubt, but she would come home from piano lessons and suggest they do a Carole King duet. 

“She’s a bit of an outlier in the music department. Why?”

Eldon shrugged.

Lorne leaned forward. “Some kid giving you trouble Mr. Sheridan?” 

He remembered his daughter’s flippant remark about a new kid walking through the halls with huge headphones blaring profanities to a heavy bass track. The lyrics made the teachers blush, but nobody made him turn it down. “They’re all scared of him… something to do with some guy who come to see him at lunch,” she’d said.

Lorne wondered if he should have paid better attention. “Mr. Sheridan? Can I help?”

 “Just getting old, is all,” Eldon said. He tipped his cap and headed out to the yard, leaving Lorne scratching his chin. 

 

Merle no longer rode the bus into town with Eldon these days. Times have changed, the bus company said. Liability and insurance and other new-fangled rules. But when she got up to start her Oldsmobile the first morning the frost set in, the engine wouldn’t turn. 

“I’ll just come with you,” Merle said. It was Monday and she would not miss her hair appointment with Sharanne.

Eldon had learned not to argue with Merle about certain things. This was key to a long marriage, he believed. He meant to tell his children this, but supposed they probably already knew, if they’d been paying attention. They rode in companionable silence through the countryside until the first passengers got on. Merle chatted amiably with the children; she’d missed them. Eldon tried to warn Merle about J.J. before they arrived at his house, but she was intently listening to the one of the Blixon sisters describe their lambs recent brush with a coyote on the ridge. He considered driving past his house, hoping today he might be sick. No such luck. Kids like J.J. were never sick.

Eldon slowed the bus. He prayed today J.J. would just glide past him and find a seat. In twelve minutes they’d be at the school. J.J. was on Eldon’s bus for thirty seconds when he noticed Merle. His bride Merle who wore a turban on her head because Sharanne would fix her hair soon enough anyways. Merle did not dress up for children.

J.J. stopped and stared at her, his hands gripping the vinyl seats on both sides of the row. “Who are you? Marge Simpson?” he roared with laughter, cursing loudly at the ceiling.

The other children only eyed him warily. Sometimes they laughed at his antics, which felt to Eldon like a betrayal. But they would never laugh at Merle.

“I beg your pardon young man,” Merle said.

J.J. put his hand to his mouth in faux surprise and retorted in a high-pitched English accent, “I beg your pardon…” he cackled with laughter as though he were the funniest person alive. When no one met his gaze, he slumped into a seat cussing like the devil. “Bunch of frickin’ hicks.”

Merle stood up.

“Merle,” Eldon tried to warn her. You never stand on the school bus and you never confront a hooligan. He might have added you never say “young man” to a kid like J.J., but again, Eldon was too slow to do anything.

“What did you just say?” Merle said. 

“Nothin,’” J.J. said.

“What makes you think it’s acceptable to talk like that? Especially around all these young children.”

J.J. studiously ignored her. For a moment Eldon felt badly for the kid. Things were about to get worse for him and he didn’t even know it yet. Merle was not one to let things go.

When they arrived at the school, Merle was the first off the bus. She marched into the middle of the school yard in search of Mr. Almond, the principal. Fifteen minutes later, she was back on the bus.

“I hope you don’t have to deal with that kind of behaviour again,” she said after receiving reassurances J.J. would be disciplined.

Eldon loved his wife, but he doubted a knuckle rap from the principal would change much. Principals these days were almost as useless as the parents seemed to be. He wasn’t wrong. Two days later, J.J. was back. He tossed a ‘sorry’ over his shoulder and shoved a hastily scrawled duty apology towards Eldon. His spelling was so poor Eldon wasn’t sure how he’d made it this far in school. That day, J.J. was subdued. He only swore once, when Eldon hit a pothole on the S bend near the dump, and Eldon could almost forgive him that – the jolt had made him want to swear, too.

