Jonathan walked and stared for hours. For a kid off the prairies like him, just the number of people and the height of the buildings were awesome. But what does a person eat in fairyland? He took in his breath and tried a store with a wooden Indian outside it. A fat man stood behind a counter of cigars. ‘Yep?’ he said.

My grandfather asked for a job. He asked with his hands, but hand-talking, so familiar to the residents of Sweetbrier, was not one of Denver’s many languages. The fat man bristled. ‘I ain’t having no mutes working in here,’ he said, already out from behind the counter, fist raised. ‘Get out. Go. Get out!’

Jonathan tried a greengrocer’s – and fared no better. He tried a hotel where there was no clerk, only a black woman on her knees scrubbing at the raw wooden floor. ‘There ain’t many jobs in town’ – she lifted her eyes just far enough from her work to see his bare feet. ‘Leastways not for the likes of you. If you was a girl now—’ She sighed, and Jonathan turned to leave. ‘Hey,’ she called after him. ‘I hear they can use a yardman down at the Hannibal & Denver – I heard the yardmaster—’

He ran all the way back to the station and threw open the door to the yardmaster’s office much as eight years before he’d thrown open the door to the saloon in the town that lay beneath the evening star.

The yardmaster’s legs were propped up on his desk. He had only one foot. He glanced at Jonathan, squirted a stream of tobacco juice at a sawdust-filled box across the room, hit it square in the middle and let out a roar of pleasure. ‘Pretty good, eh, kid?’ he said. ‘Whaddya want?’

‘Yardman’s job,’ Jonathan said, finger in mouth to hold his teeth.

‘G’wan. Come back when you’re weaned off thumb-suckin’.’ Jonathan glared. ‘Where’d you get them God-awful choppers? Can you chew with a set of teeth like that?’

‘I made them.’

‘No kiddin’?’ The yardmaster stopped chewing. ‘Listen, kid, I can’t put you to work. Y’ain’t old enough. How old are you?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Yeah – seventeen – going on fifteen. Christ. And no teeth to boot. Know what a yardman does? See this?’ He lifted up the footless leg. ‘Switchman’s foot – that’s what they call it. Hey, somebody been beating up on you? You look like shit. What makes you think you got the balls for this job?’

Jonathan opened his mouth to answer; his teeth slipped and clacked together.

‘Ah, sweet Jesus!’ The yardmaster took his legs off his desk. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Johnny Carrick.’

‘Carrick? You don’t say? Your pa wasn’t a Reb, was he? Well, I’ll be goddamned. I knew practically every goddamned Irish bastard in the whole goddamned Union Army. I knew your pa – probably did, anyhow. Died, did he? Well, I’ll be goddamned.’ He chewed noisily. ‘Know the signals, kid?’