She rolled her eyes at his uniform.
Called him a “nobody in a seat.”
But tonight, his bus pulled up in the snow—and their dog was sitting on it alone.
No driver. No passengers. Just one silent message.
Her legs gave out when she saw where the route ended.
🔹 PART 1 – Call Me Driver
Her name was Emily Jo Farrow, and she hadn’t cried since her high school graduation—until the dog showed up without him.
It was a Thursday, early December. First snow came fast to Syracuse, blanketing the cracked sidewalks and rusted mailbox outside their duplex on Spencer Street. Emily had come home from college for winter break, three days earlier than she said she would. Finals had ended, and she didn’t want to say it, but she missed the way the kitchen smelled like Folgers and frying onions.
Her dad wasn’t home yet. She figured he was still on Route 7, making the last loop past the community center and across Westcott Street before parking the city bus back at the garage. Same loop for twenty-seven years. Same seat. Same uniform. Same half-packed thermos of Campbell’s and saltine crackers.
He used to wave to her when she was little, if she stood on the corner by the old bakery at 5:17 p.m.
By high school, she stopped showing up. And by freshman year of college, she stopped answering most of his calls.
But he never stopped waiting.
She opened the fridge—just cans of Diet Rite and half a meatloaf. She left the meatloaf and grabbed the Diet Rite, cracked it open, and leaned on the counter. Then she heard it—claws on pavement.
A light tapping at the front door.
She didn’t think much of it until she opened it and saw Sammy, their old mutt, paws soaked, a dusting of snow on his wiry brown coat.
But no Dad.
Her stomach tensed. Sammy was twelve, arthritic, half-blind, and terrified of traffic. He hadn’t wandered off the porch in two years. Yet there he was, trembling, wearing something around his neck.
It was a torn bus transfer slip. Threaded through his collar. Smudged but legible.
Route 7 — Final Stop
S. Bay Bus Yard
Emily blinked. The old paper was damp but real. Her fingers started to shake. She grabbed her coat, barely pulled on boots, and flew out the door.
The snow thickened as she reached the main road. No buses passed. She stood at the shelter, heart hammering, watching the orange LED scroll by on every distant route sign but not Route 7.
Then it appeared.
Empty.
Engine idling low.
And Sammy, sitting inside. Alone. On the first passenger seat. Tail wagging once, then still.
Emily’s breath caught. She climbed aboard.
The lights buzzed faintly. Plastic seats glistened with melting snowflakes. And in the driver’s seat?
No one.
Her eyes darted. There was something resting on the seat. A folded piece of yellow-lined paper. She picked it up, slowly. Recognized the handwriting immediately—loopy, slanted, all-caps.
EMILY—IF YOU FOUND THE DOG, THEN I HOPE YOU FOUND ME TOO.
She dropped into the nearest seat.
He never left notes. Not once in her life.
The bus jolted—just a stutter from the brakes, maybe—but it felt like something bigger, like a memory tugging her backward.
And then she remembered something.
Something she hadn’t thought about in years.
One snowy night when she was nine, she sat behind his seat for his whole route.
He pointed out who was alone. Who had just buried a wife. Who used to teach music.
Every person had a name. A story.
He told her that was the real job.
Not the wheel.
Not the route.
Just getting people home.
And now he wasn’t.
She clutched the note tighter, looked out at the falling snow, and whispered, “Where are you?”
Then the radio crackled behind the dash.
One word.
“Bay.”
The final stop.
She turned. Sammy barked once, then sat again, eyes fixed forward. Waiting.
🔹 PART 2 – Call Me Driver
The road to South Bay Bus Yard was quiet. Plowed, but not salted.
She drove her dad’s beat-up Ford Focus, Sammy curled in the passenger seat like he hadn’t just walked home alone with a message around his neck.
Emily gripped the steering wheel tighter than she needed to. Her palms were damp. The yellow-lined note sat folded on her thigh. She hadn’t read beyond the first sentence. Couldn’t yet.
When the gate to the depot came into view—low chain-link, a blinking red security light, no one manning the booth—she slowed.
There, parked outside the bay doors, was his bus.
Route 7.
#1935. Same number since she was old enough to read.
It looked… still. Too still.
She stopped the car. Sammy whimpered. Snow fell like ash, lazy and soft. The air held that sharp silence only winter knew.
Emily left the engine running and stepped out.
The bus door was open. Not wide. Just enough.
