Stand

Then, it was Black people. Now, it's immigrants.

Find someone to dump on—it makes you feel

better about your own lowly life,

even though all you need to do to fix it

is to put in the work to raise yourself up.

But it’s easy and lazy—and shameful—to dump on others.

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“He’ll stay where he is.”

____________________________________________________

Stand

The bus driver wrapped his sandwich in wax paper slowly, as if the neat folds were everything that mattered. His boy leaned in the kitchen doorway, shirt untucked, watching with that sneering smirk he’d picked up from the wiseacres in town.

“You’re soft, Daddy,” the boy said. “That’s why folks don’t pay you no mind.”

The man didn’t answer. He pressed down the last crease, set the sandwich in his lunch pail, and tugged at the brim of his cap.

Out on Main Street, the church marquee read: Jesus Saves — White Service 9 AM. A woman with a Bible under her arm spat brown tobacco juice between the cracks in the pavement. The driver climbed into his bus, the seat crackled beneath him, and the engine rumbled awake at the turn of his key. Passengers filed in, heads ducked, slipping into their usual rows. Just before starting off, a young colored boy who wasn't a regular rider rushed onto the bus and plopped into the first seat.

Halfway through the route, a white man in a feed cap stood, face pinched with irritation. He jabbed a finger toward the front row where the boy sat, feet not touching the floor.

“Driver,” he said, loud enough for all to hear, “you best move that boy back where he belongs.”

In strained silence, all eyes turned to the driver. His hand tightened around the wheel, the leather worn smooth from years of driving.

Then somebody chuckled, nervous-like. Another muttered “uppity” half under his breath. A woman flipped open her pocketbook, fingers brushing the worn cover of a small Bible, then closed it again with a snap.

The driver stared through the windshield. He remembered his wife’s hand on his once, when he was growing angry, as she whispered, Gentleness is stronger. He remembered his son’s sneer that morning, and how he almost lost his temper then.

Through the window he caught sight of the inspector standing on the curb, hat tipped, clipboard ready. The man’s belly pressed against his belt, his baton twitched against his leg like a preacher tapping time for a hymn.

The boy’s fingers gripped the edge of his seat tightly. For a moment, his face blurred in the mirror set up for the driver to see the passengers, and he saw his own son sitting there, eyes wide, waiting for him to do something.

“Don’t tempt the Lord,” the Bible-carrying woman hissed.

The bus rattled. A bead of sweat rolled down the driver’s temple. His hands clenched the wheel more tightly. He remembered the foxholes in France, where men bled together without caring who was white or Black.

“Move him,” the white man barked again.

The driver turned, slow as a clock hand and said in a steady, gravelly voice, “He’ll stay where he is.”

The silence thickened. A cough. The scrape of a shoe. The sound of the jukebox from the café outside carried through the open door — a woman’s voice dragging long notes that hung in the air like Spanish moss dangling from tree limbs.

The inspector climbed aboard, wrote the driver’s name with neat strokes, and stepped back off without a word.

“Fool,” the white man muttered, sinking back down.

That night, the neighbors’ whispers had made it home before the driver. His boy sat at the table. He wasn’t smirking now.

“They say you told ’em no,” the boy said.

The driver set his badge on the table and rubbed at it with his thumb, the metal glinting in the dim kitchen light. He didn’t respond.

The boy’s eyes lingered on him for a long time, although the driver pretended not to notice. Neither of them spoke until the son went to the refrigerator to take out meat for supper. “I’ll fix some chicken for us, Daddy,” he said. The bus driver nodded.

The badge gleamed and the driver picked it up. He kept polishing, slow and steady, while his boy stood watching from the counter.