“So anyways, that’s why I’m not in school anymore.” Pep finishes her story. She looks around at the unchanged landscape. A few trees rustle in the wind, the golden grasses of her native Nebraska sprawl across the horizon as the storm clouds brew above them. So this is Wyoming, Pep thinks to herself. She has never been in another state before; somehow she thought it would look different. “So how much farther to Cheyenne?” Pep pipes.
“Do you ever stop talking?!” Sal yells. Two days into their journey, he looks as if he is on the verge of tearing out his own hair.
“I’m just trying to make it interesting. Don’t yell at me.” Pep sniffles. She looks down at the tracks upon which she stands.
“Oh, God,” Sal moans. “This is why you should never travel with a woman.” He mumbles to himself.
The two walk on wordlessly. The rhythmic jab of Sal’s walking stick tapping the ground fills the silence, until Sal breaks it. “There!” Sal exclaims. In the twilight, he points to a clearly abandoned shanty house not a far off. “That’s where we’ll make camp tonight!”
“There?” Pep looks over Sal’s shoulder. Her brow furrows.
“Yes, there.” Sal insists.
“Why?” Pep questions. She rather liked the idea of sleeping in the woods the past two nights. The house looks all too familiar to her.
“Because I said so,” Sal says with a matter of authority. He likes this new sense of power. After all those years of being told what to do and when, he’s calling the shots, and someone’s actually listening!
Lighting cracks in the sky above them. “Oh, all right,” Pep replies with a sorrowing expression. Sal sees it and decides he rather liked it when she was happy with his decisions.
“Race ya! Last one there’s a rotten egg!” Sal shouts before he’s off racing toward the abandoned house in the distance. His ripping shoes are pushed to their limits across the soil. The black briefcase, Pep asked about miles back, bounces alongside him, firm in his grip. Pep had been disappointed to learn it was empty, awaiting the load of Sal’s inheritance, as he put it.
“Cheater!” Pep shouts after him as she races to catch up. Her overalls weigh her down, cheeks turning red as she races after Sal.
“No!” Pep shouts as Sal reaches to touch the house, he looks back at her for a second, giving his signature tongue sticking out of his mouth. When he looks back to the house, he stops dead in his tracks. Pep reaches his side only to stop alongside him.
In front of them stands a man in his last fifty. His beard is graying, his blue eyes once alive with life are dull, and his wrinkles form a permanent sulk. One clip of his overalls is broken. There’s a beer bottle is his hand.
“Sorry, we thought this place was abandoned.” Sal says, taken aback.
“It is.” The man mumbles.
Pep gasps. “Are you a ghost?!”
“No,” He looks at her for a second. “I’m just a squatter. Say, what are two children doin’ out here alone anyway? ”
“Well, we’ll be goin’ now,” Pep starts to back up, but Sal grabs at her arm.
“We can’t last the storm on the tracks, we have to find shelter.” Sal whispers.
“Maybe you can’t,” Pep remarks.
Sal looks back at the man still staring at them. “I’m Sal, this here’s Pep. We’re looking for shelter same as you.” He tries to deepen his voice.
The man looks at them for a second. “Well, come on in. Name’s Lester.” He smiles. “There’s room for the both of you.” Sal nudges Pep to move forward as the man holds the door open for them. “Don’t have much company anymore…” The spark that had ignited in the man’s eyes suddenly went dark again. “Not since the war.”
“What do you mean…” Pep’s voice fades as she looks around at the state of the house. There’s no couch, like at home, or curtains, or a table, or even all the floorboards still intact. There is, however, a pile of stuff heaped in a corner, a tattered blanket, a pot, a pair of old shoes, and an harmonica, everything else is hidden under the blanket. In the middle of the room there is a place were the floorboards had rotten away revealing the earth beneath them, that’s where the charred black logs sat, ready to be made into a fire.
“Well, I guess you weren’t born yet, but I’d thought you younglin’s would know somethin’ about the bloodiest war in history.” Lester shuts the door and goes over to sit by his belongings.
“The Civil War?!” Pep pipes in excitement.
“What? Uh no,” Lester looks confused, as if he was ready to give a long speech to a crowd, when it occurred to him no one knew what he was talking about. “I’m talking about the Great War.”
“I’ve heard of that war.” Sal sits down across the fire pit from Lester, Pep beside him.
“Yes, it was a bloody war. Deadliest to ever happen, and I survived it.” Lester speaks with bravado about his accomplishments.
