From the Vault: Vigilant (from 2/12/12)

She waited at the bus stop every day at the same time, hat in hand, face down-turned as if in prayer. She waited for someone who would never show up, not that she ever lost faith. Others would pass by her at this time, she was definitely noticeable, but no one dared to stop and ask her purpose. If there was a commonality to all who lived in that town, it was the privacy was understood. No one dared to stop and ask her purpose because it would have been considered rude.

Most would have considered her a pretty girl, with her shoulder-length auburn curls framing a petite heart-shaped face. Her expressive eyes peeked out from lashes long and unteased, startlingly blue and piercing. Often when she was elsewhere in public people would stare because it felt like they knew her from somewhere. Not quite the girl next door, but she almost could have been. She was oblivious to the stares, though, because she was often preoccupied, her mind a crowded city of its own.

Her vigil was odd for more than one reason. For starters, the bus stop she stood at every day at the same time was an unused one. No bus was ever going to stop there, that station having been closed for the previous six months before she began her routine. A second oddment was her style of dress. Whereas she wore jeans and t-shirts elsewhere in her public life, at the bus stop the only suitable attire was a long white dress. Indeed, it looked exactly like a stylish modern wedding dress. It stole your eyes away, the first time you saw it, from the haunted look on her face.

So there she stood, at 6:00 PM of a Monday, of a Tuesday, of a Wednesday, until the week was completed, and then she would start all over again. Weather was no obstacle, rain or shine she was at that exact spot, and she stood there for exactly 18 minutes, no more, no less. At 6:18 she would turn and walk away. How she knew the exact time was beyond the spectators’ guesses as she wore no watch and no clock was visible from that corner, yet somehow it happened like clockwork.

Then one day she didn’t show up. It was like a rift in the space-time continuum, like saying that the sun didn’t peek over the horizon in the morning. I remember standing there looking at that spot for precisely 18 minutes that day, wondering and worrying, then leaving as she would have, when that time was up. That next day I was back there, even though she was nowhere to be seen, and I wore my white dress. I couldn’t tell you the compunction I had even then, but now it’s a force of habit. I have never seen her again, but it has ceased to matter. I carry on her daily vigil until she returns. I wait for that bus that never comes.

Sam