The Trouble with Aliens     The Trouble with Aliens

 by paperbkryter

 

 

  

 Darlene Ferris had been driving school buses in Smallville, Kansas almost
all her life. In her youth she drove the elementary and junior high aged
kids, keeping the youngsters in line quite readily with her fuzzy-browed
glower and her long, hooked nose. They called her "The Witch" behind her
back. Darlene wasn't a witch, and she really wasn't ugly, but she took
advantage of what witchy features she did possess. Adults tended to show
her more respect, often thinking she was older than her chronological age,
and the kids most certainly behaved themselves - especially around
Halloween. 

 She wore red and white striped socks on purpose, since that was the first
thing a child standing at the door to her bus would see, followed by the
dark clothing, the nose, and the eyebrows as their gaze moved upward.
Sometimes they would cry and not want to get on the bus, but usually they
were too shocked not to obey. One quick thinking little tyke, however,
once had the presence of mind to feed her a line from the Wizard of Oz. 

 "Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?" 

 To which Darlene replied: 

 "I'm a bus driver, and you're making me late. Get on, sit down, and shut
up." 

 He quickly became one of Darlene's favorites, and ultimately, a high
school principal who she addressed as "Mr. Kwan" - but with a wink and a
smile. 

 All was good until Darlene began to age and her witchiness became more
pronounced. Her hair got coarse and turned gray, the wrinkles on her face
grew more prominent, and her voice deepened. From spending so much time
over a steering wheel her back grew hunched and crooked. More and more
little ones balked at the foot of the steps and refused to get on
Darlene's bus. They cried. Parents complained. Darlene offered to dye her
hair and be more pleasant, but the superintendent of schools could not be
swayed. Darlene would be reassigned. 

 The news broke Darlene's heart, for as gruff as she seemed, she loved her
youngsters a great deal and took pride in delivering them safely to and
from school every day. She had been looking forward to driving the
children of children she'd met at the beginning of her career. It seemed
such a thing was not to be. 

 Her last day driving the elementary school children was in September of
1992. They had not yet found a replacement for her, so she was asked to
run her usual bus until the assignments could be rearranged. Darlene
looked at her route with tears in her eyes and an ache in her heart. 

 She noticed something unusual. 

 "Hickory Lane?" she asked. "I haven't had a stop there for years. Not
since Hiram's little lad started high school." Darlene smiled. She
remembered Jon-Jon. He had been tow-headed and freckle-faced, a little Tom
Sawyer if she'd ever seen one. He'd climbed on the bus and stared at her
with large blue eyes, before grinning broadly and complimenting her on her
socks. He sat directly behind her, polite and as curious as could be,
despite his young age. 

 "What does that thing do?" 

 "How fast can this bus go?" 

 And: 

 "Can I drive?" 

 The last Darlene had heard, Jonathan had moved back to Smallville with
his city-bred wife, and they had no children. There had been talk, but
she'd dismissed it. Apparently it was true, the Kents had adopted. 

 "And the house down the road. Lana is starting school too," Darlene was
told. 

 Lana, Darlene knew. Everybody knew Lana. Darlene sniffed derisively. The
child would probably be one of the balkers and the school would get an
angry phone call from Nell Potter. Darlene had driven Nell and Laura to
school too. Nell had been an insufferable brat. 

 Oh, well. At least Darlene would get a few days of exposure to the latest
generation. 

 She climbed into her bus, adjusted the mirrors to her liking, and propped
her route map up on the dashboard behind the bobble-head kitty with the
sunglasses. It had been a gift from one of her older kids the previous
year, one of the ones who graduated up to high school and no longer rode
with the elementary and junior high kiddies. 

 "A witch has to have a cat," she'd said, and gave Darlene a hug. 

 Darlene petted the kitty and set out from the parking lot before the
first light of dawn broke the skies.  

 It went well. Most of the kids were returning, and had already met
Darlene. One little tot, who actually seemed too young for kindergarten,
ran screaming back to his mother the very second Darlene opened the door.
She doubted he even got a good look at her. She chatted with his mother,
who told her to go on after several failed attempts to console the weeping
child. Thus, when Darlene pulled up at the end of Hickory Lane, she was
already behind. 

