Somebody on This Bus Is Going to Be Famous

by J. B. Cheaney

  In all his days, Jay can’t remember a ride that quiet.

  • • •

  “Jay,” his mother tells him that afternoon, “Terry Birch called this morning and told me what happened on the bus.”

  “It was just a mistake,” he says defensively. “Poppy thought the school bus looked like that senior citizens van that takes old people to town to shop…”

  She isn’t buying. “The school bus looks nothing like the OATS bus, Jay. A few days ago, he forgot he gave up driving and pitched a fit when he couldn’t find his car keys. Geemaw called me, and it was all we could do to—”

  “All right, I get it. You’re gonna lock him up in an old folks home.”

  “Nobody’s made any decisions yet.”

  “But you’re getting there. He’s just a little confused, that’s all.”

  His mother is looking at him with pity in her eyes, and he hates that. “I’m really sorry, Jay. This is always a sad thing to watch.”

  He grabs an apple from the basket on the countertop and takes a bite out of it. “I’m watching, all right. Don’t try anything sneaky.” He storms off to his room before she can ask him to explain what he means.

  Two days later, March blows cold again. There’s even a 60 percent chance of late-afternoon snow in the forecast: possible accumulation three to six inches. Everybody’s hopeful that it will be the first good snow of the winter. “Maybe I won’t see you tomorrow,” is Mrs. B’s touching farewell.

  Spencer catches up with Jay as they start toward home. “You still got your sled?” he asks, as though their little spat had never happened.

  “If my sister didn’t wreck it when she had her slumber party.” Julie told him, after the fact, how five girls had piled on his sled and rode it downhill in a heavy frost.

  “We could try it on that hill behind the Ellisons’ house. It’s nice and steep.”

  “Cool.” Jay holds out a fist, and they bump knuckles.

  “By the way,” Spencer goes on, “I changed my mind about Space Camp. You’re right, I just need to—”

  “Hold on a minute.” Jay has spotted his grandmother striding toward them, dressed like a bag lady with polyester slacks stuffed into rubber boots, her good dress coat flapping about her knees and gray hair springing wildly from a crocheted cap. Fear clutches him—is she going crazy too?

  Her voice sounds thin and screechy in the cold air. “Have any of you kids seen Panzer?”

  Out of breath, she tells them how Poppy had taken the dog for a walk after lunch, as usual, and returned without him. Geemaw hadn’t noticed at first because she was busy with a scrapbook project, but when she emerged from her craft room and found Poppy snoring in the recliner in front of the TV, Panzer was not on the doggie bed beside him. Nor was he in the house or backyard. Geemaw woke Poppy: Where’s Panzer?

  Poppy just looked at her: Panzer who?

  At this point in the story, Geemaw breaks down. Jay lifts an awkward hand to her shoulder but finds his mouth too dry to speak.

  Spencer says, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Pasternak. We’ll find him. Everybody knows Panzer, right?” A group of kids gather around. Heads nod.

  “We should organize!” Kaitlynn says. “We need a—a command central, and send people off in different directions to search behind all the houses and in the woods—”

  “Okay,” Shelly says. “We’re organizing a Hidden Acres Dogquest right now. I’m chairman, Mir is co-chair, Kaitlynn’s field captain…”

  Jay can see this going on Shelly’s scholarship résumé. But he’s sort of grateful to her for taking over, and she comes up with a good plan. The littles search house-to-house while Spencer takes the north side of the loop, Jay the west, Kaitlynn the southeast field where the picnic tables are, and Igor and Miranda the woods. Shelly stays in the gazebo with her phone and a whistle, contributed by Jay, to signal whenever Panzer is found.

  It’s the shyest, quietest kid on the bus who actually finds the dog: Alice. Jay didn’t even know Alice was looking. But when he hears two shrill blasts on his whistle, he stops beating the brush in the west field and runs back to the gazebo where all the other kids are waiting. Alice holds the whimpering dachshund in her arms while Kaitlynn and the littles try to pet him. Panzer is tucked into her jacket, but he’s still shivering, maybe from fear as well as cold. “I found him in the culvert by Meadow Lane,” Alice explains, her own voice a little shaky. Her lips are a little blue too. “He was tied to a tree, so he couldn’t get home.”

