Everything I was I carry with me.
Everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead.
      ~ Ma Jian

Devin pulled the postcard from a pocket of his hooded sweatshirt and placed it on the picnic table, careful to protect it from patches of peeling rust. He kept his hand pressed against the card’s glossy surface so the wind gusting up from the river wouldn’t send it flying. He hadn’t put a stamp on it, but that didn’t mean he wanted to send it by “air mail” either. He started to smile. That sounded like something Vincent would have come up with. He could almost hear the laughter in the boy’s voice, see the expectant grin on his face as he waited for the inevitable groan from his older brother. For a moment it seemed so real, two boys joking together as they plotted their next adventure.

A shimmer of afternoon sunlight filtering through a leafy canopy of river birches made him blink, and in a heartbeat the image vanished. He knew it had only been a trick of the mind, just like all the others, the nightmares that fractured his sleep, the waking hours when he thought – for just an instant – there was someone walking beside him.

He shook his head hard. What was the point of paying attention to things like this? None of it was real, and he was way too old to keep playing pretend. Vincent wasn’t here, and he never would be.

He examined the postcard and carefully smoothed the creases crinkling the curving lines of the Gateway Arch, rippling the surface of the river glistening just beyond it. This image was perfect, and he needed to take better care of it. He still felt bad about stuffing it into his pocket when the grandmotherly clerk in the gift shop had been distracted by a customer’s questions. But there hadn’t been any choice. He had to have the card, and his new job as a custodian’s helper didn’t pay enough for luxuries. He knew he was lucky room and board were part of the deal. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be wasting time hanging out on a bluff above the Mississippi River. He’d be searching for another abandoned building or rundown city park where he would shudder through nights of fitful sleep, places where closing your eyes for too long meant you might not open them again.

He shrugged and turned his face toward the wind. It was all part of the adventure, right? He was doing fine, so why look for trouble? This was what he’d always wanted. And just when he’d begun to think none of it would ever happen, he’d made his move. He had escaped, and now nothing and no one could hold him back. He’d made it through nearly two years; he’d make it through a lot more.

He looked down at the card and shoved aside the last twinge of guilt at how he’d acquired it. It was just a cheap postcard. That lady’s shop wasn’t going out of business over it. He hadn’t gotten caught, and even if he had, he would have wriggled out of it somehow. He was good at things like that and getting better every day. Just one more talent to add to his growing list of survival skills.

He’d used a few of them on the supervisor who’d hired him for his new job. The grizzled older man had barely looked up from the sports pages of his newspaper, not bothering to listen too closely to the tale of Will Reynolds, a high school dropout with no driver’s license or other ID because of the mugging he’d endured that first night on the streets, right after his dad had thrown him out for something that definitely was not his fault. Caught up in his flare for storytelling, he had worried he’d overdone the charade, especially when he added two years to his actual age so he could claim to be eighteen.

But evidently his employer’s only interest was signing up anyone willing to work long hours for minimum wage. There had been a contract shoved across the desk for a scrawling of ‘Will Reynolds’s’ signature, a muttering of the time and place the new hire was to show up for work, and it was a done deal. Nothing to worry about after all. Sure, it was another crap job, but it would suit his purposes for a while.

The wind picked up suddenly, shivering him with a breeze cooler than he’d expected. Not that he minded. Even in this park within the limits of yet another new city, the air seemed fresh and sweet. It still amazed him a little, the freedom to see things like the Delft blue of the early April sky, the fragile blades of emerald grass at his feet, the sprinkling of crimson striped tulips and spun gold daffodils scattered along the walkway by the river. Back during those first few weeks, the constant onslaught of color had been almost painful. But now he couldn’t get enough of it.

