Noontime was edging within the horizon. Not quite noontime, closer to ten o'clock, but the way the sun sat suggested noontime and declared that this day would be as hot as the last. I sat in the fireman's seat, my back straight as a flagpole, my eyes flickering from the gauges to the smoke blowing from the stack and back again.

I'd seen the pressure rise nicely, deliberately, steadily, no hint of dropping or turning on me. Just a few minutes ago conductor Blackstone, decked out in a nice white shirt and a knit cardigan sweater, had climbed into the 401 and half a minute later Lionel emerged, putting on his cap and slinging his jacket over his shoulder. The men were arriving, the departure time coming closer. The way Lionel walked toward the depot was kind of funny; stooped over for part of the way, then he put his chin up just before marching through the open door.

Now here came the brakeman, the one built like a baggage hauler. He'd want to test the air brakes. I'd started the compressor - hadn't I? - yes, I had, right when the steam pressure read fifty - one of the gauges on the engineer's side had climbed when the compressor furiously burst to life, crushing air into the torpedo-shaped tanks on either side of the boiler. Yes, I'd covered that - he'd have air - he'd want to test them - I thought maybe I could help with the test, operate those big brass levers atop their odd cylindrical columns - no, only engineer Alexander knew how to do that, there'd be too many ways for me to botch something.

There were a thousand things I might've botched already, starting with the flashback when I lit the engine off - amazing it didn't turn the firebox inside out - might've loosened staybolts, might have made the boiler flues leak - might have this, might have that, all manner of things flying out of kilter.

And Mr. Alexander would know. Those bloodshot old eyes of his saw everything with better sharpness than my younger eyes could dream of, he saw right through me when I said I wasn't hurt yesterday - the hand smarted still - but didn't say anything. Heck, all those old men saw right off I was a "mud steamer" - whatever that is, maybe it means I learned on a coal-burner and now they're outdated and everything's fired by oil.

Mr. Alexander knew it all. And now that even the conductor was here, Mr. Alexander would be up here soon to take one look at my solid craftsmanship and shoot it full of holes that were already there. I nervously grabbed a rag and tried to get the excess cylinder oil off the outside of the lubricator; it stuck like some hideous syrup. The rag was already soaked from when the air compressor spurted oily water and I had to mop it up. Grasping the rag at arm's length, I cruelly twisted it, squeezing the water onto the firedoor where it sizzled into vapor. I kept twisting, purging that filthy muck, felt the fibers of the material strain and become mangled in my grip, knotting itself into a solid bit of rope - it was getting painful -

Boots clumped onto the cab steps. I let go of the rag - any longer and it might have been rent to ribbons - dropped my arms to my sides, and jerked to the attention of the ominous, white-fringed face that rose up into the gangway. The unstopping, bloated roar of the firebox got into my head; the heat pressed malevolently against my cheek.

It was Mr. Alexander all right, wearing the same hard-bitten suit of work clothes, but he barely gave me a glance before turning around and hunching down to reach something off the engine. "What's the matter, partner?" he called in jovial, joshing tones that amazed me. "Your rheumatism botherin' you?"

"Aw, shaddup and get outta my way," another voice shouted, thinner but deeper, firmer but friendly. Mr. Alexander held onto a grab iron with one arm and reached out with other, straining to haul something up. The voice went on: "I don't know how you get around with all the half-baked nonsense they're saddling these engines with - umph! - I'll bet some blue-nosed foreman wanted to save a nickel by cutting the steps in half - "

By now the owner of the voice was standing on the footplate, so stocky in build he looked like he'd spent his life like the Greek god who held the Earth on his shoulders - Mrs. Middleton would be proud to know I remembered that. This man was a little older than Mr. Alexander, by ten years, I guessed, and it seemed as if his face had hardened in old age right when he happened to be smiling. Every line and crease seemed set up for a smile, right down to the two slits his black eyes peeked out from. They lighted on me. "What happened to Carl?"

"Drafted," Mr. Alexander deadpanned.

"Good. He'll go far."

"If he doesn't get his guts blown out first."

Short white hair sprouted from beneath the man's balloon-shaped welder's cap, and he held a long, black cigar in his mouth like it had grown there. He was bent over at every joint from his knees to his spine, and his torso could almost have been used for a desk, but his chin stayed level. I thought he looked a little comical, until he settled into the engineer's seat and his hands fell right into position on the throttle and the air brakes. It was like seeing the missing part of a machine click into place. "Carl's a good man, he'll probably start moving up in short order."

