Richard Paul Evans: The Complete Walk Series eBook Boxed Set
Author: Richard Paul Evans
Date: 2014-05-06 04:00:00+00:00
Description: This ebook boxed set contains all five books in the Walk series. The Walk, Miles to Go, Road to Grace, Step of Faith, Walking on Water From the New York Times bestselling author of The Christmas Box, an inspiring and uplifting series about one man’s search for faith as he walks across America. What would you do if you lost everything—your job, your home, and the love of your life—all at the same time? When it happens to Seattle ad executive Alan Christofferson, he’s tempted by his darkest thoughts. A bottle of pills in his hand and nothing left to live for, he plans to end his misery. Instead,
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

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Contents

The Walk

Miles to Go

The Road to Grace

A Step of Faith

Walking on Water

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Epilogue

Reading Group Guide

Introduction

Discussion Questions

Enhance Your Book Club

A Conversation with Richard Paul Evans

About Richard Paul Evans

To my father, David O. Evans

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Foremost, I wish to thank my friend, Leo Thomas (Tom) Gandley, who lived more of this book than anyone would choose to. I know that it was oftentimes difficult to share the loss of your own “McKale,” and I am grateful for your contribution to this book.

Also, Karen Christoffersen and her beloved Al. May his name live on around the world through these books.

I also wish to thank the usual suspects, with a few changes to the line-up. First of all my friend and former editor, Sydny Miner. It has been a pleasure working with you for more than a decade. I wish you well. Amanda, I look forward to walking on with you. Thanks for your help.

David Rosenthal and Carolyn Reidy for believing in the idea for this series.

Gypsy da Silva for enduring my impossible schedules with a smile. Liss, for being my advocate and friend. I love you.

Dr. Brent Mabey and Caitlin James for research assistance. The wonderful staff at the Redmond, Washington, Marriott, who set us on the right path.

Lisa Johnson, Barry Evans, Miche Barbosa, Diane Glad, Heather McVey, Judy Schiffman, Fran Platt, Lisa McDonald, Sherri Engar, Doug Smith, and Barbara Thompson.

My family: Keri, Jenna and David Welch, Allyson-Danica, Abigail, McKenna, and Michael. Jenna, thanks again for your help, love, and insight. Now get your own book done!

And, of course, my dear readers. Welcome to my walk.

—Richard

PROLOGUE

Dear Alan,

As you write the story of your walk, I offer you some writing advice from one of your favorite authors, Lewis Carroll:

“Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.”

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

My name is Alan Christoffersen. You don’t know me. “Just another book in the library,” my father would say. “Unopened and unread.” You have no idea how far I’ve come or what I’ve lost. More important, you have no idea what I’ve found.

I’m no one important or famous. No matter. It is better to be loved by one person who knows your soul than millions who don’t even know your phone number. I have loved and been loved as deeply as a man can hope for, which makes me a lucky man. It also means that I have suffered. Life has taught me that to fly, you must first accept the possibility of falling.

I don’t know if anyone will ever read what I’m writing. But if you are holding this book, then you have found my story. You are now my fellow sojourner. If you find something in my journey that will help with yours, keep it.

Some might call this a love story. Those without love will call it a travelogue. To me, it is one man’s journey to find hope. There are things that happened to me that you might not believe. There were lessons learned that you might not be ready for. No matter. Accept or dismiss what you will. But let me warn you in advance—which is more than I got—that what you read won’t be easy. But it’s a story worth telling. It’s the story of my walk.

CHAPTER

One

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”

—Kierkegaard

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

According to legend, once the sand of Key West is in your shoes, you cannot go back from whence you came. It is true for me. I’m alone on the beach watching the blood-red sun baptized in the Gulf of Mexico. And there is no returning to what I left behind.

The air is saturated with the smells of salt water and kelp and the sounds of breaking waves and screeching seagulls. Some part of me wonders if this might be a dream and hopes I’ll wake in bed and find that I’m still in Seattle, and McKale is gently running her fingernails up and down my back. She would whisper, “Are you awake, my love?” I would turn to her and say, “You’ll never believe what I just dreamed.”

But it’s no dream. I’ve walked the entire length of the country. And the woman I love is never coming back.

The water before me is as blue as windshield wiper fluid. I feel the twilight breeze against my unshaven, sunburned face, and I close my eyes. I’ve come a long way to get here—nearly 3,500 miles. But, in ways, I’ve come much further. Journeys cannot always be measured in physical distance.

I slide the backpack off my shoulders and sit down on the sand to untie my shoes and pull off my socks. My threadbare, once white, now-gray cotton socks stick to my feet as I peel them off. Then I step forward on the wet, shell-studded sand and wait for the receding water to return and cover my feet. I’ve had hundreds of hours to think about this moment, and I let it all roll over me: the wind, the water, the past and present, the world I left behind, the people and towns along the way. It’s hard to believe I’m finally here.

After a few minutes, I go back and sit cross-legged in the sand next to my pack and do what I always do at the pivotal moments of my life: I take out a pen, open my diary, and begin to write.

My writing habit began long ago—long before this diary, long before my walk. The Christmas I was eight years old, my mother gave me my first diary. It was a small, yellow vinyl book debossed with deep flourishes. My favorite feature was its brass key and lock. It made me feel important to have something in my life of such consequence that I needed to lock it up from the world. That Christmas night was the first time in my life that I wrote in a diary. I figured with the lock and all, only I would be reading it, so I wrote the entry to myself, a habit I would continue the rest of my life.

Dear Alan,

Today is Christmas. I got a Rock’em Sockem Robots, a set of walky-talkys and red sweetish fish that I already ate. Mom gave me this diary with a lock and key and told me I should write every day. I asked her to write on my first page.

My Dear Son,

Thank you for letting me write in your special book. And Merry Christmas! It is a very special Christmas. You will someday understand this. Every so often read these words and remember how much I love you and always will.

—Mom

Mom says it doesn’t matter what I write and if I wait to write just the importent things then I’ll probly never write anything, because importent things just look like everything else except when you look back on them. The thing is to write what yor thinking and feelling. Mom looked better today. I think she’ll be better soon.

I’ve touched that writing so often that it’s barely legible. My mother’s entry was one of those events she spoke of, the kind that look like nothing except through time’s rearview mirror. My mother died from breast cancer forty-nine days later—on Valentine’s Day.

It was early in the morning, before I usually got up for school, that my father led me into the room to see her. On the nightstand next to her bed there was a single yellow rose in a bud vase and my homemade Valentine’s card, with a drawing of a heart with an arrow through it. Her body was there, but she wasn’t. She would have smiled and called to me. She would have praised my drawing. I knew she wasn’t there.

In my father’s typical stoic manner, we never spoke about her death. We never talked about feelings nor the things that gave rise to them. That morning he made me breakfast, then we sat at the table, listening to the silence. The people from the mortuary came and went, and my father managed everything with the steadiness of a business transaction. I’m not saying he didn’t care. He just didn’t know how to show his feelings. That was my father. I never once kissed him. That’s just the way he was.

The reason we start things is rarely the reason we continue them.

Alan Christoffersen’s Road Diary

I started writing in my diary because my mother told me to. After her death, I continued because to stop would be to break a chain that connected me to her. Then, gradually, even that changed. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the reason I wrote was always changing. As I grew older, I wrote as proof of my existence. I write, there-fore I am.

I am. In each of us, there is something that, for better or worse, wants the world to know we existed. This is my story—my witness of myself and the greatest journey of my life. It began when I least expected it. At a time when I thought nothing could possibly go wrong.

CHAPTER

Two

The garden of Eden is an archetype for all who have lost, which is the whole of humanity. To have is to lose, as to live is to die. Still, I envy Adam. For though he lost Eden, he still had his Eve.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Before my world collapsed, I was a Seattle advertising executive, though, admittedly, that title rings a bit pretentious for someone who decorated his office with Aquaman figurines and Einstein posters. I was an ad guy. You could ask what got me into this line of business, but I really couldn’t tell you. It’s just something I always wanted to do. Maybe it was because I wanted to be Darrin on Bewitched. (I had a boyhood crush on Elizabeth Montgomery.) In 1998, I graduated from college in graphic design and landed a job before the ink on my diploma dried.

I thrived in the ad world and relished the life of a young rising star. A wunderkind. I won two ADDY’s my first year and four the next. Then, after three years of making my bosses rich, I followed the preferred path of ad agencies, law firms, and organized religion and split off to form my own company. I was only twenty-eight years old when they pressed the name of my agency in vinyl lettering on my office door.

MADGIC

Advertising and Graphic Design

The company grew from two employees to a dozen in just nine weeks, and I was making more money than a Barbra Streisand ticket scalper. One of my clients proclaimed me a poster boy for the American dream. After two years, I had all the accoutrements of material success: my own business, a Lexus sports coupe, European vacations, and a beautiful, $1.9 million home in Bridle Trails—an exclusive, wooded neighborhood just north of Bellevue with an equestrian park and riding trails instead of sidewalks.

And, to complete this picture of success, I had a wife I adored—a brunette beauty named McKale. Potential clients would ask me if I could sell their products, and I would show them a picture of McKale and say, “I got her to marry me,” and they would nod in astonishment and give me their business.

McKale was the love of my life and, literally, the girl next door. I met her when I had just turned nine, about four months after my mother died and my father moved us from Colorado to Arcadia, California.

It was late summer, and McKale was sitting alone in her front yard at a card table, selling Kool-Aid from a glass pitcher. She wore a short, above-the-knee skirt with pink cowboy boots. I asked her if I could help, and she looked me over for a moment then said, “No.”

I ran upstairs to my bedroom and drew her a large, poster board–sized sign:

Kold Kool-Ade

Just 10¢

(I thought the K on Kold was a nice touch.) I went back down and presented my creation. She liked my sign enough to let me sit next to her. I suppose that’s really why I got into advertising: to get the girl. We talked and drank Dixie cups of her black cherry elixir, which she still made me pay for. She was beautiful. She had perfect features: long, coffee-brown hair, freckles, and chocolate-syrup brown eyes that even an ad guy couldn’t over hype. We ended up spending a lot of time together that summer. Actually, every summer from then on.

Like me, McKale had no siblings. And she too had been through tough times. Her parents divorced about two months before we moved in. As she told the story, it wasn’t a usual divorce preceded by a lot of yelling and breaking of things. Her mother just up and left, leaving her alone with her father, Sam. McKale’s mind was always processing what had gone wrong though, at times, she seemed stuck, like when a computer locks up and you sit there watching the hourglass, waiting for something to happen. It’s a shame that humans don’t come with reset buttons.

Our broken pieces fit together. We shared our deepest secrets, insecurities, fears, and, at times, our hearts. When I was ten, I started calling her Mickey. She liked that. It was the same year we built a tree house in her backyard. We spent a lot of time in it. We played board games, like Mouse Trap and Sorry, and we even had sleepovers. On her eleventh birthday, I found her there sitting in the corner, crying hysterically. When she could speak, she said, “How could she leave me? How could a mother just do that?” She wiped her eyes angrily.

I couldn’t answer her. I had wondered the same thing.

“You’re lucky your mother died,” she said.

I didn’t like that. “I’m lucky my mother died?”

Between sobs she said, “Your mother would have stayed if she could. My mother chose to leave me. She’s still out there somewhere. I wish she had died instead.”

I sat down next to her and put my arm around her. “I’ll never leave you.”

She laid her head on my shoulder. “I know.”

McKale was my guide to the female world. One time she wanted to kiss just to see what the big deal was. We kissed for about five minutes. I liked it. A lot. I’m not so sure she did because she never asked to do it again, so we didn’t.

That was the way it was with us. If McKale didn’t like something, we didn’t do it. I could never figure out why she always got to make the rules, but I always followed them. I eventually decided that’s just how things were.

She was very frank about growing up a girl. Sometimes I’d ask her things, and she’d say, “I don’t know. This is new to me too.”

When she was thirteen, I asked her why she didn’t have girlfriends.

She answered as if she’d given it a lot of thought. “I don’t like girls.”

“Why?”

“I don’t trust them.” Then she added, “I like horses.”

McKale went horseback riding just about every week. Every month or so, she invited me to come, but I always told her I was busy. The truth was that I was terrified of horses. Once, when I was seven, Dad, Mom, and I took a summer vacation to a dude ranch in Wyoming called Juanita Hot Springs. On our second day, we went on a horseback ride. My horse was a paint named Cherokee. I had never been on a horse before, so I held onto the leather saddle horn with one hand and the reins with the other, hating every moment of it. During the ride, some of the cowboys decided to race, and my horse decided to join them. When he bolted, I dropped the reins and clung to the horn, screaming for help. Fortunately, one of the cowboys turned back to rescue me, though he couldn’t hide his contempt for my “city boy” ways. All he said was, “I been riding since I was three.” Not surprisingly, I never shared McKale’s love of horses.

Horses aside, we were almost always together, from elementary school through the awkward ages, including the middle-school years—the armpit of life. At the age of fifteen, McKale physically matured, and high school boys started buzzing around her house like yellow jackets at a barbecue. Of course, I noticed the change in her too, and it drove me crazy. You’re not supposed to have those kinds of feelings about your best friend.

I was purple with jealousy. I didn’t have a chance against those guys. They had mustaches. I had acne. They had muscle cars. I had a bus pass. I was remarkably uncool.

McKale’s father’s parenting style was best described as laissez-faire, and when he let her date in junior high, she could barely keep track of her own social schedule. After her dates she would come over to my house to debrief, which was a little like describing the buffet meal you just ate to a starving man. I remember after one of her dates she asked, “Why do men always want to possess you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I replied, wanting to possess her more than anything in the world.

Her situation with boys was like a baseball game: someone was always up to bat, someone on deck, and a couple dozen guys waiting in the dugout, every one of them hoping to round the bases with my best friend. I felt more like a hot dog vendor in the stands than one of the players.

Sometimes she would ask my advice about a particular guy, and I would give her a remarkably self-serving answer, and she would just look at me with a funny expression. I was miserable. She once said that since I was her best friend, when she got married I’d have to be her bridesmaid, which meant I’d have to shave my legs, and how did I feel about chiffon? I don’t know if she was purposely torturing me or if it just came naturally.

At sixteen things changed. I had a growth spurt, and the opposite sex took a sudden interest in me. This had an interesting effect on McKale. While she had relished sharing every excruciating detail of her dates, she never wanted to hear about mine. She initiated a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. I remember one fall afternoon, two girls came over to see me while McKale and I were talking on the front porch of her house. They sidled over and joined us. One of them had a thing for me, and both were laying the flirt on pretty heavy. McKale stormed inside, slamming the door behind her.

“What’s her prob?” one of the girls asked.

“Jealous,” the other said. I remember feeling a warm rush of hope.

Still, if she had romantic feelings for me, she hid them well, and for the most part, I suffered in silence. And for good reason. McKale was my best friend, and there’s no better way to ruin a friendship than to declare your love to an unreceptive recipient. Fortunately I never had to.

One warm June day—it was my seventeenth birthday—we were on the hammock in her backyard, lying opposite each other, her tiny, bare feet next to my shoulder. We were gently rocking back and forth, arguing about where the Beatles would be if it weren’t for Yoko when she suddenly said, “You know we’re going to get married someday.”

I don’t know where this news came from—I just remember an impossibly large smile crossing my face. I tried to act cool. “You think?”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re so madly in love with me you can’t stand it.”

It seemed pointless to deny it. “You noticed?”

“Yeah,” she said matter of factly. “Everyone notices. The mailman noticed.”

I felt stupid.

Her voice softened, “And the thing is . . . I feel the same way about you.”

She swung her legs over the side and sat up, bringing her face close to mine. I looked up at her, and she was staring at me with wet eyes. “You know I love you, don’t you? I could never live without you.”

I probably felt the same way a lottery winner feels when their number is read. At that moment, a friendship of seven years disappeared into something else. We kissed, and this time I could tell she liked it. It was to be the second greatest day of my life. Our wedding day was my first.

There’s a problem with marrying up. You always worry that someday they’ll see through you and leave. Or, worse yet, someone better will come along and take her. In my case, it wasn’t someone. And it wasn’t something better.

CHAPTER

Three

The assumption of time is one of humanity’s greatest follies. We tell ourselves that there’s always tomorrow, when we can no more predict tomorrow than we can the weather. Procrastination is the thief of dreams.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

McKale and I married young, though it didn’t seem young at the time. Probably because I felt I had been waiting my whole life and wanted to get on with it. We got an apartment in Pasadena, just three miles from where we grew up. McKale got a job as a legal secretary for a small-time lawyer, and I went to school at the Art Center College of Design, just a bus ride away from our home.

Those were good years. We had our arguments—all marriages require adjustments—but they never really lasted. How can you hurt a person you love more than yourself? It’s like punching yourself in the head. I got good at apologizing, though she usually beat me to it. Sometimes I suspected that we really just fought so we could have fun making up.

The thing we argued most about was children. McKale wanted to start a family right away. I was against the idea, and because logistics and finances seemed to be on my side, it was an argument I always won. “At least wait until I’m out of school,” I said.

As soon as I had graduated from college and landed my first steady job, McKale brought up the subject again, but again I told her that I wasn’t ready. I wanted to wait until life was more secure. What a fool I was.

I worked at Conan Cross Advertising for about three years before I decided to hang out my own shingle in October of 2005. That same week, I started a city-wide billboard campaign to promote myself. The billboard read:

AL CHRISTOFFERSEN IS A MADMAN.

The board created a small stir locally, and I even got a call from a lawyer threatening to sue me on behalf of his client, with whom I shared the same name. After three weeks I made a few changes to the sign. It now read:

AL CHRISTOFFERSEN IS AN MADMAN

(Call Al for some sane advertising advice.)

The campaign won me another ADDY and brought in three very large clients. If I thought my previous employer ran a sweatshop, it was an afternoon tea party compared to being self-employed. I’d spend all day pitching and meeting with clients and most evenings producing the work. Several times a week, McKale brought dinner down to the office. We’d sit on the floor of my office and eat Chinese takeout and catch up on each other’s day.

As my agency grew, it became clear that I needed help. One day it walked into my office. Kyle Craig, a man with two first names, was a former rep for the local television station. I had purchased time on his station, and he had been following my agency’s meteoric rise. He made me an offer: for a salary and 15 percent of the company, he’d take over client relations and media buying so I could focus on marketing and advertising creation. It was exactly what I needed.

Kyle was well dressed, ambitious, and charming: a consummate salesman. He was the kind of guy who could talk a nun into the cigar-of-the-month club.

McKale didn’t really like Kyle. She didn’t trust him. She told me that the first time they met, he had flirted with her. I shrugged it off. “He just comes across that way,” I said. “He’s harmless.” Truth was, I liked Kyle. We were rogue ad guys—young, smarmy, slick-talking boys who worked hard and had fun doing it. Back then there was a lot of fun to be had.

One of those times was when the suits at the Seattle county commissioner’s office asked us to prepare an advertising proposal for their chronically un-hip county fair. The year before, there had been a gang-related shooting at the fair, and attendance and profits had fallen through the floor. They predicted that this year would be even worse. The director of county services heard we were good and invited us to pitch their account. I created a hilarious campaign with talking cows. (That was before California Cheese Association’s HAPPY COW campaigns. You could say I was into talking cows before talking cows were cool.)

Neither Kyle nor I had ever met the people we were pitching, and so, to break the ice, I thought we’d have some fun by presenting a prank billboard campaign. In the history of bad ideas, this was the equivalent of a concrete parachute. I failed to take into account that bureaucrats don’t have a sense of humor.

The temperature dropped a few degrees as the fair’s marketing committee entered our office. There were three of them, rigid and gray—so tightly wound I expected their heads to start spinning.

I didn’t know their names so I created my own for them: Hat Guy, Church Lady, and Captain High Pants. They sat at our conference room table and looked at me expectantly. I’ve attended funerals that were less solemn. Unwisely, I stuck to my plan and presented the first prank board.

Come to the fair,

The GANG’S all here

They stared at the sign in stunned disbelief.

“Gangs . . . ,” Church Lady squeaked.

“Here’s the next one,” I said. Kyle’s eyes were practically bulging.

Show your TRUE COLORS
attend the county fair

No one spoke for a moment, then Hat Guy said, “Colors? Like gang colors?”

Without answering him I revealed the next slide.

Have a KILLER Time
at the county fair

Their three, trout-like mouths simultaneously fell open, and Church Lady gasped. Captain High Pants looked down for a moment and adjusted his glasses. “I think we’ve come to the wrong place.”

Kyle jumped to his feet. “Hey, we’re just pulling your chain,” he said. “Having a little fun.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I just thought we’d lighten things up with a little humor.”

Captain High Pants looked at Kyle with the cold stare of an immigration officer. “This is your idea of humor?”

Kyle pointed at me. “Actually, it’s his idea of humor.”

“I don’t find it very amusing,” Church Lady said, standing.

They gathered their things and walked out of the room, leaving Kyle and me looking at each other in astonishment.

“That went well,” Kyle said.

“Think they’ll come back?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I said.

“Bunch of cow-lovers,” Kyle said. “I hope the Crips stage a shoot-out in their hog exhibit this year.”

(Note: The agency they eventually selected produced the most boring campaign I’d ever seen, which fit them nicely: a television campaign with two old biddies who looked like Mayberry’s Aunt Bea, sipping iced tea and talking about the good ole days when the Fair came to town.)

CHAPTER

Four

Often the simplest of decisions carry the direst of consequences.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The beginning of the collapse came on a day like any other. The alarm went off at six, and I reached over and hit the snooze button. McKale nuzzled up to me, pressing her soft, warm body against mine. She began gently running her nails up and down my chest, one of my favorite things in the world. I exhaled in ecstasy. “Don’t stop.”

She kissed my neck. “What are you doing today?”

“Work.”

“Call in sick.”

“It’s our company. Who would I call in sick to?”

“You can call me. I’ll give you time off.”

“For good behavior?”

“No. You’re not good at all.”

I smiled and kissed her. Every morning I woke up amazed that this woman was still in my bed.

“I wish I could. But we’re pitching the Wathen account today.”

“Isn’t that why you have Kyle? Can’t he handle these things?”

“Not today. This is the big one I’ve been preparing for all month. I have to be there.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Someone’s got to pay the bills.”

Her expression changed. She lay back. “Speaking of which . . .”

I rolled over. “What?”

“I need more money.”

“Again?”

“I haven’t made the house payment yet.”

“For this month or last month?”

She grimaced. “. . . last month.”

“McKale.” I groaned in exasperation. “I got a call at the office last week from the leasing company. They said we missed the last two months’ payments.”

“I know. I’ll get to it. I hate handling the money. I’m no good at money.”

“You’re good at spending it.”

She frowned. “That was mean.”

I looked at her and my expression softened. “Sorry. You know you’re the reason I earn it.”

She leaned forward and kissed me. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said. “I’ll have Steve transfer some money into your account.” I sat up. “We may be celebrating tonight. Or not. Either way let’s do something fun. We have the whole weekend.”

She got a big smile. “I have an idea.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to tell you.” She put her finger on my lips. “I guarantee you’ll never forget this weekend.”

Neither of us could have guessed how right she was.

CHAPTER

Five

Humans waste far too much time worrying about things that will never befall them. It’s my experience that the greatest tragedies are the ones that don’t even cross our minds—the events that blindside us on a Friday afternoon when we’re wondering how to spend our weekend.

Or when we’re in the middle of an advertising pitch.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I pulled into my private parking stall about twenty minutes after nine. Kyle was already in a bad mood. “Glad you could make it,” he said, as I walked into the office. I was used to this. Kyle was always uptight before a big presentation.

“Relax, Kyle,” I said calmly.

Falene walked in behind Kyle. “Good morning, Alan.”

“Morning, Falene.”

Falene was my girl Friday—a sleek, olive-skinned beauty of Greek descent whom Kyle had met on a model search and hired as our executive assistant and resident eye candy. Even her name (her mother had given birth the night she saw Bambi) was exotic.

“Relax?” Kyle said, his voice strained. “This is the Super Bowl. You don’t show up late on game day.”

I kept walking toward my office followed by Kyle and Falene. “Are they here yet?”

“No.”

“Then I’m not late.”

“Can I get you anything before the meeting?” Falene asked.

“How about a sedative for Kyle?” I said.

Falene smiled wryly. Even though Kyle had hired her, she had never been crazy about him. Lately the relationship seemed worse.

“I’ll meet you in the conference room,” Kyle grumbled.

I understood why Kyle was so anxious. The client we were about to pitch was Wathen Development Company and the campaign was for an upscale housing development called The Bridge: a $200 million project, with 400 units, two clubhouses, and an 18-hole golf course. Their annual advertising budget exceeded $3 million.

Wathen, a brash, perennially tan forty-something developer, arrived about fifteen minutes later. He was flanked by his accountant, Stuart, and Abby, a British woman we’d never met and whose role was unclear. Kyle and I shook hands with them as they entered our office.

“What can we get you to drink?” Kyle asked.

“What have you got?”

“What’s on tap, Falene?” Kyle asked curtly. Falene glared at him, then turned to Wathen.

“Mr. Wathen,” she said, “we have . . .”

“Call me Phil.”

Falene smiled. “Okay, Phil. We have juice: cranberry, apple, pineapple, and orange. We have seltzers, vanilla and peach, and Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi, Perrier . . .”

“They still make that Perrier?”

“I’m afraid so.”

He laughed. “I’ll have a cranberry juice. Could you mix a little pineapple in with that?”

“Certainly.”

“Abby,” Wathen said, “what’ll you have?”

“Nothing.”

“I’ll have a vanilla seltzer,” Stuart said.

“Very well,” Falene said. “I’ll be right back with your drinks.”

As Falene walked out, Kyle invited everyone into the conference room. As we were settling in around the table, something peculiar happened—something a little difficult to explain. I suddenly felt a sharp pain up my spine, followed by a powerful emotional flux, a bizarre feeling of oppression that seemed to press the very breath from me. At first I wondered if I was having a heart attack or a stroke, then an anxiety attack. Whatever it was, it passed as quickly as it came. No one seemed to notice that I was breathing heavy.

I had designed the conference room to showcase my myriad awards. The walls were textured with plaster then painted aubergine and covered with gold-framed advertising awards. The south wall had two crowded shelves that held our trophies. The awards on the east wall were concealed behind a screen that descended from the ceiling.

When everyone was situated around the table, I turned on the room’s projector, and the Wathen Development logo appeared on the screen.

Falene returned, careful to take the first drink to Wathen. “There you are, sir, I mean, Phil. Cranberry with a splash of pineapple. Anything else?”

“Just to be twenty again,” he said.

Abby rolled her eyes.

She distributed the rest of the drinks, including a Coke to Kyle, which, I noticed, she did without looking at him.

“All right,” Kyle said, “if it’s all right with you, Phil, we’ll begin.” Wathen nodded, and Kyle dimmed the lights with a hand remote. “Thank you for this opportunity. Our objective, as your future agency, is to create a campaign that will not only result in capacity occupancy of your new development, but a demand that will keep your real estate value strong and growing.

“Our campaign employs a multimedia approach that includes television, radio, newspaper, Internet, and outdoor advertising. We propose to launch the campaign with a fifty-billboard showing with the express purpose of creating name awareness. We’ll accomplish this with a three-phase outdoor message, the first to begin as soon as you’re ready to pull the trigger.” He pointed to me. “Al . . .”

I pressed a button on the remote to unveil the first billboard comp.

Bridge under construction

The board was yellow and black like a road hazard sign. Kyle and I simultaneously glanced at Wathen. He showed no emotion. His lack of response made Kyle visibly nervous. “It’s a teaser campaign,” Kyle said. “We’d run this with both a south and north exposure on I-5 and I-45 for two months.”

“It looks like a detour sign,” Abby said.

“Exactly,” I replied.

She continued. “But what if people think that some bridge is really under construction?”

“Actually, that’s our hope,” I replied. “These potential clients of yours drive past several hundred billboards every day. They’ve learned to tune all those signs out, but not the directional signs. As they discover they’ve been tricked, this will give them a relationship with your development. After thirty days, we unveil the second board.” I pressed a button.

Bridge opens July 16th

“This is when we begin the television and radio campaign,” Kyle said. “While up to this point the campaign image has been purposely austere, the campaign now begins to show a luxurious aspect: upscale, beautiful, chic, happy people enjoying the exclusive lifestyle and amenities of The Bridge. You’ll notice that the bright yellow of the first board has subtly changed to a tint more gold.”

“And then,” I said, “with the opening of Phase I, the final board.”

The Bridge is now open.

Cross over to Washington’s premier new Lifestyle

Wathen smiled and slightly nodded. Stuart leaned over to whisper something to Wathen, and Abby was also smiling.

Just then Falene opened the door. In a terse whisper she said my name, “Al.”

Kyle looked at her incredulously. She knew better than to interrupt at such a crucial moment. I gave her a quick headshake. She walked to my side and crouched down next to me. “Alan, it’s an emergency. McKale’s had an accident.”

“What kind of accident?” I said loud enough that everyone looked at me.

“Your neighbor’s on the line. She says it’s serious.”

I stood. “I’m sorry, my wife’s been in an accident. I need to take this call.”

“Go ahead and take it here,” Wathen said, motioning to the phone in the middle of the table.

Falene turned up the lights. I lifted the receiver and pushed down on the flashing button. “This is Al.”

“Alan this is your neighbor, Monnie Olsen. McKale’s been in an accident.”

My heart froze. “What kind of accident?”

“She was thrown from her horse.”

“How bad is she hurt?”

“She was rushed to Overland.”

Everything in my mind was swimming. “How bad is it? Tell me.”

She hesitated then suddenly began to cry. “They think she’s broken her back.” Her voice faltered. “She . . .” she stopped. “I’m sorry, she said she couldn’t feel anything below her waist. You need to get to Overland.”

“I’m on my way.” I hung up the phone.

“Is she okay?” Wathen asked.

“No. It’s bad. I’ve got to go.”

“I’ll finish up,” Kyle said.

As I left the room, Falene put her hand on my back. “What do you need?”

“Prayers. Lots of prayers.”

I sped to the hospital, oblivious to the world around me. The drive seemed endless, and the whole way there an adrenaline-fueled dialogue took place in my head—a battle between two polar forces. The first voice assured me that my neighbor was just panicked and everything was fine. Then another voice shouted, It’s worse than they’re saying. It’s bad beyond your worst nightmare.

By the time I reached the hospital I was nearly crazed with fear. I parked in a handicap zone outside the emergency entrance and ran inside and up to the first admittance window, where a middle-aged woman with thick glasses sat behind a glass partition. She was looking at her computer screen and didn’t notice me.

I tapped on the glass. “My wife’s in here,” I said frantically.

She looked up at me.

“McKale Christoffersen. I’m her husband.”

She typed the name into her computer. “Oh, yes. Just a minute.” She picked up her phone and dialed a number. She spoke softly to someone then hung up and turned back. “We have someone coming to speak with you. Have a seat, please.”

I sat down in a chair and covered my eyes with my hand and rocked back and forth. I don’t know how long I had been like that when I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up. It was our neighbors, Monnie and Tex Olsen. The moment I saw their stricken faces something burst inside me. I began sobbing. Monnie put her arms around me. “We’re so sorry.”

“Have you talked with the doctors?” Tex asked.

I shook my head. “They’re still with her.” I turned to Monnie, “Did you see it happen?”

She knelt down beside me and spoke quietly. “No, I found her just a few minutes after it happened. Her horse got spooked and threw her.”

“How was she?”

I wanted to hear comforting words, but she just shook her head. “Not good.”

It was another ten minutes before a young woman, boyish-faced with short hair, slacks, and a silk blouse with a plastic name tag hanging from a lanyard around her neck walked out of the double-doored ER into the waiting room. The woman behind the glass motioned to me, though I’m sure it was only for confirmation. It wasn’t hard to pick out the guy in distress. “Mr. Christoffersen?”

I stood. “Yes.”

“I’m Shelly Crandall. I’m a hospital social worker.”

They sent a social worker? I thought. “I want to see my wife.”

“I’m sorry, but the doctors are still working on her.”

“What’s going on?”

“Your wife has had a spinal fracture in her upper back. The doctors are stabilizing her.”

“Is she paralyzed?” The words sprang from my mouth.

She hesitated. “It’s too soon to say. In an injury like this there’s a lot of swelling, and that can affect the nerves. We usually wait seventy-two hours for an accurate prognosis of the damage to the spinal cord.”

“When can I see her?”

“It will still be a few hours. I promise, I’ll take you to her as soon as she’s out. I’m sorry, Mr. Christoffersen.”

I slumped back down in the chair. Monnie and her husband sat across from me, silent.

The wait was excruciating. Every minute that the clock ticked off seemed to steal hope with it. I listened anxiously to the overhead announcements about incoming traumas and patient emergencies, wondering if they were talking about McKale.

Almost two hours after I arrived, the social worker led me back through the double doors of the ER. My first thought when I saw my wife was that there had been a mistake, and they’d taken me to the wrong room. McKale was vibrant and strong. The woman lying in the bed in a hospital gown looked tiny and fragile. Broken.

My McKale was broken. Her eyes were closed, and her hair was spread out on the pillow behind her. The bed was flanked by monitors. There was an IV running from her right arm. I was surprised to see there was still dirt on her face. McKale had fallen face-first from the horse, and in the emergency effort, no one had taken the time to clean her off.

My legs felt as if my body suddenly weighed a ton. I leaned against the bedrail as my eyes filled with tears. “Mickey . . .”

At the sound of my voice, McKale’s eyes fluttered, and she looked up at me.

I squeezed her hand. “I’m here.”

Tears filled her eyes. Her voice came softly. “I’m so sorry.”

I fought back my own tears. I needed to be strong for her. “What are you sorry for?”

“I ruined everything.”

“No, baby. You’re going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

She looked at me for a moment then closed her eyes. “No, it’s not.”

The next twenty-four hours passed like a nightmare. McKale’s IV fed her a steady stream of morphine, and she dozed in and out of consciousness as I sat beside her. Once she woke and asked if this were a dream. How I wished I could have told her “yes.” Around eight, I went out of the room to make some calls.

My first call was to McKale’s father. He began to cry and promised he’d be out on the next available flight. Then I called my father. He was quiet when I told him. “I’m sorry, son. Do you need anything?”

“A miracle.”

“Wish I had one. Do you need me to come up?”

“No.”

“Okay.” He was perfectly fine with that. We both were. That’s just the way it was.

Later that night I got a call from Kyle. “How’s McKale?”

“Just a minute,” I said. I walked out of McKale’s room. “Her back’s broken. It’s bad. We just don’t know how bad yet.”

“But she’s not paralyzed . . .”

I hated that word. “We don’t know yet, but she can’t move her legs.”

He groaned. “There’s hope, isn’t there? Miracles happen every day.”

“That’s what we’re hoping for.”

We were both quiet for a long time. Then he said, “I called to tell you we got the Bridge account.”

It took a minute for what he said to register. I was astonished that what had completely dominated my thoughts for weeks before no longer owned space or importance. Had it been another day, we would have been celebrating with an expensive meal and a bottle of champagne at Canlis. That world already seemed like a distant memory. All I said was, “Oh.” I realized just how disconnected I’d suddenly become.

There was another long silence. Finally Kyle said, “Hey, don’t worry about a thing, I’ve got everything under control.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Did McKale get the flowers I sent?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Give McKale my love. And don’t worry, I’ve got your back.”

CHAPTER

Six

Nothing is more excruciating than waiting for the jury’s verdict. Except, perhaps, hearing the jury’s verdict.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next three days ticked by in a surreal limbo, my heart vacillating between hope and despair. The doctors echoed what the social worker had said—they wouldn’t know for certain the extent of the nerve damage for seventy-two hours. A lot can happen in seventy-two hours, I told myself. Maybe when the swelling decreased, she would get feeling and movement back.

She had to recover. McKale in bed, immobile, was about the most unnatural thing I could imagine.

The rest of my world ceased to exist. I stayed by McKale’s side, and at night I slept in a cot next to her bed, at least tried to, since the nurses seemed to come in every twenty minutes to check on something. I didn’t want her to wake and not have me there. McKale’s father, Sam, arrived Saturday afternoon, and for the first time I left her side and went home to shower and change my clothes. I was only gone for a couple of hours.

Monday morning I didn’t go home. It had been seventy-two hours since the accident, and the doctors had told us they were coming in the morning for her tests. Finally we were going to find out the extent of the damage. Sam arrived around ten. That morning none of us spoke of the tests. McKale talked to her father about his new home in Florida, then she asked me about work. I realized then that I hadn’t told her about the Bridge account.

“That’s good news,” she said.

Sam was more excited than both of us. “Well done, my boy. Well done.”

I feigned a smile. I had no real interest in it and spoke of it only to take our minds from weightier matters.

Around eleven thirty, three doctors entered the room. One of them carried a small vinyl satchel, another a clipboard. I recognized the female doctor from the day of the accident. She said to me, “I’m Dr. Hardman. You’re McKale’s husband?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you’re her father?”

Sam nodded.

“I’m going to need you both to leave while we conduct these tests.”

I wanted to ask why but didn’t. I put a lot of faith in the doctors. I realized later that it wasn’t them I put faith in; it was my hope that she would be healed. Sam stepped away, and one of the doctors began pulling the curtains around the bed.

“May we stand outside and listen?” I asked, pointing to the other side of the curtain.

“Sure,” she said.

I leaned over and kissed McKale’s forehead. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

I parted the curtain and walked outside next to Sam.

“How are you, McKale?” Dr. Hardman asked.

McKale mumbled something.

“I’m sorry. We’re going to run some tests. They’re quite simple. They shouldn’t be painful.” There was some shuffling, and McKale moaned in pain as they rolled her over to get a look at her spine.

I heard a bag unzipping, and then one of the doctors said, “Dr. Schiffman will touch various parts of your body with this tool.” (After the procedure I saw the tool. It looked like a medieval torture device. It was shaped like a wheel, with pins radiating out from the center.) “We will run this along different parts of your body and then ask for a response. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” McKale said meekly.

Then I heard one of the doctors ask, “Can you feel this, McKale?”

“Yes.”

My heart thrilled. I wanted to high-five Sam, but he was just looking at the floor.

“Okay. Now we’ll try below your waist. Can you feel this?”

There was a long pause. McKale said, “No.”

“How about this?”

There was another pause. This time her voice was slightly strained. “No.”

My stomach twisted. C’mon, McKale.

“How about this?”

McKale started to cry. “No.”

I started silently praying. Please, God. Let her feel something.

“How about this?”

McKale was crying now. “No.”

Sam put his hand over his eyes.

“And this?”

“No. I can’t feel anything,” she shouted. “I can’t feel anything!”

I parted the curtain, but Dr. Hardman just shook her head at me. I stepped back.

“Now we’re going to test for deep nerve damage. Sometimes nerve damage is just on the surface, and patients retain feeling under their skin. I am going to insert this needle into your leg, and I need you to tell me if you feel anything.”

I kept waiting for something, but McKale didn’t make a sound.

I dropped down to a chair and held my head in my hands. I felt sick. She had no feeling. McKale was paralyzed.

CHAPTER

Seven

As a boy I heard this story in church. A man was patching a pitched roof of a tall building when he began sliding off. As he neared the edge of the roof he prayed, “Save me, Lord, and I’ll go to church every Sunday, I’ll give up drinking, I’ll be the best man this city has ever known.”

As he finished his prayer, a nail snagged onto his overalls and saved him. The man looked up to the sky and shouted, “Never mind, God. I took care of it myself.”

How true of us.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

In spite of the permanent damage to her nerves, her spine still needed to be repaired and she had to go back in for surgery. We had to wait another 24 hours before the hospital was able to fit her in. Sam had to fly home that morning, so I was the only one at McKale’s side when they rolled her off to surgery. I waited tensely in the waiting room.

When the surgeon came out to give me an update, he had a large smile on his face. “That went very well. Even better than we expected. We were able to repair her spine without any major problems.”

His tone elevated me. “Does that mean she might walk again?”

His expression fell. “No. It just means that the bones of the spine are repaired.”

I’m told that there’s a universal pattern to grief and loss that everyone must pass through. The first three stages are denial, anger, and bargaining. I suppose I did them all at once. I promised God everything. I’d give all my money to the poor, spend my life building homes for the homeless, anything that might get His attention.

I even had a plan for God to make it happen. I would just wake like the whole thing had been a bad dream. No one would even have to know what had happened. But I never woke from this dream. God had other plans.

CHAPTER

Eight

We are such fools. We punish our friends and reward our enemies far more often than we are willing to believe.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Wednesday afternoon, Falene called. I didn’t really want to take her call but did anyway. She had already called several times over the last week and left messages that she urgently needed to talk to me. She was surprised to hear my voice. “Alan?”

“Hi, Falene.”

“How is McKale?”

“The damage to her nerves is permanent.”

Falene slightly gasped. When she spoke, there was emotion in her voice. “I’m so sorry.” After a few moments, she said, “What can I do?”

“There’s nothing anyone can do,” I said angrily. “If there were, we would have done it.” Falene was silent. After a moment I said, “I’m sorry. I’m not doing well.”

“I understand.”

“What did you need to talk to me about?”

She hesitated. “It can wait,” she said. “Things will work out. Give McKale my love.”

I puzzled over her comment but pushed it aside. “All right, we’ll talk later.”

Kyle called later that evening. “How is McKale?”

“She’s paralyzed.”

Kyle was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry, man. I wish there was something I could do.”

I sniffed. “Yeah.”

“I met with Wathen this morning. He asked how you’re doing.”

“Tell him thank you. And thank you for the flowers.”

“Will do. He wanted to know when they could see some final graphics, so I put Ralph on it. Also, you have the studio scheduled for Tuesday’s Coiffeur shoot. Have you selected a model?”

I ran my fingers through my hair. “No. I scheduled a model search for Thursday.”

“Thursday, as in tomorrow?”

I had no idea what day it was. “Sorry. Can you handle that?”

“I’m always up for a model search.”

I exhaled. “I’m sorry to drop all this on you, Kyle. I just can’t go back to that world.”

“You don’t need to worry about a thing. I’ll take care of everyone. By the way, has Falene called recently?”

“This afternoon.”

He paused. “What did she say?”

“Not much. She just asked how McKale was.”

“Oh?” He sounded surprised. “Good. That’s good. Well, I better let you go. Give McKale my love.”

“Thank you, Kyle.”

“My pleasure.”

CHAPTER

Nine

The more someone assures you that everything is okay, the more you can be assured that it’s not.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next day McKale was released from the ICU and transferred to the rehabilitation wing of the hospital. I spent the next three weeks at McKale’s side. I stayed until she fell asleep every night. One night I was so exhausted, I started to leave before she was asleep, and she begged me to stay. She was afraid, and she clung to me like a man clings to a limb at the edge of a waterfall. Maybe for the same reason.

I hated rehabilitation. I hated the name of the place. It was false advertising. Nothing was being rehabilitated. I don’t think it was meant to do anything other than get McKale used to a life in a wheelchair, which proved more difficult than we hoped since she lacked the upper body strength to do much of what was required.

In addition to the physical therapy there was “emotional support” as well. A slew of counselors spewed out more promises than a late-night infomercial. You can do anything, mountains just lift us higher, you can live a normal life, your life can be just as full as it was before, rah, rah, rah.

McKale called it a “sorry excuse for a pep rally.”

She wasn’t buying any of it.

Those first weeks after the accident, the only calls I received from the office, outside of those from Kyle and Falene, were repeated calls from two of my clients, Wathen and Coiffeur. Every time they called, I texted Kyle and asked him to take care of them. I just couldn’t live in two worlds. Still, as much as I appreciated Kyle’s covering for me, I knew it couldn’t go on much longer.

By the end of the third week, as I made arrangements to bring McKale home, I began to prepare myself mentally to return to work. I called Kyle for an update on our accounts and was surprised when he didn’t answer his cell phone. This went on for the next three days. By the end of the week, I wondered if he’d lost his phone. Friday afternoon I called Tawna, our receptionist, to find out where he was.

“Madgic, Falene speaking.”

“What are you doing answering the phones?” I asked. “Where’s Tawna?”

“She’s gone.”

“She left early?”

“No, she quit. Everyone’s quit except me.”

She might as well have been speaking Chinese for all the sense it made to me. “Quit? What are you talking about?”

“Kyle and Ralph started their own company. They took everyone with them.”

I was stunned. “Kyle and Ralph left?”

“He and Ralph started their own agency. Craig/Jordan Advertising.”

“What about our clients?”

“They’ve taken them all. Kyle told them Madgic was going under,” she said angrily. “I did the best I could to save them. I convinced Wathen and Claudia at Coiffeur to call you first, but they said you wouldn’t return their calls.”

“We lost them all?”

“Every one.”

I rubbed my face with my hand. “I can’t believe it.”

“I don’t want to believe it. Tell me what to do.”

My head felt as if it would explode. “I don’t know, Falene. Just hang tight. McKale comes home Saturday. We’ll get together Monday morning and strategize. How are we for money?”

“I called Steve about payroll. He said we’re about out.”

“That can’t be. We should have received everyone’s monthly retainers.”

“I just know what he told me.”

“Kyle,” I said, thinking aloud. “He must have had them pay him their retainers.”

“Can’t you sue him?”

“He won’t get away with this.”

Falene sighed. “I’m sorry, Al. I know you didn’t need this on top of everything else.”

“We’ll weather this, Falene. We’ll talk Monday and make a plan.”

Her voice calmed. “Okay. Give McKale my love.”

“Falene.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for not leaving.”

“You’re welcome. Besides, there’s not enough money in the world to make me work for that creep.”

CHAPTER

Ten

What never ceases to amaze me is the human capacity for self-deception when looking after one’s own interest. Self-interest is blind.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I must have called Kyle at least twenty times before he finally answered my call.

“Alan.” He answered cheerfully, but his voice was tinged with anxiety.

“What have you done?”

“Why don’t you tell me what you think I’ve done.”

“You stole my agency.” I had been sitting in an empty patients’ lounge and now rose to my feet and started to pace.

“Not true, buddy. Madgic is still yours. I just followed in your path and struck out on my own.”

“With my clients.”

“No, with my clients. Don’t forget who brought them in.”

“You got them on my time, using my name, my money, my agency, and my creativity.” I tried to keep my voice under control.

“Well, that’s debatable. I’m a partner, so it’s my time, and you’re discounting Ralph and Cory’s creativity. But it doesn’t matter. The clients decide where they go, and they chose to follow me. You abandoned them. I picked up the pieces. How can you fault them for that?”

“I don’t fault them, I fault you. You said that you would cover for me.”

“I did exactly what I said I would. I took care of the clients.”

“No matter how you spin this, you’re a weasel, Kyle. I trusted you, and you stabbed me in the back while I was taking care of my wife. There are special places in hell for people like you.”

“Don’t get all moral on me, pal. This is just business. I’m moving on, and so are my clients.”

“I’m taking you down, Kyle. And that traitor Ralph. You’re not getting away with this.”

For a moment he was speechless. Then he said, “Well, good luck with that.” He hung up.

McKale had been right about him all along.

I struggled over whether or not I should tell McKale and decided to keep it from her until I knew how bad things were. As usual she could tell something was wrong. “Did you ever get hold of Kyle?”

“Yes.” I sat down in the chair next to her hospital bed.

“What’s going on?” Helpless and vulnerable, she gazed at me.

“You know, usual problems. Bottlenecks and deadlines. I need to go back to work Monday.” I reached for her hand and squeezed it.

She looked at me sadly. “I know you do. I’m sorry I’ve taken so much of you.”

“You haven’t taken anything that wasn’t yours,” I said.

A faint smile played on her lips. “So how’s Kyle doing?”

“He’s been busy,” I said, trying to hide my anger.

“I bet. I really misjudged him.” She rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t believe her own stupidity.

I looked at her for a moment, then said, “Yeah. He’s been . . . unbelievable.”

“We should give him a really big Christmas bonus this year.”

I couldn’t stand it anymore. “I’ve got to use the bathroom,” I said. I walked down the hall to the bathroom, locked myself inside, then kicked the plastic garbage can until it broke.

CHAPTER

Eleven

McKale came home today. As joyful as her homecoming is to me, I now fully face the reality that our life will never be the same. It could be worse. I could have come home alone.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Even with my world in shambles, the day McKale came home was like Christmas. At least until I put her to bed. Then reality set in. There were about a hundred phone messages. Some were calls of condolence, but the majority of them were collection calls. I sat with a pen and paper and wrote them all down.

The collection calls came more than once, growing steadily more intense and threatening.

It wasn’t just McKale who was bad with money. Even though my father was an accountant, I never inherited his fiscal discipline. Madgic had taken off like a bottle rocket, and McKale and I wanted everything right away. We purchased the largest home we could get approved for, expensive cars, vacations, and pretty much everything else we wanted. We ate out almost every night. McKale wasn’t much of a cook. She was fond of saying, “The only thing I can make are reservations.”

On top of that, McKale was generous to a fault and gave to about every charity that came along—from the March of Dimes to the Save a Greyhound Society. We had boxes of unopened Girl Scout cookies in our pantry. Whenever we realized we’d run out of money, I’d get upset for a while, then McKale would say, “You’re smart. You’ll make more.”

Even before the accident (and the demise of the agency), we were in trouble. We were late on all of our bills, had a second mortgage on our home, and our credit cards were maxed out. Financially, we had been walking a tightrope. And someone had just cut one end of our rope.

McKale was responsible for paying the bills, and, obviously, she hadn’t done it in a while. In addition to the phone messages, there was a large pile of bills on the ground near the back door. The first time I started through it, I lost my resolve and walked away.

Someone once said, “We can deny reality, but we can’t deny the consequences of denying reality.” The first of the consequences manifested on Sunday afternoon. As I was cleaning up after lunch, the doorbell rang. I opened to two men. The man in front was about my size and build, though balding and a decade or so older. The second man was sandy haired and looked like a linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks. The first man did the talking.

“Are you Alan Christoffersen?”

“Yes.”

“We’re from Avait Leasing. We’re here to repossess a Lexus Sports Coupe and a Cadillac Escalade.”

My eyes darted back and forth between the two. “Look, my wife just got out of the hospital. Is there something we can work out?”

“Sorry, we’re way past that. If you would show us to the cars.”

I looked at him for any sign of mercy, but there was none. He was there to do his job. “They’re in the garage. I’ll open it.” The men stepped aside as I walked out the front door. I opened the garage by the keypad. “Give me a minute to get our things out of the cars.”

“No problem.”

I collected our belongings—sunglasses, CDs, cell phone chargers—the usual stuff. When I was done, I removed the car keys from the key rings, then handed them to the man. He threw the Escalade key to his associate then climbed into my Lexus. “Sorry.”

I watched them drive away in our cars. I shut the garage door and went back inside.

“Who was at the door?” McKale asked.

I frowned. “Leasing company. They just repossessed our cars.”

“Sorry.” She looked away from me.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “They’re just cars.” The truth is, I felt like a lowlife.

Things just got worse. That night as I sorted through mail, I came across the first of the medical bills. More than a quarter million dollars. I can handle this, I told myself. Just don’t panic. Don’t panic. McKale needs you.

I panicked.

CHAPTER

Twelve

Something remarkable happened today. McKale’s leg began to move. We’re not breaking out the champagne yet, but could it be that our luck has finally changed?

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Monday morning, I got McKale up at six. I bathed, toileted, and dressed her. I got her into her chair, then made her breakfast. As I went about this routine, I thought of that saying, Today is the first day of the rest of your life. It fit, just not as optimistically as it was intended. This was my new daily routine—something I would do until the two of us were old and gray.

I hated to leave her alone, but I had no choice. It would have to happen someday. “You sure you’ll be all right today?”

“Yes. We need to get used to this,” she said.

I kissed her on the forehead, then went to get myself ready. While I was showering, McKale screamed, “Al! Come here, quick!”

I pulled a towel around myself and rushed dripping wet into the room. McKale was smiling. It was the first time I had seen her smile since the accident.

“What?”

“Look,” she said. To my amazement one of McKale’s legs was moving. “Something’s happening.”

“Do you have feeling in it?”

“No. But it feels like it wants to move.”

My heart leapt. It was the first hope I’d felt in weeks. “Whatever you’re doing,” I said, “just keep doing it.”

“I’m not doing anything,” she said. “It just started moving on its own.”

Finally, I thought, something good has happened. Thank you, God.

CHAPTER

Thirteen

Today I went back to the office for the first time since I ran out. It was like returning to the aftermath of a house fire—walking through steaming ruins and charred remains. Falene was the lone survivor of the inferno.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Fortunately our bad credit hadn’t entirely caught up to us before I had leased a handicap van. I had gone from a luxury sports car to a handicap van. It was a fitting symbol of our new reality.

I arrived at the office at ten minutes to nine. The place looked as if it had been deserted during a lunch break. The lights and computers were still on. Pens and papers were still at desks. It was like one of those episodes of Unsolved Mysteries. Unfortunately this was no mystery. It was Kyle. More than half the awards were gone, leaving bare hooks on the conference room wall. In my office, someone had gone through my file cabinet, and there were file folders scattered around my desk. My Rolodex was missing.

I was still in my office when Falene opened the front door. I walked out to meet her. She smiled wryly when she saw me. “Welcome back,” she said. We embraced. “I tried to tell you.”

“I know.” I looked around the office. “Looks like the Grinch struck early.”

“He even took the last can of Who-Hash.” She shook her head. “Speaking of Grinch, did you ever talk to creepy Kyle?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“Basically, he said he left because I had abandoned the agency. He only had the clients’ best interests at heart.”

“Wow, what a hero,” she said snidely. “Typical Kyle spin. The only interest Kyle has ever had is his own. You know, he started this before McKale was hurt.”

I looked at her in surprise. “What?”

“The day before you pitched Wathen, he told me what he was doing and asked if I would go with him. I was going to tell you after the Wathen pitch. But then everything went crazy.”

This revelation put everything into perspective. “That freaking weasel,” I said. I looked down at my desk and wondered if Kyle himself had ransacked it.

“A weasel he is,” Falene said. She rested her hands on her hips. “So where do we begin, boss?”

“I want you to call our client list and set up meetings with anyone who will meet with me.”

“Do I have permission to use guilt?”

“Absolutely. Do we have any new leads?”

“There have been a few inquiries. No one big, but they can help keep the lights on. I have them written down in my office. I was keeping them from Kyle.”

“Good girl.”

We walked off to our separate offices. I spent the morning following up leads and talking to Steve, our accountant. Financially, things weren’t quite as grim as it had seemed, not good, but not totally catastrophic either. At least not yet. Several large receivables had come in, and we had about twelve thousand dollars in the bank—enough to cover our payables. Around two o’clock, Falene came into my office.

“I’m headed down for a salad. Want something?”

“Thanks, but I need to go home and check on McKale. How are the calls going?”

“Okay. Wathen says he’s very sorry, but they’re just too far along to change course. But he’ll keep us in mind for future projects.”

I shook my head. “It’s only been four weeks.”

“I know. He sounded kind of dodgey. I’m sure Kyle’s been working him over. But Coiffeur, iTex, and DynaTech are willing to meet next week.”

“It’s a start. Good job, Falene.”

“Thanks. And how is McKale?”

I smiled. “Her leg was moving this morning.”

“That’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

“It makes everything else seem manageable.” I stood and began gathering a few files to take with me.

“Will you be coming back today?”

“Tomorrow,” I said.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then. And don’t worry, Al. We’ll make it. We’ll make Madgic bigger than it was before.”

I looked up and smiled at her. “By the way, I’m promoting you to Vice President.”

A broad smile crossed her face. “Thank you.” She hugged me. “See? Things are looking up already.”

CHAPTER

Fourteen

This evening I rushed McKale back to the hospital. More trouble. I feel as if the jaws of Hell have gaped after us. Where is God?

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

McKale was sitting in her wheelchair in the den when I got home. She had a book in her lap, but she wasn’t reading. She was just staring ahead at the wall. “Hey, girl,” I said. “I’m home.”

She slowly turned to look at me. Her leg was still moving, but her smile was gone. “I wish the fall had killed me.”

“McKale . . .”

Her eyes watered. “This is my new life, pushing around the house, chained to this chair.”

I put my arms around her. “Give it some time.”

She looked down. “I’m sorry, I don’t feel well,” she said softly. “I think I have a fever.”

I kissed her forehead then felt it with my cheek. Her skin was moist and very hot. “You’re burning. Why didn’t you call me?”

“You have so much work. I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Come on, Mickey, you know better than that. I better check your temperature. Where do we keep the thermometer?”

“It’s downstairs in the guest room medicine cabinet.”

I retrieved the thermometer and held it under her tongue. She was running a temperature of 104°. “You’re hot. I better call the doctor,” I said.

I couldn’t get hold of Dr. Hardman, but the doctor on call told me to bring her in. Forty-five minutes later, I checked McKale back into the Overland emergency room. The staff checked her vitals, blood pressure, and temperature, then took blood and urine samples. Her fever had risen to 105°.

Within a half hour, Dr. Probst, a compact red-head in his late fifties, had her moved from the ER to the ICU where they put tubes back into her arms and a PIC line directly into her jugular vein, to fill her with antibiotics. The staff moved in a quiet, urgent manner, and the more I watched, the more concerned I became. I stayed by McKale’s side the whole time, holding her hand. She said very little through it all, though she moaned occasionally. When the motion had settled a little, the doctor asked to speak to me outside the room.

“You’re her partner?” he asked.

“I’m her husband. What’s happening?”

“It appears your wife has developed a urinary tract infection from her catheter. Unfortunately it’s gotten into her bloodstream, and she’s septic.” He looked at me as if waiting for the gravity of his words to settle.

“What does that mean? You give her more antibiotics?”

He looked at me solemnly. “This is extremely serious. We could lose her.”

“Lose her? It’s just an infection.”

“Infections are never that simple, especially when the body has already been weakened. When they reach this stage, they’re very dangerous.”

“So what do you do?”

“We’ve upped her antibiotics. She’s on a pretty powerful dosage. Now we carefully monitor her and wait to see how her body responds. We’ve also sedated her. A fever this high can be quite uncomfortable.”

I raked my hair back with my hand. “I can’t believe this. This morning we were celebrating. Her leg was moving. We thought she was gaining her nerves back.”

“Involuntary muscle spasms,” he said. “It’s caused by the infection.” He had a strained, worried look in his eyes that made me wonder if he was holding back. “I just want you to be prepared.” He touched my shoulder then turned and walked away. I watched him go, then I walked down to the men’s room. It was a one-occupant bathroom, and I locked the door, then knelt on the tile floor and began to pray.

“God, if you’re there, I’ll give you anything. Just spare her life. I beg you, don’t take her from me.” I was on my knees for another ten minutes, until someone tried the door.

How much more humble can you be, I thought. Kneeling on the floor of a public bathroom. Surely God would hear my prayer. But the truth is, I felt like I was praying to nothing. I might as well have been praying to the urinal. I got up and went back in to McKale’s room. She looked paler already.

“What did he say?” she asked softly.

I didn’t want to frighten her. “He said it’s just a little infection.”

“It doesn’t feel so little . . . ,” she said, grimacing. She looked up at me. “You must be so tired of all this.”

I took her hand. “I’m tired of you going through all this.”

“It won’t be much longer,” she said.

I looked at her quizzically. “What do you mean?”

She closed her eyes. “Stay close to me.”

CHAPTER

Fifteen

Don’t deceive yourself. Things can always get worse.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The painkillers did their job, and McKale slept for three more hours. Her temperature had fallen back down to 104° but no lower. Everything else seemed to stay the same, which I suppose was a mixed blessing.

It was around nine or so when she opened her eyes. They were heavy with fever. She tried to speak, but her words were labored and slurred, and, at first, I couldn’t understand her. I put my ear next to her mouth. “What did you say?”

Her voice was barely a whisper. “Orcas Island.”

I looked at her quizzically. “What?”

“That’s where I was going to take you.”

Orcas Island is the largest of the San Juan islands, located off the northern coast of Washington. We had celebrated my college graduation there, staying in a bed and breakfast built from a restored farm house. It was one of my fondest memories. I had never been more happy or felt more in love.

“Do you know when I knew I would marry you?”

“When?”

“That day in the tree house. You said you’d never leave me.” Her brow furrowed, likely as much from pain as concentration. “Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

She swallowed. “You never did.”

“And I never will.”

After a moment she said, “I’m leaving you.” I looked into her face. Her eyes were brimming with tears.

“Don’t talk that way, McKale.”

“Promise me . . .”

“Don’t, Mickey . . .”

“Please. Promise me two things.”

My heart was racing. “What?”

“Don’t leave me.”

“I’ll never leave you. You know that.”

She swallowed. “I don’t want to die alone.”

Her words sent a chill through me. “Mickey, don’t say that. You’re not going to die.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re going to beat this. We’re going to beat this.”

“Okay. Okay.” Her words sounded more like pants. She closed her eyes again. A few minutes later a nurse came in. She checked the monitors and frowned.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Her blood pressure’s falling.”

“What does that mean?”

She hesitated. “I’m getting the doctor.” She walked out of the room.

A minute later, McKale opened her eyes, but she didn’t look at me, and she didn’t speak.

“You can’t leave me, Mick. I can’t live without you.” She silently looked into my eyes. “If only I had stayed home like you wanted, we wouldn’t be here.”

She gripped my hand the best she could.

A tear fell down my cheek, and I furtively wiped it away. I looked into her face. “Mickey. What was the other thing?”

She didn’t respond.

“You said you wanted me to promise you two things. What’s the other thing?”

She looked down for a moment, swallowed, then pursed her lips together, slowly moving them. I put my ear next to her mouth. “What, honey?”

The word seemed like an expulsion. “Live.”

I pulled back and looked into her eyes, then she closed hers. The nurse walked back in with the doctor. “You’ll need to step back, please,” the doctor said.

The doctor gave McKale an injection through her I.V., then took the ventilator tube and carefully inserted it through McKale’s mouth and down her throat. My mind was swimming. Things were happening that shouldn’t be happening. Her body was shutting down. I don’t remember the exact sequence of events. It came at me like a dream where time moved one frame at a time, and disjointed, disembodied phrases hung in the air.

“She’s in shock.”

“Still dropping.”

“Heart rate is dropping.”

The motion in the room continued in a growing climax, a swirling, frenzied dance of activity. Then McKale started to breathe differently. She was taking long, strained gasps of air with long pauses between breaths.

“Respiratory failure.”

Then came the most frightening sound of all. A single, loud beeping noise joined the cacophony.

“She’s going into cardiac arrest.”

The doctor frantically began performing CPR. After a minute, he shouted, “Shut off that thing.” The beeping stopped. He kept pressing on her chest.

Seven minutes later the dance stopped. My best friend passed away at 12:48 A.M. The last thing I said to her was, “I love you, Mickey. I always will.”

CHAPTER

Sixteen

All is lost.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

A social worker came in and stood next to me. I don’t know how long she was there. I didn’t see her enter. She didn’t speak at first. She just stood there. Without looking up, I said, “She’s gone.”

CHAPTER

Seventeen

I would give anything to have her back. Anything. But I have nothing to barter with. Not even my life. Especially my life. What could a life as wretched as mine be worth?

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next two days passed in a foggy parade of events. The people at the mortuary pretty much dragged me through it all—an unwilling participant in an unwanted production. I remembered the mechanical nature in which my father had acted in the aftermath of my mother’s passing. My condemnation was gone. Now it was me mechanically attending to the minutiae of death: I picked out a casket, a headstone, wrote McKale’s obituary, signed papers, and selected the dress she was to be buried in—a beaded, black chiffon overlay gown that gathered in front. She had worn the dress at last January’s WAF award ceremonies. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the room.

It became very clear to me just how completely I had shut everyone else out of my life. Outside of each other, McKale and I had no real friends, and the only people we socialized with were on our payroll. I never thought I needed anyone else. I was wrong.

Sam arrived Thursday afternoon with McKale’s stepmother, Gloria. I met them at the mortuary. Sam broke down when he saw her. “My little girl,” he sobbed. “My little girl.”

