I asked Pieczynski more questions, but he acted as if talking exhausted him and his answers grew even less informative. I did get out of him that we were headed for a settlement up in the hills, also called Yonder, and that dogs weren't native to this place; he often returned to the world and collected dogs, because they were useful in chasing something he called "fritters" away from the settlement. We fell silent a while and watched the hills build around us, the dark green resolving into dense tropical-looking vegetation. Plants with enormous raincatching leaves and trees laden with vines and large blue and purple flowers hanging from them in bunches. I spotted dark shapes crossing the sky from time to time, but they were too distant to identify. Every unfamiliar thing I saw disturbed me. Though I still felt good, I couldn't shake a sense of unease. I was certain there was something Pieczynski wasn't telling me, or else there was something important he didn't know. But I'd been considerably more confused about my whereabouts and destination in the past, hopping freights in a state of derangement and winding up in places that it had taken days to locate on my mental map. I had learned to thrive on disorientation. You might say I'd been in training for this kind of ride all my years on the rails.

Pieczynski nodded off for a bit, and I became concerned that we'd sleep past where we were supposed to detrain, so I woke him. "Jesus Christ!" he said, disgruntled, and rubbed his eyes. He yawned. "Don't worry about it. Train always stops the same places. Always stops in Klamath Falls, always stops in Yonder. That's why they built the settlement there."

"Why's that?"

"Why's it always stop where it does? That what you're askin'?"

"Yeah."

"Y'know, I still ain't figured out how to ask the trains any questions," he said. "Maybe you can figure it out, you ask so many damn questions yourself."

I apologized for waking him, and mollified, he said it was no big deal. He grabbed a canteen from his pack, had a swallow, and passed it to me. Warmish water. It tasted good.

"You gon' tell me your real name?" he asked. "If I'm gonna introduce you 'round, be better if I knew what to call you."

"Maurice," I said. "Maurice Showalter."

He tried it out, frowned and said, "Damn if I don't believe you be better off stickin' with Billy Long Gone."

"Call them mountains over there Yonder's Wall," he said. "The trains go up into 'em, and we've had some folks take a ride out that way. Ain't a'one come back to see us." He squinted into the gray distance. "Don't seem like much of an argument for followin' 'em."

We walked along a ridge line for a while, then along a red dirt path that angled down through jungly growth. The dogs trotted ahead and behind us, sniffing at leaves and crawling things, their ears pricking to variations in the fizzing noises—insects, I assumed—that issued from the vegetation. After about five minutes of down, the path leveled off and meandered alongside a river course; I could hear though not see the movement of water close by. Many of the smaller tree trunks were sheathed in a mosaic scale of pale blue and dull green that appeared itself coated in a cracked glaze—it glittered wherever the sun struck it. The leaves that dangled down over our heads were tattered and fleshy, like pale green, flabby, boneless hands. Vines were interwoven so thickly above, I couldn't tell if the leaves belonged to a tree or were part of some parasitic growth. Sunlight fell through chinks in the canopy, painting streaks of gold on the path. You could see only about a dozen feet into the jungle on either side before your eye met with an impenetrable wall of growth, and I couldn't understand how, with only two, three hundred people living in Yonder, they kept the path so clear. I'd never been in a tropical jungle before, but I had the thought that it should be hotter and smellier than this one. It still felt like a spring day, and though now and again I caught a hint of rot, the predominant scent was a heavy floral sweetness.

After a few minutes more we reached the river's edge, and I was left slackjawed by what I saw on the opposite shore. It looked as if people were living in chambers that were supported somehow in the crown of an immense tree. I could see them walking about in their separate rooms, which were all framed in sprays of leaves. Then I made out gleams of what appeared to be polished walls and realized that what I'd taken for a tree must be the ruin of an ancient building, seven stories high (an estimate, because the floors were sunk down in places, elevated in others) and occupying several hundred feet of the bank, the entire structure overgrown with moss and vines, its facade crumbled away, leaving dozens of chambers open to the weather. Blankets and other types of cloth hangings were arranged over a number of these openings. Fronting the ruin was a stretch of bare rock on which several people were washing their laundry in the murky green water and then spreading it to dry. It was the Conrad Hilton of hobo jungles, and I wouldn't have been greatly surprised to see a doorman guarding the entrance, dressed in a stove-in top hat and tails, and smoking the stub of a found cigar.

