Firebirds Soaring

by Sharyn November

  He could have done that before, Jason said to himself, thinking of the rain pouring down on the old man’s face. The firemen were pressing on Shin Bone’s chest. They shone a bright light on him and one of them shook his head. Then the police arrived.

  “That’s the boy who found him,” Mike said, pointing at Jason. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he was going through the tramp’s pockets.”

  Jason was both shocked and outraged. He’d never stolen anything from the library. He’d kept every one of their rules, not even returning a book late. The library meant too much to him, the only place that was safe and warm, where he didn’t have to constantly look over his shoulder.

  “Hey! I know you,” the cop said. “You’re from that group home—”

  Jason ran. It was a split-second decision and he regretted it at once, but by then it was too late. Once you ran, you were already guilty. You’d be sent to Juvenile Hall, where the boys were bigger and hit harder.

  Jason climbed over a fence with the cop yelling at him to stop. He tore his plastic poncho and had to throw it away. He wriggled out of the backpack and the books splashed into a puddle. Now he’d never be able to go back to the library. He almost ran into the arms of another cop waiting at the other end of an alley. Fear gave him a burst of speed. He zigzagged, leaped a ditch, scrambled over a hedge—

  —and found himself in a vast empty field. Jason was so startled he skidded to a stop. He listened. There were no pounding steps behind him and no shouts. He couldn’t even hear the rain because it had stopped raining. The sky had not a single cloud in it and was lit by a moon so bright it was slightly frightening. Jason had never seen such a moon.

  In the middle of the field was an old-fashioned train. Steam hissed around its wheels and the clock-face of the engine, glowing in the brilliant moonlight, trembled with heat. The engine huffed gently as if talking to itself. It rolled slowly past and stopped.

  Directly in front of Jason was a boxcar with the doors open on either side so that he could look through. He approached it cautiously. The floor was piled with what appeared to be empty flour sacks, and the space inside had a neat, comfortable look about it. It felt safe, as the library did when Jason had a good book and a whole afternoon before him. Almost without thinking, he climbed in and lay down on one of the heaps, pulling a flour sack over him for warmth. Soon he was fast asleep.

  The engine quivered. The whistle gave a short, soft call, and the wheels began to turn. The train moved out. Long, low, and mournful it sang through the canyons of the city, past shopping malls and apartment buildings, until it reached the wilderness beyond.

  Jason sat up. Sunlight was streaming into the side of the boxcar, and the wheels were going clickety-clack at great speed. Outside, a desert stretched away to distant purple mountains. At the far end of the car two men were playing poker, using beans instead of chips. One had a broken nose and the ruddy face of an alcoholic; the other resembled a wrestler Jason had seen on TV. They looked up at him at the same time.

  “Feeling rested?” said the one with the broken nose.

  Jason looked around frantically for a rock or some other weapon. In his experience, such men meant trouble.

  “We let you sleep,” the wrestler said. “You looked like death warmed up last night.”

  “Yeah, death warmed up.” The other man chuckled. “But we’ve got to ask you questions now.”

  “Don’t come near me!” cried Jason, inching toward the door.

  “Whoa! Don’t go there,” said the wrestler, bounding over to pull the boy back from the edge. He carried him easily to the poker game, paying no attention to the blows and kicks Jason gave him.

  “Settle down, kid. Haven’t you seen a guardian angel before?” said the man with the broken nose. He swept the beans into a Mason jar and screwed on the top. “The kidney beans are worth a dollar, the pintos five, and the limas ten,” he explained without being asked.

  Jason crouched on the floor, sweating. “You don’t look like guardian angels.”

  “That’s because we watch over Shin Bone. These are the shapes he’s comfortable with. Normally, we look like this.” The wrestler turned into a towering Presence in a white robe, with huge, rainbow-colored wings sweeping from one end of the boxcar to the other. In fact, he looked exactly like the stained-glass window in the cathedral near Jason’s group home. The boy covered his face and when he looked again, the wrestler was back.

  “W-well,” Jason said, trying not to be afraid, “If y-you’re Shin Bone’s guardian angels, you did a rotten job last night.”