 The Kents, all three, stood there waiting. Jonathan was hard to mistake
for anyone else. He was still tow-headed and freckle-faced, and grinned
his toothy white grin as he leaned in the door to greet Darlene. 

 "I like the socks," he said, and winked. 

 Darlene suppressed her own grin. "I'm late," she gruffed. "What do you
have for me?" 

 "This," Jonathan said, guiding his small charge forward. "Is Clark.
Clark, say hello to Ms. Ferris." 

 Clark did not say hello. Clark did not say anything at all, and instead
stared at her with eyes the size of small planets and a horrified look on
his face. 

 Uh-oh, Darlene thought. Here's a screamer. 

 "Cat got your tongue?" she asked. 

 He started, and amazingly, his eyes got bigger. The saying was apparently
not familiar to him. He eyed Darlene's bobbing kitty and clamped his mouth
shut even tighter. If the cat had not yet gotten his tongue, he wasn't
going to let it. 

 Martha Kent's red head appeared in the open doorway. "He's shy," she
explained. "It's okay, Clark, climb aboard." 

 He turned and looked at her with an expression that clearly indicated
he'd rather be rolled in batter and deep fried than get on Darlene's bus,
but he obeyed. He was a relatively small child compared to the other
five-year-olds and his bag was almost bigger than himself. It seemed to
give him no problem, however, as he hauled it up the steps and scurried
past Darlene as if he was afraid she'd grab him and eat him. He sat down
in a seat toward the back, as far away from Darlene as he could manage. In
the mirror above her head Darlene watched him watching his parents until
the bus rounded a curve in the road and he could no longer see them.
Darlene waited for him to shriek, but he didn't. He simply turned around
in his seat and sat very quietly. Darlene turned her attention back to the
road. 

 She stopped at the Potter's house, and exchanged glares with Nell when
the door was opened. Lana was dressed in a pink ruffled party dress that
she was clearly disgusted with, and wearing a necklace that Darlene found
tawdry and unsuitable for a child of five. Fortunately the girl was
nothing like Nell, and found Darlene not the slightest bit intimidating.
She climbed on the bus, said hello to Darlene, and plopped down in a seat
as if she'd been riding the bus every day of her very young life. Darlene
watched her warily for a minute, noting that she'd chosen the seat next to
Clark, who was staring at her as if she were a two headed alien from
another planet. Lana ignored him, and sat squirming and scratching in her
uncomfortable dress. Darlene put the bus in gear and moved on. 

 Darlene was just getting comfortable, and picking up speed in an effort
to get back on schedule, when all hell broke loose. She heard some
"ewwws!" from the back and glanced in her mirror to see Lana standing up
and waving a hand for attention. 

 "Ms. Ferris, Clark just threw up." 

 "WHAT?!?!?!"  

 The smell wafted up from the back. 

 "Oh for crying out...." 

 There were tears, shouting and general pandemonium as Darlene turned the
bus around and headed back toward Hickory Lane. There was a delay at the
Potter house as Lana disembarked to change clothes and Darlene said a few
things back to the few things Nell shouted at her, none of those things
being things that should have been overheard by the kids on the bus. (Who
were pressed to the windows in an effort to hear the taboo language.)
There was a further delay at the Kent Farm as Clark disembarked onto his
nose in the dirt, which generated blood, which in turn generated shrieks
of the "I'm being attacked by an axe wielding maniac" kind. Darlene was
perplexed by the reaction. ("Hasn't he ever skinned a knee or anything
before?") 

 By the time Darlene pulled into the parking lot, she was over an hour
late, the school switchboard had been inundated with complaints from Nell
Potter, and the bus stank so badly every kid on it staggered out looking
decidedly green around the gills themselves. 

 As she sagged heavily against the side of her bus, wondering what in
God's name she'd ever done to deserve such a day, Lana appeared to give
Darlene some good news. 

 "At least I didn't have to wear that stupid dress. This one is lots
better."  

 Ten years later found Darlene still driving the high school bus, a bus
full of kids who were much less respectful, but too frightened of their
parents to be overly obnoxious. Darlene had a lot of clout, and one word
of complaint from her could result in serious punishment such as being
banned from the bus or serving after-school detention. Frequently such
punishment resulted in long walks to and from school, and additional pain
and suffering inflicted upon them by the parental units. 

