Colfax and 12th

Fifteen years ago was the last time the bus stopped at the corner of Colfax and 12th Street. Before that, workers would take it to the east side of town, near the river, where the meat packing plant was. I lived just down the block from the stop and I walked there with the twins to go to school. They lived in the mauve ranch-style across the street. Mom always said it looked like a hot dog. I didn’t care because they had a pool in their backyard.

Jerry, though I’m not sure that was his real name, would sometimes be there with a box of doughnuts for us kids. We were the only ones besides him who came to that bus stop, so he made a point to keep us company in case anything bad happened. He lived under a tarp in front of the abandoned tenements nearby and I never knew how he found the money for doughnuts.

I never did much as a kid. Friends came and went, the packing plant sifting through bodies in line with the school year. Families would arrive in August and leave in June, their kids in tow if they had any. The only consistent playmates I ever had were the twins, but they eventually had to leave too.

The bus routes changed after the packing plant shut down. Work shifted, priorities shifted, homes shifted and I had to wake up extra early to have my dad take me to school. The hot dog house had gone empty, and I had to go to the public pool if I wanted to swim. I went twice, and never again. The pool looked sickly green and made my stomach upset. I heard it closed the year after.

My family was one of the only ones who stayed in the area because my grandma was in the nursing home and we used a lot of the money to keep her there. Everyone else left and the houses sat desolate. I soon had nobody to play with. We didn’t have much money so I couldn’t really leave, I just went to college in the next town over. Grandma died soon after I graduated.

College brought love, or something like it, and love brought a child a year later. We weren’t married. We couldn’t buy a house if we were married but we stayed together, though I’m not exactly sure why. My parents had not moved out of their house, and the hot dog next door was for sale. We bought it and put a pool in the back.

I drove a car by then, and I passed by that bus stop every day, never looking at it, forgetting the consistency it used to be. I never knew Jerry would watch me drive by, knowing who I was, sitting with a box of donuts and eating them alone. He was found under his tarp three years ago. Nobody attended his funeral, not even me. I didn’t exactly remember who he was anyway.

The child was a girl. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most beautiful little girl. My parents were average, my school was average, my friends were average, even that old bus stop was average. I think it would even be fair to say my partner was average. But this child. This little girl. She was magical. Everything she touched turned to starlight. Her musical laugh, her squeals of glee and mischief. A life I had never felt filled my veins with gold. When I looked at her, I looked at a dream. As long as I was holding her, I was holding joy. Her fragility gave me a tenderness I never believed I had. To care for someone so much, to place so much value on them… I suppose that was my mistake. I placed all my life in the hands of child. Once that is gone, what could my life ever be?

She was three years old. She would still be ten because her birthday was in October, but she would turn eleven this year. I was dozing on the porch while she toddled in the driveway. I had fallen asleep at some point. When I woke up she was gone, the street was still. There was no sign that she was even there. I had tried to kill myself that night. My partner says they found me on the floor of the bathroom near an empty bottle of painkillers.

I’m alone in this house now, my partner had found someone else to live with, someone who loved them. The pool still sits in the back, going green with algae and hatching mosquito eggs in the summer. I haven’t opened her room in eight years. If I opened it, I would try to kill myself again, no matter what medication I was on, so I just leave it to collect dust.

The day was gray and cold, yet there was no chance for rain. The trees were without leaves and lawns were brown with scraggly grass. It was dismal in every sense of the word. My medication doesn’t seem to work on gray days and I was getting antsy in the house. The therapist says that walks are generally good for getting fresh air and clearing the mind, so I decided I would go on one.

I aimlessly strolled down the block, and I found myself on the corner of Colfax and 12th. The bench was still there, with the plastic awning over it. It wasn’t very clear anymore, just cloudy and scratched with a faint yellow tinge. Graffiti signatures covered it now and cigarette butts littered the ground. I sat on the bench and stared across the street at the boarded up buildings.

I checked my wallet and saw I had a twenty in it. I figured I could go and pick up some take out, even though the nearest place was across town. I’d drive, but my car got a flat and I didn’t have the tools to fix it. I’d call to get it fixed, but I haven’t paid for a phone service in years. I’d ask for help but my parents moved into a home due to dementia. I’d ask for help from work, but I haven’t been to work in weeks.

So I decided I’d walk. I looked up from my wallet, ready to get going and saw a bus, light blue, stopped in front of me. Here, on Colfax and 12th. I suppose they must have started the old routes back up again, but I’m not really sure why they would. Happy with the convenience, I dug a dollar in quarters from my jacket and give them to the driver.

The plastic seat was faded, and the cab smelt of smoke. There was nobody else on the bus but it looked like it was used a lot. The floor was dirty, the handles greasy and fingerprinted. The windows were cloudy in the corners, as if they hadn’t been washed for a long while. Some of the light bulbs in the cab were busted, so it was darker than usual.

Outside, the street lamps flicked on in orange glare. They wizzed by while I blinked away the blurring buildings. I found that in the moments of quiet, of which I have many, my time on this earth extends longer and longer. Items and ideas stretch like rubber bands, and as soon as I’m interrupted, the present snaps back into place.

Of course I wanted to see her again. But it is insulting to me to believe that she can come back. Hope prolongs torment, according to some guy. I have just resigned myself to believing that I will never know how to feel about it all. I’m not caught in Limbo, but I am swung constantly between Limbo, Hell, and Earth. What overwhelms me is the lack of physical presence. I can think of her all I want, I can dream and remember who she was. What is Hell for me is that I cannot hold her again. I cannot hear her and smell the curls of her hair. I cannot feel that laughter again.

