George

It might have been a golden retriever. Or a Labrador. Or a German Shepherd. I couldn’t really tell. It wasn’t one of the neighbor’s dogs. It wasn’t our dog, thank god. A relief, since this dog was dead.

The dog had short yellowish fur and black paws. I don’t remember its face, the length of its snout or if the dog’s eyes were open.

It was late January in Upstate New York. The roadside snowbanks were three and a half feet high, piled up by the snowplows and stained charcoal gray from their salt. Low hanging clouds in a miserable sky were starting to unload a late afternoon flurry.Not like the dog had a choice in the matter, but I thought it was a crummy day to die.


When I told my Mom about the dog, she said “Better call George Signor.”


I rode a bus to school for the first time after my family moved to Upstate New York from Arizona in 1989. When we lived in Tucson, our house was a short three blocks from the elementary school and I walked there every morning, joining my friends from down the road or if I was running late, going by myself. When we relocated East, the school was six miles and two-towns over. Walking was out of the question. For the first time in my life, I waited for one of those yellow behemoths to stop in front of me so I could climb aboard.

George Signor was always old to me. He was already in his late sixties when I first saw him behind the wheel of bus #64. George wasn’t tall, wasn’t fat. He had earned a farmer’s body from working on his Dairy Farm. He was friendly to kids but took no shit from some of the middle-schoolers who would swear, toss garbage or get as rowdy as kids do after a day of school. The bus-ride was never a quiet, though it rarely got out of control. In cases that it did, George pulled off onto the side of the road and waited for everyone to be quiet, never raising his voice, never shouting. 

George Signor always kept a box of dog treats by his side, to toss out the window at any animals he would pass by in the bus. His love for animals led him to become the Dog Control Officer for the Village of Keeseville and Town of AuSable. If there was a problem with a dog, they’d call George Signor. I don’t think it was a giant leap from children to animals, as he was always taking care of someone who didn’t really know how to function in the civilized world. The kids on Bus 64 lived out on the outskirts, in the houses and trailers in between Clintonville and Keeseville. These were wild brats, not the straight-A set, but the kids of concrete blocks and cigarette butts. George was as sympathetic as a school bus driver could be. He was firm but not a monster when it came to rules.  I think the training lent itself well when dealing with calls about stray animals, or trips to the local pound.   

I couldn’t find his listing in the phone book so instead, I called the local vet who would transfer me to his number. This would be the first time talking to him since I was ten.  
    “There’s a dog here,” I said. “A dead dog.” 
    “Uh-huh. Where are you?”
    “Oh, over on Pine street.”
    “Yeah? Where exactly on Pine Street.”
    “Oh, 140 Pine Street.”
    “Is it your dog?”
    “No, it’s not mine.”
    “Does it have any tags on it?”
    “No.”
    “Alright. I should be there in twenty minutes.”

He showed up that afternoon in an old station wagon. I was half-expecting him to show up in a school bus. I had stopped riding his bus for a few years, having moved to a neighboring town. I was still in the same school district but I was riding #106 to the highschool. 

That day, he was wearing a long, gray heavy coat and an Irish scally cap. It had been eight years since I rode his bus but he looked so much older than how I remembered him. Eight years passed, and while I had grown taller, George had grown deeper, the wrinkles settling hard into his face. Back then, everyone above a certain point in their life had the hazy, ambiguous term old. My mom and dad were old. My grandparents were old. George Signor the bus driver was old. But in the time from eight to sixteen, some definition set in. I was able to see details. My parents were in their forties, still young and healthy, working hard to support their children and themselves. My grandparents were in their early sixties, closer to retiring from work, slower in motion but still active, still very much alive. But George?

    “George!” I wanted to shout. “You got old! Look at you, George! You’re old!”
I imagine he would have shook his head and laughed. That’s what you do. You get old. 

I showed him where the dog was. We stood around it.
    “What do you think happened?”
    “Got hit by a car, most likely.”

There were no tire tracks around the dog, like in the cartoons. No surging guts. No blood. The dog was completely intact but dead.

I asked George what he was going to do, and he said he would put the dog in the back of his car. I stood out of the way as he backed his wagon to a spot near the dog. He lifted the stiff body up by the legs and heaved the dog into the back of the station wagon with one fluid motion. He closed the door shut when he was done.

 Back when I rode his bus, I had thick plastic eyeglasses and short hair. When I saw him that day, my hair was long, I had traded colors for wearing all black and switched to contacts. I had a knit hat on that day, and my jacket zipped up tight. But as he walked up to the front of his car, he stopped to look at me.

    “You use to ride one of my buses, right?” He said to me, still looking at my face for recognition. He wasn’t smiling. It looked more like he was confronted with that I had grown up. His look said, “Jason. You’ve gotten old. Look at you. You’re old.” Eight years and we were older, and it might have startled him to see me, knowing that yes, George, you have gotten old, too.

    “Yeah, I did. I used to live out in Clintonville,” I said. I smiled. I don’t remember if George did. It wasn’t a time for happy reunions. We were old and a dog was dead, now needing to be dropped off at the local vet for proper disposal. George said his good-byes and I thanked him. He drove off and that was that.