My Name Is Memory Read Online Free PDF Page A

who’d treasure it as though it was their first and last. He knew better. What did one more matter to him? So there it would sit, with his name written in careful calligraphy.
    Why did he keep going when everyone else got to start over? Why was he still here and she would always go? Sometimes he felt like the only one on earth. He was different. He always was. His attempts at living in the regular world seemed stupid and false.
    I’ve lost her again.
    It would seem that someone who had been around as long as he had, who’d seen as much as he had, would have a longer view and some amount of patience. But he was too pent up, too full of need. She was right there, and he couldn’t control himself. He tricked himself into thinking that she would look into his eyes and remember, that love would conquer all. The bourbon was tricky, too.
    Nobody remembers but me. He kept that thought locked in its place, but this night he let it out. The loneliness of it was unbearable sometimes.
    HE WALKED THROUGH fields and along a two-lane road. He walked along the river, and it felt good to be close to something older than he was. This river had a long memory but, unlike him, wisely kept it to itself. He thought of the Appomattox campaign, the Battle of High Bridge. How much blood had soaked into this river? And yet the river flowed. It cleansed itself and forgot. How could you cleanse yourself if you couldn’t forget?
    I don’t want to want this anymore. I don’t want to do this to her anymore. I want to be done.
    He had no one to keep him here. He had no real family. In the life before this one, he’d lucked into one of the truly great families, and he’d recklessly given them up to follow Sophia. It was no wonder he got what he got in this life—an addict who left before he turned three and a foster family every bit as bad as he deserved. For the last two years he’d been on his own, living narrowly on hope. He’d given up blessings he hadn’t been worthy of for the chance to be with her, and now he’d lost that, too.
    What would it be like if you didn’t come back? That was one of the few corners of experience he hadn’t looked into. Would dying be different? Would you get to meet God finally?
    He sat at the edge of the river, minding the cold, muddy soak of it, and wondering why you couldn’t free yourself from those small inclinations. No matter how long you lived. Like the death-bound convict glancing at the clock. You could never quite fit the small rotations to the big ones, could you?
    He pulled mud-covered rocks from the riverbank, small enough to fit in his pockets. Bigger ones he threw blindly into the riverbed, listening for the hollow crack of stone hitting stone or the merciful slap of soft water. He pushed rocks and mud into the pockets of his good pants, just daring his dumb autonomic brain to resist him. He stuffed a jagged few rocks into his breast pocket, a little abashed at his own stagecraft in a moment like this. There was no moment so momentous that it strangled all the little notions.
    Except when you kissed her.
    Decisions like this were more dignified in the future or the past, or when they occurred in the lives of other people. The petty workings of your birdlike mind brought you down, and forgetting was your only salvation. It was his curse to remember lifetimes of those moments.
    Appropriately burdened, he trudged to the road and followed it onto the bridge. The dark air moved cooler and faster over the water. Headlights of a car appeared and grew on the other side of the river but passed without crossing. He got to the highest point, climbed onto the guardrail and sat on it, facing the river, dangling his legs over the water, feeling strangely young. He observed the rocks cutting into his skin as though they hurt someone else.
    He climbed up to standing, balancing the guardrail under his stiff-soled shoes. He waved his arms to keep from slipping. Why did it seem important to jump and not to fall,