Another Story

I find myself with 30 minutes free and nothing much to do, so here's another story for my valued readers, whoever you may be.

I think I had just finished the eighth grade, when a fairly ambitious trip was undertaken by the youth in my church. We gathered together the teens and pre-teens from our church and a couple of other area churches in our denomination and prepared for a trip to Kentucky. We met for a few rehearsals at the church to get our program ready, then were on our way to Kentucky in the bus.

The bus was a school bus just recently purchased used by the church, and was still painted that schoolbus yellow. Dad was the driver, and my sister and I were part of the group. The trip was lots of fun for most of us, with a chance to hang out with our freinds for that interminable ride in uncomfortable seats to Hazard County, Kentucky.

Our base was a little town called Krypton, where there was a small mission church supported by our denomination. I was very familiar with Krypton, having been there several times before with my parents, a bit of a tradition during the Fall Break from school every October. Most of the previous trips were with adult groups and involved repairs and painting and distributing used clothing and whatever else needed done at the little church in the hills or the parsonage next door.

We had been there a couple of days, working on various tasks during the day, like digging a new hole for the outhouse. Evenings were time for our little program, which was full of music and skits and some preaching and "personal testimonies". There was plenty of free time as well, and Euchre was the game of choice for most of us that trip. I found myself trying to avoid one female admirer while admiring another from afar. The pastor from my church surprised us with a hilarious wake-up call each morning, when he would play and sing a raucous version of "Pistol-Packin' Mama" on the old piano in the church. We laughed at our irreverant reverend and roused for breakfast.

That day we loaded up the bus for a trip back into the mountains to spend time at a church youth camp. It seemed to be a long drive, so after what seemed to me an endless journey into the Appalachian hills, I made myself as comfortable as possible and began to doze.

It had rained in the hills very recently, and the dirt roads were eroded and washed out in some places. Dad didn't see that this particular stretch of mountain road had been weakened from underneath by the erosion, and perhaps ran a bit to close to the edge preparing to round a curve.

I was startled from my doze by a sudden thump, as the right front wheel fell through the road surface. Before I could gather my wits to realize what was happening, I felt the rear wheels follow and the bus begin to list to the right. I turned to look out my window, next to my seat on the right side of the bus, and time seemed to slow as I watched the green foliage of the river bank rise up to meet the window.

In a sort of trancelike fascination, I watched as a single round hole radiated cracks through my window, as if someone was drawing them into the surface. Then, I felt a slide into the river, where the top of the bus rocked like a rowboat until the water displaced into the bus and it settled into the muck.

(to be continued ...)