Renegade Bus

Check out this piece by Josh Peter, who should have won the Pulitzer for feature writing a few years back. Here's to this year.

"Across the street from the Astrodome, in the alcove of a motel where the night manager sits behind bulletproof glass, a young man leaned against a faded stucco wall.

A grin crept beneath his wispy mustache when a stranger approached.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked.

His name is Jabar Gibson.

The first bus to arrive in Houston loaded with Hurricane Katrina evacuees from New Orleans was not operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency or any other government authority. It was an Orleans Parish school bus, its driver too young to drink but already a convicted car thief. His cargo: 60 of New Orleans' poorest residents, the youngest a week-old infant and the oldest 59.

It was known as the "renegade bus." Gibson, 20, was its renegade driver."