Samuel Osei had driven a city bus for thirty years, and he knew every street by heart. What he did not know was how to read a word. He had hidden it all his life, so skillfully that nobody had ever suspected, and when someone handed him a note, he had a sentence ready: "I forgot my glasses. Can you read it for me?"
One morning a letter came from his granddaughter Grace, who was nine and lived in another city. Her handwriting was big and round. Samuel held the envelope for a long time. Then he put it in his jacket pocket and carried it there for thirty-one days. At every red light he took it out and looked at it, as if it might start to speak, and then he put it back.
On the thirty-first day he noticed a poster at the bus depot: "Free evening reading class. Tuesdays at seven." He drove past the school three times, a man who could find any street in the city and could not find a door. The fourth time he went in and sat at the very back. The teacher, Ms. Lindqvist, looked at him as though she had been expecting him. "Everyone in this room started with the first letter," she said.
After four months Samuel sat at his kitchen table, took out the letter and read it aloud, with his finger under each word: "Dear Grandpa, I lost a tooth. When are you coming? I will show you. Love, Grace." He read it three times. Then he took a pen and wrote his own answer, one careful letter at a time. It took him an hour. "Dear Grace, I am coming on Saturday. I have something to show you too."
