The headline of the article caught my eye immediately, along with the photo. It was the front page of the morning paper, the Taylor County Gazette. December 19, 1952. The day after the incident.
The photo was black and white and printed large. It was a school bus, partially submerged in the river. Upside down. It made me queasy to look at it.
I remembered a handful of nonredacted words from my brother Roy’s letter: “. . . in the trees, upside down . . .”
The font of the headline was huge and bold. “Tragic School Bus Accident Claims the Lives of Two Local Children.”
“This should be everything you need,” Mrs. Flint said, her eyes averted. From the news, and from me. Both. “I’ll just leave you alone with it.”
She walked out, closing the door behind her. Leaving me in a darkened room lit only by the glow of the screen against my face. Leaving me to learn what I had been so sure I wanted to know.
To say I was no longer sure would be an understatement.
I began to read. How could I not?
Yesterday tragedy struck the town of Ashby as a bus serving the Unified School District veered off River Road and rolled down an embankment, landing upside down in the river. The driver, Mrs. Zoe Dinsmore, suffered only minor injuries, and managed to pull most of the children to safety, diving back in again and again and wading to shore with them two at a time. But two children did not survive the crash.
They are: Wanda Jean Paulston, 7, of Ashby and Frederick Peter “Freddie” Smith, 6, also of Ashby.
One child whose name has been withheld is hospitalized in stable condition and seven others were treated and released with injuries ranging from minor to moderate.
Mrs. Dinsmore has been driving a school bus route in Taylor County for well over twenty years. “Everybody loves her,” said Charlene Billings, the superintendent of schools, when reached for comment. “Students and parents alike, everybody looked forward to saying good morning to Mrs. Dinsmore. And she had a spotless driving record. Not even so much as a parking ticket.”
Mrs. Dinsmore was held at the Taylor County Sheriff’s Office for several hours, where she was subjected to questioning, as well as tests to assure that her blood showed no signs of alcohol use or other impairment. No such impairment was found, according to Deputy Leo Brooks.
Mrs. Dinsmore told sheriff’s deputies that her two young girls, Katie, 4, and Delia, 5, had influenza, and she’d been up most of the night caring for them. She said she thinks she fell asleep behind the wheel of the bus for less than ten seconds, and that it was the shrieking of the children that woke her. But by then the bus had begun to roll down the river’s embankment, and there was nothing she could do to bring it back under control.
The Gazette attempted to reach Mrs. Dinsmore for comment, but was told she had gone into seclusion and was speaking to no one.
The crash has been officially ruled an accident, and no charges will be filed.
The Gazette will announce the dates and times of the funerals and/or memorials for Wanda Jean Paulston and Freddie Smith when such information becomes available.
I read it completely through a second time. I really couldn’t say why.
Then I sat back and turned off the machine. The room went completely dark. There were no windows in the microfilm room, and the darkness all around me was a good match for my insides.
In that moment the whole world felt dark.
Chapter Five
You Know Now. That’s Too Bad.
When I returned the dogs to the cabin the following morning, I got into quite a back-and-forth with myself over whether I should knock.
I had run with them at least a mile each way up and down the River Road, and I was pretty convinced that Zoe Dinsmore’s daughter had gone home again. Because there had been no parked rental cars anywhere to be seen.
I was worried about the lady. You know, whether she had everything she needed. Whether she was feeling well enough to get everything she needed. That sort of thing.
I stepped up onto the porch. Walked boldly to the door. In that moment I was the very picture of decisiveness. I was actually proud of my courage. Noticeably proud.
Briefly.
I raised a hand to knock, then lost my nerve and turned away. Strode two steps to the edge of the porch. Stopped myself and turned back. Walked to the door. Raised a hand again. Spun away again.
I turned back to the door one more time, and this time I planned to force myself all the way through the thing. But I never got that far.
A sudden voice from behind made me jump out of my figurative skin.
“Make up your mind. You want to knock on my door or don’t you?”
I knew it was Zoe Dinsmore because no other voice sounded like that one.
I spun around to face the voice and saw, to my embarrassment, that she was just leaving the outhouse. She was wearing an old pair of men’s green plaid pajamas. Her hair was pulled back into a gray braid.
“Yeah,” I said, making my voice sound stronger than I felt. “Yeah, I was going to knock. Just to . . . you know . . .”
While I was stalling, she walked right up to me and stared directly into my face. It made me nervous, which made me lose my train of thought.
“No, I don’t know,” she said in that deep signature voice. “I barely know my own mind, kid. I wouldn’t even pretend to know somebody else’s.”
She looked even more deeply into my face for a moment, as if running after something