 September, 2001. Darlene received her route, and noticed immediately that
once again she had a stop at the end of Hickory Lane. Clark Kent was
starting high school. 

 Darlene was old, but she had a memory like an elephant. For ten years
she'd thought of Clark as "Puketart" due to the stomach contents he'd left
behind on her bus, and rued the day he'd once again climb up those steps.
This was despite the fact she had heard no other negative reports
regarding Clark from any other driver over the years. Darlene was
definitely a "one strike" sort of individual. 

 She pulled up at the end of Hickory Lane. 

 And counted to ten. 

 When, after ten seconds no one appeared at the door, she wrestled the bus
into gear, and stomped on the gas. The bus lurched forward. Darlene
shifted into second, then third, gradually picking up speed away from the
Kent farm. 

 "But Ms. Ferris...." Somebody from the back of the bus called.
"Clark...." 

 The bus roared as Darlene's foot came down harder on the gas pedal,
drowning out whatever the voice had to say to her. She knew what the voice
was trying to tell her anyway, because in her rear-view mirror a tall boy
with a knapsack had burst out of the lane onto the road and now stood
there staring at the ass-end of her bus as it rounded the curve toward
Lana's house. 

 Ha! Take that, Puketart. 

 Darlene grinned, speeding along until she arrived at the Potter residence
where she slammed on the brakes and brought the bus to a skidding halt
right in front of Nell Potter herself. The sound of books sliding off
laps, and pens flying from hands, was music to Darlene's ears, as were the
cries of injustice from the gallery behind her. They didn't have any
homework yet, this was just a dress rehearsal. In Darlene's opinion
homework should be done at home, not at the last minute on the bus ride to
school. Her stops tended to get her point across quite well. Nobody did
homework on Darlene's bus, and it was best that her kids be reminded of
that fact. 

 Her bobble-head kitty nodded in agreement. Darlene opened the door and
smiled at Nell. 

 "Where's Lana?" 

 "At school." Nell said crisply. "She rode in with Whitney. He has a new
truck." 

 "Well la-ti-dah," Darlene snorted, and slammed the door in Nell's face. 

 Nell stomped off toward the house, no doubt to make a phone call. 

 This is turning out to be a very good day, Darlene thought, as she pulled
away. 

 The bus continued on its way, turning off onto the paved highway and
picking up speed. Cornfields ran by the windows on either side, dipping
and rising over the hills in a sea of green and gold. The tassels seemed
to wave as they passed. A flock of crows flew up from one field as Darlene
honked her horn at an elderly man on a tractor. Mr. Peterson waved back
and the kids shouted and waved from the windows. 

 THUD!!!! 

 Something hit the top of the bus - hard. 

 Darlene jumped. Instinctively her eyes went to the mirror, only to find
her kids looking as perplexed as she. It could have been an act. 

 "What was that?" she roared. "Who's fooling around?" 

 "Nobody, Ms. Ferris." 

 Darlene's eyes narrowed. Several of the kids cringed back in their seats.


 "Maybe it was a meteor," someone suggested. 

 The bus grew silent. As little as they had been on the day of the meteor
shower, nobody in Smallville took it lightly. Darlene was glad Lana was
not on the bus. 

 "Not likely." A blonde girl - Chloe? - piped up. Her lips parted in a
huge grin. "Maybe it was a really, really big bird." 

 "A big bird turd," someone else suggested. 

 The kids busted up laughing. Darlene ducked her head to keep from
revealing her own good humor. 

 "All right, that's enough." 

 The rest of the journey went without incident. Darlene arrived at school
ahead of schedule, and parked the bus. Her kids trundled out, in good
spirits now on this first day of school. Later in the year there would be
more grumbling. They waved good-bye and Darlene picked up her log book to
make note of any incidents and/or time delays she may have experienced.
She noted the thumping sound, suggesting that the mechanic take a look to
see if there was anything amiss with her bus, and was just about to log
her time when something caught her attention. 

 Darlene looked out the window just in time to see Clark Kent walk into
the parking lot, cross in front of her bus, and in the front gates of the
school, joining the Ross boy and their little blonde-headed girlfriend in
the yard. 

 "How in the hell...." Darlene blinked, turned to look out the back window
of the bus, and then out at Clark again. 

 "Martha must have given him a ride."  

