by E. Catherine Tobler

Every night, Nicholas Glenn prepared to leave.

He carefully chose items from this drawer or that: a Kodak No. 1 box camera, a metal case containing metal toothpicks, a pair of women’s kidskin gloves. He wrapped each item inside a handkerchief cleverly embroidered with the initials A.A., and set them within the scarred leather suitcase awaiting him near the front door. The whole night through, back and forth, back and forth, whispering as he worked, remembering this bit and that bob, until the suitcase was perfectly full. When the suitcase was perfectly full, he would sit in the foyer chair with its worn velveteen upholstery and wait.

It was always the lowing of the train whistle that woke him from the depths of the bed where he’d somehow gotten. He closed his eyes and listened to the distant train, picturing it racing the tracks, playing catch me if you can with the moonlight glossing their infinite length. The train whistle never stuttered, was always smooth and sure of itself. It called him, a sound he might follow forever, but Nicholas was snug in bed now, his feet warm, and he could feel the weight of a body in bed with him—he wasn’t inclined to leave this sweet space, so let the train steam on.

“It’s frightening, but natural,” the voice said, and Nicholas took heart from it. The baritone made him shiver a little bit, because it reminded him of another voice, only in the soft depth of the bed, he couldn’t exactly say who. Nicholas nodded, eyes still closed, and wanted to say I know, I know, but everything was so quiet save for the whistle, he didn’t want to break the silence. He wanted only the whistle to break it, and so waited for it to come again.

It came again, more distantly, and Nicholas closed his hand around it, the way he might a rope. He held tightly, feeling the vibration of the whistle through the steam engine, in the metal flooring beneath his boots, in the windows that revealed the passing countryside. Wide plains, spreading beneath a star-spangled sky. He saw the Big Dipper, and then his reflection in the window glass, only it wasn’t him who looked back at him. The man there was shorter, older, twisted somehow. Like he had wrenched one shoulder so hard, it was permanently stuck in an awkward hunch. Nicholas tried to straighten up, but even when he managed it, the reflection didn’t change. The face was not his own, but that of a stranger. Hello, he might have said, but the voice spoke before he could.

“You can always come.”

Nicholas leaned into the train vibration, closing his eyes to the strange reflection. He didn’t need it, only needed to hear the whistle again, but the whistle was done sounding. They had passed all the crossroads and were moving through the uninterrupted plains now. Out here, there were only farmers’ fields, miles and miles of grain moving slowly beneath the moonlight. A golden ocean by day, a silver ocean by night. The tracks and roads did not cross out here and so the train moved without announcement or ceremony, seeming to gain speed as she did. She was a beautiful machine, Nicholas thought, and pressed his hands to the ceiling of the engine. He didn’t expect he should reach it—he wasn’t that tall—and yet here he was, hands flat against the wood, the metal.

She was a beautiful machine, Nicholas thought, and her fingers threaded warmly through his own, a golden cross pressed between their palms the whole night through.

• • •

Every morning, August Alonzo struggled to eat. It needed doing, and so he brewed the coffee and scrambled the eggs—some mornings he tried fried, just to see if that was the trick—but every morning it didn’t come with any ease. It didn’t help, he was sure, that he was up before the sun, because the cattle needed tending, and the ranch hands needed direction—though thank goodness for Cody Lockhart, three days new from Denver, because he was going to work fine, just fine, and August felt that better sleep and easier eating was just around the corner. But this morning was another hard one, for it had been a long and restless night, Nicholas walking the halls until an hour before August himself had to be up. And so August had never gone down.

Some nights were like that, endless, and he was certain he would mourn them when they passed, because when those nights were through, that surely meant that Nicholas was through, and August wasn’t ready for that aspect of the adventure. No, he said to the stars, thank you.

August hadn’t gone to formal school—raised on the ranch by his father and his father’s father—but still understood what it all meant. The tightness in his throat, the emptiness in his belly. The way the hot coffee never seemed to warm him. Sometimes he held the cup in his hand until the coffee cooled, watching Nicholas finally lost in sleep, just praying for the man to get a few good hours.