  “Poor puppy!” cries Kaitlynn, stroking Panzer’s head while he tries to lick her.

  “Thanks,” says Jay. “I’ll take him.” He hates what her story implies: that Poppy was the one who tied Panzer up and left him and forgot about him. The dog could have frozen to death or been lunch for a hungry fox or bobcat. “How did you see him in the culvert?”

  “I didn’t,” Alice says shyly. “I just know holes are good places to hide.”

  Jay kind of wonders how she knows that, but he only says thanks again. The little dachshund gets the cuddle of his life, and then they all go home feeling good, except Jay.

  Poppy doesn’t remember anything about it—though he does recall Panzer now. Geemaw decides she’s had enough.

  Turns out she and Jay’s dad have been looking into residential care (a nice way of saying nursing home), and there’s an opening at one of the places on their short list: Sunset Hills. Miranda’s mother has already brought over the paperwork and helped Geemaw get everything in order, and on Friday afternoon, Jay’s father drives Poppy to town to help him “settle in.”

  All this happens while Jay’s not watching. “You what?!” he yells when his parents tell him on Friday afternoon. He hurls his backpack across the kitchen for punctuation.

  His mom begins, “Please, sweetheart—”

  “It was getting bad, son,” says his dad. “He’s really gone downhill fast. It’s shocking, almost, to see how—”

  “Enough with how bad he is!” Jay is still shouting. “You didn’t even think about asking me, right, to see if I had any other solution?”

  His mom says, “Well no, but—”

  “What solution, Jay?” replies his dad. “We’ll ask you now. And if you can answer in a calm, respectful manner, we’ll listen.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Jay says, as respectfully as he can manage. “He could move in with us. I’ll help take care of him. He could have Jessica’s old room, and if Julie doesn’t like it, she can move over to Geemaw’s…” His mom moans and his dad is shaking his head. “All right, I’ll move in with him! I’ll help Geemaw with him—I’ll even quit track and soccer so I can be home in the afternoons. Poppy and me, we have this thing between us—” Now both parents are shaking their heads. “See? You’re not even listening!”

  “It’s a lot more complicated than that, Jay. All kind of issues, from health to emotional—”

  “I don’t care about issues, okay? Poppy’s not an issue, he’s—he’s—”

  “Fair enough,” admits his dad. “He’s not an issue, he’s a human being, and a husband and a father and a grandfather, and he’s losing touch with all those things. We can’t help him anymore. We have to get him to a place where he can be helped.”

  “You mean ‘kept,’” Jay mutters. “Like Uncle Troy.”

  His father sighs. With a Let’s-be-careful look at him, Mom says, “What we mean is, Poppy’s condition can’t be cured but there may be ways that’ll help him deal with it better, like…therapies and drugs and—”

  “Drugs? Just keep him doped up and out of it?”

  “No, but… Look, this is hard on all of us, not just you. We’re all going to have to readjust and accept the inevitable. After church this Sunday, we’re going over to visit as a family, and you can see for yourself how—”

  “You can visit,” Jay says firmly. “I’m not.”

/>   “Now, Jay…” begins his mother.

  “Come on, son,” says his father. “You can’t just pretend this isn’t happening. Or that he doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “I know he exists. Better than you do. I just want to go by myself. After school some day next week, like Tuesday when I don’t have soccer.”

  Neither parent likes the idea, but there’s no good reason to object. So they finally agree: instead of getting on the bus next Tuesday afternoon, Jay will walk to Sunset Hills. Julie will pick him up there after cheerleader tryouts. If Jay has to wait for her, he can start on his homework in the lobby.

  That’s the plan. But Jay has his own plan.

  He’s figured out that nobody is reaching Poppy where he lives. Out of the whole family, his wife of fifty-two years included, only Jay can do that. Because Jay lives in the same place. So when he loads up his backpack for school on Tuesday, his football goes at the bottom—the one Poppy gave him two years ago, signed by Brett Favre. It’s the one they toss around the backyard together. Unlike Poppy’s championship ball from the University of Kansas, which holds a place of honor over the fireplace, Jay’s has their sweat on it, their memories in it. Even bumping along in his backpack on a chilly morning, it feels warm.

