But even up here in the mountains the harbor reached with its cold embrace. For at night it was an adventure hurriedly to undress and bury myself in the covers in time to hear the first low rumble of "the night freight" that went by some five miles distant. It made me think of the trains on the docks, whose voices I had heard at night, and of the things I had done with Sam. I would hear the mountain engine come panting impatiently up the grade. As it reached the top I would rise from my bed and soar off into space, in one swift rushing flight through the darkness I would be there in the nick of time, I would swing on to a freight car in the way Sam had shown me, climb to the top and crouching there I would watch the dark roadway open ahead through the silent forest. Lower would sink the voice of the engine until it became a faint confused mutter. And the rest was dreamland.
This was one of those secret games I never told my mother about--until, to my own surprise, in one of those long talks at night when she seemed drawing me to her right out through my eyes, I blurted this out. My mother wanted to know all about it. Did my hands get cold? Yes, colder and colder, as listening here in bed I heard the first muttering of the train and knew that in a few moments more I would take that five-mile flight, right through the window and over the trees to the distant track, to be there just ahead of the on-puffing engine. My voice quivered excitedly as I spoke.
"I see--I see," she said soothingly. "And when you are riding on top of a car--aren't you ever frightened?"
"No--because all the time I know that I am back there at home in my bed. I can see myself back there behind me."
"Do you fall asleep in bed--or are you still on the top of the car the last thing you can remember?"
"And when you sleep--do you always dream?"
"And all those things you did on the harbor?"
For some moments she sat by my bedside quietly stroking one of my hands.
"Yes, mother." I was growing impatient, I wished she would go, for now it was nearly time for the train.
"Have you ever played other games like that? I mean where you leave yourself and look back--and see your own body behind you."
"Yes--in bed in Brooklyn when I was quite little."