This Magnificent Desolation by Cara Shores, Thomas O'Malley

face and regards him.
    Once a day, son, he says. Comes after the Omaha freight, drops a couple of cars, and picks them up on the way back. No need forthem, you see. He lifts a scarred, mangled hand as if to illustrate this, and Duncan doesn’t know where to look.
    How far to Stockholdt, sir? Billy asks, and the ticket clerk jerks a ridiculously large thumb into the air and gestures behind him.
    â€™Bout six miles or so, he says and laughs. You’ll need to put your walking shoes on if you plan to walk to Stockholdt. But Duncan is mesmerized by the thumb and stares at it until it disappears beneath the counter, and then Billy nods, thanks the man, and they settle onto a bench and wait.
    The freight bound for Omaha comes in an hour or two, over one hundred cars—they both lose count—stretching from the east and passing into the west, thumping the rails one after the other, so hard they should buckle and break, and after a while it seems as if they will. Duncan is lost in their passing, their heavy drumming and grinding and the incessant tap of metal clicking in the gaps.
    Then it is gone, the freight tapping into the distance and the air heavy with dust and black cinder and Duncan’s clothes stuck to him with sweat. The weight of the afternoon sun bears down. The air is heavy to breathe. Billy keeps his mouth open to it, and watches the sky as the eagle alights over the tree line. The light shimmers on distant, still lakes; bottle flies hop on and off their skin and gather on the empty barrels beneath the gutters. They wave at the bottle flies and wait in the shade for another freight train to pass through and then, after another empty hour, not knowing which way to go, Duncan asks Billy: Do you think you could walk? Billy wrinkles his brow in determination—Duncan has seen this look so many times before—and nods yes and they begin the walk to Stockholdt, their heads bowed and their eyes mere slits against the sun and the unfamiliar land stretching away in simmering nacre waves.
    They walk only half aware that they are walking and the hours pass and then twilight comes on quickly and Duncan realizes that he is no longer warm. In the distance the low-peaked mountains are dotted with flitting lights. Gray clouds sweep over flat tracks of landand small ponds that the bogged land spoons and about which vacant-looking trailer homes sit.
    Duncan reaches across to Billy and pulls him gently to him as they walk, and although Billy is no longer sweating, he feels feverish to the touch. Duncan pauses and they take long gulps from his water bottle.
    The skin on Billy’s face seems stretched and jaundiced and Duncan wonders if he is in pain but refusing to tell him. Are you okay? he asks. It’s okay, y’know, if you’re not. I don’t know if I can walk much more.
    I’m okay, Billy says, wiping water from his chin. I promise. Let’s keep going. It’s harder when I stop.
    It is dark when they enter Stockholdt. Everything looks squat and pressed down, even the town: square rows of flat-topped three- and four-story businesses, clapboard tiers, crumbling porches, and derelict row houses in which yellowed signs declaring ROOMS FOR RENT lay at skewed angles on the insides of grimed glass.
    A traffic light hangs over the Boulevard, the town’s single street that intersects a section of railroad tracks running north to south. To the northeast are vast straits of cold-looking lake and log-sheared forest and the gray nothingness of pastureland let to fallow, broken only now and then by a grain silo or a derelict farmhouse. The single traffic light sways from a fretted cable that stretches across the single intersection. It flashes red, on and off, on and off, throughout the night. And when the wind blows, the traffic lantern rocks back and forth from its cable like a pendulous eye. The 9:15 Northern Pacific, three hundred cars of livestock feed, trundles though, the boxcars metal