push around their own wheelchairs. Burt couldn’t.
His livelihood depended on his truck and his able body. When he wasn’t driving the school bus, he was a handyman. After four months in recovery, he found himself on a disability pension, still unable to walk. Janice Haul got a job at the attendance office at Brownfield Elementary School, but it barely paid half the bills. Little by little Burt improved, but was never the same. He couldn’t sit behind the wheel of a bus anymore, his fused and compressed vertebrae barking so loud they required handfuls of Oxycontin to quieten, and how well could anyone drive a school bus numbed up on Oxy?
Until Burt got well enough to return to work, he was replaced by a Brian Hansen, a recent Vermont transplant, and apparently an excellent driver.
Jimmy Devine’s animosity toward his brother, whose reckless existence had set into motion the spinning wheels of fate, was so violent that it ate apart the bond with his own family. He blamed Moody for never reining Kenny in, for indulging him, spoiling him, coddling him, paying his tickets, his suspended license fees, his legal bills, bailing him out of jail, buying him new wheels, allowing him to live in her basement and to drink her liquor. “Not just a good man’s back, but a whole family has been shattered, all because you could never say no to your firstborn son,” was one of the accusations Jimmy hurled at his mother, way back when. Burt and Jimmy and their families had been close before the accident, then less so, and then hardly at all. Burt blamed Jimmy for his ruined life, for knowing that Kenny should’ve never been allowed behind the wheel and yet doing nothing. “How much more could I do?” Jimmy argued in his defense. “Kenny’s license had been permanently suspended!”
And then, three years later, after another tragedy, Jimmy blamed not only Kenny for all the misfortune, but also Burt for not being man enough to get up every morning and drive the bus. It didn’t matter to Jimmy the pain Burt was in. Living three houses apart, the Hauls and the Devines stayed barely civil, even though Lang kept pointing out in feeble attempts to effect a truce between the men that Burt had done nothing wrong. “It’s not his fault he has a weak back, Jimmy.”
“Nothing wrong,” Jimmy said, “except stroll out of Brucie’s Diner with his arms full of meatloaf at precisely and absolutely the worst moment. Nothing wrong except not go to work, and ruin everybody’s fucking life.”
“He’s suffering too, Jimmy.”
“That’s why I said everybody’s fucking life, Mother.”
Chloe and Moody stood shoulder to shoulder near two graves in the small rural cemetery under the pines as tall and gray as emerald redwoods. Chloe placed all the flowers they had brought in front of a black granite tombstone that read “JAMES PATRICK DEVINE, JR. 1998-2001.”
Moody made her put half of them on Kenny’s stupid grave.
They stood with their heads bent. Moody held on to Chloe’s arm.
“Do you come here with your mother?”
“Sometimes.”
“How often does she come?”
“I don’t know.” The gravesite was beautifully tended, weeded, neatened, full of flowering azaleas, faded lilacs, knockabout roses. “Often, from the looks of it.”
“Your dad?”
“When Mom forces him.”
Moody nodded. “You have to forgive Uncle Kenny,” she said. “It’s not his fault he was born with bad genes and couldn’t walk straight. Not everybody can make a life like your mom and dad, child. Not everybody can push his own wheelchair. Some aren’t so lucky.”
“Yes. Like my brother.”
“Yes. Like him. But he was lucky to be loved. That love is better than hate for my Kenny. No question he did wrong. But it wasn’t all his fault. Sometimes catastrophic things just happen. And your father doesn’t understand that.”
Moody bent her head deeper. Chloe too.
“He understands,” Chloe said. “But that’s not what happened here. A catastrophic thing didn’t just happen.”
They stood.
“What was the poem you used to recite to Jimmy? He knew it by heart. You and he were so cute with it. Do you remember?”
“No.”
“Something about Santa, and vampires. Come on. You do remember. Tell your grandmother. It’s a sin to lie to old people.”
“I don’t remember, Moody.” Chloe ground her teeth. She didn’t tell, though she well remembered.
I wonder if Santa Claus is real
The Easter Bunny
The Tooth Fairy too
I wonder if ghosts really say boo
I wonder if leprechauns collect pots of gold
I wonder if vampires ever grow old.
Little Jimmy, who used to yell YES for the first five and an emphatic NO to the last, had been conceived around the time of Uncle Kenny’s death. Her parents had been trying for little Jimmy all of Chloe’s life. For all she knew, she was supposed to be little Jimmy and they had been trying for nine years before she was born and for eleven after. In some ways her mother was very much a Chinese mother. Two decades of trying for that one highly valued masculine child. Jimmy lived for three very good years. Their little cabin in the woods was full of noise and tricycles and paint on the walls and mess everywhere, and Lang didn’t care, and Jimmy didn’t care. Jimmy came home at six o’clock sharp every night, punctual as Big Ben. Lang called the Fryeburg police station a dozen times a day. Jimmy, you won’t believe what your son just said, Jimmy, you’ll never guess what your son just did.
When it was time for little Jimmy to go to nursery school, he was so excited to be taking the big boy school bus. He would jump with joy off the curb when he would see the blue bus pulling up to take him home. One early afternoon Brian Hansen’s wallet had fallen into the footwell. He noticed it when he was in the parking lot, about to pull up to the waiting kids. He bent down to retrieve it. He was driving so slowly. He thought he could take his eyes off the road for just a second. But Jimmy was little and his bones were greensticks. They were no match for a school bus, even a small one, even a slow one.
Lang was at ShopRite buying fruit snacks and juice boxes. Big Jimmy was in a meeting about police logistics for the upcoming summer festival. Chloe was in ninth grade math, dreaming of a tuna sandwich she was about to eat for lunch.
Had Uncle Kenny not broken Burt’s back, Burt would have been driving the blue bus as he had been driving it for thirteen years. Burt would have never taken his eyes off the road. But Kenny did break Burt’s back. And with Burt out of action, the town had hired an out-of-towner with “very good credentials” to drive over the little ones to and fro.
Afterward, Burt didn’t care how bad his back was. Though big Jimmy said it was one fucking day too late, Burt stuck a syringe of cortisone into his thigh three times a week and got behind the wheel of the bus until the town gently retired him, because every time he went over a pothole, he cried out in such anguish that the little kids shrieked in terror. Fryeburg had to either repair the town’s potholes or golden-shake Burt’s hand. The second option was cheaper.
On Jimmy’s tombstone: “THE LORD GIVETH AND THE LORD TAKETH AWAY.”
Other repercussions: three years ago, Mason comforted Chloe by taking her hand one summer night and becoming her boyfriend.
Still other repercussions: instead of Barcelona, Chloe was headed to an orphanage in Latvia. Damn Uncle Kenny to all hell.
After it happened, Lang did not come out of her house for five months. Then she bought a sewing machine, learned