“Did you ever kill a man?” Sal asks eerily. The walls quiver as the wind begins to pick up outside the shanty house.
“Well, I suppose so…” Lester furrowed his brow. “The Germans were a long ways off, across the no-man’s-land; you were never sure if you actually got one of ‘em or not.”
“Lester, could you light the fire. I’m getting cold.” Pep interrupts, disappointed with the subject matter of the conversation.
“Sure thing, little lady.” Lester crouches over to light the fire. “And after I’m done, I’ll tell you the story about my run in with a British commander.” Sal’s eye lit up. Lester speaks as he lights the fire, “He can’t say the word America without thinkin’ of old Lester here. I sure told him.” With the fire warming them, Lester starts off with a story of adventure and far off lands that neither one of the children could have ever imaged.
With the storm blown over the next morning, Sal and Pep gather their things to set out again, as Lester snoozes in the corner. “We should wake him.” Sal says.
“No, let the old man sleep.” Pep argues, relieved that the stories of war may finally be behind her.
“We should let him know we’re leaving.” Sal insists.
“He might try to keep us here!” Pep urges.
“Or come with us.” Sal counters.
“I don’t trust grown ups. Do you?” Pep says with judgment.
“I guess not!” Sal yells. Suddenly, Lester comes to, awake and alert. Sal smirks.
“You did that on purpose.” Pep says through gritted teeth as she glares at him.
“Where ya’ll going?” Lester asks.
“We’re heading to Cheyenne, wanna come with us?” Sal asks.
“Sure, the city of Cheyenne could use another guy like me.” Lester begins to pack his things. “So how are we getting there?”
“We walk.” Pep mumbles with her hands crossed.
“Oh good, good, I’ll have plenty of time to tell you about Vladimir Veksler, the Russian spy.” Lester says with a Russian accent.
“Great!” Sal exclaims
“Great.” Pep mumbles sarcastically.

“I’ve never been in a city this big,” Pep breathes as she gawks around at the three story buildings concealing her from the horizon. Cars zoom along the street; there’s a drug store on every corner. There are men in suits and women in beautiful dresses. Pep decides she wants one of those dresses. The group passes a large movie theater. Pep takes a moment to image herself standing outside one just like that in a beautiful dress.
“It ain’t much,” Sal looks around, unimpressed with the city around him. He’s seen taller buildings, faster cars, larger stores, and more beautiful women.
“Have I told you the story of Paris?” Lester pipes in, looking for the attention that the city has stolen from him.
Sal ignores Lester, the story doesn’t sound gory. “Station’s over there.”
“How much do you think it is for a ticket to Los Angeles?” Pep is pulled from her daydream.
“You plan to buy a ticket?” Lester asks in shock.
“Yes,” Pep replies in confusion.
“Don’t ever waste your money on a train ticket! Follow me.” Lester gestures for the children to follow him, glad for the attention.

“I don’t like this,” Pep whispers to Sal, laying a top the depot building.
“I’ve done it a hundred times. Just gotta wait until the whistle sounds, then ya jump.”
“Kid’s right,” Lester pipes in. “There’s nothing to it.”
Just then the trains whistle sounds. “Alright, here we go.” Sal stands. “Give me your hand.” He yells at Pep. She grabs his hand, cautiously, only to be thrown across the gap between the roof and train and land with a thud, belly first onto the train roof. Sal takes the leap, next and makes it, just as the train begins to inch forward. “C’mon, hurry.” The children urge.
Lester hesitates for a moment, before taking the leap and barely lands on the train with a thud next to Sal. The train’s speeding up now, leaving the station behind. “Well now, that’s how it’s done.” Lester stands, holding his shoulder high.
“You almost fell.” Pep points out.
“At least I wasn’t pushed. I actually made the jump myself.” Lester protests.
“I’m a girl.” Pep counters.
“So? I’m remember once-,” Those are the last words of Lester, the war veteran, as he falls to his death off the speeding train. Standing there, facing the back of the train, he hadn’t seen the turn coming. Atop a train speeding to twenty miles a hour, the sudden curve through a lurch too great for the balance of a man to combat.
As he slipped, it was all the two kids could do but watch as he tumbled backwards, landing on the side of the tracks. His body fades away as the train speeds on, unaware of the tragedy that has befallen. When the train had gone about a mile and the body was good and near the size of an ant, Pep gets over her initial shock. She turns to Sal and says, “And you thought I talked a lot.”
“At least, he had something interesting to say.” Sal counters as the train speeds off into the distance.