This is the story that won me the Clark College Fiction Prize. It came out of a deceptively simple prompt: write a story about an imaginary relative living among your family. Thinking it would be more interesting if that fictional relative was no longer living with the family, or possibly even living, I developed this story.

On the twelfth anniversary of my brother's death, a social worker explained to me Will was not dead but divorced and tan and keeping drunk in Key West. She said Will ran a little concern on a south-facing beach renting umbrellas and folding lounges for ten dollars a pop. He was beechnut tan and had peroxided his black hair the color of a ginger cat. At some point in time he'd picked up how to play a twelve-string guitar and with it he entertained sunners and German tourists on this south-facing beach. Knowing Will, he probably annoyed the hell out them. He would be so certain he was some budding Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton. Apparently he'd run afoul of Florida law a couple of times, which under normal circumstances would've embarrassed my parents to no end, if he wasn't already dead. No, what hurt them the most was that he'd changed his last name to Benoit.

"Is that Chinese?" my father asked, exasperated, as I related the news to my parents with my hand over the phone's mouthpiece.

"I think it's French," I said, guillotining my father's Germanic pride.

"At least he has work," my mother said, and then added, "Tell this woman not to call again," meaning the social worker, and I did.

"I'm sorry?" the social worker said. "Your brother's way over here in Florida and you don't have the time?"

"It's nothing against you," I said. "It's Will."

"When's the last you spoke with him?"

"Can you go now? Please?"

"I—me?—sure. I'm not keeping you on the phone, you know. You can hang up too, right?"

It was no test of courage. No wicked transcontinental game of chicken. I hung up.

The social worker was not the first to call about Will's life after death. I think our family's phone number was listed on some Internet directory, and like requesting literature from a minor Christian sect, we were harassed to no end. The vultures spotted Will in Las Vegas, Chicago, Albuquerque, Anchorage, New York City, Atlanta, and now Key West. Will's travel itinerary read like a rock star's, as did his exploits, which grew more outlandish each year. Will single-handedly foiled a liquor store hold-up. He saved four retirees, all headed to Reno, from a burning Greyhound bus. He adopted who knows how many orphans and dragged them along on his nationwide tour. Somewhere a city's erecting a statue to William L. Benoit nee Hauser for his deeds, gentle spirit, and civic accomplishments.

As my mother would say: "Oh, horseshit," and then head into another room to clean or cook or read or kick a wall.

Seven years after Will left us, my parents and I dressed in our church and funeral clothes and saw a lawyer. My mother was the first to sign my brother's death certificate, a task my father wrestled with even after the last loop of his signature lay on the legal-sized sheet of paper. I'm embarrassed to say my mother signed hers with some flourish, like the last mortgage check sent to the bank. She'd worked hard to convince my father and I of the logic of her reasons, but in the end, she only needed to convince herself.

My father was a quiet walker, something he taught Will and I when we were in elementary school, Will just two grades older than me. My father liked to walk in the evenings, and he always took us along to get us away from the television. He walked erect, his spine shaped like a spoon. He turned his six-foot-four frame into an eight-foot spire. He sent his feet out straight, only allowing his hips to twist slightly with each step. "Like this," he said, "walk in a line, one foot right in front of the other."

Will, on my father's heels, mimicked him perfectly. I winded easily and I hated sweating. My father never hid his disapproval of my physique well. He hid it by concentrating on Will, as solid a son as any father could want.

"Like this." Will cuffed me in the ear, not too hard. "Feet make one line."

"That's how the Indians walk." My father now strode in full form. "That's how they hide their numbers. It's how they hide themselves from others."

Will cuffed me again. "Can't you keep up?"

My father walked hard and fast and could cover the length of a neighborhood block in under a minute. Will matched my father's pace, keeping with him step for step, making that same determined face he made whenever we wrestled or played Battleship, that expression which told me competition had commenced, prepare to lose butterball because I take no quarter. And I did lose, and I did quit, and like most nights, I turned around and headed home sweaty in the failing light. My father and Will steamed along until it was well past dusk, and when they came in Will was laughing at all the dirty jokes my father had passed on. Pollocks, bawdy nuns, farting in church. My mother scolded him, told him she knew what was what, now both of you wash your hands because dinner's been ready. A hot meal and a tall chair beside the head of the table always waited for Will. He made our family a family. Until that one night when he was eighteen, my mother tucked him into bed and the next morning, when, poof, magic, Will was gone, along with his favorite clothes and his good backpack with the busted zipper and the shoes he wore when he Indian-walked with my father.

