I see us fishing together, from the riverbank, and then going further upstream, past where you can see any houses. Up high, where you have to climb, where we fished from the rocks.
The rocks.
The smooth rocks.
More like--
I walk slowly at first, then hard. I walk hard upstream.
I follow my brother and me, and I climb.
The water crumbles on its way down as my hands and feet push me forward. The world is lightening, taking shape, and turning to color. It feels like it's being painted around me.
My feet are itchy.
Changing from cold to warm.
I see it.
I see us.
There, I point out. There are the rocks. The giant stones. God, I see us there, throwing down the lines, hoping, sometimes laughing. Vowing not to tell anyone about us coming here.
I'm nearly there.
Far away, the cab doors are still open.
The sun is up--an orange cutout in a cardboard sky.
I make it to the top and kneel down.
My hands touch the cool stone.
I breathe out.
Happy.
I hear the river and look up and realize that I'm kneeling down among the stones of home.
There are three names carved into the rock.
I see them a few moments later when I look back up, and I go over to them.
The names are these:
THOMAS O'REILLY
ANGIE CARUSSO
GAVIN ROSE
For a while the river rushes through my ears and sweat shoves itself under my arms. Down my left side, it runs past my rib cage to the top of my pants.
I search for pen and paper, knowing I don't have them, the same way you give a person the wrong answer in the unlikely hope that by some miracle it might suddenly be right.
It's confirmed. I have nothing, so I pencil the names into my mind and go over them in ink. Then I scratch them in.
Thomas O'Reilly.