Thank God for slackers. I found another ledger, abandoned with other textbooks in the trash. It was marked History/Algebra. And only three pages of it were filled in. I was jubilant in my find. Then I saw the ominous man again. I woke Wilfred, a little creeped out. I learned that he had first seen him in 1914. "He will not go away," he wrote. "Dismiss him." And Everet, summoned from sleep, leaned in and added, "He has no power in himself; he can't hurt you, only change your mind."

"What's that mean?" I asked Wilfred. "He is the devil's chaplain. A shining patriot -- and the greatest preacher of peace that ever lived." I was confused. "He roams the earth seeking to convince men that peace flows only from a ready bayonet. That war is the calling of a holy God." Everet interjected, "I can tell you: a thousand generations ago a man said 'if war must come, let it come in my time, so that my child may have peace.' But no child since has ever known peace."

"I won't be moved," I said. And Wilfred nodded, 'I know.' Before returning to sleep, Everet whispered, "In my younger days, Luke, the mountain would have been no challenge." Then he rolled up the pant of his right leg and with this pipe tapped his calf. It resounded with a knock of wood. It was an old prosthesis! "I rode with the Buffalo soldiers. But I grow older." He gave a wink of an eye. "I wouldn't have made it without you, my friend." Then he was back to sleep, a grin of assurance lingering there, snug above his whiskered chin.

We came quickly off the mountain, down steeply through thinning trees and into sage country. Hand to chin, I watched the river flow, the elbowed Truckee. And suddenly we were into the streets of Reno. I spied the station, stretched out in stucco with great round arches and a terraced roof covered in red tile. And there Wilfred and I stepped off to unkink. Given the serious delay I expected to see a swarm of unhappy faces stampeding the train. Rather, the crowd of waiting travelers, sitting on luggage, was placidly gathered around a woman strumming a guitar. Her voice was quite good; the fades, though, gave evidence that she'd probably been at it all night. Surely what must have kept those waiting from becoming a hub of agitation. I didn't recognize a single song. But on every chorus the gathering joined in, on and off key. Those who had just dashed off our train stopped, dropped their bags, and sat in the ragged circle, dumbfounded by luck; it was like a glee club. The rush turned into a sit-in. Folk music was not my bag, but it was hard not to enjoy this little improv.

Wilfred returned to the seat opposite mine, next to Everet, who was still snoozing. A moment later a voice came over my shoulder. "May I?" It was the folksinger. "Sure," and I helped stow her guitar case and knapsack. "If you want the window seat," I said, and she took it, bowing to thank me. A moment later a man was leaning over my shoulder, pushing a pad of paper across my face; he wiggled a pen. After writing something in his pad, the folk singer turned to me, "I'm sorry. Maybe I should take the aisle." Then I was pushed again by a woman. Another little pad. More writing. What was going on? When the third person came forward and passed a copy of Rolling Stone magazine across my lap, I understood. On the cover -- which read America's New Folk -- was a trio sharing a single mic, guitars slung over their shoulders. Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and the woman on my right, whoever she was. She signed the cover. The man held up a pair of tickets, "We're on our way to see you in Omaha." Then she said to me, "I really am sorry. I don't fly for this very reason. I thought the train would be more, you know, tranquil." I waved, "No bother."

Even Wilfred brought his ledger across the seat, sheepishly, respectfully, and she signed it. He beamed. And I nearly came out of my seat when in his sleep Everet -- and he was genuinely sleeping -- began to sing in a soft mumble. Soon several people were gathered about our seats. But it was not Everet this time who was drawing attention; the song he was singing was one of hers, and they took it as a cue to serenade her with their adoration. Even I could feel the discomfort in her as she shuffled in her seat. I forced a smile, noting that something about her seemed oddly familiar.

Then the conductor approached shyly; in his hand was one of the centennial posters. And boyishly he asked her to sign it. She was also the author of the railroad lyric on the poster! Nothing was going to surprise me now. Once she had autographed the placard, she whispered to him, "Is there a way to -- uh, purchase any sleeping berths?"

"One may, yes. There are roomettes open, several; all the double sleepers are filled. This for yourself?"

"For all of us," and she drew her hand in a circle that encompassed Wilfred, Everet and myself.

"There's a stateroom that was just coupled, accommodates six."

"Dealer, show me the way!" And she pulled out the plainest of rawhide saddle purses, which contained the most unplain clump of large bills I'd ever seen. As the four of us followed the conductor, I lugging the trunks, the woman said, "So much for traveling with the common folk. That'll bother me. But I don't want to be a nuisance." And as I followed her I wondered: first, how someone so famous could have escaped my attention, and secondly how someone so loaded could appear so normal. She seemed to be around my mother's age, maybe a little younger. She wore a suede coat with long fringe across the back and arms. Her hair was long, sandy brown, her face unmade, and as clear as a mountain stream. She was plain in every way, completely unvarnished. Plain in language, in smile, in touch. The only color on her was a dot of turquoise from a small, solitary ring. And she had freckles in spades.

