“Let’s think about your dad a minute,” Frank said. “I’m guessing the guy don’t even know hisself where he left the darn rifle. Guy in that kind of shape probably didn’t take no particular mind to latitude and longitude at the time. And if they’re saying he ain’t making sense, it’s likely he won’t have a whole heck of a lot to offer on that score.”

Nate knew this, actually. He’d figured as much himself. But there was the other part: just wanting to let his dad know how much he and Junie missed him, how much they wanted him back.

“Of course you want to see your dad,” Frank went on. “The thing is, what does he need right now that you can give him? If it was me, I’d want to know my kids were doing okay. But first that would have to be true.”

Up on the tracks it looked like the men loading the grain were finishing up—meaning that he and Frank should be ready to scramble up the embankment and make their way onto the freight car.

“Maybe you have some things to attend to back home before you head off to Anaconda,” Frank told Nate. “You may have to find out a few things yourself before you can be much help to anybody else.”

“I always had my dad before. For baseball and stuff. Or like now, when I’m building this science project. We would’ve done that together. I bet if he was around, I’d even win first prize.”

“See what I mean?” said Frank. “What good do you think you’ll be to him, if you show up carrying on about how you can’t live without him? Sounds to me like you better build your project and win that prize without your old man. Once you’ve got something worthwhile to tell him—like how you’re going to be all right, so he don’t have to worry—that’s when you get yourself to the hospital. No point showing up empty-handed.”

Nate thought about the diagram he’d cut out from the magazine—how complicated it looked. The way the two sides of the cloud chamber had come unglued when he and Naomi had tried to join them to the base, and one of the pieces of glass had broken.

Nate studied the freight car. All week he’d been planning this trip. He’d pictured how he was going to hop on board. How it would be, scrunched up in the corner, feeling the rumbling of the wheels on the track, and the moment when he stepped outside again, in Anaconda.