She is gone, and I don’t know where she went. That’s what I can’t live with.

The bus stops, and the light jerk makes me shake my head. I was getting hungry so I make my way to the exit. The driver nods at me as I pass, his aviator sunglasses flashing in the dim cab light. It was nighttime so I was concerned that he couldn’t see where he was driving. I got off the bus quickly.

Before me was the bus stop, the one I was just at. I knew it was because Jerry was sitting on the bench, a pink box of donuts on his lap. I hadn’t spoken to him in over a decade. The sun was shining, strangely. It was cloudy when I left on my walk, and twilight was approaching. Now it seemed like it was just after breakfast. Jerry smiled up at me and offered me a doughnut. He had the maple long johns, which he knew I loved, and I grabbed one out of instinct. I stared at it for a while, and he kept smiling at me. I bit into it and my spirits lifted a little higher. It was a good doughnut.

“It’s been a while!” Jerry beamed. He set the box aside and patted the seat by him. “Have a seat!”

I sat down next to him and took another bite. Sugary frosting glazed my lips and I licked it away, relishing the sweetness. I felt new, like I had shed a gray skin on the bus and entered a world of color beyond. I took a deep breath of air. It smelled beautifully busy.

“You’ve come a long way, haven’t you!” It was more of a statement than anything. I nodded along as I chewed the last bite of my doughnut, and licked the rest of the glaze from my fingers. I didn’t really know what to say to that.

“It’s not often we get people at this stop. I seem to remember that you and those twins were the only ones who visited me.” He leaned back with a sigh. I kept nodding my head. I never really knew where those twins went, and I never really asked.

“I found her.” He looked at me with a faint smile. “This bus is for the lost, son. Whoever is lost, the bus finds them. Your daughter, she was lost wasn’t she? She toddled all the way down the block and sat right on this bench, next to me. Sniffling like a sick dog.” He burst into laughter.

“The bus came for her then. I would’ve tried to find you, but I didn’t know she was yours until she was gone. I’d feel guilty, but I’ve quit that years ago.” He chuckled again. “Just a block away from you. You almost had her! Maybe that’s why the bus took her. It knew you shouldn’t have been together. How can an irresponsible father truly love his daughter?”

I would have burst out in anger, but I had not overcome my years of guilt. I knew better than to protest. I reached in the box for another doughnut.

“And here you are! You’ve made it too, this little heaven we’ve made for ourselves. I’ve found there isn’t much difference. I was homeless then and I’m homeless now, which is fine by me. I guess I was never really lost until the end. Everyone here has found what they have been missing. Perhaps you might too. You might want to check out that old hot dog of yours though. She’s there, but I don’t know if she would want to see you. You did lose her after all.”

I finished my doughnut and got up. She was here. My fears, imaginations, thoughts. None of those mattered anymore to me. Relief I had not ever felt made my legs wobble. I almost got back on the bus. Just the fact that she was OK was enough, but I knew there was no going back. I had to see her, to hold her. I reached in my green jacket for the wallet and tossed the twenty at Jerry. He pocketed it with a toothy grin.

I made my way down the block. It seemed like all the houses had people in them. The yards were filled with children playing, mothers and fathers doing yard work or passing around lemonade. Friends in driveways checking out golf clubs or firing up grills. There were even some kids splashing in a kiddie pool. Many of the people I knew, some I didn’t. Old summer friends that came and went, finally settling down to live and love each other. I wanted to go up and shake all of their hands.

Soon I reached the mauve ranch-style- the hot dog. This was my house, and before that it was my friends house. It looked nothing like my house now. the paint was bright, windows clean. The grass was freshly cut and green, its fragrance drifting on the breeze.

As I neared, rounding the great tree in the yard, I looked in the sandbox and saw a girl, a little girl, singing her favorite song, pushing the curls from her eyes. Rosy cheeks pushed up in a smile, little white teeth shining, eyes sparkling with the joy of play and creation. She hadn’t seen me yet.

I stopped in the driveway, unable to move, like a wild animal in a spotlight. The little girl looked at me, studied my face for a bit, and pouted.

“I got lost, daddy.”

I couldn’t breath. Such a familiar tone, like I’d only been gone for an afternoon. Like I lost her at the mall and a mall cop holding her hand had returned her to me, or a cashier called my name over the intercom and I came running to the front of the store to see her, standing with teary eyes and a sad lip. She ran up to me and looked into my eyes. Then she smiled.

“But you found me. Do you want to play with me?”

I smiled back. We held hands as we walked to the sandbox. The light peeked through the leaves, dappling the hot dog house with a pool in the back, on the block with a bus stop on the corner of Colfax and 12th.

...

Police Report 415 for the city of Milltown.

-Filed on April 17th, 2008 at 9:26 p.m.

-Released on April 19th of 2008.

A man was found dead at a bus stop last Thursday evening. The cause of death is unknown. It is very possible it was suicide. His possessions included a wallet with no identification or money aside from a picture of a female child. He was holding a maple doughnut. Police believe the child is related to case from eight years earlier where a similar child had gone missing and was never found. Police identified the man as the father of the child and have contacted relatives for confirmation. Any further information from the public regarding this situation is welcome and may be rewarded.