This was nothing new. In some ways the men had always been leaving. Leaving on fishing boats, leaving for logging camp, even the men who worked AoG at Boeing and were lucky enough to still have jobs were always leaving for some faraway place to recover an airplane gone down in a remote jungle or desert. Really, she should be used to it by now. The men in town had been leaving her whole life, even all of her mother’s life. Bags were packed, tearful goodbyes, and no one was quite sure when they would come home. Still, this wasn’t war. Just a job in Alaska, and anyone could come home anytime he liked and therein lies the difference.
Linda stood at the kitchen sink and stared out the window. She sipped her coffee, mentally running through the checklist of her day. She looked at the clock on the stove. It was already 7:30. The day had barely begun and she was already late. And where was Lori? Twenty minutes ago, she was dressed and gathering her schoolbooks. What could be taking so long?
On the living room rug, Lori lay sprawled watching The Little Rascals.
“Lori, come eat your breakfast.”
“In a minute, as soon as there’s a commercial,” Lori said.
“No, now.” Linda escorted Lori to kitchen table where there sat a single bowl of yogurt topped with granola.
“I like to watch TV in the morning,” Lori said. “Why can’t we have a TV in the kitchen like everyone else?”
“No TV in the kitchen. And I don’t like you watching that trash. It’s junk food for your mind.”
“They’re funny.”
Linda screwed the lid on to the Mason jar of yogurt and returned it to the fridge, and then placed the gallon pickle jar of granola back in the pantry cupboard. Sometimes she worried about Lori. Lori didn’t seem very discriminating. Then again she was only a child, but still. Lori’s dad wasn’t very discriminating either.
A stampede of feet ran across the back porch, followed by a small knock. Little Lisa Hoshide stood with two other kids. Like a gravity-defying snowball comprised of solely of children, the passel grew larger as it moved up the hill toward Linda’s house. Starting with the Osborne boys, six and eight, then picking up the Hoshide girl, seven, Lori, seven, and finishing with the Johnson kid who was eight, but didn’t look any older than the six year-old, they moved in a yelling, teaming mass that seemed much larger than simply five children, until they reached the elementary at the top of the hill. Linda handed Lori her books and lunch, then pushed her out the door to join the tiny horde.
Linda returned to her spot at the window. Some of the older kids milled around on the corner waiting for the city bus to come and deliver them to the high school. Why they took the bus, she didn’t know. It was a ten, maybe fifteen minute walk. Linda never ceased to be surprised at the slothfulness of young people. The two girls, Ginny and Jenny, oblivious to being watched, flirted and laughed with the boys, who weren’t but a year or two away from beginning their own leaving. She wanted to warn them, to throw open the window and yell, “Soon you will all be very, very lonely,” but she didn’t do this. Instead, she poured another cup of coffee and waited for the urge to pass.