oses’ basket was the last thing he saw before Anthony’s body dropped to the floor in a slumbering heap. Anthony suffered from adult onset narcolepsy, but you couldn’t ask him about it because, lucky for him, he also suffered from short and long term medical memory loss.
Anthony could remember the banana-shaped scar on Joan’s inner elbow that danced wildly whenever she threw her arms around, gesticulating like his Italian grandfather who himself often gestured maniacally with his right index finger crooking left just at the tip. He could recall vividly the bitter smell of mothballs in his mother’s sweater closet where he used to hide, and fall asleep, during turns of hide-n-seek with his older brothers. He could even remember the direction of the nap in the shag closet carpeting that left linty imprints on his face when he woke up, or how he would come out and realize the game had long been over and no one had noticed he was still missing. Such things, Anthony remembered.
But he couldn’t remember flying over the handlebar of his dirt bike when he was thirteen and hitting the impenetrable oak snag off the trail, cracking three of his ribcage bones. He couldn’t recall the jiu jitsu grappling match that dislocated his shoulder, or the rushed scuba diving descent during a Navy mission that left one of his lungs partially collapsed. It’s easy to think your body is indestructible when you have no memory of injuries.
Anthony awoke a few minutes later. Moses was gone. The Riverains, gone. The barn was silent--as silent as abandoned post-apocalyptic barns could possibly be. The scurrying toes and tail of a rat rustled in the rafters above. The winds outside took turns howling and hissing.
Those freaky bastards took Moses from him. But did Moses belong to him? Didn’t he want to be free of the baby in the first place? Hadn't he wanted a way out? In truth, it was too late. The choice was no longer his. Anthony had already fed Moses. Like it or not, once you feed a child--the most primary of basic of parental instincts--it binds you to them.
“The next time I find a floating baby basket on the Mississippi, I swear to god I’m paddling away," Anthony muttered. He tried to jump to his feet. A salient, piercing pain momentarily stunned him.
“Jesus Christ,” Anthony groaned, rubbing his stinging chest. He wondered why the hell it felt like someone had stomped on it. Wounded and sluggish, he staggered over to his boat bobbing outside the barn door, pocketing the chunks of stale bread along the way.
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