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The Signal
by Alice Gray
[short story]
The young man sat alone on the bus and most of the time
stared out the window. He was in his mid-twenties, nice looking with
a kind face. His dark blue shirt matched the color of his eyes. His
hair was short and neat. Occasionally he would look away from the window
and the anxiety on his young face touched the heart of the grandmotherly
woman sitting across the aisle. The bus was just approaching the outskirts
of a small town when she was so drawn to the young man that she scooted
across the aisle and asked permission to sit next to him.
After a few moments of small talk about the warm spring weather, he
blurted out, “I’ve been in prison for two years. I just
got out this morning and I’m going home.” His words tumbled
out as he told her he was raised in a poor but proud family and how
his crime had brought his family shame and heartbreak. In the whole
two years he had not heard from them. He knew they were too poor to
travel the distance to where he had been in prison and his parents probably
felt too uneducated to write. He had stopped writing them when no answers
came.
Three weeks before being released, he desperately wrote one more letter
to his family. He told them how sorry he was for disappointing them
and asked for their forgiveness.
He went on to explain about being released from prison and that he
would take the bus to his hometown, the one that goes right by the front
yard of the house where he grew up and where his parents still lived.
In his letter, he said he would understand if they wouldn’t forgive
him.
He wanted to make it easy for them and so asked them to give him a
signal that that he could see from the bus. If they had forgiven him
and wanted him to come back home, they could tie a white ribbon on the
old apple tree that stood in the front yard. If the signal wasn’t
there, he would stay on the bus, leave town and be out of their lives
forever.
As the bus neared his street, the young man became more and more anxious
to the point he was afraid to look out the window because he was so
sure there would be no ribbon.
After listening to his story, the woman asked simply, “Would
it help if we traded seats and I’ll sit near to the window and
look for you?” The bus traveled a few more blocks and then she
saw the tree. She gently touched the young man’s shoulder and
choking back tears said, “Look! Oh look! The whole tree is covered
with white ribbons.”