She climbed the steps slowly. Sammy followed, tail low.
He wasn’t in the driver’s seat.
Not this time.
But there was something left on the dashboard—a cassette tape. Labeled in blue marker: “CALL ME DRIVER.”
Under it, a tiny sticky note:
Play this where it started. If you remember where that is.
Her knees went weak.
She remembered.
They used to park at Burnet Avenue and East Raynor Street when she was little. Not an official stop—just an empty corner lot across from the old music shop where the street kids tagged the dumpsters.
He’d bring her there during snow delays, when her mom’s shift at the diner overlapped with the start of his route.
They’d eat oatmeal in Styrofoam cups and listen to Paul Harvey on the radio.
He called it The First Stop.
The one before passengers.
The one before the world got on and made him small.
Back in the car, the cassette rested in her palm like something sacred.
She fumbled to pull the old stereo forward—her dad had never upgraded, said “tapes don’t scratch like CDs”—and slid the cassette in.
A small static crackle.
Then his voice.
“If you’re hearing this, I guess you made it.”
It wasn’t sad. Not exactly. His voice sounded… steady. Warmer than she expected. Like he was trying to say something that didn’t need to be rewritten.
“I’m not missing. I’m not dying. I just figured… maybe it’s time to let you see what I see.”
“I never had much, Em. Not college. Not retirement plans. Not big speeches or money for dreams. But I had my seat. And I had you.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. Sammy rested his chin on her leg.
“Every person that gets on that bus? They’ve got ghosts too. Kids they lost. Parents they failed. Lovers who walked away. And they ride with it all in silence.”
“And me? I just get to hold the wheel while they carry it.”
There was a long pause on the tape.
Then the soft sound of him humming. A tune she hadn’t heard in years.
“The Dutchman’s Not the Kind of Man…”
The Michael Smith folk song he played every Christmas.
She used to think it was just noise.
Now it broke something inside her.
Burnet Avenue was nearly deserted when she arrived.
The old music store was boarded up. Snow clung to the windows like frostbitten lace. The lot was half ice, half memory.
She pulled in and turned off the car.
Then she heard it.
The squeak of tires.
A second bus pulled in behind her.
She stepped out slowly.
The doors hissed open.
And there he was.
Wearing his uniform. Same wool hat. Same lunchbox.
James Farrow.
63.
City bus driver.
Father of one.
Widower for fifteen years.
“Hey, kid,” he said.
No apology.
No speech.
Just that quiet, tired voice that once tucked her in with stories about the “passenger who smelled like peppermint” or “the man who whistled without teeth.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why all this?”
He looked down at Sammy, then back at her.
“Because I didn’t know how else to make you see me.”
She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. The world slowed.
“I thought if I told you, it’d sound like begging. And I don’t want your pity, Em. I just wanted you to know—before I stop driving next year—what this seat meant.”
“You’re retiring?” she whispered.
“Next month.”
Silence again. Except for the wind brushing snow off the roof of the car behind them.
Then he held something out.
A small, worn envelope.
Her name on the front in his handwriting.
Inside?
A letter of recommendation. For a city scholarship.
Dated four months ago.
Signed by three of his regular passengers.
A teacher. A social worker. A librarian.
“She deserves a place bigger than this,” one had written. “But she’ll never forget where she came from. Because of him.”
Emily covered her mouth.
Tears. Not the first in a while. But the first that didn’t burn.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I… I didn’t know.”
He nodded, eyes glassy.
“You weren’t supposed to yet.”
🔹 PART 3 – Call Me Driver
Emily didn’t sleep that night.
She sat at the kitchen table, Sammy curled at her feet, the cassette rewound and played three more times. The tape hissed between his sentences like it was holding back more stories. Maybe it was.
Her father was in the next room, asleep on the recliner, snoring soft and steady, still wearing his bus jacket.
There was something about seeing him like that—smaller, almost—that made her ache. Not from pity, but something worse. Shame.
She had called him a “nobody in a seat” once. Loud enough for her friends to hear. She remembered the way his face didn’t flinch. Just nodded. And she’d thought he didn’t care.
Now she knew better.
Morning came pale and cold. A dull sun hovered over the rooftops like it was trying not to wake anyone.
Her dad was gone by the time she got up. Route 7, again.
Emily sat with his letter in her lap, rereading the signatures. All those names. Strangers. People she had never met, but who knew her enough to write things like:
“She’s smart, but it’s her heart that’s rare. Just like her father.”
