I would like to go home, please

The expression “I would like to go home, please” is John Leandro’s recurring inner plea as he approaches Haven, where his pursuit of a story collides with a danger he cannot yet explain. Its progression from polite self-address to a shrill, nearly shouted demand makes fear audible before he can fully understand its cause—and sets the instinct to escape against the reporter’s determination to get inside town.

First Appearance: A Child’s Polite Plea

The words first arrive as a quiet voice within Leandro, likened to a child speaking at a tea party that has become frightening. Their courtesy is striking: rather than naming the threat or explaining it, the voice asks permission to leave. The contrast between a small, mannerly request and the scene’s growing menace gives the expression its force. It sounds less like a considered decision than an instinct that has found the simplest words available.

The plea comes as Leandro surveys the countryside south of Troy. The hay is long and shaggy, with no early-July first cutting and little expectation of an August one; nearby, a tumble-down barn is ringed with rusty auto parts, and the decaying body of a 1957 Studebaker fills its entrance. The windows seem to stare, though Leandro sees no people. Against this uncanny stillness, the voice’s wish for home is at once a reaction to the landscape and a recognition that the place is unsafe.

Home as Safety, and the Reporter’s Counterargument

Leandro imagines returning to his mother: watching afternoon soap operas with her, eating cookies, drinking coffee, and listening while she talks. The routine is not idealized as perfect. His mother can be irritating, and he would do most of the listening; nevertheless, the thought resolves into a single decisive word: safe. The imagined home is valuable not because it offers excitement or professional success, but because it is familiar and outside the danger he senses near Haven.

The plea repeats, and Leandro’s mind briefly gives fear a professional and historical context. He thinks of reporters and correspondents who might have wished to retreat while covering dangerous situations, even if they appeared calm to television viewers. But he counters the desire to turn back with the logic of his assignment: the story is in Haven, and without entering the town he cannot get it. He imagines a Pulitzer Prize and credits David Bright in advance, converting an uneasy approach into a test of nerve. The expression therefore stands opposite the self-story he tells himself: one voice wants safety; the other insists that the scoop demands persistence.

Escalation on the Road to Haven

The words change as Leandro keeps driving. Less than a mile from the town line, after he has begun to feel ill and has pushed on with his teeth grimly clenched, the voice returns more shrilly: “I would like to go home!” Its increased volume tracks the widening gap between his bodily alarm and his conscious decision to continue. He has already dismissed his nausea as fear, then tried to explain it through his light breakfast of tea and dry toast. Neither explanation makes the sensation recede.

The repetition continues after strange beeping, booping, and buzzing noises come from the back seat and startle him into pulling over. When he asks what is happening, the response is no longer the softly polite request of the earlier scene: “I WOULD LIKE TO GO HOME NOW PLEASE!” The capital letters and added “now” turn the expression into an urgent demand. Its manner remains oddly courteous, but the volume and timing expose how little comfort that courtesy can provide.

From Plea to Flight Warning

The repeated expression is not simply a declaration that Leandro dislikes danger. It recurs alongside physical illness, a deserted landscape, and unexplained sounds, while he continues to defend the reporting mission that brought him toward Haven. Each return makes the conflict harder to dismiss: his stated objective is to enter town and get the story, but the inward voice keeps directing him toward home. The refrain gives this conflict a simple verbal shape without supplying an explanation for what is causing it.

Immediately after the final, emphatic version, Leandro marvels at his apparent ability to isolate a simple mathematical series—a skill he associates with the John Leandro who flunked general math in high school. The thought does not become a reason to stay. His next conclusion is an abrupt instruction to get out. In that sequence, the expression marks the turn from trying to push through fear to recognizing that flight may be necessary. The ordinary wish to return to his mother’s house has become the clearest available warning that his pursuit of the scoop has carried him toward something unsafe.