Kim Chinquee
I buy a school bus to attend a memorial in Canada. I’m not sure why I buy the bus. I have a Honda CRV that isn’t even a year yet.
My neighbor had the bus up for a steal—he fixes up old cars and sometimes when I’m home I can hear him working: loud sounds that prove maybe he’s welding, maybe sawing something steel-like.
I thought maybe it’d be cool to have a bus. I’ve seen folks turn buses into homes, taking all the seats out, hanging curtains over windows.
Before the CRV, I had a Mercedes. When people think Mercedes, they think they are expensive. I dated a guy who sold cars. He gave me a deal, and at the time, I had a Toyota Camry. I’m not sure why I bought the Mercedes. It was fancy and I liked it.
I ended up giving the Camry to my son who’s in the army. But then he got orders to Hawaii. He already had a car, a Nissan, which he’d left at my house before he left for basic training. The Nissan was old, something he paid cash for with the inheritance from my aunt, and I figured it wouldn’t last him as long as the gifted Camry. At one point, I had three cars in my then garage and driveway. It was fun to rotate them sometimes—it was just me and my two dogs then. I had a different house then. With, of course, my son’s permission, I ended up taking the Nissan to a dealership and they gave me five hundred bucks. I needed to get it off my hands. My son’s stepmom’s dad, who lives in another state, ended up selling the Toyota Camry.
I ended up selling my house and moving in with the boyfriend who sold me the Mercedes, and I hung onto that car during the whole time I was with him. We broke up two years later, two weeks before Covid, and then I realized I didn’t like the Mercedes. I mean, I liked it enough, but then I got another dog, a Goldendoodle, puppy, and then I got back into triathlons, which I got away from when I was with the boyfriend. I bought another bike, then another bike, and then a house, and I traded in the Mercedes for the Honda.
But the bus is something else. In my current house, like my next-door neighbor, I have two garages. My back garage houses mostly bikes. I have a mountain bike, a fat bike, a hybrid bike, one Jamis road bike (aluminum frame and mostly old school), a Fuji road bike with electronic shifting, one triathlon bike, a Quintana Ru that I use as a back-up, and another Quintana Ru—pink with disc brakes, electronic shifting and pedals that record my power output when connected to my Garmin. I also have an ElliptiGO, which I count as a bike, since it has two wheels, and its mechanics are all bike-like. I don’t know why I have so many bikes. Or maybe I do. I don’t know. I need to stop buying bikes. I figure the bus, even with the seats in, can house my bikes, help me transport them when I travel. I imagine taking trips with as many bikes as I like, and I imagine the dogs with me, riding around like kids going to school, hopping from one seat to the next, looking out the windows at the landscapes. Us, high up. I might even have fun while stopping, testing out the stop sign, seeing if folks stop. Like I’m a kid again, in reverse.
Oh, I also have an e-bike. That’s my newest. It’s the one I love most. Sometimes I commute to work, and if it’s windy, I just press the button and I have an e-assist, and it makes things a lot easier. It’s faster to get to work (I teach) on the e-bike sometimes than it does to get there in my Honda.
The bus was less expensive than my e-bike. My neighbor said he bought it because he likes to work on cars. He got it back to working. I trust him. When he kills rats in his rat traps, he sends me pictures. He pets my dogs when they say hi to him over the fence. When I’m out of town, his kids park their cars in my driveway. To strangers, it looks like someone’s home.
About the bus: I don’t remember seeing it in his back garage, but I don’t see most things he’s working on. His back and mine have a similar set up: a small garage attached to the house: a sort of throughway to a back garage, which is much bigger. My neighbor’s a nice guy, retired, with a wife and two grown kids who also live in the house.
I drive around in the bus. People are careful around buses. Especially school ones. At least that’s what I’m finding. Maybe I just feel bolder. I learn to be more careful around corners, more cautious when I back. And when I do, the bus makes a beep beep beep sound.
My CRV barely fits in my front garage. The bus doesn’t fit at all.
I tell my neighbor I’m going to see my friend. She grew up in Toronto. That’s where her memorial is. She was a triathlete and lived, the years I knew her, just a few streets over. She used to come to my house to raid my fridge and eat my candy. Together, we used to bike and swim and run. At her last race, a full Ironman, she drowned. Officials called it an “event.” Her heart stopped, it seems, after the first few hundred yards. I wasn’t there. I was supposed to be there. I broke my wrist tripping over a dog and was in the hospital instead.
With my casted wrist, I decorate the bus with things she liked: butterscotch, books, ball caps and confetti. Bikes. Dogs. Like me, she was a teacher. She was a better athlete. She was a better swimmer. She was a better cyclist, a better runner. Probably a better teacher too.
I sit at the border with my bikes and dogs, driving my school bus. It seems absurd, but I’m pretty sure she’d like it. She called us two peas in a pod.
For a while after Covid, hardly no one could cross the border. After we were allowed, she crossed it so often to see her dying mother that Border Patrol got to know her. She’d made a joke and said she ought to get a discount. She was an Ironman. She won all kinds of awards. Like me, she had a Honda CRV that wasn’t even a year yet.
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Kim Chinquee is Chief Editor of Elm Leaves Journal (ELJ), Senior Editor of New World Writing Quarterly, and Contributing Editor of Midwest Review. Her work has been published widely, received three Pushcart Prizes and a Henfield Prize; her eighth book and debut novel is Pipette and her three forthcoming books will appear in 2025. She directs the writing major at SUNY-Buffalo State University, is a competitive triathlete, and lives with her three dogs in Tonawanda, New York.