The School Bus

Middle of August... mid 1990s... Gray sky... a slow gust of wind carrying a cloud of leaves... they rise and dance and run away...

He looked up again and saw a flight of birds cutting the sky. He did not want to go. He did not want to stay. It was just past 7 A.M. He shifted his feet, looking up and down the road waiting for the vessel that would bring him down the street and towards the new place of learning.

See, he had wanted to go to the local school. Just a mile away. It wasn't up to him. He remembered what had happened at the place before. He remembered just how dark it had become. He had played with fire before. The anger was catching up. As a child, he didn't think it could be so complicated. That was supposed to come later. There was a lot to prove. 

Fire was a release. Oh he liked to see it burn. The light brought him comfort. The warmth was so soothing. Sometimes, he would get with friends and they would steal some liquor. Never really thought to drink it. But boy did it burn. He liked to go down by the little creek in the woods... see what he could burn.

He heard the beast coming. The diesel engine roared and the loud whine of the brakes cried out when the beast would turn. Shuddered to a stop right there with a hydraulic burst as the doors came open, engine rattling away.

The old place of learning had many memories. It had stood down on that state road, back behind the fast food and right across from the old mall. They had renamed it after integration. In the scramble to rearrange the education system, a black high school had been rechristened and converted to a middle school. It had stood down in Nickeltown. Off state highway 291. Pleasantburg Drive. 

The city had been built around that river. All those years ago, back before the Revolution, it had been born as a summer retreat for the folks down from the port of Charleston. You see, South Carolina started in a union with North Carolina, both states named after one of the King Charles. Charleston was founded as Charles Town, the first major city and remains to this day the largest (by most measures). It gets rather hot, and the settlers were prone to sickness from the swampy water and the storms. So they picked up, traveled Northwest, across the midlands (where at that time there was mostly swampy lands, forests and some fields), straight up into the foothills. There, in the Cherokee hunting grounds they found that river. Not a particularly large one. They took to building some mills. A main street. They build this street called Church Street. Deadended into a Church. Eventually some carriage factories and some more mills. The cotton from the lower parts of the state could be made into textiles, and the city boomed on that industry eventually. But initially the mills were mostly for grinding grain. By the 1990s it was the 3rd largest city in the state and had served as state capital for about a month when the Union burned Columbia. Charleston had ceased being the state capital long ago. 

They had called it Pleasantburg. Hence the road name. Where the new name came from was... well, see it had been a resort of bits, and very forested and natural. Very Green. Then roundabout the Revolution, the Swamp Fox did the country justice, so they decided that he was the inspiration, though they dropped the extra e and put up a statue right on Main. The textile mills disappeared in the 70s. Downtown was boarded up. It became dangerous. So they decided they needed a change. The economy diversified, and downtown was remade. In the 90s it became safe and popular. 

So Nickeltown had a school. Right near the old city dump, which closed sometime in the 70s. It had a concrete courtyard in the front. The High School had featured a Swimming pool, which had been left to nature and become a green pond. But he could remember that concrete courtyard oh so well. Not the safest place in the world. The bomb threats, people throwing things at others, the fights, gang type behavior. He had been compelled to defend himself physically a time or two. By the time he left, he had been gone in his mind so far away that it's amazing anything came out at all. 

That was when he met the hospital. Seemed a safe place at the time. They said he had the depression. They say he couldn't think so clear. Yet by the time he left that school he was thinking of the end. The darkness of the mind was powerful, and he was in the grip. Took to writing dark things.

Under the overpass and by the river... past the water treatment plant and up that hill... Across the state road... Past Augusta... by the furniture store and down into the neighborhood by the interstate... then the last turn taking it up that hill by the woods, turning right into the big lot. 

Interesting place. walking from that lot into the school, if you turned to the right and went into those woods, you could find a grave or two. The school seemed like a fortress. So he built himself up strong to survive.