Jenny and Connor were ready and waiting, backpacks on over light fall jackets. Outside, Flora, their grandfather’s dog, started barking. It was an urgent, loud bark, as if she was alerting the Hansons to an emergency.
“Bus is here!” Connor shouted, grabbing the door handle.
“Bye!” his little sister Jenny called, running after him.
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Their parents, Jeff and Elaine, watched from the door as the bus pulled up and Flora kept barking. Jeff ‘s father’s German shepherd puppy had learned not to get near farm machinery, to stay away from Elaine’s SUV, and not to be afraid of kids on bikes, but Flora could not get the hang of the school bus.
“Maybe it’s because the bus takes her friends away,” Elaine had offered. “Might be the colour,” Jeff suggested.
“She wants to come with us!” was Jenny’s idea.
This morning, Flora kept barking as the kids ran to the bus.
Jeff and Elaine waved at Reg, the driver. Reg waved back. He might have been saying “Morning!” but it was hard to tell over Flora’s barking. When Connor and Jenny stepped into the bus, Flora followed. Reg pulled the door closed, but not fast enough. Flora’s head was caught between the two door halves. Elaine used her phone to take photos while Jeff held Flora back, so Reg could open and re-close the door without letting the dog in. Some kids on the bus opened their windows for a better view.
“Third time this week,” Reg said. “Maybe you should sign her up for school.”
“Sorry Reg,” Jeff said, turning red while he tried to keep a grip on Flora, who was still barking.
“Dad should come over here and look after his own darn dog,” Jeff muttered. Then he turned to Elaine. “You’d better not put those pictures on Facebook!”
Jeff and Elaine were on their way back inside when Jeff ‘s phone rang. From Elaine’s side, the conversation was cryptic. “Sounds good,” Jeff was saying. “What time?”
“What’s going on?” Elaine asked after he hung up.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s a surprise,” Jeff said.
“You know my birthday’s passed, right?” she asked.
‘You’re not the only one with a birthday,” Jeff said. Jenny would turn eight on the weekend.
By mid-afternoon it was clear that the kids didn’t need the light jackets Elaine had made them wear to school. It was a warm fall day, almost a second summer. A perfect day to clear out the garden. Elaine went out with a shovel and the side-by-side, ready to pull out the corn stalks and dig the rest of the potatoes. This year’s garden had been disappointing. The summer’s heat had stunted the beans, the grasshoppers had chewed the leaves off almost everything and the aphids had invaded the corn cobs. For once, Elaine couldn’t wait to get out the rototiller and call it a year.
While Elaine was venting her garden frustrations on the corn stalks, yanking them out of the ground with a vengeance while she listened to loud music through her earbuds, Jeff was across the yard with Mark Edwards, their farm employee, greeting Mark’s friend Tyler.
As planned, Tyler had turned up in the yard with a dismantled bunk bed in the back of his truck.
“Jenny’s going to love this!” Jeff said. “Thanks for the idea, Mark.”
When Tyler had mentioned that his son had grown out of his bunk bed, Mark remembered the day Jenny told him how much she liked having sleepovers in her friend’s bunk bed. Mark got Tyler to phone Jeff, and the two men had negotiated a sale.
“I’ll stick around and help you put it back together,” Tyler said. “There’s some tricks.”
Tyler was parked in front of the door the Hansons usually used, but Jeff had a better idea. “Can you drive around back?” he asked Tyler. “That door’s closer to Jenny’s room.”
Tyler moved his truck and the three men started carrying bunk bed parts.
“Good thing Jenny didn’t want a hide-a-bed,” Mark joked.
Out in the garden, Elaine was feeling the heat. She’d hauled the last load of corn stalks out to a slough and decided she’d had enough. Flora was riding with Elaine in the side-by-side, not wanting to miss anything. Elaine checked the time on her phone. “Almost time for the bus, Flora. Get your voice ready.”
Flora looked startled, and Elaine realized she must be shouting, competing with the loud music she was still playing through her phone.
Elaine parked the side-by-side and headed for the house. Before she opened the front door she looked down at herself. She was filthy. Her T-shirt and jeans were covered with sweat and dirt and pieces of plants. She’d spent half the morning mopping the floors in the house and now she’d have to do it again.
Elaine considered the situation.
Nobody else was home.
“Why not?”
She’d strip down on the front steps, leave her filthy clothes, and run straight to the shower.
Elaine looked up and down the road. No cars coming.
She pulled her shirt over the head. She took her phone out of her jeans pocket before she pulled them off, leaving the clothes in a pile on the step. Before she took off her socks and underwear she looked around again, double-checking the road and the back of the yard. The playlist on her phone shuffled to her favourite song, and she paused for a second, raising her face the sun to feel the heat of one of the last warm days of the season before she opened the door and went in.
She was in the hallway, almost to the bathroom, when Mark stepped out of Jenny’s bedroom saying, “I’ll go to the shop for a bigger wrench.”
They faced each other in the hallway, both silent while they tried to figure out what was happening.
Elaine screamed.
Her high pitch scared Mark, and he screamed too. Jeff and Tyler ran out of Jenny’s bedroom.
Elaine screamed louder.
In his own defence, Jeff would later say, “I told you my plans were going to be a surprise.”
Elaine looked at her husband, at Mark, at Tyler. And she panicked.
She turned and ran back out the front door. Afterwards, she would try to explain that she was going to put her clothes back on.
“You could’ve grabbed a towel,” Jeff said.
“I wasn’t thinking straight! With strangers in the house.”
Jeff didn’t bother pointing out that really, only Tyler had been a stranger.
When Elaine got to the front door, if she hadn’t still had her phone in her hand with her earbuds playing, she might’ve heard Flora barking and been spared the rest of the embarrassment. But Reg was pulling the school bus to a stop when Elaine ran out. Naked.
The kids on the bus opened their windows and stuck their heads out.
Flora barked.
Jeff, Mark and Tyler came out the back door and around the front of the house.
Reg opened the bus door and the Hanson kids came out, coats in their hands.
“This stop’s never boring,” Reg hollered out the bus door. “See you tomorrow.”