 Clark was waiting at the stop the next morning. Darlene pulled up to him
and opened the door somewhat reluctantly. The boy just stood there. 

 "Hey!" Darlene barked. "Wake up!" 

 He blinked, and stared up at her. "Oh, sorry." 

 Darlene eyed him carefully. "What did you have for breakfast?" 

 "Huh? Why?" 

 "I want to know what I might have to mop up later." Darlene put the bus
in gear and tromped one Converse-clad foot down on the gas pedal, making
the big vehicle lurch forward and Clark to stumble backward into an
unoccupied seat. 

 She kept an eye on him the whole way to school, but he simply sat staring
out the window, looking as if someone had poisoned his puppy. Darlene had
serious doubts that anyone could look more morose. He hadn't looked like
that yesterday. She wondered what was going on, but refused to pry.
Instead she tried to lighten the mood. 

 "So," she asked him, as he was leaving. "If I drive this thing off the
Loeb bridge, are ya gonna jump in and haul my old ass out?" 

 Clark looked perplexed. "Huh?" 

 Darlene rolled her eyes and wondered if her bus wasn't just a tad too
long for Clark Kent. Perhaps he needed to be assigned to the abridged
version instead. 

 "Nevermind. Get to class, Puketart. You'll be late."  

 Darlene had a secret log book. In it she kept track of Clark's tardiness
relative to the times he missed the bus. One would assume that the black
marks Principal Kwan, and later, Principal Reynolds, jotted down in their
ledgers each time Clark was late for homeroom, would coincide with the
times he did not make an appearance at the bus stop. Or, if he just missed
the ten second window Darlene gave him, the times she left him standing in
her dust. What Darlene found was that there was no pattern. Sometimes
those days jibed, but most of the time they didn't. Clark missed Darlene's
bus at least every other day during his freshman and sophomore years at
SHS. He was officially tardy far, far less than that. 

 Some of those times she could say he probably caught a ride with someone,
or perhaps (after he turned sixteen) he drove himself in to school. 

 Yet frequently Darlene would catch sight of Clark casually walking
through the gates just as she was pulling in - and neither Martha's car,
nor Jonathan's truck would be in the student lot. It bothered her so much
to see this that for the first time in nearly thirty years, Darlene called
in sick to work. At the age of sixty-three, Darlene Ferris became Secret
Agent Ferris, drove her car down to the Kent Farm, and parked in concealed
location behind a small stand of trees with a pair of binoculars at hand. 

 There she waited. 

 A few minutes passed before she saw a cloud of dust moving down the road.
Presently the snub nose of a big yellow bus could be seen rounding the
corner. It stopped at the end of Hickory Lane, and waited. It waited far
longer than Darlene would have, and then moved slowly off down the road
when no one arrived. 

 Not two seconds later, Clark appeared. He jogged down to the end of the
lane, watched the cloud of dust that was his bus disappear in the
distance, and sighed. 

 Darlene watched him carefully. He stood there for only a moment. 

 Darlene blinked. 

 Clark was gone. 

 "Shitfire!" 

 Scrambling for her keys, Darlene cranked her old Chevy into life. With a
gnashing of gears and a whine of an engine not used to hurrying anywhere,
the Chevy peeled out from concealment. Darlene ignored the speed limits as
she zipped past her bus and onto the paved road. The Chevy's back tires
skidded. Darlene jerked at the wheel, bringing the car back into control,
back up to speed and back in the race. 

 She was sitting in the school parking lot, waiting, when the bus arrived.


 Clark got off of it. 

 "What?!?!" 

 Darlene got out of her car and collared another student. 

 "Hey, Ms. Ferris. They said you were si..." 

 "Did you see Clark Kent get on the bus?" 

 The startled freshman looked puzzled. 

 "Tall kid, dark hair...." 

 "Oh, him. Yeah. He got on at my stop today. Guess he missed the bus again
and his mom dropped him off or somethin'. " 

 Darlene let her informant go. "Or something," she muttered. 

 That afternoon, Darlene reported for work, and Clark reported for his
ride home. He was, in fact, early, and Darlene met him at the door before
any of the other kids arrived. 

 "I don't know how you're doing it, Puketart, but I'm going to find out
your secret." 

 "Duh-doing what?" He cringed away from her slightly as she waggled a
finger under his nose. "Whu-what secret?" 

