Free Unhooking the Moon by Gregory Hughes Page A

said the Rat.
    I felt a surge of panic. But then I saw a lever. I pushed it down, the catch rose, and I pulled them doors wide open!
    The Rat looked relieved. ‘Well done, brother.’
    We had passed through Winnipeg. I couldn’t say where we were because there was nothing visible, only the pitch-black of the prairies. We put our rucksacks near the doorway and dropped down. I lay there until my heart stopped pounding and then I sat up and looked at the night sky. There were more stars than I’d ever seen. There were billions. We always got good stars on the prairies, but nothing like this. All the constellations were visible and all the planets were out. Suddenly a shooting star skated across the sky and burned up in the atmosphere.
    â€˜A sign from the Old Man,’ said the Rat.
    I turned to look at her. ‘You’re sad about him dying, right?’
    â€˜Of course. I loved Dad and I’ll miss him a lot. But he was never happy, not really. He wanted to be with Mom and now he is.’
    â€˜You don’t know that.’
    â€˜Yes, I do. You see, Bob, when you die your spirit leaves your body and it heads for the heavens. It flies around the different solar systems and galaxies at many times the speed of light, visiting worlds we couldn’t even imagine. And being dead is your ticket to the stars, but you have to die to get there. Until that happens we can only dream about them.’ She looked at me, her eyes glinting in the dark. ‘I know you think I’m crazy, Bob. But I wouldn’t lie to you, not about this.’ She looked up at the stars. ‘Can you imagine Mom meeting Dad after all these years? I bet an angel brought him to her. And now she’s giving him a tour of the Milky Way and he’s singing to her like Frank. And he’s happy and I’m happy for him.’
    The Rat talked some garbage at times but that wasn’t one of them. I didn’t really believe what she said. But, like a child being told a fairytale, I felt better for hearing it.
    We opened up our sleeping bags and got in. The Rat was soon asleep. She could sleep anywhere, but I couldn’t. For a good while I gazed at those stars and imagined the Old Man and the mother I never really knew gliding around them. And the more I thought about it the better I felt. In time the rocking of the train lulled me to sleep. I slept, and the rat slept next to me.

Chapter Six
    The boxcar shuddered and I woke to the sound of metal clattering against metal. We were cruising alongside green fields, with black and white cows, and in the distance I could see hills silhouetted against the rising sun. It was a nice sunrise, but it was too bright to look at.
    I opened the rucksack Harold had given us. There were cookies, sandwiches and cans of soda, as well as a large silver flask of hot water. There were packets of crisps, chocolate and fruit.
    â€˜Any mocha?’
    I turned to see the Rat sitting up in her sleeping bag. ‘I doubt it.’ But searching the bottom of the bag, I found six sachets. Only the Rat could ask for mocha on a freight train and get it.
    We had a good breakfast sitting in the doorway of the boxcar. It was nice to eat and watch the landgo by at the same time. There were blue lakes and turquoise rivers with fishermen wading through them. There were hills and rocky outcrops above which long-fingered buzzards seemed to float. Then there were more lakes and rivers followed by a sea of sunflowers that bathed in the sunshine.
    When the train curved for a bend we could see the front of the train and the engine that was pulling us. It slowed to a walking pace as the bend narrowed and we saw hundreds of prairie plants growing wild. Their buds exploded into a supernova of seeds that drifted on the breeze like tiny parachutes, a minute version of the Big Bang that had first put the stars in the sky.
    â€˜The land in Ontario isn’t as flat as Manitoba,’ said the Rat.
    â€˜How do