Willow's Story - The Letter

https://youtu.be/pyq3PUTnpd0 (The Box Tops - "The Letter")


	Mechanical alarms chimed in the little lady’s head- time to wake up. Stretching and yawning she stepped out of the narrow charging locker put aside for her, taking care not to wake the other slumbering robots in her row. Hopping into her boots and strapping her bulky flight helmet on she started the short march to muster, ready to get to work. The air was still hot and dense as always. The soldiers hated it, her crewmates hated it, but to her it was home. Home for the past three years, she reminded herself, even if it was hell on her joints. Knuckles rapped on the metal locker, twisting the robot around to see her crew chief standing, waiting.
	“Willow, papers for you.” Her yearly service renewal- evidently Jordan was still in school. She snatched up the narrow envelope, splitting it apart with her lithe fingers. Eyes reading it once and again she paused, frowning.
	“My term’s up, sir?”
	“Yep. Plane’ll be here in the afternoon.” He patted her shoulder, trying to work a smile for the robot. “Get your things, Willow. We'll be fine out there, okay? So chin up, you're goin' home.”
	“Yes sir, will do,” she sighed. The man paced away to join the crew, the rhythmic ‘thwop’ of helicopters helping to wake up the base. Breathing again she returned to her diminutive cubby-hole, fishing along the walls and pulling down her meager belongings- faded polaroids, cards and letters she received before they dried up, random souvenirs she’d collected for the boys and the odd medal, too. Piling them in her little canvas bag and leaving to return her other things to the quartermaster, she took her uniform in hand and slung it over her back. And then she sat, and she waited. There’d be a hulking cargo plane touching down, dozens of others marching inside for a bank shot off the Philippines home. It was an act that played out daily but she never saw herself performing in. Cracking a weak smile from flipping through photos she prayed to see the boys again, to see how they’d grown. A thundering growl came overhead, a herculean plane touching down on the runway and coming to a stop.
	“Time to go,” she frowned, thoughts racing. “They didn’t come to say goodbye.” The pitched drumbeat of helicopter blades reminded her that her crewmates were on the clock, racing out over the canopy to answer the call for aid. Picking up her sparse belongings she stepped away and out to the tarmac with the dozens of other dischargees, her flight home a far cry from the wooden crate she’d been shipped there in. Settling into her seat, a quartet of flight nurses guided litters to the front of the plane. It was too familiar a sight for the trip home, the robot shutting it out as the plane’s turbines grumbled to life. Letting the shuddering of the plane sway her gently, she flipped into sleep-mode like so many nights before, dreaming of the golden Pacific shore she’d come home to soon enough. Recollections and flashes of memory filled her head, for once not occupied by who’d lived and who’d died that day or where they’d flown into, but by Christmas mornings with the boys, making dinner, San Francisco. It was a simple hop from one plane to another in Manila and she was homeward bound, jostled awake by touchdown in California.

	Routed to processing, given her papers, and unleashed on an indifferent world she stepped into the free air, an ocean away from the war. Pacing up and down in the airport she searched for her family, expecting them to be there waiting on her, hopefully getting a heads up in advance. Nowhere to be found she idled, unsure of what to do, routines for this instance failing in the anxiety of her return, the shock of being dumped back into America after so long away. Her neighbors from the plane had already disappeared and left her swimming uselessly in the flocks of commercial air passengers. Breathing again, defeated, she jingled the loose change she’d gathered up in her pocket. Pacing over to the phone she dialed in on her residence, the line ringing continuously to no effect. Hanging the handset up she counted out what she had left- just enough for the bus.
	Dropping what coins she had left in the change box she took her seat, deflated canvas bag lying dead in her lap. She was spared the spitting, jeering and insults she’d read about in some of the periodicals, but not the stares. She was just a robot, after all, not like she knew any better. Head leaning on the glass as the sun edged down again, she watched the city of San Francisco glow and twinkle in the growing dusk, the drive out to her little neighborhood just enough time to reminisce and to imagine her reunion with the Willows. Stepping off the bus in her neighborhood she started the uphill hike to the thin little townhouse that her family had called home since before the war. The pressure of watching eyes held her back, window-born observers curiously eyeing the little robot now knocking on the front door of that home.
	She thumped once, and then again, harder. Looking around she didn’t see the family’s station wagon, understanding that they were probably out late, spending the night on the town. No matter, she could wait. Sitting down on the brick step and laying her tubular bag by the door, she watched the last whisper of sunlight disappear behind the rooftops and into the ocean beyond them. Cool air drifted through her long hair, the robot glad to put this behind her. Home felt different, now- the ground was firmer, *cleaner*, but it was fake, fictional. The glimmering of the Winter stars overhead was alien, the unfamiliar constellations piercing the pollutive city light were ancient and unknown to her. But staring around at the scattered windows, lit and dark, she didn’t have to eye them for hostile fire now, she didn’t need to know where not to go in the city, she could breath easier. All she needed was her brick stoop and her family to pull to the curb in that wood-paneled wagon.
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