Huckleberry seized my hand, clasping it so tight he brought back in a quick flood of feelings those years with the Widow Watson, and whispered as if he wanted only me and not his friend to hear, “You take care of yourself, Jim, and keep out of all that trouble, please, cause this world is about ready to break wide open, and I sure don’t want to see you get swallowed up.”

From Vice, John Keene’s short story, “Rivers,” an ambitious and daring story that imagines Jim’s life forty years after his ride on a raft down the Mississippi River with Huckleberry Finn.

Read the story