Chapter 1: On the Train

            Tap. Tap. Tap.  The boy sat with his chin resting on one hand while his nervous fingers tapped out a rhythm with a stubby pencil.  Tap.  Tap.  Tap.  His eyes were blurred and distant as the sagebrush zipped by outside his window.  He hadn’t moved much in the past hour, clutching a little leatherbound notebook and tapping his pencil. 

“Why so sour, boy,” came a startling question from the barrel-chested man with the red striped tie who had been minding his own business since boarding in Helena. 

“I’m not sour.” Came the short reply, “just tired.” 

“Where’s your folks?”

            A thousand thoughts shot through his mind.  He remembered the sound of his mother humming as she laid him in bed, the heavy banging of his father’s boots as he stoked the fire in the early morning, so many memories of their little family.  But in answer to the man’s question, he could only muster, “The people said they bought the farm.”

            “Oh, sorry to hear that.”  Replied the man, now a little more uncomfortable.  The man pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose a bit.

            The boy knew what it meant that his parents had “bought the farm.”  There was no farm.  They hadn’t bought anything.  They were dead.  The men from factory hadn’t given many details, the only thing that mattered to the boy, was that his parents were gone.  An accident, the men had explained.  But the sound of their voices had swirled together with the terror that his parents were gone.  What was he going to do!  Just as he asked himself that question, it was answered.

            “We were able to send a telegraph to your father’s aunt.  Do you know Agnes Terry?  She lives out in Astoria, Oregon.”

            The boy had shook his head, as he did remember meeting the stuffy old lady at a funeral.  She was the only person to bring a cat to the funeral.  The cat had traveled in the train in a little black and red box, that looked more like a ladies handbag, with lace and sparkles stitched to the outside.  The cat seemed to be sadder at the service than the old lady.  The lady’s wrinkled face neither stretched into a smile or broke into tears.  Rather, the wrinkles on her face had scrunched together in a web that never changed.  The cat, however, had meowed nervously throughout the service, causing the family and friends to shoot angry glances over the pews in the church.

            “So, I never got your name, boy.”   It was the man on the train, again. 

            The boy ran his fingers over a pencil-drawn picture in his notebook before lifting his eyes and looking directly at the man.  “My name is Mist.  Mist Terry.”

            “Can’t say as I ever met anyone with a name like that.  You know your name is a noun?  Mist.”

            Mist hadn’t ever met anyone named Mist either.  He supposed that there never was another kid that had to explain his name so much as he did.

            “My folks couldn’t decide on a name for me.  Mom wanted to name me Delwin after her dad.  My dad liked Tarlton.  They neither one would back down.  So my dad sat staring out the window.  Sure enough, he couldn’t see the end of the driveway ‘cause of the fog.  So here I am.  Mist.”  The boy was surprised at his sudden burst of words, but supposed that he liked hearing his own voice talking about his parents.  He missed them already.  It had only taken a few days for the factory men to get Mist a train ticket and to take over the house to collect for his parents’ debts.  He knew that money had been tight, and that the family owed a lot of people.  But couldn’t they have waited for him to be out the door, before coming in to haul off the grandfather clock.  The clock had always stood by the door and clicked out its cadence of time passing by.  Mist had lay next to that clock and listened to the beat of the pendulum swinging on cold afternoons after school.

            “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mist.  Where you headin?”

            Mist shuddered and looked back to the sagebrush.  “My great-aunt Agnes lives in Astoria.  She said she would take me in.”  His mind flashed back to her wrinkles and the smell of mothballs that lingered on her black dress that day at the funeral.

            Mist’s thoughts were interrupted as the ticket master, in his funny looking hat came tripping into the train car.  He made his way down the aisle, reading tickets over the top of his glasses, and then punching them with his hole punch.  Mist had already had his ticket checked a few times since leaving Detroit.  He had seen the flats of the Midwest give way to the stunning mountains of Montana.  Each train stop, his car had emptied and it felt as though he was the only one to get back on.

            The ticket master pulled up beside Mist’s seat. 

            “Still going, eh?”  The ticket master read Mist’s ticket over the top of his glasses.  The man’s eyes were intense blue and seemed more alive than the rest of his aging body.  His bushy gray eyebrows danced up and down as he wriggled his glasses up his nose without touching them with his hand.  He punched the ticket and handed it back to Mist.  He quickly punched the red tie man’s ticket and just as he was about to walk away, he swooped down to the ground and picked something up off the floor.

            “You must have dropped this,” the ticket master held out his hand toward Mist.    A silver coin sat in the middle of his grooved hand. 

            “Oh no, that’s not mine.  I don’t have any coins like that.  Must be his,” Mist nodded toward the big man sitting across from him. 

            “No, I’m pretty sure this is yours,” said the ticket master with a new strength in his voice.  Mist looked again at the coin, and then back to the ticket masters eyes.  There was a flash of strength and urgency that Mist had not seen since the last time his dad was getting serious about something.  Mist looked back to the coin and reached out his hand and scooped it up. 

            “Thanks, mister.”

            Mist held it tightly in his hand, as he felt a strange attraction for his new found prize.  He quietly looked down at the coin.  It was like nothing he had ever seen.  This coin was different.  This coin was special.