“Sure.” The young man’s smile was wide now. “The BNSF did, on its way west with cargo.” The last word,cargo, was pulled out long and slow, like some kind of train signal that the young man enjoyed saying.
When Morgan didn’t reply, the young man gestured to himself, a fluid sweep of his hand to his leather-clad chest. “I hop trains. I’m a boxcar boy.”
“A boxcar boy?” Morgan asked. “You’re hardly a boy.”
“Modern-day version of a hobo, I guess.” Another smile flickered out as the young man seemed to shove some thought back as far as it would go. “Star liked the alliteration.”
Now the smell of diesel fumes made sense. Morgan had heard about guys like this, maybe read an article or seen a newscast, but the information had flitted in and out of his head because it had nothing to do with him. Only now he was face-to-face with someone who traveled by jumping on and off moving trains.
For a moment, Morgan imagined all the places the young man had seen from an open boxcar or the top of a pile of coal. Desert sunrises, mountain canyons, the long slopes of cornfields in eastern Nebraska. What a life.
“Well, I’ll be on my way.”
“Where are you going to go?” Morgan used his cane to point at the windows, at the snow, at the bleak emptiness of Montana beyond the small town’s borders.
“Somewhere to wait for the next train,” the young man said, though his expression made it clear that he didn’t have any idea when the next train would be.
“There are no trains,” Morgan said. “No passenger ones, at any rate, and the freight trains almost never stop.”
“Doesn’t matter,” the young man said. “I can wait.”
“You’ll wait a long time,” Morgan said, hardly believing that he was taking the time to explain this. “Like I said, they don’t really stop here.”
“There’ll always be another train.” The young man pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “So I’ll just wait by the tracks and get on it.”
“No,” Morgan said, and then he stopped. He had enough to worry about—his own health, the store, all of it—without coddling a young hobo who thought he could circumvent paying for a ticket.
Still, maybe if he explained the situation, the young man would understand. He might be able to hitch a ride or whatever, but he simply could not wait by the tracks. Especially not in this weather.
“Okay.” Morgan took a breath. “We’re not on the main line,” he said, repeating what Mabel had tediously told him earlier that day. “The town used to be, and trains would come through regularly, but not anymore. Today was an anomaly because there was a derailment somewhere. But the only regular train comes after midnight, at 12:39.”
The young man blinked, then asked, “Every day?”
“Yes,” Morgan said with some force. “Every day. At the same time, right in the middle of the night.”
He didn’t mention how ghostly the train’s whistle sounded, and how it was kind of comforting to have something, at least one thing, be predictable and dependable.
“I’ll go wait for it, then.” The young man gestured at the windows.
“In this weather?” Morgan asked, not holding back his astonishment and irritation. “You’ll freeze by the time it gets here, and besides, it doesn't stop.”
That was the young man’s big plan: to wait in a blizzard by the railroad tracks and jump on board whatever came next down the iron rails.
Morgan didn’t move to get in the young man’s way to keep him from leaving, because there was no point. The guy could go if he wanted to, but something in Morgan had stirred to the surface. Like it would if he found a stray cat or noticed someone who needed help at the crosswalk.
Life had been cruel to him, sure, but that didn’t mean he was an asshole—though it was true that, since his accident, he’d been acting like one.
“Look, there’s a blizzard on the way,” he said, shaking himself. “You can see it for yourself. It’s shutting the town down for three, maybe four days. The sheriff said to lock up and batten the hatches. So you’re going to have to?—”
His frustration rose. The fact of the matter was that the young man needed to go. Morgan didn’t think he could explain it any simpler.
All at once, as if the warmth of the room had thawed the young man out, he shivered again, that deep-body shiver he was perhaps unconscious of.
Morgan threw away everything he’d been about to say. Maybe it was a mistake, but he was going to offer shelter. Food, of course, and a hot shower.
How would Young Tommy react if he knew Morgan was about to invite a stranger to wait out the storm with him?
It didn’t matter what anyone might think, because what kind of man would Morgan be if he sent someone out into that storm? Though the young man with his pretty green eyes and that scalawag smirk was sure to be a distraction from the work Morgan needed to get done if he was ever going to be able to show the small town of Hysham his heels.