"Eh, who are you to tell," Mr. Alexander replied as he hung out the gangway and peered back toward the train. "You're the man who went from private to corporal to private to sergeant- "

"Got me there, you don't last long with the brass when you throw sergeants down the stairs."

"Sergeants?" Mr. Alexander turned around, his mouth half-open and grinning. "You never told me about that."

"Oh, yeah. When I was sergeant in Kentucky around '98 I got stuck with another sergeant about the same age as your twelve-year-old fireboy - you can sit down now, son - had a big head and not much to fill it with. 'Round about noon one day I was up having a dozen or so of my boys scrub out their barracks, and I gave a couple of 'em a break for a few minutes. So they were sitting on their bunks, chewing the fat when in comes this twelve-year-old sergeant and he starts screaming at 'em for sitting idle without even looking at me. So I marched over there, grabbed him by the throat and yelled right into his face 'You got something against my men, you come to me!" and then I yelled a whole bunch of things I won't get into with your fireboy within earshot over there and he just went stiff as a board and I was seeing red, so I held him by his throat with one hand and his coat with the other, and threw him right out the door and down the stairs like yesterday's rubbish!"

They both almost bent double laughing. I felt a smile creeping across my face. It was an amusing story and if, say, my father had told it I might have laughed but now something was forcing that smile - me trying to blend in without being obvious.

Suddenly Mr. Alexander waved his arm to something way back at the rear of the train. "You want to take her back, Boomer?"

"Take her back, har, I'll show you how it's done." The man in the engineer's seat reached stiffly for the whistle cord, grasped it and played out three notes like a pipe organ while I clung nervously to the firing valve. He gave the throttle an abrupt yank and my mouth dropped open in amazement, the pressure had dropped by five pounds. Trying to adjust for it, I only got myself flustered. After that initial yank, he left the throttle alone and all three of us leaned out our respective sides of the cab, gazing back at the undulating lines of cars rumbling ahead of us.

We rolled off the siding and over the main a few hundred feet before going into another switch, and at each bend the old man gave the throttle another jerk that shaved another five pounds off my pressure - why couldn't he ease it in and out, the way Mr. Alexander did? - another jolt and all the cars creaked in unison, like the iron horse neighing in protest. Peering around the 401, I saw the last car rise straight up into the air and I stared at the spectacle longer than I should have - the engine was almost on its knees. All the cars laden with ore went up before we were close enough for me to recognize the wooden beams of a trestle - a raised section of track.

"Hold her here!" Mr. Alexander ordered, and I heard the air brakes being set. The figures of brakemen rose up on top of the cars, working levers and controls too far away for me to make out.

"So I got hauled in to see the typewriter," the old man went on, "and whaddaya know, the camp brass hat is just another twelve-year-old in uniform-"

"Someone's daddy must've been chief of staff," Mr. Alexander put in.

"This doggone kid never once looked me in the eye, he just fiddled with everything on his desk and wouldn't even shout at me, just muttered some doggerel about respecting your fellow sergeants and working in harmony and it was all I could do to keep from laughing at the twit!"

A great crashing of falling rocks and clouds of dust erupted over the Owens Valley, and I jerked my head around trying to see what was going on - the ore in our train was streaming out of the cars on the trestle and into another train of larger cars - twice our size, easily! - on a paralleell track set in the dirt. In the middle of it all Mr. Alexander they kept talking like nothing was happening. "So what did you do?"

Chewing his cigar, the old man threw up a hand in a salute-like gesture. "Well, he dismissed me, so I just turned around to walk out and the boy sergeant screams, 'Hold it! How do you leave an officer?' I say, 'Salute, left turn, leave at attention!' 'So try it again!' he says, 'dismissed!' So I just walk out, he screams at me, we go through the whole rigmarole again, 'Dismissed!', I walk out, and now the twelve-year-old sergeant's red as a beet, got veins standing out on his neck, he screams 'Why won't you leave the officer correctly?' and I said 'Because there ain't no officer in this doggone room!'"

The parched, bitter ore dust was drifting into the cab now, scaling up my throat. I pulled my bandana over my face to keep from choking and crouched over my controls as if trying to hide in them, nervous and jittery.

