Russell from the movie Up said it best. “Sometimes it’s the boring parts I miss the most.”

I remember being lost only once, in a store, distracted by the toy aisle. I can’t remember with certainty if I panicked or if I stood frozen, waiting for Mom. I remember the cold light, the tall shelves, the shortness of breath as I realized she wasn’t there. I must have feared for at least a moment I was lost forever. When you’re five the world is as big as your house and the car. Everyone you know you can count on one hand. And magic is real. You also know your mother will come back, even though sometimes for some she doesn’t. At least for a while you’re safe, secure, and nothing can harm you. Your family insulates you from the bitterest of winds and shields you from the worst of the rain.

As you lose your parents, that certainty crumbles a bit, or a lot if you’re young. Perhaps for a time you’re tinged with bravado, but soon follows resignation. You slump just a bit more as you fend for yourself. You’ll survive, but now you know how it all ends.

Having just lost my father I still think about him. I expect the phone to ring with some worthless bit of trivia followed by a bit of advice for the day. Of course I hated it. Kids are ruthlessly stupid over the importance of minutia. I suspect Charles hated it. Maybe he cursed them as they turned their backs. Why do our parents have to keep at us, criticizing us, pushing us so much. And once we’re out there, working hard, they call us to interfere with our lives. Of course now I realize what an idiot I was wasting time like that. I lost precious moments being angry or disappointed at my family when I was younger and that’s time I can’t get back.

As he slipped away in the night did he cast one final look toward the fading lights of New Orleans as his ship inched relentlessly over the horizon? Or did he remember they disowned him, leaving him to his own devices? He remembered the arguments, the tears, and the disappointment echoing across the coming years like barely audible arguments two houses over.

I’m certain he’d give anything to hear his father speak once more. One month into Charles’ prison sentence George Muller died. At this time he was beloved enough to get a mention in George’s obituary, one of his remaining mentions in the public record. I wonder if George had been sick. Did they blame Charles for the death? My family has a propensity for heart attacks. Did it start with dear, old George? The cynic in me has another theory. Regardless of what killed George, the family almost certainly blamed Charles in some way. Deeply religious, the Mullers more than likely saw the trauma as punishment for Charles’ deeds. He might have believed it himself.

No matter the particulars, Charles did the next hardest thing I can imagine. He stepped into another life, one with far fewer opportunities, and always the possibility of discovery. He slipped out of the finery of a life in the throes of collapse and into the skin of a laborer, ill equipped for a hard life on a boat. Plagued by illness he disembarks in New York as the economy of America crumbles about him. Charles Francis Morgan rode the rapids of the Roaring 20s as they emptied into the shallow 30s, leaving him exhausted, hungry, and sporting a fresh new future.

Working for himself whenever he could, Clyde continued where Charles left off. He worked feverishly to launch a successful business, always trying to earn enough money to feed his family and remain on his own. His ideas failed more often than they succeeded, but he settled into an endeavor where he supplied country stores with some of his goods. I remember his gray, metal van rusting away behind the house. If the grandkids were good we could open the truck and get out some caps and smash them with a brick or a hammer.

I imagine Clyde behind the wheel of his van, driving down unpaved rural roads along the Virginia line with only his thoughts to keep him company. In between each isolated store lay countless hours of reflection. How many times did he succumb to despair, pull to the side, and shake with silent tears? As he watched his kids running around the yard did he think back to his days in Bay St. Louis, himself running along the shore. Or did he think of riding out to Spanish Fort for the day? Did he think of the parties, the weddings, dinners at the country club, even the nights on his mother’s front porch.

And did Clyde look over his shoulder as he walked through town? As he shopped at Roses Department Store was he fearful of a hand on his shoulder? I’ve read from similar fugitives you settle down a bit and it slips from your mind for a while, but you never forget.

I consider the possibility Adele knew all along, cautioned by her new husband to keep quiet or risk jail. Love motivates a couple in strange ways. Keeping a lie safe is easy if you ask no questions. Maybe keeping his secret meant preserving her life and keeping the father of her children around.

Maybe it was organic. Over the years Clyde tripped over his story, calling his father first Henry, then George and eventually she asked about it. He’d offer a disclaimer. Sure, the father’s name was George, but he preferred his middle name, Henry. And Adele accepted it as truth, or accepted the answer the only one likely to be given.

When the time came to fill out the death certificate she wrote down George Henry Morgan, whether it be true or true enough. Did she know her marriage certificate showed H. A. Morgan, not George Henry? Did she know it said Henry Morgan on Clyde’s Social Security application? I want to believe the death certificate was her chance to let the secret out without having to answer any questions. It’s with that document we have enough names to link him to someone else. Maybe grandma had the last laugh, after all.

