Danny visits Ricky at camp and makes a reunion pact

Danny’s visit to Ricky at camp turns a farewell into a carefully prepared promise of reunion. Faced with an eleven-year-old who refuses to return to Miles, Danny helps her reach her grandmother, secures the future value of his Hired Girl shares for her, and sets out a precise plan by which they can meet after cold sleep. The scene culminates in Ricky asking if he will marry her and Danny answering yes: their hoped-for future is bound to a date, a place, and an engagement.

Arrival and Reunion

After breakfast, a shower, and a shave, Danny drives to the camp with Pete. A truck associated with the United States Army has turned in just ahead of him, and Danny takes its timely arrival as a hopeful sign. The camp is full of girls in green uniforms, many of whom stare shyly at Pete. At headquarters, however, Danny encounters an adult scout who is properly wary of an unfamiliar man seeking access to the campers.

Danny identifies himself as the child’s uncle, Daniel B. Davis, and says he has an urgent family message. The scout explains that visitors other than parents can visit only when accompanied by a parent, and that visiting hours do not begin until four. Danny insists that he must deliver the message; she offers to pass along a written note after Ricky finishes her rhythm games. The arrangement keeps the meeting under the camp’s supervision while allowing Danny to speak with Ricky privately nearby.

Ricky appears with an excited shout of “Uncle Danny!” and is delighted that he has brought Pete. The cat leaps into her arms, and she adjusts him into the support position he likes before greeting Danny more soberly. Danny does not kiss or touch her. Their established closeness, he recalls, rests instead on mutual respect for individual dignity, a detail that shapes the tenderness and restraint of the encounter.

Ricky has just received Danny’s letter but has not yet opened it. He tells her that it says he is going away, and that after mailing it he decided he had to say goodbye in person. The reunion thus begins with an impending separation already in view; Ricky’s joy at seeing him is shadowed by the news that he intends to leave.

Ricky’s Refusal to Return

Danny is relieved that Ricky already knows Miles has married Belle. She says Miles wrote to her about the marriage, then reveals the more immediate crisis: she will not go back to his home. She explains that Miles is not her real father and that her grandmother is coming from Brawley the next day to take her in.

Ricky says her grandmother has told her she need not live with Miles because he never adopted her and the grandmother is her guardian of record. She asks whether that means she cannot be forced to return. Danny does not promise that the camp will readily release her: Miles entrusted her to its care, he explains, and the staff may be unwilling to hand her over to anyone but him. The obstacle is both familial and procedural, even as Ricky remains firm that she is going with her grandmother.

Danny offers a practical way around the camp’s likely resistance. He advises Ricky not to announce that she is leaving for good, but to say that her grandmother wants to take her for a ride and then not come back. He further cautions her against packing a bag or taking clothes beyond what she is wearing, suggesting that she keep anything important or valuable in her pockets. Ricky’s tension eases enough for her to agree. His advice makes the promised departure an immediate plan rather than a wish, though the scene does not narrate the grandmother’s arrival or the escape itself.

The Stock and Its Legal Transfer

Danny also uses the meeting to provide for Ricky’s future. He apologizes for having been wrong about Belle and says he is finished with her. He then shows Ricky the certificate for all he owns in Hired Girl, Inc., explaining that he wants her to have it because he will be gone for a long time. An earlier, separate assignment sheet seems too easy for Belle to destroy, so Danny abandons that approach and prepares the transfer on the certificate itself.

The exchange reveals that Ricky’s familiar surname is not her legal name. When Danny asks her full name, she says that she has been called Frederica Virginia Gentry for as long as she can remember, but that her real surname is Heinicke, the name of her grandmother and biological father. Danny writes “Frederica Virginia Heinicke” on the assignment and adds that the shares are to be reassigned to her on her twenty-first birthday. Naming Ricky correctly and specifying the transfer date turn the gift into an arrangement designed to outlast Danny’s absence.

Danny asks the camp official to witness the signature. She uses the longer form identifying him as Daniel B. Davis, known to her personally, and embosses her seal through both her signature and his. Danny is relieved that this makes the assignment harder for Belle to challenge or destroy. The official refuses a fee. Danny tells Ricky to give the document to her grandmother and take it to a Bank of America branch in Brawley, where the bank will handle the rest. He frames the stock as help with the child’s education; its value, he says, will grow.

A Dated Promise and Engagement

Danny tells Ricky that he and Pete will enter the Long Sleep, but offers her a way to find them again: she should live with her grandmother, go to school, and let the money accumulate. At twenty-one, if she still wants to see them, she will have enough to take the Long Sleep herself. He promises that he and Pete will be waiting when she wakes. Ricky does not immediately accept the plan; she considers it for a long time, then asks whether Danny will truly be there.

To make the promise actionable, Danny specifies the arrangements. Ricky is to make them with the Cosmopolitan Insurance Company and sleep at the Riverside Sanctuary in Riverside. She must order the sanctuary to wake her on May 1, 2001, exactly, and leave instructions if she wants Danny admitted when she first opens her eyes. He knows the sanctuary’s rules may otherwise keep him in the waiting room. Because he has already prepared the details in an envelope, Ricky need not memorize them; she can decide on her twenty-first birthday whether to use the plan. Danny promises that he and Pete will be there whether or not she comes.

Ricky’s question transforms the practical pact into an engagement: if she takes the Sleep, she asks, will Danny marry her? He answers yes, saying that this is what he wants and why he is making the arrangement. He gives her his class ring from Tech, the only one he has, and tells her that although it is too large, she can keep it until he has another for her when she wakes. The oversized ring serves as a present token of a marriage deferred to the reunion date.

Danny leaves Ricky another prepared envelope, marked for the event of Miles’s death, but does not explain its contents to her. It contains evidence of Belle’s varied matrimonial career, which Danny believes could help a lawyer defeat a court challenge to Miles’s will. Alongside the stock certificate and reunion instructions, the envelope shows that Danny is preparing for possible future disputes as well as for the couple’s hoped-for meeting. The scene closes not with their reunion, which remains in the future, but with the ring and a promise meant to bridge the years apart.