I woke up the next morning when the sun was white and high in the sky, sometime between eight and nine in the morning. I sprang out of bed, surprised and still sleepy. There were over three hours of chores for me to catch up on. My father would've been hauling me onto my feet long ago.

I put on my work overalls and boots, not expecting to get much in the way of breakfast. Imagine my surprise when I ran into my mother in the kitchen, tossing a few sticks of wood into the stove. "Good morning, Charlie."

"'Morning, mom." She was wearing high-ankle boots and a coat - she'd been out doing my work that morning. With a twinge of guilt, I asked "Why did you let me sleep so late?"

"You needed it. Sit. Have something to eat. This is the most I've seen of you in two days."

Obediently, I sat. My mother took a plate out of the warming-shelf, laden with ham, eggs and potatoes. I started eating while she stood silently in front of the stove, her hands in her pockets, watching me. She was a short, reedlike woman who stood a full head shorter than me but had a build that was tough as sinews, like she might stretch or bend but never snap. "How do you like working for the railroad?"

I swallowed, then answered. "It suits me. Suits me real well."

"Doesn't the engineer give you a hard time?"

Mr. Alexander? I thought for a second and tried to look like I was eating. "No, not at all. It's just the engine, and I'm handling that all right."

My mother was silent, and when I glanced up from the plate I saw her face almost blank, but there was something about her eyes that could've been sad, or wearisome, or maybe even suspicious. I was relieved when she turned and I heard pans clink together.

We were replacing the siding on the south side of the barn that day. It was so badly warped with age that there were places I could probably squeeze through if I had to. My father had been at it for a good long time before I came scampering out there, pulling on my work gloves. Sweat was oozing from beneath his narrow-brimmed hat as he worked a crowbar between a cracked board and a column, and he gave me a glance as I walked up. I grabbed the board's loose end and we both pulled.

It came off with the crackle of dry, half-rotted wood and a cloud of musty sawdust. Tossing it in the wheelbarrow, I took up a hammer and began pulling out rusty nails. It wasn't yet so hot as it was going to be, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky and already I could feel the shirt getting warm on my back. The sun fell directly on the aged, greyish-white wood that covered the barn, and it was so bright I had to squint just to look at it.

A train whistle wafted over to us, soft and musical in the fields of sharp brown crops and hard shadows, and I knew it was the Daylight but I didn't dare stop to look, I just kept on. Enough of the old boards were peeled away that I could see into the barn, completely black against the sunlit outdoors. One piece split in two as my father pried it away. He glanced over the pieces, tossed them in the wheelbarrow and asked "Number nine firing any better for you?"

I pulled a couple more nails, then answered "She doesn't seem to want to be fired at all. I put the fire out yesterday."

"Engineer box your ears?"

"No, no . . . he . . . treated me fairly."

He pulled off a long board, eight or nine feet in length, and sunlight fell into the barn. The tractor was parked in there and the sun lit up a piece of it, a glimpse of brightly colored piping and valves and big wheels. Rummaging in a pile of new wood, he started talking: "Too much atomizer, that was probably what put it out. When you want more fire, you need to come up on the oil first. Then work the stack-draft quick and the engineer won't get mad about the smoke. Coming down on the fire, you come down on the oil last. Then always work your damper so you don't cold-shock the ends of the flues with cold air."

I stopped working and stared at him for a minute. "Where'd you find all that out? They don't put all that in the rulebook."

A thin-lipped smile worked its way over his sun-browned face. Then he picked up a piece of lumber and looked it over - broadsides and ends - for an awful long time. He didn't answer until he had the wood in place on the barn: "Once thought about converting the tractor to burn oil. Got advice about it from some railroad men." Turning to the wood, he positioned it to replace the board he'd just ripped out and tacked it up with just one nail.

Still smiling, he added "Now wouldn't that be something. You wouldn't have had to shovel twice your weight in coal every day we used that old tractor." I said nothing, I just kept watching him a little, then began working another nail out.

Lionel came by when the sun was yellower and cooler, an hour or so before supper. I was hammering the siding up alone and when I saw a figure in overalls walking up I thought it was my father for a second. I'd never seen Lionel in overalls before, only slacks and ties and suits.

"Hello, Charlie."

I set down the hammer and turned to face him. "How are you."

"I knocked on the front door. No one was in."

"Mom and dad went to water the stock. They told me to keep working on this."

"Well, I was sent with an invitation. My folks would like to invite you and your parents to Sunday dinner."

I didn't answer right off. I remembered having supper with other families in the valley, the Parkers, the Beattys, the Travers, and I didn't have many fond memories of it.

"We'd love to." Lionel and I both turned to see my mother standing in the barn, smiling at us through where the siding had been taken off. Immediately, Lionel reached up and took his cap off. "Thank you, ma'am. I'll be sure to tell them that."

"We'll look forward to it. Would you like a drink of water or anything?"

