“Yes, I’m going home,” March replied. “It may be the last time for quite a spell.”
“I’m going, too,” Stan said. “Good old Utica, New York. I’m glad it isn’t far.”
So Stan and March said goodbye the next day, as they said goodbye to all the others they had come to know so well at New London. But to each other they were able to say, “See you in a couple of weeks—aboard Kamongo!”
Then March went home, and saw his mother and Scoot’s family and many of his old friends. But Hampton did not seem right without Scoot himself. It had been a wrench when he went off to New London without him, but there he had been so busy, so absorbed, that he had hardly had time to miss his friend of so many years. Now, back in the town they had grown up in together, the town wasn’t all there without Scoot.
March had written Scoot a note before leaving New London, telling him that he was going home on leave before reporting for duty. And Scoot had gnashed his teeth on getting the letter, realizing that March had finished his training first. Scoot felt that he was finished, too, for he had done everything but fly down the funnel of the training carrier—backwards.
“What’s left for me to learn?” he asked. “Unless they set up some real Jap Zeros here for me to shoot at I don’t see what else I can do.”
Then, just four days before March had to leave Hampton, Scoot got his own orders—to report in three weeks’ time to the new aircraft carrier Bunker Hill at San Francisco!
He raced home from Florida as fast as he could go, and he and March had two days together before March left. They talked submarines and airplanes all day and all night, and Scoot’s family had to wait until March left before they had a really good chance to visit with him.
But March felt better when he got on the train for Baltimore. It was good to have seen Scoot for even that short time. There were a million other things they could have talked about, but they had got close to one another again in that time and they had gained greater spirit from their companionship.
He tried not to think that he might not see Scoot again—ever. But he couldn’t help facing it.