Free The White Widow: A Novel by Jim Lehrer Page A

up at Denton. Jack had always rooted for Texas A&M, the Aggies, over U.T., the Longhorns, but if Ava was a U.T. grad he would change his loyalty for her. He would change anything for her. Anything at all.
    Jack, as he turned his bus onto Moody Street, suddenly wished for the first time that he could go back and change his life so he had gone on and finished college, even just junior college. For Ava. He wished he had done so for Ava.
    But, but, but. If he had done that, then he would probablyhave gone on to be something fancier than a bus driver. That would be terrible! He could not even imagine himself as something else. Not since he gave up seeing himself flying fighter planes or scoring touchdowns. He could not imagine a life now anywhere except behind the wheel of an ACF-Brill on the open road.
    On the open road at full speed. Again, again, after each stop in each town, it happened to him day after day, run after run.
    There were two passengers, an elderly Tamale couple, to let off at Vidauri. There was no bus station there, only a flag stop at a Flying Red Horse Mobil station. He pulled the bus to a stop and helped the couple off.
    He smelled something. Something was running hot. It wasn’t the radiator. He went around to the side where the air conditioning motor was. Some smoke was coming out of it.
    Back inside, back in his seat, he switched off the air conditioning and then stood to address the passengers.
    Here I am again, Ava! Look up here at me, please.
    “Our air conditioning is not working properly,” he said, trying his best to avoid speaking only to her, to Ava. “I have switched it off. This means opening the windows. There are releases and handles there on each. Feel free to open them. If there is a problem, please let me know. It’s only about a hundred and ninety-seven degrees outside so it should not be too bad.”
    There were some laughs. She smiled. Ava smiled. His White Widow smiled at him.
    And he was back in his seat, in gear and on down the highway and into his thoughts.
    Jack and Ava were in a booth in a nice restaurant, a seafood restaurant along Padre Island Drive that served baked potatoes with sour cream and tiny green chives as wellas butter. She was in her light-colored blouse, he was in full uniform.
    I cannot go away with you if you stay a bus driver, she said.
    I am a bus driver now and forever more, he said, leaning across the table and taking her right elbow in both of his hands. What else could I be?
    Start your own shoe store or be a radio announcer? she asked.
    I cannot do either, he replied. I have to be out there on the open road, again and again, day after day, where I belong.
    Then this must be good-bye, dear Jack.
    I cannot live without you, Ava dearest.
    You have no choice, Jack dear.
    Why can you not love a bus driver?
    Because I was brought up to love better than that.
    Then it is true you have money or something like that?
    It is true.

    Adele Lyman and four passengers were not the only ones waiting for Jack and his bus in Refugio. So was Slick Carlton, the regular Texas highway patrolman for the area.
    “Two wetbacks shook loose from some immigration cops up at Goliad,” Slick said to Jack once the bus was stopped. He had his tan uniform Stetson on his head, but Jack could still smell the tonic underneath. Jack also got a whiff of leather from his wide brown belt and holster, from which protruded a very large .38 magnum pistol. “Any candidates aboard your bus?”
    Jack was embarrassed to have to say “I don’t think so, Slick. But be my guest.”
    He stepped back up inside his bus with Slick, who had played linebacker for Lamar College in Beaumont and looked it.
    Jack, through good habit and practice, normally looked over every passenger he had on his bus. A question like “Any candidates aboard your bus?” would draw an informed answer. But since she, Ava, got on in Victoria, he had been distracted.
    Jack watched from the front of the bus as Slick walked down the