Mr. Alexander and the old man didn't even take notice of the dust, they were both laughing so hard they slapped the side of the cab. "You must've set a record for number of demerits earned in a day!"

"Demerits, har, that's how I went back to private again!" They kept bantering heedless of the dust, the old man arguing the military had gone soft and Mr. Alexander answering it had gotten rougher, while the ore kept crashing behind us.

The drumming of rock on wooden car decks grew so relentless I didn't even notice when it stopped - maybe my ears blended it with the firebox. Mr. Alexander leaned out the gangway and took a signal from far down the cars. "Take her forward, yard speed."

A hiss, and the air brakes relaxed their grip; another hiss and steam rose around the front of the engine, white and opaque in the sun. Number nine creaked forward, the cars clattering behind like a line of unruly first-graders. To my amazement, water jumped from the stack, glittering in the air. "Aw, go on and spit, you old slag-heap," the old man grumbled. Where'd the water come from? Boiler too full? Gauge said it wasn't. Maybe number nine didn't like being manhandled by this stranger, jerking her bowels around and swearing when she protested. I went to my work, adjusting the fire to sound more robust and less asthmatic, trying to soothe and salve the engine's wounds.

Mr. Alexander said: "We're going to Laws with some boxcar loads, you want to come along?"

The old man sighted down the track and breathed out a long strand of white cigar smoke, letting it drift away like a dream. "Naw -- naw, that ain't my place to be in your way, I'll get off next time you stop at the depot."

We stopped a hundred feet or so from the station to drop the ore train. The old man hoisted himself onto the footplate, grunting the way the cars had. It wasn't a matter of hauling his bulk around - he handled that all right - it was the way his arms and legs only bent in certain directions, and not too happily either. "Reminds me . . . how's your boy doing these days?"

I jerked my head up, dumbstruck. Mr. Alexander had a son?

"Eh, he's doing fine, celebrated his twenty-first birthday just last week." His smile had changed from jovial to something odd.

"Going into the army?"

"Naw, went up to 'Frisco to run the roundhouse up there."

"That so!" They both laughed, and the old one moved slowly to the cab steps. "Tell your boy he won't save any money by cutting steps off."

"He knows." Mr. Alexander helped him down, and the gnarled old face vanished behind the cab, a twist of cigar smoke floating upward.

Engineer Alexander took his seat. "That Boomer - he's a card. How'd you like his throttle style?"

A question? My mind flew - questions meant I was being put to the test. I had maybe a second to stammer out the right answer - but he didn't wait for me: "He never could handle one of these right - if his joints hadn't gone, he'd be over here instead of me. Just as well, last of his breed."

Not a test? Not a test, thank goodness . . . but the test had to be coming, surely he'd want to check over everything I'd done before we went out on the mainline. We did some more bone-rattling switching and coupling around the yard, my shin and hand stinging like the devil again. So we were headed to Laws - I thought the caller said Keeler, but never mind, my father had said I could use the working hours. I'd probably have gone along even if I didn't need the hours, I didn't think I had a choice. I wondered what Laws was. Maybe it's bigger than Keeler, got to be bigger than Owenyo. We were taking boxcars up there, boxcars were for valuable cargo, much more so than the gondolas of dirt and gravel we picked up at Keeler.

We left Owenyo with a tank car coupled behind the engine, followed by a line of those desert-red, homespun boxcars. The gauges read what they should, the water level was up, Mr. Alexander hadn't stirred from his seat -- to make sure he had all the steam he wanted, no questions asked, that was my job, and I just might be up to the task. Like yesterday, mile upon mile of sage, sand and Sierra rolled by, but now it seemed a little greener, a little closer to the farmland I knew.

There was a road that ran parallel to the tracks, and every so often a car would come along and pass us by, but then there came a rusty Ford truck dating back twenty years, carrying seven or eight Mexican laborers in its bed. At first I shrank back from the window, remembering the baggage car, but they looked up and waved and shouted to us. They were headed the same way we were, probably to Laws, and I leaned out to wave back.

The truck overtook us in two or three minutes, disappearing into its own dust. I wondered what we were carrying -- we were the city's flow of lifeblood, and I was the personal tender to the iron horse, furnishing the power that moved the train through the wasteland. A cool breeze blew in around me, created just by the train's motion, and it wicked the sweat from my face, leavening the desert's relentless heat.