"No, thank you, I have to get back. Good day, Mrs. Rusk." He pulled his cap back on. "Goodbye, Charlie." With that, he walked away around the barn.

"A great kid," my mother remarked. "How long was he in your school?"

"Two or three years, I think."

"Did you know him well?"

I hesitated, then answered "No, not till he started working for the railroad."

The barn had been all safely stitched up by the time Sunday afternoon rolled around. My father put on his Sunday suit for the second time that day, a dark, double-breasted outfit that seemed too large for him. Every time he wore it, my mother said, he'd fiddle with the collar and cuffs and fidget like a ten-year-old for the first twenty minutes. She usually managed to get him evened out after that.

I wore my brown wool sport coat without a tie (so far as I knew, my dad was wearing the only one we had), and the three of us set out along the road once it was cool enough for a walk. The sun sat low and our shadows reached ahead of us for what seemed like a mile, while the crops in the fields were starting to mature, creating vast spreads of green that seemed to well up from nowhere.

We reached the Reeds' house just after the sun had winked out behind the hills. It wasn't much of a farmhouse, or even much of a house; small, trim and white, it looked like the carpenter had built it as tiny as he could get away with. Lionel came out to greet us, looking more like himself now that he was wearing the suit he wore to work on the railroad, right down to the watch and chain. "How are you, Mrs. Rusk. Hello, Mr. Rusk, Charlie." He shook hands with each of us and led us up onto the porch. "Dinner isn't ready just yet, but there are some other guests in the parlor you can talk to. The Holdens, from town." Holding the door open, he bid us enter like a gentleman, one arm poised behind his back.

We walked into a hallway, barely wide enough for two people to stand abreast, the walls covered with vertical-striped wallpaper that seemed a bit faded but the lines were still crisp. "I know Betty Holden," my mother answered. "Her husband owns one of the hardware stores. And she has a girl who graduated from your class."

Lionel smiled affably and nodded. "That's right."

The parlor surprised me. It was spare and simple - just a sofa, chairs, and a couple of end tables - but a big bay window let in a lot of light, and the walls were brightly painted. The Holdens were already there - a round, mustachioed man in a sandy-colored suit, a woman who smiled slowly and easily, and their daughter, Laurie.

I remembered Laurie from school, remembered the girl who sat nearest the window, curled low over her books, never smiling, never talking. She got teased for it at first - the girls teased their own, same as the boys did - but they stopped when they figured out they might as well try to wring blood from a stone. She'd just clam up like a statue.

She'd been cleaned up real well for Sunday dinner, with a knee-length white skirt and a dark red vest, while her short blond hair was pinned right where it was supposed to be. Her greetings were right where they were supposed to be too - silent nods and quiet "hellos" to each of us. As soon as she could, she sat back down on the sofa, trying to blend in with it.

It was dark by the time we sat down to supper, and the Reeds has drawn the black curtains over all the windows and lit just a couple of electric lights. Laurie, Lionel and I ate slowly, kept our elbows off the table and said "please" and "thank you" while the adults talked, told stories, joked and laughed. Sometimes the three of us, the youngest ones, would laugh also and then turn right back to our food. At one point, Mr. Holden looked at me with an ear-to-ear smile and said "So, your dad tells me you're a fireman on the S.P. these days."

I hesitated. Lionel answered for me: "Yes, sir, he is."

"When did you start?"

Lionel answered again: "Four days ago, the both of us."

"Fine start for a young man." Mr. Holden stopped to chew and I shrank in my seat, afraid he'd pose a question Lionel couldn't answer. The room seemed smaller and it felt as if there were nothing beyond those black curtains, as if the house were buried underground.

"And a good thing he's on the trains," Mr. Holden continued. "I started out a switchman, then a section man, wound up a section foreman. Got company quarters, too, a nice little shack for whatever mile of track we were working on."

"What he won't mention," Mrs. Holden spoke up, "is that most of those shacks were crumbling huts or abandoned freight depots. Fifteen years and I don't think we ever owned our own home."

"You remember the company housing at that junction just across the border?" Mr. Holden asked his wife, humor in his eyes. "Just an old boxcar taken off its wheels, that's all it was."

"What I remember was the last one in Texas. That boxcar still had its wheels. It was so high off the ground poor Laurie was too short to climb into it."

"Well, she was all of five years old." The adults laughed, the rest of us laughed, and I glanced at Lionel to see if he knew what was so funny. He didn't, and when we looked at Laurie she seemed to be concentrating all her attention on cutting up a baked potato.

"What got on my nerves were the men he had to boss around." Mrs. Holden tapped her husband on the shoulder with her spoon. "Two-legged oxen who could look after a railroad but not themselves. None of them had wives - and it was easy to see why - so if they wanted their shirts mended, what did they do? They'd take it to the boss' wife! Want a meal after midnight? Go see the boss' wife!"