Untroubled hours, he hoped, but he often watched Nicholas’s hand open and close, as if he were reaching for something. As if he were trying to hold onto something that never quite stayed put. Sometimes, he laid his body down beside August’s, a worn saddle sliding over a bowed back, and sometimes he was wheeled back in time, to the first night they’d slept such, and felt himself back there, when everything was new, and nothing was falling apart.

This morning, Nicholas slept, and so August left the house, his coffee cold on the counter. The sky was colder than that, spreading like milk-splattered velvet over the quiet world. He stood for a moment on the porch, leaning into his boots, pulling on his gloves. Mrs. Sunny wished him a quiet good morning as she passed him into the house; she would be there when Nicholas woke, if August weren’t back to check in.

August settled his hat low over his eyes. The hat erased the sky and let him breathe easier. Sometimes, it was too hard to think about all that everything up there—worlds, they said, and moons, and nebula, and God knew what else. Maybe people, he thought, but couldn’t swallow the idea, not when there was so much to do here. Did those people have ranches? Did those people watch helplessly as their loved ones packed bags for journeys they would never take?

“I need to be ready,” Nicholas always told him.

And so August let him prepare, because what else could he do. He had tried to stop Nicholas, and that only ended in confrontation—a broken finger once, a black eye twice. August had no need to brawl with the man he loved, not when only one of them remembered it ever happened. August explained the injuries away far too easily—men, he’d told Nicholas, were always of temper on the ranch, and fists would fly easier than not.

Minding the ranch helped. Seeing Cody Lockhart already up with the hands loosened a knot in August’s heart. He relaxed in his saddle, and hung back, letting Cody guide the men as they headed out on inspections, rounds, feedings. Cody tipped his hat to August, but didn’t ask for help; he’d been shown all the workings three days ago, and already had them down. August watched them go, the men taking their assignments as easily as they ever had. They were a good bunch—they were a weight off August’s mind—and so August did what he hadn’t done in a good long while. He rode for the sake of riding. An hour in, he took his hat off and let the wide Colorado sky press him into the earth.

• • •

The little dog found August as he turned back for the house, the sun having broken across the tree line to obliterate his vision. August’s horse Georgia saw the dog first, high-stepping out of the winter wheat that was to be harvested next month. It was a thin animal, maybe near starvation, but it gave a high, sharp yip at the sight of horse and rider. Georgia veered, more annoyed than anything, and August peered down, baffled.

Out here, there were mostly working dogs: collies and shepherds, heelers and kelpies. This dog was none of those—looked more like a racing breed, with the sleek body and long legs. August came out of the saddle and crouched to look at it and it didn’t seem afraid of him, pricking its ears forward, and skipping closer when August ungloved his hand and offered it for inspection.

The closer the dog got, the more August could see something was wrong with it. Starving, he thought again, because he could see its ribs—only this close, with the way the sunlight was shining, the line of rib looked like actual bone. August startled when the cold, wet nose touched his fingers; a second later, the warm tongue gave him a lick.

“Where did you come from?” he asked.

At the sound of his voice, the dog bolted—but not away. The dog followed the track toward the house. August squinted, losing it in the sun, but climbed back into the saddle, and nudged Georgia onward. When they reached the house, the dog was sitting on the porch with Nicholas. If Nicholas had had a tail, August would have said it was thumping in time with the dog’s own.

“I have waited for this day,” Nicholas said.

Nicholas and the dog sat together on the steps as though they always had, Nicholas running a hand from the dog’s ears to its back. The dog wriggled, like it knew Nicholas’s touch. August swung down from the saddle and loosely draped the reins across the hitching post.

“Waited, hmm.” August drew his gloves off and held them in one hand, watching the pair. The dog did know Nicholas, he felt sure of it. The dog twirled in a circle, then bent its nose to the porch, as if bowing to August.

“She comes with the train,” Nicholas said. “I don’t know her name, but we’ve talked before. Usually only in the nights.”

