“Put me in one of your books.”
“What’s that in the back seat?” I asked.
He lit a Lucky Strike and exhaled the smoke through his nostrils. “A pilgrim hat.” He reached in the window and put it on his head. “We’re having a Little Theater rehearsal tonight. I play a Puritan judge.”
“No kidding?” I said.
“Keep on the sunny side, kid. Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”
“Satchel Paige said that.”
“I knew you were smart.”
In the early hours of the next day, somewhere in the Grand Canyon country around Flagstaff, the sliding door of my boxcar open, I woke to the sweet smell of pines and the singing of the rails, just as the morning sun broke over the mountains and, in a blink, gave life to the shadows of the boxcars racing across the desert floor.