If One Part Suffers
![Collage by Matthieu Bourel](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_30-1-900x0-c-default.jpg)
Collage by Matthieu Bourel
“It would be a grain hopper,” Robert said, our bodies twisted to take in the view out the driver’s-side window of his wife’s Toyota RAV4. I thought he might pull over there, on the stretch of beige gravel road where several of the train tracks that pass through Revelstoke, British Columbia, converge. I hoped for another of the smoke breaks that had punctuated our winding tour of the thumbprint town, pressed between the Selkirk and Monashee mountain ranges, where Robert lived.1 It was August 2022, and the heat, which I found mild,…