The Blood Rag--My Reward for Courage and Loyalty

We lived in Wallsburg and went to school in Heber, a twenty-five minute bus ride that wound around Deer Creek Reservoir. It seemed longer than twenty-five minutes. Most of the time, I propped my knees on the seat in front of me, and in classic shy-little girl style, lost myself in whatever book I was reading at the time.

Donald was our bus driver. He'd taken over the job when his Dad retired. I don't remember much about him except for the line that has become a classic in our family, "Quieten down now." This was usually said while he looked at the children in the wide rear-view mirror. I always hoped everyone would behave because when everyone was wound up, Donald looked so long and hard in that mirror that I was sure we'd go off the road, sink in the reservoir and die a tragic, drowning death.

After school, the bus students would line up on the north side of the school to catch the buses. Looking back, I'm not sure why the buses weren't there waiting for us, but they weren't. We usually waited on them, and waiting in that line was sometimes rough. I usually stood with my brothers. One day, Brady, a boy I liked and feared in equal parts was in a teasing mood and decided his target would be one of my little brothers, who stood in the line in a pair of pants that he was outgrowing. They were a little short. "Hey, Floods," Brady said to my brother. He said it a couple of different ways and I began to get angry.

I didn't like confrontation. I didn't like being picked on. I didn't like fighting. But even more than that, I didn't like one of my little brothers being picked on. With each insult, I got angrier. And braver. Finally, I stepped my 65 pound self in front of my brother and with a shaky voice said, "At least he grows, you shrimp." This was a terrible insult. Brady wasn't a big kid, but he was wiry, strong, scrappy and tough. He immediately turned his attention on me.

"What did you just say?" he said.

"At least he grows, you shrimp." Believe me when I say that this second insult was said with fear and trembling. And a much softer voice. But that didn't matter. The next thing I knew, my head was reeling and my nose felt the size of an orange. I reached up to touch it and when I moved my hand away, it was covered with blood. I'd never had a bloody nose before and I've never had a flowing bloody nose since. But my nose was like a faucet. Blood gushed through my fingers.

By this time, the bus had pulled up and Donald, seeing there was trouble stepped out. I don't know if he ever knew exactly what had happened, but he grabbed the blood rag from the floor under the glove compartment and pushed it up against my nose, took one of my hands and placed it over the rag to hold it in place. And I wanted to die. He might as well have stuck my head in a pig trough.

That rag had been there for years, maybe decades, and I'd seen it used several times. I don't think it had ever been washed. Every bloody nose on that bus for the past thirty years had bled into that rag. It was filthy. It was stiff. It smelled awful. I tried to move it away from my nose only to have Donald push it back firmly. "Keep it there. I don't want you bleeding all over the bus," he said.

I hadn't cried. Sure, my nose hurt. My eyes were stinging, but it wasn't until I knew that I was going to have to hold that foul thing next to my face for the next twenty-five minutes that the tears came. And they came all the way home. When we arrived at my stop, I dropped that large, grimy square of nastiness off in its special spot, where it stayed until the next bloody nose.

Brady's mom made him come and apologize to me. I felt oddly brave and tough, something very new for me. It was a heady feeling to know I'd provoked him so completely. But to this day, I get a little sick thinking about that awful blood rag. I deserved better than that.