Cora: Last bus out of Cobre, folks, and she is running right on time for once. Mile marker two fourteen coming up, then the long grade down to the junction.
Javier: How long till we hit the junction, miss?
Cora: Forty minutes, give or take. This old girl climbs like she means it.
Sully: She has got opinions, this one. I rode her twin sister up to the Bisbee shaft back when I still had knees worth mentioning.
Ana: You mined copper up there?
Sully: Thirty-one years. Retired now. My lungs still file complaints every morning, but my pension buys good coffee.
Victor: Speaking of buying, friends, can I interest anyone in the finest multi-tool this side of the state line? Seventeen functions, fits in a shirt pocket.
Mabel: Young man, I am eighty-one years old and I have survived this long without seventeen functions.
Dottie: Shh, easy now. Lily finally fell asleep. Sorry. Please, go on.
Cora: Everybody hold on a second. Do you hear that?
((bus engine sputtering out - engine_stall_01.wav))
Javier: Was that the engine?
Cora: That was the engine giving up. All right, nobody panic. I am pulling her onto the shoulder by mile marker two fourteen.
Ana: Are we safe here?
Cora: Flat shoulder, good visibility. But she is dead, folks. I mean truly dead. And there is no signal out here. Not a single bar.
Victor: Then we walk. The junction cannot be more than, what, ten miles?
Cora: The relay station is five miles back the way we came, and I am the one walking it. Company policy and common sense.
Sully: Then you are taking me with you. I know the old mining road. It cuts two miles off, and I know where the wash crosses it.
Cora: You have got a flashlight?
Victor: Take mine. Industrial grade, part of the deluxe sample kit. No charge.
Sully: Much obliged. Everybody stay with the bus, stay warm, and do not let the kid touch the radio dials.
Javier: I heard that.
Ana: I will keep an eye on everyone. I am a nurse. Organizing worried people is half the job.
((thunder rolling - thunder_01.wav @ far))
Mabel: Was that thunder?
Dottie: Storms come fast out here. Lily hates the loud ones.
Ana: Then we will make this bus the quietest place in the county. Javier, you have got a guitar in that case. Can you play something soft?
Javier: I only know three songs all the way through.
Mabel: Then play them twice. Slowly.
((bed: rain drumming on the bus roof - rain_roof_01.wav))
Victor: Well. That escalated.
Dottie: The wash. Sully said the wash crosses the road behind us. If it floods...
Ana: Cora and Sully are already past it. They know the high ground. Our job is to sit tight and stay dry.
Mabel: When I taught school in Cobre, the roof leaked right over my desk every spring. I used to tell the children the sky was taking attendance.
Javier: Did it work?
Mabel: Half of them stayed dry and all of them stayed. That was enough.
Victor: You know, I have driven this route selling tools for nine years. Never once been the customer who needed rescuing. Humbling.
Ana: You gave up your flashlight without being asked. That counts for something.
Dottie: Lily is still asleep. Through all of this. Babies know things.
((bed:end))
Javier: Listen. The rain is stopping.
Ana: And listen past it. Do you hear that?
((tow truck horn - truck_horn_01.wav @ far-right))
Cora: Morning, folks! Relay station had a pot of coffee and a tow truck with your name on it.
Sully: Five miles of mud and one very proud miner. The wash ran two feet deep behind us, but the mining road held.
Mabel: You two look like drowned coyotes.
Cora: The truck will tow us to the junction. Everybody keeps their seats, their stories, and their multi-tools.
Victor: For you, Cora, the deluxe model. On the house.
Cora: Last bus out of Cobre, folks. She always gets through. Same time tomorrow?