The Monster on the Bus



  The Monster on the Bus

  There are all kinds of bullying. And some hurt far worse than a punch in the nose.

  A story about bullying for older kids

  I'd like to think it was because I was so young. But I've learned since that growing up doesn't change human nature. You're pretty much born the way you're going to be, the way you'll always be until you puff out that last little bit of used up air. Everyone, despite their age, tends to act badly when they get filled up with scared right to the chin. The bad stuff just runs right out of them like water over the brim of a glass, splashing the mean and the ugly all over the place. No help to it, I guess. It's just a fact of life.

  I'm going to tell you this story even though it makes me look bad, makes me look like the kind of person I pretend not be. I guess I think it's important somehow. But I'm only going to tell it once, so be quiet and listen. Let me tell it my way. There won't be any questions when the shows over. And don't you go judging me either. It's not your place to do that. You weren't there. You didn't have to walk by that monster every day, look right at it but pretend you didn't see it staring at you with those big bug eyes. You didn't have that monster creeping into your brain late at night when it was dark and the door was closed and your eyes were squeezed shut. I did. So just hush up and listen.

  It was summer and I was seven years old. First grade was coming at me like a runaway truck...

  *****

  "No such thing," I said. But there wasn't much strength in my words. They came out quiet, almost a whine. "You're making it up."

  "Ain't comin' from me," Eddie said. "Susan told me. She rode the bus all last year. She saw it pretty much every day."

  Most of the sweat that dripped down my face came from the sticky-wet Oklahoma summer heat. But not all of it. Some of it was fear sweat. I could tell because the drops were bigger, greasier, and burned my skin more than regular sweat.

  We stood, Eddie and me, in front of the feed bins, filling galvanized buckets with oats and wheat for the horses. The sweet, heat-baked smell of the molasses on the oats filled up the room all the way to the edges. One scoop of oats and five scoops of wheat then shake the bucket to mix it all together. Dust puffed up into the air each time I gouged the scoop into the wheat. The wheat powder danced like tiny spirits in the afternoon sun that slanted through the room's one window. The horses in the nearby stalls nickered and huffed with hunger. Every so often a shod hoof pounded impatiently against wood.

  Eddie was my town friend, my only friend really. His father, Elroy Brown, owned the jewelry store in Hominy. Eddie told me once that his daddy would rub petroleum jelly on his hands every night then sleep in doctor gloves to keep his hands soft and sensitive because of all the delicate work he did with them. I always thought that was a little strange, but like my grandpa use to say, "It takes all kinds to fill up the highways." And anyway, when you're seven, judging grownups is sort of like spitting...it feels pretty cool, but it doesn't accomplish much.

  "If it's a monster, why would it be riding the school bus?" I asked with what at the time seemed like pure logic. I had paused in mid-scoop to ask the question.

  "Don't know. Suz says she ain't even s'posed to talk about it. She says the school warned 'em all to be nice to the monster...or else."

  Susan was Eddie's big sister. She was eight and a half and knew plenty. "Or else what?" I asked, my voice quiet as church talk.

  Eddie shrugged. He reached into the wheat bin and let a handful of the grain sift out between his fingers. "She tol' me what it looked like, though."

  I didn't really want to know, but I asked anyway. I didn't have much of a choice. "What?" I went back to scooping grain, needing to keep busy, no longer taking much comfort in the sweet smells and sunlight.

  "Head as big as one of them buckets," he said, kicking at one of the half-full ten-gallon buckets of wheat and oats with the toe of his raggedy black P.F. Flyer. "And teeth made a' steel."

  "You're lying."

  "If I'm lyin' I'm dyin'," he said, spitting on the first two fingers of his right hand and then touching them to a place right over his heart. There was no greater show of truth for a seven-year-old. "Got eyes that bulge clean out of its head, too."

  I looked at Eddie, listened to the way his voice sounded, and I knew he wasn't lying. He sounded too scared to be lying. Thoughts about the monster filled up a lot of my spare time from that point on.