“Come on up front,” Naftali firmly tells one of them. This isn’t the first time, and he can see the frustration on the boy’s face when he’s seated again. “We’ve talked about this. Fists aren’t going to solve anything.”

“Sorry, Naftali,” the boy says. His face is still flushed but his voice is calm, and Naftali shoots him a sympathetic smile and pulls the bus out to the street again. Within moments, the boy is shouting at his classmate sitting in the back from a safe distance, apology forgotten. Naftali shakes his head and drives on.

The little ones call him Tuli. They pile onto the bus in the morning, one by one, bouncing on the seats with enthusiasm and calling his name with shrill, joyous voices. Tuli, can we eat on the bus? Tuli, how much longer until we get there? Tuli, do you want to see my new backpack? In the afternoons, they’re even louder, playing with each other, then stepping off the bus, one at a time, their parents urging them to thank the driver. Thank you. Bye, Tuli.

Naftali has dodged the elementary boys in the morning by virtue of his other routes. In the afternoon, they’re wild and uncontainable, climbing over seats and shouting out the windows, and they have learned irreverence for the adults in their lives who aren’t their rebbeim. It had been a miracle that Naftali had managed to defuse the fight today. There’s nothing to be done about them, the other drivers say. It’s a route to be endured, they agree. They’ll grow up eventually, they all decide.

Naftali’s minyan route is the boys who have grown up. They stagger onto the bus just before seven in the morning, settling down heavily in their seats. In the evenings, once they’re dismissed from school after night seder, they’re equally listless, rarely awake enough to cause trouble. They thank Naftali without being coaxed by parents; there’s some vague respect, at least the same as they’d have toward the Ohr Gershon custodian.

There’s no shame to being a bus driver, he reminds himself. Once, he had been one of those boys climbing on the seats, flush with energy after a day of cooped-up frustration and failure. He likes the boys who can’t behave, the ones who are relieved to escape the school building, and they like him back.

His favorite of all the boys, from cherubic toddlers to rowdy ten-year-olds to sluggish teens, is the unlikely Yudi Stein. At least he should be someone’s favorite.

Yudi lives out in Meadowbrook, so far from the school that Naftali has to start his route a half hour earlier than the other drivers. Naftali suspects that Yudi is in Ohr Gershon because the closer schools wouldn’t take him; there’s something about him that’s dark and dangerous.

Yudi has a narrow face, the kind that’s built for sneers and is difficult to trust, and he’s tall and lanky, his limbs moving carelessly, effortlessly threatening. His words are belligerent even when they’re innocuous, and many of the boys give him a wide berth.

Tonight, he stalks onto the bus with those long arms swinging, clutching what looks like the hard box of a deck of cards in one hand. Naftali shoots it a look — has Yudi taken up card games? — but he doesn’t comment on it, just says, “Good evening.”

Yudi grunts a response. He sits in the front seat diagonal from Naftali’s, his thumb running against the box in his hand as he stares out the window. The bus fills up quickly, more boys traipsing on with backpacks sagging and Gemaras under their arms. They mumble hellos to Naftali and sink into their seats.

Naftali drives. He likes the nighttime route best. The streets are empty and free of traffic, and it gives him a feeling of power when he’s the one to bring noise and light to each block. He has never been one to take up space in a room, has always faded into the background. His older brother had been the one who’d filled every room with his presence, and Naftali had envied him for it. The bus is the one place Naftali feels strong and bright.

A light rain begins to dot the windshield. “Hood on! It’s wet out there!” Naftali calls after each boy as they get off the bus. They turn to grin at him, tucking themselves into hooded jackets or braving the rain. Naftali drives on to the next stop, slowly emptying the bus.

There are just two boys at the last stop before the drive to Meadowbrook. One of them sidles up to the front to sit opposite Yudi. “Tough break today, huh?” he says. “Rabbi Hartman didn’t give you an inch.”

Yudi snorts, his lips twisting. “I don’t care,” he says. “Rabbi Hartman thinks that he can save me. That all I need is a few good mussar shmuessen and I’ll be the next gadol hador.” He taps his thumbnail against the card box, tap-tap-tap in time with the rain on the windshield. “That guy listened to too many inspirational stories when he was our age.”

The other boy shifts, probably uncomfortable at hearing their saintly menahel referred to as that guy. A guilty part of Naftali finds it delightfully refreshing. “Rabbi Hartman would probably leave you alone if you didn’t cheat on tests right in front of him,” the other boy says. “What’s he supposed to do?”

Yudi rolls his eyes. The bus pulls up to the stop before Meadowbrook, and the other boy gets off with his younger brother, receiving a baleful look from Yudi as he goes.

