ATOP Prologue

Same old road. He must have walked it a thousand times... no, a hundred thousand times. And these were the same old trees. He knew every one of them by heart. Maybe it was even the same old dirt on that road, maybe the birds flying overhead were the same old birds. Who knew? They could be... he hoped they were. Something that had stayed constant. It was... beautiful. 

He stopped suddenly, right there in the middle of that same old road, and slowly got to his knees. It still hurt sometimes. That was different... he was different, he knew that. For one terrible moment he wondered if he... changed as he was... would fit into what had not changed. 

The feeling passed quickly. He was feeling his spirit coming back to life, spreading over him like a wave of relief, filling his entire being with joy. He bent to kiss the dust of that same old road and as he did so, pictures raced across his mind. A little boy, seven years old, books swinging from a strap slung over his shoulder, bare feet in the dirt, a little red tin lunch pail in his hand... a little boy, unchanged and untouched by the sorrow of the world. That same little boy in overalls with one strap falling down over the shoulder as it always had, darn those troublesome overalls, this time with a fishing pole over his shoulder. And the little boy, growing up with a hunting rifle in his hand. Sometimes that little boy was with his mama, wearing shoes and dressed in Sunday clothes, sometimes he was chasing after playmates... and there was that little boy as a teenager with his first sweetheart, shyly offering her a handful of wildflowers. And there he was again, still a boy, but almost a man... afraid and yet hiding his fear as he walked down that road going... no one knew where. Not knowing if he would ever walk that road again.

But here he was. Years later and feeling old. Feeling as if he had left the boy he had been behind forever. And yet... he felt as if he was finding himself all over again. The boy had stayed there, waiting for him. He hadn't lost him.

He was still kneeling there in the dust, his head bowed as tears slowly trickled down his cheeks. Far off in the distance, he could hear someone shouting... at first he didn't notice it, but the voice was growing louder. He lifted his head at the sound of his name. 

"Mac?..... Mackie!"

There was only one person on earth who would still call him Mackie. And that was...

He was on his feet faster than he thought he could. And running, not even noticing his limp for the first time. Running was suddenly easy... he felt at that moment as if he had wings. 

"Mackie... my boy... oh, my boy..." He couldn't answer her, couldn't speak around the lump in his throat. But he kept running... and in another moment, her arms were around him. 

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She had seen him the moment he turned the corner of the road. He was still far off, so far she couldn't see his face at all. But she knew... somehow she knew. That distant, khaki-clad figure, walking with a limp... 

She broke three plates all at once. And she had never broken so much as one ever before in all her life. Marjorie Scott was always careful. Particular. Everything always just so. That she should suddenly jump back from the kitchen sink with a cry like she had been shot, knocking an entire stack of plates onto the floor... such a scene had never been seen before in the Scott kitchen and it never would be again. She jumped over the shards of broken china as if they weren't even there, gathering her skirts in her hands, not even caring that she was running outside with an old wet apron on. The disaster she was leaving behind in the kitchen was the very last thing on her mind just then.

For one moment she paused in the front yard, watching as the man, way down on the road and half-hidden in the pine trees, went down on his knees in the middle of the road. She felt suddenly... afraid. It had been four long years... would she find him the same he had left? Surely not. Years of war and pain and sorrow would surely have left their mark on her boy. Would he have... grown apart from her in all those years? Tears suddenly filled her eyes and she felt her hands trembling.

Fancy Marjorie Scott afraid! She threw her head back in sudden determination... a tiny woman, but filled with courage... just as she had been the day he left and as she was now the day he was coming home.

Coming home. Beautiful words. Her boy was coming home!

"Mackie!" She cried out his name and broke into a run again. And she didn't stop until he was in her arms again. So blinded was she with joy and tears that she saw right past the limp, past the uniform, past the look of weariness and sorrow in his eyes, and saw only her little boy again. Her baby. 

"God brought you back to me..." and she couldn't manage another word. She cried harder at that moment then she ever had before, in all her entire life.