that seat in faded black paint, and when he leaned close, he was able to read it: S.S. Pokey. That made him grin. Luke leaned back on his elbows, looking up at the crazy sprawl of the stars, and tried to convince himself that this wasn’t a dream—that he had really gotten out.
From somewhere behind him on the left came the double blast of an electric horn. He turned and saw a single bright headlight flickering through the trees, first coming level with his boat, then passing it. He couldn’t see the engine or the train it was hauling, there were too many trees in the way, but he could hear the rumble of the trucks and the bratty squall of steel wheels on steel rails. That was what finally nailed it for him. This was not some incredibly detailed fantasy going on inside his brain as he lay sleeping in his West Wing bed. That was a real train over there, probably headed for Dennison River Bend. This was a real boat he was in, sliding south on this slow and beautiful current. Those were real stars overhead. The Minions of Sigsby would come after him, of course, but—
“I’m never going to Back Half. Never.”
He put one hand over the side of the S.S. Pokey, splayed his fingers, and watched four tiny wakes speed away behind him into the dark. He had done this before, in his grandfather’s little aluminum fishing skiff with its putt-putting two-stroke engine, many times, but he had never—not even as a four-year-old to whom everything was new and amazing—been so overwhelmed by the sight of those momentary grooves. It came to him, with the force of a revelation, that you had to have been imprisoned to fully understand what freedom was.
“I’ll die before I let them take me back.”
He understood that this was true, and that it might come to that, but he also understood that right now it had not. Luke Ellis raised his cut and dripping hands to the night, feeling free air rush past them, and began to cry.
22
He dozed off sitting on the midships bench, his chin on his chest, his hands dangling between his legs, his bare feet in the little puddle of water at the bottom of the boat, and might have still been sleeping as the Pokey carried him past the next stop on his improbable pilgrimage if not for the sound of another train horn, this one coming not from the riverbank but ahead and above. It was much louder, too—not a lonely honk but an imperative WHAAA that brought Luke around with such a jerk that he almost went sprawling backward into the stern. He raised his hands in an instinctive gesture of protection, realizing it was pathetic even as he did it. The horn quit and was supplanted by metallic squeals and vast hollow rumblings. Luke grabbed the sides of the boat where it narrowed toward the prow, and looked ahead with wild eyes, sure he was about to be run down.
It wasn’t quite dawn, but the sky had begun to brighten, putting a sheen on the river, which was much wider now. A quarter of a mile downstream, a freight train was crossing a trestle, slowing down. As he watched, Luke saw boxcars marked New England Land Express, Massachusetts Red, a couple of car carriers, several tankers, one marked Canadian CleanGas and another Virginia Util-X. He passed beneath the trestle and raised a hand against the soot that came sifting down. A couple of clinkers splashed into the water on either side of his craft.
Luke grabbed the paddle and began to angle the rowboat toward the righthand shore, where he could now see a few sad-looking buildings with boarded-up windows and a crane that looked rusty and long disused. The bank was littered with paper trash, old tires, and discarded cans. Now the train he had passed beneath was over on that side, still slowing down, screeching and banging. Vic Destin, his friend Rolf’s father, said there had never been a mode of transportation as dirty and noisy as transportation by rail. He said it with satisfaction rather than disgust, which surprised neither of the boys. Mr. Destin was into trains bigtime.
Luke had almost reached the end of Maureen’s steps, and now it was actual steps he was looking for. Red ones. Not real red, though, Avery told him. Not anymore. She says they’re more like pink these days. And when Luke spotted