There were twenty, twenty-five dogs snooting about on the rocks or just lying in the sun, and when our dogs spotted them, they took to barking excitedly. A couple of the people waved, and I heard somebody call out to Pieczynski.

"Thought you said wasn't no people born over here." I said to Pieczynski. "So where'd that fuckin' ruin come from?"

"The hell you talkin' about?" he said. "Ain't no ruins around here."

"Then what you call that?" I pointed at the opposite bank.

He gave a snort of laughter. "That ain't no ruin, friend. That there's a tree."

Pieczynski handed me over to a trim, tanned, thirty-something woman name of Annie Ware and went off to see to his own affairs. Annie had sandy hair cut like a boy's and wore khaki shorts and a loose blouse of stitched-together bandannas. It had been a long time since I'd looked at a woman with anything approaching a clear mind and unclouded eye, and I found myself staring at Annie. There was a calmness to her face illustrated by the fine lines around her gray eyes and mouth, and though she wasn't what you'd call a raving beauty, she was a damn sight more attractive than the women I'd encountered on the rails. She led me through the dim interior of the tree, passing several occupied chambers lit by candles, and explained how things worked in Yonder.

"We get most of our supplies from back in the world," she said. "There's five of us—Pie's one—who don't mind traveling back and forth. They scrounge what we need. Rest of us wouldn't go back for love nor money."

When I asked how come this was, she shot me a sideways glance and said, "You feel like goin' back?"

"Not right now," I told her. "But I 'spect sooner or later I'll be wantin' to."

"I don't know. You look like a stayer to me." She guided me around a corner and we came to a place where you could see out through a couple of unoccupied chambers at the jungle. The sunlight made the flattened branch shine like polished mahogany. "Everyone works here. Some people fish, some hunt for edibles in the jungle. Some weave, some cook …"

"I can fish," I said. "My daddy useta …"

"You'll be doin' chores at first. Cleaning and runnin' errands. Like that."

"Is that so?" I stopped walking and glared at her. "I been doin' for myself … "

She cut me off again. "We can't tolerate no lone wolfs here," she said. "We all work together or else we'd never survive. New arrivals do chores, and that's what you'll be doin' 'til you figure out what job suits you."

"Just who is it lays down the rules?"

"Ain't no rules. It's how things are is all."

"Well, I don't believe that," I said. "Even out on the rails, free as that life is, there's a peckin' order."

"You ain't out on the rails no more." Annie folded her arms beneath her breasts. Her eyes narrowed, and I had the impression she perceived me as an unsavory article. "Some people been here more'n twenty years. When they came, there was people here who told 'em how things worked. And there was people here even before them."

"What happened to 'em all?"

"They died … what do you think? Either they was killed or they just gave out. Then there's some caught a ride over Yonder's Wall."

"Them mountains, you mean?"

"Yeah, right. 'Them mountains'." She charged the words with disdain.

"You don't like me very much, do you?" I said.

Annie's mouth thinned. "Let's say I ain't disposed to like you."

"Why's that? I ain't done nothin' to you."

She twitched her head to the side as if she'd been struck and kept silent for a four or five seconds. "You don't have a clue who I am, do you?" she asked finally.

I studied her for a second or two. "I never seen you before in my life."

She fixed me with a mean look. "My train name useta be Ruby Tuesday. I rode the southern line mostly, but there was times I rode up north."

"Ruby?" I peered at her, trying to see in her face—a face that radiated soundness—the wild-haired, grimy clot of human misery I'd known long years before.

"It's Annie now," she said. "I cleaned up. Same as you. Only difference is, I been living clean seven years, and you been doin' it for a day."

I couldn't believe it was her, but I couldn't disbelieve it either. Why would she lie? "What'd I do to piss you off?" I asked. "Hell, I rode with you when you's with Chester the Molester. We had some good times together."

She gaped at me, as if stunned. "You don't remember?"

"I don't know what you got in mind, but there's a whole lotta things I don't remember."

"Well, you gon' be doin' some serious rememberin' the next few weeks. Maybe it'll pop up." She spun on her heel and walked away.

"Hey, don't go!" I called after her. "I don't know where the fuck I am! How'm I gon' find my room?"

"Look for it," she snapped back. "I ain't about to stand around and hold your dick for ya!"