It was time to get back. The ship, designed to mimic an old-fashioned paddlewheel steamer, would leave the dock of Port St. Louis in the morning for the first cruise of the season, and there was no question he’d be aboard. They’d head south, first stop Memphis, then Natchez, and all the way to New Orleans. He couldn’t help grinning. Not that he expected a lot of time off from cleaning toilets, sweeping floors, and emptying trash cans, but he’d find ways to see some of the sights.

He carefully returned the postcard to his pocket, then loped down to the main road and waited for a bus to take him back downtown. Half an hour later, he was in his quarters on the ship. The glare of a single lightbulb above his head revealed a narrow bed, a splintery wooden chair, and a small dresser with warped drawers that didn’t quite shut. If he stood in the middle of the windowless room and stretched out both arms, he could almost touch the opposite walls. But he didn’t care. In his eyes, the room belonged in a palace, better than anything Twain’s Connecticut Yankee found adventuring in King Arthur’s Court. Even the slightly tawdry, aging ship itself was to him a magic carpet that had left the Arabian sky to float on the waters of the Mississippi River, taking him to places he’d never been.

He made sure his backpack was still where he’d stashed it under the bed. It took only a few seconds to rummage through his few belongings to find a pen and a bulky, wrinkled manila envelope. Then it was down the narrow corridor and up three flights of creaking wooden stairs to the observation deck. This area would be off limits to him once the tourists came aboard the next day, but now he could only hear the footsteps of a single security guard making the rounds two decks below. The rest of the crew and staff wouldn’t show up until dawn. For now, this amazing place was all his.

He strolled the perimeter of the deck, his gaze flowing easily across the river from the hazy shores of Illinois to the glass and steel buildings of St. Louis just beginning to glitter as day turned to evening. St. Louis was okay, nothing like New York, of course, or even Toronto or Chicago. When it came down to it, it was just another city, good enough while his time there lasted but one he’d soon be leaving behind, probably forever.

He returned to his starting place and leaned against the brass railing to stare down at the sienna-colored water. Its slow-moving currents caught the sheen of the setting sun, turning the slick, oily surface to a rainbow of light. He’d never seen the Mississippi until two days ago, but there was something familiar about the water, the color, the light…

“I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.”   

To hear the phantom whisper of the poet Langston Hughes here, now, might have pleased anyone else. For him there was only the desire to deafen himself to the words he’d last heard in a dimly lit, rock-walled chamber, intoned by an old man whose voice he was determined to forget.

He clenched his eyes shut, willing away a schoolboy’s unbidden memory, vanishing it with hard-earned effort. But when he returned from that darkness to scan the far reaches of the river, he found another memory waiting, its message more pleasant and more painful.

Two boys, one sparkling darkness, one shadowing light. A rushing river of crystal water erupting from improbably powerful falls. A half-constructed raft made of scavenged boards and fraying ropes. Laughter and shouts and plans and hope.

He felt tears stab his eyes and he blinked hard, banishing them before they could trickle down his scarred skin. It wasn’t fair. He was where he had always dreamed of being. But even now, after months and miles, there was no him. It was still and always them. He’d never escape, not until he could get much farther away.

Images slid through his mind, brilliant and blazing, dream pictures conjured long ago from the worn, dusty pages of secondhand books. Brazil, Morocco, Kenya, Tibet. He could almost feel his hands unfolding a precious trash-rescued map of a world he craved to be part of. Paris, Australia, Madagascar, Mexico. He remembered repeating their names in a whisper, as if expecting them to beckon him onward.

Even then he’d known what his future would hold if he forced himself to silence those voices – years of slow suffocation until he wished he were dead. He wouldn’t let that happen. He’d stay as long as he could, but no longer.

In time a single step became a rush to freedom, and ever since that day he’d kept moving on. He promised himself he’d do whatever it took, go wherever he needed or wanted to be. And someday all the ghosts would be left behind forever. They couldn’t follow him as he journeyed South of Oz, north of Shangri-la. The familiar pledge and promise soothed him, even as it left a bittersweet sting of aloneness and the unending shadow of guilt.