My father arrived two days later, the day before the funeral. In his typical manner, he said very little, which, frankly, I was glad for. I could see that he hurt for me, and that was enough. He stayed with me and slept in the downstairs guest room.

It rained all that night, and I sat in the kitchen and listened to a million drops pelt the earth. There was no way I could sleep. My father came upstairs to the kitchen at three in the morning. I was sitting at the kitchen table, a cold cup of decaf in front of me, staring at nothing.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” he said. “Mind if I join you?”

I shook my head.

He pulled out a chair across from me. For a moment, we both sat in silence. Then he cleared his throat. “When your mother died, I felt as if half my body had been amputated. The half with the heart. At first I wasn’t sure if I could keep going on. Frankly, I wasn’t sure why I would want to.” He looked at me softly. “I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have you. I didn’t have the luxury of collapse.”

“McKale wanted to have children,” I said. “But I kept telling her we needed to wait.” I rubbed my eyes. “The assumption of tomorrow.”

My father had no response, and my words trailed off in silence.

“Do you want to come back home for a while?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“How’s your business doing?”

“Not well.”

“Maybe you should throw yourself into that for a while.”

I said nothing. We both sat in silence.

“Dad.”

“Yes?”

“How’d you do it?”

“I have no idea.” It was some time before he looked at me. “I love you, son.”

“I know.”

A few minutes later, he went back to his room. I put my head down on the table and cried.

CHAPTER

Eighteen

My heart was buried with her. I would have been satisfied if the rest of me had been buried with her as well. As much as I have thought on this matter, I see no way around the hurt. The only way to remove pain from death is to remove love from life.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning it was still raining. I showered, shaved, and dressed on autopilot. As I looked at myself in the mirror, I said, “God hates you.” It was the only explanation for my life. I had loved two women, and He took both of them from me. God hated me. The feelings were mutual.

At 10:45, my father and I drove together to the funeral home. There was an hour-long viewing prior to the funeral. I stood next to the open casket, next to the still body of the woman I loved. Déjà vu. When they shut the lid, I wanted to scream out in anguish. I wanted to climb in with her.

The service was simple. “Nice,” I heard someone say. Nice. That’s like describing a plane crash as well executed. The meeting was conducted by an employee from the mortuary, and a pastor, also hired by the mortuary, shared a few words. I don’t remember what he said. My mind was a fog. Something about the eternal nature of man. McKale’s stepmother, Gloria, a former opera singer, sang a hymn. “How Great Thou Art.” Then McKale’s father said a few words, or at least tried to. He mostly just wept through his eulogy. There was a prayer, and then the man from the mortuary got up again and gave directions for the burial proceedings.

McKale’s father and four of his friends were pallbearers, along with my father. They carried the casket out to the waiting hearse, loaded it in back, then walked to their cars. We drove in a procession less than a half mile, where the pallbearers again took up the casket, carrying it to the top of a small knoll.

After the pallbearers set down the casket, they unpinned their boutonnieres and set them atop the lid. Sam walked up to me. “I carried her when she was a little girl. No father should ever have to endure this.”

McKale’s grave was near the center of the Sunset Hills cemetery, surrounded by much older graves. The mortuary had set up a canvas canopy that shielded the family from the rain while everyone else huddled beneath umbrellas. The rain never ceased. It was a steady fall that turned into a downpour that, at the conclusion of the burial, sent everyone scampering for their cars.

As the congregation was dispersing, an older woman slowly approached me. I was certain I had never met her, though something about her looked strangely familiar. She was distraught. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her face was streaked with tears. When she was near, she said, “I’m Pamela.”

I looked at her without comprehension. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

“I’m McKale’s mother.”

I blinked in confusion. “McKale doesn’t have a . . .” Suddenly I understood. I had always thought of her mother as deceased. Seeing her reminded me of every pain-filled moment McKale had felt since the day I met her. The fact that she was here, now, filled me with rage. With all the emotion I held inside, it was all I could do not to explode. “What do you want?”

“I kept telling myself that someday I’d explain everything to her. That day just never came.”

“The assumption of tomorrow,” I said darkly.

“Excuse me?”

I rubbed my nose. “Do you have any idea how much you hurt her?”

I could see how deeply my words cut her. “I’m sorry.”

For a moment, I just looked at her tired, wrinkled face. “You missed out on someone very special. McKale was a beautiful woman. As sorry as I am for my loss, I’m more sorry for yours.”

Her eyes welled up with tears. She turned and walked away.

A few minutes later, Sam walked up to me. “You met Pamela.” I nodded. He put his arms around me, burying his head on my shoulder. “Do you know how much McKale loved you? You were her world.”

“She was mine,” I replied. We both cried.

“Keep in touch,” he said. Gloria took his arm. “If there’s anything you need, Alan.”

“Thank you.”

They walked, arm in arm, down the slope to their car.

My father walked up to me. He was holding an umbrella. “Are you ready, son?”

I shook my head. “I can’t leave her.”

He nodded in understanding. “I’ll get a ride back with Tex.” He offered me his umbrella, but I just shook my head. He put one hand on my shoulder, then he slowly walked off.

I watched him cautiously pick his way down the hill. He had aged a lot in the last few years. I had always had issues with my father. I know, who doesn’t? It would seem that blaming our parents for our problems is a favorite national pastime. But at that moment, I felt nothing but sympathy. He had done this, too. And somehow he had endured. He was a better man than I.

As everyone departed, I stood alone next to her grave, the rain bathing me, drenching me completely. I didn’t care. I had no place else I wanted to be. A half hour later, only one other person remained. Falene walked up to me. “C’mon, Alan.”

I didn’t move.

She touched my arm. “C’mon, honey. You’re all wet. You’ll get sick.”

I turned and looked at her, my face more drenched by tears than rain. At that moment the emotional dam broke. “I can’t leave her . . .”

Falene wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into her. She held me, in the rain. She just said over and over, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I don’t know how long we were there. An eternity. But when I could cry no more, I looked down into her eyes. She, too, was crying. “Come back with me, please.” She took my hand. “I’ll take care of you.”

She led me to her car, then opened the passenger door, and I got in. She climbed in the other side, reached over me, and pulled my seatbelt across my chest. She drove me to her apartment. Neither of us spoke on the way.

CHAPTER

Nineteen

It is in the dark times that the light of friendship shines brightest.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

When we arrived at her apartment complex, Falene pulled in under a carport, then walked around her car, and opened my door. Her building was four stories high, and her apartment was on the ground level, a half flight down. She unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Go on in,” she said.

The small apartment was dark, the blinds half drawn with only a little light coming through their openings. The room smelled like coffee grounds.

Falene helped me off with my coat, laid it over the back of a chair, then took off her own. She turned on a light, then took my hand and led me over to her couch, a small curved sofa with velvet upholstery. “I’ll get you some hot tea. Is it warm enough in here for you?”

I nodded even though I hadn’t even thought about it. I wasn’t sure why I was there or why she had brought me to her home. My experience with models was that they were remarkably self-absorbed. Falene was different. At the agency, Falene had always taken care of me, but I assumed it was because she got paid for it. It had never occurred to me that she really was nurturing.

Falene went back into her bedroom, then came back out when the teakettle began to scream. She had changed into jeans and a sweater. She handed me a towel, then she took the kettle from the heat and poured my cup.

“I hope you like herbal tea. This is orange peppermint. I think it will help soothe you. Would you like sugar?”

I nodded.

She put in a teaspoonful and stirred it. She brought me the cup then sat down next to me. For a moment neither of us spoke. Then I said, “You’re the only friend I have.”

She frowned. “No. You have a lot of friends.”

“No, I don’t. Just McKale. She was all I wanted.” I took a sip of the tea then set the cup down. “Why have you been so good to me?”

She smiled sadly. “Because you are a wonderful man.” She looked down. “I know you don’t know very much about me. But when I came to work at Madgic, I didn’t really think I was going to stay for long. Kyle talked me into coming, that’s what Kyle does, he talks people into things, but I didn’t feel like I belonged. And I didn’t trust him. I trusted you almost immediately. You made me feel important. At the time I was in a dead-end relationship.”

“Carl,” I said.

She flinched at his name. “He just used me. And the thing is, some part of me was okay with that. I just thought that was how all men treated women.” She looked at me with a pained expression. “Then I met you. No matter how busy you were, you would always take McKale’s calls. And even when you were stressed, or something bad had happened, you were always so gentle with her. When she came down to the agency, you treated her like a queen. At first I didn’t believe it could be real. I had never seen a man treat a woman like that, unless he wanted something from her. You were so good to her. You showed me what real love is.

“Do you remember that conversation we had when we were getting ready for the Denver convention?”

“Which one?” I asked.

“You said, ‘You can tell a lot about a man by watching how he treats those he doesn’t have to be nice to.’ I knew you didn’t just make that up. I remember that time after the Coiffeur shoot when that waitress knocked a Coke over on you. Carl would have screamed at her until she cried. You weren’t happy about it, but you still treated her with respect. I realized I had been settling for mud when there are diamonds out there. You’re the reason I dumped Carl, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. You saved me from myself.”

I didn’t say anything. She took my hand.

“McKale once told me that you were the air she breathed. I thought that was the sweetest thing I had ever heard.” She looked at me, then said, “Come here.” I lay my head on her shoulder, and she wrapped her arms around me. “I’m so sorry, my friend. I wish I could take away your hurt.” She held me until I stopped crying. Then she put a pillow down. “Just rest for a moment.”

It was the last thing I remembered Falene saying before I fell asleep.

It was a little after eight when I woke the next morning. I had fallen asleep on the couch, and Falene had taken off my shoes and laid a wool blanket over me. There was a scrawled note on the coffee table.

Alan, I had to go on a photo shoot. I had a friend take me over to the cemetery to get your van. It’s parked downstairs. Your keys are on the table. I’ll be back around two. Make yourself at home. There’s coffee in the pot and some Pop-Tarts. (I know you like those.) If you need to go, I understand. Please, please, please call me. I care about you.

Love,

Falene

I put my shoes on then lifted my keys from the table. I wrote “Thank you” over her note. Then I drove home.

CHAPTER

Twenty

There is a moment in all acts when there is no turning back: the step over the cliff, the finger committing to the trigger and the hammer falling, the bullet erupting from the chamber, unstoppable . . .

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Returning to an empty house was harder than I thought it would be. Could be. It seemed the pain increased as I got closer. Two blocks from the house, I almost hyperventilated. I got mad at myself. “Pull yourself together, man.”

My father had already gone home. He left a note for me on the kitchen table. It just read: “Eight o’clock flight. Call when you can.”

I walked through the house, not sure what I was supposed to do. Not that there weren’t things to do. The house was a disaster. There were dishes in the sink, overflowing clothes hampers, fast-food sacks and wrappers on the counters. There were still piles of unopened mail and newspapers inside the door.

At first I lay down, but I couldn’t find relief, so I set to washing clothes. As I lifted one of McKale’s undershirts, I held it against my face. I could still smell her.

That afternoon the postman came to my door. He held a clipboard and a registered letter.

“You need to sign for this,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Registered mail. I just need your signature saying you received it. Right here.” He pointed to a short line. I signed so he’d leave. I shut the door, then opened the envelope. It was a notice from the bank informing me that my house has been foreclosed on and would go up for auction next Thursday. I dropped the letter on the ground. I honestly didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. The world had already caved in on me; what did it matter if another brick or two fell?

I didn’t eat that night. The idea of putting food in my mouth made me want to gag. Falene called around eight, but I couldn’t answer the phone. Not even for her. Grief had settled around me like smog. By nightfall, my heart had become a boxing match, and there were two men inside of me contending for the possession of my future.

Fighting out of the blue corner, in white trunks, is LIFE. And in the red corner, wearing solid black trunks, is DEATH.

The fight had begun even before I was aware of it. Probably the moment I first saw McKale in her hospital bed.

After nine rounds, DEATH has gained the upper hand, showing LIFE no mercy. Constant jabs have left LIFE reeling. LIFE’s no longer the cocky prize-belt winner who weeks before paraded around as champ. LIFE has lost his legs. He’s on the ropes. DEATH senses victory and moves in for the kill. He’s relentless, landing one punch after another. It’s painful to watch, folks. LIFE is taking a beating, too tired and dazed to even block the blows.

The crowd senses blood and roars. They don’t care who wins, they just want a good fight.

At 2:00 A.M. the battle was in its final rounds. I was sitting at the kitchen table, holding two open bottles of McKale’s unused prescriptions—oxycodone and codeine—enough of each to end the fight. On the table in front of me was something to wash them down—an open bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

Ironically, in the early months of my advertising agency, I had done some pro-bono work for the Suicide Prevention Association of Seattle. The words I wrote for their radio commercial still resonated with me:

Suicide—a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

A catchy slogan, but the words rang hollow to me. There was nothing temporary about McKale’s death. I had lost everything. My business, my cars, my home, and, most of all, my love. There was nothing left—no reason to live except the natural human aversion to death. But even that was waning. I could feel it being pushed out by overwhelming pain, despair, and anger. Anger at life. Anger at God. Most of all anger at myself.

I looked at the pills. What was I waiting for? It was time to get on with it. Time to get this show on the road. I poured the pills into my hand.

I was about to cross the point of no return, when something happened. Something unlike anything I’d experienced before. Something I believe came from God—or part of His world.

When I was a child, my mother taught me about God. My mother was a big fan—even as she was dying. Especially as she was dying. She would pray, not as some do, repeating a script or chant, or shouting out to an empty universe, but as if He were actually in the same room. There were times, during her prayers, that I opened my eyes and looked around to see who she was talking to.

At that very moment, a fraction before I crossed the line, someone spoke to me. I don’t know if the words were audible, as they seemed to come both from and to my mind, but they came with an authority far greater than my own mind could muster. Just six words. Six words that stopped me cold.

Life is not yours to take.

My first reaction was to look around to see who had spoken. When I realized I was truly alone, I dropped the pills on the ground. Then another voice came to me. A softer voice. The voice of my love.

“Live.”

For the first time, I fully understood the promise McKale had asked me to make. She knew me. She knew I wouldn’t want to live without her.

I fell to my knees and began to cry. I don’t remember what happened after that. I don’t remember a thing.

CHAPTER

Twenty-one

They have not taken my home, just the brick and mortar that once housed it.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke the next morning to the sound of someone opening my door. The house was dark. Even though the sun had risen, the skies were a gray ceiling, typical for this time of year. At least it was no longer raining.

The door opened before I could get up. A man, well-dressed in a gray wool suit with a white shirt and a crimson tie, walked into my foyer, followed by two older women. They flipped on the lights.

It was one of the women who saw me first. “Oh, my.”

The other two turned and looked at me as I stumbled to my feet. There I was, disheveled and unshaven, a bottle of booze on the table and pills scattered on the floor. The women looked at me fearfully.

“Excuse me,” the man said, sounding more annoyed than sorry, “we were told the home was vacant.”

“It’s not,” I said.

“Clearly.” The man reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a business card. He stepped toward me, offering his card. “I’m Gordon McBride, from Pacific Bank. You are aware that the home has been foreclosed on.”

I didn’t take the card. “You don’t waste much time, do you?”

He looked uncomfortable. “You know what they say, ‘Time is money.’ ”

“It’s not.”

“We can come back later,” one of the women said.

“No, it’s all right,” I said. “Help yourself. I’m still getting my things. The house is a mess.”

They walked into the living room. I bent down and scooped the pills back into their bottles, then went to my bedroom as they toured the rest of the house. I showered and dressed. Before they left, Mr. McBride found me. “When are you moving out?”

I felt like a squatter in my own home. Technically I guess I was. “Soon,” I replied. “Real soon.”

I meant what I said about leaving. I couldn’t wait to get out. Without McKale, this was no longer my home. I felt no more connected to this place than the public library. Now that it had officially been claimed by others, it was time for me to go. The only question was where?

CHAPTER

Twenty-two

I believe that in spite of the chains we bind ourselves with, there’s a primordial section of the human psyche that still yearns to roam free.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The first spark of the idea came to me as I watched the banker back his silver Audi out of my driveway. At that moment, one of my elderly neighbors walked by—Mr. Jorgensen from three houses down. Mr. Jorgensen was wearing a polyester baby-blue jacket and straw hat and was leaning against a cane. He had Parkinson’s and was shaking as he walked. I don’t know why seeing him triggered what it did—who knows where ideas come from? But at that moment it was clear to me what I had to do. Perhaps the only thing left for me to do. I needed to walk far away.

In retrospect that moment wasn’t really the first time the thought of walking long distance had crossed my mind. When I was fifteen I read a book about a guy who walked across America, and ever since then I had secretly wanted to follow in his steps. Literally.

I don’t think I’m alone in this fantasy. I believe that in spite of the chains we bind ourselves with, there’s a primordial section of the human psyche that is still nomadic and still yearns to roam free. We see evidence of this in the walkabouts of the Australian aborigines and the Spirit Walk of the native Americans. We also see it cautiously peeking out its head in our own culture, surfacing in our literature and music. From Thoreau to Steinbeck to Kerouac—each generation believes they have discovered the dream anew.

But it’s not new. Every generation has dreamed of roaming. Deep in our hearts everyone wants to walk free.

Maybe not everybody. When I told McKale about my secret desire she said, “Not me. I’d rather fly.”

“But then you’d miss everything,” I said.

“Not everything. Just the boring stuff.”

“No, the real stuff. The real America. The little towns with names like Chicken Gristle and Beaverdale.”

“Right,” she said. “The boring stuff.”

I pressed on. “You mean to tell me that you really have never wanted to just pack up and start walking?”

“Never. But you hang on to that dream, you crazy old coot.”

A quote from one of my favorite comedians came to mind: “Anyplace is within walking distance if you have the time.”

That’s all I had left. Time. Far more of it than I wanted. I retrieved the Rand McNally road atlas from my den, opened it to a map of the continental U.S. and spread it out on the kitchen table. I studied it for a moment, then I went through the kitchen drawers looking for string. The closest thing I could find was a package of shoelaces. I tore the package open and put the plastic tip of one end of a shoelace on the city of Bellevue, then stretched the shoelace to the opposite side of the map, moving it up and down the east coast to determine the furthest point reachable by foot. Key West, Florida. Key West was as far as I could go from where I stood. That was where I was going to walk. An hour later I called Falene.

She was relieved to hear from me. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry I haven’t called.”

“It’s okay. I’ve just been so worried.”

“I need to ask you a favor.”

“Anything.”

“This is a big one. I need you to shut everything down. Sell everything at the agency, the furniture, computers, everything. Put it on eBay or Craigslist. I’ll text you a bank account number to deposit whatever you bring in from it.”

“What about your personal things?”

“I don’t care. Keep whatever you want. Throw the rest away.”

“What about your awards?”

The awards. My golden idols. “Throw them away.”

“What?”

“Also, there are the things in my home. The furniture.”

“But you need it.”

“Not anymore. The bank foreclosed on my house.”

Falene groaned.

“There’s more than a hundred thousand dollars of furniture and junk in here. I guess put it all on eBay or something.”

“My aunt owns a furniture consignment store,” Falene said. “They can send a truck over.”

“Great. Return the van to the leasing company.” I paused. “And there’s Cinnamon . . .” Cinnamon was McKale’s horse. “Just see if the livery owner wants her.”

“I understand,” she said.

“You can keep half of what you bring in, just put the rest into my account.”

“Where will you be?”

“I’m going for a walk.”

“Where to?”

“Key West.”

For a moment she said nothing. I think she was trying to decide whether or not I was joking. “You mean Florida?”

“Yes.”

“You’re walking to Key West, Florida,” she said incredulously. “Why?”

“It’s the farthest place I can walk from here.”

“You’re serious about this,” she said sadly. “When are you leaving?”

“This afternoon. As soon as I finish packing.”

“I need to see you before you go. I can be there in forty-five minutes. Don’t leave before I get there. Promise me.”

“I’ll wait,” I said.

“I’ll be right over. Don’t leave,” she said again and hung up.

I dialed Steve, my accountant. I instructed him to pay off all our bills, then file to dissolve our corporation and close out all our bank accounts, transferring any extra money into my personal account. He was disappointed to lose our business but not all that surprised. With all that had transpired in the last month, anything was possible.

We went over the agency’s remaining receivables, then I gave him Falene’s phone number in case he ran into any problems. I thanked him for his service and told him I’d check back with him in a few months. His final words of advice to me were, “Wear sunscreen.”

Falene arrived within the hour. I could tell she had been crying. We embraced, then we walked from room to room, talking about the furniture. There was really nothing I couldn’t leave behind. We ended up in the foyer.

“So, you’ll help me?”

“Yes. But half is too much. I’ll just take my salary.”

“It’s going to be a lot of work. You’ll have to hire someone to help you.”

“I’ll get my brother. He doesn’t have a job.”

I handed her a piece of paper. “Here’s my bank account number. I talked to Steve just a few minutes ago, he’s going to close out the corporate accounts and transfer the balance into that account as well. I told him that if he had any questions, he could call you. Is that okay?”

“Of course.”

I looked her in the eye. “Are you sure you can do this?”

“Of course. I’m Vice President now, remember?”

I looked at her wryly. “But are you sure you want to?”

“I’m sure I don’t. What I want is for everything to go back to how it was. But that’s not an option, is it?”

“If only,” I said.

She glanced at the paper, then put it in her purse. “How will I get hold of you?”

“You won’t. But I’ll call from time to time.”

She didn’t know what else to say.

“Thank you, Falene. Your friendship is the only good thing to come out of all this. You are one of the finest people I’ve ever met.”

She put her arms around me, and we held each other for a few moments. As we parted, she wiped tears from her eyes. “I wish you wouldn’t do this.”

“What else is there?”

She looked at me with a dark, sad expression, then kissed my cheek. “Be safe.” She wiped her eyes as she walked out of the house. I wondered if I’d ever see her again.

There were only two things I couldn’t discard. First, McKale’s jewelry. McKale didn’t have a lot of jewelry—she preferred a bare look—but over time, I had bought her some nice things. It all had sentimental value, and each piece reminded me of where we were when I gave it to her and how she’d responded. I took her wedding ring and slipped it over a gold rope-chain and put it around my neck. The rest, an opal ring, a ruby-and-emerald necklace, and a pink sapphire-and-diamond brooch, I put in a small pouch and put it in my pocket.

The other things I valued were my journals. Twenty-plus years’ worth. As I looked through them, I came across a dark brown leather journal that I bought on a trip to Italy several years earlier and hadn’t written in yet. The leather was soft, more of a wrap than a book cover, with a single leather thong that wrapped around the entire book. I decided that this would make a suitable road diary.

I put the rest of the journals in a box and taped it up with a note to Falene to send the box to my father’s house.

McKale would want her clothes to go to a women’s shelter, so I put her things in big boxes and marked them for Falene to deliver. With one exception. I took one of her silk camisoles. Then I began packing for my walk.

One of my agency’s former clients was a local retailer called Alpinnacle, a vendor of high-end hiking equipment. It was our smallest account. I didn’t usually pitch accounts their size, but in their case, I made an exception as McKale and I loved to hike, and we were fans of the company’s products.

Every year we produced a catalog for them, and the product samples we brought in for the photo shoot were left with us to distribute amongst our employees. I always got first choice of the booty and had claimed several backpacks, a portable, one-burner propane stove, a poncho, a down sleeping bag with a self-inflating pad, and a one-man tent. I could use all of it. I selected the best of the packs and filled it with the gear.

We kept our camping gear in a closet in the basement, and I went downstairs to collect other things I would need: an LED flashlight/radio with a hand crank, fire starter, and a Swiss Army knife. I put it all in the pack.

While I was rooting through the closet, I came across my favorite hat: an Akubra Coober Pedy, an Australian fur-felt hat with a leather band adorned with a small opal (Coober Pedy is a famed source of Australian opals). I had purchased the hat six years earlier on a business trip to Melbourne. As much as I liked the hat, I rarely wore it, because McKale mocked me when I did. She said I looked like the guy on The Man from Snowy River, which I personally thought was a good thing. It had a wide, sturdy brim and was made for the outback weather, sun, sleet, and rain. I put it on. It still fit comfortably.

I went back upstairs and retrieved my Ray-Ban Wayfarers sunglasses. Also, a roll of toilet paper, six pairs of socks, two pairs of cargo pants, a parka, a canteen, and five pairs of underwear.

I pulled on my pants, heavy wool socks, a T-shirt, and a Seattle SuperSonics sweatshirt. Fortunately, I had good hiking boots. They were lightweight, sturdy, and broken in. I sat down and laced them up. Then I slung the pack over my shoulder. It wasn’t too heavy, maybe twenty pounds.

The door locked automatically behind me, and without a single key in my pocket, I stood outside on the front patio. Then, without looking back, I began to walk.

CHAPTER

Twenty-three

I have decided on a destination; the path is but detail. I have begun my walk.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Chyan li jr sying, shr yu dzu sya. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I read that in a Chinese fortune cookie. Technically I suppose, it wasn’t really a fortune—more of a proverb—and probably wasn’t even Chinese. It was likely just some American copywriter churning out yarns for a cookie company. I suppose all those years in advertising had made me cynical.

Whatever its origin, the proverb was applicable. Mentally and emotionally, I found that a walk as far as Key West was a little hard to wrap my mind around. My ultimate destination might as well have been China. I needed an interim target, a destination that was far enough to motivate me but close enough not to break my will. That place was on the other side of the state. I set my mind on Spokane.

The drive from Seattle to Spokane along I-90 is about four hours by car. But I wasn’t traveling by car, and 90 is an interstate. The Highway Patrol would definitely have some problems with my route. The preferred (and by “preferred” I mean “legal”) route for bikers and hikers is Highway 2, a scenic two-lane road that climbs through the Cascade mountains up to Stevens Pass, one of Washington’s ski resorts. I knew that at that time of the year there would be snow at the pass, but I pushed it from my mind. I’d deal with that when I got there.

I followed 132nd Avenue north to Redmond Road, then walked about six miles northeast into Redmond. By the time I arrived at the city center, it was around two in the afternoon, and the traffic was heavy.

I was a bit conspicuous traveling through downtown Redmond with a backpack and sleeping bag slung over my back, and I drew a lot of curious glances, but I didn’t care. The first casualty of hitting rock bottom is vanity.

From the heart of Redmond, I continued north up Avondale Road. The walk was flat, and the side of the road was wet and spongy, carpeted with copper-hued pine needles fallen from the trees that lined the route. As I walked farther away from the city, I noticed that my mood softened a little. The sounds of birds and water, the rhythmic fall of my feet, and the cool, fresh air untied my mind from the craziness of the night before. I’ve always believed that a good walk in the woods is as effective as psychotherapy. Nature is, has always been, the greatest of healers.

By Woodinville—about sixteen miles from Bellevue—my legs already felt tired, which was a bad omen. Even though I was an avid hiker and runner, the last four weeks I had sacrificed everything to be with McKale, including exercise. Not surprisingly, I had lost muscle and gained weight—enough at least that my pants were snug at the waist.

There was a Safeway grocery store at the edge of town, and I stopped in for supplies and to get something to eat. I bought two quart bottles of water, a pint bottle of orange juice, a box of peanut butter and chocolate energy bars, two boxes of frosted blueberry Pop-Tarts, two Braeburn apples, a Bartlett pear, a bag of trail mix, and a sixteen-ounce bag of jerky.

People instinctively fear people with beards (like Santa Claus, or the homeless guy who sits next to you on the bus), when, historically speaking, it should be mustaches we most worry about (e.g., Hitler, Stalin, John Wilkes Booth).

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

After some deliberation, I purchased a travel pack of shampoo and a package of disposable razors and shaving gel. I had considered letting my beard grow until I looked like one of the ZZ Top guys, but decided against it. The truth is, I’ve never liked wearing beards. I grew a goatee once, but McKale said it hurt to kiss me and threatened to withhold her lips until I shaved it off. (She also told me that it made me look like Satan. I don’t know how she knew what Satan looked like, but the goatee came off that night.)

My pack was noticeably heavier as I left the Safeway. I continued walking north until I reached Highway 522, and turned east. I was finally free of suburbia. The forest around me was overgrown on both sides, thick with ferns, evergreens, and lichen-flocked black cottonwoods.

In spite of the ballast I’d added, the walk became easier as the road gradually descended, and my pack seemed to be pushing me downhill.

Seattle is amphibious. Even when I couldn’t see water, I could hear it somewhere, an underground stream or viaduct or a roadside waterfall. Under these conditions other cities would mold or rot—but on this side of Washington, wet is the natural state of things—like a salamander’s back.

By four-thirty darkness was already starting to fall. As daylight faded, the temperature dropped to the low forties. I decided not to take chances with my remaining light and find a place to camp.

I had just reached Echo Lake when I encountered a bank rising 30 feet or more into thick forest, providing a screen from the road. I climbed the bank, grabbing on to ferns and foliage to avoid slipping on the muddy hill. At the top, I looked down and saw a small inlet. I wasn’t the first to discover the site. There was a flat area where someone had camped before, evidenced by rocks gathered into a fire pit.

I hiked down the ravine to the edge of the water, found a dry spot, and laid down my pack. I looked around again to make sure I was alone, then I pulled the tent out of my pack.

Even though I had written the brochure for this tent, I’d never actually assembled it. Fortunately, it was as easy to construct as I had promised. I was glad for this. Whether I was selling tents or politicians, more times than not, I wrote my pitches based on what the product should be, not necessarily what it was. This made me a professional liar. At least I was right about the tent.

I rolled out my self-inflating pad, then laid out my sleeping bag, a down-filled mummy sack. I took off my clothes, climbed inside, and lay back with my head sticking outside of the tent’s vinyl screen door. The sky was veiled behind layers of thin, black clouds. I looked at the fire pit.

When I was twelve years old, in scouting, my scoutmaster told us that the first thing one should do when lost in the wilderness is start a fire. He asked us why, and we offered our answers. Heat. Warmth. To keep wild animals away. To signal rescuers where we were.

“All good answers,” he said, “but none of them what I’m looking for. You start a fire to keep yourself from panicking.”

I should have started a fire. As night descended, so did the panic of my situation. I realized that I was not walking alone. I was being followed by three fellow sojourners: grief, bitterness, and despair. I might get ahead of them for a while, but they always caught up. I wondered what kind of legs they had and how many miles they’d follow me and across how many state lines. The whole way?

I could hardly believe that just that morning I was living in a $2 million home with a computerized home environment system, a king-sized canopy bed with a plush mattress, and Egyptian cotton sheets with a hundred thousand thread count. (I might have exaggerated that last fact.) Now I was living in a tent. My world was upside down. I wanted to tell McKale about it. She’d call me a crazy old coot. She’d say, “I can’t believe you’re actually doing this.” Then she’d say, “Yes I do. You’re a dream chaser.”

I realized that this was how my life would be from now on—not necessarily living in a tent, but living in contrast to my former existence. Like the Gregorian calendar’s Anno Domini, my life would likewise be designated, Before and After McKale.

I had been with her for so long that not only did everything remind me of her, everything I experienced was viewed relative to her—what she liked, hated, laughed at, or endured for my sake.

I couldn’t believe I had to live the rest of my life without her.

CHAPTER

Twenty-four

Today I met a man without hands. He is a living, breathing metaphor of my life.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Birds woke me. I didn’t know what species they were, other than annoying. The racket was probably my fault. They were likely just screeching at me for intruding on their world.

Almost as soon as I woke, the pain returned. If you’ve known loss, you know what I mean. Every morning since McKale’s death had been that way—within moments of consciousness, I felt the heaviness of grief settle over me. If nothing else, grief is, at least, reliable.

I sat up in my tent and rubbed my legs. My calves were sore from the previous day’s walk. I figured I had covered close to twenty miles. I hadn’t walked that far in one day since McKale signed us up for the Muscular Dystrophy fundwalker. I should have stretched before going to bed. I just didn’t think about it. I had too many other things on my mind.

I opened my pack and brought out a Pop-Tart and the bottle of orange juice. There were two Pop-Tarts in a package, but I ate just one and returned the other. I drank the whole bottle of juice. Then I took out my razor and cream and went to the water to shave. The lapping inlet water was cold, and it braced my face as I rinsed off the shaving cream, clouding the water white. I’m soft, I thought. I’ve become soft.

McKale’s and my idea of roughing it was a hotel without twenty-four-hour room service. I once read that in the Wild West, men would avoid baths because they believed warm water made them weak. They might have been right. Warm water had made me weak.

As I was putting back my razor, my cell phone rang, startling me. I had forgotten that I had it. I instinctively checked to see who was calling, but I didn’t recognize the number, so I didn’t answer. The phone was my last link to the world I had left behind. It was more than a link—this sleek device was filled with contacts, schedules, and history—a microcosm of the very world I was walking away from. I did what every cell phone user has occasionally fantasized. I hurled the device as far as I could into the lake. It barely made a splash.

I stuffed everything back into my pack, then left my first camp, climbing the tall bank to get back to the road. The hill was slick, and I slipped on the way down the other side, leaving my rear and pack caked with mud and pieces of torn fern. I stood, wiped off my seat and backpack, then started on my walk.

I walked for about two hours before I reached the town of Monroe. I had asked the checker at the Woodinville Safeway about Monroe, and she said the town was nothing. Her assessment was flawed. It was bigger than I expected.

I stopped and stretched at the town’s welcome sign. Every town has a sign, like Welcome doormats. While most signs display no more creativity than a name, the more ambitious towns use these signs as advertisements. None of them say what they really mean: OKAY, YOU’RE HERE. SPEND SOME MONEY, THEN GO HOME.

As I walked down Monroe’s main street, I was aware that I was being watched from business windows, parking lots, and passing cars. This was a phenomenon that I would never fully get used to but would come to expect. In the smaller towns, a stranger walking through is met with mild suspicion or curiosity and usually both. No doubt at least one of the towns along my route would someday print an article about my appearance that would read like this.

Unidentified, hat-wearing man walks through town

Tuesday afternoon around five p.m., an unidentified man, wearing a hat, walked through town. He left no clues as to why he came and just as quickly departed, leaving some Beauville residents feeling a little dejected. Beauville neighbor Mrs. Wally Earp told the Bugle, “I hope he comes back and stays awhile. I think he’d find we can be right hospitable. He didn’t even try my apple crisp.” Other residents, like Jack Calhoun of 76 Main Street, were glad to see him gone. “A man wearing that kind of hat can’t be up to any good. Probably a socialist.” Millicent Turnpikes, owner of Millie’s Glad Rags on Nutmeg Street, had this to say: “I don’t know what he was up to, but it was a fine hat.”

The unidentified man and his hat were unavailable for comment.

A half-mile into Monroe, I passed a one-story, stucco building with a raptor dinosaur perched on the sign out front. (I’m not sure what the raptor had to do with braces, though the specimen displayed a fine, nicely aligned row of flesh-tearing ivories.)

DR. BILL’S ORTHODONTICS

Good advertising, I thought. Every boy in town will want braces.

I had long exhausted the carbs from my one-Pop-Tart breakfast, but I felt more unsociable than hungry, and the restaurants I encountered all looked crowded, so I just kept on walking. I passed a handful of espresso shacks, which in Washington is a frequent and welcomed phenomenon. I’d wager that Seattle has more coffee shops per capita than anywhere else in the world. No wonder that it’s the birthplace of Starbucks.

Near the end of the town was a Jack in the Box drive-through. The restaurant was probably as crowded as any of the diners I’d already passed, but this was my last chance for a hot meal, and my stomach was now growling at me, so I went inside.

As I entered, I noticed the furtive, anxious glances of diners already seated. I had no beard, so I figured there must be something about the backpack that made them nervous. My mind constructed this tongue twister:

Unsettled Seattler unsettles the settled.

Just my ad-guy mind amusing itself. Or gone haywire. I ordered myself an egg and sausage sandwich and two cartons of orange juice, then sat down in a vacant corner to eat. There was a Seattle Times on the table next to me, and I grabbed it to look over the headlines. I didn’t see the man walk up to me.

“Hey, sorry to bother you man, but could you help me get some breakfast?”

I looked up. My petitioner had a bushy beard and wild hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed for a year or more. There were deep scars across his chin, but they were not as noticeable as the brown, wart-like spots that marred his skin as if mud had been splashed on his face. He was wearing light blue hospital scrubs that were loose and fell far enough below his waist to almost expose him. I was wondering why he didn’t pull them up when I noticed his hands. He had none. From the look of the stubs, they appeared to have been surgically removed at his wrists. What would require the amputation of both hands?

“. . . A big meal with pancakes is three dollars,” he said.

Just a few days ago this man would have made me uncomfortable. But now I felt none of that. I suppose I felt a kinship of sorts. We were both homeless. I opened my wallet and pulled out four dollars. “Here.”

“Thanks.” He reached forward, pressing the bills between his two stubs. “I appreciate it.”

He walked up to the front, dropped the bills on the counter, and said something to an anxious young woman at the cash register who wouldn’t look at him. A few moments later, he returned to the dining room with a sack of food. He sat down at the table next to me. I looked to see how he would eat pancakes without hands.

“Thanks again,” he said to me.

“Don’t mention it,” I said. I returned to the paper but I kept looking up at him. He lifted a pancake with his stubs and began to eat. After a moment I asked, “What’s your name?”

He turned and looked at me. “Will.”

“Nice to meet you, Will,” I said. He extended one arm. It was a little awkward, but I shook it. “What happened to your hands?”

He didn’t seem bothered by my question. “The thing is, I like bikes,” he said.

“Bikes?”

“Yeah. Mountain bikes. Diamondback. And hills. There’s something about hills. It’s a seduction, you know. Hills are a seduction. I had an accident on a hill. The doctors, well, they saved my life, but they had to take these.” He held up his arms. “But they saved my life. That’s good.”

“Is it?” I said.

He looked at me quizzically, then reached down and lifted the pancake and took another bite. There were little plastic containers of syrup on his tray, but he clearly had no way of opening them.

“Do you want me to open your syrup for you?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

I peeled back one end of the lid on the container and poured syrup over his pancakes. I didn’t know why I was so interested in this man. “Do you have family?” I asked.

He looked away, and I noticed he twitched. “Yes.”

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“The shelter when it’s cold.”

“Like now?”

“This isn’t cold.”

“Is there a shelter around here?”

“It’s in Seattle.”

I wondered what he was doing in Monroe. Of course, I could ask myself the same thing. It had never occurred to me that the homeless I encountered downtown near my agency might have plans and schedules. “What do you do during the day?”

“I walk,” he said. “I used to walk around the mall. But they don’t like me there much. Sometimes the security hassles me. One time they beat me up for fun, so I don’t go so much in person. I just think about it. It’s easier to just pretend to go. It’s better to pretend. Or wherever. I can pretend to go anywhere. To a movie. To a restaurant. I can go to New York City or Paris or Moscow. None of it don’t cost a dime. It’s the same, just easier. But it’s better to read books.”

“You like books?” I asked.

“Yeah. But I don’t like the bookstores anymore. They don’t like me there. They’ve never beat me up, but they have food in the bookstores and coffee, except the Crown bookstores, but there’s not so many of them anymore. You shouldn’t have coffee and food around books. It’s not right. I like King.”

“Stephen King?”

He leaned forward. “Do you know Mr. King?”

“I know of his books.”

“I like Dumas and Mitchum. I don’t know about textbooks.” His expression suddenly turned grave. “In school, the teacher had the teacher book. It had all the answers in it. Why don’t they just give the teacher book to the students? Then they’d have all the answers. Isn’t that why they go to school?

“You know, everywhere I go, I just . . . I keep looking for the teacher book. If I could just find it, then it could be . . .” He looked me over. I felt like he was trying to decide whether he could trust me or not. He leaned forward and said in a softer voice, “I found it once, you know. I found it and started to read it, then I passed out before I could get all the answers. I was on the ground, unconscious. It was too much to know. Like, in the Bible, when there are things that people just can’t know, so God seals them in books. Now I just can’t find the teacher book. If I could just find it . . . it has all the answers.”

“It doesn’t have all the answers,” I said. “Nothing has all the answers.”

He grimaced. “The teacher book has the answers.”

“There is no teacher book,” I said angrily.

He looked at me curiously, then he said, “You don’t know what can happen in a blink. Time is nothing. The whole history of humanity may just be in a blink. We don’t know. I think I sometimes blink and read every book in the world. Every book in the world but the teacher book.”

“There is no teacher book,” I shouted. “There are no answers. Horrific things happen for no damn reason. Just look at your hands.”

He looked at me as if I was crazy. Others in the dining room were looking at me too. After a moment he said, “I don’t read books anymore, I pretend them. And I preserve them. Books used to be beautiful, they had this . . . you know . . . board cover. You need to preserve them. Especially with all the coffee and food they have at book-stores now.”

I finished eating my sandwich, chugged down my last carton of juice, then stood. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. I pulled a five-dollar bill out of my wallet and dropped it on the table next to his pancakes. “That’s for lunch.”

“Thanks.” He went back to his breakfast.

I lifted my pack over my shoulder and started walking again. About a block from the Jack in the Box was the turnoff to Highway 2. Even though I’d already traveled nearly 25 miles, I felt like this was the first step of my journey.

The first building I passed was the Reptile Zoo. From the outside, it looked like a rundown Cracker Barrel restaurant. I imagined inside there was a bunch of glass terrariums with dusty-eyed rattlesnakes and venom-mouthed Gila monsters. I wondered why we are so fascinated with things that can kill us. On another day, I probably would have stopped and paid the $7 to go inside because I like things like that. Always have.

I kept walking. Less than a block from the museum there was an old school bus that had been converted into a restaurant. It was called the Old School BBQ. McKale loved barbeque. She would like that, I thought.

About five miles outside the town of Monroe, I passed a small structure that some believer had built alongside the road. There was a weathered, painted sign out front that read in a fancy, dated script:

The Wayside Chapel

Pause, Rest, Worship.

The chapel was a shedlike edifice that had a steeple added to it. I crossed the road to look inside. There were brightly colored plastic flowers covered in mud in front of the doorway. I slowly opened the door in case someone might be inside, but it was vacant. On the front wall was a large, wooden cross made from stained two-by-fours. There were four pews, each big enough to fit two people.

I stepped inside and walked up to the front of the chapel. There were notes and letters left on the pulpit by passersby. There was also a stack of music CDs someone had left on the front pew: Marvin Pious and the Holy Crooners—Make a Joyful Noise. There was a picture of Marvin and his band, in matching orange polyester jumpsuits. Marvin’s haircut would be best described as a cross between an ’80s mullet and a Chia Pet. There was a large Bible, an aged, white leather book, fanned open to 2 Thessalonians:

Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace . . .

Good hope through grace, I thought. I closed the Bible. Love and consolation? In a sudden flash of anger, I threw the book against the wall. Love, hope, and grace? What a joke. I walked out of the place, wishing I hadn’t stopped.

I walked nearly a mile before I felt calm again. But the anger was still there. The emotion had always been there, concealed beneath a thin veneer of civility. The chapel had just exposed it.

I turned my attention to the road. The highway straightened a little, and I could clearly see the mountains in the distance. They were white with clouds and snow pack. Trees jutted up through the snow-covered slopes like beard stubble. The mountain was my destination. That’s a really long way to walk, I thought. I shook my head, amused by my stupidity. This was nothing compared to where I was going. Crossing the country, I’d face a half-dozen or so mountain passes that would make this one look like a pitcher’s mound.

I had walked about 12 miles when I reached the town of Sultan. The only way into the town was over a narrow metal bridge with no pedestrian lane and cars screaming by at 50 miles per hour or more. I wasn’t sure what to do. It looked like a sure way to get hit. For the record, I didn’t fear dying. I feared almost dying. They’re not the same thing.

I puzzled over what to do for a moment, then found a solution. There was another bridge running parallel to the highway bridge. A train bridge. There was no almost dying with a train. Trains don’t swerve.

I climbed over to the bridge and began walking across, slowly picking my way between the heavy rusted rails and the wood trestles. The bridge was about 70 yards across, and travel across it was slow. Still, I reached the other side without the least excitement. I wondered if the track was even used anymore. Part of me was disappointed. I stepped off the tracks and walked into the town.

I stopped for lunch at a deli. I’m not sure that the deli even had a name, which, in retrospect, was probably a wise choice on their part. I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich and a Coke with a small tub of potato salad. Even as hungry as I was, I ate very little. The food was awful. This was one of those meals that if you had to choose between eating the food or razorblades, you would stop to weigh the pros and cons. Before I left the deli, I took out a Pop-Tart and then ate it as I walked.

The next town I came to was called Startup, a “blink and you’ll miss it” community that seemed to consist mostly of mobile homes and tall grass.

As Bill Bryson observed, American towns are usually named after “the first white person to arrive or the last Indian to leave.” Here, I thought, was a welcome exception—a city council that had shown a little initiative. I was wrong. I learned the town name’s origin from a plaque mounted near the gas station where I stopped to use the bathroom.

It turns out that the town was originally called Wallace, after the first white settler, but the post office kept sending the town’s mail to Wallace, Idaho, so a vote was taken, and the name was officially changed to Startup, not after some hopeful ambition, rather after George Startup, manager of the Wallace Lumber Company. Bryson was wrong. City naming, like everything else in this world, is a function of money and politics.

The next town was Gold Bar, marked by a sign that declared itself Gateway to the Cascades. In the center of the town was a large totem pole and several coffee huts: The Coffee Coral, Let’s Go Espresso, and Espresso Chalet.

As I walked through those small places, I couldn’t help but wonder about their inhabitants. How they came to settle there and, more puzzling, why they stayed. Was it just because it’s what they know? Is human nature really that clinging?

Gold Bar had a roadside church, slightly bigger than the one I had stopped at—Vitality Christian Church—a one-room shack with a large cross nailed to the outside wall. This time I had the sense to just keep walking.

Rain fell off and on during the day—not enough to stop my walking, but enough to soak the bottoms of my pants and keep me cold and miserable. I had walked about 20 miles and was thinking about making camp when I saw a sign for Zeke’s Drive-in—home of world famous shakes.

It’s a curious phenomenon that nearly all of these roadside stands had something they’re supposedly world famous for. I wondered if it was just marketing hype or if something had actually happened to make the proprietor feel worthy of the claim.

Next to the drive-in was a red train caboose. As I drew near, I noticed the land behind it was marked with NO TRESPASSING signs. I decided to get some dinner and ask about nearby campsites.

The menu was hand painted on a sheet of plywood mounted to the outside wall. Zeke’s had the usual drive-in fare except for one standout—the ostrich burger. Unlike me, McKale liked to try new things and probably would have ordered it.

A tall man with amber hair stood at the window watching me approach. The grill behind him was flaring with small grease fires. When I was ten feet from the window, he asked, “What can I get you?”

“What does an ostrich burger taste like?”

From the readiness of his pitch, I guessed he’d already been asked this ten thousand times. “Ostrich is popular. It’s red meat, you know, just like beef, but leaner. Very lean. It’s great for people who are watching their waistlines.”

McKale definitely would have ordered it. My waistline wasn’t much of a concern for me these days, but I was curious. “I’ll have one of those,” I said. “What’s the difference between the regular ostrich burger and the deluxe ostrich burger?”

“Cheese and pickles,” he said.

“I’ll have the deluxe.”

“You want French fries to go with that?”

“Sure.”

He jotted this down with a stub of a pencil.

“And, I’d like one of your world-famous shakes.” I stressed the words world-famous, as if adding quotation marks with my voice, but he didn’t react.

“What kind?”

At least two-thirds of the menu was a listing of shakes and malts, with flavors ranging from banana caramel to grasshopper. In addition there were two seasonal specials, gingerbread and rhubarb. I asked which was better.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you prefer gingerbread or rhubarb.”

Ask a dumb question. “I’ll try the rhubarb.”

“Good choice,” he said. He rang up my order. I handed him a ten-dollar bill, and he gave me back some change and a receipt. “You’re number thirty-four,” he said, which I found mildly amusing since there was no one else waiting.

“Are these woods behind your restaurant yours?”

“No. I’m not sure who owns them. It’s private property. One day the NO TRESPASSING signs just popped up.”

“Would anyone hassle me if I camped back there?”

“Doubt it. Every now and then, I’ll see someone crawl out of there in the morning. In fact, we had a fellow lived back there for more than a year. No one made a fuss about that. He wasn’t shy about it, either. He built himself a little shack. I don’t remember his name.” He turned back to the girl at the grill. “What was that guy’s name who lived in the woods back there?”

She said something, and he nodded, “Oh, yeah.” He turned back. “His name was Itch. His father was a big-wig politician in Seattle. Lived back there for more than a year. Don’t know why he chose that place. Just liked it, I guess. He’d walk up and down the highway and pick up people’s lost change and aluminum cans, and when he had enough money, he’d come by and get something to eat. One day he just up and left. Haven’t seen him since. So why do you ask?”

I’d forgotten what I’d asked. “Ask what?”

“About camping back there.”

“I’m looking for a place to spend the night.”

“Well, it’s gonna rain on you.” There was another flare-up behind him. “Where you from?”

“Seattle.”

He looked me over a moment, then said, “You can sleep in the caboose.”

I looked at the big red caboose. “That one right here?” Another stupid question.

“Only one I got. The mattresses aren’t there anymore. But if you don’t mind sleeping on wood.”

“Thank you. The shelter would be appreciated.”

Someone behind him shouted, “Number thirty-four!”

He turned around and carefully put my food in a sack, then handed it to me with the shake. “When you’re done eating, just come back up, and I’ll unlock the caboose for you.”

“Thank you.”

There was an enclosed dining area in a separate building behind the restaurant. The room was clean and held six picnic tables. The walls were covered with maps of area hiking trails, and there was an article about bear attacks. (The article was published by the local Chamber of Commerce, so it had a lot of good things to say about bears.)

I sat down at a table and unwrapped the wax paper from my ostrich burger. Ostrich meat may look like beef, but it isn’t as good. I just put more ketchup on it.

It felt good to be off my feet. I hadn’t changed my socks since the day before, and I felt as if my flesh was absorbing them. I looked forward to taking them off, though not yet. I was eating.

When I finished my meal, I cleaned up the table, then walked back out to the drive-in. Three cars were now parked out front, and a line had formed at the window. The man saw me and said, “Just hang tight for a minute. I’ll have to unlock it for you.” About twenty minutes later he emerged from a side door. “This way.”

I followed him around back, then up a short set of stairs to the caboose. He pulled out a key ring and unlocked the door. Both of us stepped inside, standing in the narrow aisle that ran the length of the car. The interior of the caboose had been painted submarine gray and smelled like wet paint. “Don’t use the head,” he said. “It doesn’t work, and you’d have a real mess on your hands. You can use the facilities behind the restaurant. I’ll leave the door unlocked.”

I was surprised at how trusting he was of a complete stranger.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

He walked out, shutting the door behind himself. I had never actually been inside a train (unless you count the Park train at Disneyland), let alone slept in one. The berth was a long wooden tray where I suppose a mattress once lay. I laid out my pad, then unzipped my sleeping bag and lay it across the space. I lay back to test it out. Not bad. Hard, but I was getting used to that. For the most part, the soft things of my life were gone.

As night fell, the rain started coming down harder, and the sound was amplified by the wooden box I was sheltered in. I was glad to be inside.

I pulled the flashlight from my pack and my road journal and jotted down a few notes for the day. I wrote a little about the homeless man at the Jack in the Box and the teacher’s book. I wondered if, in time, I would become like him—rambling about things others couldn’t understand. The teacher book.

I hated the night and the demons that waited until dark to come out. Even though I thought about McKale all day and sometimes about Kyle or his treachery, there was some power in walking that kept my demons at bay. But in the silence and still of the night, they came out in legion. At such times, I felt like a stranger in my own mind, wandering through a mysterious and precarious landscape.

I think it was Twain who wrote, “I suppose I’m like the rest of humanity: not quite sane at night.”

CHAPTER

Twenty-five

I spent the night sleeping in a train caboose. I can’t imagine what the new day will bring except, of course, more walking. And more rain.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The world was quiet when I woke. The dawn sun had not yet climbed over the mountain, and the world was still blue and gray. The air was cold enough that I could see my breath.

I packed up my things. It wasn’t raining anymore, but the world outside was still wet, as if the rain had stopped just an hour or two earlier. I walked around to the back of the darkened drive-in and pushed on the bathroom door. I was glad when it opened.

I shaved with warm water, then filled my canteen with cold. I shrugged on my pack, then walked back out to the road.

The highway passed over a river, and below me there was a group of people unloading kayaks from a truck. No one was in a hurry. It occurred to me that neither was I. For the first time, I thought about the simplicity of my new life. No deadlines. No appointments or meetings. No e-mails or phone conferences. All I had to think about were the necessities—water, food, sleep, and occasional shelter.

The road was veiled in a haze, a cool mist that either rose from the asphalt or fell from the sky, I wasn’t sure which. After a steep climb of a few miles, I saw waterfalls cascading off the north side of the mountains. To the south of me was the Skykomish River. Even in my state of mind, I couldn’t deny the beauty of this country.

Around ten, I entered the city of Baring, where I ate a simple but delicious breakfast of eggs and link sausage at a roadside diner. It was a quiet day, gray and morose. If the sky wasn’t overcast I still would have been in shadow from the lush canopy of trees. The deep forest was green in moss and lichen, and even the concrete rails of the bridges were flocked with moss.

At Moneycreek campground, I stopped to rest and eat an apple, jerky, and a couple handfuls of trail mix.

The road had become more narrow and dangerous. Compounding the problem was that this city did not tolerate slow drivers. It’s the only place I had ever seen with signs threatening drivers with tickets if they had more than five cars trailing behind them. The offered solution was “shoulder driving,” an obvious hazard for bikers and hikers. Baring wasn’t a place to be walking after dusk. At least if you wanted to live.

In Skykomish, I stopped at the only place I could find to eat lunch, the Sky Deli. The next town was farther than I could reasonably walk, so I resigned myself to my last hot meal for the day. I ordered spaghetti with raguot and garlic bread. I let the food settle a bit, then headed back out to the road.

By mile marker 56, I had walked nearly 25 miles, almost all of it uphill, which became obvious even without the elevation signs that were now posted at regular intervals. I could feel it in my calves. The first of the elevation signs was at 1,500 feet where, for the first time, I encountered snow on the road.

By dusk, my legs were cramping, and I started looking in earnest for a place to camp. There were few possibilities, as the road was surrounded by steep terrain on both sides. An hour later, I seriously wondered how much farther I could walk and scolded myself for not stopping earlier. I even considered walking back 7 miles to where I saw the last campsite, but the thought of losing those hard-earned miles was too painful, so I just trudged ahead, hoping for something.

In the next mile, the elevation rose to 1,800 feet, a 300-foot climb evidenced by the increasing amount of snow on the mountain and shoulders. My thighs and calves were burning, while my breath froze in front of me. I was near my limit when, through the dark, I saw a sign for Deception Falls campground. I was filled with relief.

I crossed the street to the camp, stepping over the chain pulled across the entrance. The site was closed for the season. There were NO CAMPING signs posted in the parking lot, but this did nothing to deter me. My legs were gone. I had no choice but to stop.

The public outhouses were locked. I followed a cut trail down into a dark, wet valley. The river and falls roared loud enough to drown out the sound of the highway. The foliage was thick and green, accented with occasional patches of snow. It seemed as if moss coated everything, and I was certain that if I stayed there long enough, the ecosystem would claim me as well.

The falls were not high but strong, a collusion of violent, mountain-borne waters falling 100 feet or more in a series of sharp rocky inclines. According to the engraved wooden park sign, the waters pounded down with seven tons of force. At the bottom of the sign was a quote:

“There is nothing as weak as water, but when it attacks and is persistent, nothing can withstand it.”

—Lao Tse

Beneath that quote were the handwritten words:

All waterfalls are temporary. One day all this will be worn away, and the flow of water will just transition smoothly from one place to another. All things pass with time.

Everyone’s a philosopher, I thought. The words may have been true, but it wasn’t going to change in my lifetime.

There were more NO CAMPING signs on the trail below. That time of the year, the public was not even supposed to be hiking there. I doubted that the Park Service patrolled these places so late in the season, but in case they did, I found a flat piece of ground, hidden from the trail, to construct my tent. It was dark by the time I finished.

The air was considerably warmer inside my tent, but the sound of the water was only slightly dulled. I laid out my pad and sleeping bag, then pulled off my shoes and socks to let my feet breathe. The crash of the falls drowned out not only the occasional car on the highway above but my thoughts as well. For the first time in days, I slept soundly.

CHAPTER

Twenty-six

I ran into an old friend today. At least someone I mistook for a friend. Judas-Ralph. Traitors are the lowliest of God’s creatures, despised by those they betray and secretly loathed by those whom they serve.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke to strange voices. They were not speaking English. German or Lithuanian perhaps. (I don’t know why I thought that. I have no idea what Lithuanian sounds like.) Whatever the dialect, the voices were soon gone.

My legs were deservedly sore, and I stretched them as far as my sleeping bag would permit.

The air was cold enough that I could see my breath, which had condensed on the pitched vinyl roof of my tent in a plane of pregnant drops. As I sat up, I brushed the side of the tent, which brought down a shower of freezing droplets.

I opened my pack and lifted out my water and Pop-Tarts. I was famished and ate two full packages, four pastries in all. I reminded myself of Tolkien’s Hobbits, eating their elven lembas bread. Only my staple was Pop-Tarts. For the first time I wished I had brought something else.

I put on my parka, hat, and gloves, then climbed out of the tent. I walked to the edge of the water to shave, but it was freezing, so I prudently decided that one day’s growth wasn’t going to harm anyone.

I collapsed my tent and was packed up in just a matter of minutes. Even with sore legs, I was eager to get going. According to my map, Stevens Pass was about 8 miles up the road. There would be facilities there—a lodge, restrooms, and restaurant. I was looking forward to stopping for some warm food and comfort, then crossing over to the other side of the mountain. The downhill side.

I climbed up out of the campground, threw away some trash in the camp’s garbage cans—empty water bottles and wrappers—then walked back out to the road, crossing over the falls that passed beneath.

In the morning light, I could clearly see the mountain rising ahead of me, white and silent. I was in its lap. My pack felt heavier than the day before, though I knew it wasn’t. I was just worn out.

In the next 3 miles, the road climbed to 2,600 feet, and the shoulders of the road were completely covered in snow, though fortunately the snowplows had pushed it back from the bike lane. My taupe hiking boots were stained dark umber, but they were dry inside (except for my sweat), and I was glad that I had taken the time to properly waterproof them.

After another hour of walking, I saw there was more than a foot of snow on the shoulders. I could tell I was getting closer to the summit as most of the cars that passed me were loaded down with skis and tubes. A man on foot looked ridiculously out of place.

There was a rise of another 1,000 feet between the falls and Stevens Pass—which is both the name of the mountain pass and the ski resort perched at its peak. I arrived by mid-morning. The sign outside the resort placed the elevation at 4,061 feet. In the past two days, I had climbed more than 2,500 feet.

The resort was crowded, and the snow-packed parking lot north of the highway was filled nearly to capacity with traffic waiting on both sides of the street to enter.

I fell in with the bustling skiers and walked up to the lodge. The building was crowded with people milling about in brightly colored parkas and ski caps. I was no longer bothered by the crowds, though I felt no sense of belonging either.

I slid my pack off my shoulders and carried it inside the lodge. The first thing I did was use the resort’s restroom, which under the circumstance was an unspeakable luxury. Especially the hot water. I didn’t shave. The men’s room was too busy for that. But I took my time washing my hands and face in the warm water. Afterwards, I went to the restaurant to get something to eat.

The dining room was already crowded for lunch. I found a small, unoccupied table near the front window and laid claim to it with my pack. Then I went up to the counter where I grabbed a plastic tray, then ordered a large hot chocolate, a glazed donut, a double chili cheeseburger, and an extra-large order of cheese fries. The food was expensive compared to what I had been paying, and for the first time I used my debit card. I was happy that they accepted it as I had no idea how much money was in my account.

I carried my food back to the table and devoured it. When I finished eating, I got myself another tall hot chocolate and an apple fritter. For the first time in my life such gluttony brought no guilt. I was steadily losing weight and would probably burn the calories off before dinner.

I took off my parka and hung it over the back of my chair, then just sat, dunking the fritter in my cocoa and taking in the ambience. I wondered why McKale and I had never come here before.

At the table behind me, a pair of stylishly outfitted yuppie parents was trying to talk their little girl into going back out to ski. She didn’t want to and wasn’t shy about telling them or anyone else in the dining room. The room’s occupancy and noise level was such that hardly anyone paid attention to her screaming. The couple was helpless. They first bribed her with a Hello Kitty parka but quickly upped the ante with a karaoke machine, then, pulling out the big guns, went right for the puppy, but she was already out of control (though clearly in control of her parents) and past appeasement.

While I was musing over their dilemma, a short, bowling pin–shaped man with his ski bib pulled down to his waist waddled into the dining room. Something was familiar about his walk and shape. When he removed his ski goggles, my chest constricted. I immediately recognized the bright red hair and thin lips. (And ferretlike face.) It was Ralph, my former head of design and Kyle’s new partner.

He sat down only three tables away from mine where his wife and children were already eating. They were situated near the front door, and I had probably walked right by them on my way in. I was surprised that I hadn’t recognized his wife, Cheryl, but even more so that she was with him. Over the last year, I’d rarely seen them together, in part because she had no apparent interest in his occupation, or him, but more likely because he was having an affair with a woman he met a year earlier at a graphics convention. I don’t know why his betrayal of me surprised me. Cheaters cheat. If he’d cheat on his wife, why should I assume he’d be loyal to me?

Anger warmed through me. I considered either punching him out or telling him off, and preferably both. But as I watched him interact with his wife and children, I decided against either. I was already treading water in an ocean of emotion, and an embarrassing showdown in front of his wife and kids—no matter how much he deserved it—would not really make me feel better.

I took my Ray-Bans from my pack and slid them on, pulled down the brim of my hat, and became invisible. As I sipped my hot chocolate, both Ralph and Cheryl looked my way several times, but neither recognized me. Dressed like this, and with my furry face, I could be Brad Pitt and not be recognized.

Unfortunately, sitting that close to Ralph ruined my stay. I finished my cocoa, then put my parka back on and lifted my pack up over my shoulder. As I approached Ralph’s table, I heard him say to his oldest son, Eric, “Where did you get that thing?”

Eric, a straw-blond twelve-year-old, was playing with some kind of a radio and looked up defiantly. “Nowhere. Someone left it on that table.”

“Well, put it back,” Ralph said. “It’s not yours.”

“Take it easy,” Cheryl said. “He just found it.”

“I don’t care. It’s not his.”

The irony was too great to pass up. It was as if fate had handed me the assist. “He’s right,” I said to Eric. “You don’t want to take something that doesn’t belong to you. That would be wrong.” I looked at Ralph. “Wouldn’t it?”

Ralph and Cheryl looked at me, blinking with surprise. “Excuse me?” Ralph said.

“No, I won’t.” I leaned forward. “Remember, Ralphie, whether it’s Cheryl or me you’re cheating on, it’s all the same. The reward for cheating is you end up in bed with a cheater.”

I turned and walked out of the lodge, sure that Ralph’s eyes were glued to my back. He probably had figured out who I was, but I was the least of his problems now. At least he and Cheryl would finally have something to talk about.

The air braced my skin as I walked back outside and down to the road. The east side of the pass was all downhill, a decided advantage for hiking, except for the fact that the walking conditions on that side of the mountain were less favorable, and snow covered the lines marking the bike lane. I wasn’t sure if it was the eastern winds that had caused the unfavorable conditions on one side of the mountain, but the pass was the dividing line between King and Chelan County, so politics might have had more to do with it than weather. Even with the traction of my boots, I found the road slippery, and as I left the resort, I slipped and fell in front of a line of cars, which was more embarrassing than painful, and I hoped that Ralph wasn’t watching. I almost fell two other times, and I began mentally drafting a strongly worded complaint to the county roads department.

Fortunately, by late afternoon, the elevation had fallen to 2,800 feet, and the snow was considerably diminished on the road, gathered only in occasional crusted patches that I just stepped over.

