The Visitors, page 24
They moved out the next day. Powell went in an ambulance to a Boston hospital, and Steve and Kathryn stayed only long enough to pack their possessions and load their cars. It was a bright, crisp day, and the wind from the sea had a tang of autumn in it. Kathryn was pale and subdued, but she breathed the salt air with pleasure. When the last of the luggage had been loaded, they stood for a moment by their cars and looked back at the house. A limp balloon lay on the porch, the only visible leftover of the party.
“Boy,” said Steve quietly. “And to think, I thought this summer was going to be a drag. I thought Pop was handing me a line.”
Kathryn smiled. “Never doubt your father,” she said. “He knows more than all the rest of us put together.” Then she got into the family car, and started down the hill, and Steve climbed into his car and followed her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nathaniel Benchley was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1915, the son of Robert Benchley, a famed American writer and humorist, and Gertrude Darling Benchley. He graduated from Harvard College and enlisted in the U.S. Navy before the attack on Pearl Harbor, serving first as a public relations officer and later captaining PT boats in the Atlantic fleets, earning the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
After the war, Benchley worked for the magazine Newsweek as an assistant drama editor and in 1950 published his first novel, Side Street. He would go on to become a prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction, including novels for young adults and children’s books. His successful and award-winning fiction for younger readers includes Only Earth and Sky Last Forever (1972), a tale of Native American life set around the Battle of the Little Bighorn; Bright Candles (1974), the story of a sixteen-year-old Danish boy who resists the Nazi occupation; and A Necessary End (1976), presented in the form of a seventeen-year-old servicemember’s diary during World War II. A friend of Humphrey Bogart, Benchley also authored a biography of the actor published in 1975.
Several of Benchley’s novels for adults were adapted for film, including Sail a Crooked Ship (1960) (filmed in 1961 under the same title); The Off-Islanders (1961) (filmed as The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, 1965); and The Visitors (1965) (filmed by William Castle as The Spirit Is Willing in 1967).
Benchley and his wife Marjorie Bradford Benchley had two sons, Nat Benchley, a writer and actor, and Peter Benchley, author of Jaws. Nathaniel Benchley died in 1981.
Nathaniel Benchley, The Visitors
