He walked up to them, and her parents gave him polite smiles.

“Well, look who’s here,” Mr. Jeansomme said.

“Paul.” Mrs. Jeansomme patted his shoulder.

Colette looked at him as if he were a stray dog that had wandered up.

He took a deep breath. “I heard you were going and I came down to ask you to stay.”

“For what, Paul?” She was so still, it was as though the voice came from somewhere else. She wore a beige blouse with a button-down collar, but the cloth seemed white against her dark hair. He realized that he was hungry for the sight of her, and he already wondered what the days ahead would be like.

“I want you to stay for us.”

The railroad bridge whistled out four times and began to swing closed. “I don’t think there is an us anymore,” she said, looking west toward the bridge. The agent clicked on an electric hand lamp. He seemed worried.

Paul kicked lightly at the roadbed. “I never thought I’d make you mad enough to leave town.”

“Maybe I’m going to something, not away from you.”

“Like you went to Bucky Tyler.” He knew it was a mistake to say this as soon as he said it.

She looked him in the eye. “I just wanted to dance.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He started to say something else but felt an arm on his shoulder. It was the agent, Mr. Lodrigue. “Am I glad to see you. You know what’s coming? Right? That’s why you’re here?”

“What you talking about?”

“The steam locomotive. It’s the seventy-fifth anniversary of this train and the railroad decided to pull tonight’s run as far as Houston with a big steam locomotive.” Mr. Lodrigue was a short man with rabbity teeth, and he couldn’t talk to people without grabbing on to them.

“That’s nice.” He looked back to Colette, who was biting the inside of her cheek.

“Nice, hell. The crew radioed New Orleans saying they were having trouble in the cab and the superintendent called me to find a machinist who knew something about steam fittings. I told him, ‘No way.’ Then you walk up like the answer to a novena.”

Paul shrugged off the agent’s arm. “Hey, I’m here with these people, that’s all.”

Colette turned around at the sound of a distant whistle. “Go on, do what you’re interested in.”

“Colette.” Her parents backed away, disentangling themselves. From two miles away, he could hear the five-chime whistle of the locomotive filling half the parish with its rising, angry note.

Colette turned west, looking past him. “When you first came into my house when we were children, you repaired my music box but hardly said a word to me.”

“At least I fixed it,” he said, looking east down the track to where the gold headlight swam above the illuminated rails. The whistle came, a big seventh chord searing the night air. The locomotive, a hissing thundercloud of iron and spinning brass, undulated past them and slowed, a jet of steam blasting out from under the cab as the coaches squealed and stopped.