“You know how to build a dirt bike, Rufus?” Nate asked him.

“No.”

“Well, my dad does.” He turned his back and walked off.

Nate had left himself a good forty-five minutes for the hike, with plenty of margin in case the train loaded up and took off earlier than he thought. On the road he imagined how it would be if his plan actually worked and he managed to hop the freight and ride it clear to Anaconda, then hitchhike to Warm Springs. How he’d locate the hospital and how he’d get in to see his dad. Knowing they had him in a mental ward, he wondered if there’d be guards or locks on the doors. He pictured himself climbing up a fire escape, prying open a window, making off with an orderly suit, and acting like he worked there.

Tromping along the road—past the Landrys’ barn, the mailboxes, the old abandoned windmill—Nate tried to prepare himself for the sight of his dad. He’d be wearing some kind of hospital-type outfit, like one of those tunics the patients wore on Dr. Kildare. If he was really acting crazy, they might have him in a straitjacket, with arms buckled against his chest, so he couldn’t even feed himself. Nate didn’t like to think about that possibility, but it was better than getting caught by surprise.

The sun was barely up when he got to the loading depot. He had seen the spur train come and go enough over the years to have a strategy worked out: He’d wait till the men had assembled on the loading dock, then he’d scramble up onto one of the cars on the other side. He knew to be careful about not ending up in a car with a load of grain pouring down on top of him. That had happened to a boy over in Leopold one time. Better to ride between cars.

Sometime around seven thirty, to judge by the light, the train pulled in. A couple of men began loading the grain into one of the boxcars. Based on the size of the load, Nate figured that in another ten or fifteen minutes they’d be done and he could sneak on board through the opening in a panel on the side.

From the embankment where he waited, he heard a voice.

“Fancy meeting you here.” The voice came from a spot by the tracks, a little ways up from where Nate had planted himself.

Looking up, he saw a wiry man in very old clothes, sporting the kind of hat sea captains wore in the movies. His beard was mostly white, and in the place where his right arm should have been there was an empty sleeve, pinned to his shirt.

“You got a name?” the man asked.

“Nate.”