August braced one booted foot on the bottom step, leaning against the banister. His stomach tightened some. “The train?” He hoped his voice was even, but it felt thin, like it wouldn’t carry to Nicholas at all.

“You know the one.”

August did know the one and didn’t want to think about it, but Nicholas seemed sane—August could see the man he loved right there on the steps, his eyes bright and normal, his gaze steady if excited about the dog. No, August thought, about sharing the dog. About making introductions.

“She’s come before?” August asked. He squatted at the base of the stairs, and the dog bolted from Nicholas’s side, making a beeline for August. She pushed up on his denim-clad legs, to lick his cheek. August’s hand curved warmly behind her head, to give her ears a scritch. Her eyes closed, complete trust.

“Twice before,” Nicholas said. “Gave her a treat or four.” Nicholas cleared his throat. “Told you about her once, but—”

“I thought she was a dream,” August finished. He felt this was a dream right now, too, truth be told. He didn’t understand it.

Nicholas was always telling him stories—about the train they heard, about the people on the train, about the places the train would go. In his youth, Nicholas had been an artist, and as the market pushed him aside for younger, brighter minds, August had thought he’d just fallen to telling stories rather than painting them. Of course, as Nicholas’s illness deepened, August wasn’t sure what was just a story and what was something more concerning. The story about the dog had seemed like something more concerning, because in the stories, the dog wasn’t exactly alive. August glanced down at the dog’s side, where he could still see a sliver of bone.

“She looks hungry,” August said.

“Yes,” Nicholas agreed. He came to his feet and turned for the door, opening it. The dog scampered inside, needing no more invitation. Nicholas gave August a sheepish look. “She will go—she won’t stay. She knows her place, and it isn’t here. I invited her to stay, but the train always calls her back. Will you join us once you get Georgia settled?”

“I will,” August said, and turned to tend his horse. Thoughts of the dog and Nicholas nagged at him though. Imaginary friends were one thing. But when an imaginary friend turned up on one’s doorstep …

They had talked about getting a dog before—the ranch was no stranger to working dogs, but keeping one as a pet had never sat right with them. August thought it might be good for Nicholas to have someone like that—someone to care for, in the moments when he could. A small little beast to curl against him, weighted, warmed. But then the stories about the dog—this dog—had started, and August let uncertainty guide him into not doing a blessed thing.

He left the stables and found the pair in the kitchen, Mrs. Sunny cooking up a couple eggs and some manner of meat. Nicholas sat at the kitchen table, the dog poised on his lap, both of them watching the activity at the stove.

“There’s coffee,” Mrs. Sunny said at the sound of his boots on the floor.

Coffee sounded unreasonably good, and August poured himself a cup, seeing that Nicholas already had one. The dog did not, but a bowl of water gleamed on the floor. August took a long drink, letting the coffee warm away the weirdness of the moment. Where the heck had the dog actually come from? They didn’t tend to get strays—the coyotes got them first.

“You seen this beast before?” Mrs. Sunny asked, eyes skipping to August at the coffee pot, then back to the meal she was presumably cooking for the dog.

“Never once,” August said. He leaned against the counter to look at Nicholas and the dog, the pair of them looking like right old friends who’d been separated for a spell, but were now firmly back together. He eyed Mrs. Sunny. “You?”

“Gracious, no!” She laughed and swept the food onto a plate—not the metal kind, no ma’am, the white bone china, and August didn’t say a word as she set it on the floor and the dog went to it, as if knowing it were hers. “Look at that.” Mrs. Sunny sighed in contentment.

August hadn’t seen Mrs. Sunny that pleased by someone eating her cooking since Edwin Sunny had been alive and well and working the ranch with the rest of the boys. August had been surprised when she’d stayed—he knew she didn’t necessarily hold with his relationship with Nicholas, few did—but he wasn’t quite sure what any of them would have done without her.

The little dog ate like a thing starved, like she hadn’t eaten in years. August watched her side work with extra breath as she chewed the steak and eggs, her rib still gleaming. He wanted to ask Mrs. Sunny if she could see that, but before he could, she crossed to the dog’s side. She waited until the dog was finished eating, then gently touched her.

