“Ease up, Shiny,” Tom said. “Train won’t be here for another three hours.”

“That ain’t the point,” said Shiny. “Point is, I ain’t paying you two to stand around admiring your handiwork. Now git back there.”

Shiny turned and waddled off, taking his cigar smell with him. Watching him go, Tom said, “One of these days I’m going to sock him right in the mouth. Bet you a dollar it will be before the end of the week.”

Charlie started back toward the crossover. Tom waited a second, then walked fast to catch up with him.

“What’s eatin’ you today?” he asked Charlie. “You been quiet all morning. You sick?”

“No,” Charlie said. “Just tired.”

Tom put his hand on Charlie’s back. Charlie tensed. Then he walked faster, so that Tom’s hand fell off of its own accord. “Got to get them sacks moved,” Charlie said.

“You sound like Shiny,” said Tom. “Better watch out. Next thing you know, you’ll be a supervisor and I’ll have to start hating you instead a him.”

Charlie said nothing. He just walked faster, toward the mouth of the cannery that belched its fish breath in his face.

Hudson looked up. The crossovers that had once connected the canneries with their warehouses were still there, at least a few of them. He imagined what it must have been like when the canneries were operating at full force; the billowing clouds of steam, the whistles—each with its own distinct pitch—calling the workers in whenever a new shipload of sardines arrived, every single thing suffused with the odor of fish being processed. It must have been like walking through hell, but it must also have been beautiful. He wished he could see it for himself.

He closed his eyes and pictured Charlie and Tom. He saw them clearly. Tom, short and thin, dark haired and dark eyed, alert as a terrier and always dreaming. And Charlie, taller and more solid, his coloring lighter and his mood quieter. Charlie, who washed his overalls nightly despite knowing that he would never rid them of the smell of his work but who tried anyway.

Over the past year, the two men had come to be very real to Hudson. He heard their voices when he read. He knew the cadence of their speech, the peculiar dropping of letters or drawing out of words that distinguished them from one another. He heard their footsteps as they walked overhead, traversing the crossover day after day.

In some ways, the two of them were more real to him than the people with whom he interacted in his own life. He’d invested so much time in them, so much wishing and hoping, that they had taken on nearly supernatural importance. Like most faithful, he longed for the objects of his adoration to be real, or at least for what he believed to be true to prove itself indisputably.

Marty, trying to rile him into argument, had once said, “Isn’t the whole point of faith that you can never actually prove it to be true?” Perhaps what he felt for Charlie and Tom wasn’t faith, then, but merely hope. Either way, he wanted to be right about them. He needed to be right about them, not just for what it would mean to him professionally, but because after so much time with them, he wanted them to be who he thought them to be.