“Oh God, Lucknow. He sure got out of that town just in time.”

“Yeah, moved away before it happened.”

“His wife was one of the vic—”

“No,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper so the kids wouldn’t hear. “She got electrocuted a week or two before. But he grew up around here. Got a sister in Fenelon. Decided to sell the house, move back. Hell of a thing, what happened back there.”

He gave his head a sorrowful shake. “Anyway, he brought this box in, and I thought he was selling it, but he was giving it away to the first person what wanted it, he had no need for it, said the movers packed it without him realizing. And I said, hey, I know just the boy who’d love this.” At this point, he gave Jeremy a big smile. “Give it a chance, won’t you, sport?”

He reached into the box, pulled out several sections of track, then a heavy black boxy item about half the size of a loaf of bread.

“This here’s the transformer, brand-new,” he said. “Wendell didn’t have the original one that came with the set, so I picked this one up at a hobby shop in Binghamton.” He grinned. “Train won’t run without it.”

He set down the transformer and brought out from the box a shiny red boxcar with the santa fe logo printed on the side. He held out the car, about a foot long, to his son. “Just ’cause it says santa on the side doesn’t mean it has anything to do with Santa Claus. Santa Fe is a very important railway in the history of America. And check this out. The doors open and close and the couplers work and it looks like the real thing.”

With limited enthusiasm, Jeremy allowed his father to place it in his outstretched hands for a closer examination.

And something happened.

Jeremy felt a . . . what, exactly? A shock? No, couldn’t be a shock. The transformer wasn’t even plugged in. But there was something . . . like a tingle. He could feel it running all the way up his arms, if only for a millisecond.

He brought the toy boxcar close to his face, studying it. Ran his fingers along the sides, feeling the raised bumps meant to replicate rivets. Opened and closed the side doors, spun the thick metal wheels with his finger.

“Pretty neat, huh?” said his father.

Jeremy, feeling his earlier indifference shifting into something approaching enthusiasm, said, “Can we make it go?”

“Let’s make a circle of track around the bottom of the tree.”

Each track piece had a third rail that ran down the middle. “That carries the electric power and the outer rails are the ground,” his father said. “Keeps it from short-circuiting. But don’t worry, it can’t shock you.”