The Other Joseph (22 page)

But the other photograph, the other photograph was Roy's notes come alive. He and Joni are sitting on a bench, a photo album resting between them. A young man and a teenage girl looking about as related as an uncle and a niece can look. My brother's hair is untamed, his brown eyes shining, nervous, and wild.

As it had been for Roy, seeing Joni was enough to assure me she was mine—but Nancy wanted me to have no doubts, so we'd already confirmed it with a DNA test. I had a daughter, and suddenly nothing seemed more important to me than that. Joni is the same age now as I was when I swam off the face of the earth. A twenty-year-old college student who loves children and intends to be a pediatrician someday. Things are still clumsy between us, but I can feel that changing. On my most recent trip to San Francisco she brought me to some of the places Roy spoke of in his notes, places he once wandered himself. The Outer Richmond and Baker Beach. Fort Miley and Golden Gate Park. The Monarch Bear Grove. For now he is what we have in common, but that has provided us with a foundation to build on, a history. I'm limping into middle age with poor health and a bad leg, but Joni has given me a purpose. And Roy is to thank for that, of course. For bringing us together. He carried the torch for his older brother for as long as he could manage, and ultimately that did as much for me as any Arab Spring.

I WROTE PEACH
City Self Storage as soon as I found out about the unit Roy had rented, but the contents were sold at auction when his checks stopped coming. The buyer was a man from Grambling, and all I can hope is that by some miracle he is indeed the hoarder the owner of Peach City described in her e-mail to me. Please don't hang up, I told that Grambling man. I will pay you five times what you paid for whatever is left.

Although I'll never have that reunion of Josephs I had longed for, I have an updated dream to sustain me. I like to think of a morning when my new family will gather at a cemetery in north Louisiana. A small ceremony. Joni and Nancy and I in the shade of a water oak saying words for my mother and father—then, for Roy. I'll stand at attention by that empty space between my
parents as workers, laborers like him, replace one stone for another so our switch is made complete.

And I will drive to Dry Springs for a pilgrimage to the old home. Res Ipsa Plantation llamas will watch me and Sam pick our way across the pasture to the Panther Mound, and there I'll make it known to the Underwater Panther that my own vial of stolen dirt has been lost, taken from me like that dirt was once taken from him. I will apologize for us ever having disturbed him, and I'll pray the curse has been transferred, the Josephs' debt satisfied. That perhaps he will finally let us rest.

I should stop there, but I won't. Because if Roy's notes taught me anything it is that things aren't always as they appear, and that lesson, that gift—a religion, almost—has given me the faith to believe whatever I choose to believe. For example, still another dream. The dream of a stubborn and hopeful disciple that my brother is alive. He was pulled from the water by pirates who treat him as a hero. The good man who fell from the sky to rescue their friend. Roy is with them but not as their prisoner. The pirate life. One of his escape fantasies made real. He's free to leave, yet for these three years he has remained. Often thinking of Joni, but seduced by adventure.

But maybe news of me will somehow reach him and give him a second reason to emerge from the mangroves of that sweltering delta maze. A half-land, half-water place where hundreds and hundreds of creeks flow into the sea. He will steal a boat and slip down one of those tributaries, his journey resumed until we are reunited at last.

Or maybe you are already here, Roy, watching over me from afar. I can settle for that dream, if I have to. Brothers. I am for you as you are for me. My past, my present, and my future. My past, my present, and my future.

—T.J.

Photo by Sylvia Horack

SKIP HORACK
is a former Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, where he was also a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His story collection
The Southern Cross
won the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Fiction Prize, and his novel
The Eden Hunter
was a
New York Times Book Review
Editors' Choice. A native of Louisiana, he is currently an assistant professor at Florida State University.

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The Eden Hunter

The Southern Cross

COVER DESIGN BY ALLISON SALTZMAN

COVER PHOTOGRAPH © BY JEREMY & CLAIRE WEISS/DAY 19

THE OTHER JOSEPH.
Copyright © 2015 by Skip Horack. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-230085-0

EPub Edition MARCH 2015 ISBN 9780062300881

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