I was wearing that same suit four weeks later at graduation ceremonies, only now I definitely took notice of just how hot it was. It was well into June and as the sun beat down oppressively; I found myself wishing for the light cotton shirt and loose overalls I wore in the fields.

Mine was a small class, perhaps a dozen students or so, seated in our Sunday best on long wooden benches dragged out from the back of the carpenter's shop. There were two benches, one for the boys, one for the girls; a beat-up old lectern for the speechmakers and rows of collapsible wooden chairs for the audience. Lionel wore a cream-colored sport jacket that was more practical for the heat; it had some brass buttons on it with an odd shield-like engraving that puzzled me a bit. Randy was clad head to toe in the simple but unmistakable khaki uniform of the Army. Seated right between the two of them, I had to resist the temptation to laugh at Randy, given the way he sat so bolt upright, stiff as a board. Maybe the Army required he starch himself as well as the outfit.

Stuck in the middle, I twiddled my thumbs, tapped my feet to whatever rhythms I made up, looked around and turned my head constantly. I'd seen pictures in the paper of graduating classes that put this one to shame, photographs of schools from the cities that showed row upon row of students in long, shining black gowns, arranged along the stage of a gigantic theatre. Even my sister's graduation six years ago easily outclassed this one. I remembered how a cloth canopy was stretched between the trees, shading the audience and graduates alike, how I sometimes caught a snatch of the smell of fresh varnish from the lectern, and how I spent most of the time watching the shadows of the leaves sway on the canopy overhead.

The mayor wasn't there to deliver the speech, as he had for my sister, but had sent his aide instead, a balding man in a grey, double-breasted suit. His tremendous brow glimmered with sweat, and what he said sounded uncannily like the speech delivered by Mrs. Middleton, recounting victories in France and advances into Italy, and even going so far as to be the first person in a year to talk about Will's brother, praising the dead man as a hero to America. That surprised me. It surprised me even more when he mentioned "Thomas Middleton, missing in action," and implored us "not to let these sacrifices pass in vain."

When it came time to hand out diplomas, the mayor's aide called us out by our full names, which sounded strange enough but sounded stranger when he called out the fellows who had rushed out and enlisted; Randy became "Private Randolph Norman Pratt, United States Armed Forces." Called up as "Charles Carson Rusk," I was relieved just to be able to move around for the first time in an hour. Mrs. Middleton handed the priceless roll of paper to the aide, who in turn handed it to me, and I wanted to take that diploma and run, sprint along the fields and vault over streams and fences. Instead, I clutched it in one hand, shook the aide's hand with the other, and meekly returned to the bench.

Sometime when the afternoon sun hung high over the schoolhouse, the aide announced that it was over, and sent us "to conquer the evil in that vast, vast world that is now yours!" The graduates were more interested in conquering the expansive picnic lunch set up on the tables in the shade of the schoolhouse, a motherlode of cakes, pies, sandwiches, chicken, corned beef, all the standards. And I was more interested in talking to Lionel, as I had something in my coat pocket that I just knew would impress the heck out of him.

The crowd had broken into several parts, with the graduates in uniform (including Randy, as I still thought of him) gathered around the aide, who was still spinning speeches off the top of his head; the girls clustered into a pack, with a few clinging to the arms of those in uniform, and the parents were milling around in an indulgence of congratulations. I found Lionel by himself, talking to an older couple. Upon seeing me, he instantly put a hand on my shoulder and declared "Mom, Dad, this is Charlie. Charlie, my parents."

His father had a craggy face with a bushy, brown mustache, but it was his mother who caught my attention. She was dressed like every other woman there, but her skin was darker, awash with the deep brownish-red shades of an Indian, and her face, which lit up when she heard my name, looked much more Asian than Lionel's. She extended a hand to shake, saying how much they'd heard about me and how glad they were to meet me at last. Even the father allowed a smile to crease the crevices of his face, his eyes gleaming out from the skin that crinkled around them, and he gave me the friendliest "How do you do, son" I've ever heard from someone with a voice that low and gravelly.

It took me a few minutes to wrench Lionel away from them as I listened to their continual offers to lend a hand on my family's farm should we need it, to come over to borrow anything we needed, to come for supper someday. At some point Lionel and I found ourselves strolling vaguely in the direction of the food tables, which were mostly mobbed by the recruits. "My folks are in a good mood today," Lionel half-said, half-muttered as though he had to explain something. I put my hands in my hip pockets and asked, "Where's the railroad going to send you?"

"Hard to say. Probably a small-town depot someplace that I can catch a local train to. I've a bicycle, so they said they might use me as call boy in the mornings."

"Here, take a look at this," I said, drawing a stiff, light grey piece of paper from my coat pocket.

I knew it would impress him, but even I didn't think he'd be flat-out amazed when I showed him a Southern Pacific boarding pass signed by the branch superintendent. That little piece of paper had a heck of history, dating back to when I got home from the interview with Mr. Donnellon. The second I mentioned the name "Owenyo" my father's thick, grey eyebrows shot up so far I thought they'd come off his head altogether. "Owenyo? Halfway across the state? How do you expect to get over there each time you're called?" But there was a month to sort this out, and I put forth Mr. Donnellon's vague solution of a trolley or a local train. Besides, my father seemed fascinated by the rulebook I brought home, and before going to bed that night I saw him in one of the kitchen chairs, squinting through an old pair of glasses at the book, which he held in the light of a small electric lamp.

