Beyond the Black Stump Read Free

good deal from frustration in his first love. Ruth had been his girl, not Chuck’s, and if she was pregnant he had a good idea which of them was probably responsible. That she had thrown him over for Chuck was a bitter blow to him, a blow which struck far deeper than the general disgrace. It was intensified whenhe was able to meet Chuck in the Piggy-Wiggy café and found, as they discussed their position over a milk shake, that although Chuck liked Ruth well enough he didn’t particularly want to marry her or anybody else at the age of sixteen. They were in the grip of forces more powerful than they were themselves, however. Neither of them was old enough to stand up and flout the opinion of the whole community in their hour of disgrace. Chuck was not prepared to stand up to the citizens of Hazel and declare he wasn’t going to marry Ruth when she claimed him as the father of her child, which he might well have been, and Stanton was not prepared to stand up in the face of all his other sins and claim paternity from Chuck. A succession of milk shakes did nothing to resolve their problems but left them better friends than ever, united in the disapproval of all Hazel. From their meeting at the Piggy-Wiggy café Chuck went on to matrimony with Ruth and Stanton turned to work for an anodyne, his grief for Ruth tempered by a secret relief that it had proved impossible for him to get married at sixteen.
    He worked very hard in his last year at High School, abandoning his former ways of life. He had a good brain and a good background, with sensible and sympathetic parents to encourage him. It was his intention to go on to the University of Oregon at Eugene but he put in as a long shot for admission to Leland Stanford and, somewhat to his own surprise, he got in. He stayed there for four years, a sober-minded, hardworking, rather pale young man doing physics and geology, and he graduated with some distinction but no girl. From the university he had got a research job with the Carnegie Institution in Washington D.C. working on geophysics, and two years later he had joined the Topex team.
    At the time when he returned from Arabia he would drink no alcohol at all nor had he done so since his High School accident; his renunciation of it had been absolute. He smoked very little, perhaps one pack of cigarettes a month, fearing perhaps that the tobacco habit, too, could get hold of a man and lead him into gross excesses of the flesh. In compensation he still ate a good many candies at the age of twenty-eight; a can of wrapped peppermints was generally to be found in one of the drawers of his desk, and he had a weakness for milk shakes and ice cream in itsvarious forms. He was an active and healthy man, the more so for his abstinence, physically well developed though sallow in appearance.
    In the club bar he raised the question of his next employment with his boss. “Will you want me to go back to Arabia after this vacation?” he enquired. “I’d like to know ahead if it’s to be back there.”
    Mr. Johnson shook his head. “Not Arabia. Have you got any preference?”
    “I could do with a domestic assignment for a time,” Stanton suggested. “I’ve been out of the United States now for three years.”
    “Are you getting married?”
    The geologist shook his head reluctantly; he had expected that. Domestic assignments for geological work within the United States or Canada were usually reserved for men with families. “Not that I know of,” he said.
    “We usually try to work married men into the domestic assignments,” Mr. Johnson said. “It’s fairer on the kids.”
    “I know it.”
    “Have you got any other preference?”
    “I’d just as soon it was a white country,” said Stanton. “I’ve seen enough of sand and Arabs to last me for a while.”
    Mr. Johnson finished his drink, offered Stanton another orange juice, and when that was refused led the way into the dining-room. He ordered Crab Louis with a large cup of