until the clack of wheels tugged him asleep again.
CHAPTER TEN
By morning the train was passing through a silent expanse of wheat. When the sun moved over the roof and slid in through the open door Walker retreated to the back of the car,
into the cool. From here, with the golden fields and blue sky framed by the black doors, the view was exactly like the projected image of a movie screen, an endless panning shot of prairie.
Then, slowly, the view began to shrink. Houses began to appear, roads; in the distance, factories. By late afternoon the train was heaving into the outskirts of Eagle City. The number of tracks
visible from the freight increased until they stretched away like a wide river.
Walker’s train clanked and squealed over points, drawing parallel to other trains and then sliding away again. Beyond the railroad tracks was an actual river. A bridge squatted iron-heavy
in the distance. Cranes, warehouses, water towers and brooding clouds. Faded signs with speed limits and warnings that no longer mattered. Old stock that had been plundered for spares and left to
rust in sidings. The broken windows of an abandoned signal house. Littered with gulls, even the sky looked old, run-down.
The train slowed almost to a crawl. Walker jumped down and waited for it to pass, guessing that the centre of the town was on the other side, away from the river. Some way off a gang of workers
in orange bibs walked across the tracks, shovels and picks over their shoulders.
When the train had passed, Walker began making his way across the expanse of tracks, ducking under the bumpers of stationary coaches, stepping ahead of departing freights. Beyond the station
rose the office blocks of the city’s business district, high glass buildings made from cubes of sky.
Next to the railroad was a car park, cordoned off by a high perimeter fence. Walker waited behind a stationary shunter until there was no one in sight and then tossed over his bag and hauled
himself up, the fence sagging and bulging with his weight. He dropped to the other side and walked out of the car park and into the town.
Eagle City had grown up as a crossing-point and small port on the Eagle River; with the coming of the railroads it became the commercial centre of the region and was now a
large, depressed town on the edge of the prairie. Walker spent two days asking after Malory or Carver without success. He had lost track of them both. Which meant that he himself was lost. He
thought about leaving and going on to Despond, a couple of hundred miles away, but did not have the confidence to rationalize this in his usual way: if he felt like leaving, then the chances were
that Malory had felt the same. Besides, what would he find there? Sitting on the steps of an abandoned building, drinking milk from a bottle, he glanced up and saw, on the wall opposite, a torn
poster for a Western. In films cowboys spoke of the trail going cold, but he had no way of knowing if the trail had gone cold or had actually frozen over. And what trail was there except the one
that he left in his wake? What else was there to guide him?
He tossed the empty milk bottle into a bin and began walking. Soon after embarking on the search he had given up trying to guess the real significance of what Rachel had asked him to do. He had
concentrated instead on the smallest things, on a trail of imagined footprints. He had given no thought to where they might ultimately lead because the question overwhelmed him, dwarfed his efforts
and made them seem futile, absurd – whatever that meant. Now that he was pondering the larger purpose of the search he felt, for the first time, like giving up, abandoning it. And then what?
Abandoning things was all very well but what did you do once you had abandoned them? Something else. It was impossible to walk out on one thing without walking into another . . . What Rachel had
asked him to do. Perhaps it was as simple as that. He had left so that he
CHAPTER TEN
By morning the train was passing through a silent expanse of wheat. When the sun moved over the roof and slid in through the open door Walker retreated to the back of the car,
into the cool. From here, with the golden fields and blue sky framed by the black doors, the view was exactly like the projected image of a movie screen, an endless panning shot of prairie.
Then, slowly, the view began to shrink. Houses began to appear, roads; in the distance, factories. By late afternoon the train was heaving into the outskirts of Eagle City. The number of tracks
visible from the freight increased until they stretched away like a wide river.
Walker’s train clanked and squealed over points, drawing parallel to other trains and then sliding away again. Beyond the railroad tracks was an actual river. A bridge squatted iron-heavy
in the distance. Cranes, warehouses, water towers and brooding clouds. Faded signs with speed limits and warnings that no longer mattered. Old stock that had been plundered for spares and left to
rust in sidings. The broken windows of an abandoned signal house. Littered with gulls, even the sky looked old, run-down.
The train slowed almost to a crawl. Walker jumped down and waited for it to pass, guessing that the centre of the town was on the other side, away from the river. Some way off a gang of workers
in orange bibs walked across the tracks, shovels and picks over their shoulders.
When the train had passed, Walker began making his way across the expanse of tracks, ducking under the bumpers of stationary coaches, stepping ahead of departing freights. Beyond the station
rose the office blocks of the city’s business district, high glass buildings made from cubes of sky.
Next to the railroad was a car park, cordoned off by a high perimeter fence. Walker waited behind a stationary shunter until there was no one in sight and then tossed over his bag and hauled
himself up, the fence sagging and bulging with his weight. He dropped to the other side and walked out of the car park and into the town.
Eagle City had grown up as a crossing-point and small port on the Eagle River; with the coming of the railroads it became the commercial centre of the region and was now a
large, depressed town on the edge of the prairie. Walker spent two days asking after Malory or Carver without success. He had lost track of them both. Which meant that he himself was lost. He
thought about leaving and going on to Despond, a couple of hundred miles away, but did not have the confidence to rationalize this in his usual way: if he felt like leaving, then the chances were
that Malory had felt the same. Besides, what would he find there? Sitting on the steps of an abandoned building, drinking milk from a bottle, he glanced up and saw, on the wall opposite, a torn
poster for a Western. In films cowboys spoke of the trail going cold, but he had no way of knowing if the trail had gone cold or had actually frozen over. And what trail was there except the one
that he left in his wake? What else was there to guide him?
He tossed the empty milk bottle into a bin and began walking. Soon after embarking on the search he had given up trying to guess the real significance of what Rachel had asked him to do. He had
concentrated instead on the smallest things, on a trail of imagined footprints. He had given no thought to where they might ultimately lead because the question overwhelmed him, dwarfed his efforts
and made them seem futile, absurd – whatever that meant. Now that he was pondering the larger purpose of the search he felt, for the first time, like giving up, abandoning it. And then what?
Abandoning things was all very well but what did you do once you had abandoned them? Something else. It was impossible to walk out on one thing without walking into another . . . What Rachel had
asked him to do. Perhaps it was as simple as that. He had left so that he
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