At Cheyenne station, the train at a standstill, the trip over at last, College sighed and said, ‘Turn me on my left side, Johnny.’

Jonathan hesitated. ‘Don’t you mean your right side?’ he asked gently. ‘The left – that’s where the silence is. Don’t you mean—’

‘The left side, Johnny. Turn me on my—’

Jonathan eased him over, talking all the time.

College pulled his knees to his chest, tucked his hands beneath his chin. ‘Oh, do be quiet,’ he said then. And his breathing stopped.

10

My grandfather could write a little. He’d scratched letters in the dirt of the Stokes’ sod hut, but he had in fact never written on a piece of paper. It was one of the many secrets about himself that he’d hidden from College; it shamed him deeply, as illiteracy shames anybody who suffers from it, and he’d hidden it with all the guile and cunning of Atlas hiding from Claire how much drink he got down himself during the day. It was only with immense difficulty that Jonathan filled out the forms to authorize shipment of College’s body back east. He sent on College’s clothes, too, a bundle of letters and just under $300 in cash. He kept back only the pearl-handled Smith & Wesson, partly for sentimental reasons and partly because a revolver didn’t fit in with his picture of life at the Malloy’s Landing establishment on the coast of Maine. When the train carrying the casket left Cheyenne, he made his way to a saloon called the Bowie Jack at the edge of town.

‘What fascinates me is the absolute indifference of the universe,’ Atlas said into my microphone. ‘We go around feeling special somehow – you know what I mean – more dear to nature than the rest of creation. Dogs probably feel the same way. Bugs, too. Even viruses, if they can feel at all. So here you are fighting a virus – the flu maybe, or maybe something far worse – and the fact of the matter is, nature doesn’t give a damn which of you wins. You or the virus: she watches but she calls no odds. She is completely impartial. It makes people mad as hell – especially sick people.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ I said.

‘Sure you do. When people die – when somebody close to you dies – it’s much the same, don’t you think?’

‘Bottle of whiskey,’ Jonathan said to the bartender of the Bowie Jack.

‘How’ya doing, railroadman?’ said the bartender.

‘Just give me the bottle.’

‘You don’t look well—’

‘You want me to drink somewhere else?’

The bartender shrugged; the rudeness of railroadmen was accepted – even expected – in those days much as the rudeness of Hollywood stars or British aristocrats is accepted today. Jonathan took his bottle to a table. In half an hour the bar’s walls swam. He passed out, sitting there, woke several hours later, bought another bottle. At four in the morning the bartender carried him upstairs and tucked him into bed, reluctant to lose the custom of any railroadman and especially of one so ready to spend.