As the days passed I became familiar with Yonder's routine. Every morning small groups would head upriver to fish or out into the jungle to pick berries and other edibles, each accompanied by a handful of dogs. The rest took care of their work in and around the tree. On the landward side of the tree, a space had been cleared in the jungle and that's where the food preparation was done—in long pits dug beneath thatched open structures. There seemed only the loosest possible sense of community among the residents. People were civil to one another, but generally kept to themselves. At times I would wander about the tree, looking for company, and while some would say Hi and introduce themselves, nobody invited me to sit and chat until one night I ran into a skinny, intense kid named Bobby Forstadt, who shared a room on the fifth floor with Sharon, a blond punk girl who was decorated all over with self-applied tattoos—black words and crudely drawn flowers and the names of boys.

When Bobby found out I was new to Yonder, he invited me in and started pumping me for information about the world. I proved a major disappointment, because I hadn't paid a great deal of attention to current events the past few years. I wasn't even sure who was president, though I told him I thought it was somebody from Texas. The governor, maybe.

"Bush?" Bobby arched an eyebrow and looked at me over top of his wire-rimmed glasses. He had a narrow, bony face that peeked out from a mass of brown curls like a fox from a hedge. "Hey, I don't think so," he said. "What about Gore?"

The name didn't set off any bells.

"Fuck! Bush?" Bobby appeared deep in thought and after a bit he said, "You musta got it wrong, man."

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe. But I was jungled up with Kid Dallas right after the election and he was shouting, 'Yee-ha!' and shit, and goin' on 'bout some Texas guy got elected."

"Bush," said Bobby, and shook his head, as if he just couldn't get his brain around the thought. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor behind a desk he'd made from a tree stump; a spiral-bound notebook was open atop it, and there were stacks of similar notebooks in one corner of the room, separated by a couple of rolled-up sleeping bags from stacks of regular books, mostly dog-eared paperbacks. One wall was dominated by a hand-drawn map constructed of several dozen taped-together sheets of notebook paper. I asked him about it, and he said it was a map of Yonder.

"It's probably not accurate," he said. "I just put together everybody's stories about how they came here and where they've traveled since, and that's what I ended up with." He cocked an eye toward me. "Where'd you catch out?"

"Klamath Falls," I told him. "Weirdest thing, 'bout maybe ten minutes out we started goin' through these mountains. Big 'uns."

"Everyone sees the same exact stuff," Bobby said. "First the mountains and the marshes. Then the hills."

"You sayin' everyone who comes to Yonder goes through the same country, no matter where they catch out?"

"Sounds fucked-up, huh?" Bobby scratched at his right knee, which was poking through a hole in his jeans. He also had on a black Monster Magnet T-shirt. Circling his wrist was a bracelet woven of blond hair that I presumed to be Sharon's. "This whole place is fucked-up," he went on. "I've been here going on four years, and I haven't seen anything yet that made sense."

With little prompting, he went off into a brief lecture about how various elements of the ecology of the place didn't fit together, using terms with which I was mostly unfamiliar. "When I first arrived," he said, "I thought of Yonder as Hobo Heaven, y'know. A lowball version of 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain.' Everything but the cigarette trees and the free beer. But you know what the place reminds me of now? It's like the terrain some software guy might write for a computer game. The trains and all the bizarre fauna … I was so freaked out when I got here, I didn't question any of it. But you examine it and you find out it's really stupid. No logic. Just this insane conglomeration of irrational objects. But it's a landscape where you could set a cool war or a puzzle game like Myst."

"That what you think Yonder is?" I asked. "A computer game."

"Yeah, why not? An extremely sophisticated one. And we're the characters. The algorithms the real players inhabit." He gave a shrug that seemed to signify cluelessness. "What do you think it is?"

"Best I can come up with, I figure we're dead and this is some kinda test."

"Then how do you account for the fact that people die? And that some of us travel back to the world?"

"Never said I knew what the rules was for bein' dead," I told him. "Maybe it all fits right in."

He sat there for a moment, nodded, then hopped up and went over to the stacked notebooks. "I want you to check this out," he said, digging through the stacks. "Here!" He came back to the desk and tossed me a ratty notebook with a red cover. "Read this when you get a chance, and let me know what you think."

"I can't read," I said.

He absorbed this for a two-count. "You got a disability?"

"Not that I know of. My daddy wasn't too big on school. I can sign my name, I can add and subtract. That's about it."

"You want to learn, I'll teach you."

"I reckon not. I gone this long without, it don't seem all that important now."

