1921
There was gray smoke aswirl round the train station and heavy fog with the odor of coal through which itinerants came and went, departed and boarded. As he stepped onto the curb a sensation of aimlessness struck him suddenly, one that he hadn't felt so acutely before in his life. The railway commute had been long and interconnected. Three stops at least and many days between them. It had been well over a month, he knew, since he'd bore witness to that blue infinity called the Pacific. Well over two, come to think of it. When in transit the laws of perceived time and space become rubbery and opaque. To sit back and relax and sleep and do nothing but read and think while the wheels beneath you whisk you away to a fixed, predestined point. It was effortless, and he loved that about it. He was one well acquainted with travel, you could say, and the railway was his favorite permutation of it. He'd become accustomed to living upon it, erecting a kind of camp that was stationary a...