“Wonder if the doc should take a look at her—he’ll be out tomorrow.”

“She’ll be gone by then,” Nicholas said, sounding certain.

“The train?” August asked.

The smile that moved Nicholas’s mouth pulled August back in time, to the day they’d met. It was a smile that made promises for the future, a smile that was in no way uncertain, a smile that a man might murder for. August had not had to go that far, but neither had he seen the smile in years.

“The train,” Nicholas echoed.

• • •

In the night, Nicholas left the house with the dog. August had collapsed into bed sometime earlier, snoring into the pillows still fully dressed, and while Nicholas didn’t consider it an opening for mischief—he knew it was a chance. A chance for what, he couldn’t say, but he left his love to sleep, and followed the dog into the high winter wheat. He left the suitcase standing in the hall.

The wheat moved against his chest like ghost hands as he and the dog headed north. The dark line of the mountains lay to his left hand, so he knew it was north—might have known if he looked at the stars, but he didn’t look at the stars (looking up was dangerous, unanchoring). He kept to the mountains and the dog, her slim body weaving a path through the grain. She knew where she was going. Where they were going.

Nicholas knew too, if he’d thought about it, but his mind was on the wheat and the way it touched him; his mind was on the dog and the way she shimmered like bones through the grain. There was more to her than that, he was sure, but she looked like bones beneath the moonlight. The tops of the wheat glistened and she on the ground glistened, and Nicholas let himself get lost and led. He didn’t have to hear the low whistle to know where they were going.

He thought they had done this before, but he wasn’t sure. The wheat was a memory, but it was sliding past him quicker than he could hold onto it. He opened his hands and the stalks slid through his fingers, and his feet knew where he was running, running like he had as a younger man, a younger man falling in love with August Alonzo. In his mind, he could see August standing on the porch of the house, just a shadow, until he strode onto the steps and the sun hit him full in the face. He was as handsome as apples.

The ground was sudden and swift, against Nicholas’s cheek. He tasted blood, and was looking at the stars, and he didn’t want to look at them. He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. The dog was barking, prancing beside him, small teeth in his sleeve as if she could lift him from the ground. When he was upright once more, that was when the train whistle came.

It rolled through his bones, and Nicholas was weeping for no reason he could name. The dog circled his feet and he bent to pick her up. She did not protest, but leaned away from him—toward the rumbling train. Nicholas ran with the dog in his arms. Like he had as a younger man. A younger man falling in love with—

The field gave abrupt way to the tracks. Out here, there was no fence, barely a boundary between this life and that life. Nicholas drew himself up at the trackbed as if he’d hit a wall. The crushed stone ballast crunched beneath his feet. The tracks weren’t but five feet wide, and on the other side, more trackbed, and then more field. Grain as far as he could see. An ocean of it—but it wasn’t a boat coming.

The train didn’t slow. It passed Nicholas as full speed, and his entire body rattled. He tried to draw in a breath but could not. It seemed like the train had sucked all the air from the world, whooshing past like a rocket from the stories August so loved. A wheeled rocket, Nicholas thought, and if it weren’t careful, it would rise from the tracks and fall into the stars, derailed. Nicholas held tighter to the dog at that thought, like he would also fall.

It was an older engine than he imagined—something from the first days of the railroad, he thought, but some of her cars seemed newer than that. She was a hodgepodge, some new and some old. Nicholas liked it immediately. Knew it immediately. This was the train. The train that called across the night to him. But it hadn’t slowed and he didn’t dare reach out a hand for it, because he had the sense to know he might lose his hand. It wasn’t always like that. He had reached out once. Hadn’t he?

“Take all of me,” he said when the breath rushed back into him.

A hand was nothing. He could live without a hand.

Nicholas reached—and saw then the dog had gone. She was no longer cradled in his arms, but had gone where she would, maybe onto the train where she well and truly belonged. A stabbing pain then, not in his chest, but somewhere deeper. A cry escaped his lips, and he reached again for the train.