 Darlene just waggled her finger. "I'm going to get you," she said. "Mark
my words, I'm going to get you." 

 And your little dog too - well, if you had a dog. Why don't you have a
dog? All boys have a dog. God, you're a weird kid.  

 There was a bus in the middle of the Kents' cornfield. 

 Inspector Darlene had found footprints in the dirt, and some broken
stalks. Clark was cutting through the fields. 

 It still didn't explain how exactly he got to school before Darlene did,
but it did explain where he was going when he vanished so quickly. Nobody
could run fast enough to cover the distance between the school and Hickory
Lane to get there before the school bus, even with the stops it made and
Clark's shortcut taken into account. At this juncture Darlene didn't care
about explanations. She just wanted to tie a knot in her nemesis' hose. 

 So she'd convinced another driver to help her by taking the first half of
her route. She'd pick up the second half later, after she sprang a little
surprise on her speedy little friend. Being as careful as she could NOT to
destroy too much of the Kents' crop, and calculating just where Clark
entered and exited the field by his footprints in the soil, Darlene
situated her bus directly in his path. The vegetation concealed the golden
yellow bus quite well. If one wasn't expecting a bus in the cornfield, one
could be quite surprised. 

 Darlene really wanted to give Clark a surprise. 

 She waited. 

 And waited. 

 Until finally, in the distance, she heard the familiar sound of a bus
approaching and she raised her binoculars to confirm it. Sure enough,
there, at the end of Hickory Lane, was a Smallville High School bus. It
was stopped, waiting, a trickle of vapor swirling up from its tailpipe
into the cool morning air. Nobody came. Darlene cackled quietly to herself
as the bus moved away with a squeak and a rumble. She counted to twenty.
She saw movement. Clark stumbled to a stop at the end of the lane. He'd
missed the bus - again. 

 He was there. 

 Darlene blinked. 

 He was not there. 

 Two seconds later she felt a rush of air. She saw the corn part before
her like the waters of the red sea, and all of a sudden there was a loud,
pealing, glass shattering BANG! 

 It was indeed glass shattering. Darlene screamed as the glass in the
windows of the driver's side of the bus exploded from their frames. The
whole bus rocked, lurching sideways onto the passenger's side wheels as
the driver's side wheels left the ground. Darlene screeched. The bus
hovered in the air for the span of a breath, during which Darlene was sure
it would tip over completely onto its side. She hung on for dear life to
the big round steering wheel. Frantic, she threw her weight to the side as
if her insignificant few pounds could shift the tide and right the
vehicle, and maybe it did because the bus slowly began to fall back onto
all four wheels. The shocks protested as it fell the last few inches in a
rapid descent and hit the ground with a jolt. 

 Darlene clutched at her chest. Her heart was pounding. 

 Dear Lord, I'm an old woman....a crotchity old woman to be sure, but.... 

 What had hit her? 

 "Whoa!" 

 Darlene's eyes narrowed at the sound of his voice. 

 "Who put that there?" 

 All thoughts of a heart attack vanquished, Darlene threw open the door
and hastened out into the corn. She rounded the front of the bus to find
Clark picking himself up out of the dirt with a confused expression on his
face. Her finger stabbed out at him. 

 "I GOT YOU!" Darlene yelled. "I. Got. You!" She turned around in a little
victory dance, an old woman in Converse sneakers and a faded black dress
shaking her booty. 

 Clark stared at her, slack jawed and wide eyed. 

 Darlene looked at him. Then she looked at her bus and her grin faded. 

 He cowered under her glare. 

 "YOU DENTED MY BUS!!!!"   

 September, 2003 

 A big yellow bus pulled up to the end of Hickory Lane, Smallville,
Kansas, and stopped. 

 It sat there idling, and after a minute or so, a tall young man came
jogging down the lane. He stopped at the door to the bus and it opened. 

 Darlene grinned. 

 Clark grinned back. 

 "Ready," she said. 

 "Set," Clark replied. 

 "GO!" 

 The door slammed. The bus' engine roared. Clark watched it go around the
curve in a cloud of dust. 

 Darlene was sixty-four years old. At the end of the semester she would
retire. 

 Today, and every day until she handed in her keys.... 

 Clark let her beat him.   
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