I would have gone running down that road had Lionel not offered me a ride on his handlebars. "I'm headed to the train station too - my post is at the Owenyo depot, that's why they have me calling the fellows for that branch."

Leaning forward, we bounced off into the sun, squinting at the light from behind the bills of our caps. Every rock and pebble jolted and banged Lionel's old bike as if it were tumbling more than rolling, and I couldn't wait to get on the train. From what I'd seen the ground didn't make trains shake, it was the trains shook the ground.

I rode fellows' handlebars often enough when I was twelve or so, but at a gangly seventeen my boots dragged on the ground unless I lifted them up. My legs were sore by the time we reached town, but I didn't notice. The sun had risen further, now much clearer and less yellow. Downtown was eerily deserted, aside from one or two people moseying by in the distance and the deep, throaty breathing of a steam engine looming behind the depot. I could see the passenger cars snaking out from behind it, a long line of sky-bright window glass and dark, lustrous Pullman green paint.

I got down and followed Lionel as he walked his bike around the side of the station, putting us right up next to the train. The bottom edge of the car body was level with my shoulder, and after gazing up at the windows for a few seconds, I asked Lionel "How do they expect us to get on?"

Lionel didn't stop, but he did give me a strange look. "Same way you always get on a train. This one's no different." He read my response on my face, and then he did stop. "What's the matter? You've been on one of these before, I know."

I shook my head. He was amazed. "You're joking." I wasn't. He went on. "How did you go anywhere?"

"Never went anywhere." Now Lionel stared, his eyes jumping back and forth in disbelief. I added "Well, I've been to town and all the farms in the valley." That time he waited what seemed like a long while before answering "I'll show you around," and walking his bike up onto the platform.

Meekly, I followed as he wheeled it into a barn-sized wing of the station with the word "Baggage" stenciled on the door. The room was not only the size of a barn, it was built like one, with rafters stretched wall-to-wall overhead and dust drifting serenely in the atmosphere. Wooden crates were stacked in all corners, a lot of them large enough for me to hide in. Each one had a paper label on it with some words, but I just caught the largest letters - San Francisco, Sacramento, San Antonio, New Orleans . . . good grief, did that one really say Chicago? I didn't have a chance to look closely, as Lionel leaned his bike up against a wall and slung his jacket over his shoulder. I turned towards him. "You're not taking your bike?"

"Nah, I won't need it. Mr. Donnellon said I could leave it there." With that, Lionel pulled the watch from his pocket again. "Better hoof it, the train's pulling out in just a couple of minutes." He scampered out onto the platform with me close behind, then turned into the depot waiting room.

Once my eyes had adjusted to the lack of light I saw Lionel fearlessly standing before the ticket window. "Lemme guess," came the agent's voice, "one-way coach to Owenyo." An eager nod from Lionel, the sound of paper ruffling, coins clattering, and I drifted a little closer to the window. As the ticket was being pushed into Lionel's hand, the ticket agent's eyes caught mine, then glanced over my outfit, surprised but not a trace of disbelief. "Come on!" Lionel called, already over at the station door, holding it open. I followed.

Outside the line of cars stood waiting, and I could hear the engine snorting and coughing harder, a long breath of black smoke drifting from the stack. There was a man standing next to a door at one end of a coach, a man dressed all in blue like a naval officer, except his hat carried a brass badge with the title "conductor" engraved on it. Lionel rushed toward him, his boots tapping lightly on the platform planks.

The door in the coach was set above a narrow stairwell into the car, and beneath the bottom step was a square, metal stool with a few spots of rust on it. Lionel held up his ticket for the conductor's middle-aged eyes to see, and the man nodded. "Watch your step, lad." I was about to follow Lionel up into the coach when he suddenly grabbed my upper arm and whispered "Charlie - your pass."

Hastily, I unbuttoned my chest pocket, fished around for the pass and then pulled it out. For a split second, the conductor didn't seem sure of what to do, then he nodded and waved to the door. "Climb aboard, sir."

Sir? When did I earn the title of 'sir?' I pondered this as I scrambled up the steep steps right behind Lionel, who took a sharp left through an equally narrow door into the coach. The train was packed to the gills, and it seemed like an awful lot of those passengers were in uniform, the rest were laborers and workingmen in overalls - aside from the conductor, not a suit to be seen anywhere.

We were still trying to find seats in the crowd when something clanked and the whole coach nearly jolted me off my feet. I clutched at the seat backs on either side of me while Lionel kept walking with only a quick stutter in his step. "Come on, Charlie."

But I wasn't moving. I ducked down a little and saw through the windows, set low enough for seated people to see out of, the eaves of the station sliding by. Rows of shingles and siding, then the town - the whole landscape, everything outside that window was sliding backwards. The train jolted again, the engine's exhaust picked up as it gained momentum, and thousands of tons of steel clanked together in a rhythm designed to make sure I knew I was huddled in the grip of some colossal machine.

Lionel called out he'd found some seats, and that time I let go of the seat backs and moved to where he was waving from at the other end of the car. The seats, covered with some sort of cheap, ragged leather, were set up facing each other, like restaurant booths without the dining table. I instantly slid into the window seat, Lionel sportingly took the one next to me. By now the coach was rocking steadily side-to-side, the trees and telegraph poles flying by. After a minute or so Lionel spoke up: "Just wait till he gets it out on the high iron."

"The what?"

"The mainline. Once the train's out there, he'll take it up to road speed."

This wasn't speed? Good grief.