My thoughts kept wandering back to my Ralph encounter. I wondered if Cheryl already knew he was cheating. I didn’t regret saying what I did. Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold. I have no idea what that means, but it seemed especially apropos for a ski resort. At any rate, I could have done much worse.

At twilight, an Acura MDX that was headed down the mountain slowed down next to me and a blond teenage girl leaned out the passenger window. “Want a ride?” she asked. I guessed she’d been drinking. Coldplay blared from their stereo.

“No thank you.”

“Where you going?”

“Florida.”

“Where is he going?” the driver asked. She was also a teenage girl. I hoped she hadn’t been drinking. Just then a car pulled up behind their car, honked, then swerved around them.

“He said Florida,” the window blonde said.

The driver said something I couldn’t hear. Then the girl leaned back out the window. “We’ll drive you.”

“Thanks. I’d rather walk.”

She laughed. “Have fun.”

The car sped off.

After two more miles, there was no more snow on the road or shoulders, which I was especially pleased about since it was time to make camp. According to my map, there was a town ahead, but I wasn’t sure how far or how big it was, or even if there would be any place to stay. I hoped there would be. I was chilled to the core and desperately wanted a warm bath and a place to wash my sweat-stained clothes.

In spite of the time I spent lingering at the pass, I had covered a lot of ground—the most of any day so far—nearly 30 miles. My legs were okay, except my knees hurt a little from walking downhill.

As I came around a gradual bend in the road, I saw something set back through the trees. There was an unpaved, gravel pull-off, and not far behind it was a collection of dilapidated yellow shacks. They looked like they may have once been one-room rentals for skiers, but they had obviously been deserted for many years. One of the shacks was completely collapsed, the roof now lying on the ground, its asphalt-tile roof covered in moss and leaves. The other structures were in varying degrees of disrepair.

There was something about the place that made me anxious, and as I approached the first shack, I had the sudden macabre thought that I might find something inside that I didn’t want to see. I suppose it reminded me of the kind of place serial killers hid things in True Crime stories. I didn’t know what made me think of that.

I looked inside the first structure. There were no bodies, but it was clear that I wasn’t the first human to find the place. The interior was a man-sized rat’s nest. The room was filled with some bizarre junk—drained beer bottles, a molded mattress, an army jacket, the back seat of a Ford Pinto, a purple brassiere, empty plastic antifreeze bottles, and shredded newspapers.

I checked out the other shacks. They also had wood floors likewise heaped with their own eclectic contributions from past occupants. Two of them still had remnants of the original carpet—rotted and spotted black with mold like a leopard’s hide.

The windows were all broken out of them, and they offered only a little shelter, but there is something about a roof overhead that makes one feel more secure.

The shack I settled on was structurally the most sound of the four and had a fireplace that was still intact. I inspected the hearth and chimney, then gathered wood from one of the fallen structures and started a fire. The hearth was filled with wet leaves, and the chimney was partially clogged, so smoke backed up inside the room, which wasn’t much of a problem, since there were holes in the roof and walls.

The flame was a thing of beauty as the shack filled with heat and light. I wondered if anyone would notice the fire at night, but I didn’t worry about it. People driving by were going somewhere. They didn’t have time to care about such things.

I laid out my pad and sleeping bag, then rooted through my pack for dinner. There wasn’t much left to eat—an apple, jerky, trail mix, and two energy bars. I should have bought something at the resort; I had planned to, but I was in a bit of a hurry to leave. I finished off the trail mix and jerky, then sat back and slowly ate my apple.

I had accomplished a victory of sorts. The snow and mountain had worried me more than I let on to myself, but it hadn’t really been that big a deal. I wanted to tell someone what I had accomplished, but there was no one who would want to hear. McKale would have wanted to know all about it.

I threw the apple core into the fire, then crawled into my bag to sleep.

CHAPTER

Twenty-seven

It happened again. Sometimes the most frightening place to be is in our own skin.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke in the night at the sound of hail. It was an impressive storm, and even with the dense tree cover overhead, it sounded like a hundred ball-peen hammers pounding on the shack’s roof. Marble-sized ice balls flew in through the window and popped off the floor like popcorn, gathering in one corner in frozen white piles. The fire was smoldering, its embers glowing and occasionally hissing from the hail. I considered starting the fire up again but decided against it. It was too cold to leave my bag.

Suddenly my body turned on me. My chest and throat constricted, my skin flushed, and my heart began to race. This wasn’t the first time I had had a panic attack. It happened a lot when I was a boy in the months following my mother’s death. I never told my father about it. McKale was the only one who ever knew. She was the only one who had ever comforted me through it. Now it was happening because of her. Or lack of her.

I sat there for several minutes, trembling. I reached down the front of my shirt and grasped the ring that hung from the chain around my neck.

Then, in the dark, I groped through my backpack until I found McKale’s camisole. I pulled it out and buried my face in it. Through the silk fabric I shouted, “Why did you leave me! Why did you make me promise to live?”

There was no answer but the pounding hail. I pulled my sleeping bag up over my head and tried to go back to sleep. I couldn’t stop shaking.

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I woke at daybreak. The hail had stopped, replaced by heavy rainfall. I sat up. My back hurt from the hard floor. I climbed out of my bag, and for a few minutes I just sat, listening to the rain, watching a steady stream of water cascade down the east wall and pool near the fireplace. My chest still ached from the night before.

For the first time, I wished I had my cell phone. I felt lonely. I wanted someone to talk to. I wasn’t particular. Anyone who would listen.

It wasn’t just my back and chest that hurt. My whole body ached, but I wasn’t sore from walking, and I wasn’t sick. At least not physically.

I looked out at the rain and sighed. I had no desire to walk. The only thing more painful would be to sit inside a dank, molding box and think.

I was also nearly out of food. I rooted through my backpack and brought out the energy bars. I took one of them, peeled back the wrapper, and ate it. Then I ate the second one, depleting the last of my food. I threw the wrappers on the floor—my contribution to the nest. There was no need to douse the fire. The rain had already taken care of that.

I pulled my poncho on over my parka, put on my hat, flung my backpack over my shoulder, and walked out into the storm. The forest floor was muddy and dark, and torn strips of green leaves littered the ground, shredded from the night’s hail.

As I left the protection of the trees’ canopy, the rain loudly bounced off my hat and poncho. I truly loved my hat. It was one thing that made me happy. I could imagine the Aussies in the outback, herding sheep or kangaroos or whatever in their Akubra hats, the rain spitting down on them, rolling off their hats’ brims to their shoulders. The more it rained the more I loved my hat. I wondered if I would look ridiculous wearing it in Key West.

The traffic was light, whether because it was still early or because everyone else was smarter than me and stayed inside, I don’t know. The road still gradually descended, though not as much as the first few miles from the pass. I was glad for this, as not just my spirit was resistant to walking, but my body as well. I felt like I was forcing every step. I hoped there was something in the next town.

Ninety minutes later I spotted a building. The 59er Diner—a relatively ambitious establishment for a gas-stop town—was a fifties’ style building with bright pink streamers and a neon sign that proclaimed WORLD FAMOUS SHAKES. I was deliriously happy to see it.

To the east of the building was a small side yard with a healthy grass lawn and a wood fence as eclectically decorated as a yard sale. There were old bicycles and red Radio Flyer wagons, a parking meter, pink flamingos, and a set of drive-in movie speakers.

Behind the yard was a row of small bungalows brightly painted and clean, about twice the size of the shack where I had spent the night and probably not unlike what it looked like a decade or two ago.

I walked up to the restaurant. I held the door while three women exited, then stepped inside to the warmth and the pleasing smell of ice cream and pancake batter. The interior of the building was loud and cluttered with fifties relics. There was a vintage neon-lit jukebox playing vinyl 45s—Elvis’s “Jailhouse Rock”—and a soda counter with chrome-stemmed, vinyl bar stools.

This place was serious about their claim of world-famous shakes. There was a whiteboard with the number of shakes served that year, 23,429 so far, with an appeal to help them break their annual record of 27,462.

A tall, flaxen-haired woman approached me. She wore a pink apron and a name tag that read BETTY SUE. “Nice hat,” she said. “Just you, honey?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Right this way.”

She led me to a round, laminate-topped table in the back of the restaurant. “How’s this?”

“Just great. Thank you.”

“Your waitress will be right with you.”

I took off my pack and leaned it against the wall, then removed my hat and poncho. I set my hat on the table, rolled up the poncho and stowed it in my pack, then sat down. The walls were decorated in a fifties collage of old license plates, Life magazine covers, Elvis paraphernalia, record covers, antique Coca-Cola and Pepsi signs, and pinups of fifties stars: Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Lucille Ball.

There were also printed advertisements from the fifties, including one for an iron that promised to iron 30 percent faster (and so many women are using them!), and another for cool compresses for “tired eyes.”

Mounted on the wall above me was a small black-and-white television playing The Three Stooges. I decided that I truly was impressed with the work that had gone into the place, and not just because I’d spent the night in a landfill.

I pulled a menu from the chrome table stand and looked over their breakfast offerings. Banana pancakes with two eggs just $2.99. Biscuits and gravy $3.49. Everything looked good.

Just then my waitress arrived. She was a little over five feet, thin and didn’t quite fill out the jeans she was wearing. She had long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail and dark, almond-shaped eyes. She looked at me as if she recognized me.

“Hello. Nice hat.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m Flo.” Her introduction was redundant as her name was amply displayed on the license plate–sized name tag on her chest.

“Flo,” I repeated. “What’s your real name?”

She smiled. “You know, in the three years I’ve been here, you’re the first to ask. It’s Ally.”

“Nice to meet you, Ally.”

She rested her hands on her hips, then asked, “Are you okay?”

I was surprised by her question. “Sure. A little wet. A lot wet. But I’m fine.”

She nodded. “Okay. Are you ready to order?”

“Yes. I’ll have the banana pancakes and biscuits and gravy.”

“Hungry,” she said as she wrote it down. “Hungry and soggy. Anything to drink?”

“Orange juice and some hot chocolate.”

“Orange juice. Hot cocoa,” she said. “Be right back.” She spun around and walked away. She returned a minute later with a mug. There was a cloud of cream about half as tall as the cup. “There you are. I hope you wanted whipped cream on your cocoa. I went a little crazy with it. I’ll scoop it off if you don’t.”

“I like whipped cream,” I said.

“Good.”

“Do you know anything about those bungalows out back?”

“Yes. What do you want to know?”

“Are there any vacancies?”

“I’m sure there are.”

“How much are they?”

“About a hundred dollars a night.”

“Do they have hot water?”

She smiled. “Well, of course they do. They’re just like little hotel rooms.”

“How do I rent one?”

“I’ll get you a flier.”

She walked back through a set of swinging doors, then returned with a small, color-copy sales piece. Like the diner, the bungalows were themed. There was a western motif, a tropical island paradise, and the Big Bopper, which looked like an extension of the diner.

“They’re all vacant. It’s $98 a night,” she said. “But I’m sure I could get you a deal.”

“Thank you.”

Ally stepped back from the table. “And your breakfast should be out real soon.”

She returned a few minutes later holding a large platter with a hot pad. “Here you are. Be careful, the plate’s hot.”

The tall, lightly browned biscuits were covered with gravy and garnished with parsley flakes and paprika. As she set the plate down, I noticed two thick scars running horizontally across her right wrist. She caught me looking and quickly withdrew her arm, laying it to her side.

“I talked with the owner,” she said. “He says he’ll rent you a bungalow for just $59 a night. And you can occupy it immediately.”

“Thank you. I’d like that.”

“When you’re done eating, I’ll take you through them. Do you need anything else?”

I looked over the table. “My juice.”

“Of course. Sorry.” She ran back, then returned with a tall glass of orange juice. She handed it to me with her left hand. “That’s on me. Enjoy your meal.”

“Thank you.”

The food was delicious. The biscuits and gravy were especially good. When I finished eating, Ally returned with my bill.

“Anything else?”

“No, I’m good.” I gave her my debit card.

“I’ll ring this up then show you the bungalows.”

A moment later, she returned with my card, the check, and three room keys attached to wooden key chains roughly the size of boat paddles. On each key chain was printed the name of one of the bungalows.

I signed the check, then put on my hat, lifted my pack and followed her out the back door.

The first bungalow she took me to had a tropical decor. The walls were brightly painted with island foliage, exotic birds, parrots, and cockatiels. I wasn’t particular about where I stayed and said so, but Ally insisted on showing me her favorite—the Big Bopper. “I think this is the nicest of the three,” she said unlocking the door.

The interior was clean and painted robin’s egg blue, the same color as a Tiffany’s gift box. The walls were covered with pictures from the fifties: Sinatra, Brando, Elvis, but predominantly of Marilyn Monroe, which included a large poster of her kneeling on a bed. The front room had a black-and-white checkered tile landing, a couch, and a television.

The kitchen was small, crowded with a microwave oven, a small laminate table with two chrome-back chairs, a small refrigerator, an electric fan, and a porcelain sink with two pink fuzzy dice hanging from the ceiling above it. The bathroom had a shower bath with plastic shower curtains printed with pictures of silhouetted girls in poodle skirts.

“This is perfect,” I said. I laid my pack against the front wall. “I’ll take it.”

“Don’t you want to see the Western bungalow?”

“No, you said this is your favorite. I’ll take your word for it.”

“Here’s your key.” She walked to the front door. “I work until seven tonight, so if you need anything, you know where to find me.”

“Thank you.”

“You are very welcome. Have a nice stay.”

She stepped outside, and I shut the door behind her.

The first thing I did was dump the contents of my backpack in a pile on the floor of the front room. Everything I had was filthy, damp, and smelled. I filled the tub with hot water, then dropped in all my clothes, including the ones I was wearing. I kneeled down and hand washed them all with shampoo. The water turned the color of weak coffee. When I had washed everything, I emptied the water from the tub then refilled it with fresh, scalding hot water and let my clothes soak. I wrapped a towel around myself, then opened the front door and shook out my pack, emptying it of crumbs, trail mix, and dirt.

I went back to the tub, unstopped the drain, and, piece by piece, pulled my clothes from the water, wrung them out by hand, then hung them to dry over whatever I could find: chair backs, the sofa, towel bars, the bed’s headboard. I hung the clothes I needed first in the kitchen next to the fan. I considered putting my cargo pants in the microwave to dry them but decided against it. The last thing I needed was a fire.

I got a fresh razor from my hygiene bag, then went back to the bathroom. I turned on the shower until steam rose, then I climbed in myself, pulling the shower curtain closed. The sensation was remarkably luxurious, standing there, the hot water coursing over my body, a stream of dirty water running to the drain. I lathered soap over my face and neck and shaved. Then I scrubbed myself with soap and a washcloth.

When my body was clean, I plugged the drain, then ran the water until the tub was full, and lay back in it, placing the washcloth over my eyes. I lay there for nearly an hour, relaxing my sore muscles and joints, as well as my mind. When I finally emerged, I felt new again.

I dried myself off, then checked the clothes I’d hung by the fan. They were mostly dry, except my pants waistband, which I took a hair dryer to.

After I was dressed, I walked back to the diner to get some lunch. It was around two and the diner was busy. Ally was up front and smiled when she saw me. “How’s your room?”

“It’s good. I took a bath.”

“That’s always a good thing. Looks like you shaved as well. Here, come sit over here.” She led me to a booth up front and handed me a menu from the table. “Do you know what you want, or do you need a minute?”

I looked over the menu. “What’s this Elvis Burger?”

“It’s like a normal hamburger except with peanut butter and banana.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I am. It’s just . . . meaty. I think it’s like a half pound of beef—and it comes with fries and a big dill pickle.”

“Meaty is good. How about that and some of your world famous blueberry cobbler.”

“Very good choice. Anything to drink?”

“Just water.”

“Water it is.”

Fifteen minutes later, she brought back my food. There was also a large plate of French fries. “That’s on me.” She touched my shoulder. “Just holler if you need anything else.”

“Thanks.” As I ate, the diner was besieged by a busload of Amazon, sport uniform–wearing women. They looked like a volleyball team. Ally hopped from table to table like a bee on an azalea bush. I finished eating, then just sat and waited for her return. I was perfectly content to be in no hurry. Finally, Ally came over with my check. “Sorry that took so long. Those buses pull up, and Katie bar the door.”

I laughed at the idiom. “No worries. You earn your salary.”

“Salary nothing. I live on tips. And these college kids are notoriously bad tippers. Last week someone left me a golf ball. Would you like anything else?”

“Yes.” I took some money out of my wallet and put it with my check, sure to leave a generous tip. “I want to ask you something.”

She looked at me curiously. “All right.”

“Why did you ask if I was okay?”

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t know. I just felt like something was wrong. Was I wrong?”

“No.”

“Are you okay?”

I shook my head. “No.”

She looked at me thoughtfully. Then she said, “I get off around seven. If you’re not too busy, I’ll bring dinner to your bungalow, and we can talk.” Then she added, “It’s okay if you want to be left alone, I understand. But if you’d like some company . . .”

“I’d like some company,” I said.

“Then I’ll come by around seven. Sometimes I’m a little later. It depends on how busy we are.” She lifted the check. “Pray for no buses.”

“I’ll do that. Keep the change,” I said.

“Thank you.” She smiled, then walked back to the kitchen.

I went back to the bungalow. I checked my clothes. They were all still damp, so I turned the thermostat up five degrees. I took out my road diary and wrote a little, then laid back on the bed and watched the ceiling fan slowly turn until I fell asleep.

The room was dark when I woke to knocking. I sat up and looked around, momentarily forgetting where I was. There came another knock. I turned on a lamp, then walked to the door and opened it. Ally stood outside, clutching two paper sacks in one hand and holding two malts against her body. She had changed from her waitress outfit and wore a form-fitting sweater and jeans.

“Did I wake you?”

“No, I was just . . .” I grinned. “I was sleeping. Come in.”

“Thank you.” She walked directly to the kitchen, talking to me as she did. “I brought some sandwiches—our Spanky’s Clubhouse, that’s a triple decker with turkey, ham, bacon, cheese, and the meatloaf sandwich. Dan makes great meatloaf. You can take either sandwich. I also brought a taco baked potato, a basket of onion rings, and, of course, our world-famous chocolate-chocolate malt with extra malt.”

She set the sacks on the kitchen table and put the malts in the refrigerator. “Are you ready to eat?”

“Yes . . . ,” I said looking at the white briefs draped over the back of the kitchen chairs, “but I should probably get rid of these.”

She smiled. “Not on my account . . .”

I gathered up my underwear, then pulled out one of the chairs. “Have a seat.”

“Thank you.”

I threw my underwear on the bed, then came back and sat down next to her at the table.

“At least now I won’t have to ask boxers or briefs,” she said.

“I’m glad we got that out of the way,” I said.

She took the food from the sacks and laid it out across the table.

“You brought enough for a small village.”

“We don’t have to eat it all,” she said, arranging metal utensils in front of me with the efficiency of a waitress. “I hate eating with plastic utensils,” she said. “How about we share the sandwiches?”

“I’m good with that.”

She had already cut the sandwiches in half and she handed me one of each. They were both good. “So, you did your wash.”

“Yeah, I just hope everything dries before I have to leave. I thought of drying things in the microwave.”

This made her smile. “Bad idea,” she said. “So, the room’s okay?”

“It’s the Four Seasons compared to where I slept last night.”

“And where was that?”

“About 5 miles up the mountain. I found these little shacks.”

She said with food still in her mouth, “I know what you’re talking about. There are four or five of them. One of them fell over.”

“That’s them.”

“In the summer the teenagers around here go up there to party.”

I took a bite of the meatloaf sandwich. “So you’re from here?”

“No. I’m from Dallas.”

“How does one go from Dallas to the 59er Diner?”

“I had a boyfriend who moved here to refurbish his aunt’s cabin, and I followed him.” She frowned. “Then he ran off with someone else.”

“And left you here?”

“It’s not like I’m chained here. I like it. At least for now. No one stays here forever. Except Dan.”

“Who’s Dan?”

“He owns the diner.” She dipped an onion ring in ketchup. “You have beautiful eyes,” she said. “Sad, but beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Where are you from?”

“Seattle, most recently.”

She took a bite. “And less recently?”

“I was born in Colorado, raised in Pasadena.”

“I spent a summer in Boulder, Colorado. I did a lot of hiking. It was fun. How long have you been on the road?”

“Not long. Five, six days.”

“Where are you going?”

“Away.”

She nodded. “That’s a little . . . vague.”

“When I left Bellevue, I decided to walk as far away as I could on the continent, which happens to be Key West, Florida.”

“You’re walking to Key West?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. How many miles is that?”

“Three thousand something.”

She thought this over. “I admire you. I think most people dream of doing something like that but never do. Life has too many shackles. So how does one just leave everything like that? You must have had a job, friends, family.”

“I did.”

“You mean until you left?”

“No, you might say they left me.”

She nodded as if she suddenly understood. “Do you want to talk about it?”

To my surprise I did. “Classic riches to rags story. I had the perfect life. And in less than six weeks it was gone.”

“So what did you do in that perfect life?”

“I owned a Seattle advertising agency.” My voice softened, “Actually, money was only a small part of it. One day my wife was thrown from a horse. She was paralyzed from the chest down. Then a month later, she died from complications. While I was taking care of her, my business partner stole my agency, and my home went into foreclosure. I lost everything. That’s when I decided to walk away.”

“You stayed with your wife through it all.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“That’s really cool. I’m sorry about your wife. That must be so painful.” I nodded. “And I’m sorry about your scum-bag business partner. There’s a special place in hell for people like him.”

“So I’ve heard.”

We ate in silence, letting the intensity of our conversation settle. She looked at my nearly empty plate. “Would you like your malt?”

“Sure.”

She retrieved both cups from the refrigerator, then returned to her seat, setting a cup in front of me. “There’s one upside to your adventure. With all that walking, you can probably eat whatever you want.”

“I figure I burn about five thousand calories a day. Probably the same amount of calories this world-famous malt has.”

She grinned. “I made this one myself. It’s worth it. Trust me.”

I lifted a spoon. “So how long do you plan to live here?”

“I actually don’t live here, I live down the road in Peshastin. But, I don’t know. Another year or two. I guess I’m just waiting.”

“For what?”

She shrugged. “A better offer.” She ate another spoonful of malt, then said, “How about you? Leaving in the morning?”

“I plan on it. What’s the next big town?”

“It’s still Leavenworth, just the city center. About 20 miles on. Have you ever been there?”

“No.”

“You would remember if you had. It’s a tourist attraction.”

“What kind of attraction?”

“Leavenworth used to be a logging town. But when the sawmill shut down, the town almost died. Then someone had this idea to turn the town into a Bavarian hamlet.”

“A what?”

“A Bavarian hamlet. A little slice of Germany in the middle of Washington. Now you can’t sneeze if it’s not in German. They claim to have the largest Oktoberfest celebration outside Munich. Too bad, you just missed it.”

“Poor timing,” I said, glad that I had missed it.

“At any rate, their plan worked. Today the town attracts millions of visitors a year. They have a city center, parks, and—point of interest—the world’s largest nutcracker museum. It has, like, five thousand different nutcrackers.”

“I’ll have to check it out,” I said.

“I’m sure you will,” she said facetiously. “You know, it’s kind of ironic, but if everything hadn’t gone wrong with the town, they wouldn’t be as well off as they are today. It just goes to show you that not all bad things are really bad.” She took another spoonful of her malt. “You must be tired from all that walking.”

“A little. Climbing Stevens Pass in the snow wasn’t easy.”

“I bet. How are your feet?”

“Sore.”

“Come here.” She stood, took my hand, and led me to the sofa. “Sit,” she said. I sat down, and she sat cross-legged on the floor in front of me and untied my shoes.

“You sure you want to do that?” I asked.

“Absolutely. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“I won’t stop you.”

She pulled off my shoes, then began to gently knead my feet.

“Tell me if I’m doing it too hard or too soft.”

“It’s just right,” I said.

For several moments, we both sat in silence. I couldn’t believe how good it felt to be touched. I laid my head back and closed my eyes.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said.

“I just did.”

“That was your former self. No one goes through all you went through without changing.”

I opened my eyes. “What do you want to know?”

“The real stuff. Like, what are you going to do when you reach Key West?”

“I don’t know. Maybe just keep walking into the sea.”

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“What else do you want to know?”

She thought for a moment. “Do you believe in God?”

“There’s a question,” I said.

“Does it have an answer?”

“Let’s just say I’m much too angry at Him not to.”

“You blame God for what happened to you?”

“Maybe. Probably.”

She frowned, and I could tell that what I said had bothered her. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You didn’t. I just wonder why it is that we blame God for everything except the good. Did you blame Him for giving her to you in the first place? How many people go their whole lives and never get to experience that kind of love?”

I looked down.

“I’m not saying that you don’t have the right to be angry. Life is tough.” From her tone, I could tell there was more to what she said than she let on. I remembered her scars.

“Do you mind me asking what happened to your wrist?”

She stopped rubbing my feet. She looked down for a moment, and when she looked back up at me, there was strength in her eyes I hadn’t seen before. “Well, like I said,” she said softly, “life is tough.

“My stepfather sexually abused me from the age of seven until I was twelve, when I decided the only way out was to slit my wrist. I didn’t know how to do it right, so I mostly just bled a lot while a neighbor girl called 911.

“At the hospital, a social worker got out of me why I had cut myself. My stepfather ended up going to prison for seven years. My mother blamed me for the whole situation. She accused me of seducing him, and she disowned me. So, at the age of thirteen, I was sent to the first of many foster homes. At fifteen, I ran away from my sixth foster placement with my nineteen-year-old boyfriend, who one day got tired of me and left.

“I lived on the streets of Dallas for almost a year until I was caught shoplifting at a Walmart and was sent to the Dallas County Juvenile Detention Center for three months.

“That’s where I met Leah. Leah wasn’t a juvie, she was older. She was one of the community volunteers. She became my friend and mentor. When I got out, she wanted me to go live with her, but I only promised to stay one week. But she was so good to me, I kept adding weeks.” She smiled slightly in fond recollection. “I stayed with her until I was twenty and left for college.”

She pulled back her sleeve exposing the two thick scars on her wrist. “It’s odd but I’m grateful for them now. They’re my reminders.”

“Of what?”

She looked up into my eyes. “To live.”

I thought over what she’d said. “When McKale died, I almost took my life. I had pills.”

“What stopped you?”

“A voice.” I felt odd saying it, but she didn’t seem at all skeptical.

“What did the voice say?”

“It told me that life wasn’t mine to take.” I rubbed my chin. “Just before she died, McKale asked me to promise her that I would live.”

She nodded. “I think we all have to make that choice. I meet dead people every day at the diner.”

“What do you mean?”

“People who have given up. That’s all death requires of us, to give up living.”

I wondered if I was one of them.

“The thing is, the only real sign of life is growth. And growth requires pain. So to choose life is to accept pain. Some people go to such lengths to avoid pain that they give up on life. They bury their hearts, or they drug or drink themselves numb until they don’t feel anything anymore. The irony is, in the end their escape becomes more painful than what they’re avoiding.”

I looked down for a while. “I know you’re right. But I don’t know if I can live without her. A part of me died with her.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, rubbing my shin. After a moment she said, “You know, she’s not really gone. She’s still a part of you. What part of you is your choice. She can be a spring of gratitude and joy, or she can be a fountain of bitterness and pain. It is entirely up to you.”

The thought had never occurred to me that I was making McKale into something bad.

“You have to decide to look through the pain.”

“What do you mean?”

“Leah taught me that the greatest secret of life is that we find exactly what we’re looking for. In spite of what happens to us, ultimately we decide whether our lives are good or bad, ugly or beautiful.”

I thought this over.

“Leah told me this story. Some newspaper did an experiment. I don’t remember what city it was in, but they had a man with a violin go down into the subway and play music. It was rush hour, and thousands of people passed him while he played.

“A few people threw him money, but other than that, no one paid any attention. When he finished he just walked away.

“What no one knew was that the musician was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest violinists in the world. He had just played a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall at $100 a ticket. The piece he was playing was one of the most complex and beautiful pieces ever written, and he was playing it on a $2 million Stradivarius.” She smiled at me. “I love that story,” she said. “Because it sums up Leah’s life. She would have stopped to listen.

“The night before I left for college Leah said to me, ‘Ally, some people in this world have stopped looking for beauty, then wonder why their lives are so ugly. Don’t be like them. The ability to appreciate beauty is of God. Especially in one another. Look for beauty in everyone you meet, and you’ll find it. Everyone carries divinity within them. And everyone we meet has something to impart.’ ”

I thought of Will, the homeless man at the Jack in the Box.

“Do you still see much of Leah?” I asked.

“No. She passed away during my junior year in college.” Ally’s eyes welled up with tears. “She died of cancer. But I was fortunate to be with her before she passed.”

She put her head down for a moment. She wiped her eyes, then looked up at me. “The night before she died I sat next to her in bed. She reached up and ran her hand across my cheek, then said to me, ‘When you were brought into detention all the court could see was a troubled young lady. But I knew you were special the moment I laid eyes on you. I was right, wasn’t I? Never forget, Ally, God puts people in our lives for a reason. Only through helping others can we save ourselves.’ ”

I nodded slowly. “That’s why you asked if I was okay.”

“I had this feeling that you were one of those people I was supposed to meet.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said.

She affectionately squeezed my foot. “I better let you get to bed.”

My head was still swimming with her words. I didn’t want her to go. “Do you work tomorrow?” I asked.

“No. It’s my day off, and I promised a friend I’d help her paint her living room.”

I stood, took her hand, and lifted her up. We walked to the door. For a moment, we just looked at each other. “Thank you,” I said. “For the foot rub, the food, the food for thought . . .”

“I hope it helped.” She leaned in and hugged me. When we parted, she said, “Will you let me know when you make it to Key West?”

“Yes. How will I find you?”

“I’m on Facebook. Allyson Lynette Walker.”

“Your last name is Walker?”

She smiled. “Yes. It should be yours.”

I laughed. “I promise. I’ll send you some sand.”

“I’d like that.” She stepped outside.

“Ally,” I said.

She turned back.

“Thank you.”

She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Have a good walk.” Then she turned and walked away.

CHAPTER

Twenty-eight

We truly do not know what’s in a book until it is opened.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning I just lay in bed thinking. For the first time in days, I wasn’t overcome by grief. Something inside me felt different. Profoundly different. I suppose I felt hope. Or maybe I felt some part of McKale again—the real McKale and not the despairing phantom I’d made of her.

I got up, showered, then walked around the bungalow, gathering up things. My clothes were dry, except for two pairs of my thickest socks, which I rolled up and packed along with everything else.

I locked up the bungalow and walked over to the diner, hoping Ally might somehow be there. She wasn’t. Her replacement wore a name tag that said, PEGGY SUE. I didn’t ask her her real name.

I returned the key to the bungalow, then ordered a stack of banana pancakes with a 59er Scramble—a scrambled egg with ham, onion, tomato, and green pepper, topped with cheddar cheese and sour cream.

By eight-thirty, I was walking again. The road was still mostly downhill and followed the Wenatchee River, which was moving in the same direction I was walking and not much faster.

I walked all day and only stopped for a few minutes for lunch—a banana, an apple, and a couple of muffins I had bought at the diner. It was all the food I had. Peggy-Sue, the waitress, had told me there was a grocery store at Leavenworth, where I planned to stock up on supplies.

Leavenworth was exactly the way Ally had described it. The town looked as if it had been plucked from the Alps and dropped in the center of Chelan County.

The main street was lined with old-world, European street poles with decorative holiday snowflakes hanging from them. There were at least a dozen hotels and inns. I chose the one that looked the least expensive: Der Ritterhof Motor Inn.

Being in the town made me hungry for German food, and I found a suitable restaurant. I ordered a full fare: Wiener schnitzel, Leberkäse, rotkraut, and spätzle with Jäger sauce.

I remembered the one time I took McKale to a German restaurant. She was as out of place as a diabetic in a chocolate factory. She asked me if they had anything besides over-sized, fancy hot dogs. I ended up taking her to a McDonald’s afterwards to get something to eat.

The memory made me laugh. I realized that it was the first time that thinking about McKale didn’t make my stomach hurt. I left it up to the food to do that.

CHAPTER

Twenty-nine

I spent the night in Leavenworth—a mock Bavarian township in Washington. I had a big meal of German food, which, I suppose, will travel with me for the next fortnight. The Germans have a saying: “A good meal is worth hanging for.” I’m sure this food will be hanging around for some time.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I got up shortly after dawn. I showered and dressed, then walked across the street to the Bistro Espresso, where I ordered a light breakfast of coffee and a cheese Danish. I think I was still digesting the meal from the night before.

I finished eating, then I walked down to a bank. I put my card in the ATM and pushed the button to check my balance. There was $28,797. When I left Bellevue, there had been less than a thousand dollars in the account. Falene had been busy. I love that woman, I thought.

I went back to my room, packed up my things, then checked out. I walked three blocks to the Food Lion, where I stocked up on everything I needed (including a box of Hostess Ding Dongs), then hit the road.

In less than an hour, I passed through Ally’s town of Peshastin. I had found myself replaying our conversation all morning. Somehow it just felt good knowing she was somewhere near.

Two hours later, I reached the town of Cashmere. There were orchards everywhere, though the trees were barren in the winter landscape. There were big fans in the fields and silver streamers tied to all the tree branches.

There was a warehouse with the Tree Top apple juice logo painted on its side. I had once tried to pitch their account. I couldn’t remember why we hadn’t gotten it.

Everywhere I looked there were signs for fruit—apples, apricots, cherries, and pears—and I passed by at least a dozen empty roadside fruit stands. The place was a ghost town in off-season.

At the edge of town, I sat down on a patch of straw-colored grass to stretch and eat my lunch—two foil-wrapped burritos I had bought at the Food Lion’s deli.

I marveled at how completely the landscape had changed from the days before. It was now wide open and flat: a sharp contrast to the dense forests and sloping terrain that had encompassed every step of the last week. Walking on a flat road is much easier than climbing a mountain, but all things considered, I’d take the mountains. I liked the security and tranquility of the forest.

Just outside Wenatchee, I stopped and ate a simple dinner of French bread and peanut butter, which I spread with my Swiss Army pocket knife. The town center was far enough from the highway that I didn’t stop. I was growing more eager to make it to Spokane. That night I slept in an apple orchard under the stars.

CHAPTER

Thirty

Long walk today, mostly orchards. The landscape has changed entirely. This land is flat, as if nature took a rolling pin to the earth.

I stopped to help a woman with car troubles.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Rain started falling in the night, and around three in the morning, I got up and built my tent, something I was getting proficient at. When I woke at dawn, the drizzle had stopped, but the ground was wet, and by the time I was out of the orchard, my shoes were caked with several inches of mud. I did my best to kick and scrape it off, then resumed my walk.

In Orondo City, the road split, and I turned east toward Waterville and Spokane. I was in the buckle of Washington’s fruit belt. More than the landscape had changed. The culture had as well. I noticed that most of the store signs were in Spanish.

I ate a sausage and egg biscuit at a gas station near the fork between Waterville and Orondo City, and I was the only one in the building who wasn’t speaking Spanish.

A few miles later, the landscape grew more mountainous, and for much of the walk there was a wide gorge to my right with only a narrow walkway. The highway was dark and wet, and I was sprayed by nearly every car that passed. The road climbed again—almost as steeply as it had at the pass—and I could tell that I was much stronger than when I started my walk, as my pace barely slowed.

Two hours into the day, it began to rain again. I stopped and put on my poncho and kept walking.

On one of the tighter mountain curves, there was a car pulled over to the side next to the safety rail. Its trunk was open, and its caution lights were flashing. Bad place to break down, I thought. As I approached, I saw that the car, a silver-gray Malibu, was lifted up on a jack, and there were two tires lying flat on the ground, the flat tire and a spare.

I walked up to the driver’s window. Inside the car was a lone woman. She was about my age or a little older, in her mid-thirties. She had blond hair that fell to her shoulders. She was holding her cell phone. A pine air freshener and a crucifix hung from her rearview mirror next to a picture of a little boy.

Her door was locked, and the window was rolled up. I rapped on her window, and it startled her. She looked up at me fearfully.

“Do you need help?” I asked.

She cracked her window a few inches.

“What?”

“Do you need any help?”

“No,” she said anxiously, “my husband went to town to get help. He should be right back.”

“Okay.”

I’m not sure why I glanced at her left hand, but I noticed that there was no wedding ring. I considered moving on, but I was never one to leave a woman in distress, especially alone on such a dangerous stretch. I glanced back at her flat tire. “Listen, you’re not safe here. It looks like you have a spare. If it’s just a flat, I can change it.”

She hesitated, caught between her deceit and desperation. Finally she said, “I lost the . . . things.”

I didn’t understand. “What things?”

“The metal things. The bolts.”

I looked again at the wheel, then saw what she was talking about. There were no lug nuts. “What happened to them?”

“I got them off, but . . .”

She had taken them off.

“. . . they rolled down the hill.”

The side of the road sloped steeply down several hundred feet. Those babies were gone.

“How did that happen?”

“I’m just clumsy.”

No lug nuts. Probably no cell phone reception. She was probably just waiting for a highway patrolman to come along, which considering where we were, could be a very long wait. “Do you mind if I put it on for you?”

She looked at me quizzically. “There’s nothing to put it on with.”

“We can borrow them,” I said.

She was still vexed but relented. “I guess.”

“Is your parking brake on?”

“Yes.”

“. . . and you’re in park?”

“Yes.”

I set down my pack. I took her tire iron and pulled a lug nut from each of the other wheels, then mounted the spare with the three nuts and tightened them. It would be enough to get her to wherever she was going. I let the car down from the jack, then put the flat tire, wrench, and jack in the trunk and slammed it down. I walked back to her window.

“You’re good now. I took a nut from each of the other wheels. Just take it into a garage when you get home.”

For the first time I saw her smile. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” I lifted my pack, swinging it over one shoulder, then the other. “Have a good day.”

“Wait, can I pay you?”

“No. Take care.” I adjusted my hat, then walked on. The woman waited for an oncoming car to pass, then I heard the gravel spit from her tires as she pulled out onto the road. She drove slowly past me then pulled off the road fifty yards ahead where there was a small turnoff. When I reached her car, she had rolled down the window.

“Can I at least give you a ride? There’s nothing on this road for miles. And it’s raining. You’re going to get wet.”

“I’m used to getting wet,” I said. “Thank you, but I’m fine. Just happy to help.” I sounded as magnanimous as Superman (Just doing my job, ma’am), which, frankly, kind of bothered me. Einstein said, “I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.” I agree.

The woman looked flustered by her inability to help me. She reached into her purse and pulled out a business card and handed it to me. “Here, if you need anything, just call. That’s my cell phone number.”

I took the card without looking at it and slid it into my front trouser pocket. “Thanks.”

“No, thank you. Have a good day.”

“You too.”

I waited for her to drive off in a shower of road water, then started walking again. I watched her car disappear around a bend. I wondered how long she’d been stranded there and what would have happened to her had I not come along.

The rain had stopped and the sun was high when I reached the small town of Waterville. The highway ran through the middle of town, and the local coffee shop was appropriately called Highway 2 Brew. I stopped for a tall coffee, a cranberry-orange muffin, and a chocolate-dipped biscotti. I sat on the concrete pad outside the coffee shop to study my map.

It looked like I would be walking through barren wilderness for the next few days—the kind of terrain you speed through in a car with your stereo turned up. I was eager to get through it.

The Waterville homes lined the highway, and it was the first time since I left Bellevue that I had walked through suburb, even a small one like this.

I thought Waterville was a peculiar name for a town that looked like Death Valley compared to what I had just walked through. At first, I guessed that the name was really just a marketing ploy like, say, Greenland—which, incidentally, is about as green as an ice cube and a whole lot colder. Then I remembered what I had learned earlier about town naming and decided that a Mr. Waterville either owned the bank or everyone’s mortgages.

I wondered what people in a small town like this did for entertainment until I saw Randy’s Ice Cream Parlor and Putt Putt Golf Course. I’m betting that the average citizen of Waterville could putt like Jack Nicklaus.

After another twenty miles, I reached Douglas. There were no services on the road, so I walked a hundred or so yards off the highway and pitched my tent. It was cold as the sunset, just a little above freezing. I wanted to make a fire, but there was nothing to burn.

For the first time on my journey, I took out my portable stove and fired it up. I opened the can of SpaghettiOs I had purchased in Leavenworth, tore off its wrapper, then set the can on the blue propane flame until it started to boil. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to buy utensils. I tore off a piece of French bread and used it to scoop up the spaghetti. For dessert I ate a Ding Dong. I rolled its foil wrapping into a ball and threw it at a rabbit that was watching from the outskirts of my camp. I missed.

For the first time that week, the stars were visible. For me, it was one of those times we all have when we look up at the night sky and feel remarkably insignificant. That was a hopeful thing. Maybe God had more on His plate than ruining my life. I climbed inside my tent and went to sleep.

CHAPTER

Thirty-one

The time has come, the walker said, to talk of many things. Of crop circles and UFOs and the tourists these things bring . . .

(My apologies to Lewis Carroll)

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next few days of travel were tedious and largely forgettable. I walked from Douglas to Coulee, Coulee to Wilbur and Wilbur to Davenport, averaging about 28 miles a day.

Fortunately there were places along the way to stay and eat. In Coulee, I lodged at the Ala Cozy Motel and had a green chili burrito next door at Big Wally’s Shell Station and Bait and Tackle Shop. I only wished they sold T-shirts.

Coulee had an industrial feel, and it made me miss walking in the mountains even more. I realized how fortunate I’d been that the first part of my walk had led me through nature and her healing. In this landscape, there was nothing to do but walk and think.

It was a 30-mile walk to Wilbur—the biggest city I’d been through in days. Wilbur was a proper city with a bank, a real estate office, and a medical clinic. I stopped at the Eight Bar B Hotel, which claimed the “largest rooms in the county,” which seemed a reasonable claim. The hotel was located next to a small burger joint called the Billy Burger.

I left my pack in the room, then went to the Billy Burger to get something to eat. I was famished, and I ordered the Wild Goose Bill Burger named after the founder of Wilbur, Wild Goose Bill. I was sure there was a story there, but I never got around to asking.

The Billy Burger’s walls were lined with the largest (and only) salt-and-pepper-shaker collection I had ever seen, which included a pair of dice with Vegas written in gold glitter, a couple of hula girls, some politically incorrect Little Black Sambo shakers, a washer and dryer, and a seated JFK.

They also sold Billy Burger T-shirts and a book chronicling the history of Wilbur, which I seriously doubt will ever hit the New York Times bestseller list, though stranger things have happened. I had noticed that nearly everything in Wilbur started with the letter B, and I asked the woman at the counter, Kate, why.

“Good question,” she said. “A big shot Wilbur citizen, Benjamin B. Banks, had eight sons, and he and the missus, Belva, gave ’em all names startin’ with B.

“He was big on hard work, so he made all his kids start businesses to fund their college tuitions. Billy Burger was Billy’s project. He sold it when he left for school.”

That explained the Eight Bar B Hotel as well. As I was eating, I noticed a plaque on the wall.

Certificate of Award

Thanks to the Aliens who made

Wilbur their Vacation Destination.

Beneath the plaque was a framed, double-spread newspaper page with pictures of crop circles. I had seen these pictures somewhere before, but I didn’t know they had come from Washington. I got up to read the article.

Apparently the little town of Wilbur had been blessed with crop circles not once, but twice. The first was discovered by a crop duster in the spring of 2007. The second appeared two years later, in 2009.

I said to Kate, “This happened here?”

“You betcha. Twice. Over at Jesse Beales’ place.”

“What is it,” I asked, “local teens playing a prank?”

The woman’s eyebrows fell. “No sir. Ain’t no one here done them. They came from the sky. There weren’t no tracks in nor out of the field. The trails you see on that picture there were caused by the tourists and UFO chasers.”

“Tourists come to see these?”

“Yes, sir. From all over the world. Really put Wilbur on the map. They come wearin’ football helmets wrapped in tinfoil and Jesus robes. Mr. Beales says those aliens owe him $500, and he’s gonna get it, even if he has to take it from their sorry green hides.”

“That would be some headline,” I mused. “Farmer assaults aliens with pitchfork. World destroyed.”

The woman didn’t smile.

“Mr. Beales should just charge the tourists admission,” I said.

She looked at me as if I’d just solved world hunger. “That’s a darn good idea. I’ll mention that next time he comes by.”

“So you think the crop circles were made by aliens?”

“No, sir.”

I turned to face her. “But you said they came from the sky.”

“Air Force,” she said, her voice dropping as if to avoid detection. “They done it.”

“The Air Force did it?”

“Yes sir. We got Fairchild Air Force Base just down the road a piece. They’re always conducting top-secret research. Probably some new, high-tech laser beam.”

I thought of another headline but kept it to myself. Air Force declares war on Farmer Beales, burns circles in crops.

“Course it could also just be aliens,” she relented. “It’s a strange world we live in. You never know.”

“No,” I agreed, “you never know.” I sat back down and finished eating. “That was a good burger. Thank you.”

“We got shakes too. Intergalactically famous.”

CHAPTER

Thirty-two

It is good to walk. Even if you have somewhere to go.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I was tempted to stop and see the crop circles but not curious enough to add the miles.

Eight miles out of Wilbur, I stopped for breakfast at a roadside café in a tiny farming town called Creston, which, incidentally, I thought was a much better town name for an alien landing.

I ordered biscuits, fried ham, and scrambled eggs, which I heavily seasoned with Tabasco sauce. The café’s chef and proprietor (he introduced himself as Mr. Saville), was a balding Korean War veteran with a Marines tattoo and the build of a greasy-spoon chef.

It was as if Mr. Saville hadn’t talked to anyone for a few years as he spoke nonstop about whatever came to mind, though most of what came to his mind involved the New World Order conspiracy and 1992 Populist presidential candidate and former Delta Force commander “Bo” Gritz.

Mr. Saville was a life-long resident of Creston and was proud to inform me that Harry Tracy, the final surviving member of the Hole in the Wall Gang, was shot at a Creston ranch not 3 miles from the café. I suppose every city has its claim to fame.

I paid my bill, promised I’d buy Mr. Gritz’s book, and started off again. It was a long, dull day of walking, and the afternoon’s highlight was watching a bobcat cross the highway about 50 yards ahead of me. I wasn’t sure if I should be worried about the animal or not. I’d read that bobcats rarely attack humans and usually only when they’re rabid, which really isn’t a comforting thought since, if I had my druthers, I’d rather be attacked by a nonrabid bobcat. Just in case, I picked up a large rock from the side of the road, which turned out to be a total waste of motion since the cat was gone when I stood back up.

It was twilight when I reached the town of Davenport—a real town with a Lion’s Club sign at its entrance. It also had a pretty good Mexican restaurant where I ordered the chile verde burrito combo plate and a flan dessert. McKale always ordered the flan dessert.

As I was paying my bill, I asked the waitress where I should spend the night. The way she looked at me made me a little uncomfortable, and I was afraid that she was going to suggest her place. I was relieved when she suggested the Morgan Street Bed and Breakfast and Coffee Shop just a few blocks further down the highway. I left her a $5 tip, lifted my pack, and walked off to find the inn.

CHAPTER

Thirty-three

The proprietor at the Bed and Breakfast had been through Bali, China, Nepal, Europe, and death. But not in that order.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The Morgan Street Bed and Breakfast was a quaint, Victorian-style home built in 1896. It was simple, as far as Victorian motifs go, though it still had some decorative spindling, a large, front-facing gable, and a Queen Anne turret with a bell-shaped dome.

McKale would have loved this place, I thought. McKale was a bed-and-breakfast connoisseur. As I wrote before, her surprise plan for our lost weekend was to stay in a bed and breakfast on Orcas Island. She had made a list of B&Bs in the Pacific Northwest, and every few months we’d hit one of them. One time, when I was too busy with work, she stayed in one on her own.

I pushed open the wrought-iron gate and walked up to the porch. The front door was locked, so I rang the doorbell and almost immediately heard footsteps. A deadbolt slid, and the door opened to a middle-aged woman with silver hair and blue-rimmed glasses. She wore a yellow sweater over a red print dress.

“May I help you?”

“Hi. Do you have any vacancies?”

She smiled. “Yes, we do. Come right in.” She stepped back from the door.

I walked inside onto a Persian rug. The room was warm and elegant.

“Just set your pack down right there,” she said, pointing to the floor next to the stairwell.

“Thank you.”

She walked over to a mahogany Victorian writing desk against the wall and pulled a register from a cubby. “Are you alone?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I slid the pack from my shoulder and leaned it against the wall.

“Your name, please.”

“Alan Christoffersen.”

She looked up. “Are you related to that singer?”

“No. It’s not spelled the same.”

She went back to her register. “Very well. We’ve only one other guest tonight, so you have your choice of rooms. They’re all nice, unless you have an aversion to stairs.”

“I’m fine with stairs.”

“They’re all the same price, too, except the honeymoon suite. I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting that.”

“No, ma’am.”

“My name is Colleen Hammersmith. But you may call me Colleen.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll put you in the green room. It has a nice new mattress and duvet I picked out myself. I’ll just need your credit card and some ID.”

I took out my wallet and pulled out the essentials. “There you go.”

She swiped my credit card, then handed me back my card and license with a slip of paper and pen. “Please just sign there.”

I signed the form.

“And here’s your key.” She handed me a brass skeleton key. “You’re in room C, right at the top of the stairway. The bathroom is at the end of the hallway. It’s shared with the other room, but you’re the only one on the second floor tonight. My room is just down this hallway, to the left next to the kitchen. Please let me know if you need anything.”

“Thank you. I’m sure I’ll be fine.” I retrieved my pack and carried it up the stairs. I unlocked the door, then stepped inside. The space was dimly lit by a brass floor lamp, and I turned on the overhead light.

The room was tidy and feminine, decorated in typical Victorian style with cream walls adorned with framed pictures of flowers—lilies and daffodils—a gold-framed mirror, and shadow boxes displaying antique toys. There was a tall, antique French-style armoire and a small, leather-topped round table with ball-and-claw feet. In the center of the room, there was a large bed with a solid mahogany headboard and a floral-patterned duvet piled high with lace-trimmed shams.

I took off my pack and laid it against the wall, then removed my parka and set it on top of my pack. I walked to the window and parted the curtains. The only view was of the Strate Funeral Home and parking lot across the street. I pulled down the blind, then undressed, laying my clothes and shoes at the foot of the bed. I pulled the duvet down to the foot of the bed, piled the shams in a corner of the room, then peeled back the sheets and lay back on the bed. The sheets smelled fresh, the way they did when McKale pulled them out of the dryer. In fact, the whole room smelled good, like lavender, and I noticed a purple fabric sachet on the nightstand next to me. The experience was a far cry from the shack I’d camped in only earlier in the week. As I lay there thinking, there was a knock on the door. Actually, more of a kick.

“Just a minute,” I said. I got up and put on the robe that hung from the closet door, then opened the door. Mrs. Hammersmith stood there balancing a basket of blueberry scones in the crook of one arm and holding a saucer and a teacup filled with steaming water and a small wicker basket filled with tea and sweeteners.

“I thought you might like some tea before you went to bed.”

“Thank you.”

She stepped past me, setting everything down on the nightstand. “There’s a spoon in the service.” She smiled at me. “Nothing like a spot of hot tea to help you sleep well.” She walked back to the door. “I won’t bother you anymore. Good night.”

“Night.” I began to shut the door.

“Mr. Christoffersen, I forgot to ask, what time do you think you’ll be wanting breakfast?”

“Maybe seven, seven thirty.”

“I’m an early riser so I’ll have the crossword done by then. I’ll be making my raspberry muffins and egg frittata. Do you eat ham?”

“Yes.”

“Frittata with cheddar and ham it is.” She turned and walked down the stairs. I shut the door and locked it, then turned off the light, leaving the room lit only by the floor lamp.

I sat down on the bed and dropped a bag of tea into the cup. As it steeped, I took a bite of the scone. It tasted good, but I was still full from dinner, so I put it back in its basket. I lifted the tea bag out of the cup and lay it on the saucer, then poured in two packages of Sweet ’n Low. I stirred it with the spoon, then lay it, with the saucer, next to the bed. I slowly sipped the tea.

The room was comfortable and warm, but I wasn’t happy there. The surroundings were too similar to what McKale and I had experienced together. It was like going to a party where the hostess was missing.

My heart ached and I began fearing the onset of another panic attack. I set down my tea, turned out the lights, and climbed under the covers, hoping to fall asleep before panic found me.

I woke around seven or so, the morning sun leaking through the sides of the drawn blind. I put on my robe, grabbed some fresh clothes and underwear, then walked down the hall to the bathroom and showered and shaved. Walking back to my room, I could hear the clinking of dinnerware downstairs in the dining room. The delicious smell of home cooking wafted upstairs.

I hung up the robe, pulled my road atlas from my bag, and walked downstairs. To my surprise there were no other guests in the dining room. Mrs. Hammersmith smiled when she saw me.

“Good morning, Mr. Christoffersen,” she said brightly.

“Call me Alan,” I said.

“Alan it is,” she replied. “I have a nephew named Alan. He’s quite an accomplished cellist.”

“Then a name is all we share,” I said. “My musical ability is pretty much confined to my iPod.”

She smiled. “I hope you’re hungry. I’ve always had trouble cooking for so few people. I always make too much food.”

“I’m famished. Where would you like me to sit?”

“Wherever you like. This table by the window is nice.”

I walked over to it and sat down. “Am I the only guest here?”

“You are now. The Gandleys left just a few minutes before you came down. Gigi was eager to get home to Boise. Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

She walked over to a service table to get the coffee pot. “Did you sleep well? Was the bed okay?”

I hadn’t slept well, but the bed had nothing to do with it. “The bed was great. Very soft.”

“Not too soft, I hope. It’s a new mattress. How was the room?”

“The room is beautiful. My wife . . .” I stopped myself.

“Your wife?”

“Nothing,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment, then began pouring the coffee. “I’m pleased to hear you liked the room. I must tell you, one or two people have complained about the view of the funeral home. Personally, I just think they were afraid of death.”

“Well, I can understand that. Everyone fears death.”

She stopped pouring and set the pot down on a nearby table. “I don’t,” she said. “At least not since I was twelve.”

I looked at her curiously. “Why twelve?”

“Because that’s when I died,” she said. “I’ll be right back with your breakfast.”

She walked out of the dining room, leaving me to mull over the statement she’d dropped so casually, as if it hadn’t required explanation. She returned about three minutes later, carrying a plate. “Here’s your ham-and-cheese frittata. And this is a raspberry crumb muffin. You’re going to love it. I got the recipe from Magnolia Bakery in New York City. It’s out of this world.”

She set the plate in front of me. I had less interest in the food than what she’d said. “What did you mean about dying when you were twelve?”

“Just that I died.”

I wondered what I was missing. “But you’re not dead.”

“No. I came back.”

“Back from death?”

She nodded.

I had always been fascinated by stories of near-death experiences. “Would you tell me about it?”

She looked at me for a moment then said, “I don’t think so. People get a little . . . ,” she carefully chose a word, “. . . upset about it.”

“Please. It would mean a lot to me.”

She looked at me for a moment, then sighed. “Okay. You eat, I’ll talk.”

She sat in the chair across from me. “The summer I was twelve, my little brother and I climbed a tree in our front yard. We hadn’t noticed that the tree had grown over some power lines, and as I was climbing, I accidentally grabbed a power line. All I remember was a flash of light and a loud snap. Seven thousand volts went through my body. It actually blew holes through the bottoms of my Keds. It melted the flesh where I grabbed it.” She held up her hand. “It left me with this.” There was a deep, channel-like scar crossing her fingers. She looked at me. “You’re not eating.”

“Sorry.” I took an obligatory bite.

“I fell about twelve feet to the ground. My brother climbed down the tree and ran to the house, screaming for my mother. I knew this because I followed him into the house. I didn’t realize what was happening until the door slammed in front of me, and I went right through it.”

I looked at her quizzically. “You mean your ghost?”

“My spirit,” she said, as if the word ghost bothered her. “My mother came running out, and we all ran to see my body. I tell you, it’s a peculiar thing looking down at yourself. You don’t think of it, but our perception of ourselves is what we see from pictures or the mirror—always two dimensional. I realized that I had never really seen myself before. Not the way others see me. I looked different than I thought I did.

“My mother started shaking my body, and there I was, standing next to her, watching her do it. I said, ‘I’m over here, Mom.’ But she couldn’t hear me. She just put her ear to my chest.

“Suddenly there was a light in front of me. You hear people talk about the light. They say, go toward the light. I don’t think I went toward the light. I think it came to me. It was right there, passing through me.

“Suddenly I was somewhere else, and there was a being of light standing next to me. I had this feeling of perfect joy, like all the best moments of my life, all the Christmas mornings and summer vacations and new loves, everything all rolled up together but more. The feeling was indescribable.

“The Being told me that I wasn’t supposed to be there yet and that I needed to go back to earth. I remember that I didn’t want to go. I begged Him to let me stay with Him. But He said I would be gone just a short time, then I could come back after I had finished my mission.

“Then I was suddenly back in my body. I was lying on the ground, and I started crying from the pain. My mother told me that night that she couldn’t hear my heart beating, and she thought I was dead. It was several years later that I told her what had happened to me.”

“Did she believe you?”

“Yes. She always believed me. I never gave her reason to doubt.”

“What did she think?”

“I’m not sure what she thought, but she said she was glad they made me come back.”

“What was that you said earlier about your mission?”

“Everyone has a purpose for coming to earth. I hadn’t finished mine.”

“So what is your mission?”

“Nothing that will make headlines, if that’s what you’re wondering. Actually, I’ve spent my life trying to figure that out. It took me years to realize that the searching was the path. It was simple. My mission is to live. And accept what comes my way until I get to go back home. My real home.”

“You sound eager to get back.”

“I suppose I am. I’m not crazy about what I’m going to have to go through to get there, but I tell you, it’s worth the trip. Kind of like a trip to Bali.”

“You’ve been to Bali?” I asked.

“Bali, Nepal, Italy, China, Taiwan. Just because I live in Davenport doesn’t mean I haven’t seen the world.”

“You’re fortunate to have had that experience.”

“People have said that, but I don’t know. It has made my life harder. I’ve always felt different, like I don’t belong here. But, I suppose, that’s the point. None of us belong here.”

“As I grew older, I had a lot of questions. I talked to a psychiatrist, but he thought I was crazy and gave me a prescription for Prozac. I told a priest, and he told me not to talk about it. I never understood that. When I was nineteen, I learned that there are groups of people who have had experiences like mine. So I went to one of their conferences. It validated what I’d experienced, but the people weren’t real happy. People who have had NDEs, that’s what they called them, have trouble keeping jobs or staying married. I guess we just get bored with what’s here. Normal people don’t know anything else, so they live as if this life is everything.

“It’s like Mrs. Santos, down the road at the Delgado ranch. The farthest away she’s ever been from home is Seattle. She has no idea what’s out there. She can’t even comprehend the mist rising off Sun Moon lake or the way the Italian sun gilds the Chianti vineyards. In a way that’s the way the Life-huggers are.”

“Life-huggers?”

“I made that word up. They’re people who hang on to this life because they think this is it. But they’re fools, thinking they can hold on to this life. Everything in this world passes. Everything. You can’t hold on to a single thing. But God knows they try. Some people even freeze their bodies so they can be woken again at some future time. Fools. All they have to do is look around and they can see that nothing here lasts.”

“Well, not all of us have the benefit of seeing the other side,” I said somewhat defensively.

“No, but there’s evidence of the other side everywhere. Just ask anyone who works with death—like geriatric doctors and hospice workers. Any of them will tell you what happens when someone dies. How often it is that someone dying looks up and greets a visitor from that other side. It’s the rule, not the exception. But no one ever talks about that. They don’t even talk about death, as if not talking about it will make it go away. How can you understand life if you don’t understand death?” She looked down at my plate. “Now you haven’t been eating. Everything’s cold. Let me go warm that up for you.”

She lifted my plate and carried it back to the kitchen. Ironically, what she had said about the Life-huggers was the same thought I’d had about the inhabitants of the little towns I’d walked through, wondering if they knew that there’s a whole world out there. But the truth was, I was no different than them. I was a Life-hugger.

Mrs. Hammersmith came back a few minutes later, carrying my plate with an oven mitt. “Be careful. The plate’s a little hot.” She set the plate in front of me.

“Thank you.” I lifted a fork. “And thank you for sharing your story.”

“You just keep one thing in mind, Alan. Death is the beginning. This is Winter. Spring is what comes next.” She sighed. “I’d better get back to work. Owning a B&B is like having a large family. Someone always needs something.”

With that she walked out. I finished eating my breakfast, then went back upstairs. I took out my map and looked it over, then collected my things and walked back downstairs. Mrs. Hammersmith was clearing my table.

“You’re off?” she said.

“Back to the road. Could you tell me how many miles we are from Spokane?”

“We’re a little ways. About 36 miles, give or take a few.” She smiled. “I hope you enjoyed your stay.”

“Very much so.” I walked to the door. “Thanks again for everything. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

“You’re welcome,” she said warmly. “Oh, just a minute.” She ran back to the kitchen, then returned, carrying a muffin wrapped in a napkin. “One for the road. Come back and visit us again.”

“I might just do that.” I walked out grateful for my stay.

As I walked out of Davenport, I wondered if I could really make it to Spokane by nightfall. The farthest I had walked in a single day was 31 miles, and I was pretty exhausted at that. Still, I felt good and I was eager to reach my first destination. I decided just to see what the day had in store.

Without food supplies, I was carrying less in my pack, and I made good time. I stopped for lunch at Dean’s Drive-in. They, too, had world-famous shakes, though they limited their claim to their huckleberry shakes. I entered Spokane County at two in the afternoon, and three hours later, I reached the west end of Fairchild Air Force Base. The base was situated on an enormous piece of land and was a city unto itself. I wondered why they didn’t just burn crop circles on their own property.

At eight o’clock I stopped at the Hong Kong Restaurant and Bar for dinner in the town of Airway Heights. I still hadn’t completely made up my mind whether or not to press on to Spokane, but I was still feeling good, so after eating a meal of kung pao shrimp and potstickers, I just kept walking.

I felt optimistic about my odds of making it to Spokane until about eleven o’clock, when my body hit some invisible physical wall, perhaps the same one marathon runners talk about. Suddenly I was just too exhausted to go any farther.

I forced myself on until I saw a hotel in the distance. I practically limped into the Hilton Garden Inn next to the Rusty Moose Restaurant. Surprisingly, the hotel had no vacancies. The man behind the counter casually suggested that I just drive on a few more miles to Spokane.

I thought about resting my legs in the hotel’s warm lobby but decided against it, afraid that if I stopped to rest, my legs might cramp up—another casual decision I would live to regret. I thanked the clerk and walked back out to the highway, promising myself that I would take the next day off. It was a promise I would keep, though not for any reason I had considered.

CHAPTER

Thirty-four

It seems as if the golden rule has changed to “do unto others what it takes to get their gold.”

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The temperature had dropped below fifty, and my legs were heavy, as if they had weights attached. I had walked more than 35 miles, and I was practically asleep on my feet.

It was past midnight when the headlamps of a car flashed behind me. As the car neared, I could hear it slowing down. I thought they might be stopping to ask directions, or, God willing, to offer me a ride, so I turned back.

The car was an older model, a pimped four-door Impala, yellow with a black racing stripe. I could hear its music before it reached me, the heavy pounding base of rap. The car pulled up to my side and slowed to my gait. An ugly kid with pocked skin leaned out the window.

“Hey, what’s up?”

I noticed the car was full of kids. “Nothing,” I said. “Just walking.”

“Whatcha got there?”

“Nothing.” I kept walking, hoping the guys would lose interest. Another car drove by. The kid said something to the driver, and the car’s tires squealed as it fishtailed off the road in front of me. The doors flew open, and five youths climbed out. Unfortunately, the kid in the window was the smallest of the group. One of the guys was a monster, at least six inches taller than me. His arms were folded at his chest, and he had tattoos and scars up both arms.

The gang surrounded me.

“What you got on your back?” ugly kid said.

“Nothing you’d want.”