The ground swelled up to meet him anew, and Nicholas was looking at the caboose, as its bright square dwindled toward the west. Like a star shot down the tracks, smaller and smaller, until he could not see it, until he could not see anything.

• • •

Nicholas wasn’t in the house when August woke. The sheer panic that gripped him could not be described—he simultaneously felt like he was suffocating and that he had been thrown clear of the disaster the past twelve years had been. He stumbled from their bedroom, into the hall, into the kitchen, where absolutely nothing was amiss other than Nicholas’s absence. August sat himself down and tried to reason it out, his fingers tracing worry patterns across the already-worn kitchen table. It was oak, carried over in the war he’d been told, but he never knew which war, and there were so many to choose from. He had kissed Nicholas at this table and on this table and once beneath this table, but now Nicholas wasn’t here and …

August’s thoughts raced, spilling from him like water from a tipped cup. Nicholas had finally gone and … And … He couldn’t figure what came next. Nicholas had spent so many nights packing, and August had spent so many mornings unpacking, and it felt like a circle that would never quite end. They would always be trapped, each within their role until— Until what? He simply didn’t know.

He had his forehead pressed to the table by the time Mrs. Sunny arrived. There he was, sitting in the clothes he’d worn last night, because he’d passed out from exhaustion, a thing he’d never done. And then he’d woken to find Nicholas gone. His own hair was mussed by his thick fingers combing through it, and his coffee sat undrunk, and Mrs. Sunny knew right then something was the matter.

She was unflappably calm when he told her.

“Well, did he take his suitcase?” Mrs. Sunny asked.

The words were like a punch to his jaw. Blinding and bright. August pushed away from the table and ran to the entry, where the suitcase sat. Wherever Nicholas was, he hadn’t taken the suitcase.

August was on his knees, loosening the straps, opening the lid, to find it hadn’t even been packed since he’d last set everything back where it belonged. The breath went out of him entirely.

Did this change matters for the better or the worse? August did not know. Nicholas packed when he wasn’t in his right mind and laughed about the very idea when he was. If he hadn’t taken it—if he hadn’t even packed—then what had befallen him?

“Have you seen the dog?” August asked as Mrs. Sunny joined him in the foyer.

“Not that little one,” she said, and reached a hand down for him.

August gently pushed her hand aside. He was able to get his legs beneath him—he was the strong one, didn’t she know, didn’t she remember—but once standing, he couldn’t think what he ought to do. Without thinking at all, he went out the front door and stood on the porch, as if maybe Nicholas would come walking up the drive. August shaded his eyes from the rising sun, but this didn’t bring Nicholas back, either.

The men were already at work, he knew, Cody Lockhart doing the thing he’d hired him for. Still, August itched to get out there with the men, to soak in the quiet and dark of the morning before the sun took it all away. Before his day became about something else entirely. The guilt dropped his shoulders.

August saddled Georgia in the stables, having already strapped on his gun belt. He liked to think of the belt as practical, but couldn’t ignore the way cold fear slid down his spine as he notched the buckle into place low across his hips. He slid the rifle into place alongside the saddle and didn’t give it another thought. This was the gear of patrol; that’s all it was.

Coming out of the stable, Georgia caught the scent of something northward and he didn’t steer her elsewhere. He let her wander that way, all the while looking for any sign a man had come this way. Or even, a small dog.

Out here, it was just the grain, brushing with a whisper against his legs and Georgia’s sides. As a younger horse, she’d shied at the feeling, but she’d grown to like it fine. It sounded like ghosts and better days, and August could have ridden in that sound forever. He kept the reins loose and let Georgia go where she would. She wandered west, toward the line of trees that blurred the horizon. Then, she veered north again.

August didn’t see any sign of Nicholas or the dog, but Georgia seemed certain of her path. She walked without hesitation, until they reached the crushed stone trackbed that marked the rail line. Then, she turned west again, keeping to the trackbed. August lost himself in the sound of her hooves against the rock, in the feel of the sun on his shoulders, and somewhere the hum of a cricket. When Georgia picked up her pace, August took the reins a little more firmly in hand.

