School Days

Abstract

School Days Kurt Caswell (bio) I heard the big yellow school buses cross over the cattle guard on their way out. It was the double pulse of the tires over the steel grate that drew me, a rhythm I would become so accustomed to I could keep time by it. I looked out the kitchen window and watched as the red lights high on the back of the bus faded out into the milky dawn. Most mornings, I was up early, and I would hear the buses twice, first on their way out, empty and cold, and then on their way in carrying the children, who were the center of everyone's work and life here. And when I came to know the bus drivers, I also came to know who drove which bus over which route, the drivers making the longer routes departing first, as they came to a stop at the cattle guard, idled a moment, and then pressed out into the darkness. These were no ordinary school buses. They sat high off the ground on huge knobby tires. They were tightly sprung, so as to negotiate the rough dirt roads. One of them had four-wheel drive, so it was dependable in every kind of weather. When it snowed or rained at Borrego, I listened for the buses, my indication that the weather was or was not going to stop us from holding school. Even on days of questionable weather, however, the children of Borrego had to eat, and there was likely nothing for them at home. Classes would be canceled, but the buses would be trotted out [End Page 71] to bring the kids in to breakfast, and then hustle them back home. Such days were known locally as "consommé days." It was a rare and violent storm indeed that forced Bob King to cancel school completely. But it did happen, like the winter storm some years ago, Bob King told me, when the National Guard air-dropped supplies into Borrego because the snow was so deep no one could get in or out for days. When Navajos were sliding off the roads in the mud and snow, abandoning their vehicles in the ditches, the Borrego buses motored on, delivering the schoolchildren safely to their homes and sometimes collecting people along the way who found themselves unexpectedly on foot. This was an unspoken law of reservation life: never pass by someone on foot on a dirt road. You stopped and offered them a ride because it was not a matter of if but of when that person on foot would be you. I readied myself and went to school. Deena Bell greeted me in the front office. She was a tall, graceful Navajo woman with light-colored skin and a round face. She paid a great deal of attention to making herself up, the colors worked into her cheeks and across her eyes, her nails long and manicured, her hair black as jet and sprayed up into a tent on top of her head. Her eyes were dark brown, maybe black, and warm and inviting. She was the most beautiful Navajo woman I had met. She sat eternally behind the front desk. I rarely saw her standing or walking, just there behind the desk, a bright face to greet me. Later I came to know her outside of school, and to know Kestrel, her son, and Frank, her husband. "Good morning!" she said. "How are the kids treating you? I sure hope they're not giving you any trouble." "It's okay," I said. "I think I'm doing all right." "Please ask if you need anything," Deena said. "The first couple weeks are always the hardest for new teachers. We'll make sure you get what you need. Right, girls?" "We sure will," said Arlene, who sat at the desk next to Deena. Betsy, who was busy digging in a file drawer, nodded her head. "Please ask us," Deena said, and she winked at me. "May I use your phone again?" I asked. [End Page 72] "Of course you can," Deena said. "I need to try Navajo Communications again about getting my phone hooked up...