“Give it to me.”

“You don’t want to do this,” I said.

He scowled. “You don’t tell me what I want, man.”

“We’re gonna mess you up,” someone said behind me.

My eyes darted back and forth between them. I changed my mind. “You can have my pack,” I said.

“We’ll take that after we’re done,” a new voice said.

“We were lookin’ to roll some bums,” ugly kid said. “And here you are.”

“This isn’t cool,” I said. “Why don’t you just get back in your car . . .”

Ugly kid said to the monster, “He talkin’ again. You should shut him up.”

The circle closed in.

I took off my pack. “Hey, come on, why are you . . .”

I never finished. The first hit landed on the back of my head. It wasn’t a fist. Something wood, like a club. I saw a flash of light but somehow kept on my feet. As I grabbed my head, two of them came at me, ugly kid and one other.

I swung wildly at ugly kid and caught him hard enough to knock him down. One of his friends laughed at him, and I heard him shout out an obscenity as he climbed back to his feet. He came back at me.

The next few minutes seemed to pass in slow motion, like a nightmare when you want to run, but you can’t move. I was knocked to the ground, then was hit and kicked from all sides. I had my arms up, trying to protect my face, while the monster kept stomping on my head with boots that felt like they weighed a hundred pounds.

Suddenly the attack stopped. I rolled over to my side, coughing up fluid. There was blood dripping down my face. Ugly kid held a knife.

“You wanna die, loser?”

I looked at him standing above me, my vision blurred from the assault. There was my chance. This thug could finish what I wasn’t willing or able to do. Life or death. Somehow I felt it was really my choice.

“No,” I said, “I don’t.”

“Ain’t your choice,” he said.

Just then a boot landed squarely in my face, knocking me out.

CHAPTER

Thirty-five

Kierkegaard wrote that “we understand our lives backward, but must live them forward.” He was right, of course; but in looking back on the hammer strikes that chisel and shape our souls we understand more than our lives and even ourselves—we begin to comprehend the sculptor.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I would describe what I experienced next as an out-of-body experience except there was too much pain. Excruciating pain.

Someone was kneeling next to me. Around me I heard voices, different voices than my assailants. Older. Cleaner. They swirled around me, speaking about me, over me, none of them to me—as if I weren’t there. I suppose, on some level that was true.

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even grunt to acknowledge that I heard them. My eyes were closed or mostly closed, and I could not really see people, just blurs of moving colors against the occasional flash of passing cars and a streetlight glaring above me, though it might have been the moon. The lights still hurt my eyes. There were also flashing lights of red and blue.

I began to differentiate the voices. I heard an angry, older voice shout, “Stay on the ground!” I assumed the command wasn’t for me.

Then someone pressed against me and pain filled my entire body. A dark blur said something I didn’t understand. Then there were two lighter blurs, and the dark figure disappeared. The pressure on my side increased. I could feel something wet run down my stomach.

Someone pulled my shirt up. The fabric stuck to my side, and I could feel something pull away from my skin, like a bandage.

My left side below my ribcage throbbed with pain. The right side of my head pounded. My hair was wet. Why was my hair wet?

Someone grabbed my wrist; a finger prodded for my pulse. A cuff was placed around my arm.

I heard the crisp static crackle of a radio.

The dialogue was closer, clearer. “Pulse is steady. Blood pressure is low, sixty over twenty. He’s lost a lot of blood. Call ahead to Sacred Heart.”

“Better call his next of kin. Any ID?”

“You checked all his pockets?”

I felt a hand move down my right leg. Then my left.

“Here’s something.”

I was lifted from the ground, and I felt a plastic mask being fitted over my nose and mouth. Just then a phrase came to mind from my former life. My ad-guy life. Fade to black.

CHAPTER

Thirty-six

Death is not the end.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I wrote in the beginning of this book that there are things that happened to me that you might not believe. This is one of the times I was writing about. So feel free to skip over this part. Or not. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

To this day, I can’t say for sure what happened at that moment. So I’ll just put it down as I perceived it and let you draw your own conclusions—which I’m sure you’ll do anyway. It’s a rare human who spends more time looking for truth than protecting their already-held beliefs.

Somewhere in the murky, gray twilight between consciousness and sleep, McKale came to me. Call it a dream or delirium, if that makes you feel safe, but she was there. I saw her. I heard her. I felt her.

The Bard wrote, “There are more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of in your philosophy . . .” That’s especially true today, in our age of unbelief. Frankly, it doesn’t matter to me if you don’t believe that this really happened, just so long as you believe that I do.

Somehow McKale was kneeling next to me. Not on the ground. We weren’t on ground. I don’t know where we were. Someplace soft and white. She looked impossibly beautiful; her skin was fresh and translucent, as if it glowed from its own light. Perfect. She smiled at me with joyful radiance. And when she spoke, her voice was sweet, like the ring of crystal. “Hello, my love.”

“McKale.” I tried to sit up but was unable to move. “Did they kill me?” I felt hopeful asking this.

“No.”

I stared at her. “Are you real?”

She smiled. “Of course.”

“Is this a dream?”

She didn’t answer.

“Where have you been?”

“Near. Very near. Death is like being in the next room.”

“Will we be together again?”

She smiled, and I knew the answer before she spoke. But it didn’t come from her. It was as if I somehow remembered it.

“Of course. But not now. You’re not finished. There are still people who need you. And people you need.”

“I only needed you.”

Her words were loving but firm. “That was never true. You were meant for more than just me.”

“What people? Who will come?”

“Many. Angel.”

“Angel? An angel?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

She leaned over and kissed me, and it was the sweetest thing I’d ever felt. “Don’t worry, my love. Your path is seeking you. She’ll find you.”

Then she was gone.

CHAPTER

Thirty-seven

I do not know what lies beyond the horizon, only that the road I walk was meant for me. It is enough.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I awoke in a soft bed, swaddled in clean, white sheets. A plastic tube circled my ears and was blowing oxygen into my nose. There were metal bars at my sides. Something was constricting me. I reached down. There were bandages across my abdomen.

I was suddenly aware that a woman was sitting next to me. I turned to look at her. My vision was still a little blurred, and there was a window behind her, making it look as if she were glowing. I didn’t know who she was, though something about her looked familiar. I didn’t even know where I was.

“Welcome back,” she said softly.

For a moment, I just looked at her. My mouth was dry, and my tongue stuck to my mouth as I tried to speak. “Where am I?”

“Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m the woman you stopped to help outside of Waterville.”

I didn’t understand. “Waterville?”

“Remember? You fixed my tire?”

I remembered. It already seemed like a long time ago. “I should have taken you up on the ride.”

She smiled wryly. “I think so.”

Her being there made no sense to me. Nothing at that moment made sense to me. “Why are you here?”

“The police called me. They found the card I gave you. They said it was the only phone number they could find on you.” She reached over and touched my arm. “How do you feel?”

“Everything hurts.” As if in consequence of my words there was a sudden shock of pain that took my breath. I groaned.

“Careful,” she said.

“What happened to me?”

“A gang jumped you. They beat you up pretty bad.”

“I thought they were going to kill me.”

“They might have if it wasn’t for the two men driving by. They were coming back from hunting and had shotguns. They probably saved your life.”

I closed my eyes.

“I have the men’s phone numbers. In case you want to thank them.”

“Did they take my pack?”

“A police officer told me they have your things.”

A few minutes later, a doctor walked in. She was young and looked a little like Monnie, my former neighbor, though her hair was red and short. She inspected my I.V., then looked up at me. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m not dead yet.”

She grinned. “That’s what I was hoping. I’m Doctor Tripp. You had a close call. You lost a lot of blood.”

“How long have I been here?”

“You came in around one A.M. and . . . ,” she checked her watch, “it’s almost two.”

My head was foggy. “Two in the morning?”

“In the afternoon,” she said.

“What happened to my stomach?”

“You were stabbed. You had to be given a blood transfusion.”

“How many times was I stabbed?”

“You have two major wounds to your belly and one flesh wound in your side. Luckily they missed your liver, or you’d be in much worse shape. You also have a concussion.”

“That’s why my head hurts,” I said. “The big guy kept stomping on my head.”

“They worked you over pretty good. You really need to find a different set of friends to hang out with.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“The police would like to talk to you when you feel up to it. They’re just down the hall.”

“They’re here?”

“One of the young men who attacked you was shot. He’s in ICU.” She added, “Don’t worry, he’s not going anywhere. Except jail.” She turned to the woman next to me. “Are you his wife?”

“I’m a friend.”

I exhaled slowly. “How long will I be here?” I asked.

“A while. At least a few days. Maybe a week.”

“I need to get back out walking.”

Her brow furrowed. “Sorry, but you’ll have to put your plans on hold. You’re in no condition to walk. Your next stop is home.”

I didn’t respond.

“Where is home?” the woman asked.

“I’m homeless,” I said. I felt awkward saying it out loud.

“He can come home with me,” the woman said.

The doctor nodded. “Okay, we’ll deal with that when we get there. I’ll be back in a few hours to check up on you.” She touched my shoulder. “I’m glad to see you’re doing so well.” She walked out of the room.

I turned to the woman. “You don’t even know me.”

“I know you’re the kind of guy who stops to help a stranger. Besides, you didn’t know me when you came to my rescue. I’m just returning the favor.”

“How do you know I’m not a serial killer?”

“If you were, you wouldn’t have turned down the ride when I offered it to you.”

She had a point. “Probably not,” I said. I lay back and took a deep breath. This wasn’t a detour I had planned on. Of course, that pretty much summed up my life. “I don’t even know your name,” I said.

“Sorry.” She reached out and touched my hand. “It’s Annie. But everyone calls me Angel.”

EPILOGUE

When I was a boy, my second-grade schoolteacher read us a Brazilian folk tale called The Little Cow.

A Master of Wisdom was walking through the countryside with his apprentice when they came to a small, disheveled hovel on a meager piece of farmland. “See this poor family,” said the Master. “Go see if they will share with us their food.”

“But we have plenty,” said the apprentice.

“Do as I say.”

The obedient apprentice went to the home. The good farmer and his wife, surrounded by their seven children, came to the door. Their clothes were dirty and in tatters.

“Fair greetings,” said the apprentice. “My Master and I are sojourners and want for food. I’ve come to see if you have any to share.”

The farmer said, “We have little, but what we have we will share.” He walked away, then returned with a small piece of cheese and a crust of bread. “I am sorry, but we don’t have much.”

The apprentice did not want to take their food but did as he had been instructed. “Thank you. Your sacrifice is great.”

“Life is difficult,” the farmer said, “but we get by. And in spite of our poverty, we do have one great blessing.”

“What blessing is that?” asked the apprentice.

“We have a little cow. She provides us milk and cheese, which we eat or sell in the marketplace. It is not much but she provides enough for us to live on.”

The apprentice went back to his Master with the meager rations and reported what he had learned about the farmer’s plight. The Master of Wisdom said, “I am pleased to hear of their generosity, but I am greatly sorrowed by their circumstance. Before we leave this place, I have one more task for you.”

“Speak, Master.”

“Return to the hovel and bring back their cow.”

The apprentice did not know why, but he knew his Master to be merciful and wise, so he did as he was told. When he returned with the cow, he said to his Master, “I have done as you commanded. Now what is it that you would do with this cow?”

“See yonder cliffs? Take the cow to the highest crest and push her over.”

The apprentice was stunned. “But Master . . .”

“Do as I say.”

The apprentice sorrowfully obeyed. When he had completed his task, the Master and his apprentice went on their way.

Over the next years, the apprentice grew in mercy and wisdom. But every time he thought back on the visit to the poor farmer’s family, he felt a pang of guilt. One day he decided to go back to the farmer and apologize for what he had done. But when he arrived at the farm, the small hovel was gone. Instead there was a large, fenced villa.

“Oh, no,” he cried. “The poor family who was here was driven out by my evil deed.” Determined to learn what had become of the family, he went to the villa and pounded on its great door. The door was answered by a servant. “I would like to speak to the master of the house,” he said.

“As you wish,” said the servant. A moment later the apprentice was greeted by a smiling, well-dressed man.

“How may I serve you?” the wealthy man asked.

“Pardon me, sir, but could you tell me what has become of the family who once lived on this land but is no more?”

“I do not know what you speak of,” the man replied. “My family has lived on this land for three generations.”

The apprentice looked at him quizzically. “Many years ago I walked through this valley, where I met a farmer and his seven children. But they were very poor and lived in a small hovel.”

“Oh,” the man said smiling, “that was my family. But my children have all grown now and have their own estates.”

The apprentice was astonished. “But you are no longer poor. What happened?”

“God works in mysterious ways,” the man said, smiling. “We had this little cow who provided us with the slimmest of necessities, enough to survive but little more. We suffered but expected no more from life. Then, one day, our little cow wandered off and fell over a cliff. We knew that we would be ruined without her, so we did everything we could to survive. Only then did we discover that we had greater power and abilities than we possibly imagined and never would have found as long as we relied on that cow. What a great blessing from Heaven to have lost our little cow.”

This is what I’ve learned. We can spend our days bemoaning our losses, or we can grow from them. Ultimately the choice is ours. We can be victims of circumstance or masters of our own fate, but make no mistake, we cannot be both.

We are all on a walk. Perhaps not as literal as mine, but a walk all the same. I don’t know what lies ahead of me, but I have 3,000 miles to find out. There are people I’ve yet to meet who are waiting for my path to intersect with theirs, so they can complete their own journeys. I don’t know who or where they are, but I know for certain that they are waiting.

You don’t know me. I am no one famous or important. But, like you, I arrived here with a round-trip ticket. Someday I’ll go back to that place from whence I came. Back home where McKale waits.

When that time comes, I’ll look her in the eyes and tell her I kept the promise—that I chose to live. She’ll smile and laugh then say, “I can’t believe you walked across the entire continent, you crazy old coot.”

That’s the way I imagine it will be. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. Sometimes, in the shadowlands of my dreams, she whispers to me that she’s waiting. And in those moments I know she is near. As she said to me, “Death is like being in the next room.”

Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking. Maybe it’s love. Or maybe it’s something better. Maybe it’s hope.

To learn more about The Walk series or to join Richard’s mailing list and receive special offers and information please visit: www.richardpaulevans.com

Join Richard on Facebook at the Richard Paul Evans fan page or The Walk book series group.

Or write to him at: P.O. Box 712137 • Salt Lake City, Utah • 84171

SIMON & SCHUSTER READING GROUP GUIDE

Introduction

Life is good for Alan Christoffersen. He has a beautiful wife, a great house, and is head of a growing company, but all at once, Alan’s life changes permanently and irrevocably—he loses his family and job. Now completely on his own, Alan must figure out how to pick up the pieces and move on. He starts with a simple step, quite literally: he decides to go for a walk across America.

Discussion Questions

1. The author writes in the style of a diary. Do you enjoy this style of writing? Did it help you relate to the characters? Did you think it made the story stronger or weaker?

2. At the outset, Alan’s life seems to be perfect. However, in the prologue he makes it clear things don’t work out as he imagined. How did this admission and foreshadowing affect your reading?

3. At the start of chapter three the author tells us “procrastination is the thief of dreams.” Is this a true statement? How does that philosophy relate to Alan’s life? Is it true in your life?

4. After McKale’s accident, Alan is so preoccupied with her that his company disappears under his feet. What was his reaction to the news? How do you think you would have handled these major events all at once?

5. Alan became overwhelmed by his grief, yet he never lost his love for McKale. What does that say about him as a person and husband? How did those feelings help him through his pain?

6. Alan says he and McKale were each other’s only friends. Did this focus only on each other end up having a detrimental effect or positive one? Why?

7. Alan’s father also lost his wife at an early age, and so had been through a similar situation. How did he support his son during the ordeal? Was it helpful?

8. The Christoffersens were terrible at handling money and quickly had all their belongings repossessed. How does this metaphor relate to what else Alan had lost?

9. Before almost killing himself, Alan heard a voice that said, “Life is not yours to take.” Who, if anyone, was speaking to him, and what did that message mean?

10. Alan wrote in his diary he believed deep in our hearts we all want to walk free. Do you think that’s true? Would people really prefer to be unchained from their belongings?

11. “A good walk in the woods is as effective as psychotherapy.” What is Alan trying to gain from his walk? A chance to get away from his problems or a long therapy session or both?

12. At what point did you begin to see a change in Alan? Who do you feel had the most profound effect on him during his walk?

13. When McKale visits Alan in a vision, what did she mean when she talked about Angel? What relationship did she see between him and the woman whom he helped on the highway? What relationship do you think Alan and Angel will have?

14. Where do you see the story headed? What other trials do you expect Alan to encounter on his way to Key West?

Enhance Your Book Club

1. Alan begins the story as a big shot ad executive. Create your own advertisement for The Walk and share it with the group. Explain how you created your design.

2. Alan spends much of the novel walking and thinking. Go for a walk with your group as you discuss the story.

3. Do you like to hike? Alan also became proficient in setting up tents and living off the land. Take a weekend trip to the woods or the mountains with your group to take in nature.

4. More than once Alan stopped in a restaurant claiming the best milkshakes in the world. What does it take to make the perfect shake? Create some with your group and see who can make the tastiest version.

A Conversation with Richard Paul Evans

1. What message are you trying to share with this novel?

I believe that we were meant to live as social creatures, to reach out and bless each other’s lives. To paraphrase what Dickens wrote, “. . . it’s required of all men to walk abroad among humanity.”

2. Why did you decide to write in diary form, rather than another style?

I began writing in diary form nearly fifteen years ago with my second novel Timepiece. I enjoy doing it, and it makes for a very readable, interesting book.

3. There is a spiritual side to the novel as Alan wrestles with his feelings toward God. Why did you choose to add this aspect to the story?

It is my experience that almost everyone who suffers a major loss, whether a professed believer in God or not, wonders about God and struggles with either blame or confusion. It was an issue I wanted to address head-on, especially with Ally, the waitress, who asks: Why do we blame God for the bad things but not the good?

4. Are you like Alan, who said that everyone has a deep desire to leave everything behind and just keep moving? Or do you prefer to stay close to home?

Seeing I’ve been in thirteen cities in the last three weeks, I suppose I’m more like Alan than I want to believe. But as I get older, I long to just be home.

5. Why did you choose to call out certain parts of Alan’s diary to start each chapter?

It’s a style I’ve used before in my writing and one that is very popular with my readers. As I write, the focus is on creating a story that flows quickly, so the reader becomes lost in the experience. More prosaic passages can stop that flow. I discovered by pulling them out and putting them at the beginning of a chapter heading, where the reader is already transitioning, makes for a more enjoyable read.

6. You write a very descriptive narrative about Washington State where Alan travels and seem to have a lot of knowledge of the area. Have you traveled there before?

My daughter Jenna and I rented a car and drove the route, carefully observing what he would see, where he would stop, and what he would eat. I initially tried to write this story in my den and realized it was impossible to do without being there. This means that over the next four years, Jenna and I will travel across America together, something I’m very excited about.

7. Alan contemplates an important question on his walk that is good for you as well: Who really does have the greatest milkshakes?

I honestly don’t know. I’m diabetic so I didn’t try any. My daughter liked Zeke’s.

8. The Walk is the first book in your planned series. What other adventures are in store for Alan on his trip?

You’ll have to wait and see.

9. You’ve written a number of bestsellers. What is it about writing that you enjoy? What is your process in creating stories that people enjoy so much?

I suppose I have an active imagination and writing allows me to live it out. I truly feel as if I’m a conduit for these stories, and there are times that I don’t even know what I’m writing until it’s poured through me and I can confront it on the page. People are looking for inspiration, and my books are sometimes the vehicles of what people are looking for. It’s my job, however, to make my books entertaining.

Richard Paul Evans is the #1 bestselling author of The Christmas Box. Each of his twenty novels has been a New York Times bestseller. There are more than fifteen million copies of his books in print worldwide, translated into more than twenty-four languages. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Mothers Book Award, the Romantic Times Best Women’s Novel of the Year Award, the German Audience Gold Award for Romance, two Religion Communicators Council Wilbur Awards, the Washington Times Humanitarian of the Century Award and the Volunteers of America National Empathy Award. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife, Keri, and their five children. You can learn more about Richard on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RPEfans, or visit his website, www.richardpaulevans.com.

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COVER DESIGN BY JACKIE SEOW

COVER PHOTOGRAPH © GETTY IMAGES

ALSO BY RICHARD PAUL EVANS

A Winter Dream

Lost December

Promise Me

The Christmas List

Grace

The Gift

Finding Noel

The Sunflower

A Perfect Day

The Last Promise

The Christmas Box Miracle

The Carousel

The Looking Glass

The Locket

The Letter

Timepiece

The Christmas Box

The Walk Series

Miles to Go

The Road to Grace

For Young Adults

Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25

Michael Vey: Rise of the Elgen

Simon & Schuster Paperbacks

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Paul Evans

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Paperbacks Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition January 2013

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Designed by Davina Mock-Maniscalco

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Evans, Richard Paul.

The walk / Richard Paul Evans.

p.   cm.

1. Voyages and travels—Fiction. 2. Identity (Psychology)—Fiction. 3. Diary fiction. I. Title.

PS3555.V259W35   2010

813’.54—dc22   2009052981

ISBN 978-1-4391-8731-9

ISBN 978-1-4391-9142-2 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4391-9990-9 (ebook)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank the following for their assistance on this book: My daughter Jenna, for her wisdom, editorial advice and endurance on the road. It was Jenna’s idea on where to end this story. I’m proud of you, honey.

Laurie Liss, just for being you. Dr. Steve Schlozman for helping me at such a difficult time. Jonathan Karp, for your enthusiasm for this series. Gypsy da Silva, Karen Thompson and Amanda Murray, for editorial advice. Liz Peterson and Chris Evans—for helping us find our way around Spokane. Kailamai Hansen. Kelly Glad, thanks for always being ready with an answer. Pattie Servine, P.R. Department at Sacred Heart Medical Center. Taylor Swift just because I really like your music. Carl Evans and Detective Corbett Ford of the Cottonwood Heights Police Department. Tony Bonney.

And the crew of the Windstar, especially Amanda Millar, who delivered the proofs of this book in Virgin Gorda, miraculously.

My staff: Diane Glad, Barry Evans, Heather McVey, Fran Plat, Lisa Johnson, Lisa McDonald, Sherri Engar, Jed Platt, and Doug Smith.

The family; Keri, Jenna and David, Allyson, Abigail, McKenna and Michael.

As always, my Heavenly Father.

To Karen Christoffersen

Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Epilogue

Reading Group Guide

Introduction

Topics & Questions for Discussion

Enhance Your Book Club

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

—Robert Frost

PROLOGUE

The sun will rise again. The only uncertainty is whether or not we will rise to greet it.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Several months after I was mugged, stabbed, and left unconscious along the shoulder of Washington’s Highway 2, a friend asked me what being stabbed felt like. I told her it hurt.

Really, how do you describe pain? Sometimes doctors ask us to rate our pain on a scale from one to ten, as if that number had some reliable meaning. In my opinion there needs to be a more objective rating system, something comparative; like, would you trade what you’re feeling for a root canal or maybe half a childbirth?

And with what would we compare emotional pain—physical pain? Arguably, emotional pain is the greater of the two evils. Sometimes people will inflict physical pain on themselves to dull their emotional anguish. I understand. If I had the choice between being stabbed or losing my wife, McKale, again, the knife has the advantage—because if the knife kills me, I stop hurting. If it doesn’t kill me, the wound will heal. Either way the pain stops. But no matter what I do, my McKale is never coming back. And I can’t imagine that the pain in my heart will ever go away.

Still, there is hope—not to forget McKale, nor even to understand why I had to lose her—but to accept that I did and somehow go on. As a friend recently said to me, no matter what I do, McKale will always be a part of me. The question is, what part—a spring of gratitude, or a fountain of bitterness? Someday I’ll have to decide. Someday the sun will rise again. The only uncertainty is whether or not I will rise to greet it.

In the meantime, what I hope for most is hope. Walking helps. I wish I were walking again right now. I think I’d rather be anywhere right now than where I am.

CHAPTER

One

We plan our lives in long, unbroken stretches that intersect our dreams the way highways connect the city dots on a road map. But in the end we learn that life is lived in the side roads, alleys, and detours.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

My name is Alan Christoffersen and this is the second journal of my walk. I’m writing from a hospital room in Spokane, Washington. I’m not sure how you came to be holding my book—truthfully, I don’t even know if you are—but if you’re reading my story, welcome to my journey.

You don’t know much about me. I’m a thirty-two-year-old former advertising executive, and sixteen days ago I walked away from my home in Bridle Trails, Seattle, leaving everything behind, which, frankly, wasn’t much by the time I started my trek. I’m walking to Key West, Florida—that’s about 3,500 miles, give or take a few steps.

Before my life imploded, I was, as one of my clients put it, “the poster child for the American dream”—a happily married, successful advertising executive with a gorgeous wife (McKale), a thriving advertising agency with a wall of awards and accolades, and a $2 million home with horse property and two luxury cars parked in the garage.

Then the universe switched the tracks beneath me, and in just five weeks I lost it all. My slide began when McKale broke her neck in a horse-riding accident. Four weeks later she died of complications. While I was caring for her in the hospital, my clients were stolen by my partner, Kyle Craig, and my financial world collapsed, leading to the foreclosure of my home and repossession of my cars.

With my wife, business, house, and cars gone, I packed up what I needed to survive and started my walk to Key West.

I’m not trying to set any records or wind up in any newspapers. I’m certainly not the first to cross the continent by foot; I’m at least a century too late for that. In fact, the first attempt was made more than two hundred years ago by a man named John Ledyard, who planned to walk across Siberia, ride a Russian fur-trade vessel across the ocean to (what is now) Alaska, and then walk the rest of the way to Washington, D.C., where Thomas Jefferson would warmly greet him. Such are the plans of men. Ledyard only made it as far as Siberia, where Russian Empress, Catherine the Great, had him arrested and sent to Poland.

Since then, no less than a few thousand pioneers, prospectors, and mountainmen have crossed the continent without air-cushioned walking shoes, paved roads, or, unbelievably, a single McDonald’s.

Even in our day there is a sizable list of countrycrossers, including an eighty-nine-year-old woman who walked from California to Washington, D.C., and a New Jersey man who ran from New Brunswick to San Francisco in exactly sixty days.

Nearly all of these travelers carried causes with them, from political reform to childhood obesity. Not me. The only torch I’m carrying is the one for my wife.

You might guess that my destination was chosen for its balmy weather, blinding white beaches, and topaz blue waters, but you’d be wrong: Key West was simply the furthest point on the map from where I started.

I should add the disclaimer that Key West is my intended destination. It is my experience that journeys rarely take us where we think we’re going. As Steinbeck wrote, “we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” There’s a difference between reading a map and traveling the road—as distinct as the disparity between reading a menu and eating a meal. So it is with life. As the saying goes, “Life is what happens to us while we’re planning something else.” That is true. Even my detours had detours.

My most recent detour has left me in the emergency room of Sacred Heart Medical Center with a concussion and three knife wounds to my belly after being jumped by a gang three miles outside Spokane. That’s where you’re joining me.

For those of you who have been following my walk since my first step (or before), I warned you that my story wouldn’t be easy. I suppose that’s no surprise; no one’s story is easy. No one goes through life without pain—of this I’m certain. The price for joy is sadness. The price for having is loss. You can moan and whine about this and play the victim—many do—but it’s just the way it is. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. That’s one of the benefits of walking.

I also warned you in my first journal that you might not believe or be ready for all I have to share with you. This book is no different. No matter—accept or dismiss what you want to believe.

Since I began my walk, I’ve traveled only 318 miles, less than ten percent of the distance to Key West. But already there have been profound experiences; I’ve met people along the way I believe I was meant to meet and I’m certain there are more to come.

This is a story of contrasts—about living and dying, hope and despair, pain and healing, and the tenuous, thin places between both extremes where most of us reside.

I’m not sure whether I’m walking away from my past or toward a future—time and miles will tell and I have plenty of both. As the poet Robert Frost said, I have “miles to go before I sleep.”

I’m happy to share with you what I learn. Welcome to my walk.

CHAPTER

Two

I’ve gone from a schedule of hours and minutes to not being able to tell you what day of the month it is.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

My second night in the hospital was rough. I was wet and hot with fever and somewhere in the night I started coughing. Each expulsion felt like another blade plunging into my stomach. The nurse checked my bandages, then told me not to cough, which wasn’t at all helpful. In spite of the medications they gave me to help me sleep, for most of the night I just lay there, lonely and aching. I wanted McKale more than life. Definitely more than life. Of course, if she were with me, I wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. Exhaustion finally overcame me and I fell asleep around 4 or 5 A.M.

The next day I woke to a young nurse walking around my bed looking at monitors and writing on a clipboard. Since I’d been admitted to the hospital, a bevy of nurses and doctors had been swarming around me in my delirium, flashing in and out of my consciousness like dancers in a music video. But I didn’t remember any of them. This was the first nurse I was cognizant of. She was small, petite, and barely the height of a floor lamp. I watched her for a few minutes then said, “Morning.”

She looked up from her clipboard. “Good afternoon.”

“What time is it?” I asked. It was kind of a funny question since I didn’t even know what day, or week, it was. The last two weeks had run together like eggs in a blender.

“It’s almost twelve-thirty,” she said, then added, “Friday.”

Friday. I had left Seattle on a Friday. I’d been gone for just fourteen days. Fourteen days and a lifetime.

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Norma,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

“How about an Egg McMuffin?” I said.

She grinned. “Not unless you can find one made of Jell-O. How about some pudding? The butterscotch is edible.”

“Butterscotch pudding for breakfast?”

“Lunch,” she corrected. “Also, in a couple hours we’re sending you in for a CT scan.”

“When can I take the catheter out?”

“When you can walk to the bathroom on your own—which we’ll attempt after we get the results back from your scan. Are you claustrophobic?”

“No.”

“Sometimes people get claustrophobic in the scanner. I can give you something for anxiety if you are. A Valium.”

“I don’t need anything,” I said. I didn’t care about the scan; I wanted the catheter out of me. In the haze of the last forty-eight hours, I vaguely remembered pulling the catheter out and making a real mess of things.

I had two good reasons for wanting it out; first, because it hurt. No one should stick anything up that part of the male anatomy. Second, an infection from a catheter is what killed my wife. The sooner the thing was out, the better.

A hospital orderly, a husky young freckled man wearing bright purple scrubs, came for me around two in the afternoon. He unhooked some wires and tubes from my body, then wheeled my entire bed down the linoleum corridor to radiology. I didn’t know it was my second visit until the technician operating the equipment said, “Welcome back.”

“Have I been here before?”

“You were out the first time,” she replied.

The scan was tedious, surprisingly loud, and took about an hour. When it was through, the orderly wheeled me back to my room and I fell asleep. When I woke, Angel was back.

CHAPTER

Three

Somewhere between being stabbed and waking in the hospital, I had an experience that’s difficult to describe. Call it a dream or a vision, but McKale came to me. She told me that it wasn’t my time to die—that there were still people I was meant to meet. When I asked her who, she replied, “Angel.” Who is this woman?

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The first time I woke in the hospital, there was a strange woman sitting in a chair next to my hospital bed. She was about my age and dressed casually, wearing a fitted T-shirt and jeans. When I could speak, I asked her who she was. She told me that we had met a few days earlier just outside the small town of Waterville. Her car had been stopped at the side of the road with a flat tire.

I recalled the encounter. She had tried to change the tire herself but had spilled the wheel’s lug nuts down the side of the incline into a deep gorge, leaving her stranded. I had taken a nut from each of the other tires and attached her spare.

She had offered me a ride to Spokane that I turned down. Just before she drove off, she gave me her business card, which (since I’d thrown my cell phone away on the first day of my walk) was the only contact information the police found on me. They called her and, inexplicably, she came. Her name was Annie, but she told me to call her Angel. “That’s what my friends call me,” she said.

She was with me when the doctor told me that I would need several weeks of convalescence at home.

“I’m homeless,” I said.

There was an awkward silence. Then Angel said, “He can come home with me.”

Since then she had come every day to see me, staying for about an hour each night, our conversation as stilted as two teenagers on a blind date. I wasn’t bothered that she came—I was lonely and appreciated the company—I just didn’t know why she came.

Tonight’s visit (angelic visitations, she called them) was later than usual. When I woke, she was looking down, reading a paperback Amish love story. As I looked at her, a song started playing in my head.

I’m on top of the world looking down on creation…

The tune, ironically cheerful, kept on playing, as annoyingly insistent as a scratched vinyl record. The melody was from a seventies song—something from my childhood. The Carpenters. My mother loved the Carpenters. She’d talk about Richard and Karen Carpenter like they were relatives.

Even as she was dying of cancer, she’d play their records. Especially when she was dying. She said their music kept her spirits up. As a kid, I knew the words to all their songs by heart. I still did. “Close to You,” “Rainy Days and Mondays,” “Hurting Each Other”; I remember tracing the Carpenters’ signature logo on typing paper, then trying to improve it, which was probably my first commercial graphic attempt.

My mother would play their albums on our walnutveneered, Zenith console stereo (a Plymouth-sized appliance which nearly took up the entire east wall of our living room), and their music would fill our home, which always made me feel peaceful because I knew it made my mother happy.

Angel was still engrossed in her book when I realized why the tune had come to mind. She looked like Karen Carpenter. Not exactly. She was blond and probably a little prettier, but close enough to warrant a second glance. I wondered if she could sing. As I was musing over the similarities, Angel suddenly looked up. She smiled when she saw me looking at her. “Hi.”

My mouth was parched and I ran my tongue over my lips before speaking. “Hi.”

“How are you feeling?”

“A little better than yesterday. How long have you been here?”

“About an hour.” Silence. Then she said, “You were talking in your sleep.”

“Did I say anything profound?”

“I think you were calling for someone … McKay or McKale?”

I winced but offered no explanation.

“I talked to your nurse. She said that if your scan turns out well, you could leave in a few days. Maybe even Monday.” Her mouth twisted a little. “Halloween. Scary.”

“That would be nice,” I said.

After a moment she said, “My offer’s still open. You’re welcome to stay with me. I’ve already moved some things around in my apartment …” then she added cautiously, “just in case.”

“That’s kind of you,” I said without commitment.

She looked at me apprehensively. Nearly a minute had passed when she asked, “What do you think?”

What did I think? I had spent the last few days considering the few options I had. After the destruction of my life, the only friend I had left was Falene, my former assistant, back in Seattle. In spite of our friendship, I couldn’t go back there.

My only other option was my father in Los Angeles. If I went to California, I knew I’d never come back. And I needed to come back. I needed to finish my walk.

For the first time since I’d left my home, I realized that my trek was more than just a physical commitment; it was a spiritual one—like the walkabouts of the Australian aborigines or the spirit walk of the Native Americans. Something I didn’t completely understand compelled me onward.

And, for whatever reason, this woman was part of my journey. There was some reason she was in my path and sitting by my bed. I just had no idea what that reason might be.

After a moment I said, “If it’s not too much trouble.”

Her lips rose in a slight smile and she nodded. “No trouble at all.”

CHAPTER

Four

Sometimes Mother Nature has PMS.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I suddenly realized the date—October 28—McKale’s and my wedding anniversary.

Our wedding day wasn’t the kind of day anyone dreams of, unless you include nightmares. Just about everything went wrong, which, I guess, is what happens when mothers aren’t involved—or Mother Nature is.

We had planned a small ceremony at the Arcadia Arboretum and Botanical Gardens just a few miles from our home near the racetrack at Santa Anita Park. On the east side of the arboretum was a beautiful rose garden with a vine-covered gazebo, the back of the structure overhanging a pond filled with koi and lily pads. The setting was perfect. The weather, not so much. It started raining around 8 P.M. the evening before our wedding and didn’t let up until about two hours before our ceremony. Everything was soggy. The lawn was as saturated as a deep-sea sponge and water ran out along its borders in rivulets and streams.

We should have rented a large tent in case of inclement weather, but our wedding planner, Diane—McKale’s cousin—was so certain of her luck (it never rains on my parties, she boasted) that she had only reserved a small, 20-by-20-foot canopy as a backup.

After the rain stopped, Diane and her helpers scurried about the yard, setting up chairs, tossing rose petals, tying ribbons, stringing up lights and setting up an array of wide, fabric umbrellas, just in case the rain started again.

As an ornamental backdrop for the gazebo, Diane hung strings of twinkling white lights and brought in two meter-high white column-style pedestals topped with large ceramic vases.

As everything took shape, the members of the string quartet assumed their places next to the gazebo and began playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

It would seem that Mother Nature had been waiting for the optimal moment to strike, for just as the finishing touches were being made—and Diane was looking rather pleased with herself—a microburst hit. In one great sneeze, the umbrellas were turned inside out or took flight (I watched one guest chase one through the parking lot), the vases fell and shattered, and the rose petals so delicately thrown about were brusquely blown away.

The scene would have been amusing if it weren’t so tragic. Our unfortunate guests ran around the garden in a state of panic, clinging to their hats, garments, or spouses. All was chaos.

As soon as the ceremony’s accoutrements were sufficiently destroyed, the wind stopped, as if Mother Nature was taking a moment to survey her handiwork. Then the rain started back in earnest.

The preacher, Reverend Handy, a friend of McKale’s father, had come from another wedding and gotten caught in the weather-delayed traffic, arriving on the scene just fifteen minutes before the appointed hour. I noticed his stunned expression as he surveyed the ruins of our day. The setting looked like a news clip from one of those interviews you see broadcast from a trailer park after a tornado’s blown through—complete and utter devastation.

At noon I took my place under the dripping gazebo and waited for my bride, standing before a small gathering of survivors congregated beneath a bobbing sea of umbrellas.

And then she appeared, her father on one side, the distraught Diane on the other, wet and carrying an umbrella. McKale was my sun, radiant in a strapless ivory dress. As she neared, we looked into each other’s eyes and the chaos melted away. I slid the ring on her finger, hoping that she hadn’t seen the carnage as an omen for our marriage.

After we were pronounced man and wife, most of our guests fled while those remaining crowded under a dripping canopy to await the cutting of the cake.

McKale was quiet as we drove off on our honeymoon, the rhythm of the windshield wipers filling the gap of our silence. When we were alone in our hotel room, I said, “I’m sorry about how things turned out.” I expected her to burst into tears, but she didn’t. Instead she looked down at her diamond ring, then took my hand. “I would have married you with a plastic ring, standing in a landfill in the middle of a hurricane. The show was for them. All I wanted was you. It’s the best day of my life.”

That’s when I was sure we’d last forever.

Angel was by my side when I realized that McKale’s wedding ring was missing. I started frantically patting around my chest and neck. I must have looked like I was having a heart attack or stroke because Angel looked alarmed. “What is it?” she asked. “Should I call a nurse?”

“They took it,” I said.

“Took what?”

“My wife’s wedding ring. It was on a chain around my neck.”

She looked almost as distraught as I felt. “I’ll see if the nurses know anything about it.” She pressed the call button, and within a few moments a nurse I’d never seen before appeared in the doorway.

“Do you need something?”

Angel said, “Alan’s missing some jewelry.”

“Well, we usually remove jewelry in the ER.” She turned to me. “What are you missing?”

“It’s a woman’s diamond ring on a gold chain,” I said.

“It’s probably in your locker. I can check on it for you.”

I lay my head back into the pillow. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Alice.”

“Alice,” I said, “do you know where the rest of my things are? I was carrying a backpack when I was attacked.”

“No. But I can ask the police. They’re just down the hall.”

“Why are they down the hall?”

“They’re standing guard over one of the men who attacked you.”

I had forgotten. My doctor had told me earlier that one of the young men who had assaulted me was also in the hospital—not that I was planning to send a get-well card—but it was good information to have.

Alice said, “The police have asked to speak with you when you’re feeling up to it.”

“I’m up to it,” I said quickly. I wanted to talk to the police for my own reasons—I had questions about the night.

It was less than five minutes after her departure when two police officers in uniform entered my room, stopping a few feet inside my door. The officer closest to me, a short, slim man, spoke. “Mr. Christoffersen, I’m Officer Eskelson. This is my partner, Lieutenant Foulger. May we come in?”

I looked at the other officer who was standing behind him. “Yes.”

Eskelson turned to Angel. “Is this your wife?”

“No,” she said. “I’m just a friend.”

“Do you mind if she’s here for our interview?”

“I can leave,” Angel said.

“She’s fine,” I said.

Angel remained seated. Officer Eskelson walked to the side of my bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Other than the concussion and three knife wounds?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, I’ll keep this short.” He lifted a pad and pen. “I’d like you to describe, in your own words, the night of your assault.”

I’ve never understood why people said “in your own words.” Who else’s words would I use?

“It was around midnight when I stopped at the Hilton in Airway Heights for a room, but they didn’t have any vacancies, so I had to go on to Spokane. I had walked about a mile when I heard some rap music and a car pulled up alongside me, a yellow Impala with a black stripe.

“There were some rough-looking kids in the car. I assumed they were gang members. They started yelling things at me. I just ignored them, but they pulled off the side of the road and got out of their car.”

“Would you recognize these youths?”

“You mean like in a police lineup?”

He nodded.

“I don’t know. Some of them. I thought you had them in custody.”

“We do,” Foulger said.

Eskelson said, “So after they pulled over, what happened?”

“They told me to give them my pack. I tried to talk them out of it. That’s when the guy who stabbed me said they were going to take it after they beat me up.”

“Is that what he said, ‘beat you up’?”

“I think his actual words were, ‘mess you up.’ He said they were out looking for a ‘bum to roll.’”

He scribbled on his pad. “Then what happened?”

“He came at me.”

“The kid who stabbed you?”

I nodded. “I hit him and he fell over. Then one of the other guys hit me over the head with something. It felt like a pipe or a club.”

“It was a baseball bat,” Lieutenant Foulger said, clearing his throat. “Louisville Slugger.”

“He just about knocked me out. I saw stars, but somehow I kept on my feet. Then everything got crazy. They all came at me at once. Someone knocked me to the ground and everyone was kicking me. The big guy kept stomping on my head. Then everything stopped. I looked up and the little guy took out a knife and asked me if I wanted to die.”

Eskelson took his phone and showed me a picture of a young man. The picture had been taken in the hospital. “This guy?

I had to examine the image closely. The young man in the picture looked much different than the cocky, knife-wielding thug I’d encountered. Half of his face was eclipsed by gauze bandages and an oxygen tube ran down from his nose. He looked small and frail.

“That looks like him.”

He scribbled on his pad. “Were those his exact words? ‘Do you want to die?’”

“I’m pretty sure of it.”

He wrote on his pad. “Then what?”

“I don’t remember being stabbed. Someone kicked me in the face. The next thing I remember was the paramedics loading me onto a stretcher.” I combed my hair back with my hand. “So tell me, why am I still alive?”

“Luck,” Eskelson said, dropping his pad to his side. “Or God didn’t want you dead. While you were being assaulted, a truck passing westbound saw what was happening. Fortunately for you, the truck’s occupants had both the inclination and the courage to get involved.”

“And shotguns,” Foulger added.

“The men had been out duck hunting,” Eskelson said. “They laid on their horn, then drove across the median right up to the crime scene.”

Foulger jumped in. “As they got out of their truck, Marcus Franck, the kid with the knife, went at one of the men, so he shot him.”

“How is he?” I asked. “The kid.”

“Not good,” Officer Foulger said, his lips tightening. “Twenty-gauge shotgun blast from eight, nine yards, he’s a mess. He probably won’t make it.”

“The nurse said you’re guarding him.”

“He’s not going anywhere,” Foulger said. “We’re more concerned about who might come to visit.”

Officer Eskelson continued, “The hunters ordered the rest of the gang to the ground and called 911. You were bleeding pretty badly. One of the hunters administered first aid until the paramedics arrived. They saved your life.”

“What are their names?” I asked.

“Since there’s a potential fatality, their names are confidential. But I can tell them that you’d like to talk to them. I’ve been keeping them apprised of both yours and the boy’s condition.”

“I understand.”

“The doctor told us you’ll be here for at least a few more days. After that, where can we get ahold of you?” Eskelson asked.

“My place,” Angel said. “He’s going to be staying with me until he’s recovered.” She gave them her phone number.

Eskelson said to Angel, “You look familiar.”

“I’m a dispatcher for the Spokane Police Department.” “I thought I knew you,” Foulger said.

“The nurse said you might know where my backpack is,” I said.

“It’s at the station. We can bring it by later tonight.”

“Thank you. Will you let me know how the boy does?”

“No problem. At least one of us will be here for the next day or two. If you need something or remember anything else relevant to the assault, just call.”

“Get well,” Foulger said.

“Thank you.”

After they left, Angel walked up to the side of the bed, placing her hands on the railing. “You okay?”

“Yes. So you’re with the police?”

“Not really. I’m a dispatcher.”

“Were you on call when I was attacked?”

“No. That was someone from the night shift.” She patted my arm. “I better go. It’s late. But tomorrow’s Saturday, so I’ll be back in the morning.” She started to walk away, then stopped and turned back. “I didn’t know the whole story. You know, it’s a miracle you’re still alive.”

I carefully rubbed my hand over my abdomen. “I suppose so.”

“Makes you think,” she said thoughtfully. “Good night.” She walked out of the room.

CHAPTER

Five

I tried to walk today. I felt as awkward as a baby taking his first steps and I probably looked about the same.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Sometime in the night the police returned my backpack. I woke to see it propped up in the corner of the room. I had the nurse on call look through it and retrieve my diary and a pen.

Angel arrived a few hours later. She was dressed in an exercise outfit. Her hair was pulled back and, in the morning light, I noticed for the first time the deep, ragged scars that ran across her hairline and down the right side of her face to her jaw. I wondered how I’d never noticed them before.

“Good morning,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

“A little better. They might get me up to walk today.”

“Big day.” She looked curiously at the leather book lying by my side. “What’s that?”

“My journal. I’ve decided to chronicle my journey.”

“Really? Am I in there?”

“Of course.”

“I wish that I had kept a journal,” she said. “In high school I had a friend who kept one. She used to write lies in it.”

“She’d lie in her journal?”

“She said that when she was old and couldn’t remember anything she could read her journal and think she had a great life.”

I grinned. “There’s a certain logic to that.”

“I suppose.”

“I used to write copy for an advertising agency. So I guess I’m not so different from your friend.”

This interested her. “Really? I’ve always wanted to be a writer.”

“What kind?”

“I want to write screenplays. I’ve actually started one.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s still rough, but it’s about a woman who is betrayed by her husband and friends, so she fakes her own death and takes on a new identity.”

“That sounds intriguing.”

“I have the first half finished. I just can’t come up with a good beginning. Something catchy, you know?”

“I’m an expert at catchy. That’s the domain of the ad guy—thirty seconds to own you. How about something like this—‘Even though the police dug in my backyard all afternoon, they didn’t find a single body.’”

She laughed. “That’s compelling. But what if my character doesn’t have any bodies in the backyard?”

“Everyone has bodies,” I said.

I noticed a slight twinge.

A half hour later Norma came into the room holding a long white strap with a silver buckle. “Well, Mr. Alan, I have good news and good news. Which do you want first?”

“Surprise me.”

“First, I heard you were looking for this.” She handed me the chain with McKale’s ring.

I eagerly reached for it. “Thank you.”

As I strung the chain around my neck, she said, “The other good news is—you passed your CT scan.”

“Do I get a diploma for that?”

“You get something better. You get to walk.” Then she added, “If you can.”

“What do you mean, if? I’ve walked more than three hundred miles in the last two weeks.”

Norma rested her hands on her hips. “Considering your wounds, it might not be as easy as you think. What you went through is like having a couple nasty C-sections. So let’s make your first goal something attainable, like to the bathroom.”

“Followed by a victory lap around the hospital,” I said.

“We’ll see.” She laid the long white strap on my bed.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s a gait belt. In case you fall.”

I grinned at the idea of her holding me up, as she was half my size. “You’re going to keep me from falling?”

“I’m stronger than you think. So, can you sit up?”

I thought it a funny question. “Of course.” I pushed my elbows down on the bed and lifted my chest. Pain shot up through my abdomen, taking my breath away. I blanched. “Oh.”

Norma looked at me knowingly, as if she was restraining an “I told you so.”

“That hurt a bit more than I thought it would,” I said.

Norma asked, “Can you swing your legs over the side of the bed?”

As I shifted my body, I realized just how dependent my legs were on my stomach muscles. Walking wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. In one fateful night my goal had changed from Key West to the bathroom door. It took me a couple of minutes before I could dangle my legs over the side.

“Good. Now hold there for a moment.” Norma got some slippers from my closet and brought them over. She knelt down and put them on my feet, clamped off my catheter, then stood. She put the gait belt around my waist and fastened it. “Are you ready?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Now slowly slide forward, putting your weight on the balls of your feet.”

I pushed myself closer to the side of the bed, pulling my hospital gown down over my thighs. When my feet touched the floor, I began to lean forward. Incredible pain shot through my body, like jolts of electricity. “Ah.” I took another deep breath. I was truly surprised by the intensity of the pain. The bathroom now looked a mile away.

“Not ready for the victory lap yet?” Norma said.

I took a deep breath. “That … hurts.”

“Do you want to continue?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll try just a few steps this morning. Baby steps.” She looked at Angel. “Can you give me a hand?”

Angel stood. “What do you want me to do?”

“Let him lean on your shoulder a little.” She turned to me. “We’re going to help you stand.”

Both of them put a hand behind me as I put my arms around their shoulders. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go.”

I slid to the edge of the bed. My eyes watered with the pain and I lightly groaned.

“Just take it easy,” Norma said. “We’re in no hurry.”

“I am,” I said. I clenched my jaw, then leaned forward until I was standing. They both took their hands away from me but remained close.

“How do you feel?” Norma asked.

“Like I’ve been cut in two and taped back together.”

“That’s a fairly accurate description.”

I took a small step with my right foot—actually more of a shuffle than a step, maybe 6 inches. I paused, then moved my left foot up to my right foot. This is bad, I thought.

“That’s good,” Norma said. “You did it. Now try another.”

I shuffled forward again, feeling like an old man. I was halfway to the bathroom when I began to wonder how I was going to make it back to the bed. “I think I better go back.”

“Let’s try turning around,” Norma said.

I shuffled in a circle until I was facing the bed. Three days ago I was measuring my walks in miles. Now I was counting steps. Eighteen of them and I was exhausted. I walked back to the bed, turned around, leaned against the side of the bed then lay back. Mercifully, Norma lifted my legs onto the mattress.

“You did great,” Norma said. “That was a great start.”

“There was nothing great about that,” I said.

“Sure there was,” she replied. “You’re just more damaged than you thought.”

Up until that moment I had been in a state of denial, telling myself that in spite of my doctor’s warning, I was going to grab my backpack and walk out of the hospital. The reality was, I was going to have to go through an extended period of recovery. The thought painfully reminded me of McKale’s weeks of hospital rehabilitation after her accident.

“I know it doesn’t seem like much, but your stomach muscles were severed. It’s going to take a while before you’re back at it.”

At that moment I was filled with anger at everything that had grounded me: my body, the Hilton that had no vacancies, the gang, and especially the kid with the knife who was somewhere on my floor of the hospital. Languishing in a hospital bed wasn’t part of my plan. Hadn’t I already suffered enough?

To make matters worse, the seasons had already been stacked against me. I had planned to cross through the Idaho panhandle, then Montana and Wyoming, and with some luck, make it out of the mountains before the heaviest snows hit and closed the highways. That hope was gone. By the time I was walking again, the roads would be impassable. Like it or not, I was grounded until spring.

After Norma left the room, Angel sat down again, scooting her chair closer to me. “Are you okay?”

“What do you think?” I snapped. “Walking was the only thing I had. Now I’m going to be stuck in this godforsaken place until spring.”

She looked at me, her face showing hurt. “I’m sorry.”

I looked at her and sighed. “No, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. I’m just upset.”

After a few minutes of silence she said, “Maybe I’ll go do my grocery shopping. Do you need anything from the store?”

I couldn’t believe how kind she was being after I’d just yelled at her. “Pop-Tarts,” I said.

“Pop-Tarts?”

“Strawberry Pop-Tarts.”

“Pop-Tarts it is. I’ll bring some tonight.”

“You’re coming back tonight?”

“If it’s okay with you.”

“I don’t know why you’d want to.”

“I like seeing you,” she said. “Do you play cards?”

“Texas Hold ’em, Hearts, and Gin Rummy.”

“I’ll bring some cards.” She stood. “See you tonight.”

“Angel, I really am sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’d do the same thing.” She touched my arm, then walked out the door. After Angel left, I lay back in my bed, thinking about her. She really was kind.

Later that afternoon Norma came back in. “I brought you something,” she said, holding up a piece of paper.

Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse
passio simulatque eius claram et
distinctam formamus ideam.

I looked at the sign without comprehension. “I don’t read Latin.”

“Actually, neither do I. It’s from the philosopher Spinoza. It says, and I’m paraphrasing here, ‘Suffering ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear picture of it.’ My father gave me this a few years back when I had a stillborn baby. It’s helped me to get through it. I know you’re in a lot of pain and you’re frustrated. But this will pass and before you know it you’ll be walking again. I promise.”

I looked at the paper. “Would you mind hanging it up?”

“I’d be glad to. I’ll go find some tape.” She left the room.

Suffering ceases to be suffering when we form a clear picture of it. I wondered if that was the reason I felt so compelled to write in my journal.

When she came back, she taped the sign on my closet door. “How’s that?”

“Perfect.”

“Ready to walk again?”

“Sure.”

I clenched my teeth as I moved my feet to the side of the bed, then slid forward. The pain felt worse this time. Norma fastened the gait belt around my waist.

“Okay, take it easy. One step at a time.”

I took in a deep breath, then took a step, met with searing pain. I paused, then took another. The same. I took a third, then stopped. “I can’t do it.”

“You’re still sore from this morning,” she said softly. She put my arm around her shoulder and slowly helped me back. I sat back and she lifted my feet onto the bed. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

I closed my eyes and sighed.

“Hey, you’ll get this. Before you know it, you’ll be running marathons.” She patted my leg. “My shift is over. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

After she left, I tried to form a clear picture of my suffering. It didn’t make the pain go away.

Angel returned around seven. She was wearing a long navy blue wool coat and was carrying a plastic grocery sack from which she brought out two boxes of Pop-Tarts. “I got your Pop-Tarts,” she said. “I didn’t know if you wanted the frosted kind or plain, so I got you both.” She set the boxes on the table next to my bed.

“Thank you.” I opened the box with the frosted pastries and took out a package, opening the wrapper with my teeth. I handed a Pop-Tart to Angel. “Want one?”

“Sure.” She took the pastry. Then, as she walked to the other side of my bed, she noticed the quote Norma had taped to the closet door. “What’s this?”

“It’s something Norma brought in.”

She squinted as she read it. “Emotion, which is suffering, stops … no … ceases to be suffering when a clear and distinct idea is formed.”

“You read Latin?” I asked.

“Almost,” she said. “I had classes in high school.” I noticed that she made no comment as to the message or its meaning. She took her coat off.

“Your family must wonder why you’ve been gone so much lately,” I said.

“There’s no family,” she said. “Just me.”

“Well, then your friends must wonder what you’re up to.”

A sardonic grin crossed her face. “No one’s filing a missing person report, if that’s what you mean. I’m kind of a loner.”

I looked at her quizzically. “I never would have pegged you for a loner.”

“Why is that?”

“You’re a very friendly, kind person. It doesn’t add up.”

“I could say the same about you.”

“Things happen.”

“Exactly,” she replied. “Things happen.” She looked at me for a moment. “I was thinking about the ring you were looking for. Did you lose your wife?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

She put her hand on my arm. “I know this is a dumb question, but is there anything I can do?”

“I wish there were.” After a moment I asked, “Have you ever been married?”

She hesitated. “No.”

“Are you from Spokane?”

“I was born here. But my family moved to Minnesota when I was eight. I got a job offer a few months ago and decided to move back.”

“So what’s it like being a police dispatcher?”

She shrugged. “It’s not dull, but it’s depressing. Seems all day long I witness the worst of mankind.”

“I never thought of that. Where in Minnesota are you from?”

“Near Lake Minnetonka in Wayzata.”

“I’ve never been to Minnesota. I hear it’s beautiful.”

“It’s cold,” she said shortly. “Very cold.”

From her expression I guessed that she wasn’t just talking about the weather.

CHAPTER

Six

In college I took a social psychology course, something I thought useful for a career in advertising. Psychologists tested the story of the Good Samaritan. What they learned gives us reason to pause. The greatest determinant of who stopped to help the stranger in need was not compassion, morality, or religious creed. It was those who had the time. Makes me wonder if I have time to do good. Apparently, Angel does.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Early the next morning I was reading the newspaper when Norma walked into my room with her chart. I was testing my legs as I read, lifting one at a time and holding it for as long as I could, which, pitifully, could be measured in microseconds.

“Hi,” she said. She looked a little stressed.

I set down the paper. “How are you today?” I asked.

“Fine. The $100,000 question is, how are you?”

“Still here.”

“Did you hear …?” she hesitated. “The boy died.”

“Who?”

“The boy who stabbed you.”

I shook my head. “No.” I wasn’t sure how to respond. I wasn’t even sure what to feel. Revenge, justice, pity, sadness? The truth is, I didn’t feel anything.

After a moment she said, “The doctor will be in to see you this afternoon.”

“Will she tell me when I can go?”

“I think so.” She checked one of my monitors, then asked, “Are you ready to try to walk again?”

“Sure,” I said.

“I’ve got a few other patients I need to see, then I’ll be back.” She walked out.

I lay back and sighed. I wasn’t feeling any better than I was before.

A half hour after breakfast Norma walked back into my room holding the gait belt. “Let’s do this.”

She clamped off my catheter, then I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed a little too quickly. I clenched my teeth with pain.

“Just a moment,” Norma said. “Before you try again, I want to ask you something.”

I looked at her expectantly. “Yes?”

“Why do you want to walk? What’s your number-one reason?”

“So I can take out this”—I restrained from swearing—“catheter.”

She looked at me thoughtfully. “Angel told me that you’re walking to Key West. Is that true?”

“I was trying.”

“There’s got to be a story there.”

I looked down for a moment. Then I said, “In the last month I’ve lost my wife, my home, and my business.”

Her expression changed. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.” She gently touched my arm. “So that’s why you’re walking.”

“Walking is what’s been keeping me going. Without Key West, I have nothing.”

She nodded slowly. “Don’t forget that. Now let’s walk.”

I again set my feet on the floor and began to shift my weight. Actually, the pain wasn’t as severe as it had been the day before. “I’m ready,” I said.

Norma grabbed my arm as I forced myself to my feet, bracing against the pain. I took a step forward. Pain again seared through my body, but somehow it lacked the severity of before. I can handle that, I thought. I took another step, paused, then took another. “I can do this,” I said.

“I know you can,” Norma said.

I took six more steps, then stopped. Either the pain had relaxed or my determination had grown sufficient to match it. I took a few more steps, then reached out and grabbed the bathroom’s handle.

Norma smiled. “You did it.”

I took a deep breath. “Now, let’s see if I can make it back.” I slowly turned around, then, without pausing, walked to the bed. Norma clapped.

When I was lying comfortably in bed, I asked, “Would you take my catheter out now?”

“Gladly.” She shut my door, then put on latex gloves, pulled aside my gown, and removed my catheter.

“Finally,” I said.

“You earned it.”

As she was taking off her gloves, I said to her, “How did you know to ask me why I wanted to walk?”

“It’s my experience that if you focus on the why, the how takes care of itself.” She walked over and touched me on the arm. “I’m proud of you. I knew you could do it. I’ll check on you again before my shift ends.” She started to the door.

“Norma?”

She turned back. “Yes?”

“Thank you.”

She smiled and walked out.

I spent the rest of the morning reading. Norma came back in around two with a stack of color copies. “I brought you something.” She handed me the papers.

I shuffled through pictures of beaches and ocean. “What are these?”

“Pictures of Key West. I printed them off of the Internet.”

“I mean, what are they for?”

“Reminders,” she said. “I’ll hang them up if you like.”

I handed them back to her. “Sure.”

“Good. Are you ready to go for another walk?”

“Yes. To the bathroom, please.”

I put my hands on the edge of the bed and pushed myself up. I walked to the bathroom in about the same time as before, went inside and locked the door, and used the toilet. I came out a few minutes later. “I feel human again.”

“One small step for man, one giant leap for dignity.”

I smiled as I slowly walked back. When I reached my bed, she said, “That’s awesome, Alan. Well done.”

“Thanks, coach.” I sat back on the bed.

She lifted the Key West pictures from the nightstand. “I’ll hang these for you.”

There were six pictures in all. She began hanging them on the wall in front of my bed.

“So do you have big plans for tonight?” I asked.

“My husband has to work late, so I’m going to my mother’s to help her clean out her basement. She’s been on this cleaning kick lately.”

“Sounds fun. Wish I could help.”

“I bet you do,” she said sardonically. “How about you? Any exciting plans? Skateboarding? Tennis?”

“I thought I’d just hang out here.”

She smiled. “Good idea. Is your friend coming today?”

“You mean Angel?”

She nodded.

“I think so. She didn’t say.”

“I had a good talk with her yesterday. She’s really quite interesting. How long have you known her?”

“Actually, I don’t.”

She finished taping the last picture and turned back. “What do you mean?”

“I met her just a little over a week ago.”

“That’s funny. She talks about you as if you were her best friend. You know, she did something really surprising. I was admiring her sapphire necklace and she took it off and gave it to me. I’m sure it was worth at least a thousand dollars.”

“She gave you a sapphire necklace?”

“Well, she tried to. I didn’t accept it.”

I wasn’t sure what to think of that. “She’s a bit of a mystery. I can’t figure out why she’s been so good to me.”

“Maybe she’s one of those rare people who sincerely cares about others. Or maybe she’s an angel.”

“An angel?”

“Well, that’s her name, isn’t it?” she said, patting my arm. “Dr. McDonald will be in to see you before her shift is over, so in case she releases you, don’t go running out of here without saying goodbye.”

“I don’t think I’ll be running anywhere. Have fun at your mother’s.”

She grinned. “You know I will. Take care. And good job today. You’re my hero.”

After she walked out, I thought about our conversation about Angel. I didn’t mean to question her motives—or maybe I did—but I didn’t really know what was driving her. Maybe she was, as Norma speculated, just altruistic—a modern-day saint. I knew people like that, not many, but a few. My mother was like that. So was my former assistant Falene, who for no apparent reason had stood with me through all the chaos and crisis I had gone through. In spite of the horrors we read about in the papers, there are still people out there with selfless, giving hearts.

But my mother was my mother and Falene knew me. Angel was a complete stranger. Something didn’t fit.

Dr. McDonald didn’t come in to see me until after five. As she entered, she glanced at the pictures on my wall. “Looks like Key West has come to you.” She walked to the side of my bed. “Sorry I’m so late. I had a patient whose heart decided to take a holiday. I hear you’re walking again.”

“More like shuffling, but I made it to the bathroom.”

“Excellent. Your CT scans show no further damage, the rest of your vitals have been consistently stable, and you seem to be recovering without any complications, so I’d like to keep you here for another twenty-four hours, then you’re free to go.”

“Fair enough.”

“I’ve written out a prescription for an antibiotic and a week’s worth of oral morphine tablets to help with the pain. The dosage is 10 milligrams, and you’ll be taking them for comfort measures, so you can quit taking them whenever you feel up to it. We’re going to send you home in your bandages and have you check back with us next week to remove your stitches. I’ll leave your prescriptions here.” She set the papers on my bedside table. “So the word on the floor is you’re walking to Key West.”

“That’s my plan.”

“Hopefully you won’t have any more detours.” She smiled. “Good luck, Mr. Christoffersen.”

Angel arrived about ten minutes after the doctor left. Her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying. “How’s your day been?” she asked.

“Not bad,” I said. “How was yours?”

“I’m okay,” she said. She sat down.

“I walked on my own,” I said.

“And I missed it?” She sounded disappointed, like a parent who had missed her toddler’s first steps.

