Beyond the Black Stump Read Online Free PDF Page B

Spriggs, who had an office in Barrack St.
    In the next fortnight he began to overhaul his kit; he would want very much the same outfit of tropical clothes that he had worn in Arabia, but many replacements were needed. In the field he usually wore U.S. Army clothing, battledress trousers and blouse of light fabric, jungle green in colour, but these suits were threadbare and in need of much replacement. He drove down to Portland in the Lincoln upon this and other matters of his kit, trading in his typewriter for a new one and buying a new electric razor, an essential in his mind for a sojourn in the desert. Water might be brackish and in short supply, and usually had been so at Abu Quaiyah, but practically every aspect of his work demanded electricity; he could not explore the strata far below the ground nor sink a bore for exploration at the point he had selected without the assistance of a considerable power station. He bought a new camp bed with a mosquito net attached and had it shipped to Perth, and stocked up his medicine chest with two years’ supply of the American drugs that he knew and was accustomed to.
    All these things he distributed around his bedroom on the floor, with many others, as he started to get organised. His mother gave up all attempts to clean his room, but she paused in the open doorway one morning to watch him sewing on a button. “I’ll do that for you,” she offered.
    “It’s no trouble, Mom,” he said. “It’s easy to do them as I find them.”
    She looked around the room. “You taking any books along?”
    “I thought maybe I’d take this one along, this time,” he said. He indicated a small Bible on the dressing table.
    “That might be a good thing to do,” she observed. “You didn’t take it with you last time.”
    “No,” he replied. “Guess I’m getting old.”
    She did not comment, but said, “Taking any other books?”
    “I don’t think so, Mom. I’d like it if you could keep sending the
Saturday Evening Post
and
Life.”
    “Surely,” she said. “If you read those papers I don’t know that you want to read anything else.”
    There was a pause, and then he said, “You know somethin’?”
    “What’s that?”
    “I’d kind of like to see the
Hazel Advertiser
now ’n then.Not every week, just now ’n then.” He looked up and grinned at her. “See what movie’s playing at the theatre.”
    She nodded. “I’ll have that mailed to you from the office. Your Dad, he sometimes cuts bits out of our copy. You want a Portland paper, say the
Sunday Oregonian
as well?”
    “I dunno that I’d read it. Maybe there’ll be an Australian paper that I’ll have to read, out there. I guess if I have the
Saturday Evening Post
and
Life
and the
Hazel Advertiser
, that’s all I’ll want to read.”
    “And the Bible,” said his mother.
    He looked up, grinning. “Kind of makes the library complete.”
    Three weeks before the end of his leave Chuck Sheraton arrived from Texas, his Chev full to the brim with wife, four children, two dogs, a pushcart, luggage, camp kit, and appurtenances. The; Sheraton home was in Lindbergh Avenue two blocks from the Laird home on 2nd St., and Stanton strolled round to visit with them the morning after they arrived. As he approached the house a boy of eleven came out of the basement garage sucking a coke through a straw, and Stanton got his shock. When he had last seen him four years previously this kid had been getting most uncomfortably like himself, and quite unlike his father or his mother. Now, at eleven, he was the very spit and image of Stanton at that age.
    The geologist said, “Hi-yah, Tony. You remember me?”
    The boy said, “You’re Stan Laird.”
    “That’s right. Have a good ride up?”
    “Gloria was sick, and Imogen was sick, and Peter was sick.
I
wasn’t sick.”
    The geologist wrinkled his brows, a little dazed. “Is Imogen the baby, or is that Peter?”
    The child said scornfully, “They’re dogs.”
    “Oh, sure.