They are all squealing, squirming, slop-faced pigs.

One could say that Barbara felt a tad uncharitable to her family that icy December morning. Late to rise for one morning in her life, her helpless children and husband had pestered her into wakefulness. She amended her previous evaluation with the addition of “screaming” between the squealing and the squirming.

Now silence pervaded her house. Sweet, unbroken, calming silence. It persisted despite the feather light clinking the dishes made as she collected them. Barbara enjoyed that silence. No demanding children; no odd, cheating husband. They thought she didn’t notice the lives they led when they were away, but Barbara Norfolk wasn’t dumb.

Blinking back a traitorous solution in her eyes, Barbara focused on the clear, cold day outside of her lonely kitchen window. The woman across the street, who her husband fancied, quickly left the house—dressed for town, or maybe the country club.

Neighbors were always coming and going, but Barbara longed for the day that this one moved away for good.

Barbara left her kitchen window to gather more dishes from the crowded kitchen table. Billy hadn’t eaten his eggs—again. Pondering whatever could be wrong with the boy, Barbara returned to her window to find a new view awaiting her.

It was a man. A tall, scruffy faced man with a ratty old rucksack slung over his shoulder. Just another wanderer who would drift through her window and leave again. With this depressing thought, Barbara bent more diligently over the unwashed dishes. However, when she finished, the man still stood on the sidewalk where her imagination had left him. She was sure he was an illusion, for no one stood for so long in front of her prison cell.

Fascinated by the sheer difference of the drifter, Barbara couldn’t tear her eyes from him as he patted himself down, trying to find a cigarette. Her husband often did the same when he took her to company lunches. Her husband, however, rarely smoked and only did when he was particularly irritated, usually at her. This imaginary man, however, didn’t know her, so his smoking was merely an addiction.

He was thin, a severe difference from her experience with middle-aged men. Perhaps it was a reflection of the life he lived—always on the road, on the move. It was exciting to think of the life he had led before he appeared in the flat glass of her kitchen window.

It isn’t a good idea.

No, most likely a very bad one.

It couldn’t hurt.

If you get hurt, maybe your cheating husband will care for you again…

Barbara glanced at the leftovers of the breakfast her family had left uneaten. She made her choice, as radical as it was.

_{Hurry hurry} hurry…

She flung the front door open, drawing the attention of the man of the man on the sidewalk. Barbara stood breathless in the doorway, having run hard through the house to her door. They stared at each other in silence: the man with his rucksack and cigarette hanging loosely from his mouth; and Barbara in the faded dress she had donned in her rush that morning.

“You want some eggs? They’re a little cold, but I could heat them up…” she called to him. Her voice sounded merry to her own crazed mind.

He took the cigarette out of his mouth, dropped it, and ground it out with his heel. Barbara watched him walk toward her, her heart thundering. She hadn’t done anything this daring since grade school, and back then it had been leaping from the merry-go-round as it whirled around a full speed.

“Wouldn’t your family appreciate them more?” his eyes were lively, and brown. He came to a stop and stood on the welcome mat. A rancid scent, smelling like old sweat and oily hair, washed over her, but she didn’t mention it to him, instead forcing herself to reply to him.

“They’ve already gone,” Barbara said, “and with no goodbyes.”

“You should appreciate what you have, though, Ms.” he said, “you never know what’s around the corner.”

“Do you want them or not?” her tone lost some of the warmth from before.

He smiled.

“The name is Robbie, by the way Ma’am.”

“Barbara,” she said, stepping back from the door to let her new acquaintance in. Common Sense would have argued for prudence—don’t let wandering strangers in your home! But Barbara had passed the reasonings of Common Sense long ago.

“May I ask something?” Barbara listened carefully to his voice as she led him to the kitchen. His voice was pleasant compared to the usual, jarring male voices her ears were accustomed to. She could only nod, however, to his question, in and effort to keep the sound of his voice ringing in her ears.

“Why would you offer me breakfast where a hundred other housewives would have shooed me from the views of their kitchen windows?”

Barbara blinked.

“Isn’t that what a good Christian is supposed to do?” she asked instead of answering him. To tell him she’d decided to go barking mad would perhaps be the wrong thing to say. Turning—and cutting off any response from him for a moment—she lit the stovetop to start reheating some eggs from the distant breakfast with her family.

“What would you have done if your husband were home?” the wanderer, Robbie, asked from where he stood—at ease—across the kitchen. The question he asked, however, made Barbara pause. She stalled for time by filling a mug of coffee and giving it to him.

“I would have suggested it, but he would have forbade it.” More like wolfed the rest down himself than share anything.

“Are you ruled by him them?” Robbie’s eyebrows rose in surprise or consternation—Barbara wasn’t sure which.

“No, but it does add to domestic peace around here when I don’t outright fight with him.”

Robbie smiled—a disarming sort of smile—but it almost seemed like he had had the last word rather than she.

The eggs were done heating and she turned, looking for a plate only to find Robbie at her elbow with one in hand. She muttered a thanks and served him. While she went for silverware, Robbie gingerly sat at the kitchen table where her husband usually sat.

But the Father Bear wouldn’t come home to notice it. He would be working late. Barbara almost giggled at the thought of her traitorous husband coming home right then. With this slightly hysteric thought, she handed him his silverware and retreated from the table.

Robbie was a devout man, she decided, as he bowed in head in prayer. More devout than she was, at least. Suddenly feeling awkward as he recited his thanks to his God in a mutter, Barbara turned back to her sink below the window and poured herself a glass of water from the tap.

“It’s your house, why don’t you sit down?” She really did like his voice, she decided as she sat. He was nearly finished with his eggs, while the coffee sat half full at his left.

“God bless you, Barbara. This won’t be forgotten by Him, you know.” He smiled, and again she saw the slight amusement in his lively brown eyes. It would be nice to sit and watch them for long periods of time.

But suddenly he was standing and moving away from the table, his plate in hand. Robbie had eaten quickly, efficiently, and their exchange had lasted barely a quarter of an hour. Barbara watched, silent, as he shouldered his pack. It looked old and weathered, and since he had no difficulty lifting it, it was also quite light. She briefly mourned her husband’s girth, for no shirt of his would remotely fit her new friend’s scant frame.

“It was nothing, I—” she didn’t continue, but he smiled again.

“It was. And also because you are proving you are not ruled by anyone. You are your own.”

“I hope you are well, and continue to be so,” he added as he walked away, toward to the door. Away from her. It was like watching freedom slip away through her fingers.

The sound of the door softly closing was like a coffin to her ears—so attuned to every noise in her life. She was suddenly consumed with fear, and rushed to her prison cell window to see him walking from her driveway to the sidewalk.

He waved, smiling, and Barbara eagerly waved back, blinking away tears he wouldn’t and couldn’t see anyway.

But soon he was gone.

And there were dishes to be done in the sink.