'You did no wrong,' Lee Coffey said gravely. 'You tried for a solution. Who can do more? Makes sense to me.'
Rosemary's breath shuddered in. 'But the result was that the car hit us on our right, and—Kenneth was hurt. . . . Only Kenneth was hurt. Not me. Tell me, please . . . did I mean to put him between me and that other car? Did I choose to hurt him rather than myself? Is that why I turned to the left, really?'
'You just told me why. you turned left, didn't you?' Lee Coffey said.
'I thought I was trying to save us both. But, you see . . . there was no ditch. I was mistaken about that. We hadn't come to the place where the ditch began to be there, along the right side of the road.'
'Fog,' said the bus driver. 'O.K. You were on the right?'
'Yes.'
'He, the other fella, was on his left?'
'Yes.'
'And you thought there was this ditch?'
'I think I thought—but Ethel—says, there's no such thing as an accident. As if—as if . . . subconsciously I made happen what I wanted to happen . . .'
'No such thing as an accident!' cried the bus driver. 'Where has this Ethel been living?'
'Wait,' said Rosemary, warningly. 'She's . . . very wise. She's not stupid . . . and she's good . . .'
'She is, eh? Well, I'll tell you something. Nobody's that wise. There happen to be plenty of accidents.'
'But are they? Really?'
'The subconscious, hey?' said the bus driver. 'Well, I see what she's getting at, all right. Sure. Some people are accident-prone . . . this is a thing that's been discovered. It's like some people take to getting sick because they'd rather . . . Certainly. But not so, in your case.'
'Not—?' Rosemary trembled.
'How so?' demanded the bus driver. 'What did your subsconscious do? Explain it to me. Did it go up in the ether someplace and have a conference with the other fella's subconscious? He didn't have any accident either if Ethel is right. Hey? So did your subconscious say to the other subconscious, 'Look here, old chap, I'm fixing to have an accident. Is this O.K. with you? How about right now?' So the other subconscious says, 'Fine, fine. Well met. Me, too. I was fixing to have an accident, myself . . . and now is as good a time as any. So here's how we'll work it . . .' Aaah . . .' The bus driver gave an effect of spitting over the side. 'Explain to me how these two subconsciouses met, there and ?hen, if not accidentally? Or if you're going to say . . . well, only one of them meant to do it o . . Now you got to admit the other one anyhow had an
accident. So which one of you did ... or didn't? You or him? Hey?'
Rosemary said nothing. She knelt as if in prayer.
'Certainly,' Coffey continued, 'there'd be no accidents if you could know everything. But who can know everything? You can anticipate just so much. You cannot— now I don't care—you cannot always guess when who is going to do what, where. Neither you nor your subconscious, either! It's too much! There's too damned much going on in this universe. So there's going to happen what we call accidents. You see what I mean?'
'Yes,' said Rosemary. 'Yes, I do.' She sighed deep.
'Those who skin out of having accidents are the ones who take care, who look ahead and so forth. But on top of that they better have some very snappy reflexes. See? And even they don't always skin out of all the things they meet—'
'Rosemary,' said Mr. Gibson sternly. 'Ethel never said this thing to you. She couldn't have told you that you deliberately hurt me.'
'Not dehberately. No—but she thinks I must have meant to, because I did' Rosemary sobbed. 'She keeps saying she doesn't 'blame' me. She keeps saying she 'understands.' Oh, Kenneth, I'm sorry—I wouldn't say a word against Ethel but this . . . this has been . . .'
Paul said angrily, 'I told you you shouldn't pay any attention to Ethel.'
'Easier said than done,' said the bus driver . . . bluntly, accurately, and astonishingly.
'Doom,' murmured Mr. Gibson, recovering from a stunned sensation. 'Yes—doom—well. . . .'
'Now, the subconscious,' said the bus driver, throwing out one hand as if he had been lecturing all along and was starting a new paragraph. 'It's down there and it operates all right, something like they say. There's a little more to it. For instance, why would you want to hurt him?'
'Because—' said Rosemary indistinctly. 'But it isn't true.' She wiggled back up upon the seat.
'I'd say you had an accident,' Lee Coffey told her. 'For the love of Pete, Mike, and Maria ... I don't see the point of this Ethel!'
Rosemary was crying.
Mr. Gibson began to feel quite angry for Rosemary's sake. 'Ethel isn't infallible, mouse,' he said indignantly. He felt a surge of malicious mischief, too. 'I've heard Ethel say, for instance, that bus drivers are perfectly ruthless brutes. Now, obviously . . .'
'What!' Lee Coffey raised his head. 'Let me tell you, for your information, nobody's got more ruth than us bus drivers. Ruth's our business. It's a job, takes a mighty responsible party and no joking. You got to drive in whatever weather, whatever traffic, and on schedule, and what you meet you meet with your mind on safety first. Listen, we got more ruth than any twenty-five private drivers in this world.' He was sputtering. 'We can't take chances. We aren't free to. Passengers, pedestrians, school kids, nuts, drunks ... we got to look out for everybody in the world. We got to handle it, and if we do have an accident, believe me, it is an accident. What's this Ethel talking? Who is this Ethel?'
