Was I doing right by Wilfred? He was captive of my whim, my charity, my ticket. As we came into the foothills of the Sierra's, he scratched something into his book and touched my arm: "You are a godsend!" His smile curled and threatened to overtake his face. As we began to ascend the snowcapped range, brilliant in the moonlight, both of us submitted to capture.

Wilfred and I gazed out the window, transfixed by all that passed: sugar pines turning to heavy timber, purple canyons, wild rivers that Wilfred later called barmy. The snow was coming heavier now, and then became so fierce that nothing could be seen but the hilarious scurry of flakes at our noses.

A slew of colorful placards were pasted throughout the coach. They marked the centennial of the 1869 completion of the intercontinental railroad. There were announcements of all sorts: parades, banquets, a ball at the Confucius Temple in Sacramento. They featured the verses of a song commemorating the event. I'd never heard it before but whistled a likely melody. It was a railroad song, a song of struggle, of land, of labor. Words honest and earthy.

The train made several flag stops, and each time we peered out together to see who was boarding. Wilfred was driving the pages in that ledger like a man on a buckboard. At a sign for Emigrant Gap Wilfred slid me the book. "On this spot?" He motioned as if to say "very near here."

"I wasn't even 2 years old!" He gathered his brow: "I was younger then, too." In 1952, he'd been coming west on these very tracks. The train was hit by a massive snow slide. Everyone aboard was stranded for three days. "Three days?" He held up three fingers and with them suppressed a wide grin. I read on. No question came that wasn't immediately answered. I held up the notebook, "I feel as if I'd been there." He tilted his head, ‘You are!’

"Yuba Pass," I whispered.

A conductor announced that the train was pulling off into a snowshed, so that the big plows could come through and clear the track ahead. The snowshed was a long shelter of very heavy timbers built up to protect the train; we'd already passed through several. To some they were barns, to others cathedrals. The storm was intensifying. I looked at Wilfred jestfully, "It wouldn't be a disaster if a blizzard socked us in for a week, eh?" He studied me and wrote, "In such firmament I could live. Or die."

"How old were you in 1914, during that Christmas truce?" He wrote "My 19th birthday came just a month before."

"Do you ever wonder who started it? The truce, I mean, not the war."

"We saw them putting candles in the trees. Then heard a smashing tenor voice. I knew German and so joined the voice. I came in on alles schlŠft --all is calm -- then his mates and mine, each in our own tongue, stitched the song on. A few started to toddle out of the trenches into No Man's Land. We exchanged gifts, stupefied by the mixture of uniforms. Acquaintance so irregular. There's always been talk about candy and cigars and whisky. But some of us didn't have any of those things. I gave a fellow a box of evaporated cranberries. I see it still: Packed in Wareham, Massachusetts. You see, Luke, I was born between Wareham and Swanage. England, you know. In fact, I was born in the little train station at Norden."

"Get out!" A passenger behind tapped me to ask what it was! Here was another story. But Wilfred was running out of white space. Pressing hard over the top of other notes he drew a sketch of himself offering the box to his foe. And then wrote in the clean margin, "He gave me this--"

He withdrew a tin, about four inches square. It was royal blue, the maker's name embossed in yellow: GREIF. The sides were stamped Farbband, and 25mm.

I took it into my hands. "What's in it?"

"I presume typewriter ribbon. That's what Farbband means."

"Typewriter ribbon? You mean you've never looked?" He shook his head; the seal was undisturbed. The tin showed its age. "It's been with me ever since that day. Not once out of my hands. I swore that--" And he put the pencil down. I did not follow up, nor need to. Soldiers carry many things for many reasons. Even long after soldiering is done. To Wilfred this was no souvenir. It was his tin reminder, portable and enduring. "We exchanged gifts. Then, together, buried the dead. And together we prayed, a cobble of German and English. I forget it now, something like: 'my shepherd -- He restoreth my soul.' It's been a long time."

I lowered my head.

It was not boldness but camaraderie that eventually led me to break the silence: "How did you lose your hearing?" He battered his hands, signifying so much shelling. "How did you lose your voice?"

He looked at me, paused and wrote, "I didn't."

"You mean you're able--?"

"I pledged that I would carry this tin until the day I died. But to remain silent, I didn't set out to do that. For a long time I just didn't talk much and then, over time, it became an obligation. An oath to those whose voices are still in that perpetual hush. What I miss most is singing. My mother adored my voice."

I was quiet a long time. "If I took such an oath, would I be able to speak on the day of my dying? I mean, the promise is until that day, right?" Wilfred went blank. Finally, reluctantly, he nodded.

Another announcement came that we'd be further delayed. There were more snowslides ahead. It was very late into the night and the passengers took this with good nature. Some began singing "I've been working on the railroad--" The lights dimmed. Soon I was the only person still awake. I reread the lyrics on the poster nearest me. I watched Wilfred sleep. Then I, too, amid the downy lights, was out.

