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on
them,
or blast their hats from their heads with its trunk if they tried to jostle him aside.
    Â 
    It came to him now, sitting beside Crocker all these years later, that a locomotive was the nearest he’d come to an elephant. The first time he’d seen one it had spooked horses, thrown a man sprawling. He’d been making deliveries. Men were running and then he was running—
from them
for a panicked instant, then, as they drew level and passed him,
with them,
parcels jumping wildly at the end of his carry pole. He’d thought it was a fire at first; there was a pillar of smoke over the rooftops. He wasn’t the only one; others were coming with buckets slopping. Then he heard the shrill of steam and he knew, even before he rounded the corner.
    Ng had described an engine to him once—“a great hot iron come to smooth the earth”—but Ng had been doing laundry too long; an iron horse on an iron road wasn’t iron
ing
(even if the engine with its pilot did resemble a flatiron). To Ling the engine seemed like a live thing, scaled with soot, snorting and shuddering and shivering the ground. When it lurched into motion, men fell back. The great brass bell yawned so wide he could see the tongue dangling in its throat, like a cry of “Gold!” Describing it later to Little Sister (“You’re making it up.” “No, no!” he swore), he said it was like a New Year’s parade—the crowds, the raucous clanging racket, and at the heart of it the train, bedecked in red-white-and-blue rosettes and crepe streamers, like a dragon, its fiery face and lantern eyes and long, trailing body. He’d actually glanced down to see if there were feet beneath it, arms supporting it.
    And now I’m riding in one,
he thought, watching the trail of cindery smoke widening in their wake like a rent in the very sky. How he wished she could see him.
    Â 
    All those weeks he had assumed that she didn’t know he was there behind the laundry line while she bathed, but the morning after he snapped at her she dropped her soap and, when she bent to look for it, their eyes met beneath the sodden edge of the drying clothes.
    â€œDid I wake you?” she asked matter-of-factly.
    He nodded dumbly.
    â€œDon’t look so worried.
No money lookee.
But since you’re up, you might help.”
    He parted the sheets between them, their wet corners licking at his calves, and ducked under the line, remaining stooped to disguise his erection. A fresh kettle boiled on the stove, filling the air with steam like incense in a temple. She was holding a cloth behind her back and he took it and began, gingerly, to wash her. “Harder,” she instructed, and when he hesitated, she begged him, giggling, “Harder, harder,” and he rubbed her firmly, angry at the mockery, until her flesh turned fiery beneath the cloth.
    â€œThank you,” she said simply when he was done. She had been sitting up, her knees drawn to her chest and her arms encircling them. Now she lay back slowly, her neck on the edge of the tub, her eyes closed. He watched the soap scum drift across the water like clouds until the surface was still and clear. Her breasts seemed to float just beneath, the water lapping her throat gently with each breath.
    â€œI don’t mind it so much, if I can have a bath every day.” She opened an eye, pinched her arm, her cheek. “See, good as new.”
    Still, she must have sensed his pity. He was thinking of the frayed shirts, the torn and mended pieces he washed and ironed.
    With a splash she stood up, dripping so that he fell back. She let him look for a moment, her skin flushed and untouchable, then she wrapped herself tightly in a towel. “It’s only work, after all. Everyone works. I make sheets dirty, you wash them.” She was hardened, he decided—such an odd contrast to her smooth, soft flesh. “At least I don’t do laundry now. All