Why farther north? my friends from the Lower 48 ask, confused.
On the way here, my flight was canceled. I got bumped to the Milk Run, flying Sitka to Juneau to Yakutat to Cordova to Anchorage on a Monday when I should have been in my office.
In a coffee shop this morning, I'm typing up the synopsis of a legal analysis. The guy who has been sitting at the table next to me for an hour asks me if it is Wednesday. I have to tell him it is Tuesday. He is surprised. He asks if I am a student, where I am from.
"I'm from Sitka," I say. He's surprised, says it's beautiful, and that he spent part of the summer down there, organizing Little League, and staying with a friend.
"Who?" I ask.
"Oh, just a lawyer from down there," he says.
"Who?" I ask.
When he says the name, it takes me a second.
"Oh," I say, "He's my neighbor. He lives three houses down from my parents. With two kids?"
Yes, he says. He loved those kids! Racing around the neighborhood on bikes all the time, and throwing balls across the front lawn. And their friend, the blonde kid whose dad owned a boat down at Crescent --
Yeah, I say. They're great kids. About twenty years ago, I was one of them.
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