He drifted from the railing to sit on one of the canvas deck chairs that had been readied for tomorrow’s sightseers. It was time. He would do what he had to do. He pulled the postcard from his pocket, clicked open his pen, and, using the thick manila envelope as a makeshift desk, he began to write.

Hi, Vincent, or should I say Huck —

I made it! All the way to the Mighty Mississipp’! Remember when we used to sing that song? In a few days I’m going to be in New Orleans for real. I got a job on a river cruise ship. It’s not much, the job or the ship, but it’ll take me places and that’s what counts, right?

Hope you and everyone else are well. I’ll write again soon!

Devin, aka Tom S.

He re-read the message, then nodded, satisfied it said all that needed saying. He carefully slipped it into the envelope with all the other postcards he’d stolen or scrounged or even bought with precious pennies. Maybe later, tonight, tomorrow, whenever, he’d take them out and read them all again, as he’d done more times than he was comfortable admitting. He’d never been a fan of writing in his journal…back then…but this was different. The cards were tangible proof of his amazing adventures, the joy of seeing his dreams come true.

The words sliced through him. Not his dreams, their dreams.

If he could, he’d sell his soul to forget how he’d condemned Vincent to a world of pain and anguish when he’d chosen to vanish without a trace. Sure, the others would have wondered what had become of him. Some would have looked for him for a while, probably mourned him, picturing him lost to the Abyss or mangled from an accident in some outlying tunnel few would ever visit. Others would have shrugged, figuring he was just another orphaned rat slinking away from a hole in the ground. Either way, everyone would have forgotten about him by now.

Except for Vincent. He knew his brother hadn’t given up on him; he never would. He’d argue or maybe even fight with anyone who claimed Devin was gone for good. Even now, Vincent would spend every moment he could searching, hoping, refusing to believe the truth that his beloved brother was never coming back for him.

But someday even Vincent would be forced to admit that someone he trusted, someone he loved, had stolen everything they’d shared and cherished, that he’d run away and kept all the stories for himself, that he’d rejected the life they’d known, the future they’d planned…that he’d abandoned his closest friend, the brother of his heart, and left him with useless dreams crushed by betrayal.

He stood and walked to the railing to gaze out again at the dusky water, the envelope full of postcards clutched in his hand. Niagara Falls, the Liberty Bell, Wrigley Field, the Blue Ridge Mountains. He’d loved all of it, even when he was hungry or hurt, afraid and alone. He wouldn’t trade a single second, not one, for the prison he’d left behind. He knew he’d managed to give himself a gift beyond imagining. Longings impossibly fulfilled, dreams incredibly made real.

But at what price, at what sacrifice…

He couldn’t think about that any longer. It had to end. Sure, once all those dreams had been shared, but now they were only his. It wasn’t a game anymore, but he still felt like a winner. He was the adventurer, the explorer, the voyager. He was…he was…

Sad and sorry? A survivor who sacrificed his own brother to get what he wanted? The worst kind of person he could imagine?

His sigh rustled the dusky air. He’d done what he’d had to do to save his own life, to do and see and be the person he’d dreamed of becoming. And yet he’d never stop wanting, never stop hearing the words that whispered from him, even as he claimed what was his.

“Vincent, I wish…I wish that it was you.”

When tears again filled his eyes, he let them come, but only for a moment or two. It was time to move on for good, time to put that world of shadows and regret behind him and let it go forever.

His fingers tightened on the envelope full of words and pictures depicting a world Vincent would never see. Images on postcards, scrawled but carefully thought-out messages – in the end, they were little more than cardboard and ink, and in his heart, he’d always known he would never send them. Why make things even worse by shoving it all in his brother’s face?

He couldn’t do it. He’d already been beyond cruel. Better to just disappear for good, let the healing begin for both of them.

He held the envelope out over the railing, then let it fall. It floated for a single beat of his heart, then disappeared into the mud-colored water.