The mountains beyond were bitterly cold. The night they reached the continental divide was foggy. The Mogul rested there to prepare for descent in the morning. Lying awake in the caboose, Jonathan played with the color of his father’s eyes, but he found his mind on the town of Mogul instead, his engine’s town, and on himself visiting there in two years’ time maybe, maybe in ten: Johnny the railroadman. Suddenly the realization came to him that he had enough money to buy a frock coat.

The town of Lenssen lay at the bottom of the mountain. On the very next day, he swore, he would buy the coat right there. Tomorrow. No matter what. Serge with a silk lining – to hell with George’s buckram – pearl buttons, velvet collar.

At dawn, the train began to ease its way downhill. Icicles hung from the redwoods and from the chains that held them. The wind was so sharp it froze eyelashes together. A change in the locomotive’s exhaust is the only warning of a break-in-two a railroadman gets. Hear that? That easing of the sound? That’s your reference point. That’s what measures you – tells you who you are. If you’re quick you can catch the mistake before it’s actually made. But nobody was quick enough on those icy redwoods in that icy, whistling wind – not Jonathan, not College, either, not Hecox the bear of a conductor himself. The train quaked. The redwoods swung in their chains. The back half of the train pulled away from the front, paused, then cannoned forward. Well, what can you expect? You’ve got to die sometime. Fire sprouted from the wheels: this really happens, fire from metal on metal, and it catches the brush on either side of the track as though the train itself has melted, become molten like lava that ignites whatever it touches along its path. The redwoods tore loose. Jonathan, my grandfather, inched toward the engine, setting each of his brakes as hard as he dared. The engineer, a pinch-faced Scot whose nose had been chewed off in a bar-room fight, jerked his head toward the corner of the cab. The bear of a conductor sat there, eyes staring ahead, beard clotted with blood.

When the wheels hiss, a train is sliding free, and there’s nothing God or man can do to stop it. In front, the foothills leveled off. The engine hurtled on toward the solid brick walls of Lenssen stationhouse. Without a backward glance at the Scot, Jonathan scrambled out of the cab window and climbed up behind the engine’s brass sand dome.

And jumped.

My aunt Claire supplied bologna sandwiches and milk for Atlas, her already tiddly husband, and for his gate-crashing niece: me. She’d made them days before and frozen them, because she’d known that on this day, at just about this hour, twelve-thirty, she’d be on the point of creating an aioli for the French dinner party to come. Claire hated garlic, and making anything like an aioli caused her agony.