They found Nicholas collapsed farther down the trackbed. August drew Georgia up and she stopped, and August took a long look at the man who wasn’t moving. From this distance, August couldn’t see if he was even breathing. His own breath hitched hard.

They had talked about it, of course—talked about the end and what it meant. Nicholas didn’t believe in an afterlife and August couldn’t conceive of one either. He’d looked hard enough into the blue Colorado skies and no heaven had revealed itself, so he presumed it wasn’t there. The land, that was what they had. The land and the stars and the water between. Nicholas wanted to be cremated, spread in the fields, so that some part of him would always be part of the wheat.

August slid off Georgia and walked toward Nicholas. Perhaps it was more a meander, but August couldn’t make himself go faster. If Nicholas were—if he’d arrived too late— He couldn’t even finish a thought. He pulled his gloves off and scanned for coyotes, but saw none. He tucked his gloves alongside his rifle, then moved toward Nicholas, heart like a stone in his throat.

The ranch was dangerous—he’d told Nicholas so countless times after the doctors had diagnosed him. Nicholas might be better off somewhere else, somewhere safer, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Now, the sight of Nicholas sprawled beside the train track made August sick.

“Nicky?”

The name came out broken, August’s throat gone dry. It sounded like wheat breaking in a fist, and Nicholas didn’t move. August was closer now, close enough to kneel beside his beloved and reach a hand toward Nicholas’s pale cheek. August’s breath stuttered and then— Then.

The wheat on the north side of the train track swayed, revealing the great curve of something metal against the sharp blue sky. Something metal and moving. A great wheel.

August turned away from it and reached again for Nicholas. He curled his hands into Nicholas’s shirt sleeves, meaning to haul him from the trackbed, put him on Georgia, and take him home, but Nicholas vanished beneath his touch, as if he’d never been. August jerked backward, sprawling in the coarse gravel.

He started breathing again when Georgia nudged his shoulder with her warm, soft nose. He took hold of the reins and got himself back on his feet, wondering if he’d imagined Nicholas. If he’d imagined the wheel against the sky.

It was still there, the wheel. August’s hand slipped from the reins and he moved toward the wheel, as if drawn. A Ferris wheel, no doubt, but he didn’t understand why, or how. Off the trackbed, back into the grain, he spread his hands out to feel the wheat across his palms as he passed through. It didn’t feel like dreaming, like imagining, it felt like it had always felt, his boots crunching through the grain, the sun burning against his shoulders. He tried not to think about Nicholas, how he’d been there and how he’d vanished, but couldn’t quite let it go. If he wasn’t dreaming, then what?

The wheel was rusting, falling apart so sincerely that flakes of rust drifted on the gentle morning air. One caught August’s cheek, the edge biting into him, drawing blood. He hissed at the sting, but didn’t stop moving toward the wheel. The grain had been crushed beneath the metal contraption, as if it had dropped straight out of the sky.

It was big, bigger than anything else he could remember. Hundreds of feet high—thousands, he thought maybe. It turned slowly, without a visible operator, and every rusting open-air carriage was empty. Until one wasn’t. There was a figure in the highest carriage, only a shadow as the wheel rotated counterclockwise, and the sight made August’s stomach tighten. He felt like he might vomit right there, the longer he looked at the figure. It wasn’t Nicholas—he’d know Nicholas’s shadow anywhere, and this was not his. The man was shorter, older, twisted somehow. Like he had wrenched one shoulder so hard, it was permanently stuck in an awkward hunch.

The wheel crept down, little bits of metal lifting off every time the wind picked up. The closer the occupied carriage came to the ground, the more unreal the wheel looked; more and more of it was lifting into the sky, a trail of rust against the Colorado blue as far as August could see. He didn’t look away from the carriage for long—the figure was too compelling, too imperiling. Which was funny, August thought, because when the wheel slowed, stopped, and the figure stepped out of the carriage, it wasn’t at all large. The man was not physically imposing, and yet the closer he came, the worse August felt. Felt like his entire guts were being hauled from his body, against his will, through his screaming mouth. But he sure wasn’t screaming, not on the outside.

