by Kim Andereck
THS Class of 1966
Not long ago and not far from here, on one of those cool, overcast October mornings, I set off in the car, driving with no particular destination in mind. I left the city behind as I crossed over the big bridge that spans the great muddy river. Instinctively, I set a course northeastward, driving for maybe an hour. Then, just beyond that little town whose name I can no longer remember, I turned right, leaving the interstate behind. I preferred, somehow, to return the old way, along the narrow, shoulderless blacktop that was once the main route for travelers north and south; east and west. Strangely, I felt like I was going home, but yet, I wasn’t really sure I’d ever been here before.
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Surrounded by field and farm, I approached those two 90-degree corners. You remember them, don’t you; where the road turns sharply to the left, then cuts back to the right? According to local folklore, those corners were like the mythical Sirens, enticing carloads of speeding teenagers into the ditch after a late night of partying. Ever so carefully, I navigated the S-curves, and then became keenly aware of that old familiar gravel road just a mile or so ahead on the left. Compulsively, intuitively, I made that turn and started up the slight incline toward the crest of the ridge.
Here, the fence posts weren’t the store-bought kind. No, these posts were hand cut by some forgotten farmer many, many years ago, using native Osage orange and whatever other tree he could find growing in the surrounding hardscrabble. You can easily tell because of the peeling bark and their irregular lengths poking skyward. Some were just tall enough to catch the top strand of barbed wire; others extended into the air, a foot or two above the rusted wires.
The sumac along the fencerow was thick and colorful, displaying magnificent autumn leaves of red, yellow and gold. As I stopped and rolled down the window to take a closer look, a harsh north wind gusted against my face. I could hear the rustling of the native prairie grass along the side of the roadway as it swayed in the breeze. I saw no other person nor bird nor animal of any kind. That morning, it was just me on a cool, cloudy day with the stiff breeze and a colorful hedgerow concealing the rusty wire fence along that ancient road that is, God only knows, how old.
From my youth, I remembered there would be that little farmhouse just up ahead on the west side, tucked in behind a stand of walnut trees that obscured it from view. You remember that place, don’t you; the one with the well-kept out buildings and the big cement silo? I once walked there in the dead of night to sheepishly ask the sleeping farmer to tow my ’57 Chevy with three terrified passengers out of a culvert down the road a piece. Oh, the joy I felt when I saw that light bulb come on through the sheer yellow curtains in the window on that most darkest of midnights.
But this day, as I approached the rutted driveway, I was startled to see the homestead had been abandoned. Unpainted and neglected, its roofline sagged like some gaunt swayback mare in a black and white Benton etching. And the siding had long since been stripped off; leaving only the corners and a few splintered uprights to support what was left of the rotting structure.
Trees and weeds grew where before there had been a gaily lit living room. And thistles now resided in the cracks in the floor, replacing the children who once did their homework in the evening after chores. What remained was just an eerie skeleton standing in stark contrast against a dark gray skyline. And in the barnyard, the old silo was crumbling; listing precariously to one side, like the hull of some Titanic sinking slowly into the arms of the old gray widow maker.
I was growing weary now, as if a Quixote atop his Rocinante. I pressed on, northward for a mile or more, venturing at a slow, deliberate pace before somehow turning back east on that familiar, yet so unfamiliar gravel road. A path to that place I somehow knew would be around the next bend and down the hill.
The bridge. It was there! Oh, my God…it was there!
Just as I remembered from my youth, that ancient rusty, red steel skeleton that has spanned the muddy river for God only knows how long. They were still there, too; those well-worn and loose floorboards wrestling with one another, clapping and rattling and moaning and groaning to create one narrow lane. I slowly crossed, glancing over the side rails, through the blistered metal supports, to be certain the river…more of a rivulet, really…was still transporting its usual cargo of fallen leaves and twigs.
Once across, I stopped and got out of the car. The wind was somehow calmer here than it had been moments ago atop the hill. The air was still and silence embraced me at that the moment. I stepped onto the old bridge and cautiously paced to the middle of the span, looking down at the brown, gray-green water that reminded me, somehow, of a cold bowl of Miso soup, spilled on the countertop in a of some cheap Chinese deli. No, nothing had changed in the 45 years since my last visit to this most special of special places.
My gaze turned slowly eastward, upward to the rise in the riverbank where I somehow remembered the old abandoned school bus. You remember it, don’t you? The bus! It was that faded orange, the color of bottle of Nehi soda. The bus, abandoned for years by God only knows who, had stood as a dowager queen and constant companion to the bridge and that the little river below.
Over the years, it had been shot full of bullet holes and filled with rusty beer cans…souvenirs of countless hobos and squirrel hunters who had passed by long before you and I ever set foot there. Its window glass was gone; the seats had been long since removed; it had no wheels. Its only occupants were weeds, a bag of trash and an occasional raccoon.
As I stood there on the bridge, I surveyed the hill, but the bus was nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly, desperately, I began running across the splintered wooden slats and up the hill. I leaped into the wooded canopy in a confused panic, amid the carpet of fallen leaves and nettles, to that place where I somehow remembered the bus to have been.
The bus was gone.
There was no trace of it ever having been there. No trace at all.
I stood there perplexed, confused and bewildered, like some Magdalene outside an empty tomb. Only this time, there was no angel to tell me where they had taken it. Where they had taken the bus.
The wind picked up again. Just then, it started to rain. Shoulders slumped and head down, I returned slowly to the car. As I crossed the splintered planks of the ancient red span for that last time, I looked back to my right to the hillside. Maybe I’d missed something.
I hadn’t.
A little piece of me was forever gone.
Some people will ask, perhaps, the same old question: “Was the bus real?” You shall say, “To me, it was very, very real. I seem, somehow, to have known it always.”
“And the bridge, too,” they will ask, “was it real?”
Tucked away somewhere amid the hardscrabble fields and hardwood stands that dot the rolling hills of north central Missouri, not far from the old Thompson place and just a little bit east of Poosey, you will find, if you care to look for them, a horseshoe lake, a Five Points, a bridge named Forty-two Hundred and an abandoned yellow school bus overlooking a moaning, groaning, sagging red bridge with splintered floorboards. But you must see them all from high above the mists.
With apologies to Harold Bell Wright, I now stand above the mists, looking down at that path I shared with each of you and so many others who traveled those early days with me.
The bus is gone. And it is a very personal loss. And I wept.