“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “The doctor was just here. She said I could leave tomorrow.”

This clearly pleased her. “Good. Everything’s ready at home. Is there anything else you need?”

“I need my prescriptions filled,” I said, pointing to the table.

She stood and lifted the papers. “No problem.”

“My wallet is in the small zipper outside of my backpack. There’s a credit card inside.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take care of them right now.”

I noticed she left without taking my card.

CHAPTER

Seven

There are people who come into our lives as welcome as a cool breeze in summer—and last about as long.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next day Norma was fussing around in my room while we waited for Angel to arrive. Angel had planned to get off work a little early. She arrived at quarter of six and was out of breath. “Sorry I’m late,” she panted. “I was having BG problems.”

“BG?” I said.

“Blood glucose,” Norma said. “Are you diabetic?”

“Type one. I was a little low this afternoon.”

“You don’t live alone, do you?” Norma asked.

“Yes.”

Norma cocked her head. “That’s really dangerous. Now I’m especially glad that Alan will be staying with you.”

“So am I,” Angel said. She held up a paper sack. “And I got your prescriptions filled.” She unzipped my pack and stuffed the medications inside.

“I just need to get dressed,” I said.

“We’ll give you some privacy,” Norma said.

A couple minutes later Norma knocked, then opened my door. “Ready?” She entered pushing a wheelchair. Angel was behind her.

“Would you like to take Key West with you?” Norma asked, taking down the pictures.

I turned to Angel. “Will there be wall space?”

“Plenty.”

“Okay. I’ll take Key West.”

“I’ll get the car,” Angel said. She lifted my backpack, though not without difficulty. “I’ll meet you downstairs.” She walked out.

I stood up, walked to the wheelchair, and sat down.

“You know, I’m going to miss you,” I said to Norma.

“I’ll miss you too. Will you send me a card when you get to Key West?”

“Yes.”

Norma wheeled me out to the elevator and pushed the button for the lobby. A moment later I was outside the hospital.

I recognized Angel’s car from our first encounter—an aged, silver-gray Chevrolet Malibu which she pulled up to the loading zone right in front of us. She put the car in park, climbed out, and walked around, opening the passenger side door.

Stepping over the curb suddenly looked daunting. “I can do this,” I said, though less certain than hopeful. I slowly stood, pushing myself up from the armrests. I couldn’t believe how much it still hurt to move. Getting back into shape wasn’t going to happen overnight. I stood for a moment, testing my balance.

“Got it?” Norma asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Good luck,” she said.

“Thank you. For everything.”

She leaned forward and we hugged. Then I carefully stepped off the curb into the car. I lifted my feet inside. Angel leaned over me and clicked my seat belt, then shut the car door.

Norma waved, then grasped the handles of the wheelchair and pushed it back inside. Angel climbed into her seat and started the car. “Norma was great.”

“Yes she was,” I said.

“Now it’s my turn to take care of you.” She put the car in drive and we headed for her home.

CHAPTER

Eight

I feel like a kite caught in a hurricane.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Angel lived fifteen minutes from the hospital in a small suburb east of the city. We drove over some train tracks and I held my abdomen and grimaced. Angel glanced over at me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re almost there.”

As we drove, the landscape of the city flashed by me like a dull cinema. All I could think was how much I didn’t want to be in Spokane. The city looked as gray to me as the weather, though it was likely more a reflection of my grayness inside. I had been to Spokane before, twice, and enjoyed my stay, but this time the city seemed unwelcoming.

Spokane is the second-largest city in Washington, and a lot like Seattle except without the population, the business community, the economy, the waterfront, the politics, the coffee … actually, Spokane is nothing at all like Seattle.

I’m sure the people who live here are just as warm, intelligent, and cultured as those in Seattle, maybe more so, and, in their defense, they didn’t give the world grunge music nor Sir Mix-a-lot. It’s just different. A lot different.

As I said, my problem wasn’t with Spokane as a locale, it was with my being stuck there. I was still running from Seattle, and my legs had been taken out from under me just a few miles from the Washington-Idaho border. I wanted out of the state more than I could say.

Angel’s apartment was located in an old, A-framed home just a few miles north of Gonzaga University on a pinelined street called Nora. The house, which had been divided into three apartments, was shingled, with a steeply pitched roof and peeling yellow paint that made the home stand out, not just because of its color, but because most of the other homes on the street were constructed of brick. The windows were oddly narrow and irregular, some taller than others. There was a good-sized front yard, and overgrown holly bushes surrounded the house’s exterior.

The neighborhood seemed staid for a university area, which meant the surrounding homes were either occupied by students who were serious about their studies or hungover from all-night partying. I was hoping for the former.

About half of the houses were decorated for Halloween, some elaborately with giant spider webs and other haunts. The sum of the decorations at Angel’s place was a dried cornstalk on the ground next to the front door.

Angel pulled her car up to the curb in front of her home and killed the engine. “Here we are. I’ll get the door for you.” She walked around to my side and opened my door.

Painfully, I pivoted my body so I was facing out, but this was the extent of my acrobatics. I looked up at her. “Can you give me a hand?”

“Of course. On the count of three I’ll pull,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, planting my feet on the asphalt road.

“One, two, three …” she pulled back as I leaned forward and stood up. Crippling pain shot up my body, taking away my breath.

“Just a minute,” I said.

“Are you all right?”

“I’ll be okay.” When the pain eased, I said, “All right. Next.”

She came to my side and took my arm. “Let’s go.” I stepped up over the curb onto the yellowed lawn. I paused and looked up and down the sidewalk. Eventually, I would be walking these sidewalks, but for the moment just making it to the house and up the front stairs seemed a formidable goal.

I shuffled up a concrete walkway to the stairs that led up to Angel’s apartment. The stairs were narrow and steep, poured from concrete with a wrought-iron railing that seeped rust into the cement. I clutched the railing and looked skeptically at the first step.

“Are you ready for this?” she asked.

“It’s walk or crawl.”

“Let me help you. Put your arm around my shoulder.”

I put my right arm over her shoulder and gripped the railing with my left hand. I took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

With her help I made it to the landing, every step accentuated with words of encouragement.

“You’re doing great,” she said. “Really great.”

I think by great she meant I didn’t fall.

Angel’s apartment was on the main floor and situated the furthest back. She took her key out of her purse, unlocked the door, then pushed it open. “Be it ever so humble,” she said.

The first thing I noticed was the smell of cooking—though I wondered how that was possible since she’d been at work all day. “Something smells good.”

“Dinner’s in the Crock-Pot,” she replied.

The front room was larger than I expected, with a large picture window looking out over the back yard. There was a couch and a rectangular coffee table in front of a television, which was nestled into a wood-veneer cabinet. The room was uncluttered and austere, with just the barest of necessities.

There was something different about the room—something was missing—but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

At the end of the hall was a small kitchen, with a tiny, Formica-topped table. The kitchen was messy.

In the hallway between the living room and the kitchen were three doors. “This is your room,” she said, pushing open the south door and stepping inside. I followed her in. A queen-sized poster bed was pressed up against the corner, touching two walls and leaving a three-foot margin on the front and side. There was a small clothes closet and a chest of drawers.

“I hope it’s okay.”

“It’s more than okay,” I said.

“After dinner we can hang your pictures of Key West.” She stepped back into the hallway. “My room is right here, across the hall. Just make yourself at home. I’m making a special dinner to celebrate your release from the hospital. I hope you like Italian.”

“I love Italian.”

“I’m making chicken cacciatore with roasted vegetable stuffed ravioli.”

“So you’re a cook.”

“I love to cook,” she said. “But I hardly ever do it since it’s just me. I need about a half hour to finish. Would you like to read something or watch TV?”

“Something mindless.”

“TV it is. Let me find the remote.”

I shuffled into the front room and sat down on the sofa, which was lower and softer than I expected and I fell back into the cushions like they were quicksand. I knew I wouldn’t be getting up without help.

Angel found the remote on the floor next to the television and brought it to me. “I need to get your pack from the car.” She went out the front door, leaving it slightly ajar, and returned a few minutes later carrying my pack over her shoulder. She was huffing a little. “I’ll just put it in your room.”

“Grazie.”

“Don’t mention it.” She set the pack in my room, then disappeared into the kitchen. I scanned through the programs, ending up in the middle of a public television broadcast of Spartacus.

About forty-five minutes later Angel came out to get me. “Dinner’s ready,” she said. She helped me up from the couch. When I came into the kitchen, the table was set with porcelain dinnerware and there was a flickering, slender white candle in the middle of the table.

“You went to a lot of trouble,” I said.

“No trouble, it’s a celebration.”

She pulled out my chair and I slowly sat. Then she sat down across from me.

“Buon appetito,” she said.

“You too,” I replied. “Can you eat pasta with diabetes?”

“The carbs are a killer, I just don’t eat as much.” She lifted a small cylindrical object. “And of course I shoot up.”

The meal was one of the best I’d had since I had left Seattle, and I told her so. Angel seemed very happy to see me so pleased.

“It’s a pleasure cooking for someone who appreciates it.”

“So, outside of work and caring for the infirm, what do you do for fun?”

“Fun?” she repeated, as if she hadn’t heard the word for a while. “Well, I haven’t had a lot of free time lately, but I’ve been watching the American Film Institute’s list of the hundred greatest movies. I started with one hundred and I’m working my way up to number one.”

“Which is …?”

“Citizen Kane.”

I nodded. “Orson Welles. Of course.”

“Last night I watched number seventy-eight, Rocky. Tonight is seventy-seven, if you’d like to join me.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m free. What’s seventy-seven?”

“American Graffiti.”

“It’s been at least twenty years since I saw that.”

“It’s a classic,” she said. “Of course, you could say that about everything on the list.”

Angel ate slowly, controlling how much she ate while watching me do the opposite. She seemed amused by my appetite. When I finally laid down my fork, she asked, “Can I get you anything else? A side of beef?”

I laughed out loud. “No, I think I’m about done.”

She grinned. “Why don’t you go back to the living room. I’ll do the dishes, then I’ll be in.”

“I can help,” I said.

“You should stay off your feet. Besides, it will only take me five minutes.”

“I want to pull my weight around here.”

“I’ll make you a deal. As soon as you can walk around the block, I’ll work you into the ground.”

“That’s incentive,” I said.

“I’m a great motivator of men,” she replied.

I was able to get myself up, though I did have to push up from the table. While she did the dishes, I went to my room. My bandages were itching a little and I pulled one of them off to inspect my wound. It was a little red around the stitches but didn’t look infected. Just then I heard children’s voices.

“Trick or treat!”

I leaned my head out my door. “Sounds like you have visitors.” Surprisingly, Angel didn’t answer the door.

I replaced my bandage then shuffled out to the couch. A few minutes later Angel walked into the front room with a bowl of miniature candy bars. She quickly opened the apartment door, set the bowl on the floor and then shut the door again.

“You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?” I said.

“What?”

“Some kid’s going to take the whole bowl.”

“Have a little faith,” she said, walking back to the kitchen.

“I have faith,” I replied. “That’s what I would have done.”

“I’m just about finished,” she said, ignoring my comment. “I just need to pop some corn. You can’t properly watch a movie without popcorn.”

A few minutes later she came out with a sack of microwave popcorn. She inserted a disk into her DVD player. “If I had been thinking ahead, I would have rented number eighteen for tonight.”

“What’s eighteen?”

“Alfred Hitchcock. Psycho.” She switched off the floor lamp, grabbed one of the pillows from the couch, then lay down across the floor in front of the sofa.

“You’re sitting down there?”

“I like sitting on the floor. Feel free to own the couch.”

I lay on my side and hit the button to start the movie.

It was past eleven when the movie ended. Angel stood up and turned on the lights. “That was good.”

“I forgot that Richard Dreyfuss was in that,” I said, “a very young Richard Dreyfuss.”

“And Suzanne Somers and Cindy Williams. That movie launched a dozen sitcoms.”

“What’s next on the list?” I asked.

“It’s supposed to be City Lights.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s an old Charlie Chaplin movie.”

“A Charlie Chaplin film,” I said, happy that one of his movies was on the list.

“It’s considered one of the last great silent films. And let me tell you, it wasn’t easy to find. I ordered it online, but it hasn’t come yet.” She went to her front door and opened it, stooping over to pick up the candy bowl. There was still candy inside. “You were wrong. There is hope for the next generation. Have a Milky Way.” She threw me a miniature candy bar.

“This is the ultimate spin,” I said.

“What is?”

“They cut the bar to a fraction of its size then call it ‘fun-size.’ There’s nothing fun at all about a smaller candy bar. It’s all in the spin.”

“Just like life,” she said.

I nodded. “Just like life.”

She walked back to me. “I’ll help you up.” She took both of my hands, leaning back to pull me up from the couch.

I groaned as I stood. “Getting up is always the hard part.”

“Can I get you anything before bed?”

“No. I’m good. So what are you going to do when you finish watching the one hundred movies?”

She looked at me with a strange expression. “Then I’ll be done.” The way she said it struck me as peculiar.

She smiled. “I’ll probably be gone to work by the time you get up, so I’ll just leave breakfast ready for you. Don’t forget to take your pain pills with food, and I’ll put the Saran Wrap in the bathroom.”

“Saran Wrap?”

“Remember, you’re not supposed to get your bandages wet. Norma said no baths for at least a week, and when you shower you should cover your bandages with cellophane.”

I nodded, impressed that she had remembered.

“She said it works best to just wrap the Saran around your body a couple times. It’s not a big deal if your bandages get a little damp.”

“You’re a very good nurse.”

“I do my best.”

I shuffled toward my room with Angel by my side. When I got to my door, I turned to her. “Thanks for everything. You’re more than a good nurse, you’re a good person.”

She looked into my eyes with a light I could not read. “I wish that were true,” she said, then disappeared into her room.

CHAPTER

Nine

Today I made it to the front walk. I don’t know if I should be happy for my achievement or depressed that I consider it one.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Angel was gone by the time I woke the next morning. She left a note for me on the kitchen table.

Breakfast in oven to warm. OJ in fridge. Please turn off oven. I’ll be home around five.

Have a good day, Angel

I walked over to the oven and, with some effort, leaned over and opened the door. Inside was a square pan with what looked like a baked omelet—a frittata, I guess it would be called. She didn’t need to go to so much trouble, since I’d be just as happy with a bowl of Wheaties.

I turned off the oven, grabbed the pot holder she’d left on the counter, and brought out the pan. She had already set the table for me, and I dished the frittata onto my plate and placed the pan on top of the oven. I got my pain meds and orange juice (which she’d poured into a glass) and then sat down to eat. The egg-thing was delicious.

After breakfast I went into the bathroom to shower. A box of Saran Wrap sat next to the sink. I took off my clothes, wrapped the cellophane around my torso twice, then turned on the water.

I felt the water for temperature, then stepped into the tub and let the water wash over me. It was the first shower I’d had in days, and I closed my eyes, and let the warm water cover my body. I stood there for minutes.

Drying myself off wasn’t easy, and it took me nearly fifteen minutes to get my clothes on. I had already discovered that tying my shoes was nearly impossible, so I loosened the laces, then dropped them on the floor and slipped my feet into them. When I was finally dressed, I walked to the front door. I didn’t have a key to the apartment, so I checked to make sure that the apartment door wasn’t locked, then slowly walked to the building’s front door and opened it to the world outside. The street was quiet, garnished with a few smashed pumpkins.

I had planned my rehabilitation as I lay in bed the night before. My first major goal was to make it around the block before the snow fell, which sounds ridiculously simple, but at that time seemed as daunting to me as scaling Mt. Everest.

My first minor goal was making it up and down the front stair by myself, and my second was to make it all the way down the walk. If I hadn’t been in such pain, I would have laughed at the absurdity of my new expectations. Just weeks ago I made a goal to walk across the country. Today I would be thrilled to make it to the sidewalk.

I grabbed onto the landing’s cold wrought-iron railing and took my first step down with my right foot, then moved my left foot to the same stair. Step. Repeat. Step. Repeat. Six steps. Unless they’re OCD, most people don’t count steps; they just bound up and down them as quickly as they can, but to me they’d become milestones.

I was slow, but I made it to the bottom step with a minimal amount of pain. I was feeling pretty good, so I decided to press on, hobbling down the front walk toward the street. When I reached the sidewalk, I surveyed the neighborhood. Angel’s building was in the middle of the block, and the sidewalk went about four homes either way before a corner.

I felt pleased with my accomplishment. I had already achieved my first goal. I also liked being outside again. The trees had lost most of their leaves, and the air was brisk and portending the changing weather.

The next week I would walk to the end of the street, and by the 14th, I would attempt to walk around the block—unless it snowed. Then it would be too dangerous. I couldn’t afford to fall.

I turned around in a gradual process of steps, and for about five minutes I stood there looking at the house I now lived in. It was a far cry from the $2 million behemoth I’d been thrown out of, but I was grateful for it and Angel’s generosity. I wondered how long I would be here. I took a deep breath and then slowly walked back.

Climbing the stairs was much more difficult than my descent, and when I reached the landing, I stopped and let the pain wash over me.

As I stood there, one of the other apartment’s tenants, a young woman with long brown hair and a backpack flung over one shoulder, walked past me without a word but smiling as she went. I walked into the house and then the apartment and went back to my bed to rest.

Angel arrived home a little before five. Something was different about her. She seemed distressed.

“How was your day?” I asked.

She shook her head. “A family of four was hit by a drunk driver. Everyone was killed except the father, who’s in intensive care battling for his life, and the drunk driver, who, of course, walked away unscathed. Actually, he ran away unscathed. He fled the scene on foot.” She looked at me with gray eyes. “Why is it that the guilty survive while the innocent die?”

Sometimes it did seem that way. “I don’t know.”

“If there is a God,” she said, “He has a foul sense of irony.”

I had had nearly the same thought as I looked in the mirror the day of my wife’s funeral, but I was surprised to hear it coming from her. I guess I didn’t expect someone named Angel to diss God.

“I’m making meatloaf for dinner,” she said, turning from me. “I just need to put it in the oven.”

“Are we on for a movie tonight?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

She clearly didn’t want to talk, so while she made dinner, I went to my room and read. A half hour later she called and we sat together at the table. We ate a while without conversation. Suddenly, she asked, “How long do you think you’ll be here?”

I looked up from my food. “Are you tired of me already?”

“Of course not. I was just wondering.”

“Assuming I’m in walking condition, I can’t leave Spokane until the roads through Montana and Wyoming are clear. That could be as late as April. But I could always stay somewhere else.”

“No, I’d like you to stay.” She went back to eating. All of a sudden she asked, “Do you believe in an afterlife?”

I thought the question a peculiar change of conversation. “Yes.”

“Why?” she asked. “There’s no evidence of one.”

“You don’t believe in life after life?”

“I think that death’s just death. The grand finale. There’s no afterlife, no memory. Nothing.”

“That’s a depressing thought,” I said.

“For some it would be heaven.”

“Heaven? To never see our loved ones again?”

“It sounds tragic, but it’s not. We’d never know what’s gone. A person born blind doesn’t miss eyesight.”

I just looked at her, wondering why we were having this conversation.

When I didn’t respond, she said, “That’s what I hope for at least. Sweet oblivion.”

After taking another couple of bites, I said, “I met a woman in Davenport who claims to have had a near death experience.”

“Those people are crazy.”

“She didn’t strike me as such.”

“So you believe the Bible’s version of an afterlife with pearly gates and a hell with a lake of fire?”

“Pearly gates and lakes of fire, no. But I believe the spirit and intellect live on, as do relationships.” I was a little surprised by the strength of my conviction.

She seemed bothered that I didn’t echo her belief and her voice turned antagonistic. “What evidence could you or anyone possibly have that something exists past this life?”

I set down my fork. “I’m not arguing with you. Truthfully, for most of my life I wasn’t sure what I believed, until …” I stopped, not sure of how much I wanted to share.

She was looking at me intensely. “Until what?”

“The day after McKale’s funeral I was considering taking my life. Just before I swallowed a handful of pills I heard a voice.”

“What kind of voice?”

“I don’t know how to explain it. I actually thought someone had spoken to me and I looked around the room. The voice seemed both to have come from inside me and outside me. All I know is that it didn’t feel like my own thoughts.

“Then, after the mugging, just before the paramedics revived me, I had another experience. It was something like a dream, except I don’t think it was. It was much more lucid. I think I saw McKale.”

“Your wife?”

I nodded. “I talked to her. And she told me things.”

“What kind of things?”

“She told me that there was a reason we’re here on this earth and that there are people I am meant to meet. People whose lives were supposed to intersect with mine.” I looked into her eyes. “She told me that I would meet you.”

“Me?”

“She told me I would meet ‘Angel.’ When I woke up in the hospital you were sitting there.”

Angel went back to her food, as if she needed time to process what I told her. Finally, she said, “I don’t know what to say to that.”

“Neither do I.”

We finished eating in silence. I got up to do the dishes but she again stopped me. “Please,” she said. “Let me do them.”

I went to my room and read. When I came out to say goodnight, the kitchen and hall lights were out. She had already gone to bed.

CHAPTER

Ten

Experience has taught me that the stronger the denial the less the reason to believe it.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

As I lay in bed, I thought over our conversation. What struck me as peculiar was not so much her opinion, but her anger and disapproval of mine. I have found that the people who shout their opinion the loudest are usually the ones most insecure in their position. I had never seen the dark side of her personality until that night.

Again, Angel was gone when I woke. I ate a breakfast of oatmeal with brown sugar and walnuts, then, focusing on my convalescence, walked out of the house with a new level of confidence knowing that I had already conquered the stairs.

I walked to the sidewalk, then to the end of the property line. I thought that I could have walked further, but being alone, I decided to err on the side of caution and not overdo it. Still, I was pleased. I had made definite progress. If it wasn’t for the weather, I figured I could be on my way as early as January.

I shuffled back to the house and climbed the stairs, this time not feeling like I would pass out.

I had just finished getting dressed and was wondering what to do for the day when the doorbell rang. I walked out of my room to answer it.

In the doorway was a woman. She was nicely dressed and had dark red hair that fell to her shoulders. She looked a little older than me, though not by much, and she held a piece of paper in her hand.

“May I help you?” I asked.

She looked surprised. She glanced furtively down at her paper, then back at me. “I’m sorry, does Nicole Mitchell live here?”

“Nicole?” I shook my head. “There’s no one here by that name.”

She glanced back down the hall at the other doors. “I’m sorry, I must have the wrong apartment. Would you know if she lives in this building?”

I shrugged. “Sorry, I’m new here. I don’t know the other tenants.”

For a moment she just stood there looking confused about what to do.

“You could knock on the other doors,” I suggested.

“Thanks. I’ll do that. I’m sorry to bother you.”

“No worries.” I shut the door.

Angel arrived home shortly after five. “How was work?” I asked, hoping for better than the day before.

“It was okay,” she said softly, then asked, “How was yours?”

“Good,” I said.

She nodded. “I picked up a rotisserie chicken on the way home. Do you like stuffing? I have Stove Top.”

“I love stuffing,” I said, happy that she was in a better mood than she was the last time I’d seen her.

While she cooked the stuffing, I set the table and filled our glasses with water. A few minutes later we sat down to eat.

“I’m sorry I was so moody last night,” she said. “I sometimes get that way when my sugars are off.”

“No problem,” I said.

“I just didn’t want you to think I was trying to push you out. I’m really glad you’re here.”

“I didn’t take it that way,” I said. “And I’m glad I’m here too.”

She looked relieved. “So, what did you do today?”

“I got caught up in my journal,” I said. “And I watched Judge Judy. That woman is hardcore.”

Angel grinned. “That’s probably why she’s so popular. Did you walk?”

“I made it to the edge of the yard and back.”

“Congratulations. You’re making real progress.”

“I’ve come a long way since that first walk to the bathroom.” I pulled some chicken from the breast with my fork. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, when does Spokane get its first snow?”

“I haven’t been through a winter here since I was a kid, but I think that they usually have snow by the middle of November.”

“My goal is to make it around the block before the snow flies.”

Angel was cutting meat from the chicken’s breast and said without looking up, “You’ll make it. You’re doing great.”

I took another bite. “Do you have a neighbor named Nicole?”

Angel abruptly looked up. “Why?”

“A woman came by this afternoon looking for someone named Nicole.”

“What woman?”

“Just some woman.”

“What did she look like?”

“She was probably just a little older than us. She was nicely dressed and had long red hair.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her that Nicole didn’t live here.”

Angel looked at me for a moment, then went back to her meal nearly as abruptly as she had stopped eating. “No, there’s no one here with that name. Would you like some more stuffing?”

I looked at her quizzically, then handed her my plate. “Sure.”

After dinner I convinced Angel to let me help her with the dishes after which she made popcorn and we went out to watch our movie. City Lights hadn’t arrived yet, so we jumped up to number seventy-five, Dances with Wolves, directed by and starring Kevin Costner.

I had seen the movie before—twice, I think—but it had been more than a decade.

McKale and I had watched it together. I remember that she cried at the end, which wasn’t all that surprising since she cried at Hallmark card commercials.

Later that year the movie won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Much of the film was shot in South Dakota and Wyoming, two of the states I would pass through when I was walking again.

Dances with Wolves is one of the longer movies on the top hundred list, nearly four hours in length, and Angel fell asleep long before it ended. As the credits rolled up the screen, I leaned forward and gently shook her. “Hey, it’s over.”

Her eyelids fluttered, then she looked up at me as if unsure of who I was. Then she blinked a few times and her eyes widened. “Oh. Is the movie over?”

“Yes.”

She rubbed her eyes. “How did it end?”

“The Indians lost.”

“Thought so,” she said, standing.

I took a deep breath, then without help lifted myself up from the couch. I still had to take a moment to catch my breath.

“I could have helped you,” Angel said sleepily, barely stable on her own legs.

“I know.” I started walking toward my room. “Good night,” I said.

“Good night, Kevin.”

I looked at her. “Kevin?”

“Alan,” she said quickly.

I grinned. “Sorry, I’m not Costner.”

“Costner?” she asked, then nodded. “Oh right. Good night.”

I woke in the middle of the night. My room was dark, and I rolled over to look at the radio-alarm clock on the nightstand next to my bed. 3:07. I groaned, then lay back, wondering why I had woken so early. Then I heard it, a soft, muffled groan. My first thought was that it was a tomcat outside my window, until I realized it was coming from inside the apartment.

For several minutes, I lay still and listened. The noise sounded like crying. I pushed myself up and climbed out of bed, quietly opening my door. The sound was coming from Angel’s room. I walked over to her door and put my ear against it.

Angel was sobbing, though the noise was muffled, as if she were holding a pillow against her face. The sound of her in pain was heart-wrenching. I stood there for a moment, wanting to comfort her but unsure of what to do. Maybe she didn’t want my help.

After several minutes her sobbing decreased to a whimper, then faded altogether. I hobbled back to my bed, my mind filled with questions. The longer I was with her, the more I realized how little I knew her. The truth is, I didn’t know her at all.

CHAPTER

Eleven

We’re all moons. Sometimes our dark sides overshadow our light.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next week passed quietly as I settled into my new routine. I noticed something peculiar about my emotional state. Somehow the change of setting helped me keep my mind off McKale, as if I could deceive myself that I was only away on a business trip, and she was home waiting for me. Or, maybe it was because there was nothing familiar in my surroundings to remind me of her. Either way, I welcomed the emotional respite.

I walked a little further every day. And every day after my walk I studied my road atlas at length, marking it with a yellow highlighter pen, comparing roads and routes to best determine my next course.

I decided that when my body and the weather permitted, I would walk east along Interstate 90 through Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, then head south into Yellowstone National Park, exiting the east gate on my way to Rapid City, South Dakota. My route was probably neither the shortest nor the easiest. I had been to Yellowstone as a child and I just wanted to see the park again.

I didn’t plan my route past South Dakota for the same reason I hadn’t planned the first leg of my trip past Spokane: something my father had taught me. Whenever I got frustrated with a difficult task, my father would say, “How do you eat an elephant?” I’d look at him as if he’d lost his mind, then he’d say, “One bite at a time.” Rapid City, a little over 700 miles from Spokane, was my next bite.

I talked Angel into letting me take over the cooking. Compared to Angel, I wasn’t much of a chef, but I could handle myself in a kitchen. In my previous life I was a better cook than McKale, who claimed that the only thing she could make in the kitchen were reservations.

Our carousel of movies continued fairly regularly and our entertainment couldn’t have been more eclectic. The list took us from Westerns to classics to science fiction. In one week we watched The Gold Rush, Wuthering Heights, Ben-Hur, Forrest Gump, and The French Connection.

I started having reservations about the American Film Institute’s rankings. Forrest Gump was a stretch for me, but—with all due respect to Dustin Hoffman—Tootsie?

I never said anything to Angel about the night I had heard her crying. I figured that if and when she wanted to talk about what was hurting her, she would. But it made me wonder about her and her past, which I knew nothing about, and she remained stingy in sharing.

Outside of her occasional bouts of moodiness, she was nothing but kind to me and spoke encouragingly about my progress. But underneath her veneer of hospitality there was a chasm of deep sadness and loneliness—emotions I understood all too well.

What worried me is that I sensed the gap was growing, as if each day she took one step back from me and the rest of the world. I had no idea how to cross the gap or even if I should try, but I couldn’t help but worry about her.

Ten days after being released from the hospital, Angel drove me back to Sacred Heart’s outpatient clinic so they could remove my stitches. While we were there, we dropped by the ICU to see Norma. Sadly, it was her day off.

My muscle tone was slowly returning as my wounds healed, and by the end of my second week at Angel’s I could get off the couch or climb the stairs without considering either journal-worthy. I wasn’t about to compete in the Ironman, but for the time being, it was enough.

On November 11, I reached my first major goal. I walked to the corner of our block, then turned south and walked to the end of the street. Even though Angel and I had driven past this corner on the way to her house, there was something different about encountering the place on my own legs.

A Montessori school took up the back half of the block, and there were a few dozen young boys on the school’s backfield playing football.

I stopped to watch them, lacing my fingers through the cold chain-link fence. The boys wore long navy blue jerseys with big white helmets that made them look like bobble-head dolls.

I felt remarkably liberated to be outside and this far from home, and I took my time walking back. Walking around the block was a far cry from the twenty to thirty miles I’d been putting in prior to the attack, but it didn’t matter. Snows had already hit Wyoming and Montana, and the east entrance of Yellowstone was already closed to traffic. I wasn’t going anywhere soon.

CHAPTER

Twelve

Angel’s landlord came to the door and asked for Nicole. What am I missing?

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The first measurable snow in Spokane fell on the fourteenth. The snowfall was deeper than I had anticipated—nearly five inches—and the sidewalks were completely buried. The good news was that the weatherman said it would be gone by the end of the week.

Instead of walking outside, I did some light calisthenics, then found an aerobics channel on television, which I followed along with at the lowest impact level.

As I was exercising, I could hear someone going up and down the walks with a snow blower. I parted the curtains and looked out. An elderly man was clearing the walks. He wore a brown parka, a knit scarf, and a hunting cap with earflaps, which he had pulled down and tied under his chin.

I thought he was a little old to be clearing the walks and, had I been able, I would have gone out and helped him.

About a half hour later, as I was finishing my second workout, there was a knock on the apartment door. I opened it to find the elderly gentleman standing in the doorway, his hat and shoulders flocked with snow. “Hello, is Nicole in?”

I looked at him quizzically. “No, Angel Arnell lives here.”

His brow furrowed, then he said, “Oh, then is Angel here?”

“No, she’s at work.”

“I’m Bill Dodd, I own this place. I just need to do a quick look-through of the apartment.”

I was a little apprehensive about letting a complete stranger into Angel’s apartment, especially after he had called Angel by the wrong name, but he looked harmless enough, and he had just plowed the walks. Besides, he smelled of Old Spice cologne. How bad could you be wearing Old Spice?

“Come in,” I said, stepping back from the door. “I’m sure she won’t mind.”

He stomped his feet off at the door then walked inside. He took less than ten minutes to look around the place. As he was leaving he asked, “What’s your name?”

“Alan.”

He took off one of his mittens and put out his hand. “Pleasure to know you, Alan.”

I shook his hand. “Nice to meet you too.”

“Would you mind telling Angel I came by? And tell her thanks for the get-well card. It made me laugh.”

“Glad to.”

He stopped outside the doorway. “She’s a great gal, Angel. I hate to see her go. I have some people interested in taking the place, but if she changes her mind, I’m more than happy to keep her. Wish I had more renters like her.”

I was surprised by this news. “When does her lease expire?”

“February first. She’s got a couple more months.” He put his mitten back on. “Goodbye.”

“Bye.” I shut the door. “That’s weird,” I said aloud. Angel hadn’t said a word to me about moving.

That night as we were eating dinner, I told Angel about the visit.

“Your landlord came by today. He cleared the walks.”

“Bill?”

“I think that was his name.”

“I love Bill. I don’t know why he insists on clearing the walks himself. He has plenty of money and he’s eighty-two years old.” She said grimly, “I think he’s trying to have a heart attack.”

I looked up from my spaghetti. “You sound serious.”

“I’m only half kidding. He lost his wife two years ago. I don’t think he wants to live anymore.”

“I can understand that,” I said.

She either missed my comment or ignored it. “He collects model electric trains. I’ve been to his house. His entire basement is one huge train track. It’s actually quite impressive. You’ll have to see it sometime.” She leaned forward. “So what did he have to say?”

“He said ‘Thank you for the get-well card.’ And he also said that if you change your mind about moving he’s happy to keep the apartment for you.”

“Oh.”

I was hoping she would say more about the moving part, but she didn’t. I took another bite of spaghetti then asked, “Are you moving?”

She hesitated. “When I first moved here, I wasn’t sure how long I’d be staying, so I only signed a six-month lease. I’ll give him a call on my lunch break tomorrow.” She went back to eating.

“It’s kind of a weird coincidence,” I said, “but when I opened the door, he didn’t ask for you. He asked for Nicole.”

Angel didn’t look up.

“I just thought that was kind of strange,” I said, “after that woman came by the other day looking for—”

She cut me off. “I don’t know any Nicole.” She took another bite of spaghetti.

I looked at her for a moment then went back to my meal.

When the silence became uncomfortable, she asked, “Did you walk today?”

“No. I did aerobics off the television.”

“Sweatin’ to the oldies?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“So, what movie are we on tonight?” she asked. I had become the expert on the list.

“Sixty-nine. Shane.”

“Is that the one about the Harlem detective?”

I looked at her a moment, then smiled wryly. “That’s Shaft. Shane is a Western with Jack Palance.”

“Close,” she said.

We both burst out laughing. Nothing more was said that night about Bill or Nicole.

CHAPTER

Thirteen

People aren’t wired to be alone. Even in the stressful population of prison, solitary confinement is still considered a cruel punishment.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I was eating breakfast the next morning when it suddenly struck me what was wrong with Angel’s apartment. There were no photographs. Not one. No snapshots of a mother, father, friend or sibling. There was no image of another human in the entire apartment.

In fact, there was no evidence that this woman had any connection with humanity at all. That was true of her speech as well. In all our conversations she had never once mentioned family or friends, not even in anger.

No, there had been one picture. I don’t know how I remembered this, but when I had stopped to help her outside Davenport, I remembered seeing a picture of a young boy hanging from her rearview mirror next to a crucifix.

What kind of person lives her life like Eleanor Rigby, then invites a complete stranger to live in her home for an indefinite period of time? Or, was that precisely why she had invited me—so she would have someone to be with? Maybe. People need people. So where were they in Angel’s world?

My questions about Angel were stacking up. Her crying at night, our conversation about death and her hope for oblivion, the coincidence of two people asking for Nicole—and Angel’s peculiar reaction when I told her. Who was Angel and why was I here?

My intuition told me that whatever was bothering Angel had something to do with this Nicole woman, but I had no idea who she was. I didn’t even know her last name. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been paying attention when the woman who had come asking about Nicole had mentioned it. Why would I? At the time, the encounter meant no more to me than a wrong number.

It occurred to me that perhaps others in the building might know something about her, so I decided to talk to them. I had my first chance that afternoon.

I had increased my walking to twice a day. A little after 2 P.M. I was stretching in the foyer when I ran into one of Angel’s neighbors, the young woman I had passed coming out of the apartment on my first walk. She came slowly into the building with her head down. She jumped a little when she saw me. “You startled me.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“No, it’s just I hardly ever see anyone here.”

“I know what you mean. It’s really quiet. Are all the apartments rented?”

“You wouldn’t know it, but they are. Bill doesn’t rent to anyone noisier than he is. So we’re all church mice.”

“Bill the landlord?”

“Yes.”

I reached out my hand. “I’m Alan Christoffersen.”

She shook my hand. “I’m Christine Wilcox. It’s nice to meet you. You’re in apartment three?”

I nodded. “I just moved in with Angel a couple of weeks ago. Have you lived here long?”

“Long for me. I’ve been here a couple years. I’m a senior at Gonzaga.”

“I guessed you were a student by the backpack,” I said.

“Standard uniform,” she said.

“Two years,” I repeated. “So you probably know all the tenants here?”

“Yes. But not well. Everyone pretty much keeps to themselves.”

“Maybe you could help me. Was there ever a tenant here named Nicole?”

Her brow furrowed. “Nicole? Not since I’ve been here. Why?”

“A woman came by the other day looking for Nicole.”

“Oh yeah, she left a note at my door. No. Not since I’ve been here. But you could ask Bill.”

“Thanks. Maybe I’ll do that. It’s nice meeting you, Christine.”

“My pleasure. Have a good run.” She reached into her pocket for her keys. “Oh, and say ‘hi’ to Angel for me. We keep threatening to get together, but every time I’ve come over, she doesn’t answer. I’m starting to think she’s avoiding me.” Christine unlocked her door and opened it. “Have a good day.”

“You too.”

She disappeared inside her apartment. I walked out the front door to start my walk.

That night I made clam chowder for supper. While we were eating, Angel said, “May I ask you about your wife?”

“Sure.”

“What was she like?”

I smiled sadly. “She was perfect. I mean, for me she was. I should say that she was perfectly flawed. We both lost our mothers at a young age, and neither of us had siblings, so we held to each other. Our broken edges fit. I can’t imagine loving anyone as much as I loved her.”

“That’s how it should be. I think it’s rare. Why are you walking to Key West?”

“You want to know why I’m walking to Key West, or why I’m walking?”

“Both.”

“I chose Key West because it was far. I’m walking because after I lost McKale, I also lost my home, my cars, and my business. Walking away just seemed the prudent thing to do.”

“Sometimes we need to run away,” Angel said, nodding as if she understood. “How did you lose your business?”

“I was betrayed by my partner. While I was taking care of McKale, he stole all my clients and started his own firm.”

“That’s reprehensible.”

“I thought so.”

“What’s his name?”

“Kyle Craig,” I said slowly. “Never trust anyone with two first names.”

“Do you hate him?”

The question made me think. “I suppose so, if I think about it. But truthfully, I don’t think much of him and I don’t think that much about him. Dwelling on him would make him a bigger part of my life than I want him to be.”

“That’s wise,” she said. She took another bite of soup, then asked, “Do you hate the kid who stabbed you?”

“He’s dead. There’s no one to hate.”

“A lot of people hate dead people.”

“That’s true,” I said. I leaned back and gazed into her eyes. “Is there anyone you hate?”

“I could name a few people.”

“Anyone in particular?”

She didn’t answer immediately, and when she did, there was a strange tone to her voice. “Probably me.”

CHAPTER

Fourteen

As difficult as walking is to me these days, I still seem to have no trouble walking into trouble.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Spokane’s second major snowfall came early in the morning on November 17. That afternoon I walked twice around the block with almost no pain, except when I almost slipped and caught myself.

As I came back down the road to the apartment, I saw Bill, the landlord, pushing his snow blower up our sidewalk. I stopped on the walk near him, giving him a short wave. “Hi, Bill.”

He cupped his ear.

“Hi!” I shouted. When he got up to me, he bent over and switched off the snow blower. He was huffing from exertion and his glasses were frosted with snow. He wiped them with the back of his mitten. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Alan Christoffersen. We met a few days ago.”

He gazed intently at me, as if trying to remember.

“I’m Angel’s friend. Did Angel ever get back to you on the lease?”

I could tell that he still wasn’t sure who I was. “No. Not yet.”

“She says that she plans to.”

“Well, tell her not to wait too long. I’ve got a bird in the hand.”

“I’ll do that.” He started to bend over to restart his blower when I asked, “May I ask you something?”

“You just did.”

I ignored the comment. “A few days ago when you came by the apartment you asked for Nicole. Who is Nicole?”

A grim look crossed his face. “I think that if Angel wanted you to know, she’d tell you herself.”

“I’m trying to help Angel. I may be her closest friend.”

He frowned. “If you were a close friend, you’d already know.” He reached down and pulled on the rope to start the blower. The machine roared to life on the first pull. I stepped out of the way as the old man stormed by in a cascade of snow.

That evening Angel arrived home from work a little later than usual, and it was already completely dark out. It was obvious that she’d had another bad day, as she barely spoke to me. Moody again, I thought. Sitting down to dinner, I asked, “Are you okay?”

She nodded but didn’t speak.

“We’re on movie number sixty-eight, An American in Paris.”

She didn’t respond. The only sounds from our meal were the clinking of fork and knife. Once again the silence became painful.

The fact that she was avoiding eye contact with me made me wonder if the problem had something to do with me.

Finally, I broke the silence. “Thanksgiving is only a week away. Do you have any plans?”

“No.”

“Do you want to go out?”

“I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving,” she said. Back to silence. Halfway through the meal I gave up. “Okay, did I do something to offend you?”

She slowly looked up, as if deciding whether or not to answer. Finally, she said, “I talked to my landlord this afternoon. He said that you talked to him.”

“He was out clearing the walk.”

“I would appreciate it if you would stay out of my personal affairs.” She stood up and walked to her bedroom. I sat there in a stupor. After a few more minutes I put our plates in the sink and went to my room. We both went to bed without another word.

That night I woke again to her crying.

CHAPTER

Fifteen

I can see clearly now. How could I have been so obtuse?

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning, for the first time since I’d arrived, I considered leaving. I wouldn’t be able to continue my walk, I wasn’t ready and neither was the weather, but I could always find someplace else in Spokane to stay.

I looked through the phone book and found an extended-stay hotel just 2 miles from the house. Angel didn’t have a phone other than her cell phone, so I couldn’t call to check on vacancies, but at just 2 miles I thought I could make the walk.

As I began to mentally plan my departure, I stopped myself. After all Angel had done for me, could I really just walk out on her? I knew I couldn’t. I was worried about her.

I also still believed in the vision, that I was meant to meet Angel. Selfishly, I had assumed that meeting her was for my benefit, just like the other “angels” I had met so far on my walk, but now I realized that maybe I was sent here for her.

It seemed to me that Angel was on a slope of sorts, and I didn’t know where or how far it fell. What I did know was that I, being the only one in her life, was probably her only hope. I decided to stay as long as there was a chance of helping.

There hadn’t been any new snow for two days and the streets and walks were reasonably clear, so I decided to try my first long-distance excursion and walk with my empty pack 2½ miles to the outskirts of the suburb, then back, a journey of 5 miles in all.

My walk started out well, at least for the first couple miles, but after that my thighs and calves were burning, not so much from the injury as from being out of shape. Even empty, the pack seemed heavier than I remembered. I was moving at a turtle’s pace when I arrived back on Nora Street, grateful to be home. On my way inside the house I stopped and picked up the mail. There was a postcard from the cable company marked RETURN TO SENDER.

A Friendly reminder from Larcom Cable

Dear Valued Customer,

Your Larcom Cable account will expire in just 90 days.

We value your business, so if you re-subscribe now we’ll bonus you two months of Spokane’s greatest entertainment value absolutely FREE. Plus, we’ll send you a coupon for a FREE large, 2-topping pizza from PIZZA HUT.

This is a limited time offer, so act now to keep the excitement coming!

Across the bottom of the card were scrawled the words Please cancel my account, I won’t be needing it.

I checked the postage mark. The card had been sent just three days earlier.

Angel came home late from work again, and I expected another night of uncomfortable silence. Instead, as soon as she walked in, she called my name. “Alan.”

I walked from the kitchen to the hallway. She smiled sweetly when she saw me. “Hi.”

Her complete change in temperament surprised me. “Hi.”

“Do you want to go out tonight?”

“I made dinner.”

“Can we freeze it? I’d like to take you out.”

“All right,” I said, a little bemused.

“How does Chinese sound? The Asian Star has fabulous potstickers and their walnut shrimp is life-changing.”

“Say no more,” I said.

We put dinner in the refrigerator, then drove immediately to the restaurant, which was near the university and crowded with students. After the waitress had taken our orders, Angel said, “I miss going to school. I love the energy.”

“How long did you go?”

“I had to drop out my junior year, when I …” She stopped mid-sentence. She looked down for a moment, then back up into my eyes. She looked soft, full of contrition. “I’m sorry I’ve been so irritable lately. You must feel like you’re living with a crazy woman.”

“No,” I said. “But I’ve been worried about you. If I can do anything for you—if you need to talk, I’m a good listener.”

“Thank you,” she said, but nothing more.

I cleared my throat. “So, I’ve been thinking. I would really like to prepare Thanksgiving dinner.”

“I don’t really celebrate Thanksgiving,” she said.

“I know. But maybe you could make an exception, so I could thank you for all that you’ve done for me.”

“You don’t need to do that. Besides, I have to work Thursday.”

“We’ll eat when you get back.”

She didn’t respond; rather, she looked quiet, as if suddenly lost in thought. Then she glanced up at me. “Okay,” she said, relenting. “That sounds fun.”

“Thanksgiving it is.”

After dinner we stopped by the video store for the next video on our list. They didn’t have the movie we were supposed to be watching, The Third Man, starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, but they did have number fifty-six: M*A*S*H.

As a child I rarely missed the TV series spawned by the movie, but I had never seen the original with Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould.

Not surprisingly, the movie was darker and edgier than the television series, with an antireligious agenda about as subtle as a mankini.

About halfway through the movie there is a scene where Waldowski, the camp dentist, decides to commit suicide.

Predictably, Hawkeye and Trapper John make a joke of it and offer Waldowski the “black pill,” which is actually harmless but which Waldowski believes will bring sudden death. At the scene’s climax (a spoof on da Vinci’s Last Supper) the group gathers for Waldowski’s death, and a soldier sings the movie’s title song: “Suicide Is Painless.”

My own recent contemplations about life and death rendered the segment uncomfortable. I glanced over at Angel to see if she thought it was funny. To my surprise, she was crying.

Suddenly, I understood what was going on. How had I missed the obvious?

CHAPTER

Sixteen

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I laid a pretty good stretch of asphalt today. I suppose I’ve done enough damage. It’s time for me to leave.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The classic signs of suicide were all there, as glaring as a Las Vegas casino sign. The expiration of her lease and cable, her quiet, abiding sadness, her outspoken hope for oblivion. The surrendering of her possessions, like the sapphire necklace she’d attempted to give to Norma at the hospital. Her intentions were obvious—what I didn’t know was why.

As the production credits rolled up the screen at the end of the movie, Angel switched on the lamp and stood. “Ready for bed?”

“I’d like to talk,” I said.

The gravity of my tone was not lost on her. She looked at me nervously. “It’s kind of late.”

“It’s important.”

She looked at me for a moment, then sat down on the sofa. “Okay,” she said, knitting her fingers together. “What do you want to talk about?”

I moved closer to her and put my hand on hers. “I’m not sure how to approach this, so I’ll just say what’s on my mind. First, I want you to know that I care about you deeply. I am very grateful for all you’ve done to help me.”

“I care about you too,” she said, her brows knit with anxiety.

“Clearly. You’ve been very good to me. I also know that something is very wrong.”

“I know it seems that way, but everything’s fine,” she said. “Really. I’ve just been a little emotional lately.”

“Angel, it’s more than that.” I looked into her eyes, then slowly breathed out. “I need you to be completely honest with me. Who is Nicole?”

She looked at me incredulously. “I told you to stay out of my affairs,” she said sharply.

“I can’t help you if you’re not honest with me. Does this Nicole have something to do with why you’re so sad?”

“You have no idea what you’re asking.”

“You’re right, I don’t. But I want to know. I want to help. I think that’s why we were led to each other.”

Her expression turned fierce. “We weren’t led to each other. There is no fate. There is no God. There is only chaos and chance. You’re here because of coincidence.”

“I’m here because I stopped to help you and you knew you could trust me.”

She began to cry.

“I know why you came back to Spokane,” I said.

“Enlighten me,” she replied angrily. “Why did I come back?”

“You came home to die.”

She just stared at me for a moment then stood. “Stop it.”

“Angel—”

“Leave me alone.”

“No,” I said.

“I made a mistake coming for you,” she shouted.

“You found exactly what you were looking for.”

“And what was that?”

“Hope,” I said.

She was quiet for a moment, then said, “What I do with my life is my business and mine alone.” She stormed off, stopping in the threshold of her room. “And don’t talk to me about hope. There is no hope. The only hope is oblivion.” She slammed the door behind her.

From the couch I could hear her crying. I walked over to her door, then pressed my forehead against it.

“I really do care, Angel.”

“No one cares. Go away.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Go away, please.”

I went to my room and lay on top of the covers. It was more than an hour before I fell asleep.

Angel didn’t speak to me for the next three days. She came home late each night and went straight to her room. I tried to get her to talk to me, but all my attempts were met with hostility. I feared every day for her. Most of all, I feared she might hurt herself. I had failed in my quest to help her. I had more than failed—I felt like I had pushed her closer to the brink.

By Tuesday afternoon I couldn’t stand the silence and tension anymore, and I was now sure that it wasn’t going to get better. Around three in the afternoon I made up my mind. For better or for worse, I was leaving.

But not without saying goodbye. I owed her that. I packed up my things and waited for Angel to come home.

CHAPTER

Seventeen

My father used to say that people are like books: unknown until they’re opened. Until Angel, I have never felt so illiterate.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I was sitting on the couch when Angel’s Malibu pulled up to the curb. My pack was full and leaning against the sofa. I stood as she entered the apartment. She froze when she saw me, then looked back and forth between my pack and me. “What’s going on?” she asked.

I lifted my pack. “I’m leaving,” I said. “I was just waiting for you to come home so I could say goodbye.”

“Why?”

I walked up to her. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I’m sorry that things turned out the way they did. I would do anything to change it, except pretend things are okay.”

She just looked at me, speechless.

“I hope you know that I didn’t mean to hurt you. I would never hurt you. You’re a beautiful soul.”

She swallowed. “Where are you going to go?”

“You don’t need to worry about that. You’ve done enough. I left some money on the table.” I leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “Good luck, Angel. I hope you find peace. I don’t know anyone who deserves it more.”

As I walked to the door, her eyes welled up with tears. “Who will take care of you?”

“I can take care of myself.”

I stepped out into the hallway and she followed me out. “Then who will take care of me?”

I looked at her. “No one, if you won’t let them. I’m not going to stay and watch you destroy yourself. I can’t. I care too much about you to do that.” I looked down and adjusted my pack, securing the waistband. When I looked back up, she was covering her eyes and crying.

“Good luck,” I said.

I walked out the front door of the building and down the stairs. There was a light snow falling, reflecting the dying sun in the cool twilight. Halfway down the walk I heard the door open behind me.

“Alan.”

I didn’t turn back.

Then in a trembling voice she shouted, “I’m Nicole.”

I stopped and turned around. Tears were streaming down her face. “I’m Nicole,” she said. She fell to her knees. “Please don’t leave me. You’re my only hope.” She dropped her head, her hands clenching her hair. “Please, help me.”

I shrugged off my pack, then walked back as fast as I could to her. I knelt down and put my arms around her, pulling her into me. She put her face against my chest and wept.

CHAPTER

Eighteen

If you plan to burst someone’s bubble, be sure to have both hands cupped beneath them.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

We were both covered in snow when I brought her inside and sat her on the couch. She cried for nearly fifteen minutes, then she went completely silent, occasionally whimpering or shuddering.

When she could speak, she said in a strained voice, “You asked what I was going to do when I finished the movies. I was going to watch the last movie, then I was going to go out and eat whatever I wanted. A big banana split with caramel and whipped cream and a cherry.” She looked up into my eyes. “Then I was going to come home and overdose on insulin.”

She said it so calmly that it took a moment for her plan to sink in.

She continued, “It’s easy to kill yourself when you’re diabetic. No one would even know it was suicide. I’d just slip off into a hyperglycemic coma and be dead before anyone found me.”

I rubbed my thumb over her cheek. “Why would you take your life?”

“You don’t know my life.”

“I know you.”

“No. I’ve lied to you about everything. Even my name. Killing my name was the beginning of killing myself. Nicole was already dead to me.”

“What happened, Nicole?”

She put her head down. “You don’t want to know.”

I put my hand under her chin and gently lifted it until she was looking into my eyes.

She exhaled deeply. “My life fell apart when I was eighteen. I had just started college, with a film studies major.” She shook her head. “… There’s a useful career for you.”

I squeezed her hand.

“I was still living at home when my mother took a new job and got in with a different group of people. They changed her. She started hanging out with them after work, going to bars and clubs. She started coming home drunk. My dad just put up with it, thinking it was a phase. But it wasn’t. After a couple months she told my father that she wanted a divorce. Dad was devastated. He begged her to stay, but she’d already made up her mind. After twenty-two years of marriage, she treated him like a stranger. My father had always struggled with depression, so when she threw him out, he couldn’t handle it.” Her eyes welled up. “One night he took his life.”

Nicole wiped her eyes. “That time is just a blur to me. Everything was in commotion. I stopped going to school, my sister ran off with her boyfriend, then my mother informed me that she was moving in with one of her friends so I’d have to find someplace else to live. I dropped out of school and got a job.

“I wasn’t really qualified for anything, so I took the day shift at a Dairy Queen. That’s where I met Kevin. He was the owner. He was a lot older than me, almost fifteen years older.”

She looked at me with a pained expression. “It seemed like such a good thing. He owned his own business. He had a house and a nice car. Most of all, he paid attention to me. I mean, I had to pay for it, he did whatever he wanted with me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. I just wanted someone to want me.

“One night he told me that he was engaged to someone else, but he didn’t love her. He loved me.”

Nicole wiped her eyes. “I knew it was wrong, I should have left him, but I didn’t. I was so afraid of being alone again. He asked me to marry him. I didn’t think about that other woman or how much it would hurt her. I didn’t even worry about his unfaithfulness. I just wanted him for my own, so I told him yes.

“Kevin and his fiancée had already started making wedding plans when he called the engagement off. His mother, Barbara, was livid. She wouldn’t even acknowledge me.

“A couple weeks before we got married, I was alone with Barbara when she cornered me and asked me what I was trying to do. I didn’t understand her question. I said, ‘I’m marrying your son.’ She said, ‘You cheated with an engaged man. You’re nothing but a tramp.’ I started to cry. I told her that I didn’t know he was engaged. She called me a liar. Then she said, ‘Are you stupid enough to think he really wants you? You’re just a little plaything for him. As soon as he tires of you, he’ll throw you out like yesterday’s garbage.’

“Then she pulled out her checkbook and offered me five thousand dollars to leave and never come back. I couldn’t believe it. When I turned her down, she said, ‘Don’t think this is going to last. You’ll never be part of this family.’

“From then on she did everything she could to make my life miserable. We got married, but it was one of the worst days of my life. Barbara didn’t say a word to me all day.

“I thought she’d eventually accept me, but things only got worse. Every time Kevin spent time with her, he’d come home and give me the silent treatment. She’d poison him. I started begging him to stay away from her, but he just got mad and said I didn’t understand her and that I should be grateful for all she did for us.

“She owned him, emotionally and financially. She owned the controlling rights to the Dairy Queen. Before we got married, I had to sign a prenuptial agreement relinquishing all claims to his money, or else, Kevin said, she’d force him out of the business and we’d be broke. I think I signed the agreement to prove to Barbara that I wasn’t a gold digger. I didn’t care about the agreement, I wasn’t after his money. I wanted to be loved. But it didn’t make any difference. She got it in her mind that I was trash and nothing was going to change that.

“Then I got pregnant with Aiden. I thought having a grandchild would finally convince Barbara that I wasn’t going anywhere, but she worked even harder to break us up. She would bring women home to meet Kevin. Can you believe that? She’d actually bring women home to meet her married son. And there I was, pregnant and feeling unattractive. He’d say, ‘I’m married, Mom,’ and she’d roll her eyes and say, ‘For now.’”

“How did you know she did that?” I asked.

“Kevin told me about it. At first Kevin stood up for me—at least as much as he dared—but after Aiden was born, things changed. The truth is, Kevin didn’t want the responsibility of fatherhood and he blamed me for that. He stopped coming home. He’d go out playing cards and drinking with his friends almost every night.

“I assumed they were all male friends until someone told me that they’d seen him with another woman.

“After that we got into a fight, and he said that I’d gotten pregnant just to trap him. I said, ‘Trap you into what? We’re already married!’ He said, ‘For now.’

“He apologized the next day, but you can’t really take that back. I had no one but my son. So I built my entire life around him.”

Her demeanor changed and there was a faraway look in her eyes. “On his fourth birthday I picked him up early from preschool to take him to the zoo. We stopped at the Dairy Queen to get an ice-cream cone. Kevin was there and we got in another big fight. I was so angry that I grabbed Aiden and left.” She paused and her eyes welled up with tears. “I pulled out of the parking lot without looking. This car came out of nowhere. The police said the driver was going nearly eighty miles per hour in a forty-mile-per-hour zone.

“He hit my car on the driver’s side, about a foot behind me, where Aiden was in his car seat. It killed Aiden instantly.” She began to sob.

“I had to be pulled from the car by the Jaws of Life. I was cut all over. I had internal bleeding and more than twenty broken bones.” She looked down. “Unfortunately, they saved my life.”

She was quiet for a while, unable to speak. When she could, I had to strain to hear. “While I was in the hospital, only two people came to see me. One was the mother of the man who was driving the car. He was killed in the crash. This woman blamed me. I lay there, unable to move, while she screamed at me. Finally, a nurse heard her and called security. They had to drag her out.

“The other person was Barbara. She came to tell me that I had killed her grandchild and it was God’s punishment for stealing someone else’s husband. She said she wished that I had died instead.”

My eyes welled up. “What did you say to her?”

She looked up at me. “I said that I wished I had too.

“I was still in the hospital when I got served divorce papers. My wrists were broken, the nurse had to open the envelope and read them to me.”

She squinted, forcing a stream of tears down her cheeks. “I decided my life wasn’t worth anything, so I came back to Spokane to end it.

“When I met you, I had just been to Seattle. I wanted to see the ocean again. I wanted to stand on Bullman Beach and feel the wind in my hair and listen to the waves. Do you know Bullman Beach?”

I shook my head.

“It’s near Neah Bay, on the west side of Olympic National Park.”

“I know where that is,” I said. “I drove through there once. It’s beautiful.”

“When I was seven, my family stayed there at a little inn on the beach. I was happy then. I wanted to see it one last time.” She exhaled deeply. “My mother had a nickname for me back then.”

“What was it?”

She looked up into my eyes. “Angel.”

CHAPTER

Nineteen

We humans are born egocentric. The sky thunders and children believe that God is mad at them for something they’ve done—parents divorce and children believe it’s their fault for not being good enough. Growing up means putting aside our egocentricity for truth. Still, some people cling to this childish mindset. As painful as their self-flagellation may be, they’d rather believe their crises are their fault so they can believe they have control. In doing so they make fools and false Gods of themselves.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I held Nicole for more than an hour. She cuddled into me like a little girl seeking shelter, which might be close to the truth. At one point she began crying again, which she did for nearly twenty minutes before she fell silent. When she finally sat back up, she was soft and vulnerable.

“Do you think God was punishing me?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Aiden’s death wasn’t your fault. It belongs to the man driving that speeding car. But I understand your question, because, for a while, I wondered the same thing about McKale.

“I had an employee who one day came into work crying. Her doctor had just informed her that she couldn’t have children. She said to me, ‘It’s because God’s punishing me.’ I asked her why God was punishing her. She said, ‘Because I haven’t been going to church.’ That very morning I had read an article in the newspaper about a drug addict, prostitute, who was arrested for putting her newborn baby in a Dumpster. I said to my friend, ‘You’re telling me that God won’t give you a baby because you missed church, but he gave a baby to that prostitute to kill?’ It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Then you don’t believe God punishes us?”

“I don’t know if He does or not. But I don’t believe in a God I can control,” I said. “It seems to me that He is much more interested in helping us than in condemning us. I believe that’s why when we’re in need, he puts people in our path. Think about it, doesn’t it seem peculiar that someone who understands what it means to lose everything ends up in your home exactly when you needed him most?”

After a moment she said, “Yes.”

“Just six weeks ago I was on my knees holding two bottles of painkillers and a bottle of whiskey, ready to end it all. And now here I am with you. It’s miraculous.”

She looked down for a long time. “How do you live when you don’t want to live anymore?”

How many times had I asked myself the same thing? I thought. “One day at a time,” I said softly. “One day at a time.”

That evening we didn’t eat. We never even left the couch. I held Nicole until she fell asleep in my arms. I wasn’t strong enough yet to carry her, so I woke her and helped her into her room. I pulled back the covers, pulled off her shoes, then tucked her in bed with her clothes still on. I kissed her on the forehead, then went to my own room. I lay in bed replaying our conversation over in my mind. I wondered what Nicole would do in the morning.

CHAPTER

Twenty

The first step of a journey is always the longest.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke a little after sunrise. I was contemplating the night before when there was a knock on my door. “Come in,” I said.

Nicole stepped inside. She wore a robe and her hair was tousled.

“I slept in my clothes,” she said, pulling a strand of hair back from her face. “But I don’t remember the last time I slept that well.” She looked at me, her eyes full of gratitude. “Thank you for last night.”

“You’re welcome.”

She sat down on the corner of my bed.

“Are you going in to work?” I asked.

“No, I called in sick.” She took a deep breath. “I have a big favor to ask of you.”

“Whatever you need.”

“Will you help me start my life over?”

I smiled. “Absolutely I will.”

“Where do I begin?”

“We begin by bringing back Nicole.”

She looked down for a moment. Then she took a deep breath and stuck out her hand. “My name is Nicole Mitchell. It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s a pleasure meeting you, Nicole,” I said. “Nicole needs a proper coming-out party. I say we start on Thanksgiving.”

“Thanksgiving is tomorrow.”

“Then we’ll have to find people who don’t have other plans. Do you know anyone who might be alone this Thanksgiving?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Bill,” she said. “My landlord.”

“What about Christine, your neighbor?”

“We can ask,” she said.

“One more thing Nicole needs to do,” I said. I looked at her seriously. “This won’t be easy.”

She took a deep breath, steeling herself to what I would say.

“Nicole had a son. A son she loved very much. Aiden needs to come back as well.”

Her eyes watered. “How do I do that?”

“You talk about him. You put up pictures of him.”

She wiped her eyes. “Okay.”

I just looked at her for a moment, then said, “Welcome back, Nicole.”

She clasped my hand. Then she stood. “I better go get dressed. We have a lot to do before tomorrow.”

A half hour later Nicole and I sat down at the kitchen table to construct our shopping list. I held the pencil.

“All right,” I said, “we need a turkey and stuffing.”

“Write down bread crumbs, celery, and onions,” Nicole said.

“Got it. And we need a can of cranberry sauce and we need yams…”

“I’m good at candied yams,” Nicole said. “I make the diabetic-death kind with brown sugar and pecans.”

“You are definitely in charge of yams.”

“Write down pecan halves and butter,” Nicole said.

“How about rolls?”

“I make awesome Parker House rolls.”

“Fabulous. Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, candied yams, rolls. Gravy. I can actually make turkey gravy,” I said. “Do you have cornstarch?”

“Yes.”

“How many should we prepare for?” I asked.

“At least three. Bill’s coming.”

“You already called him?”

“While you were showering. He was very excited.”

“Okay, we’ll plan on four. Worst case we’ll have leftovers. I’ll be in charge of the turkey, stuffing, and gravy. Oh, and eggnog. We need eggnog. Everyone loves eggnog.”