Wilfred shook me awake. Everyone in the train was still fast asleep. It felt strangely like a barracks: some shifting hilariously in their sleep, others mumbling softly. At first my eyes, sill blurry, could not make out what he was shoving toward me. Then the ledger came into focus, You are needed!"

"Huh?" My confusion was compounded when I realized that the train, while again at rest, had moved. Now in an entirely different snowshed. When the conductor stepped silently into the car I asked where we were. "Near the summit!" he whispered. "Norden. Won't be long. Storm's ended."

"Norden?"

Wilfred brought the notebook closer to my eyes. "I don't know what you mean! Needed for what?" He wrote: "No more room." And indeed that was the last of the space in the notebook; there was not room for a fraction. But -- why hadn't I thought of it before! I pulled out my mother's letter. He wrote on the unused side, "You must get to the Guard's van."

"Guard's van?"

"Caboose. You must go now!"

"I don't get it!" His face, beseeching and firm, brought me to my feet. "For what purpose?" He simply wielded his pencil with fervor and affirmation. A panic set in: I was sure this was a ruse. "We're in Norden!" I said in a cautionary tone. It did not escape me that this was the namesake of his birthplace. Was this the destination he'd had in mind all along? To leap from a snowbound train, to build one last fire? To die, warm and drowsy, along Henderson Creek? Had I been used? The forlorn look I first noticed about him had not faded. He pleaded. And I went, powerless, certain I would not find him when I returned.

I walked through each of the cabins until I reached the last. And out upon the platform in the open air a man stood holding the fence rail, looking out, the stiff wind thrashing his long coat and scarf. The car was slightly beyond the tail of the snowshed, and I could see the sky clearing overhead, the moon level with the two of us, perched between two distant peaks. The man turned toward me, stiffly, and held out his arm. Frailly he spoke, "Watchman?" He felt round. "Watchman -- tell me of the night." He kept his face, stiff and unblinking, toward me and his arm outstretched. There was no doubting he was sightless. "What do you see?"

"I'm not the watchman. I don't see anybody."

"Are you from the train?" I didn't know how to respond to such a peculiarity. "Uh, yes."

"Oh, you're a traveler. I thought you might have been one of the celestials." By his inflection I felt that perhaps I should laugh. I didn't. "You're young," he said.

"Not so young."

"You're not from the west."

"New York."

"The Celestial Kingdom, that's what they call their homeland, the Chinese workers who built most of what you've been traveling on. That's why the name."

"Oh." I misfired a laugh. He leaned further over the rail, as if preparing to be devoured.

"Do you read much Danish?"

"Uh."

"Funny I should be thinking of that story way up here. We're at the summit, aren't we?"

"Is Norden the summit?"

"At the Bottom of the Snow Ocean. That's the name of the tale. By a fellow Gunnar Gunnarsson. The father is out to sea. The family is nineteen days snowbound. Their house completely submerged Christmas Day."

"Does the father return?"

He turned his head again into the wind, which seemed to tear more at him than me.

"Tonight there is no mercy. Everything that is out and about must die."

Into my pockets went my hands. Then out. He shifted suddenly, like a bird dog, and came off the rail. He went to his knee and felt around on the platform. "Oh, here, you dropped this."

I feared a swindle coming. But when he put into my hand a coin I didn't know I had dropped I flushed with a form of shame. It was my coin all right. An old Chinese woman, the very first person to greet me when I got off ship in Frisco, had clapped it into my hands. It was a heavy piece, very old, and minted on one side was: "One Wondrous Token." On the reverse was a field of stars, a raised series of bumps that I took to be stars. Then I remembered hearing the clink of the coin on the floor. Yes, I had dropped it, but hadn't heard: the sound had come only through memory. "Thank you."

"I'm usually pretty good with my fingers, 'One Wondrous Token.' But the other side. What's it say?"

"There's nothing on the reverse." I flipped the coin high in the air, and in its rotations, like one of my holographic trading cards, there appeared a pointing finger, Uncle Sam-like, and the phrase: "Six Days of Sight For You." I stared. Flipped it again. This was my coin all right. But!

"Watchman?"

"There's no watchman."

"Do ya hear the thundering of those slides, far off?"

"I only hear the engines."

"What do you see over yon mountains? Tell me of the night."

"Hard to see anything distant, but the sky is clearing; the moon's setting behind the peaks."

"And stars, you see stars?"

"One."

"What sign does it give? Hope -- or sorrow?"

"I -- I don't know."

He made a left face. "And over yon, what do you see?"

"I see--" I gave a perfunctory look. Then I craned forward.

"Over yon." His face became a promontory of emphasis, "What do you see?"

I looked deep out into the night. "It's a man!" I shouted.