  “See, that’s what we’ve got to discuss,” said the man with the broken nose. “By the way, my name’s Chicago Danny, and that’s Three Aces over there. We watch over people for the years allotted to them, and when their time’s up, we call them home. Shin Bone was supposed to board the train last night.”

  “Only you showed up instead,” said Three Aces. “I assume you have his ticket.”

  “Ticket?” Jason said faintly. He felt in his pants’ pocket and pulled out the rectangle of paper with light fizzing around the edges. TICKET TO RIDE, it said in swirling gold letters, and in finer print, ONE WAY.

  “Thought so,” said Chicago Danny. “Problem is, it isn’t yours.”

  “I didn’t steal it!” Jason protested.

  “Never said you did, but it puts us in a pretty pickle. Why don’t you explain how it happened.”

  And so Jason told them about the storm and finding the old man under the tree, the scrap of paper floating down the gutter, and how he ran from the cops. “Can’t we return and fix things up?” he asked.

  “That’s a one-way ticket,” Three Aces pointed out. “Most trains go farther and farther into the past, until the bearer finds the place he was completely happy. That’s where he stays.”

  “I can’t remember ever being happy,” said Jason, and he wasn’t angling for sympathy. It was simply true. He’d been born addicted to crack and placed in one foster home after another. No one wanted him because he wasn’t cute. As he grew older, he learned to spread his own misery around to make others unhappy. And he did steal, no matter what he told the angels, only not library books. That was how he’d ended up in the group home, one step away from Juvenile Hall. His life had been bad experience after bad experience, and there wasn’t a bit of it he wanted to repeat.

  “You’re not reliving your past because that’s not your ticket,” explained Chicago Danny. “You’re going to where Shin Bone was happy. Looks like the first stop is the town of Amboy.”

  The train pulled to a halt next to a cluster of houses and businesses. They got out and went into a café. Cowboys, truck drivers, and families on vacation crowded into booths with yellow plastic tables and vases full of yellow plastic flowers. A juke box played in a corner, with globes of colored light rippling around its edges.

  “What’ll ya have, gents?” said the waitress, pencil poised over an order pad.

  “I don’t have money,” Jason whispered to Chicago Danny.

  “Sure you do. Look in your pocket,” the angel said. Jason pulled out a dollar bill.

  “I’ll, uh, I’ll have a hamburger and a slice of apple pie— with ice cream,” Jason added, daringly. He was sure he didn’t have enough money, but the hamburger turned out to cost thirty-five cents and the pie with ice cream was only twenty-five. He looked out the window and saw a car with enormous tail fins, and chrome just about everywhere you could put chrome, pull up. A man Jason had seen only on midnight television got out.

  “Isn’t that . . . ?” He hesitated.

  “Elvis,” Three Aces said.

  “But isn’t he . . . ?”

  “Dead? Sure, and so is this town. They built the new freeway on the other side of those mountains, and one by one the businesses folded up. You’re seeing Amboy as it was when Shin Bone was here. This was one of the best days of his life.”

  Elvis came in, and since all the other tables were full, he asked if he could sit with Jason and
the angels. “Sure,” said Jason, thrilled beyond belief. He sat in a happy daze as Elvis ate three slices of pie with ice cream.

  But it seemed this wasn’t the final destination for the train. Its whistle blew long and lonesome, and Jason, Chicago Danny, and Three Aces climbed aboard.

  The next stop was Yuma, where they attended a rodeo and Jason rode a bronco for three minutes and won a prize. Then they went to Albuquerque and New Orleans, followed the Mississippi River up to St. Louis, and turned right to get to Chicago. “My town,” said Chicago Danny, “when I was alive.”

  It was there Shin Bone had had the accident that ended his career. He’d been a fireman for the railroad. “He was the best,” Three Aces said. “He should have been promoted to engineer, but in those days a black man couldn’t get that job. One night he fell between two cars that were being coupled and got his leg smashed.”

  “But he kept riding the rails,” said Chicago Danny. “Once you get that wandering spirit, it never goes away.”

