After the Pullman conductor asks, “What’s he done to you lady?” and the woman from Dearborn says, “He’s black! He’s black!” McPherson writes:

“The porter, who stood all the while like a child waiting for punishment, seemed to droop and wither and grow smaller; . . . #APStogether

“and his eyes, which had only minutes before flashed brightly . . . now seemed to dull and turn inward as only those who have learned to suffer silently can turn their eyes inward.”

I have heard Yiyun Li, during discussions after our readings, take a question, say, about form and content—story, essentially—and offer the possibility that a considered answer would require a 5,000-word essay, perhaps 10,000.

I can see just that about “On Trains.” In eight and a half pages McPherson has written a world. And we would need more than a world to take it all in, if we could.