"I won't push it," Bobby said. "But you'd be smart to take me up on the offer. Time can move pretty slow around here."

Time, as Bobby had said, did move slowly at the settlement. I came to view my life there as a kind of penance for my sins, a retreat during which I was forced to meditate upon the damage I had caused, the waste and delusion of almost my every waking hour. And maybe, I thought, that meditation was a measure of Yonder's purpose. Though the actual nature of the place continued to elude me, I realized that Bobby was right—nothing about it made sense, at least in terms of a reality that I could comprehend. I noticed all manner of peculiarities. Like for example, no one ever got pregnant, and when someone died, which happened twice during those first months, sooner or later somebody new would arrive on a train. It wasn't always a one-for-one exchange, yet from what I could tell the population had remained stable since forever. But if you strung all the peculiar things together, all you wound up with was a string of peculiar things that didn't belong together. I kept going back to what Pieczynski had said—"Why should creation be all one way?" And then I'd think how it would be for a caveman whose task it was to explain the operation of the universe judging by what he knew of the world. That was how I understood our position. We were trying to comprehend the universe from information we'd gathered while living in a humoungus tree for a few months or a few years, whereas it had taken folks thousands of years to come up with the theories of creation found in some of Bobby's books. A theory, as I saw it, was a kind of net that held all the facts you knew. Back in the Stone Age, they'd only had a few basic facts and so the nets they used had been basic; but as the centuries went by and more facts came to light, the mesh of the nets necessary to contain them had grown finer and finer, and things still fell through the gaps. My feeling was they'd never come up with the perfect net, and we'd never know for sure what was going on, no matter how advanced we proclaimed ourselves to be. Maybe, I thought, first impressions were the most accurate. Maybe the old world had been created by a god, and this one was populated by the dead. It didn't make life any easier to hang your hat on those notions, but it did allow you to focus on the matter at hand.

While learning to read, I naturally spent a lot of time with Bobby. People were always stopping by his room and telling him about something they'd seen, which he would then write down in a notebook, and he introduced me to all of them. But I never struck up any friendships, and once I started reading on my own, Bobby and I stopped hanging out. Looking back, I can see that he wasn't all that interested in me—at least no more than he was interested in anyone else—and the main reason he taught me was to fill his time. That was how things were with everyone in Yonder. You might have a friend or two, but otherwise you left everyone else to their own devices. After the first week, I hardly ever ran into Pieczynski anymore. People I'd known on the rails, and there were twelve of them, men I'd ridden with like Shaky Jake, Diamond Dave, Dogman Tony … they acknowledged me in passing and then went on with their oddly monastic reclaimed lives. Even Stupid kept his distance. Once every so often he'd wander up and snoot at my hand to get petted, but he had become part of the pack and spent the bulk of his day associating with his four-legged associates. For my own part, I didn't have much interest in anybody, either. It was like whatever portion of my brain was in charge of curiosity had been turned down to dim. The only constant in my life were occasional visits from Annie Ware. She never stayed long and rarely showed me anything other than a businesslike face. I guessed she was filling her time by checking up on me. I was always glad to see her. Glad all over, so to speak. But I didn't enjoy the visits much because I assumed that I had done something bad to her—I had no idea what it could have been, but I imagined the worst and felt confused and remorseful whenever she came around.

For more than six months my life was occupied by menial chores, and by studying and reading. The two favorite books I read were Gulliver's Travels and Richard Halliburton's The Occident and the Orient, which was a travel book published a half century before. It was full of black-and-white photographs of the Pyramids and South Pacific islands and the Himalayas. When I compared them to mental snapshots of the switchyard in Topeka and tramps sleeping among piles of cow crap in a Missoula cattle pen and various hobo jungles, I wished now I'd done some real traveling back in the world instead of just riding the freights and drinking my liver stiff. Thinking what I could have seen, a world of blue sky and ice from twenty-nine thousand feet up or tropical fish swarming like live jewels in aquamarine water, it stirred me up, and I would go off exploring throughout the tree, climbing rope ladders from floor to floor, peeking into chambers where ex-hobos were engaged in mending shirts or decorating their cells, and ex-punk riders were playing chess on a makeshift board. The atmosphere reminded me of this idiot farm a Seattle judge sent me to when I was so fucked-up, they couldn't tell if I was sane or not, a place where you sat around all day whacked on thorazine instead of jungleberries and smeared fingerpaint all over yourself. Even though this state of affairs was preferable to the lives most of the residents had led prior to crossing the dimensional divide or the River Styx or whatever border it was that we had crossed, I just didn't understand being satisfied with it.