  At each stop Jason had a wonderful time, but sooner or later, no matter how much fun he was having, he would feel restless. He wanted to see what was around the next bend, over the next hill, beyond the horizon. Then Jason and the angels would get back on the train and travel on. Until they got to the farmhouse.

  It was a rickety, falling-down structure at the bottom of a deep valley. Rows of scraggly corn grew next to lima beans, broad beans, and tomatoes. Chickens pecked their way through the vegetables, and a mangy hound lay on the porch. She looked up and thumped her bony tail.

  “How can she know me?” whispered the boy.

  “She knows Shin Bone,” replied Chicago Danny. “He loved that dog Beauty, and when she died, he was heartbroken.”

  “I thought this was supposed to be a happy memory.”

  “This is before.”

  And now a skinny black woman came out onto the porch, followed by four raggedy kids and a pair of men, followed by a very old man and three more women with three more children, not counting the baby one of them carried.

  “They can’t all live in that shack,” Jason said.

  “They can and do,” said Three Aces.

  “Shin Bone!” the people called from the porch. “You’ve come home at last! We’re all so glad to see you!”

  “I’m not him,” Jason said, shrinking against Chicago Danny. “I’m not even the right color.”

  “They see what they hope to see. Now run along and make them happy,” said the angel. So Jason was swept into the middle of Shin Bone’s family, and they made a big fuss over him. They fed him corn pone and fatback and many other things he’d never heard of but that tasted good. Best of all were the long, lazy evenings when everyone crowded together to tell stories. And nobody was left out, not even the great grandma, who never left her bed and who you had to shout at because she was deaf.

  One night, very late, Jason sat on the porch with Beauty. Stars filled the gap between the mountains on either side. Mockingbirds sang as they did on warm nights, for it was summer here and had been for years. Jason heard, far off, coming through the mountains, the long, low whistle of a train.

  He stood up as it chuffed to a halt, gave Beauty a last friendly pat, and climbed into the boxcar.

  “Welcome back,” said Chicago Danny from the shadows.

  “We were counting on you,” said Three Aces. The train went off through the mountains, away from the dog, the farmhouse, and Shin Bone’s family sleeping inside.

  “Counting on me for what?” asked Jason.

  “To put things right. You see, most people travel only one way. They go into the past until they find the best time of their lives and there they stay. But not Shin Bone and not you. You’re just naturally restless. You’re happiest on the train, looking for what’s around the next bend.”

  “What if I hadn’t got restless?” Jason said.

  “The train would never have returned.”

  Again they crisscrossed America, finding stops they hadn’t seen before and revisiting some of the others. Clothing fashions changed; cars got longer, sprouted tail fins, and shrank again; the blue light of television flicked on behind window shades. And one night they pulled up in front of the library. The windows were dark, and frost covered the grass. Shin Bone stood under his favorite tree, waiting.

  “What’ve you been doing since we left? ” asked Jason, glad to see the old hobo look so healthy and happy.

  “Haunting the library,” admitted Shin Bone. “That’s what happens to people who lose their ticket. They become ghosts. I amused myself by hiding in the stacks and flushing toilets. Mike drove himself crazy trying to catch me, but he never did. He’s in a nice rest home now, I hear.”

  “I guess this is yours,” Jason said regretfully, holding out the ticket.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “Oh . . . I don’t know.” Jason looked at the dark city all around, at the ice coating the dark street. He had no idea how long he’d been gone or what would happen when he returned to the group home.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” suggested Shin Bone.

  “I don’t have a ticket.”

  The old man grinned. “I’ve been riding boxcars for fifty years and never once—not once!—did I have a ticket. Stick with me, kid, and we’ll go places.”

  They both climbed onto the train. “You made it!” hollered Chicago Danny, slapping Shin Bone on the back.

  “Welcome home,” cried Three Aces. “Just look at that view!”

  The train picked up speed, and the countryside rolled by like life itself, field after valley after mountain range, with here and there the lights of a small farm. The air rushed past, scented with pine needles and sage.

  “It never disappoints,” said Shin Bone as the whistle sang its way through the sleeping towns and cities of America.

