Johnny rested for a short time more. The light of Israel shone through swinging glass doors a few metres away. More invalids needed their time and he took up space there. He stood up and ate cereal from a tray and arranged a set of crutches from the nurses. He thanked them and hobbled out of the building 

 He saw that he was still close to a militarized zone. The driver of a security jeep saw his uniform and offered a ride to the border. The positions of large concrete blocks outside Palestine were the object of negotiation. Johnny did not have the heart for this in the holy land. Small measurements provoked argument and the ethics were bad. At the first return vehicle leaving, he quit. The same jeep took him to a field outlying Beersheba.

 A group of fresh washed students gathered at a hillside where he clambered out from the last jeep he would ride in. They were talking about American universities. When they saw Johnny in his crutches and worn out shirt, they said, “So that’s what war does to a man. I pray that never happens to me... I have a cousin in the army. Let’s not look at him. Ah, let’s stay here and see what happens... We’re on the hill where Jesus delivered his sermons so let’s be kind to him... I didn’t want to face all that. We’re complaining to the form master about this."

 John stood leaning against a crutch. A man with red purple green and yellow freedom ribbons tied on his wrists approached him. He offered to lend John a small amount of money. John accepted and the man loaned him five cents.

 John slept overnight on the sacred hill. The next day the man came back to him and said, “I’m here to collect the debt. Ten cents please, return it to me.” John still had the five cent piece kept in his pocket from the day before. He offered it back to the man.

 The man said, “That’s only the capital. I want the interest. Keep the coin until you have the total repayment. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

That day John talked with a form master from the University of California. He borrowed a phone and called the embassy. The embassy told him that his job was not finished yet, that he still had to collect his payment from a bank in Kenya. They transferred him to an air force office, who said, “Are we still dealing with that man? I thought we had seen the last of him. He’s injured, and he still has work to do. If he can stand up, then we can send a helicopter tomorrow.”

 Food at the canteen at the bottom of the hill cost five cents a day. The lady chefs smiled as they served it and said gentle things. The next day the form master gave him fifteen cents and shrugged and said it was hardly anything. He paid the money lender back with it. When the unusual man collected it he looked at John through his locks of hair and asked, “What do you want?”

 “I want to go home,” John said. The same question relayed across to the form master.

 “Do your work first. It will be only a small job,” the master told him. 

 On the third day Johnny leaned on his stick and talked with the people who were on the hill about the world. On where he was from, and on the way everyone was the same regardless of race and religion. He worked a little by cleaning a step. It was a stone step which had been there since the time of Christ. He washed and scrubbed it until it was clean, and it stayed that way. 

 He rested on his stick all night. He lay a little but stayed upright in the arms of another man. A large sweaty man who wore a linen and wool suit and button shirt. His standing up all night was the local peoples’ effort to help him in his healing. So that he was not to become lazy and lie down to lose the use of his right leg. The moon shone and the air was sweet. The early day shone golden and cool.

 Unfortunately, his method to leave arrived. He could make his way to the helicopter waiting on its landing place of scattered rocks and dirt. A post by the craft affirmed that it was genuine in intent. It had written on it the word ‘Kenya.’ He was going to complete the last of his drafted assignments. This was one more mystery in a list of many accomplished.

 After the flight he found his way into a cafe district of the capital city Nairobi. He had been in this city seven years previous when he delivered the negative film reel to the government. He made another call to his embassy and made his way there. It was a small street level office with glass windows by the pavement. A man came out and hurried him to a cafe where two men sat drinking tea and talking about business. They wrote a check from a trust account and attached his name. Like Abraham had promised at Waaihoek Island, the check was for twenty thousand. All the money intended for a construction company account.

 Johnny was to build a hospital ward. He received advice about not talking too much with the residents of the country about his life. Johnny caught a ride in a lorry with indigenous men across a thousand miles of wild country to the west of Nairobi. He said nothing past a hello and learned from the driver that these men were the builders for the work team. Supplies were being trucked in to the site with them. There were not any checkpoints along the way and they arrived at a red rock desert flat plain by a river.

 Kinshasa was being developed and this was where the wages would invest. Six weeks of labour and building ensued. First the rock hammer drill to fashion an inserted ledge platform. Then concrete and steel mesh laid down. Bricklayers piled line after ascending line of bricks and mortar until a wood and iron roof could be set up. He laboured with the gang, but not too hard. Since he was the sponsor of the development he took the time to meet chiefs and doctors from the village.

 The temperature during the night fell to twenty but in the day rose to fifty degrees. When the mercury hit fifty, it was time to put down the tools and rest inside tents of cooling canvass. He kept up to pace with the foreman and slept in a hammock overnight. The workers had to flick scorpions off blankets and leggings. The lucky little things scuttled away. His skin dried and all the money dispensed. The building had a refrigeration unit installed. To power it up an electric wire system assembled traveling east. The building was for medical purposes. 

 A final bonfire party celebrated the completed building. The tribe danced to their drums and they drank their beer and ate a meal of roast oxen.

 The last flight took him to Somalia again where he met the same man at his lonely post. Georgia was standing on the brown dusty dirt when Johnny was flown out from there. The one-time general told him that he had earned a car for his efforts and said he would send it to his father’s address for him. As the transport helicopter took flight, John whistled a happy tune and lay down. He rested on the expansive floor all the way from Africa to his home country. Across the Indian Ocean to Australia and then across that continent and the Tasman Sea.

 The transporter flew to above an address in Parnell. He slid down a rope dangled from out of the aperture. He came to his mother’s door and knocked loud.

 Doctor Greyson rejoiced that the son he adopted was home again. When his mother opened the door, she cried for joy and he embraced her and she wept. Joe and Roscoe congratulated him and shook his hand. John changed out of his uniform and into jeans sweater and shoes for a round of photographs. He felt that he was a man with as legitimate an amount life experience to everyone else in the house. They all welcomed him home. His family said how happy they were that an absence of news from him had ended now. His father drove in from a golf fairway and embraced him. Eleanor opened a bottle of champagne.