long journey. Ralphie suddenly said, "I got to go, Dad. I promised Walt and the others I'd pitch. It's Inter-Town Little League, you know. It's Harmon, you know. I got to keep my word." Without waiting for an answer, he waved his hand—it shook; a ten-year-old boy's hand that shook—and ran from the room and from the house.

He and Edith sat beside each other, and he wanted badly to take her in his arms, and yet he didn't want to oppress her. He stood up. "I'm very tired. I'd like to lie down a while." Which wasn't true, because he'd been lying down all the months of the way back.

She said, "Of course. How stupid of me, expecting you to sit around and make small talk and pick up just where you left off."

He nodded. But that was exactly what he wanted to do—make small talk and pick up just where he'd left off. But they didn't expect it of him; they wouldn't let him; they felt he had changed too much.

She led him upstairs and along the foyer past Ralphie's room and past the small guest room to their bedroom. This, too, had changed. It was newly painted and it had new furniture. He saw twin beds separated by an ornate little table with an ornate little lamp, and this looked more ominous a barrier to him than the twelve-foot concrete-and-barbed-wire fence around the experimental station.

"Which one is mine," he asked, and tried to smile.

She also tried to smile. "The one near the window. You always liked the fresh air, the sunshine in the morning. You always said it helped you to get up on time when you were stationed at the base outside of town. You always said it reminded you—being able to see the sky—that you were going to go up in it, and that you were going to come down from it to this bed again."

"Not this bed," he murmured, and was a little sorry afterward.

"No, not this bed," she said quickly. "Your lodge donated the bedroom set and I really didn't know—" She waved her hand, her face white.

He was sure then that she had known, and that the beds and the barrier between them were her own choice, if only an unconscious choice. He went to the bed near the window, stripped off his Air Force blue jacket, began to take off his shirt, but then remembered that some arm scars still showed. He waited for her to leave the room.

She said, "Well then, rest up, dear," and went out.

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