Logan Markko
The Bus Driver’s Routine
Before setting off on his morning route, the bus driver checked his blood pressure with a Velcro cuff that coiled around his right arm like a copperhead. He’d become a shriveled raisin of a man with an achy back; hand tremors from years of cigarettes, black coffee, and booze; and rheumy, bloodshot eyes he hid behind a pair of old-school aviator sunglasses. Stop after stop, children dragged themselves onto the bus, yawning and lethargic. In the afternoons the driver let them scream and cuss as much as they wanted as long as they stayed in their seats, figuring they deserved the chance to blow off a little steam after spending the day cooped up indoors, sitting in the same uncomfortable wooden desks kids had been pushing up against for decades, pretending to listen as their teachers droned on about improper fractions or the Battle of Gettysburg.
As a boy, he’d dreamed of flying jets over the Pacific Ocean on covert military missions or stepping to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning with the World Series hanging in the balance. But he was colorblind and no good with a baseball bat or a leather glove. On a different try, he could’ve been a police officer or a firefighter, but instead, he fell in with the freeloaders and burnouts, chasing teenage girlfriends and hard reputations headfirst into a bad deal that left a gas station clerk lying half-dead in a puddle of his own blood. Confused and jittery on a cocktail of amphetamines and malt liquor, he woke up the next morning tasting the jailhouse floor. He copped a plea, learned to say “yes sir” like a good boy, and paroled out a decade later, way after the drugs and shame burned through his brittle body, spitting him into early middle age, cynical and beaten. The court tested his urine every week until a county judge declared him suitably rehabilitated, a credit to the system.
What followed were many wandering years working on oil rigs off the Gulf Coast; summers in Northern Michigan picking cherries and apples through fall; early mornings and late nights in greasy Memphis kitchens cooking brisket and pulled pork for minimum wage; and a long stint near Salt Lake City selling toasters and microwave ovens for commission. For a while there, he tried to play house: married, fathered a child, and went door-to-door with nice men dressed in short-sleeve shirts and ties, only to spiral out after the sweat cooled under his collar. Blackouts and firings ensued, and a list of mistakes so aimlessly American as to frighten off anyone supposing order.
He tried at being sober. When he felt particularly dried up, he’d catch a meeting. Sitting in musty church basements and sipping burnt coffee out of Styrofoam cups, he’d listen for hours on end to strangers talk about how addiction and self-abuse had ravaged their lives. Once, a young woman with long blonde hair and sad, tender eyes stood up from her folding chair and told the room about the time she’d passed out on the back porch with a lit cigarette in her mouth, waking the next day to find she’d burned the whole house down. She was suing for custody of her daughter, laying off the hard stuff the best she could, really trying to be a good mother. After the meeting, he asked her out for a cup of coffee, and they spent the rest of the weekend between twisted motel bedsheets, passing a plastic jug to and fro. Passion turned to marriage and another family, but that was no good either, and it took them the rest of their best years to figure out there was nothing left that would bring about anything called change.
A friend of a friend who must’ve believed in second and third chances helped him get the job driving school buses for the local district. Between routes, he sat with the other drivers in the garage on the edge of campus, playing cards and gambling for peanuts. In the evenings, after he’d finished his route and refueled the bus for the next morning’s run, he’d drive his pickup truck across town to a quiet subdivision where all the houses were two stories high and every lawn was immaculately manicured. On one of these streets was a yellow house with flower beds bursting with tulips and daffodils. The owners were a nice-looking couple. She wore pantsuits and vibrant red lipstick, and worked in an office building downtown, leaving her husband with the domestic chores, which the bus driver guessed was the way of many modern marriages.
Watching from the truck, he twisted the cap off another indiscriminate brown bottle, promising himself that one day he'd show a little courage, climb the steps to the yellow house, and knock on the front door. If the woman answered, she might slam the door in his face. Although maybe it would be one of the little ones on the other side, and he’d finally get the chance to tell his grandchildren who he was. There was no telling. Their mother might invite him inside and set another place at the table. If they asked about his day, he’d say it was the same as always – kids throwing shit when they thought he wasn’t looking, calling each other horrible names, squirming in their sticky leather seats, itching for release.
He took a nip of the stuff in his hand and felt fire burning in his chest, closed his eyes, and drifted way out to sea, slowly becoming aware of the gentle sound of fingers tapping against the truck window. The girl looking up at him was small, seven or eight, with the same blonde hair and doe-like eyes of the women that had come before her. He rolled down the window, and she handed him a sandwich wrapped in a paper towel. He took a bite, tasting turkey, lettuce, and Swiss cheese. Then, they began to talk.
END
Logan Markko’s recent fiction has been published in Consequence, Chaotic Merge, The Literary Hatchet, and Brilliant Flash Fiction. He lives in Michigan with his wonderful wife, their two sons, and a 100-pound American Bulldog named Sampson.