The cabin was less glorious than its name, but it had fine wood paneling and smelled of pine. The windows were larger and let in a soft light that washed through the cabin. The woman pressed her head against a window; she looked drained, as if she needed a true hibernation. And when she turned I saw her in profile. Without meaning to, I blurted aloud, "Billi Callico! "She swung round, almost angry, as if I had cornered her. "No, I mean, I didn't know who you were; I don't know who you are!" I explained, apologetically, that I'd never heard of her, that I'd seen her on a tattoo. She came forward and hugged me, "If only the whole world were made of Lukes like you!" For the next few hours she kept her hands wrapped round my forearm, as if afraid that, without an anchor, she would be sucked out the window.

Later, as Everet slept, snoring softly in an oriental scale, Billi whispered to me, "Have you ever seen the great salt lake?" I shook my head. "Wait till you see the sparkle of the salt. It's like quartz. The colors of the water change by the hour. Sapphire and turquoise. Sometimes metallic. All crystals and tiny little algae." And then we were upon the lake. Wilfred looked at me, open-mouthed, "Do you see what I see?" I nodded my head, speechless. We came closer to the window, the three of us, watching the sparkles, our heads adjoined like a cluster of berries.

Just then a flare of greenish-gold lapped across the entire sky. Then came another, with more fingers to it, then the light just erupted in a fantastic sheet of wispy color. And it arced across the heavens, billowing, changing form and color. And Billi exhaled, "Borealis!" I had seen northern lights before, but nothing like this. We didn't know whether to wake Everet or not: we figured he was well acquainted with the spectacle.

The train, itself part of this movement, cut a trail between earth and sky. The long shallow lake sparked as if the polished rings from ten thousand hands were catching life's last light. The northern lights danced, shifting in lovely, unpredictable waves, bending low, reaching out, withdrawing. It seemed as if we were witnessing the colloquy of two great powers --companions of light. They gestured, one to the other, unrestrained and unrestrainable. They danced. But by their power they had lost all ability to understand the gestures of the other. And so they radiated only their longing, hopelessly lost in adoration.

"Borealis speaks to me," Billi said. "I've written three songs to him."

Wilfred wrote, "It reminds me of the air once over the Garone, at Toulouse." I could think of nothing to say. When it was over, we sat in silence. Wilfred laid his pencil on the table, keeping it lightly in hand. Billi put her hand above his, and then I lay mine higher still upon hers. All three loosely round the pencil, as if clutching a fallen flag. After that, every word that we had for each other was filled with the kind of intimacy known only to siblings.

It would be nearly 24 hours before we hit Omaha, and so we settled in. Wilfred was sleeping now, too. Billi was crying lowly. "There's one song," she said, "that I've never been able to write. You don't know anything about me, do you?" I shook my head. This comforted her. "The only song that matters. But I can't come to it. The words I have but no courage." And there, somewhere in the Wyoming night, I learned of the anguish Billi could not put in song. She had had a child at 18, just as her career was beginning to rise. And she had given the child away. "I wish I could say it was a hard choice. But it wasn't. All that mattered then was my career. And I could not have both. So I left it -- this will sound incredible, I know -- but at a convent, Our Lady of Angels in Omaha. That's why I give a charity concert there every Christmas. And what breaks my heart still is that only one day later some bureaucrat wrung that child away from the Sisters there. I never knew after," and she leaned against me, beginning to faint, "never knew whatever happened to her." I plunged my hands into my pockets.

"Have you ever had a regret so deep? So deep you feel like you've swallowed a sword ... that you'll be forced to live forever? And the more good happens to you the more it aches?" She could see that I did. And so she spoke softly on.

The train made another stop. Just then we heard a bang, bang, bang. And then a rumble of feet in the corridor. There were shouts and then a girl shot in through our door, slamming it behind her. She took immediate surveillance of the room and dashed toward the second of Everet's trunks. She swung it open, "For the love of Rome, does this thing have an apartment?!" She swashed aside the dust-shield tapestry and crouched into the little cavern where Everet might have kept hangared trousers. Everet, roused but bleary, looked at the girl in his trunk. Then he slammed it closed. A knock came to the cabin door.

From the knock we learned that a certain young girl had stolen a loaf of bread, made an inscrutable gesture toward her pursuers and jumped the train. "All that commotion for a loaf of bread?" Billi asked. "A loaf today, tomorrow a purse. Then anarchy. They breed, these types. There is no small crime in the eyes of Justice."

Everet swung open the trunk, exposing the knees of the girl crouched behind the dust shield. I stood, confused but ready. And then Everet stood with severity in his cheeks and said, "Justice should take the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate." The men moved forward and I brought my chest to theirs. Before the ominous man could appear, though, I retreated and bent to unroll my pant leg. "I have your bread, and her fare. How much will it be?"




Next Chapter: The Grammar of Ornaments




NOTE: The next two chapters will be available on this Web site beginning Monday evening, Dec. 17.