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missed one yet. Not for many years. Don’t reckon I’ll start now.”
    She opened the door then and was swiftly gone. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her marching purposefully down the street.
    Duncan came out from behind the counter and shambled toward me.
    â€œCan I do anything for you?” he asked.
    â€œMy name is Horton Smith,” I said. “I made arrangements …”
    â€œNow, just a minute there,” said Duncan quickly, peering closely at me. “When your mail started coming in, I recognized the name, but I told myself there must be some mistake. I thought maybe …”
    â€œThere is no mistake,” I said, holding out my hand. “How are you, Mr. Duncan?”
    He grasped my hand in a powerful grip and held onto it. “Little Horton Smith,” he said. “You used to come in with your pa …”
    â€œAnd you used to give me a sack of candy.”
    His eyes twinkled beneath the heavy brows and he gave my hand an extra hearty shake, then dropped it.
    It was going to be all right, I told myself. The old Pilot Knob still existed and I was no stranger. I was coming home.
    â€œAnd you’re the same one,” he said, “as is on the radio and sometimes on television.”
    I admitted that I was.
    â€œPilot Knob,” he told me, “is plumb proud of you. It took some getting used to at first to listen to a home-town boy on the radio or sit face to face with him on the television screen. But we got used to it at last and most of us listened to you and talked about it afterwards. We’d go around saying to one another that Horton has said this or that and we took what you had to say for gospel. But,” he asked, “what are you doing back? Not that we aren’t glad to have you.”
    â€œI think I’ll stay for a while,” I told him. “For a few months, maybe for a year.”
    â€œVacation?”
    â€œNo. Not a vacation. There’s some writing that I want to do. And to do that writing I had to get away somewhere. Where I would have time for writing and a bit of time for thinking what to write.”
    â€œA book?”
    â€œYes, I hope a book.”
    â€œWell, seems to me,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand, “you might have a lot to put into a book. Maybe a lot of things you couldn’t say right out on the air. All them foreign places you was in. You were in a lot of them.”
    â€œA few of them,” I said.
    â€œAnd Russia? What did you think of Russia?”
    â€œI liked the Russian people. They seemed, in many ways, like us.”
    â€œYou mean like Americans?”
    â€œLike Americans,” I said.
    â€œWell, come over to the stove,” he said, “and let us sit and talk. I ain’t got a fire in it today. I guess one isn’t needed. I can remember, plain as day, your pa sitting in one of these chairs and talking with the others. He was a right good man, your pa, but I always said he wasn’t cut out to be a farmer.”
    We sat down in two of the chairs.
    â€œIs your pa still alive?” he asked.
    â€œYes, he and Mother both. Out in California. Retired now and very comfortable.”
    â€œYou got a place to stay?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œNew motel down by the river,” Duncan said. “Built just a year or two ago. New people, by the name of Streeter. Give you good rates if you’re staying more than a day or two. I’ll make sure they do it. I’ll speak to them about it.”
    â€œThere’s no need …”
    â€œBut you ain’t no transient. You’re home folk, come back again. They would want to know.”
    â€œAny fishing?”
    â€œBest place on the river. Got some boats to rent and a canoe or two, although why anyone would risk their neck in a canoe on that river is more than I can figure.”
    â€œI was hoping for a place like that,” I said. “I was afraid there would