There was a time during my life which I spent in the company of mostly well-intentioned people driving school buses. It is often a curiously contradictory fact that drivers chosen to navigate as substitutes for others absent from the daily roster, tend to be rookies, or those of fledgling experience.
Why is this in any way dissonant from reason? You would not be far wrong to surmise that the role of the substitute is much more difficult to manage than the challenges confronting drivers negotiating the same, well-established routes with many of the same children, and sometimes for years at a time. Common sense would seem to demand that the most experienced drivers should assume the mantle of the substitute, as the “new driver” (who is a complete unknown to the students) is often tested by taunts, threats, and misbehavior, sometimes approaching the irrational chaos of a mobile, captive, rebellious mob.
Veteran shepherds of the bus brigades know full-well the multiple vicissitudes visited upon the newcomer by her charges, and will work almost any angle to avoid the inescapable, undesirable chore. Lending a neophyte driver the stability afforded by the repetition of a set of routes over a lengthy period grants that driver time to develop the essential skills necessary to meet the challenging demands of controlling three-dozen or more children anxious to be anywhere else but on a school bus, while driving them all safely every day to school and home again, often on unruly, distracting, dangerous streets and byways.
But assigned, unvarying routes for specific divers were the coveted plums of our chosen vocation, and were bestowed only via a formal bidding process whenever the previous captain of the repetitive circuits either retired or moved on to greener pastures elsewhere. These paths were, more often than not, snapped up by the most senior among us, as it was determined by consensus and on balance to be the most just way to proceed. Of course, not every route demanded an equal measure of egalitarian or universal favor; but even the worst of them usually had some advantage over the dreaded unknowns and annoying vagaries of the life of a substitute driver.
So it happened that although I was an experienced driver accustomed to difficult, varying routes assigned to me by a rural school district in a neighboring state, I was a rookie at the new yard, with my formerly agrarian meanderings leaving me largely unprepared for the dictates of major city traffic. I was assigned to the “satellite” yard, where other shock troops of the educational transportation wars gathered every morning and afternoon for coffee and fellowship, and the trading of the latest, strangest stories of the wanton nature of their shared trade.
One of the women there seemed on first meeting to be at once fully engaged with the somewhat raucous crew, and yet strangely divorced from it all. She was what some men might describe as “easy on the eyes.” She was a long-time resident of the yard, but unlike many of her compatriots, both male and female, she was not overweight or overloud, although her laughter was easily distinguishable and infectious.
She loved regaling others with stories of her rollicking, rolling adventures on the road, but was equally attentive to the tales offered by others of her ilk. She had a full, hearty, throaty, nearly hoarse laugh, punctuated by a naturally scratchy voice; not deep, but a woman’s voice completely. She didn’t demand attention, but earned it nonetheless, for when speaking to her, one always knew that you were the undivided focus of her interest.
I managed over the course of three or four months to cadge an enjoyable blether or two with her, and couldn’t help noticing that sometimes she wore sunglasses during the morning as well as the afternoon, often for several days at a time. Once I saw that she seemed to have a bruised eye, and wondered at the time, what might have happened.
But like most people of my generation, trained in the endlessly repetitive way that I was to always maintain a respectful distance from prying into another’s affairs, while scrupulously observing certain shared social rules of courteous conversation (and additionally because there was easily at least 20 years dividing us in age), I plodded on in my own decorous and respectful way without grabbing at personal facts, or encroaching upon her privacy. This proved to be the source of self-regret and recrimination later, and often.
The morning of Elizabeth’s murder dawned indistinguishably from all of the others at the satellite yard. We were all there, laughing, complaining, gesturing, cajoling, drinking coffee, and planning how best to spend our brief afternoon hiatus, between the AM and PM routes. I was given another in a seemingly endless stream of changing stops and strange faces, and equipped with the bare bones outline of my run from the central office administrators and my own detailed county map, I prepared myself once again to venture into the unfamiliar and boisterous reality of the substitute.
During my return later that morning, and across the median strip that divided the local highway from itself in opposing directions, I couldn’t help but notice that one of our buses was parked on the shoulder, bracketed by police cars front and rear. The driver’s side window had been draped from the inside with a cloth of some sort, its uppermost portion attached to the top of the window, and waving gently in the late morning breeze of our springtime. I thought that it was curious, in that someone had used the material to signal distress, or a mechanical breakdown, in lieu of the typical reflective plastic cones and triangles which we were trained to use during such events.
But the news, and the horrific nature of it was revealed to me shortly after entering the drivers’ area of our little building on its campus. The harrowing details of Elizabeth’s final moments haunt some of my waking moments to this day, now many years since.
As school bus drivers, we are taught to observe many layers of basic safety checks, both before our runs and immediately following them. One rule that I considered essential, no less and no more than any of the others, was to walk the entire length of the bus, checking each side of the long rows of bench seats, in search of anything that might be amiss, or not belong there. Loose objects such as the seats themselves, brooms, dustpans, improvised waste baskets, unnoticed discarded items from students which might cause someone to trip and fall, and so on.
The final step in this particular process was to examine the rear safety door and its latching mechanism at the back of the bus. Without question, this particular inspection should never have been neglected, as the door in an emergency requiring a rapid exit from the vehicle must work smoothly, and its latch closed securely prior to departure. I have often wondered throughout the years if Elizabeth might have managed an escape and obtained the help necessary to avoid what later transpired, had she simply walked to the rear of her bus.
Apparently known openly to many, though not to myself, she was enmeshed in an abusive relationship with a man who was, as I recall, the father of at least two of her children. Apparently, she felt unable or unwilling to extricate herself from what must have been dire personal circumstance. I do not remember what events occasioned his wrath, but he had hidden himself somewhere at the rear of Elizabeth’s bus, and with his presence there unknown to her, she had exited the yard and driven to that portion of the highway which she usually employed as a staging or waiting area preparatory to beginning her first run.
Although most of the details of their final fatal confrontation may never be known fully, it was certainly a violent, unforgiving one, as he proceeded to stab her to death in the seat which she used every day with smiles and confidence, never managing then or again to rise from it.
The sadness and shock of that day has never left me. I recall returning to my bus, and weeping there for a long time; and eventually noticed by another driver who climbed aboard, we did our best to comfort each other through our sudden, shared, astonished grief.
Due to the nature of her chosen profession, and because she was as well-known as she was well-regarded, her memorial service was attended by hundreds of people, who collectively offered many words and an abundance of tears and sympathy to all those from whom she was so needlessly torn. I penned a poem at the time, and which I recognize and acknowledge as an inadequate tribute to her, and of our brief acquaintance; but it remains the truth of my heart, my loss, and my regret, at failing to know her better.
Related to – Elizabeth (Part of the Poetry List.)
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