The key to finding the proper family turned out not to be the initial DNA test. That was interesting, but nothing you could act upon. The thing that told us we were on the right trail was this. Clyde never saw fit to rename his mother. It was our first real clue. That’s why I think he missed her dearly. Even after being disowned Charles/Clyde saw fit to keep his mother special; he kept her whole if not just barely in the light.

And then I wonder, how did he leave Mathilda? Did they fight, argue over his misdeeds? Did he cross some line she couldn’t abide and was kicked out? Obviously he left the home and moved into the Istrouma Hotel, but at whose request? I desperately want to believe he stood  before Mathilda, hands at his side as she demanded:

“What are we going to do?”

Unable to speak he stands there, defeated and mute, helpless and alone. Everything he’d worked for, everything he’d built was gone.  The properties were liquidated, the cars sold off, and still there were calls for more money. No one would hire him and jobs were scarce. The life of partying and privilege, so long his playground, was gone. He was worth more dead than alive, but what an option.

“Tell me something!” she demanded.

“I can’t go back,” he implores her for some understanding. His eyes move to the window.

“They’ll come and take you, Charles.” She insists. “How could you write another check? What were you thinking?” It was a hard question; one he couldn’t answer. Outside the window he watched people walk past, on their way to something, somewhere. He longed to just go for a walk, end up someplace full of sun.

Lowering his head he said, “The timing just didn’t work out. What do you want from me?” He stared at his feet, noticing the scuff on one tip.

“I can’t take it anymore.” She seems to sag as she says it. “They’re going to knock on that door one of these days and you’re going back to jail. We’ll be humiliated again.”

“You should try being in prison, Tilly.” Maybe he could disappear, just until all this blew over. Maybe take a boat to Jamaica and hold out for a year or two. But he knew better. You needed money to live and someone would recognize him. His days in New Orleans were over and as he looked in her eyes he knew she’d never go with him.

“I’ll take care of it,” he assured her. She turned her back to him, furious at another assurance. What more could he say that he hadn’t said already? Always the promise of more to come, always the promise to fix it.

“How?” she demanded, but he’d already left the room.

Why he chose Clyde Morgan will never be proven, but the strongest lead is a local actor by the same name. Charles almost certainly attended plays, giving him a chance to meet Clyde. The man had a sister in the neighborhood of the Istrouma Hotel as well. Hell, the man’s father even worked for Standard Oil giving Charles more material to work into his new life. And if someone should go to find Clyde Morgan’s roots they’d discover someone entirely different and maybe the trail would go cold.

With all this swimming in his head, I see him sitting in a dark hotel room, the window cracked letting out the smoke from the cigarette dangling from his fingers. He thinks to himself this is the better way. This way they can forget about him, move on and maybe one day he’ll come home like the prodigal son.

I see him giving Mathilda an impassioned speech, insisting his disappearance is the only way to give her the freedom she deserves. It’s banishment for him. She gets to keep whatever meager remains there are of his estate and hopefully her dignity. But that’s corny and not likely. The truth is she more likely threw him out, or he panicked and ran. The census record in the hotel makes me think he was living single, though. One doesn’t live in a hotel room without his wife in the same town. But why fill out the census? I imagine the owner of the Hotel filled it out for him.

I see a newspaper open, the shipping news section laid bare with the names of vessels coming into port in New Orleans. To the right lay another paper, open to the society news where Clyde Morgan’s latest safety skit performed for Standard Oil employees gets a mention. Charles stares off into the distance, the words a blur in the background. How convenient it’d be to become someone else, if only for an hour. To be some other person, the words written already. People don’t see you the actor, they see the character.

Bringing his gaze back into focus he sees the shipping page once more. He could spend a year or more on one of those and come back a different man all right, but Charles knew a year wasn’t long enough. But a year away as someone else might erase the old man.

And so he executed the plan. After a year at sea he arrived in New York a new man, Clyde Morgan. Weather worn and disheveled, his body no longer soft and used to a slower way of life. He was a well spoken man with a shiny new name and no one cared who he was. No miracle could give him back his old life, not without destroying the new one. Like the immigrants of old Clyde moved forward without any hope of returning. What he did going ahead was all the mattered  now.

The pictures I’ve found of him show him happy. I’m sure every day he spent away from prison, every day he spent surrounded by his kids were a miracle. If he felt loss he never let it show. Perhaps that’s why Adele succumbed to anger and frustration in her final years. Her little lost boy was gone and she was alone with no one to shelter. Sometimes we become  twisted by our anger and fear and we forget to live the days we have. Who knows the pain our mothers and fathers feel? We only think about it after they’re gone.

But the story of Charles Francis Muller taught me much more than how not to steal or lie or run away from my problems. It taught me how easy it is to stumble and how quickly the permanent can dissolve. It taught me the future is a wondrous place for dreams, but the present is where all the action happens. Because everything changes and the future holds no guarantees you can’t spend your time wasting the precious few chances given to live deeply, honestly, and thoroughly. You only get one go around on this world; make the trip count.