JUN IOR K ING ’S BUSINESS edited, by Martha S. Hooker
its place, the house was not much good for a summer home. But Bill seemed to like it fine because it was away from everybody. The river had to be *crossed on a rickety bridge. Flood waters had over flowed the bridge twice since Joey’s arrival. A noise like someone rubbing a finger across a toy balloon but deeper and with a note of complain ing, made h im l ook westward where black masses of clouds were piled tremulously as if about to burst into a heavy rainfall. Thun der meant rain and the possible washing out of the bridge. If only he could get Bill to take him into Wailing Waters before the storm. He started running down the ridge faster and faster. It was exciting, and it was a little scary because he knew he couldn’t stop until he reached the bottom. Uncle Bill was standing on the porch and Joey, out of breath, mac[e his request. “ I know Rev. O’Grady is a great man,” Bill said, looking up through the foliage at the clouds. His eyes, as nervous as the first flutter of leaves in a storm, were suddenly caught and held by a jet trail, a milky thin line being swal lowed by a moving mass of cloud. “ I don’t think I need any preach ing now, though, Joey,. I get enough religion just watching you read that red-lettered Bible you brought up here. You’re a regular missionary yourself, talking about miracles and sweetness of Jesus and all that. Kid, I’m not bucking for promo tions in heaven. I had enough of bucking in the Air Force. I’m will ing to settle down here with my little pension and not see anyone. Why don’t you just fish and swim like a fellow should and let me alone.” Then he smiled and the sudden look of gentleness on his face took away the sting his words had held. “ It’s this way,” Joey said, taking a new tack. “ Some kids like to see
VAPOR TRAILS
by Robert B. Black
Ever since he’d come to visit his Uncle Bill two weeks ago after he’d graduated from the eighth grade, he’d been hoping that Bill would take him to see the evangelist when he stopped in Wailing Waters on his way to Kansas City for a big campaign. Bill was a bachelor, and Dad, who was Bill’s older brother, said it would be good if Joey spent part of his vacation with Bill. “ The poor guy saw too much fighting,” Dad had said. “ And fly ing was the only thing he knew. That’s why he took it so hard when they said his reflexes weren’t fast enough anymore to fly jets.” Going down the ridge was al most as hard on Joey’s legs as going up. It was so high Joey could look down on the treetops which were like a green, bumpy carpet. The house, which could not he seen from the ridge, was an old summer place Bill’s parents had built when the river used to form a natural lake there. Now that the lake was gone and the brush grew thick in
Joey opened his eyes and the mir acle was there — the miracle of a June morning with new grass growing on the ridge and beyond the ridge the wide fields of com with Jet-made vapor streaks above. In the distance was the town of Wailing Waters with plant chim ney and water tower pointing toward the sky. Uncle Bill never came up on the ridge with Joey for morning and evening devotions, or even to just look across the fields, the river and the town. Of course the devotions were all Joey’s idea and they were private. Joey knew Bill would laugh if he told him about them. “ And make Uncle Bill,” Joey prayed aloud, “believe in miracles and that You took him for Your own once long ago and wanted him to he a preacher, though he doesn’t seem to remember it. And please let him take me down to Wailing Waters this afternoon to see Jim O’Grady when his t ra i n stops there.”
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