The Boy in His Winter

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I LOOK BACK IN MY OLD AGE on that long-ago day when I came off the river and began my grown-up life — and much earlier still, when, no more than a boy, I set out from Hannibal on the raft with Jim. Of course, I reckon time differently now than we did then, sweeping down the Mississippi toward Mexico as though in a dream. Those days did seem like a dream, though not mine, or Jim’s, either, but one belonging to somebody whose hand I almost felt, prodding me onward in spite of my reluctance. Or maybe it was just the river I sensed, shaping a kind of destiny for me and also for Jim, whose end came before mine and was, sadly, neither glorious nor kind. We were, each of us in his own way, looking for something that did not exist.

That other story, Jim’s and mine, about a trip downriver, was true enough. But this, the one I am about to tell, is just as true and even more amazing.

You want to know what I mean by “true enough”?

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