One morning about an hour before sun-up—if it was a sun that rose each morning and not, as Bobby theorized, an illusion produced by the software into which our essences had been transformed, I rolled out early and waited for the fishermen and the hunting parties to set out, and when I spotted Euliss Brooks, the best fisherman in Yonder, a rickety-looking, stiff-gaited, white-bearded black man with three rods on his right shoulder, carrying a net and a bait bucket, I fell in behind him, as did a handful of dogs. He glanced at me over his shoulder, but didn't say anything and kept walking. I followed him along a path that cut inland for a mile, then angled back toward the river, rejoining it at a point where the banks widened and lifted into steep cliffs of pocked grayish black limestone, forming a cup-shaped gorge that shadowed the green water, and the perfumey heat of the jungle gave way to a profound freshness, like the smell of spring water in an old well. Birds were always circling overhead, their simple shapes like crosses against the high blue backdrop, then diving down to settle in the spiky-leaved trees that fringed the cliffs.

At the edge of the gorge was a wooden platform that could be lowered on ropes and pulleys to a ledge sixty-some feet below, just above water level—that's where Euliss did his fishing, while the dogs waited for him up top. Euliss didn't utter a word until he was ready to mount the platform, and then asked me how much I weighed.

"Hunnerd 'n' fifty maybe," I said.

He mulled this over. "Reckon I'll let you go on down alone," he said. "Just hang onto the rail and don't worry it sway back and forth. Damn thing always do that."

I offered to take the bucket and the rods down with me, but he said, "Naw, you might drop 'em."

"I ain't gon' drop nothin'," I told him, annoyed—what did he take me for?

"First time down you liable to drop somethin'" said Euliss. "My word on that."

I began to lower myself, and the platform swayed sickeningly, scraping against the limestone. I gripped the rail hard. Up close, the cliff face resembled the smoke-blackened ruin of a derelict cruiser: rocky projections clumped with blue-green moss; flat surfaces hung with twists of vine; punched into here and there by caves, the largest being about five feet in diameter. As I descended past one of the cave entrances, I thought I spotted movement within. I peered into the blackness, and a wave of giddiness overwhelmed me. My vision dimmed, my throat went dry. I had a moment's panic, but that was swept aside by a rush of contentment, and then I had a sense of a shy curiosity that seemed distant from me, as if it were something brushing the edge of my thoughts, the way a cat will glide up against your leg. Allied with this was an impression of great age and infinite patience … and strength. A strength of mind like that you'd imagine a whale to possess, or some other ancient dweller in solitude. I lost track of myself for an unguessable time, and when I pulled myself together, I could have sworn I saw something go slithering back into the cave. Panic set in for real this time. I lowered the platform hastily, and when I jumped off onto the ledge, I shouted up at Euliss, asking him what the fuck had happened. He waved for me to send up the platform. Minutes later, after he had joined me on the ledge, I asked him again.

"Didn't nobody tell you bout the elders?" With effort, he bent down and plucked a large dead bug out of the bait bucket.

I half-recalled Bobby using the term, but couldn't recall exactly what he had said.

"Lookit that vine there." Euliss pointed to a long strand of vine that was hanging into the water about a dozen yards from the ledge. "Follow it on up. Y'see where it goes?"

The vine vanished into a cave mouth halfway up the cliff.

"That's one of 'em," Euliss said. "He fishin' just like us."

I studied the vine—it didn't twitch or vibrate, but I could see now that it was different from the other vines. Thicker, and a mottled gray in color.

"What are they?" I asked.

"Old hermits like to fish. Thass all I know. And I ain't crawlin' into one of them caves just to catch a look at 'em. They be fishing with that tentacle thing they got all day long." He handed me a rod—a Shimano. "Don't be mistreatin' that pole, boy. Took me most of a year to get Pie to fetch it." He straightened, heaved a sigh and put a hand to his lower back as if to stifle a pain. "I figgered you knew 'bout the elders. Don't nobody 'cept me like fishin' here 'cause they scared of 'em. Ain't nothin' be scared 'bout. Once they touch you up, they know all they want to 'bout you, and they won't never bother you again."

