3

A morning of French toast dripping maple syrup, hard little sausages that tasted of hickory smoke, tomato juice: Ohio just ending outside the dining-car windows, an epic of grain-filled plains separated by dark smoky cities. By now nearly everybody who had joined their train in Arizona was gone, and churchy, singing Midwestern voices had replaced the sunburnt drawls. The most important new passengers were four middle-aged black men dressed in conspicuously handsome suits - they had supervised the loading, late at night in Chicago, of a trove of instrument cases into the baggage car and were supposed to be famous musicians. The conductors treated them like her-s, like kings, and they looked like kings: they had an extra charge of authority and no need of anyone else. Morris Fielding would have known their names.

'One of them's called Coleman Hawkins,' Del said. 'The conductor told me. And you'll never guess the name of the quiet one without any hair.'

'You're right. I can't guess.'

'Tommy Flanagan. He plays piano, and the conductor says he's fantastic.'

'Tommy Flanagan?' Tom put down his silverware and looked at every table in the dining car.

'I don't think they get up this early,' Del said wryly. 'Don't look that way. If someone has to have your name, it might as well be a fantastic piano player.'

'Yeah, it's sort of neat… but I'd rather have him be a fantastic third baseman,' Tom said. For a second he had felt that the man, as modest and civilized as an Anglican priest, had stolen his name from him.