"Worst idea ever."

"No. The worst idea ever was allowing Constantine to fund the Church."

"I really don't care about that..."

"No. You do, but you you don't know. Anyway, this is a good idea. You can't get off and no-one can get on."

"Not true. Any ship can be boarded. And anyone can jump off."

"Look, I've got just as much at stake here as you do, and trust me, this is the safest way to move right now. Roadblocks are for roads. Rivers don't have riverblocks."

"You really don't have any idea about anything do you."

"It's a good idea."

"And the second worst idea is you telling everyone I'm your 'nephew Peter'. Oh, Peter's my nephew, nudge nudge, wink wink! That worked well!"

"It's not my fault they jumped to conclusions."

"Actually it is."

"Anyway, it doesn't matter. They leave us alone now. They think we're on a romantic cruise together."

"No, they don't. They think you're the worst crew member ever and they will pitch you overboard if you don't suddenly get a lot more useful."

"They do not. They will not."

"Time will tell."

"We're going to disappear in St. Paul. Everything is going to be simple after that."

Simple. Of course not. Nothing had been simple yet. The cargo ship we were on was heading North on the Mississippi. James had signed up as a labourer and got on board, not for the cash pay they were offering, but for the opportunity to drop out of sight in the South and wander off into an unsuspecting St. Paul, Minnesota. When he saw me in town, he told me he had a safe place and told me to meet him on the boat. I was not expecting a boat this size, nor for him to be crew.

"James" got up and started putting on his gear again. He had brand new work clothes, like a dock worker fresh out of the box. He had got a grease stain on one pant leg though and spent a good time trying to rub it out. Fortunately for him, he rubbed it in and made the stain look a bit more legitimate.

I had told him right away that he didn't fit in, and so I came back later to find him sitting by himself practising swearing. Foolish and dedicated. There's an epitaph.

It was even more ludicrous to listen to that it sounds. He was trying to insert cuss words between the digits of the boat's callsign. Why memorize the callsign? Nobody was going to ask him for it, he was a labourer. James was working hard on a cover story that didn't add up well. And to top it off, he kept forgetting the callsign. Most boats here have a four character sign, sometimes five. Occasionally a long one that is six characters is used. Or seven. Our boat had a seven digit callsign. And every time he tried pronouncing it with expletives before and after every character, he would inevitably forget and have to start again.

"It's almost 3:00, you better go."

James didn't look at me and did his best to work his face into the best crewman scowl he could muster. It wasn't very good, but it was pretty good. Maybe James could disappear into this fantasy and that would truly be how he could get away. Epitaph: "He died pursuing." Just pursuing, that's all. Who knows what now.

James went out onto the deck to report for work with the crew.

Twenty minutes later when I heard the commotion on the deck I wondered if that was James or anybody else who had created a catastrphe. It could have been anyone, or it could have been some accident, but it seemed likely that it should be James.

It came as no surprise when I learned about the incident. I don't know exactly how it goes, but there was a rope that he was standing on when someone did something. They were getting cargo ready for when we hit the dock so that they could unload the right ones first. So he was standing on this rope and when the cargo moved, the rope moved, it caught him around the ankle and he was yanked off his feed like in a cartoon. I would have liked to see that part. The part where he went flying, and the rope let him go, he hit his head on the steel railing as he fell overboard, and then hit the water--that part I can still see in my mind's eye without ever having been witness. It's a vivid scene that I know I just made up in my head but I see it and I laugh because there is nothing I can do. Sure he was an idiot, but a smart one. We don't have capital punishment for any kind of idiots though. Or do we.

Local authorities would pull the body from the river. There was nothing for us to do but get to St. Paul, Minnesota. The crew sent someone to check on me, thinking I might be devastated. I didn't laugh, but I didn't cry so I guess they thought everything was ok. For a moment I thought I was going to have to join the crew for the remainder but I think they decided they did not need a new hazard.

Local authorities. They would find out who James really was. They would find out as much as they wanted to. His trail and mine were completely different leading up to Memphis, but I couldn't help think about how this might become a danger to me.

The next day I convinced them to let me off at an unscheduled port. There are a lot of places you can stop on the Mississippi river, but not a lot you can dock at if you have a big boat. There was a small dock where someone came out in a light craft and took me to shore. I was carrying my deceased comrade's rucksack. I had not looked all through it but I figured I could do that later. Hopefully he bought some useful things. I still had next to nothing other than the money in my pocket.

I was travelling light but I decided that I was going to have to rectify that soon. I needed to find a better way to go and a better place to be.