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from it at birth. People’s love of the country is simple and profound: out here one lives on real earth, not a measured and manicured replica of it, or in an apartment whose seclusion consists of steel and concrete rising above the streets, and high up there, one can have colored walls and the smells of toiletry and cooking. We pass trees so dense that we cannot see between them, our vision narrowed to our window and the green trees in the late sunlight, and the sky patched with blue. Then we leave the trees and, in the open, the sky is slashed by tall grey turrets and we pass Three Mile Island. Then we go along the tree-grown banks of the Susquehanna, into Harrisburg. By dinner the sun is out, the sky blue, and as we are seated we cross the Susquehanna, broad, with tiny grassy islands.
    The steward comes for our drink orders: a vodka and tonic, and a half bottle of burgundy with two glasses. He assumes the two glasses are for my wife and daughter, and says: “I’ll bring it and you pour it. I know they’re not twenty-one, and I won’t touch it.”
    I tell him one glass is for me, the other for my young wife. When he brings the wine, he pours it and says: “Pennsylvania, Iowa, Texas, Arkansas are the bad states. We know them. They come aboard and arrest the bartender. In Oklahoma you can only sell beer with an Oklahoma stamp on it.”
    Still we are following the Susquehanna, trees along the banks, the earth rising in ridges to the horizon. I go to the club car so I can smoke with my drink, and sit with a black man with white hair and moustache. He is from New Jersey, and he and his wife are going to St. Louis to visit a niece.
    â€œI was supposed to be born in New Orleans,” he says. “But my daddy got on a moving van and didn’t have the sense to get off. He just couldn’t stay settled. Started in Georgia, got to Louisiana, ended in Trenton.”
    â€œAre you still working?”
    â€œI own a garage, knock out a few dents. Something to do while I’m retired. But it’s hard to keep help.”
    â€œThey don’t show?”
    â€œThey don’t show, or when they do, they want all the money.”
    He tells me to watch for the horseshoe turn later that night.
    â€œYou see a train moving and you think it’s another train, then you realize it’s the same one you’re riding.”
    â€œMaybe I’ll see you here for that, after dinner.”
    â€œMaybe. My wife’s up in the car. I came back to smoke. She worries about our stuff, wants to watch it all the time. I try not to worry. This year I’ll be seventy-two. How much can I take with me?”
    â€œSix feet of the country.”
    â€œThey probably won’t give me all of that.”
    I go back to the dining car; the sun is setting behind trees, peering through as though perched on the fork of bough and trunk; then it is on the crest of a blue ridge, beyond the river and trees.
    After dinner I drink a beer in the club car and talk with Doris, a black woman tending bar. She asks where I am going, then says: “You’ll love the Zephyr: two decks, and the scenery from Denver on west is beautiful. My husband is a retired veteran, and he flew a lot in the service, but hadn’t hardly been on trains. So we were going to L.A. and I said Let’s go by train. He fell in love with it. He loved it so much that he took the train back from L.A. I’m telling you, honey, he left before me, and I flew back.”
    â€œYou married an older man too. You don’t look over twenty-five.”
    â€œI’m past twenty-five, but my husband’s for ty-five.”
    â€œMy wife’s twenty-three.”
    â€œThere you go. Nothing wrong with that. I’d never marry a young man again: too many hassles . You got to get somebody sett led. This man that works for Amtrak asked me about a friend of his that was forty-seven and wanted to marry a girl that was twenty. But I