“Not everyone,” Nicole said.

“You don’t like eggnog?”

“Diabetes aside, no. You can have my glass.”

I looked at her. “Really, Angel? You don’t like eggnog?”

“Excuse me,” she said.

“Eggnog is like the greatest drink ever.”

“You called me Angel.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did.”

“Sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“Better not,” she said.

I went back to my list. “Okay, we’re still missing dessert.”

“Pumpkin pie,” Nicole said.

“Pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes. Do you say mashed or smashed?”

“Mashed. ‘Smashed’ sounds like they got run over by something.”

I looked over the list. “I think we’re ready.”

“I’m not good at pies,” she said.

“We can buy those.”

“The bakery at Safeway is pretty good.”

“Do you have potatoes?”

“No.”

“Do you have enough milk?”

“I’ll check.” She opened the refrigerator. “Better get some more. Especially if you’re going to use some of it with your, gag, eggnog.”

“You don’t need to disparage my eggnog,” I said.

We put on our coats and started off. On our way out of the apartment we stopped and knocked on Christine’s door. She answered wearing sweat pants and a Gonzaga basketball T-shirt. She looked surprised to see us.

“Angel,” she said. “And Steven…”

“Alan,” I corrected.

“Right, Alan. Sorry.”

“And you can call me Nicole. Angel was just a nickname.”

“Now I’m really confused,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter what you call us,” I said. “We came to invite you to our Thanksgiving feast tomorrow at one.”

A smile crossed her lips. “Really?”

“If you don’t have other plans.”

“I don’t.” To our surprise her eyes began to well up. “Sorry,” she said, furtively wiping them. “I just thought I was going to spend the day alone. Thank you.”

“Well, we’d love to have you.”

“What can I bring?”

“Just yourself,” Nicole said.

“I make really delicious mincemeat pies.”

“Good mincemeat is an oxymoron,” I said.

Nicole looked at me incredulously. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

“Sorry. But it looks like roadkill.”

“That was even worse,” she said.

“I know, mincemeat is an acquired taste,” Christine said. “Don’t worry, I also make an apple pie to die for and a pumpkin pie that’s at least worth getting mugged for.”

Nicole glanced over at me. “Worth getting mugged for.”

“That must be some pie,” I said. “I’m sold. You’re in charge of pies. Then we’ll see you tomorrow around one?”

“One. Thank you so much.”

“Our pleasure,” Nicole said.

I took Nicole’s arm and we went off to the store.

They—“they” being the turkey experts—recommend a pound to a pound and a half of turkey per person, which meant a six-pound turkey should be plenty. But, since I’m partial to cold turkey leftovers, I selected an eight-pound bird. I also bought an entire gallon of eggnog, which Nicole thought was overkill. “No one’s going to drink it but you,” she said.

“Everyone loves eggnog,” I said.

“Not everyone,” she replied. “Some people have taste.”

“Truce on the eggnog,” I said.

“Truce,” she said.

In addition to all the food we bought, we purchased other accoutrements of the season: scented candles, mistletoe, Christmas tree ornaments, and strings of Christmas tree lights. Through it all, Nicole was joyful.

As I was looking through the produce section, she brought an ornate silver picture frame to show me.

“What do you think?” she said. “I think it’s pretty. It’s sterling silver.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “What’s it for?”

“For Aiden,” she said.

“Perfect,” I said. “It’s perfect.”

Then she said, “I think I’ll get two. I think Bill would like one as well.”

A few minutes later I asked Nicole, “Do you have any Christmas music?”

“No.”

“Do you have a stereo?”

“I have a CD player and an iPod.”

“That will do.” I purchased Christmas CDs by Burl Ives, Mitch Miller, and, of course, the Carpenters. As I showed the CDs to Nicole, I said, “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Karen Carpenter?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“I don’t look at all like Karen Carpenter. To begin with, I’m blond.”

“Okay, so you’re a blond version of Karen Carpenter.”

“I don’t look like her,” she said, throwing her hands up in the air and walking away. I followed her with our shopping cart.

“I think you do,” I said to myself.

I told Nicole to wait for me at the front door while I stopped at the video counter and picked up two movies. As I walked back, she tried to see the DVD cases I held in my hand.

“What movies did you get?”

“You’ll see.”

“Tell me,” she laughed. “You’ll see,” I said.

On the far corner of the strip mall was a Christmas tree lot.

“We need a tree,” I said.

“I get to pick it out,” she said. “It’s my house.”

“Fair enough,” I replied.

Nicole found a nicely shaped Douglas fir about 6 feet high. The man selling the trees—his name was Maximilian (but just call me Max)—was so passionate about his trees that I was almost surprised he was willing to part with them. In addition to our Douglas fir, we left with a profusion of unrequested and useless information about our purchase, including:

• The Douglas fir is not really a fir tree.

• The Douglas fir is one of the few trees that naturally grow cone-shaped.

• The Douglas fir was named after David Douglas, some guy who studied the tree back in the 1800s.

• The Douglas fir was voted the number-two overall Christmas tree in America, second only to the South’s Fraser fir, which, I assume, is a real fir tree.

• Max only sells Douglas firs.

Max tied the tree to the top of Nicole’s Malibu and we drove home. After we had carried in all the food and put it away in the fridge, I grabbed a steak knife to cut the twine and went out to get the tree.

Our tree was gone.

I couldn’t believe it. I shouted for Nicole from the porch and she came running outside.

“What?”

“Someone stole our tree.”

“Right now?”

“Right off the car.” I looked at her. “Who steals a Christmas tree?”

“Well, it was a Douglas fir,” Nicole said, “the second-most-popular Christmas tree in the world.”

I looked at her and grinned. “Do you think there’s a black market for Douglas firs?”

“Huge market for stolen and kidnapped trees. We’ll probably get a ransom note any minute.”

“Won’t our thief be surprised when he learns that it’s not even a real fir.”

“Fake fir,” Nicole said. “It would be like stealing a diamond ring and finding out it was only a zirconia.”

“It would be just like that,” I said.

We both burst out laughing. Then we went back to the store for another tree. Max gave us his “friends and family” discount of ten percent off our second one.

That evening we decorated the tree. After we finished, Nicole came out with the silver picture frame with a smiling photograph of her son. She set it on top of the television.

“He’s a handsome kid,” I said.

She smiled sadly. “Welcome back, son.”

CHAPTER

Twenty-one

There can be no joy without gratitude.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning Nicole rapped on my door, then walked in. “Morning.”

“Happy Thanksgiving,” I said.

“Happy Thanksgiving to you. I called in sick to work again.”

“How did that go?”

“My boss wasn’t happy. I don’t think she was buying it.”

“Did you try to sound sick?”

“I did. But I’m not very good at it. I wonder if I’ll get fired.”

“I think you should just quit.”

“Why? It’s an important job.”

“It is. But it depresses you.”

“You’re right, but I can’t quit. I need the money. Besides, what do you do with a major in film studies? No, an uncompleted major in film studies.”

“You could get a job at a theater. You could, like, sell popcorn.”

She playfully hit me. “That will certainly pay the bills.”

“We just need to find you a job with a little more positive energy.” I looked over at the clock. “And we’ve got a lot of cooking to do. When should we put the turkey in?”

“Eight pounds, right?”

“Yes.”

“It will probably take three hours. I’d allow three and a half to four, just in case.”

“That would be right now,” I said. “On it.” I climbed out of bed.

Nicole began making rolls. She asked, “Were you planning on watching movies tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Will you tell me now what you got?”

“It’s a Wonderful Life …”

“Good. A classic for Christmas. So why the mystery?”

“… and Citizen Kane.”

Her smile fell and she stopped kneading the dough. “Why did you choose that?”

“You spent months creating a timeline I want to derail.”

She looked at me for a moment, then went back to her rolls. “You’re very wise,” she said.

“I think so,” I said.

She threw a handful of flour at me.

Bill the landlord arrived early (his Old Spice arrived a few seconds earlier), a little before noon. He was dressed up as if he were going to church, wearing a hat, suspenders, and a red polka-dot bow tie. He brought a box of caramels with walnuts and a bottle of Cold Duck.

“Thank you for the invitation,” he said to Nicole, taking off his hat as he entered. “I wish you’d reconsider moving.” He turned to me. “Angel’s been my best tenant.”

“I’ve decided to stay,” she said. “Just bring me a new lease.”

“A new lease on life,” he said.

She grinned. “You might say that. And you can call me Nicole.”

He smiled. “I will be pleased to.”

“We’re still making dinner,” she said. “Would you like to watch a football game on TV?”

“No, I don’t care for that. If you don’t mind, I’ll just stay in here where the action is.”

“We don’t mind,” she said.

“Would you like some eggnog?” I asked.

He waved his hand at me. “Don’t drink the stuff, I’m lactose intolerant,” he said.

“Another glass for you,” Nicole whispered snidely.

Christine knocked on our door at the appointed hour. She wore a bright holiday sweater with Christmas bauble earrings. Her apartment door was wide open. She asked me, “Would you mind helping me bring over my pies?”

“Glad to,” I said. “How many did you make?”

“Three. Apple, pumpkin, and … mincemeat.”

“You made mincemeat just to spite me, didn’t you?”

She smiled. “I like mincemeat.” Then she added, “And to spite you.”

“I’m not carrying the mincemeat,” I said.

We carried back the pies. Nicole gasped as we entered. “Those look fabulous.”

“Thank you. I love to bake, I just don’t have anyone to bake for.”

I looked at Nicole. “I think you two need to get together.”

“We just did,” she said.

“Hi, Bill,” Christine said, walking into the kitchen.

“Hello, Chris,” Bill said. “Is that mincemeat?”

“Yes it is.”

“I love a good mincemeat.”

Christine shot me a glance and Nicole grinned. “Looks like the mincemeat is beating out your eggnog,” Nicole said.

I shrugged. “There’s no accounting for taste in some people.”

“My thought exactly,” she replied.

“So how does a diabetic handle a Thanksgiving feast?” I asked.

“I’m not diabetic today.”

“Really.”

“Just kidding, but I’ll use more insulin. I know it’s not smart, but one day of the year … I’ll live with it.”

A half hour later we finished our preparations and sat down to eat.

“My, what a feast,” Bill said, looking over the table. “I haven’t seen a spread like this since June.” We knew he wasn’t talking about the month.

“I’d like to pray,” Nicole said. She reached out and took Bill’s hand and mine. Bill took Christine’s hand and Christine took mine, completing the circle.

Nicole bowed her head. “Dear Father, I am grateful this day for my friends and for Alan and his care. We are grateful for this food and for so much to be grateful for. We ask a blessing on those without and to be led to help them. Also, we are grateful for those who are missing from our lives. Amen.”

“Amen,” I said.

“Amen,” Bill and Christine said.

“Before we eat,” Nicole said, “I would like to take a moment and say something, if that’s all right.”

“Of course,” Bill said. “Speech, speech.”

“Well, it’s not really a speech,” she said. “In better days my family used to always say one thing we were grateful for before we could eat. I’d like to do the same.”

We all agreed.

“Alan, would you start?”

I looked around the table as all eyes turned to me. “Sure.” I sat up a little. “This is my first holiday without McKale. If you had asked me a year ago what I was most grateful for, I would have said McKale. If you asked me today, I’d say the same thing. I guess sometimes we’re lucky to have someone to miss so much.”

Nicole smiled sadly.

“I’m grateful to be here today with all of you, for this food and home. I’m grateful to be feeling so much better. Most of all, I’m grateful for Nicole, for taking care of me and encouraging me through it all. I don’t know how I would have made it without her. That’s it,” I said.

Bill nodded thoughtfully.

“I’ll go,” Christine said, turning to Nicole. “I’m grateful that you invited me to have dinner with you. I thought it was going to be another crummy Thanksgiving alone. Money’s kind of tight, so I won’t be flying home until school gets out. So I’m grateful to have friends to make me feel thankful.”

“Amen,” Nicole said.

“How about you, Bill?” I said.

He looked down at his plate as he gathered his thoughts. Then he looked up at all of us, his eyes eventually landing on Nicole. “Since I lost my June, I’ve been pretty lonely. So I guess I’m a bit like Christine—I thought this was going to be another crummy day alone with my memories. Thank God there are people like you, Nicole, who would include an old man in your festivities.”

“It’s been my pleasure, Bill,” Nicole said. She took a deep breath. “I guess it’s my turn. Last Thanksgiving I was in a hospital bed, alone and going through the most difficult experience of my life. This day I am grateful for all of you. You’ve said such kind things. You don’t know how much it means to me. I’m especially grateful that Alan came into my life at this time.” She took my hand. “I thought I went to the hospital to help you. I didn’t realize that it was for me. Thank you for not leaving me like everyone else did. Thank you for caring.”

I looked deeply into her eyes. She continued. “Today I am mostly grateful for life. It seems we’ve all had tough years lately. I don’t know about you, Christine, but the three of us have all lost someone we’ve loved. But as hard as the last few years have been, I’m still grateful for them. I’m grateful for the good days I’ve had. There haven’t been too many of them lately, but I have hope that there will be more to come. I hope that’s true for all of us.”

Christine’s eyes were beaming and Bill looked like he was getting emotional or about to. I raised my glass of eggnog. “Here, here.”

Everyone else raised their glasses and we toasted.

“Now let’s eat before we all die of hunger,” Nicole said.

I stood to serve the turkey and we began dishing out the food.

“Angel, would you please pass me the mashed potatoes?” Christine asked.

“She’s going by Nicole, now,” Bill said.

“Oh right. Sorry.”

“Angel was a nickname,” Nicole said. “But I’m through with it.”

I looked at her proudly.

The meal was delicious and the conversation kept up, covering a broad range of topics from the origin of mincemeat to where we were when the Space Shuttle exploded.

The sum of the day was truly greater than its parts. The four of us loners talked and laughed like old friends, like we hadn’t a care in the world. Maybe, for that moment, we didn’t.

We all did the dishes, even Bill, who claimed that under his wife’s regime, KP was his job. When the kitchen was clean, Bill hugged Nicole. “Thank you.”

“You’re not staying for the movie?”

“No, I think I’ll just retire. But thank you for everything. It was a wonderful meal. I had a most enjoyable time.”

“You’re very welcome,” Nicole said. “We should get together again.”

His face lit. “I’d enjoy that immensely.”

The three of us watched It’s a Wonderful Life. Christine spent most of the evening with us but left before the movie was over. She hugged both of us and set a date to go out with Nicole.

Jimmy Stewart was on his knees begging for life when there was a knock at the door. Nicole stood. “Christine must have forgotten something.”

“I’ll pause the movie,” I said.

“That’s okay. I’ve already seen it a million times.”

I glanced over as she opened the door. I couldn’t see who was in the hall, but I heard a man’s voice. Nicole said something then glanced back at me. “Alan, it’s for you.”

“For me?”

She took a couple steps toward me. “It’s your father.”

CHAPTER

Twenty-two

My father came. No matter what he said, his search for me spoke louder.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I looked at Nicole in disbelief. “My father?”

She nodded.

I got up from the couch and walked to the door. My father stood in the hallway wearing his Los Angeles Lakers windbreaker. For a moment we just looked at each other. Then he stepped forward and threw his arms around me.

“Son.”

My father rarely hugged me and never in front of others, so it felt unnatural. He held me for nearly a minute before he released me, stepping back, his hands still on my shoulders. Only then did I see that his eyes were red.

“Thank God you’re okay. When I learned that you had been stabbed …” He stopped, affected by emotion. He wiped his eyes with the back of one hand. “Are you okay?”

“Much better than I was four weeks ago,” I said, my mind swimming with questions. “How did you find me?”

“Falene called me.”

His reply only raised more questions. Falene was my assistant at Madgic, my former advertising firm and the only employee who had remained loyal to me when Kyle stole the agency. After McKale’s death, when I decided to shut everything down, I had asked Falene to liquidate everything I owned and put the receipts in an account for me. I knew she had been busy—evidenced by the growing bank account—but I hadn’t spoken to her since I left Seattle.

“How did Falene know where I was?”

“She didn’t. She had been tracking your walk by your credit card transactions until they stopped just outside of Spokane. She became worried that something had happened to you, and she called me to see if I’d heard from you.

“I’ve got to tell you, when she told me that you were walking across the country, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I didn’t even know you had left Seattle.”

“I’m sorry, I should have told you.” The truth was, my father and I had never been close, I hadn’t even thought to call him.

“After her call, the first call I made was to the Spokane Police Department. They told me that you had been assaulted and taken to the hospital. I called over there, but no one could answer my questions about where you were, so I flew up here and nosed around until I found someone who knew where you were.”

“Norma,” I said.

“A nurse, about yea high, blond.” He held his hand out horizontally from his chest.

“That’s her,” I said. I stepped back a little. “Come inside, let’s talk.”

My father stepped inside. Nicole had turned off the DVD and was standing near the couch watching us.

“Dad, this is my friend Nicole. She offered to take me in when the hospital released me.”

Nicole walked over to us, shaking my father’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Christoffersen. Please, sit down.”

“Thank you.”

My father walked over to the couch and sat. I shut the door behind him and sat down on the far end of the sofa. “Join us,” I said to Nicole.

She sat.

“Your name is Nicole?” my father asked. “I was told my son had gone home with a woman named Angel.”

“Angel’s my nickname,” she said.

He nodded. “Well, Nicole, I want to thank you for taking care of my son.”

“It’s been my pleasure. In fact, you might say that he’s been taking care of me.”

My father turned back to me. “Falene said that you were walking to Key West, Florida.”

“That’s the plan.”

He looked down for a moment as if trying to process my reply. “I don’t even know what to say to that. You told me that your business was struggling a bit, but you didn’t tell me it had gone under and you’d lost your home.”

“Things fell apart pretty quickly.”

He nodded. “I’m just glad you’re alive. You’re not going to keep walking now, are you?”

“As soon as the weather permits. I’m grounded here until spring.”

His forehead creased. “Could I talk you out of it?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Could I bribe you out of it?”

“No.”

He sat back. “It’s dangerous out there.”

“That’s for sure,” Nicole said.

After a minute my father asked Nicole, “How is it that you two know each other?”

Nicole said, “Serendipity, really. We met outside a town about a hundred miles from here when Alan stopped to fix my tire. The police called me after he was attacked.”

“That is serendipitous. Did the police catch the hoodlums?”

“Yes,” I said. “As far as I know they’re in jail. The kid who stabbed me is dead.”

My dad looked at me with a peculiar expression I’d never seen on his face before—a hybrid between shock and admiration. “You killed him?”

“No, I was unconscious. The kid attacked the men who saved me and they shot him. He died in the same hospital I was in.”

My father just shook his head. “Where are the parents these days?”

Nicole leaned forward. “Mr. Christoffersen …”

“Bob,” he said. “Call me Bob.”

“Have you eaten?”

“I had a burger earlier.”

“That’s not acceptable on Thanksgiving Day. We have a complete Thanksgiving feast in the refrigerator. May I put something together for you?”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all. You two just stay in here and catch up,” she said, running off to the kitchen.

“Nice gal,” my father said after she was gone.

“Yes she is.”

My father clasped his hands together in his lap. “When Falene told me you lost the house…” He looked up at me. “Why didn’t you call me? I could have helped.”

“I was kind of a wreck.”

“That and you didn’t feel like you could.”

I looked down. “I guess not.”

“I’m sorry for that. I truly am.”

Ten minutes later Nicole walked back in. “Dinner’s ready.”

My father smiled and stood. I followed him into the kitchen. The table was laid out with platters and a single dinner plate with utensils.

“Now that’s a feast,” my father said.

My father was never a big eater, but he surprised me, eating large portions and seconds of everything. I sat down next to him and ate slices of cold turkey breast sandwiched between rolls.

“How long are you in town?” Nicole asked.

“I was prepared to stay as long as I needed to.” He looked at me. “But now that I’ve found my son, I’ll probably leave tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you stay the weekend?” I asked. “It would be nice having you around.”

I could see that he appreciated my offer. “I’d like that.”

“Where are you staying?” Nicole asked.

“Over at the airport Ramada.”

“You could stay here,” she offered. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“No, no. I’m fine. All my stuff’s over there and it’s not much of a drive to get here.”

“Have you had enough to eat?”

“I’ve had enough for a small village. You don’t have any eggnog do you?”

Nicole smiled. “Plenty. I’ll pour you a glass.”

“I dilute it with milk, half and half.”

“Like father, like son,” she said.

When my father had finished eating, he thanked Nicole profusely. Then I walked with him out to his rental car. He started the car, turned on its defroster and wipers, then climbed out as it warmed.

“Thank you for coming,” I said.

“Of course I came.” He stood in the cold, his breath freezing before him. “I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since Falene called. So if it’s all right by you, I think I’m going to sleep in tomorrow.”

“Sounds good.”

He nodded. “I’ll see you sometime after noon. Good night, son.”

“Night, Dad.”

He opened the door and then stopped. “That Falene’s a nice gal. You better give her a call. She was beside herself with worry.”

“I’ll call her tonight.”

“She’ll be glad.” He climbed inside the car, then slowly pulled away from the curb. Nicole met me in the doorway.

“I can’t believe he came,” I said.

“And he likes eggnog.”

“He does like eggnog.”

“Glad someone does,” she said. “We’ve still got a whole gallon of it in there.”

CHAPTER

Twenty-three

Developing a friendship is like feeding squirrels at the park. At first it’s all grab and go. But with gentle motion, time and consistency, soon they’re eating from your hand.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I borrowed Nicole’s phone to call Falene. Her phone rang six times before it went to voice mail. I hung up without leaving a message, then redialed the number. I remembered that Falene rarely answered numbers she didn’t know but sometimes did if the caller was persistent. The phone rang awhile again and I was about to hang up when she answered. “Hello.”

“Falene, it’s Alan.”

Silence.

“Are you there?” I asked.

“Where have you been?”

I wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical or if she really wanted an answer. “I’m in Spokane.”

“You’re in Spokane,” she said, her voice rising. “And I’m over here worried to death. Your father is out looking for you, I’ve been calling all the hospitals from here to Denver. For all I knew you were lying on the side of some road dead. Of all the selfish—”

“Falene—”

“I’m not done. You couldn’t take just five minutes and call me? I’m not worth just five minutes of your time? Here I’ve been killing myself liquidating everything, taking crap from the vendors and trying to answer these questions by—”

“Falene, I’m sorry. You’re right, I’ve been selfish.”

“No, you’re incredibly selfish. You’re the most selfish, insensitive—”

“Falene. Just stop.”

Surprisingly, she did, though she was still breathing heavily.

“Thank you,” I said.

She breathed out in exasperation. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Spokane,” I repeated.

“Your father’s in Spokane right now looking for you.”

“He found me.”

“He said you’d been stabbed. Is it true?”

“I was jumped by a gang. I was stabbed three times.”

“Where?”

“Just outside Spokane.”

“I mean, where on your body?”

“In the stomach. Fortunately, he missed all my vital organs.”

“Are you okay?”

“It took a few weeks before I could walk again, but I’ve mostly recovered.”

She breathed out slowly. “I’m sorry I got so mad. I’ve been terrified for the last three weeks. I was worried that something bad had happened and I was right.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’m not saying it’s an excuse, but I don’t have my cell phone anymore, so I don’t think about it.”

“What happened to your cell phone?”

“I threw it in a lake.”

She didn’t ask why.

“I didn’t know that you had been following me,” I said.

“Of course I’ve been following you.”

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m okay. I’ve finished liquidating all the furniture from the office. About half the furniture from your home is still at the consignment shop. There’s around forty-six thousand in the account. I hope it’s okay, but I took four thousand for my salary and to pay my brother for helping me.”

“I offered you half of what you brought in.”

“I know, but that was too much. I just needed a little. Besides, I got another job. I’m now the office manager at Tiffany’s Modeling. I’ve tripled my modeling gigs and I get my head shots for free.”

“I’m glad that’s working out.”

“You know, being at Tiffany’s, I see a lot of the other agency guys we used to compete with. They ask about you all the time.”

“What do you tell them?”

“I tell them that you took a job with BBDO in the U.K.”

I laughed. “Why don’t you just tell them the truth?”

“It’s none of their business. Yesterday, I saw Jason Stacey from Sixty-Second. He told me that Kyle’s losing clients almost as fast as his hair and that he and Ralph parted ways. Ralph took a job with some credit union doing in-house graphic design.”

“That didn’t last long,” I said. Kyle had been my partner at Madgic. While I was caring for McKale, he had covertly started his own advertising agency, stolen my clients and talked Ralph, my head of graphic design, into coming on as his partner. I had hired and trained Ralph myself, so his betrayal was especially hard on me. “It’s only been about two months.”

“Apparently, cheaters don’t prosper. In fact you’ll never guess who I got a call from the other day. Phil Wathen.”

The name sent a pang through my body. Phil was a real estate developer, and it was his $6 million account I was pitching when I learned of McKale’s accident.

“What did Phil have to say?”

“He wanted to know if you’d consider taking him back as a client. I guess Kyle’s not keeping him happy either.”

“Karma sucks,” I said.

She laughed. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

“I have some tax papers I need signed, where should I send them?”

“I’m staying at a friend’s house. You could send the documents here.”

“How about if I just brought them?”

Her offer surprised me. “You don’t need to go to that much trouble.”

“It’s no trouble. Besides, I have the week between Christmas and New Year’s off, I’d love to see you.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

“Then I’ll come.” She sighed. “I better let you go. Have a happy Thanksgiving.”

“Happy Thanksgiving to you,” I said.

“It is now,” she replied.

I hung up the phone. I had forgotten how good it was to talk to her.

CHAPTER

Twenty-four

We watched Citizen Kane. I’m pleased to witness that, in this instance, the movie ended entirely different than it was supposed to.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Long conversations (and most short ones) were not a part of my experience growing up with my father, so I wondered what we would talk about that afternoon. My worries were in vain. My father arrived around noon and immediately started poking around Nicole’s house for something to repair, which is his favorite pastime. His discoveries necessitated two trips to Home Depot. He repaired a leaky faucet, weather-stripped two windows, and replaced a refrigerator bulb before he sat down with me to watch the Alabama-Auburn game.

Nicole came home from work at her usual hour. We ate a dinner of Thanksgiving leftovers, then my dad and I decided to meet at noon for lunch the next day.

After he left, Nicole and I popped some corn, then sat down and watched Citizen Kane.

When it was over, Nicole said, “Did you know that Citizen Kane was about William Randolph Hearst? He owned dozens of newspapers, and when the movie came out, he not only banned them from mentioning the film, but he threatened to cut advertising from any movie theater that played it.”

“Can’t say that I blame him,” I said.

“It does make him look pretty ruthless. The film never did well at the box office. In the end, the film destroyed both men—Hearst and Welles.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Remember, I’m a film major.”

“Oh yeah.”

“That was also true of It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“Hearst didn’t like it?”

She laughed. “No, it also bombed at the box office. People thought it was just too depressing.”

I thought about this. “But we like it now.”

She smiled. “We most certainly do.”

CHAPTER

Twenty-five

There are two kinds of people. Those who climb mountains and those who sit in the shadow of the mountains and critique the climbers.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

True to his nature, my father arrived at the house the next day precisely five minutes before twelve. “If you’re not five minutes early, you’re late,” he always said, and he was as punctual as he was thrifty—which would impress you if you knew how thrifty he really was.

Even though it was lunchtime, we went to the IHOP for pancakes. IHOP was a tradition for me. Whenever we pulled an all-nighter at the agency, we’d all end up at IHOP, sometimes at three in the morning.

We both ordered a tall stack of pancakes—him buckwheat, me blueberry. When we’d gotten our meals, he asked, “How are you dealing with McKale?”

“I have my moments.”

He looked at me knowingly. “You know, after your mother died, some of my colleagues tried to get me to start dating, but I didn’t. That was a mistake.”

“I’m not interested in dating right now,” I said.

“I’m not saying you should be, it’s too early. But I hope you would someday consider it.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Well, there are the lies we tell ourselves and then there’s the truth. I told myself that I didn’t want to confuse you by bringing home a strange woman. But the truth was, I was afraid of throwing the dice again. I was always shy, so your mother was the only woman I had ever dated. I got lucky with her. I didn’t think a man should hope to get that lucky twice in one lifetime.” My father poured maple syrup on his pancakes. “I’m just saying, don’t be a coward like me. Life is short. You should find love when and where you can.”

I was surprised to hear this from him. “You’re no coward.”

“Sure I am. Cowards always hide behind bravado or stoicism. It takes courage to show emotion.” He took a bite of pancake. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about your walk. How’d you come up with your destination?”

“It was the furthest point on the map.”

He nodded as if he understood. “Have you ever been to Key West?”

“No.”

“Me neither,” he said. “Anyway, I’m not against it—your walking there.”

“You’ve changed your mind?”

“I guess it was never really set. When I first heard, I didn’t know why you’d want to do such a crazy thing, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I think I know why you need to walk.”

I was curious to hear his reasoning, especially since I wasn’t totally sure myself. “Why?”

“When I was twenty-something I read this book written by a German psychiatrist. He was a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

“That book had a profound effect on me. Something that he said has always stuck with me. Maybe this is just my interpretation, but basically he wrote that when a man loses his vision of the future he dies.

“There’s a lot of talk these days about living in the now, but if you don’t have a future, there is no now. You see it all the time. Men retire from their jobs and a few months later the paper runs their obituary.

“I’ll be honest with you, when I lost your mother, there were days I wanted to put a gun to my head. But I still had you. And I had my job and my buddies at the Rotary. All that kept me from derailing.

“But you weren’t so fortunate. You lost it all. Lesser men have given up under such circumstances. But you found something to keep you going. I think that’s admirable. I think it’s more than that, I think it’s manly.”

That may have been the greatest accolade I had ever received from my father. Almost instinctively, I tried to deflect it. “I almost gave up.”

“Almost has no consequence in this world. None whatsoever. You didn’t give up, that’s all that matters.” He set down his fork and leaned forward. “Do you know why men climb mountains?”

I looked at him blankly. “Because they’re there?”

“Because the valley is for cemeteries. Sometimes, when tragedy strikes, people give up hope that they can expect anything more from life, when the real quest is finding out what life expects from them. Does this make any sense?”

“It makes sense,” I said.

“So, my CPA-trained mind must ask, do you have the financial means to carry out your trek?”

“I think so. I have about forty-six thousand dollars.”

“As long as you don’t stay at the Four Seasons, that should get you through. You’re not carrying all that money with you.”

“No. I use a credit card and ATM machines. Falene liquidated all our assets and put it in an account.”

“I don’t like the ATM fees,” he said, sounding more accountant than father, “but I suppose it can’t be avoided. The account is interest-bearing, I presume.”

“I really don’t know.”

He frowned. He never understood why I was so lax about such things. “Well, if, for any reason you come up short, you come to me. It may surprise you, but I’ve got quite a nest egg put away.”

“It doesn’t surprise me at all. You’re a hard worker and the most frugal person I’ve ever met. If I were more like you, I wouldn’t be in such a mess.”

“If you were more like me, you’d be a bored, unhappy old man.”

I was surprised by his comment.

“I know I’ve come down on you more than a few times for being irresponsible with your money, but I’m being honest with you now—a part of me admires that about you. You and McKale lived. You had fun. And now you have those memories. I didn’t, and you and your mom suffered because of it. I suffered because of it.”

“We had good times,” I said.

“Course we did, but they were few and far between. I put things off with your mother that I regret to this day. One Christmas she wanted to go to Italy more than anything. She begged me to go. She said she didn’t want another thing for Christmas or her birthday, she said she’d cut coupons, get a side job and save her dimes. She even had a sitter lined up for you.” He shook his head. “Idiot I was, I told her ‘no.’ ‘Too expensive’, I said. ‘A waste of money.’ Instead we drove to Yellowstone Park.”

“I remember that trip to Yellowstone,” I said. “I have fond memories of it. Didn’t Mom want to go?”

“You wouldn’t know it if she didn’t, but I knew that her heart was set on Italy.” Suddenly, my father’s eyes welled up with tears. “I didn’t know that would be our last vacation together.” He cleared his throat. “The kicker is, we had the money—even back then. I saved up all this money for retirement and for what? To give it to someone else? I live alone and still go in to work every day. I’ll never use the half of it, just leave it to you. I should just give it all to you now, you’d know what to do with it.”

“I’d just lose it,” I said. “At least I would have.”

“In the end, we all lose it. Remember that. In the end, we own nothing.”

It struck me odd hearing this from a man who had spent his career counseling people on how to keep their money. I didn’t know if my father had changed or if I’d just never seen this side of him. Probably both.

We finished our pancakes, then my father drove me back to Nicole’s. Idling at the curb, he asked in his direct, pragmatic way, “Anything else we need to talk about?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll go home tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said.

“It’s settled,” he said.

I got out of the car. As I started up the walk, he rolled down the window. “Son.”

I turned back. “Yes?”

“I love you.”

I looked at him for a few seconds, then said, “I know. Me too.”

He put the car in gear and drove away.

CHAPTER

Twenty-six

Funny how we can wait so many years to hear so few words.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

My father came by to see me once more before he left. He was wearing his Lakers windbreaker again, with a Lakers cap. He came inside the building but not Nicole’s apartment.

“It was good seeing you, son.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“Where’s Angel? I’d like to say goodbye.”

“Nicole,” I corrected. “She’s inside.” I called to Nicole and she walked out.

“I want to thank you for taking care of my son,” he said.

“My pleasure. And thank you for all the things you fixed around here.”

“I like puttering around. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, just call.”

“Thank you,” she said.

They looked at each other for a moment, then Nicole stuck out her hand. “Travel safe.”

“Thank you.”

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Come out to the car with me.”

I followed him out. When we were at the curb, my father said, “Three things I ask of you. First, take this.” He handed me a small cell phone, the inexpensive kind they give you when you open a new cell phone account. “Just for emergencies. No one needs to know the number and you can keep it turned off. I won’t call you, but you call now and then. I don’t mean daily, but every couple of weeks just to let me know you’re okay.

“Second, if you need help, you come to me. I want you to promise me that.”

“I promise,” I said, and I actually meant it.

“Good, good. Third.” He reached into the car’s trunk and brought out a small bag. “Here’s the charger for your cell phone. And here’s something else you’ll need.”

I looked at what he was handing me. “A handgun?”

“Nine-millimeter. The safety’s on, clip is empty.”

I pushed it back to him. “I don’t do guns.”

“If you’re going to live on the road, you better have it. You didn’t even get out of Washington without almost getting killed. You’ve got thousands of miles to go and I’m betting you’ll be walking through places a whole lot tougher than Spokane.”

I looked at the gun skeptically. “I don’t know.”

“If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me. For my peace of mind.”

“Is it even legal?”

“It’s registered in my name. But I’m guessing your next mugger won’t care much.”

I balanced the piece in my hand. After a moment I said, “All right.”

“Good. Don’t forget the shells. One box should be ample.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Are you going through Colorado?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“If you do, drop by and see the Laidlaws. I haven’t seen them in years.”

“If I’m in the neighborhood I’ll be sure to do that.”

He stepped forward and hugged me. “Take care of yourself. I’m glad you’re my boy.”

All I could say was “Thanks.” I’d wanted to hear that for the longest time.

CHAPTER

Twenty-seven

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep; “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.”
—Longfellow

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

My mother often said that the shortest path to healing was to heal someone else. I never knew how right she was. In caring for Nicole I had almost forgotten my own loss and grief. By all rights that holiday season should have been despairing, or at least melancholy, and, of course, I had those moments, but they didn’t define the season. I didn’t forget McKale—that would have been impossible. I just found a different side of my loss, focusing more on the sweetness of what was than the bitterness of what wasn’t.

Nicole also seemed different, as if reclaiming her name had changed everything else about her life. For the first time since I came home with her, she stopped talking about the horrors she encountered on her job and started talking about the positive ones, like the work the police were doing to help kids during the holiday season or the people who rescued complete strangers at personal risk to themselves.

We weren’t watching movies from her list anymore, just a few Christmas ones—Miracle on 34th Street, White Christmas, and A Charlie Brown Christmas—but we kept busy, making the most of the holiday.

We went to a stage production of A Christmas Carol, the planetarium’s presentation of The Star of Bethlehem, and toured the Christmas Tree Elegance presentation in downtown Spokane at the Davenport Hotel.

One Saturday we drove across the border into Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, for their remarkable holiday light show: more than a million and a half lights over the lake.

With the exception of our escapade into Coeur d’Alene, we brought Bill (and his Old Spice) along with us to almost everything, including a Christmas singalong at the neighboring Montessori. It was fun watching how happy he was to be included, and I realized that what I was doing for Nicole, she was doing for Bill.

Through it all there was something remarkably seductive about denying the dwindling candle of Nicole and my allotted time together and believing in something more permanent. That level of denial might sound peculiar, but, on some level, we all do that every day.

CHAPTER

Twenty-eight

The giving of a Christmas fruitcake has been passed down from generation to generation to generation. That’s because nobody wanted it.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Christmas Eve. Christine had flown home to Portland to spend Christmas with her family, but Bill joined us. The three of us had a nice ham dinner with scalloped potatoes, asparagus, and a fruit salad. Bill brought a fruitcake, which reminded me of what Johnny Carson had to say about fruitcakes. “There’s only been one fruitcake ever made—and every Christmas it gets passed around the world.”

After dinner we exchanged our gifts. I gave Nicole the complete set of Alfred Hitchcock movies and a year’s supply of microwave popcorn. I gave Bill a bottle of Old Spice. He caressed the bottle as if it were a fine wine. “How did you know I like this?” he asked.

“Lucky guess,” I said.

Nicole gave him the silver picture frame.

“I think it’s the most beautiful picture frame I’ve ever seen,” he said.

“I thought you could put a picture of June in it.”

His eyes welled up with tears and his chin began to quiver a little. All he could say was “Thank you.”

Nicole gave me something less sentimental—a pair of Nike walking shoes and seven pairs of wool athletic socks.

The snow was falling gently, casting the world in a serene, peaceful air as we walked Bill out to his car. He shook my hand, then turned to Nicole and embraced her tightly. “Thank you, my dear. Your friendship means more to me than I could ever tell you. God bless you.”

“God bless you, Bill. And Merry Christmas. Don’t forget we have brunch tomorrow. We’ll pick you up around eleven.”

“I won’t eat a thing before.”

“And don’t forget our wild New Year’s Eve party. I fully expect to see you wearing a lamp shade before the night’s through.”

He chuckled heartily. “Oh, that would be a sight. I’ll be there, unless, of course, I’m too tired. You youngsters keep me up too late. I haven’t stayed up this late for years.”

“It’s good for you,” Nicole said.

“I’ll take your word for it.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “Good night, my dear.”

As he drove off, Nicole said, “He’s a sweet old guy.”

“I don’t think you have any idea how much you mean to him,” I said.

“It’s mutual,” she said, smiling. She took my hand. “I have a gift for you.”

“You already gave me a gift.”

“No, that was a necessity.”

Back inside, she told me to sit on the couch as she ran into her bedroom. The Christmas tree lit the front room, its blinking lights flashing on and off in syncopation.

She returned a few seconds later with a package. “Okay, so you’re both easy and difficult to shop for. On the one hand, what do you give a man who has nothing?”

“Anything,” I said.

“Exactly. On the other hand, what do you give a man who carries his home on his back?” Her expression turned softer. “Or the man who saved your life?” She handed me the box. “Anyway, I hope you like it.”

I peeled back the paper to expose a crushed velvet jewelry box. I opened the lid. Inside was a St. Christopher medallion.

“St. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers,” she said. “Do you like it?”

I lifted the white gold medallion by its chain. “It’s beautiful.” I unclasped the chain and put it around my neck. The pendant fell to the top of my chest.

“I hope you’ll think of me every time you feel it against your skin.”

I leaned over and kissed her cheek.

Suddenly, she said, “Hey, how about some eggnog?”

“You’ll actually join me in a glass?”

“No, but I’ll watch.”

I laughed. “Fair enough.”

CHAPTER

Twenty-nine

The greatest gift I received this Christmas was peace.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Christmas Day was joyous and relaxed. Just before noon we picked up Bill, then drove downtown for Christmas brunch at the Davenport, which Bill insisted on paying for. “I’m starting to feel like a charity case,” he said.

After the meal we came back to the apartment and spent the rest of the day playing card games until Bill got tired and we drove him home.

On the way back Nicole asked, “How was your Christmas?”

“It was great.” I looked at her and smiled. “That’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? I thought I’d be suicidal by now. Instead, I feel peace.”

As she pondered my words, a grin spread across her face. “May I tell you something awful?”

I looked at her curiously. “What’s that?”

“I’m glad you got stabbed.” She covered her mouth with her hand.

I just looked at her, then burst out laughing. “Me too.”

The next morning Nicole had to go back to work. I got in my walking, which I had been less than diligent about through the holidays. I walked seven miles and I could feel it in my legs. I came back and showered, then spent the rest of the day at home waiting for Falene.

Falene arrived around two-thirty, driving a fire engine red BMW. I walked outside and waved her down. She climbed out of the car wearing Chanel sunglasses and a form-fitting, one-piece sweater-dress.

“Alan,” she shouted.

“Hey.”

She bounded up the walk to me and we embraced.

“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” she said, kissing my cheek. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too,” I said. “Have you had lunch?”

“I’ve just been mainlining Diet Cokes.”

“As usual. Want to go get a burger?”

“Oh yes, real food. Please.” She handed me her keys. “You drive.”

We drove to a Wendy’s where I got a salad and she got a double cheeseburger, giant fries, and a chocolate Frosty with a Diet Coke to counter it.

“I get so sick of starving myself,” she said, “sometimes I’ve just got to binge.”

“How’s Seattle?” I asked, stealing one of her fries.

“Rain,” she said. “And more rain, and then some more.”

“You gotta love that rain. Speaking of storms, tell me more about Ralph and Kyle.”

Falene grinned. “Did you really come up with that segue on the fly?”

“Of course.”

“You’re still brilliant. Well, I told you they split. But it gets better,” she said. “Or worse, depending on whose side you’re on. Ralph’s wife finally found out he was cheating.”

“I might have had something to do with that,” I said.

“You told his wife?”

“I ran into Ralph and Cheryl up at Stevens Pass. They didn’t recognize me since I had a beard and glasses, but I made a comment to him about cheaters.”

She shook her head. “Serves him right, the weasel. Ralph was nothing until you brought him in, and then he plots behind your back to steal your agency.”

“What about Kyle?”

“You know how he always bragged that he could talk his way out of anything?”

“Yes.”

“Well, apparently there comes a time when people actually expect results. Let’s face it, everything brilliant that ever came out of Madgic was yours. They may have stolen your clients and the awards off the wall, but they can’t take your creativity. It was only a matter of time before the wheels fell off.” She took a bite of her Frosty. “I’ve got to tell you, you’ve walked a long way. Just driving here made me tired.”

“I’ve just begun.”

“Are you really going to walk the whole way?”

“I’m still planning on it.”

“So, what was it like being stabbed?”

“It hurt.”

A grin crossed her face. “I figured that much. Does it still hurt?”

“No. There’s a little numbness, but nothing compared to what it was.”

“May I see?”

“Sure.” I lifted my shirt to show her the wounds. I had removed the bandages several weeks earlier, so all that was left were three fresh scars. She grimaced. “You poor baby. You should have stayed with me.”

“I had to leave Seattle.”

Just then a guy walked by staring at Falene as if his eyes were caught in a tractor beam. I forgot that this is how it was whenever I was with her. She didn’t even notice it anymore.

“Where did you meet Nicole?” she asked.

“I came across her while I was walking. She had a flat tire and I stopped to help her.”

“Always the good Samaritan, aren’t you?”

“Not always.”

“Next time something happens, you call me.”

“I promise the next time I’m stabbed, I’ll call you first.”

She grinned.

“How is the liquidation of my estate going?”

“Well. I think we’ll probably bring in another twenty thousand on furniture before we’re done.”

“I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done.”

“You can start by keeping in touch. Every week.”

“I promise.”

“… and when you arrive in Key West, I want to be there.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to her request. “Let me think about it.”

“Okay,” she said, “you think about it.”

Falene and I sat and talked for nearly two and a half hours, long after the ice had melted in her Coke and the sun had started to set. Afterward we drove downtown to look at the lights.

Nicole’s car was out front when we arrived home. I pulled up behind her car and we got out. I led Falene up to the house and opened the apartment door. “Nicole,” I shouted. “We’re home.”

Nicole walked into the front room from the hallway.

“Nicole,” I said, “this is Falene.”

“Hi,” Nicole said, extending her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Falene said.

“We’re going to get Falene checked into a hotel, then we’re headed out to dinner,” I said. “Want to come?”

“No, I’m sure you two have a lot to catch up on.”

“We’ve plenty of time for that,” I said. “Come on.”

“Yes, come,” Falene said. “It will be fun.”

“Actually,” she said, “I already have a date.”

I looked at her with surprise. “Really? With who?”

“Bill. We’re going to see the ice sculptures at Candlelight Park.”

“How romantic,” Falene said.

I started laughing. “Bill’s her landlord. He’s like ninety.”

“Oh?” Falene said. “You can’t be romantic at ninety?”

Nicole smiled. “Exactly. Besides, he’s only eighty-seven,” she said lightly. “And it will be romantic. Bill’s a real gentleman.”

“My apologies,” I said. “Have a good time.”

Falene and I walked out to the curb. I opened the door for her, then walked around to my door. I looked back once more. Nicole was still standing at the window watching us. She waved. I waved back then got in and we drove off to dinner.

CHAPTER

Thirty

Old friends are memories personified.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Falene checked herself into the Davenport Hotel, and we decided to eat at the Palm Court Grill in the hotel’s lobby. The restaurant was quiet, and we sat in the corner away from everyone else, which was good since we laughed so much.

It was nice to laugh again. I think Falene remembered every amusing anecdote from our time together, including my April Fools campaign for KBOX 107.9 radio. I had created a billboard campaign dealing with their radio hosts’ body parts, such as:

MARK HAS AN EAR FOR THE HITS

The words were positioned next to an enlarged picture of Mark’s ear. There was also:

DANNY KNOWS YOUR FAVORITE SONGS

The words appeared next to a picture of Danny’s nose. Yeah, it wasn’t my best campaign, but it did the job.

Since the campaign was scheduled to start on April Fools Day, as a joke I had the printer change the lettering on one of Danny’s signs, which I personally brought down to the station. He sat quietly as I unveiled the board. Next to a very extreme close-up of his nose were the words:

DANNY PICKS YOUR FAVORITES

His expression was priceless. I then told him that I had made an executive decision and changed all thirty exposures at the last moment. “They’re going up as we speak.”

I thought he might hyperventilate. Even after I told him it was a joke, it took him nearly a half hour to calm down. Falene nearly choked on her drink recalling the experience.

“There were some good times,” I said.

Falene smiled. “There were a lot of good times.”

As the evening wore on, our conversation slowed and we began to talk about weightier matters—the final days of our time together.

“I was so worried about you at McKale’s funeral,” Falene said. “I watched you standing alone next to her casket in the rain.” She looked down. “My heart was breaking.”

“You were the only one there for me.”

She hesitated. “I was really afraid you might take your life.”

“Honestly,” I said softly, “me too.” I reached over and took her hand. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“I’m glad I could be there for you.”

The moment fell into a sweet silence. After a minute I said, “You must be tired.”

“I am a little. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“I’ll let you go. It’s been good seeing you.”

“You too.”

She stood. “I still need to get those tax papers signed. Should we do them tonight or in the morning?”

“The morning’s fine,” I said. “When are you going back?”

“I was thinking tomorrow afternoon. My brother just got out of rehab and he’s living with me.”

“Always the good Samaritan,” I said.

“Not always,” she replied. “Breakfast around ten?”

“Great. Good night, Falene.”

“Good night.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, then she turned and walked down the hall. A group of men’s heads swiveled as she passed by them. She turned back once more and waved to me.

One of the men said to me in passing, “You are one lucky dude.”

I turned away without comment. In the last two months I had lost my wife, my business, my home, and had been beaten and stabbed. And now I’m “lucky.” I started laughing on my way to the car.

CHAPTER

Thirty-one

When I am tempted to compare my life with Job’s I remind myself that he never had a Falene.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning I picked Falene up at the hotel. She had already checked out of her room and was standing with her luggage near the hotel’s front doors. I threw her things in the back seat of her car, then drove to the IHOP. Our conversation was light. She told me that a major modeling agency had discovered her and wanted her to move to New York.

“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” I asked.

She looked vexed. “I don’t know. Right now my brother needs me. We’ll see.”

After we finished eating I signed the tax papers, then Falene drove me back to Nicole’s house. We pulled up to the curb, and Falene put the car in park.

“Thanks for coming,” I said. “It’s been great seeing you.”

“It’s been great seeing you,” she replied. “It’s going to be a better year for you.”

“That’s not setting the bar very high,” I said.

“I guess not,” she laughed. She brushed her hair back from her face. “Don’t forget, you need to decide if I can meet you in Key West.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“… and you’ll call every week.”

“Every week. I promise.”

She leaned over, and we embraced. “Take care of yourself, Alan.”

“You too.”

I climbed out of the car and waved again from the sidewalk. She waved back then pulled away from the curb. After she turned the corner I walked back to the apartment. She really was lovely. I wondered when I’d see her again.

CHAPTER

Thirty-two

There is a Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. How gladly I would welcome a boring year.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

New Year’s Eve is a drunken night, when police dispatchers are patching through calls with the intensity of a fifties telephone operator. Nicole worked up until 8 P.M., about the time “things started getting interesting,” she said.

Bill was supposed to be over at the house by eight-thirty, but he never came. This didn’t surprise us, as he called Nicole earlier and said he felt a little under the weather and might just sleep it off. “You youngsters are working me like a rented mule,” he said.

Christine was back from Portland, and she came over around six to help me make cake doughnuts, one of McKale and my favorite traditions. We rolled them out, cut them, then set them in a minifryer to cook. When they were golden brown we laid them on paper towels around the kitchen. We made nearly ten dozen, enough to last for months.

As I think back on that night, I suppose our party wasn’t so much about celebrating a New Year as it was about discarding the old—a year neither Nicole nor I would ever forget as much as we wanted to. A New Year’s celebration was the best way I could think of to drive a stake through the last year’s heart.

As the clock counted down, we all sat on the couch and watched Dick Clark in Times Square ring in the New Year. At midnight our neighbors emerged from their otherwise docile domains to light firecrackers and bang pans.

“Happy New Year,” I said to the women.

“Happy New Year to you too,” Nicole said. “And to you, Christine.”

“And to both of you,” Christine said. “I hope next New Year’s finds us all here together just like this.”

I glanced over at Nicole. “That would be nice,” I said. Nicole smiled. “That would be nice.”

Nicole and I slept in the next morning. It was Saturday and Nicole had the day off. I got up before she did, so I made Belgian waffles with Reddi-wip and sliced strawberries, then called her to breakfast. She came out in her pajamas to eat.

“I really need to keep you around,” she said. “I may have to stab you again.”

I grimaced. “Now you’re scaring me.”

When we had finished eating, Nicole said, “We need to take Bill some doughnuts and wish him a happy New Year.”

“We have plenty to share,” I said. “I’ll bag some up.”

Bill lived near the hospital in an upscale, older neighborhood called South Hill. His home was a large red brick rambler, surrounded by mature evergreens. His truck was parked in the driveway, and Nicole and I walked together up the stone path to his front porch. Nicole rang his doorbell, but he didn’t answer. After a few minutes she knocked on his door, but there was still no response. She turned back to me. “Would you mind checking to see if he’s in the garage or backyard?”

“No problem.”

I walked around the side of the house, but the garage was locked and his backyard was filled with snow, which had drifted up over his patio. As I was making my way to the back door, I heard Nicole scream. I ran around to the front of the house. The front door was open and inside Nicole was kneeling on the floor next to Bill performing CPR.

“Call 911,” she said.

I found the kitchen phone and dialed. “What’s the address?” I shouted to Nicole.

“Twenty-two thirteen Yuma.”

After I hung up, I walked over and kneeled next to Nicole. I put my hand on Bill’s neck to check for a pulse. There was none. His body was cold. I looked up at her. “He’s dead, Nicole.”

She continued to push on his chest.

“Nicole, he’s dead.”

“I know,” she said. She stopped pushing, covered her eyes, and wept.

CHAPTER

Thirty-three

We can only lose what we have first claimed.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Nicole went out and sat in the car and cried, unable to be in the same room as Bill’s body. My heart grieved for her more than for Bill. I was certain that Bill was where he wanted to be.

I waited outside for the paramedics and led them inside when they arrived. After examining Bill they made no attempt to revive him.

“When was the last time you saw him alive?” one paramedic asked.

“My friend saw him a couple days ago.”

“He’s been gone awhile,” he said.

Nicole and I spent the rest of the day working through the affairs of Bill’s death. The paramedics called the Coroner’s Office and they came and took him away. Nicole went through Bill’s things looking for someone to call.

While she was looking for contact information, I went downstairs to see the train set she had told me so much about. Bill’s train layout was truly remarkable. It was built on heavy boards and elevated, probably 10 by 20 feet, with hundreds of feet of track, tunnels, and miniature towns with plastic buildings.

Bill had left the train’s power on, and I pulled on a lever and a small locomotive began winding its way through the Lilliputian landscape. So that’s how the old man spent his time, I thought.

After some searching, Nicole found a business card for Bill’s attorney, Larry Snarr. Fortunately, the card listed a cell phone number, which she immediately dialed and he answered. She told Snarr about Bill’s death, and he said he’d take care of everything.

That afternoon Snarr called back for Nicole. “I just heard from the Coroner’s Office,” he said in a low voice. “Bill died of a massive heart attack shortly after midnight.”

“Everything’s been set up with the mortuary. He didn’t want a funeral service. He told me no one would come, so the mortuary will just bury him.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Nicole said. “Could we at least have a little graveside service?”

“You just work it out with the mortuary,” Snarr said. “He’s over at Larkin Mortuary. And let me know if you decide to go ahead with it—I’ll be there.”

Bill was buried two days later in a plot next to his wife. The mortuary had cleared the snow from the grave, and the casket lay aboveground for our makeshift ceremony. Nicole asked if I would say something, but I declined. McKale’s funeral was still too close to me.

There were only four of us that day; Nicole, Christine, Snarr, and me. We gathered in the frozen landscape around the grave, our breath freezing in front of us. Nicole had bought a Christmas wreath, which she laid on top of the casket.

Nicole said, “I just want to say how grateful I am that I got to know Bill. I’m certain that I gained more from our friendship than he did. I’ll never forget his love and loyalty for his wife. And I’m glad that he and his sweetheart will be reunited.”

Nicole then asked if any of us wanted to say anything. At first I shook my head, but then I said, “I really liked Bill. He had a good heart.” Then I felt stupid, thinking, If he had a good heart he’d still be alive.

Christine said: “Bill was always very good to me. He told me that he was worried that I might slip on the ice, so he put down a little extra rock salt on the walk for me. It may seem like just a small thing, but it made me feel good. I’m glad I got to spend Thanksgiving with him.”

Snarr said, “He was an honorable man.”

That was it. On the way home Nicole said, “I wonder if I’ll have to move.”

“Why would you have to move?” I asked.

“New owners.”

“I wouldn’t start packing,” I said. “I’m sure it will take a while before anything happens. Besides, the house has been divided for apartments. Whoever gets it is going to need tenants.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said. “I don’t want to move.”

Three days later I was doing my aerobics in the living room when someone knocked at the door. It was the attorney, Snarr.

“Is Nicole here?” he asked, standing in the building’s lobby.

“She’s at work.”

“I need to speak with her about Mr. Dodd’s estate. Do you know when she’ll be home?”

“She’s usually home by five-thirty.”

“Would it be a problem if I came back tonight for a few minutes?”

“No, that should be fine.”

“Very well then. I’ll see you this evening.”

Nicole arrived home on time. I told her about Larry Snarr’s visit as she walked in the door.

“Did he say what he wanted?” she asked.

“He said he needs to talk to you about Bill’s estate.”

“He’s going to kick us out,” she said flatly. “Or raise the rent. I don’t know where I’m going to find another place at this cost.”

“Wait to worry,” I said. “Wait to worry.”

A couple minutes after six, Snarr pulled up to the house in an older-style Mercedes-Benz. He was wearing a wool overcoat and scarf, and carried a leather briefcase. He walked up the stairway and I met him in the building’s lobby. “Come in.”

Nicole met him at the apartment door and motioned to the couch. “Have a seat.”

“Thank you,” he said.

Snarr and I sat on opposite ends of the couch while Nicole sat in an armchair facing us.

“What is this about?” Nicole asked anxiously.

“I am the executor of William Dodd’s will.”

“Is Nicole in his will?” I asked.

“Actually, Nicole is Mr. Dodd’s sole beneficiary.” He turned to her. “Bill left everything to you.”

“What?” Nicole said.

Snarr opened his briefcase and brought out a dossier. “These documents specifically outline the whole of Mr. Dodd’s estate. They include trust funds, life insurance policies, a few mutual funds, and several rental properties, including this property right here. The entire estate is valued at about $3.6 million.”

Nicole gasped.

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“No sir.”

“But why me?” Nicole asked.

“Actually, the change was made only two weeks ago. He did leave a letter for you, perhaps it might explain things.” He pulled several documents from the stack he held. “I’ll need a few signatures from you, and, as outlined in the will, I’ll be deducting my fees from the estate prior to disbursing funds.” He handed her several papers. “I’ve marked where you need to sign.”

She signed the documents and handed them back. Snarr put them in his briefcase, then handed her a tan envelope. “Here’s the letter Mr. Dodd left for you.”

“Thank you,” Nicole said.

Snarr stood, lifting his briefcase. “You’re very welcome.” He handed Nicole a business card. “If you have any questions, please feel free to call at any time.”

Nicole walked him to the door. “Thanks for coming by.”

“My pleasure,” he said.

She shut the door behind him and then turned back and opened the envelope. Inside was a note penned in shaky handwriting.

Dear Angel,

I hope you don’t mind me calling you that. It’s certainly applicable. If you’re reading this, then be happy for me, as I’m finally with my family again.

The last two years have been difficult for me. Ever since I lost my sweetheart, I lay alone in my cold bed at night listening to the infirmities of my age and hoping for it to catch up to me. The worst infirmity of all has been the loneliness. As you know, June passed several years ago. Our only son, Eric, died nearly twenty years ago. My two brothers and my sister have also died, as have most of my friends. I have no one. Or, I had no one, until this last Thanksgiving when you reached out to me. It may seem a small thing, inviting an old man to join you at the table, but, for me, it was everything. I woke the next day happy for the first time in years. But you didn’t end there. You included me in all of your activities. Even with that young man you room with, you brought me along. You made me feel alive again. You were my friend.

I hope you will accept my gift as a token of my friendship. I honestly can’t think of anyone more deserving. If you wish, I would hope that you would extend to Christine free rent until she graduates from school. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. You have made an old man smile again.

God bless,

Bill

CHAPTER

Thirty-four

Forgiveness is the key to the heart’s shackles.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Not surprisingly, Nicole was a little overwhelmed by it all.

“I don’t know anything about trusts or real estate. How am I going to handle all this?” she asked. “Will you help me?”

I almost laughed. “That would be the blind leading the blind. But I do know just the man who can.”

“Who?”

“My father. The man knows how to handle money.”

“That would be perfect,” she said.

My father was the only number programmed into the cell phone he gave me, something he’d done himself. I called him and told him about Nicole’s windfall. He was pleased and glad to be asked to help.

“I love it when good things happen to good people,” he said.

Nicole went into work the next day and gave her two weeks’ notice. A few days later I accompanied her up to Gonzaga’s enrollment office as she enrolled in school and registered for the Spring semester. She was finally going to complete her film studies major with a minor in American literature. She also began writing a new screenplay, one that I think has promise.

“It’s the story of a young police dispatcher,” she said, “who gets involved in the life of someone she meets through a crime.”

I thought she’d probably start looking for a bigger home, but she didn’t. “I don’t want too many changes in my life right now,” Nicole said. “Baby steps.”

“Sounds like something my father would say.”

“Actually, he did,” she replied.

The next three months were filled with so many remarkable changes that the time passed quickly. Nicole was truly a new person, or, more accurately, herself again. She loved going back to school, and she and Christine began carpooling, leaving me with a car during the day, so I got out more and spent several days each week at the Spokane library.

In mid-January, Nicole called her sister, Karen. Karen was relieved to hear from her and apologized for not being there to support her through her accident and Aiden’s funeral. “I was just in such a crazy state of mind,” Karen said. “But there’s no excuse for me not being there for you. I hope you can someday forgive me.”

“I forgive you now,” Nicole said.

Those four words had a miraculous effect on both women. They made plans to get together that summer and vacation at Bullman Beach for old times’ sake.

While I waited for better weather, I stepped up my physical training. I walked twice a day or swam at the community center when the weather was inclement.

I had gone through my road atlas so many times I could recite the towns and cities I would pass through on my way to South Dakota.

My muscle mass had returned and the pain I had overcome was just a bad memory. I was getting antsy to leave, and it seemed that with each new day I felt more acutely my own path calling me.

Spokane had a mild winter that year, and around March the snow on the ground had completely melted. Every day I’d watch the weather reports, and Nicole had taken it upon herself to call Yellowstone National Park daily to check on road conditions.

Saturday afternoon, March 19, I had just finished my morning walk when I found Nicole sitting on the outside steps of her building waiting for my return.

“How was your walk?” she asked. She looked upset.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“If I answer that, then I’ve told you, which is precisely what I don’t want to do.” She stood up and walked inside. I followed her in.

When I had closed the apartment door, Nicole said, “The east gate of Yellowstone is open.”

“Oh,” I said.

We were both quiet for a moment.

“When will you leave?” she asked.

“I’ll need a couple days.”

She looked down. “Then we have a couple days. How do you want to spend them?”

“I’ve got some preparations I need to make.”

“Anything else?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t care. Just as long as I’m with you.”

CHAPTER

Thirty-five

I don’t think it is as much a human foible as it is a human curse that we cannot understand the beauty of a thing until it is gone.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke Tuesday to the smell of bacon and coffee. I pulled on my sweat pants and walked out of my room. Nicole was in the kitchen. She had made me breakfast. “Morning, deserter.”

“Good morning.”

“Would you like some coffee, Mr. Abandonment?”

I grinned. “Is this necessary?”

“I think so, Mr. Exit. How about you stay until tomorrow.”

“You’ll say the same thing tomorrow.”

“It’s the magic of tomorrow. It never comes.”

I sat down and she sat across from me. “How far are you planning on walking today?” she asked.

“I wanted to make it to Coeur d’Alene, but I’ll probably end up just over the border into Idaho.”

She lifted a piece of bacon and took a bite. “What an adventure.”

As I looked at her, I realized that we’d been together for almost five months. It was hard to believe that she wouldn’t be there every day. The thought made my heart ache. Difficult times build unique relationships, and we’d become closer than friends. She was the sister I’d never had.

Her eyes began to well with tears. “You have no idea how much I’m going to miss you,” she said softly.

After breakfast I showered and shaved, fully appreciating the hot water I’d soon be deprived of, then I went into my room and checked the contents of my pack one more time. When I was ready, I put on my Akubra hat and carried my pack out to the front room. “It’s time,” I said.

Nicole walked out of her bedroom. Her eyes were red and puffy. She took my hand and we walked out together, stopping at the house’s front door. “I better not go outside,” she said, “or I’ll probably just keep on following you.”

I leaned my pack against the wall and took her hands in mine. There was a sweet awkwardness to the moment, like icing on sorrow. I looked into her eyes. “So, did you ever figure out why you came to help me?”

“Maybe I’m just the kind of girl who rescues stray puppies.”

I squeezed her hands.

Nicole said, “I’ve realized that the happiest times of my life have been when I was taking care of someone—my Aiden, you, then Bill. I’m going to miss having someone to care for.”

“I have a feeling that won’t last long.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The world is full of stray puppies.”

She smiled sadly. “Do you have your St. Christopher?”

“Yes,” I said, pulling the chain out of my shirt.

