There were four dials on the barbecue panel, one for each burner that sat below the grills. Darryl gave the one on the far left a quarter turn. There was a hissing sound of escaping propane. Darryl pointed the lit end of the wand down between the grills.

“What’s your problem?” Auden said aloud to the train. He turned the throttle back and forth several times, trying to get the freight train to move. Each time it jerked slightly, but refused to maintain any forward motion.

The wand flame flickered and died. The burner failed to erupt in blue flame. “Damn it,” Darryl said under his breath. He clicked it again as propane continued to hiss from the jets of the first burner. The wand did not light. He clicked again. And again. “This fucking thing,” he said. The problem, it seemed, was not so much the barbecue itself as this useless lighter.

Auden turned the throttle as far as it would go. The transformer hummed, but the engine stubbornly refused to move. Leaving the throttle set to max, he put his hand on the engine and once again moved it back and forth, hoping that would somehow snap it back into action.

It did.

The train suddenly shot forward, like a stone from a slingshot, so quickly in fact that, as it reached the first turn only a couple of feet away, the Chesapeake & Ohio loco left the tracks and was airborne, flying off the end of the table, plummeting to the floor with the various freight cars trailing after it. As spectacular a railway disaster as the Pidgeon family’s dining room had ever been witness to.

And outside, Auden’s dad finally got the wand to light.

“Yes!” he said as the tiny flame emerged and ignited the gas that had been flowing from the burner and now filled not only the entire barbecue cavity but found its way back to a small leak in the valve atop the propane tank sitting underneath.

Kaboom.

The sliding glass doors to the kitchen shattered. Christina screamed and raised her arms defensively as double-paned shards flew past her. Auden, on his knees, assessing the damage to his brand-new train set, whirled around at the sound of the explosion and his mother’s anguished cries.

Right up until the sun was setting, members of the Lucknow Fire Department were finding scraps of Auden’s father more than a hundred yards away.

Fifteen

Edwin was gazing out the window of his shop when he saw Gavin walk past. Not so much walking, Edwin thought, as shuffling with no destination in mind.

He stepped out onto the sidewalk and went after Gavin. Moving at a regular gait, he caught up quickly, came up alongside him, and said, “Hey, how you doing today?”

Gavin glanced his way and said, “Oh, hey, how’s it going, Mr. Choo?”

“Not bad, not bad. You?”