It didn't last - the stack billowed brown smoke, the gauges fluttered, Mr. Alexander shot me a glare when he had to adjust the throttle for falling pressure. I kept leaning out the window, making like I was watching the smoke but actually trying to catch that breeze again. All I found was a hot stupor.

Laws crawled into view when the sun said it was afternoon, leaning maybe toward two or three. I'll say this much for it: there was a real depot next to the tracks. Not the meager, boxlike thing Lionel worked in at Owenyo, but something more like the depot back home, a sprawling building and platform beneath a roof with colossal eaves. What else I could say for it, I don't know, except at least the houses looked decent, each with a spiffy, if faded, paint job. From the tracks coming in I saw a store or two, some women in nice, Sunday-style dresses walking along a wooden sidewalk, a Wells Fargo office, men in dirty clothes gathered around a car. Somewhere in the shadow of the distant Sierras I could see herds of cattle, or maybe horses - must be ranchland out here. That was all.

Engineer Alexander cut the throttle. I bitterly slammed the damper most of the way shut. This Laws was not the Laws I'd dreamed of, not the Laws I'd hoped would be glorious just to serve. Owenyo, Keeler, now Laws - all ramshackle flotsam in a forsaken country, no relation to the dreamscapes of San Francisco and Los Angeles I'd glimpsed in gritty, black-and-white photographs. Even number nine was miles apart from the Daylight.

We passed the station and stopped out where the tracks wallowed in the dirt. Mr. Alexander dropped the pin into the throttle to keep it from being opened, then took off his leather work gloves. "Dinner break."

Ah, now that sounded good. I instantly began to take off my own gloves.

Mr. Alexander looked down at me. "Where do you think you're going?"

I stopped, then slowly slid the gloves back on and let my arms fall to my sides.

"Someone's gotta watch the fire, kid. That's your job. We'll be back to start switching in a half-hour."

I nodded receipt of the instructions and returned to the fire, my head angled morosely downward. The engineer spoke again: "Bring anything?"

I looked up. My face must've answered for me. He silently pointed to the cabinet beneath his seat before descending the cab steps out of sight.

Immediately, I went over to the other side of the cab to lean out the gangway, and I saw him walking back to where the conductor and brakeman were standing by the caboose. A quaint old man wearing a black suit and a white beard came out of the depot to join them; I took him to be the stationmaster. What they said I couldn't catch, just whispers and laughs in the air, then they all turned and walked down the Laws main street.

I leaned on the grab irons for I don't know how long, not too long, staring at the dirt like it fascinated me. Then I pulled myself upright, turning back to the shadows inside the cab, the firebox roaring indifferently away

Opening the seat cabinet, I saw Mr. Alexander's dented steel lunchpail, and on opening it found a few generously-sized sandwiches in brown paper, tucked in alongside a very old canteen labeled "USM." Good of him to go to the trouble for a green fireman, and a mud steamer at that.

Slumped on the fireman's seat, I chewed mechanically, my eyes intently focused on the gauges. I don't know what all the intent focus was for -- whenever pressure rose a little too high, I gave her a shot of cold water from the injector to keep things even. My hand still stung, but other than that I guess I really had nothing to make a complaint of.

I got up and stretched my legs - it's no joke to fold up a six-foot-frame for hours on end. I picked up the oilcan and climbed out of the cab. I could at least oil round again -- probably didn't need it any more than the tender bearings did, but I had to do something to move around.

The second my boots hit the dirt, something alerted me that I was being watched. It was an eerie scene across the yard from me, the hulks of shacks and trees stuck in the ground in a haphazard line, casting very black shadows along hot ground. Some other shapes were human and moving, hints of their chatter creeping over the yard. It was the ones that were human and motionless that made my nape hairs quiver. In glances over my shoulder I could swear there were two glints on each figure where the eyes would be, focused on me. Leaning under the boiler's shadow, water boiling right over my head, I started oiling the rear driver bearing.

Scattered scratching noises in the dust - footsteps, behind me, coming closer, who knew how fast. I caught words and mutters: "New boy . . . green one . . . skinny as a snake." I expected them to say "mud steamer." Pulling the can from the bearing and my head out of the frame, I turned nervously around.