For a moment we just gazed into each other’s eyes then she suddenly threw her arms around me, burying her head in my chest. She began to cry again. “Will you call me when you get to Key West?”

“Absolutely.”

She looked up into my eyes. “Please don’t forget me.”

I wiped a tear from her cheek. “How would I do that?”

“Will you be mad at me if I call you sometime? I promise I won’t stalk you.”

“You call if you ever need anything. And remember to let my dad help you.”

She kept looking at me, as tears ran down her face.

I kissed her forehead, then she buried her head in my chest again. “What would I have done without you?”

I just silently held her. It’s not that there wasn’t anything to say. It’s that there was too much and words were poor substitutes for our feelings. It was maybe ten minutes before she sighed and stepped back. “I’ll let you go,” she said softly.

I grabbed my backpack, lifting it over my shoulder. Nicole stood with her arms folded, occasionally wiping a tear from her cheek.

I took a deep breath. “See you,” I said.

“See you,” she echoed.

I walked outside and I was alone again.

CHAPTER

Thirty-six

Last night the reality of my impending departure hit me. My former companions—Loneliness and Despair—had been patiently waiting outside Nicole’s house the whole time, waiting to get me alone, waiting to resume our walk.

—Alan Christoffersen’s diary

In the storm of the emotional challenges of my departure, I had neglected to consider the physical ones. I was leaving the creature comforts of Nicole’s home for the exposure, tedium, and exertion of the rugged outdoors. Even if the roads were open, it was still very cold.

In the east I could see dark storm clouds gathering like an angry mob. The clouds reminded me of the night I had spent in the shacks outside Leavenworth, being pelted by hail.

I walked east on Nora to Dakota Street, then south, past the Montessori. At Mission, I turned left and walked east again for several miles until I came to Greene, turned south and walked another quarter mile to Trent, the road that would take me to the Washington-Idaho border.

The scenery on Trent changed dramatically for the worse as suburb turned to industrial—I passed steel and aluminum buildings, a junkyard, a boiler company, equipment rental, auto repair shops, and Bobo’s Adult Video.

Still, the names of the coffee purveyors were no less creative than what I’d passed between Seattle and Spokane—the Grind Finale, Grind Central Station, Caffiends Espresso, Sorrentino’s Espresso, and 1st Shot Gourmet Espresso.

About four hours into my walk I stopped to get a coffee at the Java the Hut, then sat behind the small wooden shack and ate lunch from my pack. As I sat there sipping from my cup, I spotted a big reflective sign that read:

Apple Maggot Quarantine Area

The sign raised many questions: Were people actually carrying apple maggots, and would the sign stop them if they were? Were there areas where apple maggots were considered okay? Would other types of maggots be welcome? Would apple maggots someday be an endangered species and have SAVE THE APPLE MAGGOTS bumper stickers?

I rested for about a half hour, then set off again. Later that afternoon nature returned and the landscape grew dense and green again until it opened up into a broad, welcome expanse of horse property.

Standing next to the road was a cinnamon-colored quarter horse that looked remarkably like McKale’s. The horse watched me approach, her head hovering over the vinyl fence. I stopped and rubbed her nose, then I took an apple from my pack and gave it to her.

An hour later I reached the Idaho state line. Emotionally, this had a remarkable effect on me. After six months I was finally out of Washington. This small step seemed to legitimize my journey and raise my hopes that I might someday actually reach my destination.

A few miles later, in the town of Post Falls, I stopped at a gas station for an energy drink and to ask about distances and lodging. The lady behind the counter informed me that I had only another 10 miles to Coeur d’Alene. “Just a few minutes ahead,” she said, apparently not noticing my backpack.

“Is there anything closer?” I asked.

“There’s a Comfort Inn just down the road, but if I were you, I’d just go on to Coeur d’Alene. Great lodging there, and it’s a beautiful town.”

I thanked her, paid for my drink, then walked back out to the street. I spotted the Comfort Inn a few blocks down on the north side of the highway. I downed my energy drink, then headed toward the hotel.

The Comfort Inn was small, tidy, and just $75 a night, which included a continental breakfast. I paid with my credit card and went to my room on the second floor. I lay my pack on the floor near the closet, then reclined back on the bed to rest a moment before going back out to find dinner. I woke the next morning.

CHAPTER

Thirty-seven

Today God dropped someone else in my path.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke confused. The sun shone brightly through the window, and I rolled over and looked at the digital clock. It was already 9:09. It took me a moment to realize the time was A.M., not P.M. I was still fully dressed, boots and all, and lying on top of the covers. My legs were sore and I sat up and rubbed my calves.

I showered, dressed, and then went downstairs with my pack. I grabbed an apple and a cheese Danish from the hotel’s complimentary selection, then checked out, stopping for a coffee at the aptly named Jumpstart Java. I arrived in Coeur d’Alene just before noon.

I knew three things about Coeur d’Alene. First, they had a world-class Christmas celebration. Nicole and I had agreed that our visit to see the lights was well worth the trip.

Second, the scenery was remarkably beautiful. Travel brochures to the city touted that no less than Barbara Walters had called Coeur d’Alene “a little slice of heaven” and put it on her list of “most fascinating places to visit.”

The third thing I knew about Coeur d’Alene seemed wildly in contrast to the first two—that it was the headquarters of the Aryan Nations white supremacy group. In 1998, Coeur d’Alene made national news when there had been a standoff between federal agents and the group, ending with some of the group’s leaders being arrested.

That Coeur d’Alene is a town of contrast is evident even in its name. The name sounds romantic (The Heart of Alent), but it’s not. “Alene” isn’t a person and the name was meant as a slur. French fur traders named the indigenous tribe the Coeur d’Alene—Heart of the Awl—meaning that they were sharp-hearted, or shrewd.

The resort town’s hired spin doctors have either ignored this fact or tried to pass off the insult as a term of endearment, but native French speakers visiting the city agree that it was not meant kindly.

Once inside the city, I stopped at a small market and bought bottled water, deli rolls, trail mix, a few apples and oranges, chocolate bars, pecorino cheese, a box of energy bars, a carton of Egg Beaters (which I packed in a plastic bag full of ice), and some dry salami. With my pack substantially heavier, I walked up Sherman Avenue, perusing the quaint shops and boutiques that lined the downtown district.

Coeur d’Alene is the kind of town that McKale would have loved. She would have spent the day gleaning obscure facts about the city and its residents, returning to our hotel room at night with her arms needled through the handles of shopping bags and regurgitating everything she’d learned. I was disappointed that I had never brought her.

The people of Coeur d’Alene (CDA, they call it) are as verbose as they are friendly—which is a polite way of saying they like to talk. A lot. I found myself trapped in several stores. I have nothing against friendly; I just didn’t have the time for it.

I walked through the city center and climbed the on-ramp to I-90, a fairly busy highway, but the only route I could find to cross the mountains. The highway was busier than Washington’s Highway 2, and the cars drove faster. On the plus side, the highway had a wider shoulder. A mile up I passed a road sign for the next town:

Kellogg, Idaho
36 miles

The town was too far to make, which meant I’d have to camp along the way.

Around noon I crossed the Centennial Bridge, with its breathtaking view of Lake Coeur d’Alene. Shortly after the bridge, the road began to descend steeply while the lake continued on to the south, specked with houseboats and lake homes.

There was really no place to get off the highway, so I didn’t stop for lunch but ate an energy bar and an orange and kept walking. About 10 miles and two and a half hours later, the lake gave way to grazing land and cowinhabited meadows. A sign proclaimed the gateway to the Idaho Panhandle National Forest.

The sun was starting to set behind me when I reached the Fourth of July Pass recreation area, and I was tired and ready to find a place to camp and eat dinner. I took the off ramp, which ended in a T, unsure of which way to go. The top sign pointed right to a recreation area for motorized vehicles, located somewhere out of sight up a long steep hill. The sign below read MULLAN TREE, with an arrow pointing left to a declining asphalt road, which, on weary legs, looked infinitely more inviting. I chose left.

I had no idea that the simple decision I had just made would affect so many lives.

I crossed back over the interstate and climbed a slight incline up to a gravel road. A brown Forest Service sign explained that the Mullan Tree was a lodgepole pine that was carved more than 150 years ago by some of General John Mullan’s soldiers to commemorate the completion of the Mullan Military Road, the first major highway in the Pacific Northwest, which ran between Fort Benton, Montana, and Fort Walla Walla, Washington. (The Mullan name would become familiar to me, for I soon learned that Mullan had a propensity for naming everything after himself.)

The road split again and a sign informed me that the celebrated tree was located on the left fork up the mountain. Unfortunately, the sign gave no clue as to just how far up the road the tree was. Looking up the steep grade, I decided that I hadn’t the legs, curiosity, or daylight to explore, so I took the right trail, which ended about 50 yards from the fork at a small recreational area with a large stone statue honoring General Mullan. I set to making camp.

I walked off the gravel-dirt road, down a slope to a small, flat area with an outhouse and a couple of picnic tables. The air was cool and thick with a mossy aroma. The NO OVERNIGHT CAMPING signs posted all around didn’t worry me. I doubted anyone ever checked on this obscure little stop, and even if they did, it would be easy enough to hide my tent in the thick vegetation.

I hiked back near the picnic tables and constructed my tent behind a grove of trees where it couldn’t be seen from the road even in broad daylight.

I was famished. The deli rolls I bought in Coeur d’Alene were smashed to half their thickness, but they still tasted all right. I cut thick pieces of salami and pecorino, and spread the smashed bread with mayonnaise and mustard from the little condiment packets I’d picked up at one of the fast-food joints along the way. I devoured the sandwich quickly so I made myself another, which I ate with a Hershey’s almond bar.

I had finished the second sandwich and climbed into my tent when I heard the spit of gravel from an approaching vehicle as it drove past my camp and skidded to an abrupt stop. I heard the doors open, releasing a party of voices, mostly bass in tone, with the occasional higher-pitched voice of a young woman. The vehicle’s inhabitants were laughing and talking excitedly, and I guessed it was probably a group of drunk college kids.

The area was mostly in shadows by that time and I was invisible behind a darkened screen of forest. I was sure that I had no reason to worry, but after my mugging, I was still on edge. I reached into my pack and brought out my father’s gun. I pulled out the clip I kept in a separate part of my pack and locked it into place. Just in case.

Then I heard the woman scream. “Just leave me alone!”

Her scream was followed by the slamming of doors and more dull laughter.

“Stop it!” she shouted.

I couldn’t hear what the men were saying, but their voices were low and taunting. I checked my gun’s safety, then slid it down my waistband and crawled out of my tent. I quietly crept up the rise, peering from behind a tree to see what was happening.

A 4-door Dodge pickup was parked near the monument, its headlamps illuminating the statue. To the rear right of the truck were four young men and an even younger woman. All the men, except for one, had surrounded her, and she was swinging at them.

The young man who was standing apart from the others, a lanky, blond kid, seemed to be nervously advocating for the girl. The ringleader of the bunch was a muscular kid, probably in his early twenties, and built like a football lineman. In one hand he held a can of beer. He turned back and told the blond kid to “Shut the hell up.” Even in the dim light I could see the cruelty on the man’s face.

Then the girl spit at him, and he backhanded her across her jaw, knocking her to the ground. She held her cheek and cried, “Please, stop.”

“We gave you a ride, you’re gonna pay for it,” he said. He threw his half-full beer can at her, which splashed up on the ground in front of her.

“I don’t owe you anything,” she said. “Just let me go.”

He walked up to her side. “Not until you make good. Take your clothes off.”

“No.”

“Fine, we’ll take them off.”

She snarled, “Are you a rapist? That’s a class-one felony.” She turned to the other guys, “Are you rapists too?”

I was impressed by her courage. All the men seemed taken back by her reasoning except the ringleader. “Shut up! Just take ’em off.”

“You’ll have to do it.”

“You heard her, dudes, she asked me to.”

He moved toward her and she, still sitting in the dirt and gravel, began to scuttle back. He ran behind her and grabbed her hair while she futilely swung at him, her blows only serving to make him angrier. He yelled out a guttural string of profanities, then grabbed her T-shirt and yanked on it, ripping it across the shoulder.

I had seen enough. I climbed out to the edge of the gravel road and shouted, “Leave her alone.”

Everything froze. The men were clearly surprised to discover they weren’t alone and everyone turned to me, including the girl. For a moment no one moved or said anything.

I took a few steps closer. “Get away from her. Now.”

The ringleader scowled at me. “This isn’t your business. Walk away, or we’ll make it your business.”

My eyes panned across the four of them as I continued to walk forward. “I said get away from her.”

Ringleader looked at me with a dumbfounded expression. “Are you stupid? Four of us, one of you. You’re outnumbered, loser.”

I stopped about 20 feet from them. I grasped the handle of my gun and pulled it out. I held it up as I clicked off the safety. “I’ve got the math right. Four of you, sixteen rounds in the clip. I’ve got you four to one.”

The gun had their full attention. I pointed the barrel at the blond kid’s stomach. “This is how it’s going down. You walk away from her right now, or I’m going to shoot the tall glass of water first, then Big Ears, Fat Boy, and I save you for last.” I squared off at the blond kid, holding both hands on the gun. “You’ve got five seconds to walk away.”

Trembling, the kid raised his hands, even though I hadn’t told him to. “I wasn’t doing anything. Tim, get away from her. Let’s go.”

“He’s bluffing,” Ringleader said.

“You think I’m bluffing?” I asked. “Five months ago I got stabbed by some losers like you. That’s when I got the gun. I will definitely kill all of you and not lose a bit of sleep. Enough talking, I’m counting to five then I’m going to start firing. Ready, Slim? One …”

The blond was shaking with fear. “We’re leaving, man. We’re going. C’mon, Tim,” he screamed. “Get away from her!”

“… two … three.”

Ringleader kicked at the girl, sneered, then turned. “We’re leaving,” he said to the two men next to him (who looked visibly relieved). “C’mon.”

“I need my backpack,” the girl said.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“It’s in the back of the truck,” she said.

The lanky kid reached over the side of the truck’s bed and pulled out a medium-sized backpack. He set it on the ground with surprising gentility. “Here you go.”

Ringleader started around the truck, saying things beneath his breath. I pointed the gun at him. “Stop.”

He froze.

“If you get the idea to drive your truck at me, or her, I won’t stop shooting until you’re all dead. If you lose your mind and come back later, I’ll be waiting in the dark for you, just like we did in Desert Storm. No warning. Trust me, I’ll know. This gravel pops like firecrackers—I heard you coming before you left the off-ramp.”

The second kid, the one I’d called “Big Ears,” spoke for the first time. “No worries, man. We’re out of here.”

I kept the gun leveled at them as they climbed in their truck. Ringleader revved the engine a couple times, then put the truck in gear. The wheels spun out and the truck fishtailed, but they kept a good distance from me. They drove up to the fork, then, shouting out obscenities, drove off.

When we were alone, I pushed the safety on the gun and slid it back in my waistband. I turned to the girl. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, climbing to her feet.

“You were brave,” I said.

“So were you.”

“No, I just had a gun.” I walked toward her. “How did you end up with them?”

“I was hitchhiking and they picked me up.”

“Not a good idea.”

“I didn’t know they were creeps.” She wasn’t quite as shaken as I expected her to be. “Were you really in the army?”

“No,” I said. “Advertising.”

She smirked. “Is that even a real gun?”

“Yes.”

She brushed off the back of her pants, then walked over and lifted her pack. As she neared, she looked younger to me than I had originally thought. I guessed her to be seventeen.

“Do you have anything to eat?” she asked.

“I can make you a sandwich. I’ve got cheese and salami.”

“I’ll eat anything.”

“Come with me.”

She followed me back toward my tent.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

I reached into the tent and brought out my pack. “Alan. Yours?”

She sat down at the picnic table, laying her own pack across it. “Kailamai.”

“Kay—la—may?” I repeated, distinctly pronouncing each syllable.

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“Sounds Hawaiian.”

“Samoan.”

“You don’t look Samoan.”

“I know.”

I took out the bread, meat, and cheese. “The bread’s kind of smashed.”

“I’m not fussy.”

I pulled out my knife and cut off a slice of cheese, then salami. “Mayo?”

She nodded. “Yes, please.”

I cut the roll in half, then took out one of the packets of mayonnaise and spread it across the bread with the packet. I put the bread and cheese inside then handed her the sandwich.

“Thank you,” she said. She ravenously bit into it. I wondered when she had last eaten.

“Hungry?” I asked facetiously.

She answered my question with another bite. Then she said with a full mouth, “I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

“There’s more, if you want.”

“Thank you.” She continued to chew. After a few more bites she slowed down. “Did you really get stabbed?”

“Three times. I was walking along the highway outside Spokane when a gang jumped me.”

“You walk a lot?”

“You could say that.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Key West.”

“Where’s that?”

“In Florida.”

She looked at me as if she were trying to tell if I was joking. “You’ve got a lot of walking to do.”

I sat down at the end of the picnic bench. “Where are you headed?”

“Back east to live with my aunt.”

“Where back east?”

“Boston.”

“That’s a long way to hitchhike.”

She shrugged. “I don’t have a car.”

“You could have flown. Or taken a bus.”

“I could have if I had any money.”

“How old are you?”

My question seemed to trouble her. She stopped eating, then slowly looked up. “You’re not going to do anything to me, are you?”

“Didn’t I just stop those guys from hurting you?”

“Well, maybe you just wanted me for yourself.”

“I’m not that kind of guy.”

“I thought all guys were that kind of guy.”

“Not by a long shot,” I said.

After a moment, she said, “I’m almost eighteen.”

“Where are your parents?”

“My mom’s dead. I don’t know where my father is.” She said this casually as she took another bite of sandwich.

“Sorry,” I said.

When she finished chewing, she asked, “About what?”

“Huh?”

“What are you sorry about?” she asked. “That my mom’s dead or that I don’t know where my father is?”

“Both.”

“I don’t care about my father. I don’t even know who he is. He could be you for all I know. At least if you were older. And I’m not sorry my mother’s dead. No one is.”

I just looked at her for a moment. “Then I’m sorry for that too.” I breathed out and I could now see my breath in the chill air. Neither of us spoke for a few minutes as she ate. “How’s your sandwich?” I asked.

“Good, thank you.”

“I have a Hershey’s chocolate bar if you want it.”

“That sounds really good.”

I retrieved the candy from my pack and brought it over to her. “Here you go. If you want to camp with me tonight, you can sleep in the tent.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking the candy. She peeled the bar like a banana. She took a small bite, then looked up at me. “So what are you running away from?”

“What makes you think I’m running away from something?”

“You’re a nice guy, you talk like you’re smart, and you’re good-looking, so there’s no way you don’t have something you’re leaving, like a girlfriend and a job. So you must be running away from something.”

I was impressed by her reasoning. “I was married.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding as if she understood. “Bad divorce.”

“No divorce. She died.”

She looked genuinely upset by this. “I’m sorry. What did she die of?”

“She was in an accident. Her horse got spooked and threw her.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“So am I. She was everything to me. I lived for her.”

She was silent for a moment, then said, “That must be nice though, having someone to live for.”

“It’s nice until you lose them.” I handed her a bottle of water. She took a long draw and handed it back. “I think I’ll go to bed,” I said. “Like I said, you can sleep in the tent.”

“Where are you going to sleep?”

“Under the stars.”

“It’s cold out here.”

“I’ll be all right.”

She looked back over at the tent. “I don’t care if we share the tent. I trust you. Besides, it will be cozy.”

There were at least a dozen reasons not to share the tent, but the chill in the air was pretty persuasive. “All right.”

“Do you have enough for another sandwich?”

“Sure.”

I made her a second sandwich, then went inside the tent, undressed, and climbed into my sleeping bag. Maybe five minutes later she said, “Knock, knock.”

“You can come in,” I said.

She threw her sleeping bag inside, then crawled in after it. She climbed into her bag with her clothes still on. After a minute she said, “This is kind of nice.”

“The tent?”

“Yes.” More silence. “Do you mind if I pray?”

“No.”

“I usually pray out loud,” she said. “Do you mind?”

“No.”

She rolled over on her stomach and covered her face with her hands. “Dear Father in heaven, thank you for another day. Thank you for all that you’ve given me. Thank you for sending an angel my way tonight. I am grateful for Alan and his protection and the food and shelter he’s given me. Please bless him with peace and safety and all that he needs. And I pray for those who are being hurt tonight and please send angels to save them too. I pray that those guys in the truck won’t come back. In the name of Jesus, Amen.”

We were both quiet for a moment. She rolled back over. “Do you think those guys will come back?”

“No.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “They were pretty crazy.”

“I hate to think what would have happened if I hadn’t been here,” I said.

“Same thing as usual,” she replied, and rolled away from me. “Good night.”

It was the last thing she said before she fell asleep.

CHAPTER

Thirty-eight

I wonder what McKale would say if she saw me now. Actually I know. She’d call me a “crazy old coot!” Either that or smack me.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke the next morning at sunrise. The inside of the tent was warm, and drops of water had condensed on the inclined vinyl ceiling. It took me a moment to remember why I wasn’t alone and who was sleeping next to me.

Kailamai was still asleep, on her side, lightly snoring. I dressed inside my sleeping bag then climbed out of the tent.

The morning air was chill and crisp, and the sun was just breaking through the thick canopy of forest, which was filled with the shrill single-note calls of an owl, invisible in the trees above me.

I had not fallen right to sleep. Instead, I had thought about the last thing Kailamai had said. “Same as usual.” I wondered about her story—her father (or lack of one) and a dead mother she claimed no one cared about, including her.

I gathered some cantaloupe-sized stones and made a fire pit, then walked around the area picking up branches until I had collected an armful. I could have used my propane stove to cook breakfast, but it was a cold morning and I wanted the warmth of the fire and thought the girl probably would as well.

I put three of the stones in the center of the pit, and when the flames were a foot high, I balanced my pan on the stones. A minute later I poured in the carton of Egg Beaters. I cut thin slices of pecorino and salami and dropped them across the bubbling egg.

Kailamai emerged from the tent about five minutes later. “Hey,” she said. I turned around. I had only seen her in the dark, so I was now seeing her clearly for the first time. She was about five foot three, thin, with a wide face. She was prettier than I had realized, in a classical way, with high cheekbones and a gentle, sloping nose like one of the women in a Botticelli painting. Her hair was dark and tousled. She also had piercings I hadn’t noticed, three in each ear and one in her nose.

“Whatever you’re making smells good,” she said.

“A different rendition of what you ate last night. Omelets with pecorino and salami.”

“Sounds good,” she said. She straddled the picnic table’s bench, close enough to the fire to feel its heat.

“Hungry?” I asked.

“I was born hungry.”

“Grab that mess kit,” I said.

“The what?”

“The mess kit. It’s that silver thing on top of my pack.”

She lifted the kit. “This?”

“Yeah. Just bring it over.”

“Why do you call it a mess kit?”

“I don’t know. It’s an army thing.”

“I thought you said you weren’t in the army.”

“I wasn’t,” I said. I took the kit apart and spooned an omelet into one of the halves. “Here you go.”

She took the food, then sat down at the table, her back to the fire. “Thanks. I’ll say grace.”

I took the pan from the fire. “All right.”

“Heavenly Father, thank you for this food, and bless Alan for sharing it with me. Bless this food to our bodies’ health and us to Thy service, Amen.”

“Amen,” I said. I flopped the remaining omelet into my metal bowl, then sat down next to her. “You pray a lot,” I said.

“Before meals. When I get up. When I go to bed. Whenever I’m afraid. Whenever I feel grateful.” She smiled at me. “Pretty much all the time.” She took a bite of omelet. “It’s good to have a hot breakfast.”

“I wish I had some coffee to go with it,” I said. I took a large bite of omelet. “What are your plans today? More hitchhiking?”

“I guess.” She looked down for a moment, picking at her food. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to walk with you for a while.”

I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea or not. “I walk more than twenty miles a day. Think you can keep up?”

“I’ll try.”

I took a bite and slowly chewed while I considered her request.

“If you don’t want me to walk with you, I understand,” she said.

“It’s okay,” I decided. “I wouldn’t mind some company.”

She smiled. “Good. Me too.”

After she’d finished eating, she stood holding her plate. “I’m going to see if I can find some water to wash our dishes.” She came back a few minutes later with a clean, dripping pan. “I found a water spigot.”

“Do you think it’s potable?” I asked.

“What’s potable?”

“Is it safe to drink?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t say it wasn’t.”

“Then it probably is. We better fill up.” I took a long drink from my canteen and then got two plastic bottles. “Where is it?”

“It’s over there,” she said, pointing. “Behind the statue.”

I filled my receptacles then came back and poured out one of the bottles on the fire, the ash and rock releasing a white cloud of smoke and steam. I went and filled it again and stowed it in my pack.

We rolled up our sleeping bags and Kailamai helped me break down the tent. I put on my hat and sunglasses. When all was packed, I asked, “Ready?”

She slid her own pack over her shoulders. “I’m ready.”

We climbed the hill to the road and up to the fork. As we passed the Forest Service sign, I asked, “Have you ever seen the Mullan Tree?”

“Never heard of it. Is it worth seeing?”

I looked up the road where the sign pointed, then just kept walking. “Apparently not,” I said.

We crossed the interstate, then walked down the on-ramp to I-90. The road was still descending, and I pulled down the rim of my Akubra hat as the sun was in my eyes.

“I like your hat,” Kailamai said.

“It’s an Akubra,” I said. “I got it in Australia.”

“You’ve been to Australia?”

“About five years ago. I had a client from Melbourne.”

“That’s cool. I’ve always wanted to go there.”

“I hear Boston’s nice,” I said. “You have an aunt there?”

“I just made that up,” she said. “It was just the first place that came to mind.”

“Where are you really going?”

“I don’t know. I thought that if I walked long enough I’d find something.”

“Where’s your home?”

“I don’t have one. Technically, I’m a runaway. At least on the state’s records. But only for another month.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m a foster kid. I’ve been in the system for most of my life. My last foster home didn’t really work out, so I ran away.”

“Why didn’t you just go back to the state?”

“There’s no point. I’m eighteen in a month, so the state’s no longer responsible for me. It’s called aging out. I’m on my own.”

“Are you ready to be on your own?”

“I guess I’ll find out. The odds aren’t good. My caseworker told me that two years after aging out, there’s a sixty percent chance I’ll be pregnant, in jail, homeless, or dead. But I’m not going to let that happen. I want to make something of my life. I want to go to college.”

“Do you know what you want to study?”

“I want to be a judge someday.”

I nodded. “That’s a great goal. Everyone would have to call you ‘Your Honor.’”

A broad smile crossed her lips. “That would be awesome. Maybe I could be like Judge Judy and have my own TV show. Judge Judy doesn’t take anyone’s junk.”

“No,” I said. “She doesn’t.”

I liked this girl.

CHAPTER

Thirty-nine

This is the joke Kailamai told me today.
A wife asked her husband,
“How was the golfing today?” “It was awful,” he replied. “On the eleventh hole Harry had a heart attack and died.” “Oh no!” she exclaimed. “That is awful!” “You’re telling me,” the husband replied. “For the next seven holes it was hit the ball, drag Harry. Hit the ball, drag Harry.”

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

We had walked about two and a half miles when we came to the Old Mission State Park. The Old Mission of the Sacred Heart was built by Jesuit priests in 1853 and is the oldest building standing in Idaho. Even by today’s standards it’s an impressive structure, and it’s hard to believe these men built this massive edifice in such a secluded place without the benefit of a lumberyard or heavy machinery. What they lacked in technology they made up for in devotion.

The park was open to visitors and Kailamai and I spent an hour wandering around the visitors’ center. That morning I discovered two things about Kailamai. First, that she was funny.

“How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?” she asked.

“No idea,” I said.

“Just one. But the lightbulb has to want to change.”

I grinned. “That’s pretty funny.”

She continued. “These guys rob a bank wearing gorilla masks. As they’re getting away, a customer pulls off one of the men’s masks to see what he looks like. The bank robber says, ‘Now that you’ve seen me, you have to die,’ and he shoots the man dead. The robber looks around the room. Everyone is looking away or covering their eyes. ‘Did anyone else see my face?’ he asks. An Irishman in the corner slowly raised his hand. ‘You saw my face?’ the bank robber asked. ‘No, but I think my wife might have got a wee peek.’”

I laughed pretty hard.

The second thing I discovered about Kailamai is that she could outeat me. I made salami sandwiches again and gave her an apple and a couple energy bars. She devoured it all. We walked all day and reached the Kellogg city limits as the sun began to set. Kailamai was exhausted and I slowed my pace considerably so she could keep up. She never complained about the distance, but several times apologized for slowing me down and said if I needed to leave her I could. I didn’t want to. I liked her company. In some ways she reminded me of McKale when she was younger: bright, funny, and sardonic.

Kellogg is a peculiar town, divided by the interstate between old and new—the new being a ski resort with one of the largest gondolas in the western hemisphere.

According to town lore, Kellogg has the proud distinction of being founded by a jackass. Literally. The town is named after a prospector named Noah Kellogg. One morning in 1885, Kellogg’s donkey wandered off from his camp. Several hours later Kellogg found the animal standing next to a large outcropping of galena, a lead ore mineral that contains significant deposits of silver.

The discovery led to the establishment of the Bunker Hill Mine and Smelter, which was operational for more than a hundred years, until closing in 1981. A sign outside the city read:

This is the town founded by a jackass and inhabited by his descendants

Kailamai assured me that this was true. “I know,” she said. “I used to live here.”

We crossed the interstate to the old part of town and went inside the Silverhorn Motor Inn and the Silver Spoon Restaurant. The front lobby was small and cluttered with various sundries for sale or borrow: bottles of toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, and shaving cream, and an entire wall of ancient VHS videotapes.

I asked for two rooms but Kailamai objected. “That’s too much money. Let’s just get one room with two beds.”

“It doesn’t seem proper,” I said.

“You were like two inches from me in the tent,” she replied.

She had a point. I asked for one room.

The woman handed me a key to room 255 and informed us that the hotel had VCRs in each room and the videos were all free to borrow. She also warned us to be careful on the roads, as one of the restaurant’s waitresses had been hit by a bear while driving the night before.

“He just ran right into the side of her car. Poor girl was shaking like a leaf.”

I sent Kailamai to the restaurant while I carried both of our packs to the room, then came down and joined her.

“I don’t have much money,” Kailamai told me as she looked over the menu. She had already eaten a dinner roll and was buttering a second.

“Don’t worry, it’s my treat.”

She looked relieved. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

I ordered for us two “Nancy Melts”—a house specialty burger on grilled sourdough with bacon, grilled onions, Swiss cheese, and sautéed mushrooms, and for dessert we had huckleberry pie à la mode.

That night as we lay in our beds, Kailamai asked, “How far do you think we walked today?”

“About twenty-six miles,” I said.

“I’ve never walked that far before.” She was quiet a moment. “How far are we walking tomorrow?”

“About the same,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “Night.”

“You did great today, Kailamai. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks.” She knelt by the side of her bed and said her prayers.

CHAPTER

Forty

We reached Montana today. Along the way we met the most interesting of characters—Pete the miner. The heavens indeed hold many stars from which to set a course.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant—pancakes and bacon with scrambled eggs. We left the hotel and then stopped next door at a convenience store for bottled water, trail mix, and beef jerky. We didn’t worry about dinner. There were towns close enough that we’d be eating at a restaurant that night.

We crossed the interstate bridge and continued our walk. After a few miles Kailamai said, “This might seem like a dumb question, but do you know how to get to Key West?”

I hid my smile. “Basically. I’ve got maps.”

“Shouldn’t we be walking more south?”

“After Butte, Montana, I’m planning to walk southeast through Yellowstone.”

“We’re walking through Yellowstone?”

I was curious that she’d included herself on my journey. “I was planning on it.”

“I’ve heard that there are a lot of buffalo there. I’ve always wanted to see a buffalo in real life.”

“That would be cool,” I said.

Maybe an hour later she asked, “Do you believe in UFOs and aliens, that kind of stuff?”

“No. But I know where there’s a crop circle,” I said. “Wilbur, Washington. I walked past it.”

“I think I’ve figured out where aliens come from.”

“Where?” I asked, genuinely wanting to hear her theory.

“From Earth.”

“Explain,” I said.

“My theory is that aliens aren’t in flying saucers, they’re in time machines.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. If time travel is possible …”

“A big if,” I said.

“Yeah, but people used to say that about flying. Now everyone is doing it. So let’s say that there are things we don’t understand yet about time, which is logical, or at least possible, right?”

“I’ll give you that.”

“So if it is possible to move through time, that means that there are people already here, observing us.”

“Why would they want to do that?”

“Same reason we study history. Besides, wouldn’t you want to see the past if you could? Watch Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address, or listen to the Sermon on the Mount?”

“But then we’d see them around us. The physicist Stephen Hawking said, ‘The absence of tourists from the future is an argument against the existence of time travel.’”

“Haven’t you ever read a book about time travel?” Kailamai said. “People from the future can’t show themselves or be involved in our circumstances or they could mess things up and change history.”

“History is messed up.”

“Yeah, but if they did, they might disappear. You know, like in all the science fiction movies.”

“So you think aliens are us?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? The way people describe aliens, with two eyes, our body shape, smaller bodies. As technology takes over, it makes sense that our brains would evolve bigger and our bodies grow smaller.”

“You’re a very interesting young woman,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said.

Near the Kellogg city limit, Kailamai pointed to a car dealership north of the freeway. “That’s Dave Smith Motors. It’s one of the biggest car dealerships in the world.”

I thought it odd to find such a large dealership so far from a metropolitan area.

“I used to go to school there, right by the used car lot. Dave Smith tore down my elementary school to build his dealership. We were the Sunshine Unicorns.”

“The Sunshine Unicorns?”

“I know, pretty lame, huh? Probably a good thing he tore it down.”

Four and a half miles down the road we saw signs for something called the Sunshine Miners Memorial, which struck me as a peculiarly cheerful name for a disaster site. We didn’t stop.

In the afternoon we passed through Silverton and the foothills of the Bitterroot Mountains, where we exited the highway at the town of Wallace, which called itself the “Silver Capital of the World.” We ate lunch at the Brooks Hotel Restaurant and Lounge.

The restaurant claimed to have a “famous” salad bar, which was, in fact, the most ordinary salad I’d ever encountered. I guess they meant famous, as in, lettuce is famous.

Actually, their claim of fame was unusual. While practically everything in Washington was advertised as “world famous,” I noticed that since I’d been in Idaho I hadn’t seen a single world-famous shake or burger. Instead, everything in Idaho was “historic.” Trees, roads, churches, rocks, mines, just about anything you could attach a sign to.

After lunch we went to the Harvest Grocery Store to stock up on water, fruit, and Gatorade. We were climbing the highway on-ramp when we saw a man standing at the side of the road with his thumb out. He was an older man with a bushy gray beard that fell to the middle of his neck. He wore a train conductor hat, bright yellow-lens sunglasses, and overalls that were striped like the old seersucker suits.

He waved to us. “How y’all?”

“Good afternoon,” I said.

“Hey,” Kailamai said, looking a little anxious.

“How’s the fishing?” I asked.

“Fishing?”

“The hitchhiking,” I said.

“Oh,” he said with a squint. “Ain’t a whole lot of cars coming out of Wallace this time of day. Mind if I walk with you a piece?”

“Not at all.”

He ran to the edge of the road and lifted a small canvas pack from the ground, then ran back to catch up with us, much more nimbly than I expected from a man of his years.

“Name’s Pete,” he said.

“I’m Alan. This is Kailamai.”

He tilted his hat. “Ma’am.”

“Hey,” she said.

“Where y’all be headed?”

“East,” I said. “Way east.”

Though he walked with us, his thumb was still extended at his side. “I’m not headed too far. I go to Mullan every week to see my friends.”

“You’re from Wallace?”

“Most days I am. Seventy years of ’em.”

Kailamai walked with her head down, not involving herself in the conversation.

“What do you do in Wallace?” I asked. “For a living?”

“Prospectin’ mostly. Some loggin’, but mostly prospectin’.”

“For gold?”

“Always gold. Well, that ain’t entirely true. I’ve done some silver, but mostly gold.”

“Have you had much luck?”

“I always have luck,” he said with a slight chuckle. “Just sometimes it’s the good kind, sometimes it’s the bad kind. More the latter.”

“Do you have a family?”

“I did the whole nine yards. My kids live nearby. They keep in touch sometimes.”

“Your wife?”

The look on his face was answer enough. “Done with her. Or she done with me. Don’t remember which.”

“So, in all those years of prospecting, did you ever find the mother lode?”

He swatted at the air in front of him. “Nah. Thought I’d found her a few times, but her milk always dried up.”

“How many years have you been looking?”

“About since I was old enough to hold a pan. I’m still lookin’.”

“How do you do that?” I asked. “Carry on for seventy years without success.”

“Success?” he said. “I’m this side of the dirt, relatively healthy, good friends, kids not in prison, don’t know what your definition of success is, but that’s mine.”

“Of course,” I said, feeling the reprimand. “I meant, all those years without finding what you were looking for…”

“Ah,” he said. “The question is, what would’ve happened if I found her?” He pointed a bony finger at me. “Worst thing you can give a man is what he wants. The lookin’s the thing. When a man gets what he been lookin’ for, the road ends, don’t it.” He smiled. “But you’re young. You’ll figger it out.”

As I thought this over, an old Dodge truck pulled up on the shoulder ahead of us and stopped. “That would be my ride. You wanna lift?”

“No, we’re just walking.”

“Good day for it. You be safe now, sometimes the loggin’ trucks pass a little too close to the shoulders.” He opened the passenger side door and climbed in, and the truck sped off.

Most of the day was easy walking, with wide shoulders and plenty of shade. Kailamai and I talked a lot, covering topics as broad as religion to why I had never had a pet dog. And then there were Kailamai’s jokes.

“A doctor is talking to his patient one day, and he says, ‘I have some bad news and some terrible news.’ The patients asks, ‘What’s the bad news?’ and the doctor says, ‘You only have twenty-four hours to live.’ The patient says, ‘Oh no! What news could possibly be worse than that?’ And the doctor says, ‘I’ve been trying to contact you since yesterday.’”

Twenty miles or so into our day, we entered Coeur d’Alene National Forest and the roads started climbing again. The roadsides were all inclined and uncampable, and it was getting dark when we reached the state line of Montana and Lookout Pass Ski Resort.

We walked up to the front doors of the resort, but even though there was still some snow on the ground, the lodge was closed for the season. The place looked abandoned, so we pitched our tent behind the main building. I was connecting the last pole on our tent when Kailamai whispered, “Alan.”

She was discreetly pointing at a man who was standing near the lodge looking at us.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

I stood up. “Evening,” I said.

“You can’t camp here,” he said gruffly. “It’s private property.”

I walked toward him. “I’m sorry, but there’s no place else around here and it’s getting dark. But I promise we’ll be gone before anyone else gets here in the morning.”

He looked over at Kailamai then back at me. “You’re not in trouble with the law, are you?”

Kailamai walked to my side. “No,” she said.

“You know we probably wouldn’t tell you if we were, but no, we’re not. Sorry about trespassing. We would have rented a room, but there was no one here.”

“We close on the fifteenth,” the man said.

“Please let us camp here,” Kailamai said. “I’m really tired. We’ll leave early.”

The man exhaled audibly, then shook his head. “Grab your packs and come with me.”

We left our tent and followed him over to the back of the lodge. He took out a fist of keys and unlocked a door. “You can stay in here. There’s no sheets on the beds, but I’m guessing you’ve got sleeping bags. The bed will be softer than the ground. You can turn the heat up, but turn it back down when you leave.”

“Can I pay you something?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. Just don’t break anything and be gone by ten.”

“Will do.”

“Thank you,” Kailamai said. The man turned and walked away. An unexpected kindness. I never even got his name.

CHAPTER

Forty-one

Napoleon said, “My life changed the day I learned a man would die for a blue ribbon.”
My life changed the day I read that.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

We left the lodge by 8:30 A.M. The road into Montana was a steep downgrade. At noon we stopped at Mangold’s General Store and Motel in Haugan. After stocking up on a few supplies, we walked fifty yards west to the Montana Bar and Grill. A large black Labrador was lying in front of the bar’s entrance. He didn’t move, so we just stepped over him.

The bar’s interior was decorated with bear and cougar pelts and ram, elk, and deer heads alongside a bizarre assortment of snowmobile carcasses. As we entered, Kailamai looked at the animals and said, “Welcome to the room of death.”

Country music played over the loudspeaker, accompanied by the whirring electronic sounds and bells coming from a bank of video poker games. A fire crackled in a large rock fireplace, and on the wall behind a green felt pool table a handwritten sign hung:

8 Ball Break. Sink the 8 ball on your break and win the pot.
Bartender must see it to pay out. $1 to play.

There was one man sitting at the bar and one playing video poker. As we entered, the bartender shouted out to us, “Sit anywhere.”

We sat down at a table near the front door as the man brought out menus.

“What’s good?” I asked.

“House specialty’s steamer clams cooked in garlic and white wine. I’ll give you a minute to look over your menus. Can I get you a beer?”

“No. I’ll just have some water.”

“Me too,” Kailamai said.

Steamer clams isn’t exactly something you’d expect to find in a cowboy bar in northern Montana, but the clams turned out to be quite good, and I finished an entire plate of them. Kailamai ordered a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.

As we were finishing our meals, Kailamai said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

“The other night, when you pulled the gun on those guys, why did you point it at the skinny kid? He was the only one who wasn’t doing anything to me.”

“Psychology,” I said.

She squinted. “Psychology?”

“It’s like this. A man will die for his honor. If I take aim at the ringleader, he either looks like a coward or he takes a chance and makes me shoot him—both bad scenarios. If I point it at the other two guys, they’re feeling intense peer pressure from the ringleader, so again, they might do something stupid and I would have to shoot them.

“The skinny kid had already proved that he didn’t want any part of it, so by picking him, the other three can save face, feel like heroes for saving their friend, and walk away. You’ve got to give people a way out, or else the circumstances will take over.”

“Man, you’re smart. Did you really think of all that that quickly?”

“No. Actually the skinny kid was the closest. I figured I probably wouldn’t miss him.”

Kailamai started laughing. “You’re such a dork.”

We finished eating and stepped back over the dog on our way out.

“Montana reminds you that the Wild West still exists,” I said.

Kailamai said, “Wait until you see Wyoming.”

We put in 27 miles that day, walking through beautiful, raw country.

About five miles past Haugan we passed a sign that read HISTORIC TREE NURSERY. It wasn’t the historic part I found odd so much as the idea of the nursery itself in the middle of a forest. A tree nursery in this land of endless forest is like claiming a saltwater lake in the middle of the ocean.

“Maybe that’s why it’s historic,” Kailamai said. “Did I tell you the one about the duck?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“A duck walks into a drugstore and asks for a tube of ChapStick. The cashier says to the duck, ‘That’ll be $1.49.’ The duck replies, ‘Put it on my bill.’”

I think I laughed for about five minutes.

CHAPTER

Forty-two

There are two kinds of suffering in this life. That which pursues us and that which we doggedly pursue.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next week of walking took us through St. Regis, Clark Fork, Missoula, Drummond, and Phosphate on our way to Butte.

With each day spent together Kailamai and I grew more comfortable with each other, and though she opened up more to me, she still never talked about her past, which I grew a little more curious about each day.

There weren’t many amenities along this stretch, and we camped every night in our tent except for the night at Clark Fork, where we had an unexpected dinner invitation next to a river at a fishing area called St. John’s. The sign at the entrance specified,

No Overnight Camping

The sign below it named and showed fish that could be found in the river:

Bull Trout, Rainbow Trout, Brown Trout,
Westslope Cutthroat Trout

Around twilight we took a slight detour from the road, and we were walking down by the river when a man stuck his head out the back door of a camper.

“Have you eaten yet?”

I looked over. “Excuse me?”

“Have you eaten yet?”

“No.”

“Come on, then. I’m just putting it on.”

Kailamai looked at me and I shrugged. “I guess it’s time to eat,” I said.

The man opened his camper door for us to enter. “Watch your step,” he said. He took Kailamai’s hand and helped her up.

I followed after her, shutting the narrow door behind me. The camper was comfortable, not old but well used, set in the back of a Ford pickup truck. It had a refrigerator, stereo, television, gas stove and oven, a Formica-topped table, and several cushions on which to sit or sleep.

Our host was tall, maybe a few inches over 6 feet, with thinning reddish-brown hair. He was dressed as an outdoorsman, wearing a flannel shirt and a fishing vest with fishing flies attached.

“I’m frying up some rainbow and brown,” he said. “I pulled my limit this afternoon, so there’s plenty to eat. Make yourself at home, there’s room around the table.”

“Sounds good,” I said, trying to look amiable. I could tell that Kailamai didn’t know what to make of the situation or our host.

The man knew his way around a fish, deboning them with his pocketknife with such ease, I guessed he could have done it blindfolded.

Watching him reminded me of some time back when McKale brought home a trout from the neighborhood Safeway. My father wasn’t an outdoorsman, and he never took me fishing or hunting, so I wasn’t sure what to do with the fish.

“I thought you were a Boy Scout,” McKale said.

“A long, long time ago,” I said, adding, “in a galaxy far, far away. And I never had to debone a fish.”

“Didn’t you camp in the wilderness?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What did you eat?”

“Mostly Pop-Tarts,” I replied.

“Figures,” she said.

The man sliced a raw fish cleanly down its gut, then flapped back one side of it and peeled out the spine with every bone intact. He dropped the waste into a plastic shopping sack hanging from a cabinet doorknob. Then he cut off the fish’s head and tail, dropped them in a separate bag, and started on another fish.

“What do you do with those?” Kailamai asked, pointing to the second bag.

“It’s for the cats,” he said.

When all the fish were filleted, he combined them all in a brown bag filled with pancake batter, shook it up, then laid the fish two at a time in a skillet of boiling grease until they were light brown and crispy. He dished them onto paper plates for us along with some pork and beans.

“You’re welcome to eat in here,” the man said, opening the camper door. “I prefer to eat outside.”

I looked at Kailamai. “I’m cold,” she said.

“You can stay inside,” I said. “I’ll go out.”

I took my plate and followed the man out the back of the camper. He was already seated in a fold-up chair facing the river.

“Pull up a chair,” he said, motioning to an identical chair leaning against the truck. I flipped it open with one hand, then sat down next to him. I cut into the trout with my fork and took a bite. It was tender inside and sweet. “It’s delicious,” I said.

“Everything tastes better outdoors,” he said.

I took another bite. Living in Seattle, I’ve eaten at some of the finest seafood restaurants in America, but I’ve never tasted fish so good. “You know, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Great isn’t it, not getting all mixed up in names and brands? Just being. Out here, names are superfluous. It’s how it should be.”

Frankly, I’d always thought names were a pretty good idea, but after his diatribe I didn’t dare ask him his name nor offer mine.

He took a pipe from his vest, then a book of matches. He held a lit match over the pipe’s bowl and sucked in the flame. When the pipe was lit, he threw the match on the ground, inhaled deeply, then slowly blew it out. He asked, “Have you been walking long?”

“A while. I started in Seattle.”

“That is a walk. Where are you going?”

“Key West.”

He looked at me skeptically. “Really?”

“Yes, sir.”

He sucked on his pipe. “I’ve spent some time in the Keys fishing marlin. Home of Papa Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and Jimmy Buffet.”

“I take it you do a lot of fishing,” I said.

“You might say that.”

“Where are you from?”

“In my former life, Queens.”

“Queens, New York?” I asked.

He nodded. “How long have you been married?”

“Seven years,” I said, wondering how he knew I’d been married.

“Seven, huh? Don’t they have laws against marrying minors in Seattle?”

“You mean …” Since we weren’t using names, I pointed with my thumb to the camper. “She’s just a walking buddy. My wife passed away about six months ago.”

“Sorry to hear it.” He took a long draw on his pipe. “I had a wife once. I lost her too.”

That’s all he said. After a minute I asked, “She died?”

“Our marriage died.” He looked at me. “I murdered it with work.”

“Where did you work?”

“I worked for a company called Young and Rubicam.”

I didn’t expect that. Young and Rubicam is one of the largest and most prestigious advertising agencies in the world. “You were in advertising?”

“You’ve heard of it then,” he said, not looking altogether happy that I had.

“I used to be in advertising myself,” I said. “What did you do?”

“Client services, account management, whatever they’re calling it these days. I was over the Chanel account.”

“That’s a huge account.”

“A hundred fifty million dollars,” he said slowly. “You don’t have an account like Chanel, it has you. I was always gone. Anniversaries, neighborhood parties, birthdays, my father-in-law’s funeral. My wife became a stranger. I could tell you precisely what perfumes American women were wearing, in any city in America, in any demographic. But I couldn’t tell you what kind of flowers my wife liked. I couldn’t even tell you what kind of perfume she liked.

“One day I came home early from a business trip and found her with another man. He was terrified. I’m sure he thought I was going to kill him in a jealous rage. He said, ‘I didn’t know she was married. Honest.’ My wife said, ‘Then you’ve got something in common with my husband.’ “He shook his head. “I’ve got to hand it to her, that was pretty clever under the circumstances. She always had a quick wit.

I wasn’t sure what to say.

“We divorced, of course. I quit my job, bought this truck, and started fishing.” He set his plate on the ground. “I’m guessing your wife never wanted to leave.”

I looked out over the river. “No, she would have stayed.” I turned back to him. “Did you ever try to fix things with your wife?”

“When I got over my rage, I asked her to stay. I even told her I’d quit my job. But it was too late.”

“I had a small agency in Seattle. I worked a lot too, but my wife was involved. At least as much as she cared to be.”

“That couldn’t happen at a big agency,” he said.

“No, it couldn’t,” I agreed.

He blew out a cloud of smoke. “I think I was addicted to the stress.”

“I’ve seen that happen,” I said. “Stress is like a drug. It will kill you as well.” I looked at him. “That’s why you fish.”

“That’s why I fish.” He took another long draw on his pipe, then let it out slowly. “What are you going to do when you reach Key West?”

“I don’t know. Eat some key lime pie.”

He started laughing, almost imperceptibly at first, then it grew until he almost doubled over. “Key lime pie,” he said. “Eat some key lime pie.”

By the time we finished eating, it was dark.

“Thank you for dinner,” I said. “We better get going. We still need to make camp.”

“Where are you camping tonight?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. The first campground we come to.”

“That will be a while,” he said. “There’s nothing around here. You’re welcome to stay with me. There’s a couple bunk beds in back. I can sleep up in the cabin.”

“I thought there was no overnight camping.”

“I’m not camping,” he said. “I’m parking.”

Spun like an adman, I thought.

I slept in a bunk that hung over the truck’s cabin and Kailamai slept on cushions above the table. She was still a little apprehensive about our host, and after I turned out the lights she whispered to me, “You don’t think he’s like a serial killer or something, do you?”

“No,” I whispered back. “Worse.”

“What?”

“He’s an adman.”

I was just about asleep when Kailamai said, “Two muffins are in an oven and one says to the other, ‘Sure is hot in here.’ The other shouts, ‘Holy cow, a talking muffin!’ “

CHAPTER

Forty-three

It would appear that a significant portion of the Montana state budget has gone to the making of historical markers.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The adman (he never told us his name) made breakfast for us, a homemade concoction he called scramble-mamble, a potpourri of diced potatoes, eggs, cheddar cheese, trout, onions, and bacon. It was actually pretty good.

We thanked him, wished him well, and headed off toward Missoula.

“That guy liked to fish,” Kailamai said.

“Everyone needs a reason to get up in the morning,” I said.

The traffic grew heavier as we neared Missoula, and I fully expected we’d be stopped by the Highway Patrol, but it never happened. As we exited toward the town, we passed a billboard advertising the “Testicle Festival.”

“What do you think that is?” Kailamai asked.

“I don’t want to know,” I said.

Later that afternoon we stopped at a gas-station convenience store for water and a Hostess apple pie for Kailamai. As we came out of the store, we walked past a large semi filling up at the gas pumps. A trucker sat on the front bumper of his truck.

“Howdy,” he said to us with a subtle tip of his cap. He wore a flannel shirt and a belt buckle the size of a pancake.

“Could you tell us where’s the next hotel?” I asked.

“Depends on which way you’re goin’. East or west?”

“East.”

“Maybe thirty miles.”

I groaned. “Thanks.” I turned away.

“Need a ride? I’m headed that way.”

“No thanks. We’re walking.”

“Okay. Be safe now.”

The truckers were always helpful.

A couple hours later I said, “I’ve discovered something.”

“What?” Kailamai asked.

“There’s a secret to naming Montana towns. You pick an animal and then one of its body parts, and combine them.”

She looked at me like I was crazy.

“No, really, think about it. We’ve been through Beaver Tail, Bearmouth, Bull’s Eye—the possibilities are endless.”

“I could be good at this,” Kailamai said. “We could name the next town Moose Antler.”

“Totally believable,” I said. “Or Otter Tail.”

“Rabbit’s Foot.”

“Badger Paw.”

“Wait,” Kailamai said, “I’ve got the best one. Monkey Butt, Montana.”

We both started laughing. I liked this girl.

The next town we came to didn’t conform to my name formula—Drummond—but the first restaurant we passed did. The Bull’s End Café. A sign in front of the eatery proclaimed PAULINE’S BBQ SAUCE MADE HERE beneath the backside of an anatomically correct bull. Not surprisingly, the establishment was out of business.

“That’s just gross,” Kailamai said. “What part of that is supposed to make you want to eat there?”

“That’s why there are advertising agencies,” I said.

A little further down the road we came to the Frosty Freeze, a weathered A-framed building with a sliding window for takeout. Out in front of the building there was a plywood, painted pig holding an American flag under a sign that advertised ITALIAN SLOPPY JOE’S, YOU’LL LOVE’EM!

The place looked abandoned, but there was a WE ARE OPEN paper sign on the window. As soon as we approached the building, a woman appeared at the counter.

“What can I get for you?” she asked, her breath still pungent from the cigarette I could see smoking behind her.

“I’ll try your Italian sloppy joe,” I said. “How about you, Kailamai?”

“I’ll have the sloppy joe too. Can I have Tater Tots?”

“We’ll have Tots on both and a Diet Coke for me.”

“We have Pepsi products,” she said.

“Fine, a Diet Pepsi and a Sprite for her.”

“We don’t have Sprite, we have Pepsi products.”

“Whatever looks like Sprite,” I said.

“Sierra Mist,” she said, leaving the window to prepare our meals.

The special turned out to be a sloppy joe with the addition of provolone cheese, onions, and garlic, which was surprisingly good, though Kailamai picked out the onions.

That night we pitched our tent near a golf course.

“Do you golf?” Kailamai asked.

“I used to,” I said, rolling out my sleeping bag.

“This man was out golfing with his buddies. He was about to putt when a hearse drove by leading a funeral procession. The man set down his club, took off his hat, and put it over his heart until the procession had passed. ‘That was the most decent thing I’ve ever seen you do,’ one of his friends said.

“‘It’s the least I could do,’ he replied. ‘We were married thirty-two years.’”

CHAPTER

Forty-four

Today I learned Kailamai’s story. It’s almost as difficult to believe that someone with so many trials could harbor such hope, as that there are those with so much advantage who harbor such hopelessness.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning the river that had intermittently followed our journey was running alongside us again. I don’t know why the sound of the river made me feel peaceful—I’ve heard it has something to do with our experience in the womb—but few things so easily bring calm as the sound of rushing water.

Perhaps that had something to do with why it was here, along that barren stretch of highway, that Kailamai finally told me her story. We had been walking quietly for a few minutes when she said, “You haven’t said anything about your mother.”

“She passed away when I was eight.”

“Do you remember what she was like?”

“She was lovely,” I said. “She was the kindest person I’ve ever known. Once I saw her give some money to a guy begging on the street. My dad got real mad at her. He said, ‘You know he’s just going to use it to buy booze.’ My mother said, ‘Maybe that’s what he needs most right now.’

“If the world was populated with people like her, there would be no wars or want.” I frowned. “I miss her. After all this time I still miss her.”

“I wish I had a mother like that,” Kailamai said. She bowed her head and we walked a ways in silence. Then she asked, “Do you want to know why I was put in foster care?”

“If you want to tell me.”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“We’ve got a long walk,” I said.

“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “My mother was the opposite of yours. She was really abusive. Actually, both my mother and my older sister were. Growing up, I thought that getting beaten up was part of life. My sister beat me up almost every day, and my mother would beat the tar out of me at least once a week. Once she beat me so badly that it took me more than an hour before I could even crawl back to my room.”

I now understood why she wasn’t sorry her mother was dead. “What was wrong with them that they thought they could beat you?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She pulled her hair back from her face. “Probably because they could. I was smaller than them and they were just mean. They never, like said, ‘Pardon me,’ or stuff like that, they’d just shove you out of the way or pull you by your hair.

“It wasn’t until the fourth grade that I realized that not everyone had a home like mine. I couldn’t believe that some of my classmates actually liked their parents.”

“That’s remarkably sad,” I said.

“My mom was an alcoholic. She lived off welfare and food stamps and whatever men gave her. When I got a little older, the men my mother brought home started noticing me. Every few months one of them would come at me. I knew my mother knew what they were doing, but she just acted like it was no big deal. Then my mother married one of them and he moved in. Kurt,” she said, her mouth twisting a little with the name.

“Kurt was a meth addict and he got my mom and sister on it. I wouldn’t do drugs, so he hated me. Once my sister was beating me up, and he sat there and cheered her on. It was the worst whupping she’d ever given me.

“He’d hit me too. But it wasn’t like he was mad, it’s like it turned him on or something. He’d get mad at me for stupid things, like he’d say I didn’t change the toilet paper roll, and so I was going to get it. He liked to make it last. Once he made me sit in the garage and wait a whole hour for him to beat me. Usually, he’d make me pull my pants down so he could beat my bare butt.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

She kicked a stone. “It’s not that easy,” she said. “When it’s all you know, you just accept it.”

I frowned.

“But school was good. When I got to middle school, my life changed. I had this really great history teacher who liked me. Mrs. Duncan. She told me how smart I was. Once I got the highest score on a test, and she held up my test and told the whole class. She even gave me her cell phone number and said I could call her any time I had a question. I never did, but it was cool that I could have.

“Then one day, just before school got out, the school nurse called me down to her office. She started asking me about the bruises on my arm. I told her I fell down the stairs.

“Then she asked me about my mother. I was really scared and I told her that everything was good at home, but she knew I was lying. Finally, after like a whole hour of questions, I just broke down and told her everything. She listened and took notes. When I was done talking, she said, ‘I want you to go home and pack a suitcase. Someone will come get you.’

“She never said who was coming. So I walked home wondering what was going to happen. When I walked in the house, my mother was furious. She said that I had left a mess in the kitchen and she went after me. I never ran from her anymore, it only made her madder, so I just stood there while she hit me.

“When she was done, I had a bloody nose and was lying on the floor, and she kicked me in the butt and told me to clean up the blood I’d gotten on the carpet and then go to my room. I wiped up my blood and then, when I was going to my room, she said something that hurt worse than the beating. She said, ‘Why did you have to be born?’

“I just kind of flipped. I said, ‘You don’t have to worry about me anymore. Someone’s coming to take me away.’

“She started laughing. She said, ‘Who would want a little turd like you?’

“It was like a miracle because just then someone rang the doorbell. My mother looked at the door, then me, then back at the door. She was, like, frozen. They pounded on the door, then a man shouted, ‘Open the door. Police.’ My mother opened it. There were six police officers. It was really scary. Two of them got in my mother’s face and began shouting at her, and another one walked over to me. I thought he was going to shout at me too, but he didn’t. He asked, ‘Are you Kailamai?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Go upstairs and pack up your things.’

“I ran upstairs and threw everything I had in a pillow case and brought it down.

“When I came back downstairs, the police officer said, ‘If you want, you can say goodbye to your mother.’ I went over to hug my mother, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with me. The policeman got really mad and said, ‘Hug your daughter!’ She hugged me, but it was only because she was afraid. As we were walking out, I started to cry, and I looked back at her and she said, ‘You’re the devil’s child.’ One of the policemen said, ‘Then that makes you the devil. We’ll deal with you later.’ They put me in the back of the police car.”

“That must have been frightening,” I said.

“It was. I mean, the policeman was nice and all. He asked me what radio station I liked. But I was still really scared. I thought I was going to jail. Instead he drove me up into the mountains where there were two other cars parked. A tall, redheaded woman came out of one. She was my caseworker. Then a woman and her daughter came out of the other. Lois and Mabel Thompson. They were my first foster home. I was like their twentieth kid, so they knew what they were doing. They were really nice.

“After a year and a half the state sent me back to my mom. The courts made her take classes about how to be a decent mother and she was all honey and sugar when they brought me back. That lasted for about two hours, then she went back to her old self. Just before I went to bed, she smacked me in the head and told me she had gotten into all kinds of trouble because of me and I was going to pay for it.

“The next day her husband took me out to the garage and made me take my pants off, then he whipped me with his belt. A neighbor heard me scream and called the police. They came and got me right away. They took me to this place called Children’s Village. I was there for a few months, except when I was sent to a mental hospital.”

“Why were you sent to a mental hospital?” I asked.

“Because I sent a letter to my judge that said if he sent me back to my mother I would commit suicide. He didn’t like that very much.”

I looked at her gravely. “Would you have?”

“Maybe. I was thinking about it. After the mental hospital they sent me to live with this couple named David and Karlynne. They were nice. I was the first foster child they’d ever had, so everything was kind of harder for them. Karlynne had a job and had to travel a lot, which meant I had to be home alone with her husband. David never did anything bad to me, but I didn’t really trust men, so I told her that I was afraid of being left alone with him for a week. But she had to work, so she left, and the second day I freaked out and called my caseworker and they came and got me.”

“You don’t seem uncomfortable with me,” I said.

“You’re different.”

“How am I different?”

“I don’t know. I just like you.”

“I like you too,” I said. “So what happened next?”

“After that they changed my caseworker. My new caseworker was awful. She didn’t believe that my mother was as bad as I told everyone, so she filed to have me sent back home. I told her that I would commit suicide and she just said I was manipulative and knew how to work the system. I didn’t like her at all. I called her supervisor and they changed her.”

I asked, “How old were you then?”

“It wasn’t too long ago. Maybe six months. While the state was trying to decide what to do with me, my mother gave up all her custodial rights to me. The weird thing is, she died a week later.” She looked at me. “True story.”

“What did she die from?”

“I don’t know. She was really fat and had diabetes and high blood pressure, so they just said natural causes. But honestly, I think her husband killed her. No one knows—there wasn’t one of those things they do to see why you died.”

“An autopsy?”

“Yeah,” she said. “An autopsy.” She put her hands in her pockets. “They put me back at the group home for a while. Then they sent me to a new foster family, the Brysons. But they were really strict and negative and I just couldn’t do it, so one day while Mrs. Bryson was grocery shopping I ran away. I’ve been on the streets ever since.”

“Which brings you to where I met you,” I said.

She nodded. “Pretty unbelievable life, huh?”

“What’s unbelievable to me is how you’ve managed to remain so positive. I’ve been with you for more than a week, and you haven’t complained once.”

She smiled. “I heard someone say, ‘There’s no problem so big that whining won’t make it worse.’”

I laughed.

“The way I see it,” she said, “everyone has problems. It’s how you choose to deal with them. Some people choose to be whiners, some choose to be winners. Some choose to be victims, some choose to be victors.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. “You’re the type who thinks of the glass as being half full instead of half empty.”

“No,” she said, “I’m just grateful for the glass.”

I smiled. “Out of the mouth of babes,” I said, “out of the mouth of babes.”

CHAPTER

Forty-five

There are times when the great cosmic architect gives us brief glimpses of the blueprint so we can do our part.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Two days later we walked into Butte, Montana, which has the coolest city sign I’d ever seen—an old mining rig strung with white lights.

Butte’s a first-rate town, with movie theaters and shopping malls and at least a dozen hotels to choose from. I chose the Hampton Inn, and at the recommendation of the hotel clerk, Kailamai and I ate dinner at a nearby steakhouse called the Montana Club.