An uneasy truce lasted almost a week. The morning had been uneventful, J.J. seemed a little sleepy to Eldon, the way teenagers were supposed to be on cold winter mornings. By the afternoon however, he was no longer drowsy. He was wired for sound. Oh good Lord, was he on drugs? Eldon spent the first ten minutes of the drive hardly looking at the road. He fixed his gaze on J.J, who was intent on tapping another boy on the head with his fingers, as though he were a drummer in a rock band. The boy whipped around and told him to “bug off” and this only made J.J. more jumpy. He was like an elastic band ready to snap.

“J.J,” Eldon said. “Come have a seat up here.”

His right hand trembled a bit, and he gripped the wheel tighter. This worked with normal kids, with younger kids. J.J. just stared at him in the mirror. A slow smile spread across his defiant face.

“Don’t think so, Grandpa. I’m happy here.”

Eldon took a deep breath. They were almost at the boy’s home. He could pull over and wait for the kid to move, but what if he didn’t? Eldon wasn’t about to drag the kid to the front seat. The bus grew quiet. The other children began to fidget nervously. Finally, a car honked and Eldon put the bus in gear. He didn’t know what to do. He just didn’t know what to do.

Like a corrupt politician, J.J. got bolder each day his infractions went unpunished. Merle asked her husband how things were going and for the first time in their married life, he lied. He was embarrassed to admit he didn’t know how to handle the kid. He grew despondent. The world was going to hell. Obviously the kid was poorly raised. Why else would he act out so much? Slowly Eldon began to see degeneracy everywhere. Nothing was what it once was. Maybe it was time to give up the route. 

 

“I feel old,” he finally admitted to Lorne one morning at the coffee shop.

Lorne had been trying to coax out what was making the old bus driver depressed for weeks. Once Eldon started to talk, he found it helped.

“I used to just give kids a look, and they’d sit back down. Most kids would apologize, too. They didn’t have to be told; they knew when they were out of line.”

“You try pulling the bus over on the side of the road?” Lorne asked.

Eldon winced. “People these days are so impatient. I just get honked at. Nobody has a clue.”

“What do you know about the kid’s family?” Lorne said.

Eldon shrugged. Fancy car in the laneway. City people. He imagined they’d come north to try country living, maybe separate the kid from trouble somewhere else. That story made sense, except the truth was he knew nothing about them, hadn’t even seen them. He’d sooner retire than admit he couldn’t handle one kid. In the mornings when he walked towards the bus he felt tired. He couldn’t relax the way he used to when he drove down the country roads. 

When that afternoon J.J. got on the bus and told a sweet kindergarten kid with an Elmo backpack to get out of his f------ way, Eldon decided he’d had enough. Once he’d dropped off most of the town kids past the bridge, he stalled the bus on purpose and edged slowly to the shoulder of the road, out of sight near an orchard. He popped the hood, grabbed his toolbox and got out without a word to the children.

Before he could change his mind, he went to the back wheel and removed the inner valve quickly letting the air out. Lord forgive him, these were new tires. Eldon grabbed a hammer and punctured the rubber. Before he radioed the drivers of routes 4 and 7 to tell them he’d run over a nail, he made sure the tire was good and deflated. Soon enough, the other busses pulled up behind him and Eldon instructed the children which busses they needed to get on. His charges arrived home only fifteen minutes later than usual. All except J.J.

Eldon asked the station to call Merle to pick him up in the Oldsmobile. 

When Merle showed up just after the tire mechanic, she was surprised to see Eldon sitting with J.J. in the grass near the ditch.

Silently Eldon took the keys from his wife and told the boy to get in the back seat. J.J. had been quiet ever since Eldon told him he wouldn’t be going on either of the alternate busses. He didn’t offer a reason, he just told him to take a seat. Without an audience, he wasn’t so tough. Eldon could even see a bit of baby fat on his face he hadn’t noticed before. 

They took the backroads. Merle said nothing as they passed the turn-off for J.J’s house. Soon they were almost in the next county, they were almost home. Eldon slowed as they reached the bush lot.

“That there is my farm. I cleared the land, planted the first bean crop. I grow my own feed for my animals. It’s hard work,” Eldon said.

