I KNEW PATRICK had a wedding the night before, but I didn’t know he’d be coming straight from it. His wine-stained dress-shirt hung untucked over his pants. He had no bag; he walked up my driveway from our mom’s car just after 5 a.m. with a five weight in one hand, a pair of cowboy boots in the other, and a hip pack and a pair of jeans slung like saddlebags over each shoulder.
“Jesus,” I said. “Get in.”
He woke up four hours later as I pulled into a Walmart near our put-in on Arkansas’ White River. I am nearly six years older than Patrick. We were always close, but looking back, which I do a lot now, I see how that gap often placed us at different life stages. The gap narrowed exponentially once
