THE TRAIN IS THERE, belching smoke, barely still. As Jack looks down from the rim of the bluff, a thin shower of grit falls on him. Steam gasps from the great iron wheels. He can feel the heat. Behind the engine is a parade of passenger cars. Their dull red color matches that of the bluff he stands on. They go on and on around the bend to the east. He wonders if there’s a caboose.
Out of the first car steps the conductor, stubble-chinned but spiffy in black suit and brimmed cap. “All aboard!” he calls, looking up and down the tracks as if he doesn’t know Jack stands above him. Jack skids down the bluffside, rushes to the train. “Almost didn’t make it, kid,” says the conductor. He moves aside so Jack can mount the steps.
Jack stands at the head of a long aisle of empty seats. He wonders if he’s the only passenger. Above him a dim light flickers behind frosted glass. He chooses a seat on the right side. Then changes to the left. A window seat.
A flurry of chuffs: the train begins to move. The conductor comes down the aisle barking, “Tickets!” Jack hands over his ticket. The conductor punches it, but instead of handing it back, he keeps it. He pulls a round brass watch from his vest pocket. “Running late,” he says, and moves on. For a moment Jack wants to call after him, wants to say Where are we going? But he doesn’t.
As the train slowly gathers speed, he watches the bluff go by, then Gorilla Hill and Great Plains, milky in the moonlight, then nothing but trees. Panic rises. He glances back for the conductor but he is gone. He stands. “Stop! Wait!” He tries to open the window. It won’t budge. He runs down the aisle to the next car, which is empty, and the next car, which is empty. Where is the conductor? He calls: “Stop the train! I want to get off! Please!” The ceiling lights flicker a final time and go out. The pale light of the moon skims the crests of a hundred empty seats. From the engine’s heart beats a strong and steady rhythm.
Groping in the dark, he returns to his seat. For some reason it feels important to reclaim the same seat he started with. Occasionally a passing branch scratches at the window. He has to look back now to see the moon. He cannot find Gorilla Hill.
Why is this happening? Why must he go? He thinks he hears the Amigos calling him from the bluff. In the black glaze of the window he sees the faces of Hokey Pokey. Kids. Kids. From the other side of the window Jubilee smiles at him. Scramjet rears up majestically on his hind wheel. The herd thunders across Great Plains. Kiki pounds his fist into his glove, calls, “C’mon, Jack—send me a hard one!” He has been happy here. Happy. The Hokey Pokey Man flips his towel over the block of ice. The Hokey Pokey Man says, Sayonara, kid.
The train labors up a slope, now cruises onto flatlands, bogs of moongleaming pondwater and the contorted stumps of trees. It is so different here. Jack has never known anything but Hokey Pokey, has never known there was anything but Hokey Pokey. The train clatters over a bridge. His creek, where he explored and stone-crossed and poked at crayfish all his life, is but a trickle to the broad river below. The engine hurls its whistle into the night.
Jack looks back out the window and panics—the moon is not there! He rushes to the other side of the train—there it is, high above the bogs. When he returns to his seat, he sees dark, massive shapes receding in the distance. The Mountains. They have now passed beyond the Mountains that speak in thunder, the end of the world.
The bogs give way to a landscape of humpy hills, like dumped potatoes. Dinging, flashing red lights race by the window. He glimpses roads running into the tracks. He sees a light in the distance. A fallen star? Pale lights drizzle from unseen sources. The train rolls on.
Boxy shapes race by. In the distance a cluster of lights, some of them moving. Into the dark well of a tunnel and out to a hailstorm of lights on all sides. The train seems to be moving faster, seems excited. Jack’s heart matches the pulsebeat of the screaming locomotive. The smell of burning coal fills the swaying, clattering car. He is thrilled. He is terrified. He wants to cry. He wants to cheer. There are no faces at the window now, only lights against the blackness. He closes his eyes. He breathes deeply … deeply … he is feeling creamy … he tries to remember …