a vacant stare into nothing

a vacant stare into nothing

fiction
edward w Pritchard

At first it seemed the woman was drunk. The owner of the Chinese restaurant was trying to politely shoo the woman out of the restaurant so as not to disturb the other customers. We were the only other customers and we weren't the type people to get upset over a handicapped girl who couldn't express herself well.

The girl was over weight and was trying to tell the owner of the restaurant how very much she enjoyed her meal. She stammered badly and there was an irregular cadence to her speech that was annoying and slightly frantic.  Finally after a minute or two the owner closed the door behind the woman who was still gesturing and nodding and sent her off into the cold night. I heard the owner tell her son, or maybe brother in law who was the cook and waiter that Annie was finally gone.

My date had drove her own car so I walked around the strip shopping center a few minutes after our meal to let my food digest. It was windy cold, below zero and after 10 PM. No one was much around.

The only light was half way down the walkway and I stared into the window at Kauffman's photo. It was a camera shop and had hundreds of old style Nikon and Kodac cameras and supplies for sale. The handicapped girl from the Chinese restaurant  was methodically cleaning each camera with a silk twill. I watched for about ten minutes. In that time she carefully wiped off two cameras.

Four years later I was at the Hartville flea market walking around and I got to talking to a man selling film for old fashioned cameras. It came up that he was Mr. Kauffman and had once owned the camera store at the Kent shopping plaza. I asked him about the girl Annie. He had to let her go when he sold the place last year. Too much competition from digital phones that took pictures.

A week ago I went to visit Mr. Baker my high school football coach, who had a stroke last month,  over at the Rolling Hills retirement Center. Walking in I saw the handicapped girl Annie, now about thirty sitting in a rocking chair on the porch with a vacant stare into nothing. She was still sitting there with a vacant stare into nothing a half hour later as I crossed the porch after I visited with  Coach Baker.


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