The Bus Must Go On

Chapter 1: The Loudest Thing Since the Tornado Siren

The Hickory Falls Senior Singers had been rehearsing in the basement of First Lutheran Church for eleven years, which was three years longer than the church's last pastor and roughly nine years longer than anyone in town thought they would last.

They met every Tuesday and Thursday at two o'clock, because two o'clock was after lunch but before the window of the day when half the altos needed to nap. The basement smelled of old hymnals and industrial carpet cleaner, and the acoustics were, according to their director Don Berryman, "better than Carnegie Hall if you don't count the furnace."

Don was seventy-three, built like a fire hydrant someone had dressed in khakis, and he had the kind of face that looked permanently amused even when he was furious. He had taught music at Hickory Falls High School for thirty-one years, retiring only when the school board suggested that perhaps the spring musical did not need to be Les Misérables for the seventh consecutive time.

"It's a masterwork," Don had told the superintendent.

"It's a lawsuit waiting to happen," the superintendent had replied, referencing the barricade collapse of 2016 that sent two freshmen to urgent care.

Retirement had not agreed with Don. He had tried woodworking, which produced a birdhouse that looked like a threat. He had tried gardening, which produced tomatoes so aggressive his wife Brenda refused to eat them on philosophical grounds. He had tried sitting on the porch, which produced nothing except a growing suspicion that the neighbor's dog was watching him with judgment.

Then he had founded the Hickory Falls Senior Singers, and something inside him that had been slowly dying began to breathe again.

The choir had fourteen members, a number that fluctuated seasonally depending on hip replacements, snowbird migrations, and whether Dee Dee Womack was currently speaking to the soprano section. Their median age was seventy-one. Their collective medical history could fill a textbook. Their sound, on a good day, was surprisingly beautiful—a warm, slightly wobbly wall of harmony that made audiences tear up, though Don suspected some of the tears were from volume.

"We are the loudest thing to come out of central Ohio since the tornado siren," Don liked to say at performances, and the audience would laugh, and Don would beam, and then he would conduct them through a medley that would rattle the fillings in your teeth.

The letter from the National Silver Voices Championship arrived on a Thursday in March, which was appropriate because Thursdays were when good things happened to the choir. They had won the regional qualifier on a Thursday. They had gotten their matching vests on a Thursday. Dee Dee had stopped threatening to quit on a Thursday, though she resumed on the following Monday.

Don opened the letter in front of everyone because he already knew what it said. He had checked the website fourteen times since the regional finals and had seen their name appear on the accepted list at 6:47 a.m. the previous Tuesday. But a man needed his moments.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, holding the letter with both hands, "the Hickory Falls Senior Singers have been invited to compete at the National Silver Voices Championship in Branson, Missouri."

The basement erupted.

Sharon Pohl, who sat in the front row because she sat in the front row of everything, clapped exactly four times and then pulled out a notebook. Sharon was sixty-nine, small and precise, with reading glasses that she wore on a chain and wielded like a weapon. She had been a courtroom stenographer for thirty-seven years, during which time she had transcribed over four thousand depositions, eleven murder trials, and one custody hearing so acrimonious that both lawyers apologized to her afterward. She remembered everything anyone had ever said, and she considered accuracy a moral obligation.

"Branson," Sharon said, writing it down. "That's eight hundred and twelve miles. What's the itinerary?"

"We're getting to that," Don said.

"You said last month the itinerary would be ready by March fifteenth. It is March twenty-first."

"Sharon—"

"I'm just noting the discrepancy."

Brenda Berryman, who had been standing by the refreshment table arranging celery sticks into a pattern that suggested military precision, walked over and placed a hand on Don's arm. Brenda was seventy-one, had the posture of a woman who had never once slouched, and ran the non-musical aspects of the choir with an efficiency that made Don's directing look like improv theater.

"The itinerary is done," Brenda said. "I finished it Tuesday. Eleven days, four warm-up performances across three states, then the finals. I've booked the hotels. I've mapped the rest stops. I've calculated per diem snack allocations."

"Per diem snack allocations?" said Al Metzger from the baritone section.

"You heard me."

Al was seventy-five, tall and gentle, with the kind of face that made strangers want to tell him their problems. He had been a pharmacist for forty-two years, mostly at the Rexall on Main Street, where he had filled prescriptions, dispensed advice, and once talked a man out of a panic attack using nothing but a glass of water and a calm description of how aspirin worked. He was the choir's only decent baritone, a fact Don acknowledged privately and Al acknowledged not at all.

