I drove the ninth grade football team to Grantsville the other day. We took the back route. That’s about 120 miles of sagebrush valleys and tinder-dry hills on a narrow, two-lane highway. Traffic was minimal. In fact for most of those 120 miles my yellow school bus was the only thing moving for as far as you could see in either direction.

Through the course of the journey we passed through or passed by several places that aren’t much more than names on a map: Goshen, Eureka, Faust, and Bauer to name a few. A couple of them actually appeared to have a population even if it was only five or six. Mostly they were just signs with a place-name and an arrow pointing out into the sagebrush next to a lonely road. Eureka is an old mining ghost town, except that people still live there. You don’t drive through Eureka and fear the ghosts of old miners. It’s the intermittent signs of living people that surprise you. One of those signs is a school crossing that still had a living crossing guard on duty as we drove by in the rain. At least I think she was living.

Eureka and Goshen are those types of small towns so hidden that they could be home to a cult that gives a human sacrifice at a secret ceremony once each year even though they are right in the middle of America. Actually, they are probably a little piece of paradise away from the insanity of big city living. I know a fellow who used to live in Goshen and he seems legitimate.

As a school bus driver I’m attuned to the colors yellow and black. When I’m driving bus and see those colors coming down the road I always think, “Ah, someone who understands.” Imagine my surprise when out in the middle of nowhere I made out the back end of a school bus far ahead of me. I was traveling faster and slowly caught up. The event I was traveling to was not multi-school so I knew I was the only bus heading to Grantsville. I wondered what this bus was doing so far out in the void. An active railroad line crossed the highway ahead of us. It was well-marked for such a remote area, probably to alert drivers hypnotized by the long empty miles of the possibility of death if they didn’t wake up. It was easy to see that the track was empty for ten miles in both directions, but this lonely bus in front of me turned on its hazard lights and came to a stop just like it was supposed to. I saw the doors open and the driver look both ways before beginning again. That’s a good driver.

I passed the bus soon after and saw a few elementary age kids rush to the windows to look at us. They probably don’t see many other buses during their ride. The bandana wearing driver was looking up in her rear view mirror when I glanced over. No doubt she was telling the kids to sit down and be quiet. As far as I can tell she was on her regular route taking the kids home from school. Home must have been ranch houses scattered here and there throughout the sagebrush. I watched the bus for mile after mile as the distance between us slowly grew. Then I checked my mirrors and the bus was gone. Maybe it turned up one of those lonely roads next to a narrow sign with a place-name and an arrow. Or maybe it was a ghost bus akin to the Flying Dutchman and had graced, or cursed, me with a sighting.

I looked for signs of the bus in the darkness of midnight on the return journey. I came to that desolate railroad crossing where we had both stopped before. My flashing hazard lights reflected off the raised crossing bars. I opened my door to listen for trains . . . and maybe for the sound of another bus engine. Only one engine idled. With a sigh I shut my doors and drove my sleeping cargo home.