Jackson felt the evening chill at once, but he was liberated, lighter in himself. He’d left his ma behind at last and distanced himself a little from his brother. The coat had been her manhood gift to him. In richer times. They’d feasted on four sibling goats with all the other families and she had scraped and tanned the hides to make his gift, which she said — too frequently — would last him a lifetime. It would outlast him. Jackson was certain that if she were to imagine him now and wonder how he and Franklin might have fared, the coat would be a sure part of it. Now he was beyond imagining, and glad of that.

The meal that night was not as grand as he had hoped, although the usual country protocols were followed closely before the food was served, raising expectations. Those eating had to wash their hands at the canteen door in water that, after passing through two hundred hands dirtied by the journey, smelled of horsehair, sweat, and rope and looked as brown as tea. And for at least the second time that day (for news of Margaret’s illness had made the Ferrytowners vigilant and fussy) they were all inspected for rashes or livid spots before they were allowed to take their places. The women had the best benches, on the wall side of the tables. The men sat in the central gangway, with nothing to support their backs. Their children and any adolescent boy too young to grow a beard gathered on their haunches, on mats to the side of the fires, and were forbidden to move or speak above a whisper. No dogs. Hats off. And sleeves rolled up, in optimistic readiness.

Jackson was given a low stool at the head of the shorter table so that he could stretch his legs and use his elbows without fear of braining a neighbor. It suited him to take this mostly practical and cautious placement as a mark of respect not only for his size but also for his bearing, which he considered dignified. The candlelight made all the faces seem rudely healthy and animated, and soon new friends were being introduced and stories told. Jackson, though, stayed mostly silent, partly because he had no direct eye contact across the table, partly because his immediate neighbors were too old and tired to draw his attention, but largely because he was taciturn by nature, prepared to express a short opinion but not eager or even able to prattle. Besides, his head was full of awkward possibilities.

When the food was served, it was clear that the hosts had gone to no expense. It was hog and hominy with corn bread, they said (though it was later claimed by one of the travelers — possibly a joke — that he’d pulled a yellowish raccoon hair from between his teeth. “I’ve never seen a ring-tailed hog before!”). Hardly anybody failed to clear his plate, however. Anything was better than the travel pantry that had provided yesterday’s meals.

The meat was followed by oatmeal and molasses, offered without the benefit of silverware, so eating it by hand was a noisy, self-conscious business. The adults felt obliged to extend their little fingers respectfully as they ate, using their fores and indexes as spoons and reserving the pinkie for dipping into the dishes of salt and for scooping pine-nut mash onto their molasses. Such good manners seemed excessive for that quality of food but necessary in the company and under the scrutiny of strangers.

Nobody was truly satisfied. This was not the meal that they’d been dreaming of on the journey, when they’d been making do, at best, with brushjack stew and feasting on the skeletal corpses of pack horses and mules, or on carrion. A chicken’s egg, some milk, some recent, cultivated fruit, true bread and mutton, would have served them better.

Despite the quality of food, however, Jackson could have eaten twice as much again. At least his stomach was half full for once, and sweet. And eating in the company of so many other emigrants had been a kind of nourishment as well, even though he had not spoken yet. But when the elderly woman to his right offered him her unfinished oatmeal and some untouched quarters of bread, he felt required, once he had cleared his board, to set aside his dignity, provide his name, and say a word or two about his journey east. He had listened to the travel tales of his fellow diners with little interest. So much disaster and regret should be not be spoken of when it was over, Jackson thought. What was done was dust, as far as he was concerned. Such rapes and robberies and injuries and deaths, so many bolting horses, snapped axles, wagon fires, and sudden floods, did not fit his experience. His account would tell of uneventful days marked out by boredom and hardship and livened only when the weather or the landscape played its trick of exposing travelers to mud or drought or, when the route had not been notched or blazed on tree trunks by preceding travelers, luring them into valleys that had no exit at their farthest ends. He told his story in a sentence, one that did not mention his brother.

“We could use a pair of shoulders like yours,” an old man said, nodding at his wife for her approval. “Our cart’s too heavy and we’ve lost a horse. We’re moving out tomorrow, if you’d appreciate the ride. Pay your fare with your muscles, when the going’s poor.”

Jackson nodded. Yes, he’d sleep on it and let them know. He’d be sleeping on a lot of things that night. His single bed would be crowded with temptations.

In fact, it was not at first easy for anyone to sleep that night. What they’d eaten crept around inside their guts, foraging with its nocturnal snout. And then the storm arrived, beating against the rest-house walls, keeping them all awake to wonder what state the route ahead would be in and whether they should rest up in the town for another day, allowing the mud some time to crust. The men called out in the deafening darkness from their shared beds, exchanging advice and providing their versions of the likely route ahead. No two versions were the same. The liars and the teasers could exaggerate as much as they wanted to. The worriers could share their greatest fears without shaming themselves. They were only faceless voices in the night. And they could safely list their various adversities — the beatings and the robberies, the time that they were stoned by bears, the five nights drifting on a lake, the treachery of so-called friends, the toil and drudgery, the hunger and the thirst, the murderous temperatures that they’d survived — from between warm coverings and underneath a decent roof.

The optimists among them believed that once the river had been crossed, something of the old America would be discovered, the country their grandpas and grandmas had talked about, a land of profusion, safe from human predators, snake-free, and welcoming beyond the hog and hominy of this raw place; a country described by so many of their grandparents in words they’d learned from their grandparents, where the encouragements held out to strangers were a good climate, fertile soil, wholesome air and water, plenty of provisions, good pay for labor, kind neighbors, good laws, a free government, and a hearty welcome. A plain and simple ambition, surely.

Here were men who’d come from places with flat and functional names like Half-Day Bridge, Boundary Wood, Center Island, and, yes, Ferrytown, but within a day or two they expected to travel on the Dreaming Highway, which led, so they believed, through Give-Your-Word Valley to Achievement Hill and a prospect of the Last Farewell, with its long views from the far shore of America. On the journey the country would be flat, they’d heard, with surfaced tracks as hard as fired clay. “Not flat,” someone corrected them, “but downhill all the way, sloping to the sea. The wheels do all the work. That’s why it’s called the Dreaming Highway. The country lets you sleep.” The journey to the boats, he said, would be an easy and a speedy one. “A hog could roll there in a sack.”