Free A Christmas Sonata by Gary Paulsen Page B

something,catch it as it went by and try to see what it was, but I couldn’t. There were backsides of buildings with signs on them, and warehouses with pictures on the side showing big smiling faces and letters as big as houses, but I couldn’t see any of them—everything moved so fast it was all a blur and then the city was gone.
    Gone. We were out in the country and everything slowed down into rolling hills covered with snow. There were trees, but no leaves, and I could not remember seeing anything so white and clean. Winter in the city was gray and the snow was dirty, but out here it was so bright it hurt my eyes and I had to turn away.
    “Isn’t it pretty, punkin?” Mother smiled, the tears gone. “Christmas in the country is always prettier.”
    We went faster and faster, the train wheels clacking. I did not know or understand time then, but I heard the conductortell Mother it would take eight hours and I knew that Mother worked eight hours a day at the laundry, so I knew how long that was.
    All day.
    All day on the train. In a little time I turned away from the window. We sat in a seat in the middle of the car and the car was full of people. Each person had a different face and a different set of eyes and different clothes and I wanted to see them all, each and every one, so I ran up and down the car and tried to look at each one.
    Mother stamped her foot and made a face at me and I came back and sat down before I’d finished.
    “They’re all different,” I said to her. “I just wanted to see them—”
    “It’s rude to stare at people.”
    “They all smiled at me. And I smiled back.”
    “Still, it’s rude. Stay here now.”
    So I sat next to her and drew pictures with my fingers on the ice around the edges of the train window until she went to sleep. When her head was back and her eyes closed, I slipped away again and went up and down the car because it was impossible to sit still. I met different people and talked to them. One was a soldier and I asked him if he knew my dad and he got a sad look in his eye that I did not understand and shook his head. Before I could tell him that my dad was tall and had dark, curly hair and was in a place called Europe the conductor came into the car.
    He was a large black man who smiled at me and said: “Where are you supposed to be sitting?”
    I pointed to my sleeping mother and he shook his head.
    “I’ll bet she doesn’t know you’re running around, does she?”
    “No. She wouldn’t let me run in thecar when she was awake. She said it was rude, but I don’t know if it is or not when people smile at you.”
    “If she doesn’t want you to run maybe you’d better sit next to her.”
    His smile was wider but I knew he was right and there was the thing with Santa Claus again. What if it was Mr. Henderson and he heard I had been bad on the train?
    I went back to the seat and sat next to Mother for what seemed like years until I couldn’t wait for her to wake up anymore and my eyes closed and I fell asleep.
    “Wake up, punkin, it’s time to eat.” Mother was shaking my shoulder and when I woke up I found I was stretched out on the seat across from her. I didn’t remember her moving me.
    “We have to go to the dining car.” She stood and led me to the bathrooms at the end of the car, where she let me go into theone the men used, and I felt good because she usually made me go into the other one. When I came out she looked at me.
    “Did you wash your hands?”
    “Twice.”
    And it was the truth, too, although it was partly because it was fun to use the little sink and hear the water whoosh out and not because I felt dirty.
    The dining car made me want to whisper.
    “Everything is so clean and white,” I said to Mother as we came in the end of the car. The tables each had a white tablecloth and smooth wooden chairs, and there was a water pitcher in the center of each table with beautiful silver knives and forks and spoons and a napkin so white that it