They weren't old. They were young, younger than the brakeman, young enough to be my age. They squinted their eyes against the sun, looking me over from boots to cap, searching and scouring for, I don't know, the mark of the mud steamer, maybe. Or maybe not - they weren't railroad men, their clothing was too much of a hodgepodge of flannel shirts, old jeans, good trousers, even a leather jacket on one of them, worn in defiance of the heat.

I looked back at them. I knew faces like these, and they made me want to crawl under the engine and stay there. I'd seen them jeer at Lionel's bloody face in the fields, seen them glare hatefully at the well-dressed depot clerk who invaded their baggage car, and now they were deciding whether to call me a friend or something less than them.

A friendly face - I must have looked pleadingly over the small crowd before finding a friendly face - a girl's face, over the jacketed boy's shoulder. She wasn't searching - she didn't seem to notice me the way the others did, her eyes kept jumping from my face to the boy in front of her. Looking right at her, I managed a halfhearted "Hello!"

The whole mob flinched. The one in the jacket burst into a grin. "Hello yourself!" They laughed now, hello boy, ahoy there, how nice of him. My mouth curved upward - I smiled and maybe laughed a little along with them. Even the girl's eyes were contorted into the folds of a laughing face. Maybe they'd call me a friend - or at least wouldn't call me a foe.

The boy with the jacket had a strange face, hard-edged with some dark, shiny good looks. "Don't think we've met."

I replied: "My name's Rusk, ah, Charles Rusk."

"How long have you been on this job, Charles Rusk?"

I held the oilcan in one hand and nervously gripped the stem with the other. "Two days now, almost."

"Hello, I'm Charles Rusk and this is my train." It was someone else who said that, a boy with a solid but mealy face and tangled, curly hair -- he looked like a very young desert rat. His words didn't draw snickers, it was the voice he said them in that did, almost talking out his nose - did I really sound like that? I smiled with the mob that time, but I didn't laugh with them.

"Alright, alright, never mind him, Charles Rusk." The jacketed boy laid a consoling hand on the girl's shoulder, like he was trying to smooth something over, but I didn't buy it - not with those eyes of his, looking down on me and searching. My view settled on the girl again.

The leader looked back at her, gently chucking her chin with his fist. "Keep smilin', looks good on you." No, it didn't. That smile she turned and gave him was halfway to a grimace. She might as well have pushed up the corners of her mouth with her fingers.

Her eyes moved, and I realized she was looking at something behind me - they all were - and I looked back to see Mr. Alexander's face looming at me like the crags of the Sierras. "Get back to the cab."

Instantly, I walked back along the engine, but the young desert rat called after me "Chick-chick-chick-chicken . . . !" Thinking back, he probably meant to goad me but I remember stopping, not having the faintest idea what he meant by that.

Engineer Alexander faced them now. The leader said "That your boy, Pops?"

The old man replied "What've you come for here?" But they didn't answer, they were still chuckling over that chick-chicken bit.

"Well, why don't you answer me, you damn yellow-livered guttertrash!" The engineer shouted that, chewed up each word and spat it out, jarring both me and them to the core. He let it sink in just long enough before going on: "What business have you egg-sucking Southern trash got in this yard? Railroad's a job for men and the closest you gutter-crawling millboys have is the girl back there! Now beat it and do your chicken-stealing at Keeler hereafter, you hear!"

They heard all right, but that didn't mean they moved. Most of them stood just stunned, dumb as posts. It was the girl and the leader who had their heads down - not in shame, more like they were ducking a cloudburst. The girl's eyes flickered up as if checking to see if it was over.

It wasn't: "Move! or you'll play hell to get out!" That time they beat it, ducking out of sight behind the front of the engine. The girl and the leader walked backwards as if afraid to turn their backs on Mr. Alexander, who was standing his ground, before they also stepped over the rails toward yard limits.

I was standing by the cab steps, cradling the oilcan, firebox roaring overhead, when the old engineer gave up his ground the walk back to the cab. His eyes met mine, squinted against the sun, and his jaw seemed just a bit slack, like the tongue-lashing he'd dealt had exhausted it.

He gestured with his head for me to get up there, and I knew I had to move or risk a lambasting that would take the soot out of my clothes. That looming, craggy face had an expression on it the likes of which I'd never seen before, something furious a hair's-breadth away from collapsing into something pitiable. Scrambling up the steps, I could only imagine the horror it must be, to be this man's son.