Blounts’ Toyota, the Morrisons’ and the Lewises’ Volvos, the smattering of BMWs and Mercedeses that belonged to new people—those who had recently moved in from Memphis or Jackson or the Delta, in search of the town’s crime-free, arty, sports-possessed, boozy, barbecued college-town life, where white people were enlightened but still in charge. It refreshed Mary Byrd a little to see the other smattering of cars in the line: a few banged-up or rusty hoopties and the earth-toned, carpeted vans from the 1970s with little ladders to the roof. What were those ladders for anyway? Stargazing? Rock concerts? NASCAR infields? The hoopties and vans had trickled down to the poor white and black families, and now were starting to be acquired by the Mexican workers who had come to construct the crappy condos that were cropping up all over town like poison ivy blisters on a careless ankle to accommodate the students, weekend football people, and retirees who didn’t want to pay taxes for things that didn’t benefit them directly, like schools. Now that tornado season was just around the corner, the regular townspeople wondered if the clusters of cheap condos would hold up with the first big rains and winds of spring. Mary Byrd hoped they wouldn’t. Let ’em wash away down the ditches they were built in or blow all over the county. Maybe condo developments would be the new mobile home parks—tornado magnets—and if they did remain standing they would be tomorrow’s tenements when the real estate thing busted, which, Mann said, was definitely going to happen.
On the other side of the school building, Mary Byrd could see the orange train of buses all lined up. If she were queen of the world, school buses would still have the usual orange fronts and backs, but their sides would be painted in beautiful and cool ways, like psychedelic hippie buses or those crazy things in Ceylon. Or was it Sri Lanka now? Maybe kids would be happier about going to school if they could climb into a submarine, or a rocket, or a pioneer wagon, or onto a magic carpet. She could hear William saying, “Bye Mom! Got to get in the space shuttle Endeavour now and blast off for school!” No—not a space shuttle—bad idea. She thought of the Challenger and was glad William hadn’t been one of the millions of children who’d watched that awful launch. God. Maybe kids could paint the buses themselves. Why not? As they were, except for their colors, school buses were identical to the prison buses at Parchman. Maybe that’s why buses were so institutional and boring: to keep convicts or children from feeling too good about things.
Charles and Mary Byrd saw the bus as the great equalizer. Kids whose parents worked, whether at the hospital or the university or Chambers Stove, were relegated to the school buses, which had always been a sort of rolling microcosm of the real world and a rehearsal for life’s realities. Every day zillions of American children were encapsulated in smelly, seat-belt-less tin cans piloted by drivers who could easily be stoned, hopped up, deranged, or worse—twenty-one or sixty-four. Every day they could have fun and socialize and make joyful noise and see and hear things they’d remember nostalgically their whole lives, or they could be robbed, tortured, or humiliated, or all of the above, for twenty minutes twice a day, every day. Maybe it made them tougher or maybe it broke them. Who knew. Mary Byrd hoped that by comparison, maybe riding the bus might at least make kids, even the ones with sketchy families, glad to get home and deal with whatever they needed to deal with when they got there. Well, all of them should ride the bus to school. Or walk. Too many of them were fatties already.
Charles and Mary Byrd were willing to sacrifice Eliza and William so that they could have this democratic experience, but out of some instinct for self-preservation, or just being spoiled, the Thornton children refused to ride the bus. They
On the other side of the school building, Mary Byrd could see the orange train of buses all lined up. If she were queen of the world, school buses would still have the usual orange fronts and backs, but their sides would be painted in beautiful and cool ways, like psychedelic hippie buses or those crazy things in Ceylon. Or was it Sri Lanka now? Maybe kids would be happier about going to school if they could climb into a submarine, or a rocket, or a pioneer wagon, or onto a magic carpet. She could hear William saying, “Bye Mom! Got to get in the space shuttle Endeavour now and blast off for school!” No—not a space shuttle—bad idea. She thought of the Challenger and was glad William hadn’t been one of the millions of children who’d watched that awful launch. God. Maybe kids could paint the buses themselves. Why not? As they were, except for their colors, school buses were identical to the prison buses at Parchman. Maybe that’s why buses were so institutional and boring: to keep convicts or children from feeling too good about things.
Charles and Mary Byrd saw the bus as the great equalizer. Kids whose parents worked, whether at the hospital or the university or Chambers Stove, were relegated to the school buses, which had always been a sort of rolling microcosm of the real world and a rehearsal for life’s realities. Every day zillions of American children were encapsulated in smelly, seat-belt-less tin cans piloted by drivers who could easily be stoned, hopped up, deranged, or worse—twenty-one or sixty-four. Every day they could have fun and socialize and make joyful noise and see and hear things they’d remember nostalgically their whole lives, or they could be robbed, tortured, or humiliated, or all of the above, for twenty minutes twice a day, every day. Maybe it made them tougher or maybe it broke them. Who knew. Mary Byrd hoped that by comparison, maybe riding the bus might at least make kids, even the ones with sketchy families, glad to get home and deal with whatever they needed to deal with when they got there. Well, all of them should ride the bus to school. Or walk. Too many of them were fatties already.
Charles and Mary Byrd were willing to sacrifice Eliza and William so that they could have this democratic experience, but out of some instinct for self-preservation, or just being spoiled, the Thornton children refused to ride the bus. They
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