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comics—first
Dick
Tracy
and
Moon Mullins
and then her favorite,
Invisible
Scarlet O’Neil—and nobody else in the house had been awake. Now she was eleven and she could not remember where she was. It was late at night and her mother was calling her baby and asking her if she was all right.
    â€œOf course I’m all right,” said the girl. “I just want a glass of milk.” She reached out into the darkness and ran her fingers along the smooth siding of the train. “Where’s White Dog?”
    â€œWe couldn’t take him with us.”
    â€œWhere is he?”
    â€œWe left him at home. We’re on the train.”
    The girl sat up in her seat and grasped her mother’s hand. “I dreamed about Papa,” she said. “He was wearing his fancy French shoes and we were in a boat going to Paris and he was singing that song again.” She began to hum because she could not remember the words.
    â€œ ‘In the Mood,’ ” her mother said.
    â€œYes, that’s it, “ ‘In the Mood.’ ”
    â€œWhat kind of boat was it?” the boy whispered.
    â€œA gondola.”
    â€œThen you were in Venice.”
    â€œAll right,” said the girl, “let’s just say that I was.” She pulled back the shade and looked out into the black Nevada night and saw a herd of wild mustangs galloping across the desert. The sky was lit up by the moon and the dark bodies of the horses were drifting and turning in the moonlight and wherever they went they left behind great billowing clouds of dust as proof of their passage. The girl lifted the shade and pulled her brother to the window and pressed his face gently to the glass and when he saw the mustangs with their long legs and their flying manes and their sleek brown coats he let out a low moan that sounded like a cry of pain but was not. He watched the horses as they galloped toward the mountains and he said, very softly, “They are going away.” Then a soldier with a flashlight and a broom came walking down the aisle. The girl let the shade fall back against the glass and told the boy to return to his seat.
    â€œWhere’s that brick?” asked the soldier. “Over here,” someone answered. The girl sat quietly listening to the soldier sweeping up the shards of broken glass. “Shades down,” she said to herself. “Shades down.” Then she closed her eyes and she slept.
    SOMETIME DURING THE NIGHT the train entered Utah. It crossed the barren stretch of the Great Salt Lake Desert and then the Great Salt Lake itself. The lake was dark and shallow and had no outlet to the sea. It was what it had always been—an ancient body of water where nothing ever sank—but the girl did not see it. She was sound asleep but even in her sleep the sound of the rippling water came to her. An hour later the train stopped at the station in Ogden for water and ice, and the girl, who was thirsty, still slept. She slept through Bountiful and Salt Lake City and Spanish Fork and did not open her eyes until the train arrived at Delta the next morning. When she woke she did not remember the sound of the rippling water but it was with her, without her knowing. The sound of the lake was inside of her. At Delta, armed soldiers with bayonets escorted them off the train and the girl climbed down the metal stairs one by one with her suitcase and stepped out onto solid ground. The air was still and warm and she could no longer hear the low moan of the engine or the clicking of the wheels against the iron rails.
    She covered her eyes with her hand and said, “It’s too bright.”
    â€œIt is unbearably bright,” said her mother.
    â€œKeep walking, please,” said a soldier.
    The boy said he was too tired to walk. His mother put down her bags and reached into her purse and gave him a piece of Chiclets gum she had been saving for weeks. He popped it into his mouth and then he