“Hello,” the small man said.

August was inclined to take a step backward, but couldn’t. He opened his mouth and also couldn’t talk, couldn’t find a single word. Not even a hello in return. This is my field, he wanted to say. This is my grain. What are you doing to—

“It’s frightening, but natural,” the man said. “Go on.”

August didn’t know what he meant, but then his feet were moving—toward the wheel, toward the carriage the small man had just vacated. August very much didn’t want to be on the wheel—and he also did. He told himself it was a dream, but it still didn’t feel like one—the crush of the grain beneath his boots, the whicker of Georgia’s breath in the near distance, the scent of rust carrying on every breath. This wheel was falling apart and he was stepping into the carriage, sitting down, and the wheel was moving again, carrying him backward, and up.

Nicholas—where had Nicholas gone. He’d come to the field to find Nicholas and … And. August curled his hands around the metal lapbar that secured him into the seat, and told himself to breathe, but this high, there was no air—there was only the rust, obscuring his vision, his breath. Then they turned higher, reaching above the decay, and August saw the world spread out below him, soft and golden and curving into the distance. Telegraph cables along the railway, and the low rumble of a train passing by. A figure walking the tracks resolved itself into Nicholas, who turned in a slow circle, hands spread out as if to feel the vibration of the track. The train slowed, but never stopped, and Nicholas leaped onto the small step of the caboose, and vanished inside.

“It’s frightening,” the small man said at August’s side, “but natural.”

August was certain the man had not gotten into the carriage with him, but now here he was. August startled so badly, he flung himself from the carriage, into the rust that occluded the sky. He opened his hands, to feel the metal bite his palms as he fell. When he looked back up, to the wheel and its solitary passenger, only rust lingered in the air, the wheel having gone its way.

• • •

It wasn’t like waking up. He was in one place and then he was in another. Nicholas recognized both places, the Here and the There he liked to think of them. Here was the house, the house he was forever wanting to leave to get to the There, the train.

He knew it wasn’t right, that something had gone wrong inside of him, but he didn’t know how or why. He knew that people weren’t like this, but that he was, and that August didn’t care—or well, he cared, and cared deeply, but it hadn’t ever changed his love, and never would. These were the things that Nicholas knew.

What he didn’t know was how it would all go. How the end would come. And not The End, as he liked to picture it as though it were the final screen of a film. How the end of the Here would come—that’s what he wondered. He couldn’t stay Here, and knew it, but didn’t know how to tell August. He needed to go home—even though Here was supposed to be home. He packed, and August unpacked, and it was a great, silent circle between them, each playing their part, walking their half. Nicholas was so tired of walking.

When he saw August coming up the walk, his heart quickened. He stepped out onto the porch steps and lifted a hand, and August’s steps stuttered, like he couldn’t believe it, and he dropped Georgia’s reins, and broke into a run, and then the Here contained August once more (oh, the There never did, Nicholas knew), and they were kissing, and the kisses tasted like the sea he was sure, though he had never seen the sea, only this ocean of grain around them, around the Here.

“It’s frightening,” August whispered against his mouth, “but natural.”

Nicholas pulled back. “You met Jackson.”

August’s face held a frown, but it quickly moved on. “Saw his wheel.”

“The wheel.” Nicholas smiled and for a flickering moment he was eight years old again, the day spreading out before him, his parents carting him to the carnival, where the striped tents flapped in the breeze, where all manner of strange animals and people gathered, where he first discovered paint and canvas and dreamed of something other than the ranch.

“I thought it was all dreams,” August said. “That it was …” He trailed off, his fingers gentle and firm as they threaded through Nicholas’s hair.

“My mind,” Nicholas said.

They stood for a long while, just looking at each other, and everything Nicholas wanted to say became unnecessary. He could see in August’s eyes that he understood—August knew how the end would come. August knew it was about to come—or was already here.