"I just want to be clear," Al said. "Are we being rationed?"

"You are being nourished," Brenda said. "There's a difference."

"Last time she packed the cooler, I got four almonds and a clementine for a six-hour drive," whispered Dee Dee Womack to no one in particular, though Dee Dee never really whispered. She projected. She had been projecting since 1974, when she had allegedly opened for Wayne Newton at a casino in Reno, a claim that varied in its details every time she told it but never in its confidence.

Dee Dee was seventy, though she would tell you sixty-four, and she had the kind of presence that made a room feel smaller and more interesting. She wore scarves. She wore rings. She wore sunglasses indoors and somehow made it look reasonable. Her past was a collage of lounge acts, cruise ships, session work, and at least one marriage she only referenced as "the Albuquerque situation." Nobody knew which parts were true, and Dee Dee seemed to consider that a feature rather than a bug.

"Four almonds is a serving," Brenda said without turning around.

"Four almonds is a cry for help."

"The cooler has limited space, Dee Dee. If you'd like to bring your own snacks, you are welcome to, provided they don't attract ants."

"That was one time, and those ants were already on the bus."

Don cleared his throat. This was a sound he had perfected over three decades of teaching teenagers, and it worked on seniors with equal effectiveness. The room quieted.

"The bus," Don said. "I've chartered a coach. Forty-four seats, bathroom in the back, decent suspension. The driver's name is Mike Stover. He comes recommended."

This was technically true. Mike Stover had been recommended by the charter company's dispatcher, who had described him as "available" and "not currently under investigation for anything," which Don had chosen to interpret as a ringing endorsement.

Mike was forty-six, built like a man who had spent twenty years sitting in a truck cab eating gas station food, which he had. He had been a long-haul trucker for two decades before the company restructured, which was a polite way of saying they replaced him with a younger man who would accept less money and a GPS system that didn't require bathroom breaks. Mike had driven cattle, frozen chickens, industrial solvents, and once, memorably, a trailer full of novelty rubber ducks that had shifted during a turn in Tulsa and produced a sound he still heard in his sleep.

He had never driven a charter bus full of senior citizens.

He would come to regard this as a significant gap in his preparation.

"Now," Don continued, "I want to talk about our competition pieces."

He walked to the piano, where he had spread out sheet music with the careful arrangement of a general planning an invasion. Don had been re-scoring their arrangements for weeks, staying up past ten o'clock, which for Don was the equivalent of pulling an all-nighter. He had analyzed recordings of every choir in their bracket. He had studied the judges' past scorecards. He had identified the Indiana choirs as the primary threat and had restructured the Hickory Falls harmonies specifically to exploit what he perceived as their weakness in the upper register.

"It's just lovely to participate," Don said, smiling at the room.

Brenda looked at him.

"Don."

"Hmm?"

"You were up until midnight last night with headphones on, listening to the Terre Haute Silver Bells' performance from last year's regionals."

"I was appreciating their artistry."

"You were taking notes. In red ink."

"Red is a warm color. It's appreciative."

Sharon wrote something in her notebook. Don decided not to ask what.

The last member of the core ensemble arrived late, as he always did, slipping in through the side door with the quiet grace of a man who had spent his life trying not to be noticed. Herb Stanek was seventy-eight, thin, with white hair combed neatly to one side and eyes that were either kind or careful, depending on how you read them. He had joined the choir three months ago after showing up to a Tuesday rehearsal, sitting in the back row, and singing along so beautifully that Don had stopped conducting mid-phrase to listen.

"Where did you come from?" Don had asked.

"Indiana," Herb had said, which was the most he had ever volunteered about his past in a single sentence.

Herb didn't talk about himself. He didn't talk much at all. He arrived, he sang, he left. He was polite in the way that suggested practice rather than personality. He carried his sheet music in a leather folder that he never let anyone else touch. He had no family photos in his wallet, which Sharon knew because Sharon had checked, not out of suspicion but because Sharon checked everything.

"Herb," Don said, nodding.

"Don," Herb said, taking his seat.

And that was the extent of their pre-trip conversation, which was notable only in retrospect, when everything Herb Stanek had ever said or not said would be examined under the harsh fluorescent light of hindsight.

The bus was scheduled to depart the following Monday at seven a.m. from the First Lutheran parking lot.

Brenda had the cooler packed by Saturday.