“Let me hold that bill of sale a minute, Lucien,” I said, and I took it from his hand before he could object. At the bottom was a signature in blue ink, over a printed name. Dennis Garrity, Regional Vice President, Gulf South Student Transit. The date was last Tuesday. I had known Dennis Garrity for exactly four months, since the week my company was sold, and I had shaken his hand at the closing and had liked him. I took out my phone and dialed the number of the chief executive of the buyer, a woman named Ms. Haverty, whom I had met only once. She answered on the second ring.
I put her on speaker and read the bill of sale aloud, line by line. For a long time, there was no sound but the wind in the chain link. Then Ms. Haverty spoke in a clipped voice. “Mr. Dorsey, Dennis Garrity had no authority to sell a single asset of this company,” she said. “Our policy requires two signatures from corporate for any sale over five thousand dollars. I will have our counsel at your yard within the hour.” She paused. “Dennis has been with us since the merger. I did not know that he and Mr. Duvall have ridden in the same Mardi Gras krewe for fifteen years.” Lucien looked at his shoes.
That was the thing I had not seen, and the thing I had trusted. Lucien had been telling Dennis Garrity for months to move fast on my sale, to close before the new year, to value the buses by the count at the lot before they were audited. In exchange, Dennis was to sell Lucien six of them for next to nothing and quietly record them as scrap. It was the reason my buyer had been so eager to deal with the family of my wife. It was the reason a nephew of Lucien had found himself holding keys to buses that did not belong to him. I had been the last to know.
A gold krewe cup set beside a bus title gave one uncle the weekend to bring his nephew back to the bus yard in Prichard.
Jules, my nephew, stepped forward with his cap in his hands. He is thirty one, tall and soft spoken, and his eyes were red. “Uncle Leon, my father told me you wanted me to have the buses,” he said. “He said you were too proud to say so. I believed him.” I looked at him a long moment. “Jules, did you ever call me?” I asked. “No, sir,” he said. “I did not want to hear no.” I put my hand on his arm. “A man who is afraid to hear no is already halfway to a lie,” I said, and he nodded and began to weep.
I laid out my terms in front of everyone, with Pee Wee, my yard manager, standing at my side holding a clipboard. The six buses, including unit one hundred four, would be back in the yard by Friday, and the Duvall Transit decals would be scraped off the sides. The bill of sale would be voided by the company. Dennis Garrity would be dismissed by Ms. Haverty that same day, and I would not stand in her way. Jules would work for me as a driver at a fair wage. And Lucien would repay the eighteen thousand dollars of krewe dues that I had paid for him in 2010.
Lucien did not argue. He stood straight, a heavy, silver haired man in a purple jacket with golden beads around his neck, as if he had come directly from a parade. “Leon, I have been a captain for twenty years,” he said. “I know how to throw a party. I do not know how to say I am sorry.” I told him to try it in plain English. He swallowed. “I am sorry, brother,” he said. Antoinette, beside me, said nothing, but she took a handkerchief from her purse and handed it to the husband of her sister. It was the kindest thing I saw all week.
On Friday morning, the six buses rolled into my yard in a yellow line, their lights blinking, with Jules in the lead driving unit one hundred four. Pee Wee stood at the gate with a bucket of soap and a scraper, and he went at the decals with the gusto of a man removing a bad tattoo. By noon, the paint was bright yellow again, and the school bus signs were polished. A group of retired drivers had come to watch, and they gave a cheer. I laid my hand on the cool hood of unit one hundred four and felt the engine tick as it settled.
The money consequences were fair and swift. Gulf South Student Transit dismissed Dennis Garrity, and its lawyers sent me a letter of apology and a three year contract to consult on school routes in Mobile County. Lucien sold his boat and a rental house to pay back the krewe dues, and the first payment arrived in a plain envelope with a gold bead taped to the front. In the memo line, he had written, From a captain who owes. I put the bead in the cup holder of my truck, where it still rides, and sometimes catches the sun.
In the name of my mother, Mae Dorsey, who passed twenty three years ago and who rode the bus to clean offices for forty years, I started the Mae Dorsey Wheel Fund. It pays for commercial license training, physicals and uniforms for young adults in Mobile County who want to drive a school bus and have no way to pay for the course. In the first year, we put thirty one new drivers behind the wheel. A woman of twenty six, in her new yellow safety vest, took her first group of children down Telegraph Road and said afterward, “I did not know I could be trusted with so much.”
On Fat Tuesday, I stood on the curb of Government Street with Antoinette, in a lawn chair, with a cup of coffee. The krewe of Lucien came rolling down the avenue, with trumpets and glitter, and he rode high on the lead float in his purple cape and crown. He saw me and stopped waving to the crowd. Then he reached into his basket and pulled out a single Moon Pie, wrapped in gold foil. He threw it straight to me, a long underhand toss, and I caught it with one hand. I held it up. He bowed, very low, and the crowd roared.