The boy in the back of the car said nothing. He stared at the fields and the forest. There was nothing else around for miles.

“Year after year, I got up early and I milked the cows. Afterwards, I did my bus route. And you know what? I liked it. I looked forward to coming into town and seeing the Bay sparkling at the bottom of the hill. That view never gets old.”

Merle put her hand over Eldon’s hand. The nervous shaking had come back. He wasn’t used to talking so much.

“But I haven’t enjoyed it much this year,” he added. He looked in the mirror at the boy now shrinking against the plush back seat.

He hadn’t thought it through beyond pulling over and piercing the tire. Now he felt ashamed. He turned the car around and drove J.J. home, silence stretching out between the three passengers.

When he pulled into the laneway, a woman came running out of the house.

“J.J! Why are you so late?” she looked at Eldon and Merle, confusion spreading across her face.

“Oh, God. Has he been in trouble?”

Eldon saw that the woman had been crying and there was something strange about her hair – there were patches of it missing. J.J. hung back behind his mom and didn’t say a word. 

Mercifully, Merle stepped in. “I’m Merle Sheridan. The bus broke down and the children all went home with other drivers. Sorry he’s so late. It should be back to normal tomorrow.”

The woman glanced at the Oldsmobile. “Oh. Okay, thank-you.” She said ‘thank-you’ like a question and shut the door.

 

For about a week, the bus route was peaceful. J.J even said “good morning” one day and the shaking in Eldon’s right hand gradually disappeared. And then just before March break, the bus pulled up to J.J’s house and the boy wasn’t waiting at the end of his laneway. Instead, there were two police cars outside the house. The children pressed their noses to the windows and rumours spread like crazy from row to row, finally reaching Eldon’s ears. The children only knew half of it.

At the coffee shop, Eldon learned that J.J was arrested for drug trafficking. Over the years he had picked up plenty of teenagers who smelled like patchouli and marijuana, but people grew their own pot on the edge of cornfields, or traded with the hippies who lived at the artists’ colony. Drug dealers were burly men in leather vests on television. Eldon couldn’t wrap his mind around it. J.J. was just a kid.  

The boy was sentenced as a minor and sent to a country school farm. If he behaved, he could finish his education back at the local school, and some of the men at the coffee shop placed bets on whether or not he’d get out. Eldon wasn’t a betting man. 

After J.J’s arrest, Eldon wasn’t as tired anymore, or as nervous. But he was sad, a kind of melancholy he struggled to shake. He’d wanted to get rid of the kid, and now the kid was gone. And yet.

After drop-off one Friday, he decided  to forgo the coffee shop. He detoured north through the valley past the abandoned ski hill and kept going. This wasn’t his route and he was wasting gas, but he couldn’t help himself. After a half an hour he pulled up in front of the Lakeridge Youth Farm. In smaller letters it read “Correctional Facility” as though some bureaucrat had obligated them to clarify what a youth farm was. Eldon had never been out this way. It was funny how you could spend your whole life between two concessions and be satisfied, happy even. 

He got out and looked around. There were a couple of kids weeding a garden in one field and another group turning the soil for planting. A scarecrow stood erect in the middle of the yard wearing a familiar skater cap. Eldon put his hands in his pockets and looked around. He spotted him sitting astride a gorgeous horse, coaxing the beast in circles. Something about his face was different. He was smiling. On the fourth circuit of the pen, J.J. noticed the bus and locked eyes with Eldon. He slowed his horse and lifted his hand to his forehead in a brisk salute.

Eldon tipped his cap and turned to get back on his bus. He was humming as he made his way home.

Later that month he ran into J.J’s mom in the grocery store, waiting for Merle to finish her shopping. He had to clear his throat three times before he found the words, but when he did, he reached out his trembling right hand, put it on her shoulder and said, “I saw your boy the other day.”

He didn’t look like such a thug, sitting up there on a horse. Eldon searched for the right words.

 “I think the kid’s gonna be alright.”