Where's My Wandering Boy Tonight?

In a hamlet stitched together by lamplight and lullabies, Garry Beecher—eyes bright as struck matches—trades the lilac-scented promises of his mother and the steadfast gaze of sweetheart Lorna for the tinsel mirage of Veronica, a shimmying chorus girl whose laughter ricochets like silver coins on marble. The pair elope to the electric Babylon of the city, where skyscrapers rise like hypodermic needles against a velvet sky; there, amid jazz-soaked speakeasies and ticker-tape constellations, Garry discovers his paramour draped across the lap of a marble-cool millionaire. Pride flayed, he slinks home, rifles the safe of his former benefactor, and re-enters Veronica’s orbit on a gilded tide of embezzled cash. Opulence devolves into prodigality: champagne cascades over balconies, roulette wheels devour inheritances, and a diamond necklace—icy rope of stars—becomes the noose that cinches when coffers run dry. Veronica, ever the pragmatist, whispers his name to the police; Garry is shackled, condemned to a decade behind stone and rust. From a prison bunk he pens counterfeit letters—dictated by loyal Lorna—to console the mother who nightly sets a third plate for a ghost. Yet fate, capricious dramaturge, engineers a riot: convicts swarm like iron filings toward a hijacked locomotive, its headlamp a Cyclopean eye splitting the dusk. Garry, swept aboard, rescues the warden seconds before a hurtling freight train would have painted the rails with oblivion. His act of gallantry buys a governor’s signature on parchment of mercy; the prodigal, sun-scorched and chastened, limps back to the porch swing where two women have kept the lamp trimmed and the coffee hot, proving that even a coin melted by sin may still bear the profile of redemption.