He couldn’t get the word “homecoming” out of his head. As he drove the familiar country roads and wooded lanes, a trip he’d made countless times when he was dating Melissa Frederickson at the state college, he contemplated its significance. He thought about the photos he’d seen when their boys came home from the European theatre, and the parade of heroes they’d had down Main St. His grandfather returned with a paralyzed arm and the admiration of every man woman and child in that town. He thought about the homecoming of Marshall Dickson, after he’d quarterbacked the high school team to the state championships, but splintered his knee in the fourth quarter, you’d never have known the Gents of Jefferson High hadn’t won, except for Marshall with the casted and elevated knee, waving from a red convertible.
He thought about the homecomings his town had seen, and wondered how his would be. He hadn’t seen Main St. since his first Congressional run, the last speech he’d made before the citizens soundly agreed to charge him as their representative in Washington. He’d won that seat twice since then, and hadn’t shadowed Main St. in almost ten years. He gripped the steering wheel as he tore through the turns, took his foot off the gas when he noticed he was driving too fast, and then he smiled. He remembered that Melissa Frederickson was the Homecoming Queen their senior year in high school, the year that he’d lost his virginity with Brittany Mathers, and the year his grandfather had died. He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his tweed jacket, trying to focus on the empty, blurry rural route.
He knew he wasn’t worthy of the memories he possessed; his life in that town was too wholesome to have been his own. Perhaps, it was someone else’s life he was remembering. He didn’t know how they would receive him when he finally got there, fearing and expecting the worst. He was prepared to fly through town, sign the papers, collect his father’s irreplaceable items, and leave. Perhaps he didn’t even have to eat while he was there, but his stomach was already rumbling at the thought of one of Mel’s pasties. For the first time in a very long time, he was afraid.
His station wagon took the final turn and blew up the leaves around the sign that Gil Mason had built in 1932, the hand-carved wooden sign that swung from rusted chains and had the names of hundreds of young lovers carved inconspicuously into the base. The sign that reads, “Welcome to Milton, Make Yourself at Home.” The tears were coming now; he sniffled and scolded himself for being the blithering fool he’d always thought himself to be. He pulled the car to the side and fished around the floor of the car for a tissue. He blew and wiped, like an old woman at a funeral, and giggled at himself. His eyes cleared and focused and he stopped to look at a splotch of color not ten yards in front of the car. He turned on the wipers to scrape away the drizzle that had begun to fall and saw a sign hand painted onto a piece of lumber, nailed to a stake driven into the shoulder of the highway. In deft script, it read, “Welcome Home Chuck.”