Mania. Craig Larsen

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      Nick did know precisely how generous Sam was. He knew that he was forever in his older brother’s debt. After their parents died—in a car accident, when Nick was seventeen years old—the two brothers had sold the house in Wisconsin and liquidated most of the family’s assets. The entire fortune hadn’t amounted to much—less than $55,000 each. Sam had saved his half of the inheritance. He had consulted a financial advisor, but opted just to bank it conservatively into a savings account bearing a few percent interest. After finishing his last year of high school with barely a C average, Nick, on the other hand, had blazed through his share.

      Looking back, Nick wasn’t sure where the money had gone. He had disappeared for nearly eighteen months. Most of that time, Nick spent backpacking in Asia and then South America. Finally, he ended up on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, shacked up with a Dutch girl, surfing, smoking pot, sleeping until noon—paying for both their expenses when he could barely afford his own.

      Nick woke up one day by himself, flat broke, not a thing to his name except his digital camera and a silver chain he had worn as a talisman since he was a kid. He didn’t have two dimes to scratch together. He knew, though, that his brother had decided to attend the University of Washington a couple of years before, and, hitchhiking and working where he could for his meals, he began heading north to Seattle to find him.

      One of things Nick had learned was how to get around without money. The roadways were buzzing with people in motion. He hitched rides in the back of trucks, often with migrant workers heading north looking for work. On one long stretch of highway, he even tied himself to the undercarriage of a big rig. He walked when there was no other alternative. Once back across the border in the United States, he jumped trains like the original hobos.

      Nick traversed Central America on the Pan-American Highway, all the way from Nicaragua through Mexico, without incident. Then, walking down a side street in downtown El Paso, Texas, after midnight, looking for a hostel, he was jumped by two men. Nick knew that he was being followed. The streets were so empty, however, that he had nowhere to run. He ignored the first man when he called out after him. The second man, though, caught up to him before Nick understood the danger.

      Nick didn’t have much the two men could steal, only a couple of dollars in his pocket. The two men took what they could. They tore the chain from his neck and pried the camera from his fingers. Then—though there was nothing to be gained by it—they beat him up pretty badly. Nick spent the next few nights on the street, forced for the first time in his life to beg. By the time he found himself on Sam’s doorstep, his hair was so long that Sam barely recognized him, and his lips were so cracked he couldn’t speak.

      In the year and a half that he had been gone, Nick hadn’t contacted Sam once. Not knowing whether his brother was dead or alive, Sam had grieved for a time, then made his peace. Nevertheless, without once asking his brother what had happened to him or to his share of their parents’ small bequest, Sam had spent what remained of his savings to put Nick through college.