The chimney sweeps of Clydesdale couldn’t sleep. Nor did they want to. Soot and ashes were fresh in their lungs and they were, indeed, forever young. Devon’s blackened face scared off the girls, but his deep voice, worthy of the radio, drew them back in.

They talked about the cinema, about what latest double feature was playing and if it was worthy of their viewing. Maybe, maybe not. He told them about chimney sweeping and how, as a job, it was nothing to sneeze at, but boy did you meet some helluva interesting peoples. For instance, Mrs. Dulaney, who lived on the corner of 7th and 12th, had a house filled to the brim with damaged instruments she’d stolen from prominent orchestras that occasionally came into town. Half of these stories were lies, the other half, embellishments. But it’s not about actually being interesting, it’s about seeming interesting. The girls didn’t pay attention anyways; all they wanted to hear was Devon’s voice no matter what spewed from his lips. He could be blaspheming their mothers or insulting the ridiculous rouge on their cheeks (did they think themselves womanly?) and they would still melt like heaps of butter.

Sometimes, many times, they’d want to visit his house. He warned them that he lived alone in a small, sordid apartment without any running water and the occasional rat. The girls honed in on the words “lives alone” and ignored all else. Only seventeen and he lived alone. A total dreamboat. A total find.

At his place, they always asked to wash his face for him. A revealing of mystery. The unmasking of the hero. The penetrating of an unknown identity. Girls ate that shlop up like sweetmeats. Some found him gorgeous. Others found him just above average. Never hideous. Never ugly. And Devon didn’t mind that at all.

But after all the mysticisms had been disposed of, reality struck the girls with such force. His poor living conditions, his desperately limited income, his lack of family, and his utter loneliness, all made their upperclass hearts skip a beat; their frilled dresses hit the floor, for reasons unbeknownst to him. Even so, he gladly took what he could from them and they gladly obliged. Devon had convinced himself that this was what they meant by the “simpler things” in life.

By age nineteen, Devon abandoned the chimneys of Clydesdale. In fact, he abandoned the entire city altogether. How could he stay with business-owning fathers breathing down his neck and hunting him down with the police force hounds as if he were some fox? A fox with a voice fit for the radio. Or maybe, perhaps, he thought, the movies. The silver screen. That’s where people escaped to all the time. That’s where life was nothing but "simpler things." Where girls, no, young women, never had to visit orphanages because of him. He had the voice, the looks. They would tell him this all the time.

But Hollywood was on the other side of the country and he wasted his money buying sweets to fancy the girls who fancied him. He’d have to hitch rides on train cars to get where he wanted to go. So he did, treating the hobos and other drifting youths to the same half-lie, half-embellished stories he told to the girls of Clydesdale. His audience wasn’t particularly impressed by the content of his tales, but boy were they captivated nonetheless. Once again, Devon found that it wasn’t actually about being interesting, only about the seeming. Maybe the rest of the world was just like Clydesdale. Just like the boxcars. Just like the homeless encampments. If so, he thought his future pretty bright.

Three-quarters of the way to his destination, Devon saw the desert. The red dust invaded his lungs and mixed with the chimney ash. The vast emptiness of the heated plains scared him. What if the rest of the world was like this? Large. Overwhelming. Desolate. Lonesome. He just stood there as the train chugged away and the hobos called for him to jump back on. Everything fell into absolute silence.

For the first time in his life the world was marked by an absence of something. So often we remember what was there but so little do we recall what wasn’t. What wasn’t there? Devon thought. He laughed to himself inside his head. Love, obviously. Truth, secondly. How very un-chivalrous he was turning out to be. But when you’re an island of consciousness in a blistering desert, words with such heavy meaning don’t even matter. Devon sat down and waited for the next train to come by. It was due in a couple of hours and he could endure the heat.