Isaac leaves Buell and sets out west

Isaac leaves Buell and sets out west after years of remaining in the Mon Valley partly out of duty to his disabled father, Henry English. Taking four thousand dollars from Henry’s savings, he follows the railway toward Pittsburgh and hopes to reach California by freight train. His departure turns a long-imagined escape into a journey through the abandoned industrial landscape that shaped his family, while Lee English recognizes that the absence may become permanent.

Background and Decision

Isaac is twenty, slight enough to be mistaken for a boy, and lives alone with Henry. His mother has been dead for five years, but he still thinks about her. The immediate act that sets his departure in motion is taking four thousand dollars from Henry’s desk. Isaac corrects his own description of the money from something taken to something stolen: the distinction registers his awareness that escape has crossed a moral boundary, even as he has decided to go.

The journey is not an impulsive idea. Isaac has been planning it for a month, and regards it as overdue. His route is practical: follow the railway beside the river to Pittsburgh, where he can board a coal train, then transfer to another train bound for California. At the beginning, he wonders whether Billy Poe will accompany him, but the evidence leaves that possibility unresolved. His plan is his own, and it depends on movement away from the town and the obligations attached to it.

Those obligations are clearest in Lee’s later effort to understand why Isaac stayed so long. She sees that Henry could manage many ordinary tasks, but that living alone was not safe for him. An inexpensive caregiver might have been available; Isaac nevertheless remained. Lee concludes that he felt leaving his father alone would be wrong, and that this sense of duty held him in Buell for five years after she left. His departure is therefore not simply a rejection of home: it follows a prolonged struggle to decide whether caring for Henry requires sacrificing his own future.

Buell and the Route Out

The landscape Isaac leaves is both beautiful and materially diminished. From an overlook, he sees rolling green hills, forest, the muddy winding river, Buell, and the steel mill that once stood like a small city. Closed in 1987 and partly dismantled a decade later, the mill has become an overgrown ruin. Vines and young trees occupy its buildings, while deer and coyotes leave tracks across the grounds; human squatters appear only occasionally. The contrast between industrial scale and gradual reclamation makes the journey out begin amid evidence of a changed local economy.

Buell itself retains the appearance of an older prosperity. White houses climb the hillside among church steeples and the silver domes of an Orthodox cathedral, while historic stone buildings downtown stand mostly boarded. Some blocks still maintain a semblance of upkeep; others have been abandoned. Isaac avoids being seen by walking the railway tracks, though there are few people about. The route is not just a way to leave town unnoticed: it passes through the physical remains of a place where work and community were once organized around the mill.

The tracks also carry Isaac into childhood memory. He recalls the shift change at the billet mill, the traffic, and workers emerging coated in steel dust. In that earlier world, Henry was tall and able to lift him. Isaac’s memory sets that image against the present, after an accident left his father weakened and dependent. As Buell recedes, departure means moving away from the town’s decline and from a changed father-son relationship that Isaac has been unable to resolve at home.

Beyond Familiar Territory

Isaac travels through the night along the railbed, past the mill, his old school, and the road to Billy Poe’s home. The narration marks this point as the journey’s true beginning: he is alone and on foot, heading for California. He watches for fires at hobo camps in the woods and imagines himself as a capable wanderer. The expansive self-image gives his departure a private mythology, but the physical details remain modest: a backpack, a narrow track, and a long distance still to cover.

A passing train proves too fast for him to board. He continues on foot, calculating his pace and recognizing that the tracks curve with the river while roads might be shorter but could leave him lost. His route carries him toward Belle Vernon, where a shopping mall, a Lowe’s, and a Starbucks mark a different kind of development from Buell’s abandoned mill. Yet reaching a place beyond the circle of people who know him matters more than arriving at any particular town. The journey loosens the hold of local familiarity before it brings him near his destination.

At a bend in the river, Isaac encounters two men spray-painting a retaining wall. One is Daryl Foster, a former schoolmate who later worked at the Dollar Store in Charleroi. Recognizing someone from home briefly changes the encounter from a meeting with strangers into contact with his old community. The moment underscores how gradually the familiar falls away: even outside Buell, Isaac’s path initially crosses people connected to the same valley.

The Baron and the Freight Train

Later, Isaac meets Winston, who tells him that most people call him the Baron. When asked where he is going, Isaac names California. He considers whether he should have given a false name, but accepts that he needs the Baron’s help. The exchange joins the practical demands of travel to the vulnerability of relying on a stranger: Isaac wants to keep control of his journey, yet cannot make it by intention alone.

The Baron finds out about a large freight train with four units, bound for a place near Detroit. He tells Isaac that it carries traffic through a location where it should be possible to find another ride. When the train begins moving, the two run alongside it. The Baron throws his backpack onto a platform and climbs aboard; Isaac throws his pack onto the rear platform of a different hopper car and pulls himself up. The train gives him what walking could not: forward motion without requiring another step, though the exposed platform and cold wind make the ride precarious.

Isaac watches Pittsburgh pass as the train slows and turns west. He holds the railing and secures his backpack against sliding off the car. The city, its bridges, and the river recede behind him. The scene marks a concrete threshold in the departure: Isaac has not yet reached California, and the destination named by the Baron is near Detroit, but the train is carrying him westward beyond the landscape he knows.

Lee’s Recognition and the Meaning of Leaving

While Isaac is away, Lee tries to reach Billy Poe, whose phone has been disconnected, and grows increasingly concerned about her missing brother. She is angry with Isaac, but also recognizes that the problem may be his inability to afford the bill. Henry tells her only that Isaac will come back soon. Rather than reassuring her, his certainty makes Lee fear that Isaac will not return at all. The stolen money has gone unmentioned for several days, and Isaac’s second disappearance turns the departure from a temporary absence into a break the family may not be able to reverse.

Lee’s understanding complicates the idea that Isaac simply abandoned Henry. She thinks his strict sense of right and wrong kept him home, even as caring for his father became excruciating. She also sees the cost of that arrangement: Henry’s helplessness may have made it difficult for him to respect the very person who stayed to help him. Isaac’s theft of Henry’s reserve fund finally forces a separation that care and resentment had postponed. His journey is thus both escape and consequence—a movement toward a life elsewhere, begun only after the duty that bound him to Buell had become untenable.