And:
“Some days, he’s the only human kindness I see.”
She looked down at Sammy. “What else don’t I know, boy?”
He thumped his tail gently. Then sneezed.
By noon, she was at the downtown depot.
The buses lined up like tired soldiers. Same faded blue stripe. Same fogged windows.
Emily stepped into the lobby. It smelled like old coffee and engine oil. A few drivers loitered near the vending machines. One of them—a woman in her fifties with tight curls and deep laugh lines—looked up.
“You lost?” she asked, kindly.
“I’m James Farrow’s daughter,” Emily said.
The woman’s face changed. Not surprise. Something softer. Recognition.
“Oh,” she said, stepping closer. “You’re Emily?”
She nodded.
“I’m Carla. I drove the midnight loop. Your dad—he’s a legend around here.”
Emily smiled, embarrassed. “He never says much.”
“That’s ‘cause he doesn’t need to,” Carla said. “You ever been on his route?”
“Not in years.”
Carla tapped her clipboard. “Come on then. We’re doing a short loop now. Route 7A. It’s his break hour. But I think there’s someone you should meet.”
The first passenger got on at 12:14 sharp.
An older woman in a maroon coat, holding a paper bag and a small bouquet of plastic flowers. Carla greeted her like an old friend.
“This is Miss Della,” she told Emily. “She rides every Thursday. Hospital visit.”
Della gave Emily a once-over. “You the daughter?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Della nodded. “Your father prayed with me when my son passed. Sat in the front seat and held my hand ‘til I could breathe again.”
Emily blinked. “He never told me that.”
“He wouldn’t,” Della said, smiling. “He thinks small kindness isn’t news.”
The next stop brought on a young man in a hoodie, headphones hanging around his neck. He looked rough around the edges, with tired eyes and a face that hadn’t seen sleep.
“This here’s Tyrell,” Carla said. “Fresh outta the halfway house.”
Tyrell looked up. “That your dad, Mr. Farrow?”
“Yes.”
Tyrell nodded slowly. “He let me ride free the day I got out. Said I looked like someone who needed mercy more than tickets.”
Emily felt her throat tighten.
“He tell you ‘bout the notebook?” he added.
“What notebook?”
Tyrell grinned. “He keeps a little book in his lunch bag. Names of passengers. Notes about birthdays, anniversaries, who needs a hello. Guy’s got more memory than a preacher.”
At the last stop, Carla parked and turned off the engine. The bus groaned with rest.
“I’ll show you something,” she said, motioning Emily forward.
They stepped off the bus, walked around to the driver side, and entered the garage through a side door.
The walls inside were covered in pegboards and tools. Oil-stained concrete. The hum of heaters overhead.
Then Carla pointed.
A corkboard.
Covered in notes.
Sticky notes. Torn scraps. Printouts. All addressed to Driver Farrow.
“Thank you for waiting that extra minute.”
“You made my morning with that dumb joke.”
“You’re the only person who sees me.”
And one, near the bottom, printed in large bold font:
“Because of you, I got sober.”
Emily stared at the board.
Tears welled up again.
“I never knew,” she whispered.
“No one ever does,” Carla said. “That’s how service works. You don’t measure it while it’s happening.”
Emily stepped closer, hands trembling. One note caught her eye. A child’s crayon drawing. A bus with stick figures. A dog in the window. And a heart.
She reached out and gently pulled it from the board.
On the back, in shaky handwriting:
“Thank you for taking my daughter and me to safety that night.”
Carla looked at her. “He never told you that story either?”
“No,” Emily said, her voice small.
Carla put a hand on her shoulder. “He doesn’t carry regret, Em. But he carries people.”
That night, Emily met her father on the porch.
He was tired. His steps slower than usual. Sammy barked twice and settled beside his boot.
Emily held out the notebook.
“I found it,” she said.
He sat down with a long sigh. “Figured you would.”
She opened to the page marked by a folded paperclip.
Her name.
Every birthday.
Every award.
Every time she cried and wouldn’t say why.
Notes from age six to twenty.
“I didn’t think you were watching,” she said.
“I always was.”
She looked up at him.
“I’m staying for Christmas,” she whispered. “If that’s okay.”
He smiled.
“First stop, right?” he said.
She nodded.
Then, quietly: “Call me Driver.”