The fishing itself wasn't much of a challenge. We were after the big sluggish fish with tarnished-looking scales that hid out under the rock shelves underwater; once they were hooked, they struggled briefly, then gave out and let us haul them onto the ledge. The bulk of my thoughts turned to the strange creature that had scoped me out with its tentacle, to the impression of age and patience and calm I'd derived. It occurred to me that the presence of the elders suited Bobby Forstadt's theory that we were constructs in a computer game better than it did the notion that we had passed on. They served no apparent purpose, they were window-dressing, an invention designed to appeal to twelve-year-olds—like mutant Zen monks in their shyness and simplicity, possessed of vast wisdom, bestowing calm and contentment on everyone they touched, even—I assumed—the fish they ate. Or maybe they had a hidden purpose. They might be the secret masters of this bizarre place. I was beginning to wish I'd never learned how to read. Too many ideas started rattling around in your head, and it got to where you couldn't make up your mind about anything.

"Best thing you can do," Euliss advised me, "is concentrate on fishin' and don't worry 'bout it. People 'round here worry too damn much 'bout what's goin' on. Ain't nothin' to worry 'bout. It's just God."

"God?" I said.

"That's right! You set here and fish long enough, you gon' feel Him. He's all around us—we livin' inside Him." He cocked an eye toward me. "I know you think you heard all that before, but what I'm sayin' ain't the same as you heard. You quit runin' your mouth all the time, you'll know what I'm talkin' 'bout."

Each morning thereafter Euliss and I went out to fish; each evening we would return home and drop off our catch with the cooks. I'd thought that we might become friends, but we never did. Euliss had one topic of conversation—fishing at the gulf—and once he had done communicating whatever information he felt compelled to convey, he would fall silent until next he needed to instruct me on some point of lore. Once I asked him about his life before arriving in Yonder, and he told me he had ridden under the name of Coal Train and he been hoboing for almost fifty years. He didn't appear eager to expand on the subject, and I guess I understood that. After all the painful remembering I'd done, I had little desire to share my old life with anyone.

I woke up one day feeling poorly, and instead of going to the gulf, I slept in. Around noon, moved by restlessness, I forded the river and set off walking the path along which I had come to Yonder. Three dogs—one, the little collie that had ridden with me and Pie—fell in at my heels. I followed the path up through the jungle, then ascended the ridge line until I reached a point where I could see the tracks curling around the base of a hill. A train was standing on it, most of the cars out of sight beyond the curve. The engine and the visible cars all bore ridged scars left by beardsley attacks, and that led me to believe it was an old train. As I've said my curiosity had been at low ebb ever since my arrival, but now I was suddenly overcome with curiosity, wondering how the trains got born and how long they lived or if those questions were even relevant. Once I had scrambled down the slope, I walked alongside the cars, examining them closely. Nowhere did I see a bolt or a seam. The entire train was of a piece—couplings and wheels and doors all seemingly grown into shape. The wheels appeared to be made of the same stuff as the cars, only thickened and harder, and the tracks they rode on weren't metal but grooved black rock that sprung from the earth. I scraped away dirt from the grade and saw that rock was embedded to a depth of at least two feet—that was how far down I excavated. The engine had no windshield, no doors, no lights—it was just a dead black streamlined shape. How could it watch ahead? I wondered. How did it take sustenance … fuel? I had a hundred questions and no answers. It was like Bobby Forstadt said, nothing made any sense.

I went around front of the engine and then walked downtrain between the side of the engine and the hill. Just above the engine's rear wheel someone had spraypainted a red message, faded, but still legible:

I'd never met Santa Claus, but I'd heard old hobos talk about him, much of the talk regarding what a devious piece of crap he had been, this coming from men who themselves were notable for being devious pieces of crap. They did testify that Santa Claus had been a balls-out rider, how when he was determined to catch out on a train, nothing, not the bulls, not security devices, would stop him. What interested me was why he had signed his moniker and not his birth name. Maybe, I thought, his parents had stuck him with something as unappetizing as Maurice Showalter.

I went back around to the other side of the train and sat myself down on the grade. The trains, the tree, the beardsleys, the elders, the placid, disinterested inhabitants of Yonder treading water in their lives, and Yonder's Wall—they still seemed to be pieces belonging to different puzzles. But now I wondered if Santa Claus hadn't hit on the only solution there was to all of them. What was the point in sticking around the tree and eating jungleberries and fishing and thinking about the past? Might as well see what lay beyond the mountains. Could be you'd die … but maybe you were already dead. For certain sure, according to everything I'd heard, you eventually were going to die from sitting on your butt. And if Bobby was right, then moving to the next level was your one chance to win.