  While boarding the bus, he’s so focused on his mission that it’s hard to pay attention when Miranda says, “Shelly has an announcement!” Shelly’s announcements are pretty common, but this time she’s not selling anything.

  “My mom went to the hospital last night. I have a new baby sister, Eve Marie, eight pounds, two ounces.” She bows to the applause and whistles.

  As the noise dies down, Bender’s voice comes from the back: “And next week, she’ll be selling cute little baby toes for fifty bucks apiece!”

  The boys laugh; Miranda says, “Gross, Bender!”; Shelly licks her finger and makes an invisible tick mark in the air; and Mrs. B shouts, “Congratulations and sit down!”

  Jay cradles his backpack as though it had a baby in it. If someone can be born, chances are someone else can be reborn.

  • • •

  After the last bell that afternoon, he shoulders his backpack for the jog over to Sunset Hills—just over a mile, which he can do without breaking a sweat. When he arrives, the receptionist tells him where Poppy’s room is. South wing, Alzheimer’s unit—even though he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, Jay silently corrects her. Just dementia.

  As he walks down the hall, counting up numbers on the doors, his mind strays in the other direction, toward Uncle Troy’s room. Since he’s here, maybe he should stop by to say hello. But Jay has never just “stopped by” his uncle’s room; only at Christmas and birthdays when his parents make him. It’s tough, seeing a grown man with the mind of a five-year-old. Geemaw visits him almost every day, but usually without Poppy. Uncle Troy is probably the only thing Poppy won’t talk about—hurts too much, Jay figures. Shoot, it hurts Jay, who never even knew the promising young wide receiver headed to Mizzou. Uncle Troy doesn’t even go by his first name here; everybody calls him Larry, which is short for his middle—

  “Sonny, sonny. I need to tell you something I need to tell you…”

  An old lady in a saggy dress has him by the elbow. She only comes to his shoulder, but he’s terrified. He tries not to grip too hard as he pries her clawlike fingers off his arm, jumping as a shout comes from the room behind him, or at least it begins as a shout, but the voice gets higher and higher until it becomes a scream. “Sonny…”

  The nurse’s aide taking a man’s blood pressure across the hall raises her eyebrows. “Who’re you looking for, sweetie?”

  Jay tries to speak, can’t, coughs to clear his throat. “Um, Jay Pasternak Senior?”

  “Two doors down, left side. He might be asleep.” Jay nods and passes by, breathing shallowly through his mouth because the place doesn’t smell too good.

  Poppy isn’t asleep; he’s sitting up in a wheelchair—a wheelchair?!—staring at some documentary on TV. Something about World War II. On the History Channel.

  Jay lets out his breath in a rush; this is worse than he thought. Past time for an intervention. He reaches into his backpack and plants himself in front of the television, bouncing the football lightly in one hand. “Hey Poppy, what’s up?”

  His grandfather looks at him with no change in expression, as though Jay were a World War II documentary. Keeping his voice deliberately bright, like he’d just run over to his grandparents’ house after school to toss the old pigskin around, Jay says, “Why did they put you in a wheelchair, man? Are you razzing the nurses?”

  The word nurses ticks the old man off. “Bunch of—” he says, calling them a not very nice name.

  Jay tries a knowing laugh. “I just ran over after school to shoot the breeze. Not much is going on. We have our first soccer game this week, so—”

  “Soccer’s a stupid game,” Poppy interrupts. “Sissy, European…”

  “…runaround,” Jay finishes with him. He laughs again, for real this time. “I know; I’m just doing it for the moves. So I can try out for junior varsity next fall, remember? You’re coming to see me play.” Jay comes closer. “Listen, Poppy. Are you listening? We have to talk, okay?”

  The old man is looking at him, and his eyes seem more focused. “Okay.”

  Jay places his football on the old man’s lap and lays the bony hands upon it. Then he puts his own hands on top, as though the ball were a magic medium for communication. “Poppy? We’ve got to get you out of here, man. This place is no good for you. Mom was trying to feed me a load of crap, like you might get better here, but you can only get worse. Lookit, you’re in a wheelchair already. Uh-uh, no way. No way are you ready for a wheelchair.