"I understand completely," my mother put in. I squirmed. My father was wearing the same thin-lipped smile he'd given me outside the barn the day before.

Mrs. Holden continued, unabated. "I felt like I was the den mother for the world's oldest pack of Boy Scouts. And then poor Laurie got dragged into helping out when she was just eight. Half the time she was homeschooled, the other half she darned men's socks."

"Never stayed in one place for long?" Mrs. Reed asked.

"Never. Not more'n six months. No way to raise a child."

Mr. Holden piped up. "Saved up enough to buy the hardware store by the time we got this far west. It'll do her good later on, graduating with a real high school diploma."

Laurie kept working on that potato the whole time they were talking. Mrs. Reed gave her a gaze of very genuine sympathy and asked "What was it like, Laurie dear?"

Laurie froze, like an actress who realizes she's missed a cue. "I . . . I'm sorry?"

"What was it like? You must have some stories. We'd all like to hear them."

The girl stayed stock-still, her wide eyes turning to her mother. Mrs. Holden said "Are you feeling all right?"

All the adults leaned in closer. Mrs. Holden added "Late nights never did agree with her. She'll be better in the morning. Maybe she'd best go home."

"Why, don't all of you leave so soon," Mrs. Reed said, graciously.

Laurie was already halfway to her feet. "That's all right, I'm sorry, I can walk home alone."

Mr. Holden shook his head. "The boys will go with you."

Lionel gave a nod and folded his napkin. I turned to my father, who was giving me a look that said, you will go, and you'll do it with a smile on your face.

Stepping out of that farmhouse was like the world opening up. The dim lightbulbs and black curtains were left behind and the three of us were out on a wide road beneath a warm desert moon, miles of crops basking in shadows and moonlight. Sometimes the roar and rattle of a train would drift over us, so distant it sounded more than anything like the rushing of the wind. Laurie led the way, with Lionel and myself on either side of her; we walked the first half-mile or so as if we were each alone.

"When did you start in the school here? About three years back?" Lionel surprised us by talking. Laurie looked at him, puzzled, then straight ahead again.

Lionel kept talking: "I remember first going for something at your store in the middle of the winter. So you must've started working there that summer. Are you going to keep working there?" I wouldn't have thought it was the right place to talk, in a landscape so dark and quiet, but Lionel's talking seemed all right -- clear and gentle and, well, almost musical. He went on: "How about the railroad? I'm a clerk in the depot at Owenyo, at the junction for the Keeler branch. They have me writing out car orders, tracking shipments, anything that needs typing. Or there's a lot going on at San Francisco."

She cut him short. "I don't talk to Japs."

That was a lie. It was a lie I wanted to call her for, tell her she'd seen his parents, tell her she knew him from school and calling him a Jap was outright cruel. But Lionel took it like a master, kept his chin up and kept walking without a misstep. Laurie watched the ground go by for a few minutes, then raised her eyes to see the few tiny lights in the warm-toned darkness that told us where the town stood. I followed Lionel's lead, bit my tongue and kept quiet.

We continued in silence, until we heard another distant whistle and saw the lighted windows of a passenger train slide to a stop at the station. It waited, then glided away, its whistling engine and rushing cars just a whisper across the valley. Getting closer to town, Lionel reached into his coat pocket and drew out a small wooden case. It contained his harmonica, a gleam of chromed moonlight in his hand, and he raised it into position to play.

He nailed the first note - firm and clear and quiet as the train's whistle, and Laurie turned to look at him. I don't know what tune he was playing, but it probably wasn't another improvisation. This was a waltz, or some kind of old dance tune, one that lilted along on graceful notes, the silences just as important as the sounds. Laurie spent a long time giving him her strangest looks, trying to convince him he was a madman, before she gave up and looked ahead. We were almost in town now, and the lights were putting a glimmer in her eyes, a sheen over her hair, a warmth to her face. Her footsteps became rhythmic, like was walking in time to the music -- I think maybe all of us were.

Lionel didn't finish his tune until we were walking along the backs of the town's stores and businesses, where the rear walls of wooden buildings abutted the stretches of fields we'd been walking through. The Holdens lived on the second story of their hardware store, with a wooden staircase on the outside. Her hands clasped behind her back, Laurie paused for an instant at the bottom of the steps, then trotted up. A door opened, then shut, and there was silence.

Lionel took out his case to put his harmonica away, and I couldn't help but stand and admire. He'd handled the evening with such grace, greeting people, making introductions, knowing when he'd have to answer for me at the dinner table. Even Laurie didn't set him back any, he just responded the best way he possibly could. Now he closed his harmonica in its case and slipped into an inner pocket with a deft hand, the suit seeming to fit him just right, the perfect outfit for a full-blooded man of the world.

Clasping his hands behind his back, he glanced at me, then looked down at the ground and muttered "Well, I sure made a fool out of myself, didn't I."