grey-limbed trees were forever shifting in the wind like ghosts, and the fields were always puddled over or covered with dirty patches of snow. Through this landscape the bus moved like a cabin ship, cut off and separate, sealed tight; but it was pleasant then, at the beginning or end of the bus’s run, when the bus was nearly empty, to be sitting safely inside, the heater sending a warm shaft of air under the seats while outside the rain poured or the ground was rimed with frost.
After I got on in the morning the bus continued up to the 12 & 13 Sideroad and then doubled back along the 4th Concession to the highway again, following it for a stretch and stopping at some of the new yellow brick houses there. But finally it swung back into the concessions and lost itself in their maze-like grid, and it would seem then as if we had suddenly entered a new country, with its own different unknown customs and average citizens. The land here stretched flat and clean, the horizon broken only by the occasional dark island of pines or maples sitting strangely in the middle of a field, by the red or silver curves of silos, by the tall, steep gables of wooden farmhouses that stood, far from their neighbours, like lonely watchmen, their narrow windows gazing out over the endless fields that surrounded them. Toward Port Thomas the landscape changed again – we came out onto another highway and then entered atonce into the town, smaller and meaner than Mersea, with only a few false-fronted stores at the four corners and then the houses growing gradually more weather-beaten and ramshackle until we came finally to the port, where dozens of fishing boats would be moored against the dock, some small and white and new, others with their paint peeling and strange names etched in red or black on their hulls,
Silver Dollar
,
Mayflower
,
The Betty Blue
. From Port Thomas we would follow the lake down into the black farmland of Point Chippewa, where the houses were more ramshackle still, their windows covered sometimes only with gritty plastic, and old farm machinery rusting outside barns and storage sheds like the remains of rotting animals.
Our driver was a man named Schultz, a big grey-eyed German with the rough swollen hands of a peasant and the large round face of a child. In the curved mirror that gave him a view to the back of the bus we could watch his movements as he drove, the way his face screwed into a grimace each time he ground up to a higher gear, the way his tongue strained against the side of his mouth when he turned a corner or rounded a curve. The older boys did imitations of him: sometimes, on cue, six or seven of them would begin squeezing imaginary clutches and shifting imaginary gears in tandem, their voices imitating the whine of the engine. At the noise, Schultz would raise his eyes to his mirror, his face darkening.
“Hey-you-boys,” he’d say, in his thick, slow monotone, and one of the grade-eight boys would call out, “Sorry about that, Schultz.”
Otherwise Schultz usually didn’t take much notice of what went on on the bus; though sometimes, if a girl shrieked or if someone threw something out a window, he’d pull up to the side of the road suddenly and jam his emergency brake uphard, crossing his arms and leaning them into his steering wheel with an air of finality and intention. For a moment the bus would go silent; and then the boys at the back would begin their entreaties.
“Aw, we didn’t mean anything by it, Schultz.”
“Yeah, Schultzy, give us a break, we promise we’ll knock it off.”
And finally Schultz would purse his lips and shake his head slowly, and we’d set off again.
When I first began riding the bus I made the mistake once of sitting in the back seat, not knowing then that only the older boys sat there. A tall, lean, black-haired boy who got on at one of the brick houses along the highway sat beside me, flashing me an odd, exaggerated grin and whipping his head back with a practised
After I got on in the morning the bus continued up to the 12 & 13 Sideroad and then doubled back along the 4th Concession to the highway again, following it for a stretch and stopping at some of the new yellow brick houses there. But finally it swung back into the concessions and lost itself in their maze-like grid, and it would seem then as if we had suddenly entered a new country, with its own different unknown customs and average citizens. The land here stretched flat and clean, the horizon broken only by the occasional dark island of pines or maples sitting strangely in the middle of a field, by the red or silver curves of silos, by the tall, steep gables of wooden farmhouses that stood, far from their neighbours, like lonely watchmen, their narrow windows gazing out over the endless fields that surrounded them. Toward Port Thomas the landscape changed again – we came out onto another highway and then entered atonce into the town, smaller and meaner than Mersea, with only a few false-fronted stores at the four corners and then the houses growing gradually more weather-beaten and ramshackle until we came finally to the port, where dozens of fishing boats would be moored against the dock, some small and white and new, others with their paint peeling and strange names etched in red or black on their hulls,
Silver Dollar
,
Mayflower
,
The Betty Blue
. From Port Thomas we would follow the lake down into the black farmland of Point Chippewa, where the houses were more ramshackle still, their windows covered sometimes only with gritty plastic, and old farm machinery rusting outside barns and storage sheds like the remains of rotting animals.
Our driver was a man named Schultz, a big grey-eyed German with the rough swollen hands of a peasant and the large round face of a child. In the curved mirror that gave him a view to the back of the bus we could watch his movements as he drove, the way his face screwed into a grimace each time he ground up to a higher gear, the way his tongue strained against the side of his mouth when he turned a corner or rounded a curve. The older boys did imitations of him: sometimes, on cue, six or seven of them would begin squeezing imaginary clutches and shifting imaginary gears in tandem, their voices imitating the whine of the engine. At the noise, Schultz would raise his eyes to his mirror, his face darkening.
“Hey-you-boys,” he’d say, in his thick, slow monotone, and one of the grade-eight boys would call out, “Sorry about that, Schultz.”
Otherwise Schultz usually didn’t take much notice of what went on on the bus; though sometimes, if a girl shrieked or if someone threw something out a window, he’d pull up to the side of the road suddenly and jam his emergency brake uphard, crossing his arms and leaning them into his steering wheel with an air of finality and intention. For a moment the bus would go silent; and then the boys at the back would begin their entreaties.
“Aw, we didn’t mean anything by it, Schultz.”
“Yeah, Schultzy, give us a break, we promise we’ll knock it off.”
And finally Schultz would purse his lips and shake his head slowly, and we’d set off again.
When I first began riding the bus I made the mistake once of sitting in the back seat, not knowing then that only the older boys sat there. A tall, lean, black-haired boy who got on at one of the brick houses along the highway sat beside me, flashing me an odd, exaggerated grin and whipping his head back with a practised
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