Yudi sits back in his seat, staring at the box in his hand, and Naftali is quiet. He has one little son and a slew of girls at home, three of them teenagers who are entangled in enough drama to power a dozen novels, and he has long ago learned the art of staying silent.

He steers the bus out to a quieter road, the speed limit ticking up, and drives along the water toward Meadowbrook. Houses give way to trees and rock, and the only light drifting into the bus is via sparse streetlamps. Yudi’s tapping is more audible now, a constant clicking noise.

“I didn’t cheat,” he says suddenly. “Just so you know. I’m not a cheater.”

“I believe you,” Naftali says. It isn’t a lie. He can’t imagine that Yudi cares enough about his schoolwork to cheat on tests. Yudi has told him as much.

“I turned around during some test today,” he says. “I’d finished mine, but I didn’t hand it in. When the menahel is proctoring, you can’t hand it in too early or he’ll make you take it again.” He barks out a laugh. “So I was bored. I wasn’t going to copy off of David Abramov’s test. No one would buy that those were my answers, anyway.” He slouches into his seat.

“I cheated off of a friend’s test once,” Naftali says quietly. “He knew even less than I did. I wound up losing points. Learned my lesson.” He still remembers the embarrassment of it, the knowing look of his rebbe when he’d handed back both tests and circled the answers that Naftali had changed incorrectly. Naftali had wanted to please, had been desperate for a win, and instead he’d humiliated himself. It’s an old, awful memory.

But he’s pleased now at Yudi’s laugh in response to that. “Bet you didn’t have to deal with a menahel like Rabbi Hartman, though. The guys treat him like some kind of legend and he started buying into his own hype. He talks down to me like he thinks I might care that he’s disappointed.” He rubs his thumb against the card box. It shines like metal when Naftali glances back at it.

Naftali clears his throat, remembering his sense of propriety with unease. “Yudi,” he reminds him. “Rabbi Hartman is the menahel.”

Yudi huffs out an irritated breath. “Come on,” he says. “You must’ve known loads of rebbeim like him. Don’t tell me that you can’t see it, too.” Yudi spends an excess of their evening drive complaining about the menahel. There’s a part of Naftali that’s drawn to that irreverence, that feels an anxious pleasure at it.

He brushes it off. He is an adult, and he is past that. Instead, he says lightly, “Well, there must be some rebbeim at yeshivah that you like.”

Yudi laughs. “I think you’re the only adult at mesivta that I don’t hate,” he says. “And it’s probably just because you take me away from that place every day.”

“I also bring you there,” Naftali points out. It’s impressive, really, that Yudi makes it to Shacharis every morning. But there he is, sitting on his porch steps at six-thirty every morning, ready to climb onto the bus. It’s a relief that Naftali isn’t waking for neitz and driving out to Meadowbrook for no reason.

Tonight, they have moved away from the water toward the large houses and sprawling lawns of Meadowbrook. Naftali easily steers the bus down wide blocks that sport only stop signs, no traffic lights to mar the idyllic night, and stops in front of a manor on Beaker Street.

The lights are all out in Yudi’s house, his long path to the door illuminated only by electric lanterns that dot the walk. His parents are often away on business trips, Naftali knows by now, and a neighbor checks in on Yudi sporadically. Yudi insists that he’s fine on his own.

“Are you going to be all right there?” Naftali asks, the same refrain of every day.

Yudi rolls his eyes. “I’m fine,” he says, but it’s free of sullenness. “Thanks.” He climbs off the bus, that box still in his hand, and he makes his way to the front door. It’s dark there, but Naftali waits for the telltale rectangle of bright color that means that Yudi has made it inside and switched on the foyer light.

First, though, he sees something else. A flare of something, illuminating Yudi’s face at the door. A tiny little flame, a spark in his raised hand, and Naftali understands at last what Yudi’s box had been: a cleverly concealed lighter, something that should never have been allowed onto the bus or into school.

He will have to mention it to him tomorrow. For now, he watches Yudi’s face in the dim light, sees the way his eyes glitter as they reflect the fire, notices how adrift he looks when he thinks no one is watching.

Yudi’s front door opens, and Naftali turns the bus around and heads home. There’s a satisfaction to emptying a bus, to slotting it back into place in the lot. Naftali likes it far more than he will admit to anyone, even his own wife and family.

The little ones call him Tuli. The older boys call him nothing most of the time. He prefers both to what he’s called outside of the bus, when he can’t escape from the shadows in which he lives: off the bus, he is only Naftali Hartman, brother to the legendary menahel of Ohr Gershon.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 949)