If I hadn't stayed glued to the window I might have noticed the scene playing out a little to my left. I mentioned before that the seats were set up to face each other, and we were facing two men, one in Army khakis, the other wearing overalls. I couldn't even say whether they were young or old, but Lionel got plenty of attention from them. At one point I heard feet shuffle and a muffled, hard-edged "Sorry, boy." I turned just in time to see Lionel shift his position, his face straight. The two men were staring at him, brazenly. I didn't like this. I turned back to the window.

One of the men spoke again. "What's your business here?" I kept my eyes on the landscape as I heard Lionel shift his position again, this time more nervously, before answering "I'm, ah, working for the railroad." Silence, aside from the chatter of the passengers and the clanging of the train. I kept watching California rush by - there were farms out there that way, I could see them - could that one be the family farm, out there? I couldn't be sure, this didn't seem like the same route as the Daylight.

"They must be getting desperate." It was the man in the Army uniform talking. "First they hire women, then those rookies -" I knew he was pointing at me "- and now - that." He wasn't pointing at me that time.

"The two of us - my friend and I - we're going to the same place on the line. Owenyo." Lionel stammered those words out. "Aren't we?" He prompted me that last time with a nudge in my arm. Looking forward, I was hit head-on by two implacable faces that made the ticket agent back in town seem likable, only these faces weren't grumpy but hard-lined, set in stone. I managed to put forth a weak "Oh . . . yeah."

Another silence. Lionel kept shifting. I kept still. I forced my eyes over to the window again. Was every trip going to be like this? The men were talking to each other now, but they were being awfully loud about it. "Doesn't the army still have separate trains for colored troops these days?"

"Yeah, they can afford it. But this is civilian transport. Free enterprise. Be amazed what that leads to, all rules of decency just go out the window." Now I was the one who shifted nervously. Lionel kept craning his neck to look down the aisle, fidgeting with his watch chain. The men went on. "No notion of what's right or what's in order." Lionel sat stock-still. "Say, boy, do you have anything to say about that -"

"Tickets, please." The conductor interrupted him and Lionel seemed to deflate as if something had been released. The two men handed the conductor their tickets, and he examined, punched and handed them back. Lionel was on the edge of his seat and held up his ticket as if it were an appeal, and the man in blue stoically punched it. He didn't ask me for a ticket, he just nodded, touched his cap, and walked on to the next coach.

Lionel was on his feet almost instantly. "Come on, you ever seen the train from the vestibule?"

My mind rapidly jumped through all the terms I'd collected from the rulebook. Vestibule, vestibule . . . "From the end platforms?"

"Come on."

I did. Coming out the door a cool wind gusted over my face, and I could hear the roar and rumble of the tracks beneath my feet. The platforms were enclosed, but the doors on the sides were Dutch doors with the top section left open to offset the summer heat. I stepped towards one only to have Lionel jerk my back by the shoulder. "Don't go near those with your hat on, for Pete's sake!" Without looking at him I stuffed my cap into my hip pocket, braced both hands against the doorframe and peered out.

I couldn't help pulling my head back in a second later; I thought the wind would shear it right off. Then I cautiously leaned into the gale just outside, blinking my eyes against the particles of airborne dust and dirt that flew into them. There was the engine, three cars ahead, the stack shooting columns of brown smoke rapid-fire into the sky with a constant, earth-rattling roar. We were rolling past an orchard and the rows of trees flashed by so quickly I couldn't even see what kind of fruit they were. Half a mile down the line I could see a small wooden building with enormous eaves, and I heard the hiss of escaping air, then iron brake shoes grinding on steel wheels and I could tell the entire affair was slowing down. Looking around, I saw Lionel leaning out the next car's door several feet behind me, his arms casually folded on the sill. "What's happening?" I shouted, barely heard over the din of the machinery between the two cars.

"First stop on the line," he yelled back.

"Not ours, is it?"

"No! Not for a lot further."

Thank goodness for that. I was enjoying this.

When the train stopped in front of that little wooden station the aisle was full of passengers, most of them looking like farmers and some definitely Mexican. They spilled out all over the platform, then the conductor raised his arm into the air twice (the hand signal for 'proceed' - I recognized it from the rulebook). He picked up the stool, swung it behind him and hoisted himself aboard when it swung forward, all in one swift, balletic move. The whistle spoke with two sharp blasts, then the couplers clanked and banged and the landscape began to slide backward again.

From there we galloped across California at speeds that kept me at that vestibule door to the end of the line, the brakes screaming when we occasionally stopped but more often we flew by tiny wooden shacks thrown up next to the tracks in the middle of some vast pieces of nowhere. At each stop more men filed past, then fewer and fewer as we went on. How long I stayed at the door I couldn't say, but at some point the train straightened itself out after rounding a curve and saw ahead a pitiful collection of wooden buildings clumped next to the tracks, standing out clearly amidst the long, dry desert terrain. "That's it," I heard Lionel shout above the brakes. "That's Owenyo."

Getting closer to the town, I stared in utter bewilderment at the railyard strung out next to the mainline. What was the matter with those freight cars? They were ancient, dilapidated, wooden things, and they were tiny, maybe a third of the size of the passenger car I stared down at them from. Was that really a railroad down there?

Lionel shouted again. "That's your engine. That's number nine." He was pointing to a huge object on the rails that, to be sure, looked like an engine, hissed like an engine, even smoked like an engine. But it sure wasn't the Daylight. It wasn't even near the size of the train I was on right now, not even on the high iron. Number nine looked painfully undersized, a half-pint model covered in dirt and grime with not a trace of the Daylight's vibrant orange and red.

With a final jolt and a hiss of air from the brakes, the train drew to a halt. Lionel left the door and walked into the aisle. "Come on, Charlie."

Good grief.