  “So listen—are you listening? You’ve got to do what they say. Do whatever stupid therapy they give you and—and start paying attention and—” His grandfather has opened his mouth and is shaping his lips, like he’s trying to catch the words for a reply. He’s trying—Jay can feel it. All he needs is a little help, a little encouragement. All these years, he’s been here for me, Jay is thinking. Now I can be here for him. “What, Poppy? What is it?”

  The old man squints at him, really hard, concentrating. “Who…who are you?”

  • • •

  Jay takes his hands off the football. It rolls off the slope of the old man’s lap and bounces clunkily on the tile floor. Then he slowly stands, turns, and walks out, leaving his backpack by the door.

  Once in the hall, he just keeps walking, past the wheelchairs, the rising scream, that lady who suddenly steps out from her room saying Sonny, sonny. He pushes open a side door to an empty courtyard, a little garden, a sidewalk winding around to a gate. He follows the trail, opens the gate, and escapes.

  His Nikes clang on the sidewalk. Where to? Where to? The hospital is just a few blocks north, and behind the hospital is a path where his track coach took the relay team for practice last fall. It’s part of the old railroad bed, abandoned when the tracks were taken up; Coach says they’re turning it into a bike trail. The high school cross-country team runs it for five miles every other day during the season.

  He dashes across the hospital parking lot and finds the trailhead. After a few hundred yards, the asphalt bends into a loop, but Jay goes straight north on the old railroad bed.

  His breath is good, his legs strong. They pump (“like a well-oiled machine!” Coach barks), his arms keeping pace, nose in, mouth out, four, five, six…

  It’s when he slows down that everything catches up to him.

  Not fair. It’s not fair! I just wanted him to see me play varsity, four more years maybe. We planned it, talked about it. Scouts, agents. High school to college, full scholarship. Good football school—Kansas? Oklahoma, maybe. The eyes of Texas are upon you! Scouts, agents, first-round draft pick for the Cowboys or Steelers. They had it planned. Poppy still knew people. He stayed i
n the loop, knew who to call. Go long, Jay—go long! Watch it—tackle on your right! Watch your left! Get mad at that durn block!

  He’s getting mad. The old man could have hung on just a little longer, couldn’t he? He’s held on for eighty-two years; what’s four or five more? Didn’t he have a lot to live for? He had me. “He—had—me!” Jay gasps out. All those years of disappointment—Dad a nerd, Uncle Troy a mental case—waiting for a son who could run. Jay’s the one. He’s the one who puts that spark in his grandpa’s eye, everybody says so. “Thinks you hung the moon,” Geemaw tells him.

  But that spark is gone—disappeared—like Poppy scattered it and stamped it and even peed on it to make sure it was totally, completely, 100 percent gone. And never, ever, ever to light again. Nothing left. It looked like Poppy, a little, but Poppy was gone. Ran off and left him when he could have held on for just a few more years. Jay hates it. Hates it, hates it, hates—

  “I hate you, Poppy!”

  Somehow, he finds himself on his hands and knees. The ground is still hard-packed and cold from winter. His fingers curl, gripping the earth, and next minute, he’s sobbing like a girl. The earth tilts sideways, taking Jay with it.

  Who are you?

  Who am I? You knew me best of all—I need you to tell me!

  Minutes pass, or maybe hours, while he’s curled up like a grub worm, and the wind mutters who are you who are you who…you….

  After a while, he sits up, dry as paper, recognizing that he’s lost.

  Should he go back, or forward?

  The sun is slipping, and a cold breeze rattles the leaves on the oak trees. Rattles his teeth too—he’s been shivering for a while now. The path has gradually become narrower and bushier, but it’s still a path. He figures he’s covered at least four miles from town, over halfway home. Forward it is. He pulls himself up and starts out at a trot, trying to guess his direction by the position of the sun. If this is the old railroad bed, it can’t get too far from the highway, can it? A faint, occasional hum of tires on his right seems to bear out that guess.