home for three years,but the United despatcher at the gate of Portland airport came from Portage, a village not far from Hazel, and knew Stanton, and greeted him by name.
“Hi-yah, Stanton,” he said. “Quite a time since we saw you here.”
The young man paused, delighted, but unable to remember the despatcher’s name. “That’s right,” he said. “I’ve been away.”
“I know it,” said the fat, uniformed man. “Some place in the East, was it?”
“That’s right. Arabia.”
“Uh-huh. You going on by Flight 173 in the morning?”
“That’s right.”
“Saw your name down on the list. Where are you stopping tonight?”
“I’ll be at the Congress Hotel.”
The official scribbled a note upon a pad. “I’ll fix the airport limousine for you. Five minutes past seven at the hotel.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Your mother, she came through about two weeks back. Your father, of course—he comes through quite a bit. They’re looking fine.”
“You don’t look bad yourself.”
“Putting on weight,” said the official sadly.
The limousine was waiting to take Stanton to the city. With the homecoming he reverted to the idiom of his boyhood. “You know somethin’?” he enquired.
“What’s that?”
“It’s kind of nice to be back.”
The despatcher laughed. “’Bye now.”
He got to the hotel at about ten o’clock, tired, but not too tired to ring his parents from the hotel bedroom. He spoke to his father and mother for some minutes and told them the time when he would land at Hazel airport; then he rang off and undressed slowly, savouring the comforts of the bedroom and the shower. It was a warm night, though much cooler than New York, and he lay for a time before sleep came to him. He had nothing to read till he discovered the Gideon Bible in the drawer of the bedside table; he leafed it through as he grew drowsy, remembering the intonations of the minister in church as the familiar phrases met his eye, one after the other.
The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
That meant Arabia, of course. Well, it hadn’t.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.
Well, He had. The motor might have failed way out over the Atlantic instead of half an hour before they were due to land at Lisbon.
This is my rest for ever; here will I dwell, for I have desired it.
He was home again, back from his travels, in one piece. Back in his own state of Oregon, in his home town tomorrow. Gee, this Book had messages, skads and skads of them, if only you bothered to look.
Presently he slept.
He flew next morning in an old D.C.3 eastwards from Portland up the Columbia River valley, landing once at The Dalles. The D.C.3 Put down on the small Hazel airport in the middle of the morning and taxied into the miniature airport building, and there at the fence he could see a little crowd of people waiting to meet him. He got out of the machine carrying his plastic overnight bag and the wrapped parcel that contained the barbecue set, and walked quickly to the barrier. There were his mother and his father, cleanshaven and portly, and his sister Shelley with her husband Sam Rapke who ran his father’s business, the biggest hardware store in Hazel, and their two children, Lance, aged six, and Avril, aged four; they must have left the baby at home. All the family were there to meet him, those who lived in Hazel, and he was glad of it.
“Hi-yah, Mom,” he said, and kissed her. She said, “Junior, you’re so
brown!”
He turned from her to his father. “Hi, Dad.” His father said, “Welcome home, son. You’re looking mighty well.”
“I feel pretty good,” Stanton said. “Glad to be back again.”
His mother asked, “Did you get sick at all, out in those hot places, Jun? You never said in any of your letters.”
“I wasn’t sick a day,” he assured her.
“Well now, isn’t that just wonderful! I got so worried you might