“It belongs to the company that bought mine, Reverend,” I said, and I said it into the stillness of the tent, with three hundred faces turned toward me. “Eight weeks ago, I sold Big Country Coach for seven million, four hundred thousand dollars. Every bus. Every contract. Every driver.” The old evangelist from Lubbock, a tall man with a voice like a rusted gate, nodded slowly. “That Prevost has been mine since 2021,” I said. “Unit fourteen. It is on line fourteen of the fleet list. Josh is trying to sell it for three hundred eighty five thousand dollars, along with a mini bus and a set of tires.”
Clayton stared at the paper in his hand as if it had changed languages. He is a handsome man of sixty with the silver hair of a deacon, and I had watched him lead “Amazing Grace” for thirty eight years. “Josh,” he said, in a small voice. “Tell me you did not.” Josh stood in the front row, in his good suit, looking at nothing. “Daddy, I thought the company was going under,” he said. “Uncle Leroy told me fuel was eating us alive. I thought if I took the bus, I could save something.” “You did not take it to save anything,” I said, gently. “You took it to paint your name on the side. I understand the wish, Josh. I do not understand the method.”
Sharon walked down the aisle, past the folding chairs, with her good purse on her arm. She is a small woman, but she carries the Pruitt jaw, and it was set. She stopped beside Clayton and spoke so quietly that the front rows leaned in. “Clayton, for thirty eight years you have called my husband the bus driver in front of this church. I have said nothing. I said nothing at every wedding dinner and every Easter. Tonight, I will speak.” She turned to the tent. “His name is Leroy Gaskins. He drove the children of this church to every camp meeting for forty years without charging a dime.” Clayton lowered his head.
A fleet schedule laid on a pulpit gave one nephew the weekend to bring his uncle back to the revival tent in Abilene.
I gave Josh my terms at the foot of the pulpit, in front of the whole tent, because he had given his speech in front of the whole tent. The Prevost, the mini bus and the tires would be back in my yard on Interstate 20 by Monday noon. Pruitt Gospel Coaches would be closed, and the shoe polish washed from the windshield. He would sit with the lawyers of the buyer and tell the truth. If he did all of it, I would not press charges, and I would ask the new owners to keep him on as a driver at the same pay, since he had driven choirs to Galveston and back without a scratch.
On Monday morning, I waited at the gate on Interstate 20 with a thermos of coffee. The tires arrived first, in the bed of a church pickup. The mini bus followed. At ten, the silver and blue Prevost rolled through the gate with Josh at the wheel, and the windshield was clean. Ernesto, my yard manager, climbed aboard and checked the engine hours. When he came down, he took off his cap. “Mr. Leroy, it is all here,” he said. “Even the number fourteen on the bumper.” I put my hand on the cool metal flank of that coach, and I felt the tension of three days leave my shoulders.
Clayton came to my house on Tuesday night in a plain pickup, alone, with his hat in his hands. He stood on my porch like a man waiting for a verdict. “Leroy, I called you the bus driver for thirty eight years,” he said. “I thought it was a joke. I see now that it was a way of keeping you small, so that I could feel large.” He swallowed. “I am sorry. I do not ask you to forget. I ask only that you let me sit with you.” I opened the screen door. We sat on the porch swing until the stars came out over the pasture, saying very little.
On Wednesday night, the revival resumed. The tent was fuller than it had been all week. The old evangelist from Lubbock stood in the pulpit and, instead of preaching, read from the book of Luke about the man who sat in the lowest seat and was told to move up higher. Then he looked straight at me. “Brother Gaskins, there is a seat at the front,” he said. “I would be honored if you would take it.” Three hundred people rose to their feet. I walked down the aisle on legs that did not feel like mine, and I sat in the front row, and Sharon sat beside me and took my hand.
The money consequences were fair. Josh repaid the buyer nineteen thousand dollars for the fuel, the hauling and two cracked windshield seals, out of his savings, and he agreed to drive without overtime for a year. Clayton sold a lake lot and a ranch truck to pay the legal fees. When he handed me a check for the cost of my trouble, I tore it in half and handed it back. “Give it to the roof of the youth camp,” I said. “It has leaked since the spring.” He did. The next week, the young people of the church gathered on a ladder with hammers, and they sang while they worked.
In the name of my mother, Ruby Gaskins, who passed nineteen years ago, and who never owned a car and rode a church bus to every Sunday service of her life, I started the Ruby Fund. It pays for bus transportation, camp fees and tickets to youth conferences for children in Taylor County who have no way to get there. In the first summer, we carried six hundred children to camp meetings and mission trips. A girl of eleven, in a borrowed T shirt, pressed her face to the window and said, to nobody, “It is the first time I have ever been anywhere.”
The following September, at the Pruitt revival, I stood at the pasture gate with a flashlight, and I parked cars in the dust, row by row, for one hour, because I wanted to. Clayton stood at my elbow. When the last car was in line, he laid his hand on my shoulder. “Leroy, will you do me an honor?” he asked. “Will you lead the closing song?” I walked into the tent, up to the old piano, and the three hundred of them sang “Just As I Am” with me, and I realized I was not driving anybody anywhere. I was home.
