Before Sunrise Report from the Middle

by Pat Darnell
I was just driving home from the job. Its pre-light, and the roads are slick from last night sleeting. My car is cold and engine is telling me take it easy pardner. So I wait and the traffic blows past on the Huntsville Highway, coming and going.

A bus is off in the distance, with a S-10 Chevy truck in the other lane. It looks far enough off that I pull out and get in the far lane. I think "the buses aren't running today, kids are out of school."

This bus is on me in a few seconds; while I carefully don't slip out my cold transmission... I drive fifty-five to keep it alive. Steady as she goes there bus, I think to myself.

It's a school bus only its all white. Oh, its a Texas Correctional Transport. It rolls past me after the S-10, and pulls me along in its slipstream. Mystery over; it's what doesn't happen that surprises me.

There were no helicopters, or semi's jack-knifing. The little S-10 didn't pull alongside with a shooter blasting away at the driver, nor did anyone jump on top of the bus. There were no explosions, or oil fires on the asphalt. No one blew out the back of the bus and rolled on the asphalt. There was no kamikaze collision at the intersection of Highway 6 and Elmo Weedon Roads. Not one little dinosaur came out to kick ass.

Nope, not even a seven-forty-seven skimming the top of the Baptist Church on the corner sending the steeple across the highway into the Pop Warner football field: not crashing into CJ's BBq, nor coming to rest in the Navasota River flood plain.

The only thing I got was a snoot full of diesel smoke when the bus gunned it at the traffic light. So I suppose we do live in a little town where even the prisoners get transported on country roads along with the chicken co-op and cotton trucks of no regard.

That's the report from the middle: where the women are strong, men are good-looking, the children are all above average; their pets are named after Saints, and the elderly are generally well behaved.