Hugo, who could not account for several recent minutes, was crawling, bloody as an anchorite, from the train and toward daylight at the edge of the mob. He arose near the picnic tables. His face felt as if he’d slept on a clothes iron.

He watched the crowd swarm over the train: passenger-car seats were ripped open, their straw stuffing used as kindling, and then, with a careful sprinkle of the God-given, plentiful, and rich local gasoline, the train was set afire.

The rest of the assault—pipes beating on the train, bricks, harassment of passengers—came to a halt, for the spectacle of the burning train was impressive. Hugo had never actually seen a mob before, but this certainly confirmed all he had heard about them. There was a stiff crackle, and he flinched before a sound like rivets popping, the fire finding a cache of ammunition in someone’s suitcase.

But passenger cars made poor targets for arson; once the seats and wallpaper were consumed, there was just a no-longer-exciting trickle of smoke going skyward. By then, word had passed through the crowd that perhaps they had made a mistake and it would be best to go home.

When a horde lost its purpose, it was like the sun disappearing in a fog bank. The entire town brushed past Hugo, finding fascinating objects in the middle of the lowlands to stare at. He looked to the picnic tables, where there still sat the quarter acre of pies. His eye was swelling shut, his nose was clotting with blood, there was a bruise that throbbed from his jaw to his cheekbone, and he was running his tongue from tooth to tooth, testing them all for number and fixity.

And yet the pies smelled delicious. The nearest was sweating, its vents swollen with a deep-blueberry ooze. Hugo wondered how a person decided to throw a pie. And why was that supposed to be funny?

With a flick of his eyes, he grabbed a pie in each hand. He limped with determination to a pillar draped with bunting, where he carefully sat with a groan, cross-legged. The pies were slightly warm, and the smell of strawberries and rhubarb was overwhelming. He excavated a palmful of custard filling. The taste was glorious, tempered only by the trouble he had working his jaw. Then he took another pawful of the sticky fruit and crust, and closed his eyes. Heaven.

The train had been destroyed, but he laughed, for he had hated everyone on the train. He glanced toward the station-agent cottage, alive with telegraph activity. As soon as they were done reporting the damages to the company, he would need to wire his father. He put a sticky fist under his chin. He realized, with a shudder, that he needed another goddamned job.