The days before my first possible call whittled down quickly, and I was taking stock of what pocket money I had to figure out how many tickets it would last. It was a useless task, as I'd never been on a train before and had no idea what the fares were between here and Owenyo. Salvation came only two or three days before the last day of school, when I went out to get the mail. I'd seen the mailman from a half-mile away, and had plenty of time to get from the house to the dirt road that ran closest to it. The mailman was an affable fellow who had been in twelfth grade when I was in third, and by then was a popular figure on our distant postal route, as he was the only one who would deliver the mail there since the war began, and then only three days a week. As he cycled past he called out "What-ho, Charlie!" and held out a hand with a few envelopes in it. I gave a returning "hello" and snatched the contents of his hand as he breezed by.

Walking back through the grass and sage, I sifted through the envelopes; a letter from my sister, another from an uncle in Oklahoma, something (probably a bill) from Huntington & Fisk Dry Goods, a place in town . . . and a strange envelope with the Southern Pacific crest on it.

And it was addressed to me. The first piece of mail I'd gotten all year, since Christmas cards in December, and this was from the S.P. itself. I fumbled around in my pocket for my penknife, snapped it open, then stopped for just a second before carefully slitting the flap like I was performing surgery. There was a stiff, light grey piece of paper inside, emblazoned again with the S.P. crest and all manner of official lines and text, but the most prominent letters read: "Boarding Pass: This document entitles the bearer to any coach seat on any Southern Pacific train, free of any fare or charge."

Lionel gaped at those letters, the noise and jabbering of the graduation shindig not seeming to reach his ears. "How in the world did you get one of these?"

"Don't know, exactly. It came in the mail. Maybe it was Mr. Donnellon; Mom said something about how he must've cashed in some favors."

"I still don't get it. Those are supposed to be for people like governors and railroad men who've worked for them thirty or forty years."

I shrugged. "Maybe it's the war." I didn't mention what my father had done when I showed him the pass: his eyes just sprang to life, then he held out his hand and I let him take the pass. He held it like he was afraid to break it, those gleaming eyes scanning the lettering, his rough, callused, sun-browned fingers moving along the sides and over the surface. Then he handed it back and said, "You've done well."

The day after graduation I awoke while it was still dark, the only hint of daylight being a blue glow emanating from the horizon. Even my parents weren't up yet, not for at least an hour. I put on my overalls and workboots, tucked the leather gloves I used on the steam tractor into the hip pocket and the boarding pass into the chest pocket. Then I went out onto the front porch and paced slowly back and forth, waiting for the call boy.

The porch sounded hollow, my boots clumping against the dry wooden boards. Dew had settled, and the sweet, plain smell of sage and wheat was sharper and stronger than I was used to. I'd seen dawn before, but not like this, when I could do nothing but wait and listen, only the landscape for company. It wasn't until I stepped off the porch and began pacing the yard that something caught my attention: the snowy Sierras, still impossibly distant but shining orange in a sun that had reached them but not yet me. They were like a row of beacons, not a small collection but a whole panorama that stretched across my vision whenever I looked to the northeast.

Pans clinked together as my mother started working in the kitchen. Vague thuds in the breeze as my father opened and closed the barn doors. The mellow tones of cattle lowing drifted by along with the strident pitches of a cock crowing. By now the sky glowed a deep, bright blue, and the horizon was a vast streak of yellow. Pungent wood smoke suddenly shot through the smell of wheat and sage, and I knew breakfast was being made. It didn't seem like much longer before I heard my mother's voice: "Charlie, breakfast is ready. For pity's sake, Charles Rusk, you'll see the call boy coming two miles away. Come have something to eat."

Walking slowly back, I looked over the roads and fields, still dim but clearly visible, for some sign, any sign, of life. Ma was right; wherever the call boy may be, he was definitely more than two miles out. I turned and trotted back to the house.

I rushed through breakfast with a speed that came close to being impolite (my parents gave me looks that could've stopped a charging bull, but not an eager seventeen-year-old), then scampered back out to the porch. The sun was just over the fields, low and warm, and everything in sight was backlit, shadows outlined by yellow light. I had to shield my eyes to see something moving a mile off down the road.

Yes, something moving . . . something coming! I started walking toward the road. It was a figure far off, on a bicycle . . . maybe it was just the mailman. I stopped walking, then squinted, looking harder. No, the mailman was taller, and he didn't wear a cap. I started running.

The figure raised an arm and waved, and I knew it was Lionel. I waved back, stopping at the roadside. When he drew up next to me he was on an old-fashioned cycle, one decorated with brass that was antique but polished, and the paint was a tuscan red that looked like it had been faded, left in the sun too long. A few bits of sage clung to the sprocket.

But it was the rider that surprised me more than the machine. Lionel was immaculately cleaned up and fitted out with a brown vest and trousers to go along with a white shirt and black tie, while on his head he wore a matching brown shop cap. I didn't know what to make of him; he looked like a cross between a professional clerk and a Western Union boy. Seeming surprised himself, Lionel asked "How'd you know you were going to be called?"

I shrugged. "Mr. Donnellon said I'd be the day after I graduated."

Lionel had the same look on his face he'd had when he was trying to figure out how I'd gotten that boarding pass. "Still doesn't make sense. You weren't even on the call list until this morning. At least, not on mine. They're only calling you because the regular fireman got drafted yesterday."

Not ignoring him but not really listening either, I blurted "What are they calling me for?"

Reaching back, Lionel plunged a hand into a folded brown jacket on the bicycle's luggage rack and pulled out a little grey pasteboard book, the size of one of those five-cent pocket novels. He opened it to the first page. "They want you to fire engine #9 out of Owenyo, on a freight taking some empties to Keeler and coming back loaded. She leaves at zero-eight-twenty-two."

"Quick, do you have the time?"

Lionel instantly pulled a pocketwatch from his vest pocket; it looked like a silver dollar with a clock face. "Just nigh on six. You going?"

There was no stopping me now.