I was going round and round with this in my head, when I spied somebody walking toward me from the curve. Soon I saw that it was Annie Ware. She had on an orange T-shirt and her khaki shorts. She looked like ice cream to the Devil. "What you doin' out here?" I asked as she came up, and she shrugged and said, "I like the trains, y'know." She stood over me for a few beats, staring off along the tracks, shifting her feet, as if feeling betwixt and between. Then, with an abrupt movement, she dropped down beside me. "Sometimes when I'm huntiin' for berries, I come back this way so I can look at 'em. There's always a train waitin'."

That startled me. "Always?"

She nodded. "Yeah … least I can't recall a time when there wasn't one."

Video game, I decided. The zombies are always in the parking lot, the hamburger with the message under the bun is always served at the same cafe. Then I thought, Why couldn't death have that sort of predictability? All every new piece of the puzzle did was add another confusing color.

We sat without speaking for the better part of a minute, and then, for want of anything better, I said, "I know I done something to you, but I swear I can't remember it. I been tryin', too."

Her mouth thinned, but she didn't say anything.

I lifted my eyes to the sky, to the dark unidentifiable creatures that were ever circling there, gliding among scatters of cloud. "If you want me to know what I done, you probably gon' have to tell me."

A breeze ruffled the weeds alongside the grade, drifting up a flurry of whitish seed pods.

"You broke my heart, you sorry son-of-a-bitch." Annie's eyes fixed straight ahead. "You'd been romancin' me for a long time, and finally I told you I was gonna leave Chester. We're s'posed to meet at Mother Love's in Missoula. I waited for you almost a week." She turned a steely look on me. "It was bad enough thinkin' you run out on me, but I know you fuckin' forgot! You was probably so damn stoned, you didn't even know you were hittin' on me!"

Here I'd been thinking I must have raped her, and now finding out I'd stood her up … well, if I'd been back in my old life that would have pissed me off good and proper. I might have laughed drunkenly and said something like, "Broke your heart? Who the fuck you think you are? A goddamn princess?" But I'd become a wiser man. "I'm real sorry," I said. "Chances are I was so messed-up behind … "

"I realize I wasn't much back then," she went on, a quaver in her voice, "but goddammit, I think I deserved better'n to get left alone in a mission in fuckin' Missoula fightin' off a buncha ol' animals day and night for a week! I know I deserved better!"

"I'm sorry," I said. "I truly am. I wouldn't do it now."

"The hell's that mean?"

"Means now all the shit's been scraped off my soul, I still like you. It means that me likin' you must run deep."

She shifted like she was about to stand up, but she stayed put. "I don't … " she began; she drew a breath and held it for couple of seconds before letting it out. "You're just horny."

"Well, that don't mean I don't like you."

This brought a slight softening of her expression, but then she said, "Shit, I ain't listenin' to this," and got to her feet.

"C'mon, Annie. You 'member how it was back in the world." I stood up behind her. "We were fuckin' wrecks, the both of us. We'd likely have killed each other."

"That's still an option, far as I'm concerned."

It's funny sometimes how you enter into an involvement. You're not even thinking about it with the front of your mind, you're dealing with some stupid bullshit, then all of a sudden it's standing right there, and you say, Oh yeah, that's what I been wanting, that's what the back of my mind's been occupied with, and now you can't do without it. Watching the featherings of whitish blond hair beside Annie's left ear was the thing that did it for me. I put a hand on her shoulder, lightly, ready to jerk it back if she complained or took a swing at me. She flinched, but let the hand stay where it was. Then she said, "You ain't gettin' laid anytime soon, I can promise you that."

"What can I get?" I asked, trying to put a laugh in the words.

"You keep pushin', you'll find out." She stepped away, turned to me, and I could see our old trouble in her worn, still-pretty face. "Just take it slow, okay? I ain't too good at forgive and forget."

I held up my hands, surrendering.

She pinned me with another hard look, as if searching for signs of falsity. Then she gave a rueful shake of her head. "Let's go on home," she said.

"Don't you want to hang out here with the train?"

"I'm gonna hunt up some decent food and fix you dinner," she said. "I wanna find out if we can spend an evening together without makin' each other crazy." She ran her eye along the sleek curve of the engine. "This ol' train be 'long here any time I want it."