To Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis Read Free Page A

chance?”
    “Yep. You fail this time, you get to be a bartender. Your life will be erased from human history. Nobody will remember you, and what’s worse, you won’t remember you, either. You get to live forever, though. Slinging booze you can’t drink in a room you can never leave.”
    I looked at his weathered face and wondered who he’d been. What was his story?
    How would it feel to forget oneself? To never again close my eyes and see the sun set over the Missouri? To fail to hear Clark’s laugh whisper through the trees? To be Nobody?
    I wiped my brow with the back of my hand. Whispered my plea. “Tell me. Tell me how to finish this. Please.”
    He pushed a button on the cash register, and the drawer popped open, a fat wad of bills on one end. He picked it up and tossed it from hand to hand. “I had my own failures, Merry. That don’t mean I can remember them. I’m just here to do my good deed. To lubricate your ego a little and send you out again.” He stopped and slid the cash across the bar. “This ought to be enough to see you to the end.”
    “Five hundred? That’s too much.”
    He flicked his eyes to the door. A rattle crescendoed through wood and glass. “Not in 1977, it ain’t.” He swabbed the bar with a stained towel. “Look, Merry. I got another customer coming. Don’t keep making the same damn mistake, all right?”
    I grabbed his grimy t-shirt. “What mistake? Tell me.”
    But instead, he shook free of me. Leaned over and took something out from under the counter. “Here. You lost your hat, and you’ll be needing another one.”
    I looked from it to the two dollars crumpled in my other hand. Jefferson’s stare launched me into the streets, patrolling like a lunatic. Searching, seeking the unknown someone who could save me. Rewrite my story. Release me from Nowhere to find whatever was next for a broken soul like me.
    And so it began.
    Again.

FOUR
    New Orleans
    October 1977
    Six Months Later
    I knew Mommy would be mad when I tore my best dress at the zoo. She might even be mad enough to kill me. Aunt Bertie helped me sneak past her when we got home. It was hard to be invisible going up two flights of stairs in Mommy’s house with her ladies everywhere.
    Maybe the Wonder Twins could give me the power to be invisible to Mommy. Sometimes, I liked to pretend I was a Wonder Twin. One twin was the me that had to live with Mommy, the me everybody could see. But the real me was the other twin: the invisible one who lived with Daddy for the last six months, since the divorce. She didn’t wear dresses and sit up straight and always be quiet and look pretty. She was the me I wished I could be.
    Anyway.
    We made it to my room without being seen. Aunt Bertie left me to take off my dress. She waited in her room for me to bring it to her to fix. The front hem was shredded, and part of the right sleeve pulled loose when I fell. Plus, all the dirt.
    Bertie left me with a kiss on my nose. She told me she could sew the tears on my dress and wash it before Mommy saw. I made a real mess, though. I hoped Bertie kept some voodoo in her sewing kit with her needle and pink thread. Bertie could do anything, but I wondered if she could make this better.
    Mommy didn’t like mistakes. Especially mine.
    I held my arms out straight at my side and fell backwards on the bed. The cool blow of the window fan felt good on my naked skin. I closed my eyes and remembered the freedom of running through the dirt underneath the branches of the oak trees. I didn’t even care when I tripped over that root and fell. From the ground, the sky was so pretty through the twisty limbs. I wanted to stay there forever.
    Instead, I had to put on another scratchy dress for Mommy.
    I dragged myself to my closet and touched the fabric and lace that made up my dress collection. They were all selected by Mommy to “highlight my fair hair and clear complexion.” Blech. I wished I was ugly. Mommy always wanted me to be perfect, especially