My mother never gave up. Losing Will only made her more determined. She beat the odds. She gave birth when she was forty-four, against everyone's advice, it seems, which only reinforced her sense of utter rightness. I looked down at the pink shaved puppy in the nurse's arms and realized I was twenty-three and feeling like an uncle to my new brother. With his translucent fists unable to leave his forehead, he stared up at me with a yawning anus of a mouth, desperate but unable to expel a satisfactory cry for milk. He'd emerged from my mother's uterus backwards and upside-down and curled in a loose corkscrew. He was the Hauser's newest escape artist performing his last trick, thank you, good night, drive safe.

Reynold took to the wheelchair like any boy would take to a new bicycle. He performed in school as well as any kid who needed sleep every four hours. He saved birthday and Christmas money in a slick pink piggy bank, and uncorked it every weekend to count his fortune. He spent hours in his room over AAA maps charting the shortest path to Will, as ethereal a moving target as any would-be adventurer could hope for. And, he roped me in. I would provide the car and he was the money end. We'd live on fill-up station sandwiches and cherry cola and unleaded gasoline would take us everywhere Will was last seen. Reynold would pepper Will with questions from his list, like What's your favorite, mom's cheese grits or dad's super strawberry pancakes? and Did you really win that prizefight in Charleston? Will and I would play Battleship mano-a-mano, red versus white, Reynold refereeing. Then Will would teach us to walk like Indians, and we'd hide our numbers and never be seen again.

That damn social worker called and worked up Reynold. Made my parents upset to see Reynold so happy, and I said I'd work it off for them. The next morning, at dawn, I showered and shaved and got him out of bed — he was already awake, with his maps and travel guides — and wheeled him to my car and we were off. Reynold had veined his map of the United States blue and purple and green with his magic markers. He used it as a lap blanket.

"Clothing is optional in Key West," he announced on the road.

"Everywhere?" I said. "Or just the fancy restaurants?"

"It started as a salvage community," he said. "It said so on the Internet."

"Then it must be true," I said.

"Yeah, and the Army Corpse of Engineers doubled its landmass in the 1960s."

I played along for forty, fifty miles. He'd planned our route south on Interstate Five, two blood cells free-sliding down California's aorta, but I went west for the ocean and stopped in Santa Cruz for unleaded gas and Cokes and food. When I returned to the car with our bounty, Reynold was asleep. I took him by the shoulder and whispered, "How about a sandwich?"

"Super strawberry pancakes," he mumbled.

The sun had elbowed aside the morning fog and the salt in the air led me to the boardwalk. I parked across the street from the bannered entrance and unwrapped a sandwich. Reynold broke from his nap and drank some cola to refresh himself. He regarded the circus-striped buildings and taffy-pulled roller coasters with quiet interest. He said he had to pee. Really, he needed an excuse to deviate from the itinerary.

First I made him take his pills and drops. I checked his pressure with the gizmo we kept in his chair. In the bathroom I held him by the armpits because the catheter was too much trouble. Some of it went down his leg. I cleaned him up with a wet nap and told him not to worry about his pants. He said he was used to it.

I pushed him between the rides and the carny booths. I bought a coffee for myself and a bag of marshmallows for him. The ocean and the wheat-color sand interested him the most, so I locked his wheelchair up with a bike chain and carried him out. He wanted to play in the waves, but it looked too turbulent so I promised we'd do it later. I laid him on a clean patch of sand beside a dead fire pit. A greasy, hairy woman at a card table rented me two loungers and an umbrella for thirty dollars. Then, seated and Reynold's tallow-white skin completely shaded, we feasted on the bag of marshmallows.

"Why did Will leave, you think?" he asked, oblivious of the powdered sugar on the corners of his mouth.

"Look at that bird there," I said, pointing. Reynold twisted to see the pelican, the same as the fifty around it.

He popped another marshmallow into his mouth. "Tell me about the day he went."

Reynold never understood. Will was dead. Someday I'll tell him about the quiet funeral we held in a lawyer's office. And the wake at the garbage dump, throwing Will's clothes and bedspreads and crinkly finger-painted family portraits out the back of my father's pickup truck.

But that day I could only wait for him to tire so we could go home. There on the beach, eating marshmallows around a cold fire, I told my brother ghost stories until he fell asleep. All I could manage were funny ones. I just wish I had the will to frighten him instead.