“I need to be ready,” is what Nicholas said.

August’s mouth was warm and soft and tasted like a hundred summers, like a thousand rainstorms, like the salt in the butter. “You will be.”

• • •

The little dog found them ahead of the sunrise, ahead of the train coming. The little dog, like the Ferris wheel, was falling apart, but seemed no less happy for it. Walking the trackbed, Nicholas carried his suitcase, and August held his free hand, trying to be strong, but not quite ready to surrender the person he loved best in the world.

They had packed together for the first time the night before: a tin case holding three paintbrushes, a small photograph of a stern-faced woman August thought was Nicholas’s mother, August’s freshly pressed white button-down. Extra socks, August had said, pressing them into the suitcase, because you never knew, and socks would help you put everything back in focus. Nicholas did not argue, only made sure August had enough socks in his own drawer before they left the house.

August wasn’t ready, but supposed that didn’t matter. He would never be ready. Nicholas had been ready for years, had listened to and chased the train’s low call, and even if every time he had come back to the house, or had never really wandered off at all, he was ready. Something inside him said it was time, was calling him the way light called a moth. August couldn’t be sure the call didn’t mean Nicholas’s destruction—a moth plunging into a flame—could only be sure that holding Nicholas when he was ready to go wasn’t right, or just. They could pack every night, and unpack every morning, but eventually one had to go.

“I’m not ready,” August selfishly said.

Nicholas looked at him with the smile August would never not love. “It’s frightening,” Nicholas said.

August left it at that. It was frightening, especially when he could feel the train coming. No whistle yet, but he felt it in the ground. Nicholas slipped his hand from August’s and despite the soft gasp from August, rushed to the track, to toss his suitcase down and collapse against the length of metal. He pressed his ear against the metal, closed his eyes, and was somewhere else entirely. August stopped walking, but the dog skipped to Nicholas’s side, turning in circles as if she also felt the train’s approach.

“I can live without a hand,” Nicholas whispered.

August didn’t know if he could. He didn’t move, was frozen on the trackbed as Nicholas picked himself up and dusted the knees of his trousers off. He righted his suitcase and the dog sat beside it, as if meaning to not be forgotten when they all left. Left. August couldn’t understand the word. It didn’t make sense. There was no train station here—Nicholas couldn’t leave, surely. He couldn’t just … go.

“Will you …” August was going to ask Nicholas to write, then a broken laugh spilled from him, and he was crying, because where Nicholas was going, he was certain Nicholas couldn’t write. He could leave, train station or no, and would leave. They had packed together. Last night, August had understood, but now the sun was coming up and the train was abruptly silhouetted in the golden light, rushing closer, and August couldn’t breathe, didn’t understand. Why—how had they come to this place. Already—how? The years were supposed to last, they were supposed to go on and on and this wasn’t supposed to happen. Not yet. Not—

The wind whipped the tears against his cheeks as the train rushed past—the uprush of air snatched August’s breath, and the air was filled with bits of grain, wheat dislodged by the train’s great speed. He told himself he had to let go—had to open his hands and let—

He couldn’t.

He couldn’t.

He could—

Nicholas dislodged, suitcase in one hand and dog in the other, and the ground no longer mattered, for the train already had them, was carrying them away. Through tears, August saw them on the caboose steps, in the door, and then gone—gone.

August collapsed to the trackbed and wanted to reach for the train himself, wanted to haul himself into the cars and ride as far as he possibly could with Nicholas. But another part of him understood that he already had done this thing. He curled his hands into the coarse gravel of the trackbed, and let the tears pour out of him until at last he could stand again. Until he could walk away from the tracks and back to the house, where some mornings small paintings were found left on the porch: wide fields of lavender lined with a path made by a bony dog; a metal wheel falling apart against a sky of strange stars; an endless gray sea that held waving golden grain in its depths. Metal tracks running endless and for always. Some mornings, jars of marmalade that evoked one memory, and then another.

Some mornings, August Alonzo propped the paintings against the marmalades, managed to eat his breakfast, and told himself he was ready.