  NANCY FARMER grew up in a hotel on the Mexican border. As an adult, she joined the Peace Corps and went to India to teach chemistry and run a chicken farm. Among other things, she has lived in a commune of hippies in Berkeley, worked on an oceanographic vessel, and run a chemistry lab in Mozambique. She has published six novels, four picture books, and six short stories. Her books have won three Newbery Honors, the National Book Award, the Commonwealth Club of California Book Silver Medal for Juvenile Literature, and the Michael L. Printz Honor Award. Her Web site is www.nancyfarmerbooks.com.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  “A Ticket to Ride” was inspired by an elderly homeless man who camps outside our local library. He is clean and well spoken, doesn’t take drugs or drink alcohol. Most of the time he lies in wait for library patrons because he loves talking and can do it for hours. But there is nothing wrong with his sanity. “Shin Bone” (not his real name) is simply one of those people who can’t live too close to others. He has to be outdoors and he needs total freedom. He would have been perfectly happy living in the Stone Age, and I find him thoroughly admirable.

  Christopher Barzak

  A THOUSAND TAILS

  When I was five years old, my mother gave me a silver ball and said, “Midori chan, my little kitsune, don’t let Father know about this. He’d take it from you to sell it, but it’s yours, my little fox girl. It’s yours, and now you can learn how to take care of yourself.”

  “You mean I can learn how to take care of the ball,” I said. Even then I was not polite as I was supposed to be. I was a girl who corrected her mother.

  “No, no,” said my mother. “So you can learn how to take care of yourself. That’s what I said, didn’t I? ” She swatted a fly buzzing near her nose and it fell to the floor, stunned by the impact, next to her bare foot. The next moment she crushed it beneath her heel and continued. “A fox always takes care of itself by taking care of its silver ball. Don’t you remember the stories I’ve told you? Well, I’ll tell them again, my little one. So listen and you’ll know what I mean.”

  My mother had always called me her fox girl, had always told me she’d found me wandering in th
e woods and brought me home with her. Father would laugh and say, “Your mother is always bringing home lost creatures. Soon we’ll be keeping a zoo!” He’d stroked the back of my head like I sometimes saw him pet our cats: one long stroke and a quick pat to send me off again.

  As a child I was often confused by the things my mother said and did, but it didn’t bother me. It felt natural that life was mysterious and that my mother hid her meaning behind a veil of stories, as if her words were water through which truth shimmered and splintered like the beams of the rising sun. She taught me that some matters have no clear way to explain their meaning to others.

  Children at school often remarked on her. How strange your mother is, they told me. And how alike the two of us were. “Why does your mother speak to herself? Why does she sometimes laugh at nothing? Is she crazy?” a small group once asked me at recess, forming a circle around me. “Why do you sit in class and stare out the window while we’re playing karuta or Fruit Basket? Why don’t you talk to us, Midori? What’s the matter? Don’t you like people?”

  To tell the truth, they were correct. I was a strange child, and they sensed it. It was because, even then, people seemed so odd to me in their single-minded concerns and simple pleasures. I did not know at the time why, at the age of five—at an age before the world had had time to inflict many wounds on me—I felt this way. Somehow, though, I felt somewhere a world existed that was my true home, not the rice fields or the gray mountainsides in the distance, not the rivers and the fishermen standing along their banks, not the dusty fields where other children played games during afternoon recess, not the farm on which I was being raised, not the little town of Ami. And it was not that I felt I belonged in a radiant, carnivalesque city like Tokyo either. It was that I somehow knew I simply did not belong with people.

  I knew all that at the age of five. But it was at nine years old that I discovered my true being in this world.

  In fourth grade we read a book called Gongitsune. This is an honorable way of spelling and saying the name of the fox, the kitsune. Many of the new kanji we were learning that month were in this tale, and beside each new character the publisher had printed small hiragana, the simpler alphabet, to guide us to the right sound and meaning. I didn’t need hiragana as much as the others, though. Kanji was easy for me. When sensei introduced new characters, it seemed I could look at them and, almost by magic, they would reveal their meanings to me, yet one more reason for my classmates to be suspicious. So when sensei gave us this story, I read for pleasure, I read without having to study our new words.