We were waiting for our main entrées when I was struck by a flash of genius. It must have shown on my face because Kailamai gave me a puzzled look. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I was just thinking,” I said vaguely. “So let me ask you something. If you could suddenly have any life at all, what would it look like?”

“You mean, like, if I could be queen of the world or Britney Spears?”

I grinned. “I was thinking of something a little more realistic.”

She thought about my question. “Well, since this is fantasy and I could have anything, I’d live in a nice home near a college where I could go to school to be a lawyer. The home doesn’t need to be a mansion, just a nice place that smells good.

“I wouldn’t want to be treated like a foster child anymore, but I’d still want to live with someone who was a little older so she could teach me things that people with normal lives already know. But she would still be fun and joke and stuff and not bust my chops all the time. Someone like you.”

“I’m no fun,” I said.

“See, you’re always joking,” she replied. “And we’d go to a movie now and then or bowling or hiking. And I’d go to school and work a job and also I would help out around the house, because I wouldn’t want my roommate to think I was a freeloader.”

“Are you sure that’s really what you want?” I asked.

“That would be heaven.”

“What if I could make it happen?”

She looked at me curiously. “Then I’d say you were an angel or something.”

“An angel, huh?” I got up from the table. “I need to make a call.”

We slept in the next morning, a rare luxury. We showered and dressed, then went downstairs for the complimentary breakfast.

“Yellowstone awaits,” Kailamai said, spreading cream cheese over a bagel. “Ready to hit the road?”

“No. Not today.”

“No?”

“We’ve been putting in a lot of miles lately. I thought we should take a day off. Have a play day.”

Her face lit with excitement. “Really?”

“I think we deserve it. We should go bowling, have a nice lunch, maybe go shopping.”

Her smile grew. “Sounds awesome.”

“I hope you don’t mind, but a friend of mine’s going to join us.”

“You have a friend in Butte?”

“No, she actually lives in Spokane. She’s driving all the way here.”

“Is she like a girlfriend?”

“No, just a good friend.”

“When is she coming?”

“She should be here any minute.”

I was getting directions from the clerk at the front desk to the nearest bowling alley when Nicole walked into the lobby. She smiled when she saw me. “Alan!”

We embraced. “It’s good to see you,” I said. It had only been eighteen days, but it already felt like a year since I’d left Spokane.

Nicole looked around the hotel lobby. “Where is she?” “Kailamai, come here,” I said, waving her over. “Meet my friend.”

Kailamai had been watching our reunion. She set her pancakes down and walked over.

“This is my friend, Nicole,” I said.

“Hello,” Kailamai said, sounding uncharacteristically formal. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice meeting you too,” Nicole said. “Alan’s told me a lot about you.”

“Good things I hope.”

“All good,” Nicole said. “Do you mind me hanging out with you guys today?”

“No problem.”

Nicole turned to me. “So what’s on the agenda?”

“I think some bowling might be in order,” I said.

Nicole asked Kailamai, “Do you like to bowl?”

“Who doesn’t?” Kailamai said.

“Then let’s go bowling,” Nicole said.

Kailamai looked back and forth between us. “If you two would rather just be alone…”

“Absolutely not,” I said.

Nicole shook her head. “Sorry, you’re stuck with us.”

Kailamai smiled. “Good, sounds fun.”

We climbed into Nicole’s Malibu and drove a few miles to Kingpin Lanes. We were all pretty bad bowlers and our combined scores wouldn’t equal a decent IQ, but that only added to the fun.

After one throw Kailamai said, “What does one of my bowling balls and a drunk have in common?”

“What?” I said.

“Chances are they’ll both end up in the gutter.”

Afterward we walked through a mall, and Nicole and Kailamai went off clothes shopping while I browsed a bookstore and then sat in the courtyard to read a magazine and drink an Orange Julius. An hour later they found me.

“Look what Nicole bought me,” Kailamai said excitedly, holding up a denim jacket with white stitching and rhinestones. “This cool coat.”

“She picked it out,” Nicole said. “She’s got great taste. She helped me find the perfect pair of jeans.”

I smiled. They had already connected. After the mall we headed back over to the Montana Club for lunch.

Nicole got a phone call on our way into the restaurant and stayed out in the restaurant’s lobby while Kailamai and I sat down at our table.

“So what do you think of Nicole?” I asked.

“You two should get married.”

I smiled wryly. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I think she’s really cool. She should go to Yellowstone with us.”

“No, she’s got to get back to school.”

Kailamai looked disappointed.

A few minutes later Nicole entered the dining room and sat down in a chair next to Kailamai, across from me.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“It was my sister,” she said, rolling her eyes. “She calls a lot now.” She turned to Kailamai. “So what’s good?”

“I had the French dip and sweet potato fries last night,” Kailamai said. “They were both awesome. I’m going to try making those fries some day.”

“You can cook?” Nicole asked.

“A few things. I make a mean grilled cheese sandwich and I can make pizza dough. I thought of being a chef once. That or a judge.”

Nicole laughed. “You have diverse tastes.”

“Well, in both cases, you have to make sure things are done right.”

“You’re right,” Nicole said, “you’re absolutely right.”

The waitress came and took our orders and then Kailamai left to use the restroom. When she was gone, I said, “So, what do you think?”

Nicole smiled. “I think she’s great. I think it’s a great idea.”

“What if it doesn’t work out?”

Nicole nodded. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it—if we ever do. But I’m not worried. I have a good feeling about her. It will be nice having company again.”

“Do you want to ask her or should I?” “Maybe you should.”

A few minutes later Kailamai returned. After she sat down, I said to her, “Remember our talk last night, when you told me about your perfect world?”

She put her napkin on her lap. “Yeah.”

“Did you mean it?”

She looked at me quizzically. “Yeah, I mean, it was just wishful thinking, but I hope that something like that happens someday.”

“Well, someday is today.”

She looked back and forth between us. “What do you mean?”

“Nicole didn’t drive all this way just to go bowling. She came to meet you.”

Kailamai looked at Nicole. “Why would you do that?”

“Because,” I said, “Nicole’s your perfect world. She’s smart and fun, she lives less than a mile from Gonzaga University, and she’s willing to take you in as her roommate, pay for your room, and help you get into school, as long as you get good grades, help out around the house, and are respectful.”

Kailamai’s eyes darted back and forth between both of us. “Are you kidding me?”

“What do you think?” Nicole asked.

After a moment she said, “It’s like a dream come true.” She turned to Nicole. “Why would you do that? You don’t even know me.”

“No, but I know Alan and I trust him.”

Kailamai’s eyes welled up. “I can’t believe this.”

The waiter brought our food. After he was gone, I said, “There is one catch.”

“What’s that?” Kailamai asked.

“You need to leave this afternoon. Nicole’s headed back to Spokane as soon as we finish lunch.”

Kailamai looked surprised. “But… Yellowstone.”

“Yellowstone’s not going anywhere,” I said.

She looked down at her food. “Wow, for once I’m not hungry.”

“So what’s your decision?” Nicole asked.

A big smile crossed her lips. “Yes. Thank you. Yes.”

We finished eating, then Nicole drove us back to the hotel. I stayed in the lobby with Nicole while Kailamai ran upstairs to get her things.

“Remember what I said to you the day you left?” Nicole asked. “The happiest I’ve ever been was when I was taking care of someone.” She smiled at me. “Once again, you’ve changed my life.”

“Well, no one deserves a chance more than Kailamai. She’s lucky to have a mentor like you. She’ll go far.”

A big smile crossed Nicole’s face. “Thank you.”

A few minutes later Kailamai came into the lobby carrying her backpack.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

We went outside and I put her bag in the Malibu’s trunk.

“I’m going to miss walking with you,” Kailamai said.

I looked at her fondly. “Me too. Be a good roommate. And a good judge or chef. Make me proud.”

“I will, I promise.” She looked down. “Will I ever see you again?”

“Absolutely.”

She hugged me, then she turned to Nicole.

“Let’s go, roomie.” She climbed into the car.

Nicole walked up and hugged me. “Another goodbye. It was hard enough the first time.”

“I hate goodbye,” I said. “How about I just say, ‘See you later.’”

“Promise?”

“I promise. I’ll call to see how things are going.”

“I’ll look forward to it.” She was starting to tear up, so she quickly kissed my cheek, then climbed into the car and started it. “Bye,” she said sweetly.

“Goodbye,” I said.

Kailamai waved as they drove off.

“Alone again,” I said. I took a deep breath, then went up to my room and took a long, hot bath.

CHAPTER

Forty-six

I’m alone again. It’s not that I dislike the company, it’s just that I’ve already heard all his stories.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning I went downstairs for breakfast—Raisin Bran with skim milk, a banana, and a glass of orange juice. At the table next to me was a man wearing a lanyard that read HI, MY NAME IS TONY written in blue marker. He was watching ESPN on the television mounted on the dining room wall.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you know the fastest way from here to Highway 2?”

He turned to me. “Sure. Just turn right in front of the hotel and keep going south about two miles down to the MT2 sign. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you.”

“Where are you headed?”

“I’m walking to Yellowstone.”

“You’re walking all the way to Yellowstone?”

“Actually, I’m walking to Key West.”

“Florida?”

“Yes.”

He looked at me for a moment, then said, “Man, I wish I were doing that.”

I was on the road by eight. I already missed Kailamai. I missed her spirit. I even missed her jokes.

Outside of Butte, I got on Highway 2 toward Whitehall. The next three days took me through the towns of Silver Star, Twin Bridges, and Sheridan. Silver Star was a small but legitimate town. It had a scrap metal yard, a taxidermist, and a stop called Granny’s Country Store with a sign outside that said FREE COFFEE, WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY, 10-6.

I stopped at the store, where I picked up a wilderness survival book and a pamphlet that claimed it would help me predict the weather using the wisdom of our forefathers. The small book was filled with chestnuts like:

When the dew is on the grass,
Rain will never come to pass.
When grass is dry at morning light,
Look for rain before the night!

And (according to the book) the single most useful weather proverb of all:

Red Sky at night,
Sailor’s delight.
Red sky in the morning,
Sailors take warning!

I filled up my canteen from the bathroom sink, bought some honeycomb, and chose two cellophane-wrapped sandwiches from a refrigerator. I learned that the woman who ran the store was the owner, which, I guess, technically made her Granny. She was probably in her late thirties, had long, brunette hair that fell to her waist, and didn’t wear shoes on the hardwood floor.

I passed Jefferson Camp (where the Lewis and Clark expedition had camped), then a few miles later crossed the Jefferson River and followed the Lewis and Clark Trail all the way to the town of Twin Bridges.

Twin Bridges bills itself as “The Small City That Cares.” The town had GO FALCON signs posted in most of the store windows. I ate dinner at the Wagon Wheel Restaurant, which was surprisingly crowded, and bought supplies at the Main Street Market.

I spent the night at King’s Motel, which had a sign outside proclaiming AWARD WINNING ROOMS, which was infinitely better than “world famous” or “historic.” I was skeptical of the claim until the owner—a fishing outfitter named Don who looked like Ernest Hemingway in shorts—gave me a tour of the place. The rooms were cozy, wood paneled cabins with kitchenettes. The cost was just $73 a night, and as a bonus, Don offered to take me fly-fishing in the morning. I told him I’d have to pass on the fishing, but rented one of his rooms.

Sheridan was only eight miles from Twin Bridges, and most of the terrain between them was smooth, with green meadows and grazing sheep. Sheridan was larger than the last three towns I’d passed through and had a bank and a Napa Auto Parts Store alongside the Ruby Saloon, which had a sign advertising BOOZED BUNS, which I mused was either a bread product infused with alcohol, or referred to the help.

I stopped at the Sheridan Bakery & Café and ordered a ham and cheese roll and a cinnamon bun. Next to my table was a sign on the wall that read:

We have the right to refuse service to anyone at any time.
No exceptions, Steve, Joe, and Allen

A whiteboard mounted to the wall across from my table read:

TRIVIA QUESTION:
Where is the Trevi Fountain located?

Someone had scrawled beneath it: “Trevi?”

Whoever answered the questions correctly got a free maple bar, which I hope hadn’t been made especially for the contest, since the sign had been posted a month earlier and still no one had won. I asked the manager, a woman named Francie, if I could give it a shot.

“Sure thing, honey. Where is the Trevi Fountain?” she asked with the intensity of a game show host.

McKale and I had been to Rome twice on advertising incentive trips, and I was quite familiar with the beautiful fountain of Neptune that capped the end of the ancient Roman aqueducts.

“The Trevi Fountain is just a little east of Via Veneto, about a half mile from the Spanish Steps.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said sadly. “It’s in Italy.”

I just smiled. “Well, I tried.”

The next day I walked along the Ruby River, which, in the 1860s, was originally called the Stinking Water River by the miners. Sometime later it was renamed the Ruby River after the gems found along its length, which turned out not to be rubies, but garnets.

A sign mounted near the river shared several interesting facts: First, the gold once mined there by dredges was used to finance Harvard University in the early twentieth century. Second, the Ruby River was the site of the Vigilante Trail, and the dreaded numbers 3-7-77 were of historic significance, though it didn’t explain why.

The next town I came to, Nevada City, was closed. Literally. Nevada City was an authentic old western town with a music hall, blacksmith shop, barbershop, saloons, and a saddler. The town looked like a movie set—which it was—and outside the village entrance was a long list of all the movies that had been shot on the premises. The numbers 3-7-77 were posted on one of the buildings here as well. Maybe it was a date, I thought. March 7, 1877.

Eight miles down the road was Christine City, which was also an Old West town, and more authentic than Nevada City though not as colorful. Fortunately for me, it was open. I stopped in a small tourist shop to browse, and I asked the shop’s proprietor the meaning of 3-7-77’. She seemed glad for the question.

“If you had that number placed in your yard by the vigilantes, you had 3 days, 7 hours, and 77 minutes to get out of town or you would be buried in a grave 3 feet wide, 7 feet long, and 77 inches deep. However, some believe that those numbers were also connected to the local Masonic order, who in the 1860s had 3 deacons, 7 elders, and 77 members.”

The woman told me that their town had a “boot hill,” which is where the vigilantes’ victims were buried, placed in graves with their boots pointing away from the sun.

I ate lunch at a small restaurant called the Outlaw Café. When I asked the waitress, Cora, if their food was any good, she replied, “Oh, it’s good all right. Before I worked here I looked like Twiggy, now look at me.” She spun around, modeling her plump physique for me.

I told her about my walk, and she said another man had walked through Christine City on his way across the country—Tim. “He carries a cross with him.” She gave him extra tea bags and sugar packets to help keep him warm in the winter.

I kind of hated leaving the town. I walked until dark and spent the night in the city of Ennis, which, no matter how many times I read the name, didn’t seem right.

The next two days were some of the dullest walking I’d encountered yet on my journey. The view came with two options—flat, dull landscape with trees or flat, dull landscape without. The roads were smooth, with wide shoulders but no coverage from the elements. The only excitement was when someone threw a plastic cup filled with soda at me from a speeding car.

Seven days from Butte, I entered the Gallatin National Forest, Earthquake Lake Geologic Area.

The lake had a surreal quality. The water was thick with moss and the tops of dead trees poked out of its surface like stubble, some even in the center of the lake. A mile or two past the entry there was an observation point with a plaque:

On Aug. 17, 1959, a 7.5 earthquake triggered
a massive landslide.
80 million tons of rock—half the mountain—fell,
creating this lake, now 4 miles long and 120 feet deep.

That explained the trees in the middle of the lake. The next day I reached West Yellowstone.

CHAPTER

Forty-seven

The last time I was in Yellowstone I was wearing Superman underwear.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

When I was seven years old, my family took a trip to Yellowstone National Park (the same trip my father and I had talked about at the IHOP). That was years ago, a unique era, when America’s love affair with the car was on a par with our old fear of beeping Russian satellites. There was a remarkable, though admittedly charming, naïveté to our perception of the park—almost a collective suspension of reality in our national imagination. Yellowstone was just a grand, outdoor stage show with animal actors conveniently placed for our entertainment—moose were gawking, Bullwinkle creatures, and bears were domesticated fur balls with names like Yogi and Boo-Boo, who loved picnic baskets and tourists and were more than happy to pose for photographs. It has taken more than a few grisly maulings to alter our collective paradigm. Wild animals are, well, wild.

While my mother was standing in line at the restroom near the Old Faithful Inn, my father and I watched a tourist (I remember her looking like a larger version of Lucille Ball) walk up to a wild buffalo for a prized photo op, her husband, eyeing her through the lens piece of a Brownie camera, verbally nudging her: “Just a little closer, Madge. Yes, just a few steps more. Yes! Like that! Put your hand up, yeah, rub its neck.”

The buffalo looked at her through glassy eyes roughly the size of tennis balls like she was the stupidest creature on God’s green earth (possibly true), trying to decide whether to walk away in disgust or trample her for the ultimate good of the human gene pool.

My dad watched the scene unfold with a curious, mixed expression of amusement and envy. Ultimately, the buffalo didn’t do anything but walk away. Sometimes nature takes compassion on stupidity.

I don’t know what self-talk might take place in a buffalo’s brain, but I imagine it went something like this, “These guys are really at the top of the food chain?”

Like so much of life, the anticipation of that trip was even better than the trip itself. A few weeks before our vacation my mother took me to the Buster Brown shoe store to buy some new Keds—green canvas boat shoes with whitetrimmed soles—and a new T-shirt with a picture of Charlie Brown running at a football held by Lucy. (Digression: why, oh why, didn’t Charles Schulz let Charlie Brown kick the football in his last comic strip—what hope he could have left humanity!)

We were in the car for a length of time that, to my young mind, seemed the equivalent of my entire secondgrade year, but in the end it was all worth it. Being an only child, I was denied the pleasure of fighting with a sibling (He’s on my side of the car. He stuck his tongue out at me! He touched me first.), but on the plus side, I did have the entire back seat to lie down on.

We owned a candy-apple red Ford Galaxy 500, a car slightly larger than a sand barge, with considerably worse mileage. I remember once we were climbing a hill and my father pointed to the gas gauge and said, “Watch this.” He pressed down on the gas pedal and the gas needle visibly dropped a point or two.

My father was uncharacteristically generous on that trip, and I was allowed, actually encouraged, to purchase a souvenir. I chose a ceramic bear with fuzz painted on all the right places, and a box that had a wood-burned sketch of Old Faithful. I remember the agonizing internal debate that went on in my young mind between choosing an authentic Indian hand-sewn leather wallet (manufactured in Taiwan) or the box. In the end, the box won out since it had a real lock and key.

My parents and I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a crowd of tourists at Old Faithful, Yellowstone’s most famous geyser. True to its name, the geyser erupted. I remember my father standing there, his hands thrust deep in his back pockets, my mother at his side, holding my hand lest I have the sudden impulse to run and jump on the spray.

Old Faithful is neither the most spectacular nor the highest geyser in the park. What made Old Faithful so famous is its reliability and short window of eruptions. According to NASA (I’m not sure why they cared about such things), from 1870 through 1966 little had changed the geyser’s eruption cycle.

Before the feds made laws protecting the site, people would actually throw their laundry inside the geyser, which (I’m told) had a particularly pleasing effect to linen and cotton fabrics but tended to tear woolen garments to shreds.

Actually, Old Faithful’s spout is not the kind of thing one sets a watch to, as its eruptions occur at intervals from 45 to 125 minutes apart, which means you could be standing there for two hours to watch a spray that may last only 90 seconds—a fitting analogy for life. I don’t remember how long our eruption was; I just remember my father staring at the spout in awe and muttering, “Would you look at that…”

If you put a gun to my head, I still couldn’t tell you what it is about water shooting from a hole that would attract millions of tourists. It is the only time in my recollection that water spraying from the ground would warrant anything from my father except a curse and a call to the plumber.

Later that same day we stopped at the Morning Glory Pool. Today that amazing blue pool is fenced off, but back then it wasn’t. There was just a little wood-plank path that wound around it. Walking the path terrified me. The water is crystal-clear, and the rock formation underneath looks like an open mouth, so even though the pool is only twenty-three feet deep, it seemed like it dropped to the center of the earth.

As we walked around the pool, I clung to my mother’s hand, desperately fearing falling into the water and being lost in its depth. It never occurred to me that at 171.6 degrees, I would be burned into unconsciousness long before I hit bottom.

Today, due to tourist abuse, the pool is mockingly called Fading Glory. The pool’s once Windex-blue color has changed from tourists tossing in tons of trash (yes, tons), which has blocked the pool’s natural vents, lowered its temperature, and upset its balance.

I’m not sure what would possess someone to throw trash into these beautiful pools, let alone tons of it. It’s not as if Yellowstone doesn’t offer a hundred thousand acres of convenient landfill. “Clyde, dear, will you take the trash and dump it into the pristine crystal pool? Thanks, honey.” But then, it never occurred to me to wash my clothes in Old Faithful either. Maybe something’s just wrong with me.

I left Yellowstone Park certain that I would someday be a mountainman: traveling the wilderness alone, eating jerky and venison in my fringed, rawhide suit, which, not counting the apparel, wasn’t a far cry from where I was today. We should be careful of what we dream of, as apparently life, or God, has a sense of humor.

My father liked to drive at night and I slept for most of the ride home. I still remember the feel and smell of cold vinyl against my face. Somehow I woke in my own bed, the soft white sheets tucked in around me. I miss that. Childhood was magical that way.

I hadn’t been back to Yellowstone since.

CHAPTER

Forty-eight

Nothing clears the mind (nor colon), like an encounter with a Grizzly Bear.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Prior to entering the park, I spent the night at the Brandin’ Iron Inn, which had a large replica of a bear trap over the front doors. The next morning I ate an Egg McMuffin for breakfast, then walked into Yellowstone Park.

Pedestrians, as well as cars, are required to pay an entrance fee and I paid $12, which was valid for seven days. Less than 100 yards past the gate a large sign informed me that I was now in Wyoming.

Just a few miles in, I passed two trumpeter swans in a pond surrounded by trees growing at 30-degree angles. I was happy to be back in nature and feel her healing. That night I pitched my tent in a place called Whiskey Flats.

The next morning’s walk led me past the Midway Geyser Basin and Biscuit Basin, where I watched the steaming geyser water run down fluted, sandstone gullies to cool in the river.

An hour later a sign told me Old Faithful was just one mile ahead. After a mile I turned off the road to Old Faithful, which I missed erupting by a few minutes when I stopped to use the bathroom. I wondered if I should wait for the next eruption, but instead I returned to the main road and headed southeast to West Thumb Junction.

I had walked about four hours when I reached the Continental Divide, elevation 8,262. What I knew of the Continental Divide was this—water that falls on the west side of the divide drains to the Pacific Ocean. Water that falls on the east side drains to the Atlantic Ocean.

What I didn’t realize was that the divide wasn’t some large, straight rift, rather that it moved all over the place, and I ran into two more Continental Divide signs as I walked. That night I camped illegally, hidden in the dense forest just 50 yards from the road.

My third day in Yellowstone, I reached West Thumb—which received its name from its thumblike projection of Yellowstone Lake—and began my trek around the lake’s western perimeter. The scenery was beautiful and the air was crisp and sweet, similar to my walk through Washington over Highway 2.

The day proceeded without incident until I had an experience that every car-driving tourist in Yellowstone hopes for and anyone in the wild prays not to have; I encountered a grizzly. I had stopped to eat my lunch when the bear walked into a clearing about thirty yards in front of me. I slowly reached into my pack for my gun, praying that I wouldn’t have to use it, as the advantage definitely belonged to the bear.

I had once seen a PBS documentary on a bear-mauling incident, and I came away with information that, at that moment, was rather unsettling: the bear’s metabolism is so slow that it can still run two- to three-hundred yards after a direct shot through the heart. With a small-caliber handgun the chances of a direct hit on a moving bear’s vital organs—especially with my untrained hand—was infinitesimally small, and with a round as small as a 9-mm bullet, it might only serve to make the animal angrier.

I’m not certain whether or not the bear saw me, though I assumed it had at least smelled my presence. It lingered in my area for a tense few minutes, clawed at a tree, and then lumbered off. I don’t think I breathed until then. I waited ten minutes to make sure it was gone, then I walked back out to the road and continued my trek.

That afternoon I walked past acres of forest that had been burned, leaving black, ashen remains on trees and the heavy scent of sulfur in the air. It wasn’t until after dark that I reached greenery again. I knew from road signs that I was finally near the park’s east entrance, but I was exhausted, so I hiked into the forest and made camp. The bear was still on my mind, and I spent an uneasy night, waking at every snap of twig or coyote howl.

As it turned out, I had camped less than a mile from the East Entrance gate. I crossed the Yellowstone River on Fishing Bridge, which, appropriately, was lined with fishermen, then stopped at the Yellowstone General Store.

Even though I had officially left the park, I wouldn’t have known it if it weren’t for the signage, as the road led into Shoshone National Park. At lunchtime I sat down with a sandwich and looked over my map. By adding a couple extra miles to my daily routine I could reach my next destination in three days: Cody, Wyoming.

CHAPTER

Forty-nine

If a man cries in the wilderness and no one hears him, does he make a sound?

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Cody, Wyoming, was named after the famous (or infamous, depending on what biography you read) William “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Cody was a frontiersman and showman who brought the romance of a dying Wild West to wild easterners and beyond, including the crowned heads of Europe. His Wild West show was so popular that it was even said to have improved relations between the United States and Britain.

Cody, who was a frontier scout and a natural selfpromoter, began as a fictional character in the day’s dime novels after the publisher Prentiss Ingraham discovered the public’s voracious appetite for all things Western—a role the real William Cody stepped into like comfortable cowboy boots.

I arrived in Cody around 9 P.M., walking in darkness for the last two and a half hours—something I usually avoid since snakes sometimes like to stretch out on the warm asphalt at night. I had covered more than 30 miles that day—driven on by the lights of the city. I wanted a warm room, a soft bed, a long, hot shower, and a meal I didn’t have to unwrap.

The freeway turned into Sheridan, the main street through town. Cody is a real cowboy town. We sometimes think of cowboys as remnants of our nation’s past, forgetting that they’re alive and well—or at least alive. Cowboys are a race as distinct as any I’ve encountered in my travels, with their own language, culture, history, literature, and costumes—a hat, Wrangler jeans, boots, and big belt buckles, the larger the better. They have their own walk as well, a little bowlegged and stooped, as if their backs hurt.

About a mile and a half into town I stopped to eat at the Rib & Chop House. My meal was large and heavenly. My server’s name was Kari, a pert, fresh-faced nursing student who looked as out of place in the Cody population as I did. She was also the first person I’d talked to in days.

I took my time eating and when I finally stood, my thighs cramped up. I walked (limped) a few blocks down to the Marriott and booked a room. There was a quilters’ convention in town, and the hotel was crowded with quilters and cowboys, which seemed culturally congruent.

That night I spent a long time soaking in the hotel’s hot tub. When I first arrived, there was another man in the tub, not surprisingly a cowboy, and he wore his hat. He tipped it at me as I stepped into the water. I pulled off my T-shirt and threw it onto a nearby vinyl chair then settled into the bubbling water.

“Howdy,” the cowboy said.

“Howdy,” I said back, not knowing why I was speaking “cowboy.”

He pointed to the scars on my abdomen. “Look like yer dun yerself a li’l fight’n.”

“Wasn’t much of a fight,” I said, sinking down into the water.

“Me too,” he said. He rose up a little from the water, revealing the scar from a knife wound, a slash, across his sternum. “Yer should’a seen the other feller,” he laughed.

I closed my eyes, hoping he might just let me relax.

“Where yer frum?”

“Seattle.”

“Fishin’ or passin’ threw?”

I looked at him for a moment, then replied, “I’m here for the quilting convention.”

“Oh,” he said. He pulled the brim of his hat down and sunk to his chin in the water. A minute later he got out of the tub and left the spa.

I slept well that night, though I had an unsettling dream. I was walking down a long stretch of highway, as forlorn as any as I’d passed through, when I saw a woman walking alone ahead of me. It was McKale. I shouted to her, and she turned back briefly but said nothing and kept walking. I kept walking faster until I was running, but she just increased her speed to match mine. She was always just within sight and just out of reach. I woke, the sheets wet with perspiration.

CHAPTER

Fifty

The Wild West has never been so dull.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I spent the next day resting. I had a big breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant, then watched a movie on the pay-per-view—one of the Bourne movies. You really can’t go wrong with Matt Damon.

I took everything out of my pack, releasing a stale, moldy smell into the room. I discovered a completely withered and black banana, a moldy deli roll, and a couple of half-eaten energy bars.

I washed my pack in the shower-bath, then left it open to breathe next to the window. I laid out my map, then, based on my route, compiled a shopping list on a hotel notepad. I was still several weeks out from Rapid City. Miles to go.

I traced my route with the plastic cap of a hotel pen. I would stay on I-90 until I reached a fork in the road about 280 miles east of Cody. I could travel north on Interstate 90 up through Spearfish and Sturgis, South Dakota, or take the smaller road south to Custer, South Dakota. It was about the same distance either way. The upside of heading south was that the roads were smaller and less busy. The downside was fewer amenities. I elected to go south. I put away my map and went grocery shopping.

As I left Cody the next morning, I felt weighed down, not just because I had stocked up on so many supplies, but because my soul felt heavier. The two-lane highway, like my life, seemed to stretch out to nothing. The land was agricultural, with large, fallow fields for planting or grazing—the patchwork I had looked down on from plane rides in my previous life.

The next two weeks through southeast Wyoming I felt as if emotionally I had taken a giant step backward. I would detail my various stops, but it would only bore you—I know because it bored me. I stopped writing in my journal. I stopped shaving. I stopped caring.

There were few towns on my walk, the largest being Gillette, Wyoming, with a population of about 20,000. The city calls itself the “Energy Capital of the Nation” and is abundant with natural resources: coal, oil, and methane gas. The town was dirty and gray, and I was more eager to leave it than I was to arrive there. There was a desolation of spirit that was as palpable as the cigarette stench of every restaurant I entered. Wyoming is one of the last holdouts on public antismoking laws, and smoking is as much a part of the culture as license-plate-sized belt buckles. Simply put, every public place in the city stinks of ten thousand cigarettes.

I’ve known people from Wyoming (one of my agency’s media reps comes to mind), and I’ve heard tale of its rugged beauty and friendly, folksy inhabitants, but honestly, in this part of the state I didn’t feel it. Wyoming depressed me to the core, though I’m certain that it’s likely that my feelings were less a result of the actual state than my state-of-mind—my pain stemming from a combination of loneliness, physical discomfort, and the unchanging landscape.

Each day the postwinter, gray-yellow terrain that surrounded the highway appeared pretty much the same as it had the day before, and my toil felt like that of the Greek Sisyphus, each day pushing a stone to the top of the hill only to have it roll down again.

Nicole’s former landlord, Bill, had said something to me a few days before his death that I now had reason to recollect. Without his wife, he said, his life felt like a walk through a desolate and forlorn wilderness. Each day was a pointless trek with no one who cared, no one to ask him about his day, his thoughts, his colitis.

That’s exactly how I felt. Perhaps this walk through Wyoming was the perfect metaphor for my life without McKale. As I wrote once before, I was lonely but not alone—my companions were despair, loneliness, and fear. And they were a talkative bunch.

During these difficult days I called my father once and Falene twice. My father spent a half hour telling me about his last golf game and, for the first time in my life, I relished each word. Falene could sense my discouragement and she lifted my spirits greatly. She even offered to drive out, an invitation I came seriously close to accepting. But an internal voice told me to push on through the shadow lands alone, that I would have to walk them sometime—if not now, then later.

So I trudged on, and the more I walked, the more difficult it became. My mind began to work against me, to focus on the hard and the despairing, to see only the shadows and not the sun. A thousand times I relived the final days and minutes of McKale’s life. Worst of all, I began to doubt.

What was I doing out here? This was an insane idea to walk across the country—there was nothing here, and nothing at my destination was waiting for me. My body ached as much from depression as from the elements, but not nearly as much as my heart. I knew that I was in a bad way, but in dark moments like these, it’s not what you know, it’s what you feel. And I felt hopeless. I doubted my motives. I doubted that I would ever finish my walk. Then, in one especially dark moment, I doubted my wisdom in not swallowing the bottle of pills. If it hadn’t been for what I’d soon find in South Dakota, I don’t know how much longer I could have held on.

CHAPTER

Fifty-one

I spent the night in Custer, South Dakota. I hope I have better luck here than he did.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

On my thirteenth day from Cody I reached Wyoming’s eastern border. Crossing from Wyoming into South Dakota was like the moment Dorothy emerged from her relocated Kansas home into the magical, Technicolor world of Oz.

The roads I walked were no longer rough, potholed asphalt, but smooth, paved concrete of a pinkish hue. In eastern Wyoming the dingy, prefab homes I passed were surrounded by their own weedy landfills of rusted cars and abandoned household appliances, while just over the border the land was green and lush, with well-kept farms and beautiful red barns.

By evening I entered the town of Custer and my spirits lifted some. I ate dinner at a pizzeria (I downed an entire medium-sized pizza myself) and found a warm, bright hotel crowded with tourists excited to see Mount Rushmore and the myriad sites the area offered.

A long row of Harley-Davidson motorcycles were parked in front of the hotel, presumably on their way to Sturgis, even though the Harley gathering wouldn’t officially begin for another hundred days.

I lay in bed the entire next day, melancholy and defeated. I had walked more than a thousand miles and for what? What good had it done? McKale was still gone—and my heart was still broken.

I didn’t eat that day. I never left my room, acting the hermit I was looking like. My beard was several inches long, and scraggly.

The second day I was hungry and bored so I forced myself out of bed around noon, I ate lunch at a Subway sandwich shop, then took a shuttle to see the nearby Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse monuments.

When I first arrived at Mount Rushmore, the monument was concealed by clouds, which seemed appropriate for my life, and since the shuttle didn’t return for an hour I waited at the visitors’ center and gift shop, where they had plastered the four presidents’ faces to everything conceivable, from playing cards to chopsticks.

Then I heard someone shout, “Look, you can see them!” and I walked outside as the clouds dissipated and the faces were revealed: Washington first, then Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln.

You hear it all the time: Mount Rushmore isn’t as big as you think it’s going to be, but even in my state of mind the memorial was phenomenal.

All art intrigues me, and something on this scale had an especially powerful effect, so I hiked the trails beneath the mountain and lingered around the visitors’ center and museum until it was beginning to get dark. At that late hour I found myself debating whether to just head on back to my hotel or over to the Crazy Horse Memorial.

Frankly, Crazy Horse was an aside for me. I knew little about the monument, except that it was an incomplete statue of Chief Crazy Horse, someone I didn’t know or care anything about. It certainly couldn’t compare with the majesty of Mount Rushmore. But in the end, curiosity won out and I took the shuttle over to the memorial. I didn’t anticipate the profound effect it would have on me, my life, and my walk.

CHAPTER

Fifty-two

Some men see mountains as obstacles. Others as a canvas.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The Crazy Horse monument was started in 1948 by a Polish-American sculptor named Korczak Ziolkowski. Korczak was born in Boston in 1908 to Polish parents and orphaned at the age of one. He spent his life being shuffled through a series of foster homes in poor neighborhoods. Though he never received formal art training, in his teens he worked as an apprentice to a shipmaker and began to demonstrate his skill in carving wood.

He created his first marble sculpture at the age of twenty-four, a bust of judge Frederick Pickering Cabot, a hero to foster children in the Boston area and the man who encouraged Korczak’s interest in art. In 1939, Korczak moved to the Black Hills of South Dakota to assist in the creation of the Mount Rushmore Memorial.

Less than a year later, Korczak’s marble sculpture of Ignacy Jan Paderewski, pianist, composer, and prime minister of Poland, won first prize at the New York World’s Fair. Shortly afterward he was approached by several Lakota Indian chiefs who asked him to build a monument honoring Native Americans. Chief Henry Standing Bear wrote Korczak, “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, too.”

Korczak accepted the project and began research and planning for the sculpture. Three years later the project was put on hold while Korczak enlisted in the United States Army. He was wounded on Omaha Beach during the invasion of Normandy.

After the war Korczak moved back to the Black Hills and began his search for a suitable mountain. He thought the Wyoming Tetons would be a better choice than the Black Hills, with better rock for carving, but the Lakota considered the Black Hills a sacred place and wanted the memorial built there.

“The Lakota had no money and no mountain,” Korczak said. “But I always thought [the Indians] had gotten a raw deal, so I agreed to do it.”

When completed, the monument, a three-dimensional sculpture of the Indian Chief Crazy Horse sitting on a charging steed, will be the largest sculpture in the world, standing 563 feet high—taller than the Washington Monument—and 641 feet long. To put the size of the memorial in perspective, just Crazy Horse’s war bonnet would be large enough to contain all the presidents’ heads on Mount Rushmore.

Korczak died thirty-four years after starting work on the mountain, the statue far from being completed. His final words to his wife were, “You must finish the mountain. But go slowly so it is done right.”

I stared at the mountain for nearly twenty minutes. It started to rain on me and I hardly even noticed. The whole thing was absurd. Colossally absurd. A man with no money, no training, and no heavy equipment, decides to carve a mountain. It was gloriously absurd. In Korczak’s impossible quest I found what I was looking for.

CHAPTER

Fifty-three

I asked myself what McKale would tell me to do and I knew exactly what she’d say, “Get off your butt, pick up your pack, and get walking.”

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning I lay in my hotel bed looking at the ceiling. For the first time since I set foot on my journey, I knew exactly why I was walking. My journey wasn’t an escape from my past; it was a bridge to my future, and each small step was an act of faith and hope, affirming to myself that life was worth living.

And with that simple revelation the weight was gone—the heaviness of my despair and self-pity. It was time to get on with what I’d committed to do and stop feeling sorry for myself. It was time to stop asking what I could take from life and learn what life was asking of me.

I opened my map out on the bed and drew a path with my finger. It was time to head somewhere warm. Time to move south. My next target was Memphis, Tennessee.

I shaved, grabbed my backpack, and headed out of the hotel. I was committed again to my next destination.

As I walked through the hotel’s lobby, I noticed an older woman sitting in one of the chairs near the reception desk. She had gray hair, a long woolen coat, and a burgundy silk scarf tied around her neck. She was beautiful, or had been once, and something about her was hard to look away from. She was likewise watching me and we made eye contact. When I was near to her she said, “Alan.”

I stopped. “Excuse me?”

“You are Alan Christoffersen?”

I looked at her in surprise. “Yes.”

“Do you know who I am?”

Something about her looked familiar. After a moment I said, “No.”

“Are you sure?”

Then, as I stared into her eyes, I realized who she was. Before I could speak, she said, “I’ve been looking for you for weeks.”

EPILOGUE

We are all in motion. Always. Those who are not climbing toward something are descending toward nothing.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

What my father said about mountains is true. We climb mountains because the valleys are full of cemeteries. The secret of survival is to climb, even in the dark, even when the climb seems pointless. The climb, not the summit, is the thing. And the great don’t just climb mountains, they carve them as they go.

Korczak’s dream was an impossible one—that one man could sculpt a mountain. I can only imagine the barbs and insults of Korczak’s critics, and he had galleries of them. “You’re crazy, a fool, you’ll never do it,” they sang from their low places and half-dug graves. “The statue will never be complete.”

But Korczak knew better than to listen to the ghosts in the cemeteries. Every day he climbed his mountain, and with a chisel here, a blast there, he moved tons of stone as his dream emerged from the mountain.

Korczak knew he’d never live to see his work finished, but this was no reason to stop. As he lay dying, he was asked if he was disappointed to not see the monument completed. “No,” he said, “you only have to live long enough to inspire others to do great things.”

And this he did. As the mountain took form, the masses began to dream too. And they began to move. Today millions come from around the world to see Korczak’s mountain, and a professional crew works year-round to move the dream forward. It is no longer a question of if the statue will be completed, only when.

But Korczak’s greatest legacy is not a public one, the massive stone mountain that he conquered, but the mountain he first conquered in himself—a mountain that he climbed alone—and in this we can all empathize. For there are moments in all lives, great and small, that we must trudge alone our forlorn roads into infinite wilderness, to endure our midnight hours of pain and sorrow—the Gethsemane moments, when we are on our knees or backs, crying out to a universe that seems to have abandoned us.

These are the greatest of moments, where we show our souls. These are our “finest hours.” That these moments are given to us is neither accidental nor cruel. Without great mountains we cannot reach great heights. And we were born to reach great heights.

Every one of us is faced with a task equal to Korczak’s, one as gorgeously absurd—to chip away at the stone of our own spirits, creating a monument to light the universe. And, like Korczak’s monument, our task will not be completed in our lifetime. And in the end we will find that we were never sculpting alone.

Korczak said, “I tell my children never forget that man is not a complete being in himself. There’s something greater than he that moves him.”

I don’t honestly know if I’ll ever reach Key West, but I do know that I will never give up. And, when I take my final step, whether or not I made my destination doesn’t really matter, because in the end I will be a different man than the one who left Seattle. I was never carving a mountain. I was carving myself.

Reading Group Guide

Miles to Go

INTRODUCTION

In the second book in Richard Paul Evans’s The Walk series, former Seattle advertising executive Alan Christoffersen hits a detour on his cross-country trek. Facing months of recovery after a vicious roadside attack in Spokane, he encounters a mysterious woman, Angel, who offers him a place to stay. But before Alan can continue on with his own journey, he must first help Angel find her way.

TOPICS & QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. At the beginning of Miles to Go, Alan explains: “I’m not trying to set any records or wind up in any newspapers.”. Why does he undertake such a monumental journey as walking across the country? What does he hope to accomplish? If you were in Alan’s position, would you consider doing something similar?

2. Alan and Angel are practically strangers when she invites him into her home for a several-month stay as he recuperates. Why does she take him in? Why does he accept her offer? In what ways are Angel and Alan alike?

3. Being stabbed robs Alan of the thing that is most valuable to him: his ability to walk. Along with his physical wounds, how is he affected emotionally by the stabbing? What are the upsides to his unexpected delay in Spokane?

4. Discuss the women in Alan’s life, both past and present—his mother, Falene, Angel, Kailamai. What can you tell about Alan by how he interacts with them? What do you learn about Adam from what he reveals of his relationship with McKale?

5. When does Alan realize that Angel intends to commit suicide? How is he able to get through to her and change her mind about it? Why does Angel respond to Alan when she has made a concerted effort to shut everyone else out of her life?

6. “Before my life imploded, I was, as one of my clients put it, ‘the poster child for the American dream,’ ” says Alan. “The universe switched the tracks beneath me and in just five weeks I lost it all”. Discuss Alan’s attitude about the hardships and heartbreak he has endured. Is he an inspirational character? Why or why not? What are your thoughts on the narrative style of the novel, which is told as Alan’s diary?

7. On page 160, Alan says, “I didn’t know if my father had changed or if I’d just never seen this side of him. Probably both,” says Alan. Why didn’t Alan tell his father about the attack and stabbing? What does he come to realize about his father after their conversations in Spokane?

8. What motivates Alan to confront four men to save Kailamai when he has only recently recovered from an assault? Why does he allow her to join him on his walk?

9. What is Alan’s impression of Kailamai—and hers of him? Why do these two people, who on the surface appear to have little in common, quickly form a close relationship? Why does Nicole agree to take in Kailamai?

10. Discuss Alan’s encounters with the unnamed advertising executive from Young and Rubicam and the gold prospector. What words of wisdom do these men share with Alan? How do they affect Alan’s thinking about his life and his journey?

11. While traveling through Wyoming, Alan has a crisis of faith about whether or not he should continue his journey. Why does he start to doubt himself? Why does he ultimately decide to keep going?

12. Why does the story about the creation of the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota strike such a chord with Alan? In what ways does he relate to artist Korczak Ziolkowski?

13. For those who have read The Walk, the first book about Alan Christoffersen, how do you think it compares to Miles to Go? If you haven’t read it, are you interested in doing so? Why or why not? Share whether or not you’d like to continue with Alan on his journey in future books.

ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB

1. Lace up your walking shoes. Before your group talks about Miles to Go, take a stroll of a mile or more to get a better sense of the magnitude of Alan’s ambitious undertaking.

2. In honor of Angel’s “coming out party,” prepare a Thanksgiving-style feast with all the trimmings. Before you dine, have members each share one thing for which they’re grateful—aside from your book club, of course.

3. Pair your discussion of Miles to Go with a movie. Like Alan and Angel do in the book, make a selection from the American Film Institute’s list of 100 Greatest Movies. Some of the ones they watch together are American Graffiti, City Lights, and M*A*S*H. Don’t forget the popcorn.

4. Like Norma does for Alan in his hospital room, hang up pictures of Key West while you discuss Miles to Go.

Coming April 2012, book 3 of The Walk series

To learn more about The Walk
series or to join Richard’s mailing list and
receive special offers and information please visit:
www.richardpaulevans.com

Join Richard on Facebook at the
Richard Paul Evans fan page
www.facebook.com/RPEfans

Or write to him at:
P.O. Box 712137 • Salt Lake City, Utah • 84171

Dear Reader,

As you likely know by now, I write with the hope of improving the world. In Miles to Go, I included the character of Kailamai to highlight the important issue of foster youth aging out of care. The Kailamai in my story is partially based on a real young woman. And, like the Kailamai in my story, she’s full of hope and gratitude. My daughter Jenna has helped Kailamai write her incredible story. To download her true story go to www.richardpaulevans.com and click the Kailamai link. All of the donations for this story will go to help this young woman reach her dreams.

I want my readers to know that the challenges of youth aging out of foster care are very real: Research from the Pew Charitable Trusts shows that 6 out of 10 youth aging out of the foster care system will be homeless, incarcerated, or dead within the first two years. Most youth aging out of the foster care system lack the essential skills, resources, and support to live a safe and independent life.

GO-Mentor is a collaboration committed to creating programs and offering services that effectively improve such outcomes. GO-Mentor includes the Youth Mentor Project, the School of Life Foundation, and the National Crime Prevention Council, home of McGruff the Crime Dog®.

To contribute financially to the exciting GO-Mentor initiative, please visit www.ncpc.org or write the National Crime Prevention Council, 2001 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 901, Arlington, VA 22202. To learn more about GO-Mentor or to volunteer, please visit www.go-mentor.org. Thank you for your help in building brighter futures for youth aging out of foster care.

Richard Paul Evans is the author of the number-one bestselling novel The Christmas Box. Each of his novels has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list; there are more than 14 million copies of his books in print. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, and several have been international bestsellers. He has won two first-place Storytelling World awards for his children’s books and the Romantic Times Best Women’s Novel Award. Evans received the Washington Times Humanitarian of the Century Award and the Volunteers of America National Empathy Award for his work helping abused children. Evans lives in Salt Lake City with his wife, Keri, and their five children.

ALSO BY RICHARD PAUL EVANS

The Walk
Promise Me
The Christmas List
Grace
The Gift
Finding Noel
The Sunflower
A Perfect Day
The Last Promise
The Christmas Box Miracle
The Carousel
The Looking Glass
The Locket
The Letter
Timepiece
The Christmas Box

For Children

The Dance
The Christmas Candle
The Spyglass
The Tower
The Light of Christmas

Simon & Schuster
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New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events
or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Paul Evans

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or
portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address
Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department,
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition April 2011

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Designed by Davina Mock-Maniscalco

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Control Number 2011 006 336
ISBN 978-1-4391-9137-8
ISBN 978-1-4391-9147-7 (ebook)

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” from the book,
The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem.
Copyright 1923, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company.
Copyright 1951 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of
Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Epilogue

Reading Group Guide

Introduction

Topics & Questions for Discussion

Enhance Your Book Club

About Richard Paul Evans

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank those who have made this book possible.

First, my lovely and wise daughter Jenna, who travels Alan’s route with me, figuratively and literally. You’re a great travel companion, sweetheart—a true saunterer. Thank you for all your help. I couldn’t do it without you.

To my sweetheart, Keri. For your support, friendship, love, wisdom, and goodness. I’m grateful for you.

To Laurie Liss—friend, confidant, secret agent.

To all my friends at Simon & Schuster: Carolyn Reidy, for keeping the house in order and for all your support over all these years and all these books. Many more thanks to come. To Jonathan Karp. I enjoy working with you, Jon. Thank you for your attention to this series as well as your input and creativity. To my new editor, Trish Todd. Thanks, Trish. I look forward to years of working together. You have a comforting spirit. (Also to Molly, your supernatural assistant, thanks for being so remarkably competent, cheerful, and dependable.) And Gypsy da Silva. I adore you, Gypsy. We need to do Little Brazil again.

Mike Noble and Noriko Okabe in S&S audio. You make the marathon sessions survivable.

My staff: Diane Glad, Heather McVey, Barry Evans, Karen Christoffersen, and Lisa Johnson.

The Christmas Box House Staff and Board.

Also, some friends who have made a difference in my life this year. Karen Roylance. Glenn Beck. Kevin Balfe. Shelli Tripp. Judy Bangerter. Patrice Archibald. The Students of Riverton High School—go Silver Rush!

As always, my dear readers. Thank you for your loyalty and goodness. There is no magic without you.

To my big brother, Dave. I still look up to you.

If you are going through Hell, keep going.

—Winston Churchill

PROLOGUE

I had a dream last night
that McKale came to me.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“South Dakota,” I replied.

She stared at me without speaking and I realized that she didn’t mean my location.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Keep walking,” she said.

“Just keep walking.”

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

A few years ago I was walking through a Seattle shopping mall when a woman at a kiosk peddling discounted airfare shouted to me, “Sir, if you have a minute, I can save you nearly half on your travel!”

“Thank you,” I politely replied, “but I’m really not interested.”

Undeterred, she asked, “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would that be?”

I stopped and looked at her. “Home.” I turned and walked away.

I suppose I’m as unlikely a candidate to walk across the country as you could find. I was never one who, as Steinbeck wrote, was afflicted with “the urge to be someplace else.”

That’s not to say I haven’t traveled. I’ve done my share of it and I have the passport stamps to prove it. I’ve seen the Great Wall of China, the Hermitage in Russia, and the Roman Catacombs. Truthfully, all that travel wasn’t my idea. My wife, McKale, wanted to see the world, and I wanted to see her happy. Actually, I just wanted to see her, so I went along. The foreign locales were just different backdrops for my picture of her.

Her. Every day I miss her. I may be a closet homebody, but life has taught me that home was never a place. Home was her. The day McKale died, I lost my home.

Up to the moment I lost McKale, I had lived my life as a liar. I don’t say that just because I was in advertising. (Though that qualifies me as a professional liar.) Ironically, I was annoyingly honest in unimportant matters. For example, I once went inside a McDonald’s to return a dime when the gal at the drive-in window gave me too much change back. But I deceived myself about the things of greatest consequence. I told myself that McKale and I would be together until we were old and gray—that we were somehow guaranteed a certain amount of life before our time expired, like cartons of milk. Perhaps a certain amount of self-deception is necessary to get one through the day. But whatever we tell ourselves, it doesn’t change the truth: our lives are built on foundations of sand.

For those of you just joining my journey, my childhood sweetheart, my wife, McKale, broke her back in a horseback riding accident, paralyzing her from the waist down. Four weeks later she died of complications from her accident. During her last days, while I was caring for her, my business was stolen by my partner, Kyle Craig, and my financial world collapsed, leading to the foreclosure of my home and repossession of my cars.

With my wife, business, house, and cars gone, I contemplated taking my life. Instead, I packed a few things, said good-bye to Seattle, and started my walk to the farthest walkable distance on my map: Key West, Florida.

I suppose if I were completely honest with myself (which I’ve already established I’m not), I’d have to admit that I’m not really walking to Florida. Key West is as foreign to me as any of the towns I’ve walked through on the way. I’m walking to find what life may hold. I’m looking for hope. Hope that life might still be worth living, and hope for the grace to accept what I must live without.

Perhaps that’s true of all of us. I’m certainly not alone in my quest to find that grace. There are others I have met on my journey. Like the elderly Polish man in Mitchell, South Dakota, who took me in; a young mother I stayed with in Sidney, Iowa; the old man I met in Hannibal roaming graveyards in search of his wife; and the woman I met as I walked out of my hotel in Custer, South Dakota. This is their story too.

Again, welcome to my walk.

CHAPTER

One

One can never know what
a new road will bring.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Custer, South Dakota, is a tidy little tourist town near Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial. I spent two days in Custer, convalescing after a long and emotionally challenging stretch through eastern Wyoming. Sunday I was ready to resume my journey. It was a cool May morning and I rose with the sun, showered, and shaved. The luxuriousness of my temporary surroundings was not lost on me. In the weeks ahead, crossing through the barren stretch of South Dakota’s badlands, I would be without a soft bed and hot water.

I laid my road atlas open on the bed and studied it for a few minutes, drawing a path with my finger. Then, once I was committed to a course, I marked it in pen. My next target was thirteen hundred miles away: Memphis, Tennessee, by way of St. Louis. From Custer I would walk north until my path intersected with Interstate 90, then I’d walk east through South Dakota, through the badlands, about four hundred miles to Sioux Falls.

The night before I had washed five pairs of my socks in the hotel sink. They were all gray and threadbare and due to be retired. Unfortunately, they were also still damp. I put them in the dry-cleaning sack from the hotel closet and packed them into my backpack. Then I put on my sweat-stained socks from the day before, laced up my shoes, and headed out of the hotel.

As I walked through the hotel’s lobby I noticed a woman sitting in one of the chairs near the reception desk. She had gray hair, though she looked too young to be so gray. She wore a long, black woolen coat, and a burgundy silk scarf tied around her neck. She was beautiful, or had been once, and something about her was hard to look away from. Something about her looked familiar. Peculiarly, she was likewise watching me with an intense gaze. When I was just a few yards from her she said, “Alan.”

I stopped. “Excuse me?”

“You are Alan Christoffersen?”

As I looked into her face I was certain we had met before, but I couldn’t place her. “Yes,” I said. “I am.” Then I realized who she was.

Before I could speak she said, “I’ve been looking for you for weeks.”

CHAPTER

Two

There are people such as Benedict

Arnold or Adolf Hitler, whose names
become synonymous with evil and
more adjective than proper noun.

For me, “Pamela” is such a name.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The woman was McKale’s mother.

“Pamela,” I said. It was a name I had never spoken without pain or anger—and usually both—a name that seemed to me, as a boy, and even as an adult, to represent everything wrong with the world. Pamela was the source of McKale’s greatest angst—a permanent sliver in her heart. There’s a good reason that I hadn’t recognized her immediately. I had met Pamela only once before, briefly, at McKale’s funeral and had said all I ever intended to say to her then.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I was hoping to talk to you,” she said.

“About what?”

She swallowed nervously. “Everything.”

“Everything,” I repeated. I shook my head. “No. We have nothing to talk about.”

She looked upset, but not particularly surprised by my response. “I don’t blame you, but I’ve come a long way . . . ”

I looked at her for a moment then lifted my pack. “So have I.” I turned from her and walked out the hotel’s front door.

The town of Custer was bustling with tourists and the traffic was brisk, the sidewalks along Mount Rushmore Road crowded with those who had come to see the monument. I planned on walking about twenty miles that day and I was ready for breakfast, though, admittedly, seeing Pamela had somewhat dulled my appetite.

I couldn’t believe she had come looking for me. What could she possibly want to talk about? After I had walked about a hundred yards from the hotel, I looked back. To my dismay Pamela was following me, walking about a block behind me on the same side of the street. She wore a sun visor and had a large pink bag draped over her shoulder. Half a block later, I stepped into the Songbird Café—the restaurant the hotel clerk had recommended.

The café was small and crowded and the waitress had just seated me at a round table in the corner when the bell above the door rang and Pamela walked in. She held her bag in both hands and glanced furtively at me as she waited to be seated. Fortunately, the hostess led her to a table on the opposite side of the room, where she stayed. I was glad that she didn’t come to my table. I would have left if she had.

I wolfed down my breakfast—a tall stack of buttermilk pancakes with two fried eggs, three strips of overdone bacon, and a cup of coffee. I paid my bill, then slipped on my heavy backpack and walked out. Pamela was still sitting at her table, sipping coffee, her dark eyes following me.

I crossed to the other side of the street and walked several blocks back toward the hotel, turning in the middle of town at the 16 Junction. I followed the highway north toward the Crazy Horse Memorial. There was more than one route to I-90 from Custer, but 16 would lead me back by the monument, which, if not a shorter route, seemed more interesting.

When I got to the top of the hill above Custer I glanced back at the town. Unbelievably, Pamela was there, walking a quarter mile behind me. I shook my head. Did she really intend to follow me? I doubted that she was in the physical condition to keep up with me. She didn’t even have the shoes for it. If she thought I was going to stop and wait for her she was sadly mistaken.

The first three miles from the city were mostly uphill and Pamela quickly fell back until I couldn’t see her anymore. Less than a half hour from Custer she was nowhere to be seen. I wondered what McKale would have thought of the situation. The mother she had spent her life longing for was chasing me.

Four miles out of Custer I reached the Avenue of the Chiefs. I was still enamored with Korczak’s work (will forever be), so I took a short detour and walked up to the park entrance. There’s a ten-dollar admission fee to the park, and I didn’t have the time or inclination to walk all the way to the monument, so I just stood at the entrance and admired the work from a distance. I wondered if the massive sculpture would be completed during my lifetime. I hoped so. Even as an old man, I would definitely return to see the finished piece. Suddenly my heart ached. The idea of growing old without McKale filled me with intense loneliness. I turned back toward the highway and resumed my walk.

The road after Crazy Horse was mostly steep downgrade with wide shoulders and only a few buildings along the way, including a business offering helicopter rides to the monuments.

I stopped in Pennington County and ate lunch out of my pack. I had an apple, a granola bar, and a slightly smashed ham and Swiss sandwich I had purchased the day before at the grocery store in Custer.

As I ate, my thoughts returned to Pamela—along with my anger. I wondered how far she had walked before she had turned back. I also wondered how she had found me. After a few minutes I pushed her from my mind. The thought of her following me overwhelmed me with disgust. I finished eating then got back on the road.

The next few hours were ideal walking conditions—smooth, new roads with black asphalt, wide shoulders, clean air, and a beautiful mountain setting—something I appreciated more after my long walk through the desolation of eastern Wyoming.

The sun had begun its decline when I heard a car pull up behind me and roll to a quick stop, gravel crunching beneath its wheels. I turned around to see an aged, turquoise Chevy truck with a matching camper top, stopped about fifty feet behind me. The passenger side door opened and Pamela stepped out of the vehicle. She said something to the driver, then swung her bag over her shoulder and continued walking after me. I groaned. She’s as persistent as McKale, I thought. Maybe persistence is genetic. If McKale wanted something she didn’t stop until she got it.

After the truck drove away, Pamela shouted to me. “Alan, we need to talk.”

“No, we don’t,” I shouted back without looking. “Just leave me alone.” I hurried my pace. When I reached Hill City an hour later she was nowhere to be seen.

CHAPTER

Three

I don’t know if poltergeists or ghosts
exist, nor do I care. There’s too much

I don’t understand about the world

I inhabit for me to worry about a
world I haven’t been to yet.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

During its brief heyday, Hill City was nicknamed “Hell City” or “One Mile of Hell,” since there was a church on each end of town with fifteen saloons in between them. The city was established during America’s centennial celebration of 1876, and was originally a mining town, only the second to be settled in the Black Hills.

Hill City was about twenty miles from Custer, most of the way downhill, which may seem an easier walk, but I was feeling the descent in my knees, which were throbbing. Darkness was falling when I started looking for a place to spend the night.

On Hill City’s main road I came upon a hotel called the Alpine Inn, a quaint, Bavarian-styled building with gingerbread trim and a wood-planked porch. Above the front stairway was a sign that read:

Fine European Lodging

I walked into an empty bar scattered with small round tables. To the left of the room was a door that led to a restaurant, which was surprisingly crowded. A woman standing near the restaurant’s entrance was watching me from behind a burled walnut reception desk. She smiled as I approached her. “Good evening,” she said.

“I’d like to look at your menu,” I said.

“No need,” she said. “We only have one item on our menu. Actually, two. Filet mignon, small or large.”

At first I thought she was joking but her expression remained serious. “Really?”

She nodded. “I know, it’s unusual, isn’t it?”

I had never encountered a restaurant like this, but judging from how crowded the place was, they appeared to be doing something right.

“I’ll have the filet mignon,” I said.

“Good choice,” she said. “Right this way, please.”

She sat me at a small table near the room’s back, inner wall. There were paper menus in a stand on the table, which, considering the restaurant’s limited selection, seemed a little odd.

A moment later my waitress appeared. She was a tall woman probably my age, with blond hair and a prominent nose.

“I’m Heidi,” she said. “Large or small?”

“Large.”

Not surprisingly, she didn’t write anything down. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Do you have juice?”

“Apple, orange, and cranberry.”

“I’ll have some apple juice. Can you mix that with cranberry?”

“Absolutely. One cranapple.”

“And some ice water.”

“Of course.”

Before she walked away I asked, “Do you know if your hotel has any vacancies tonight?”

“No, but I’ll check.”

A minute later she returned with my juice. “Here you are. And I checked on our rooms. Unfortunately, we don’t have any vacancies. We only have four rooms.”

I frowned. I had been looking forward to staying there. “Do you know of someplace else nearby I could stay?”

She thought for a moment. “I’m pretty sure there’s a bed-and-breakfast about a half mile north of here. It’s called the Holly something. Holly Inn, I think.”

“Along the highway?”

She nodded. “If you keep heading north you won’t miss it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll check it out after I eat.”

My meal was brought out quickly—another benefit of a limited menu. The filet mignon was served with a lettuce wedge, homemade ranch dressing, and buttered Texas Toast.

“Is there anything else you need?” Heidi asked.

“No,” I said. “Are you always this busy?”

“Year round. The hotel is busy too. The rooms are nice.” An impish grin crossed her face. “Haunted, but nice.”

“Haunted?”

“Yes, but I probably shouldn’t tell you that.”

“How do you know they’re haunted? Have you ever seen a ghost?”

“No. But one of the other waitresses said she did.”

“And you believe her?”

“She’s never lied to me before. Besides, it’s not what she said, it’s how she said it. It happened in the middle of a busy Friday night. She was in the employee restroom behind the kitchen. While she was washing her hands she looked in the mirror. There was a woman dressed in eighteenth-century clothing standing right behind her. We all heard her scream.

“I went to see if she was all right and she was pale and shaking. She looked like she was going to faint. She quit on the spot. I ended up taking all her tables. She’s never set foot in here since.” She looked at me, studying my reaction. “Anyway, I better let you eat before your dinner gets cold. There’s more about the hotel on the back of the menu. Bon appétit.”

I cut into the steak. The meat was masterfully prepared and so tender that, had I been inclined, I could have cut it with my fork. I took a few bites then lifted the menu. The hotel’s history was printed on the back, and I read as I ate.

Hill City was a placer gold mining town, founded during the western gold rush. Its success was short-lived, and the miners quickly moved on, leaving the town to two residents—a man and his hound.

In 1883, the town experienced another boom when tin was discovered, and an English mining company invested millions organizing the Harney Peak Tin Mining, Milling, and Manufacturing Company. The company built the inn—then named the Harney Peak Hotel—as a luxurious residence for the mining executives. Like the town’s previous mining venture, the tin rush didn’t last very long, and the town died again, until Mount Rushmore resuscitated the area, bringing in tourist gold.

In 1974, a German woman named Wally (pronounced Volley) Matush bought the Harney Peak Hotel and renamed it the Alpine Inn. By then, ghost sightings had become commonplace and the new management wasn’t shy about telling their guests that the hotel was haunted. Wally even requested to be buried under the hotel when she died so she could walk the halls with the other ghosts.

Reading about hauntings made me think about Pamela. I wondered what had happened to her since I’d left her behind. For the first time since she’d shown up, my anger had settled enough that I could objectively examine my feelings. In spite of my rage, I felt somewhat conflicted about the situation. Part of me felt that even talking to Pamela was a betrayal of McKale. Another part, perhaps a more civilized part, thought it wrong to not at least let her say what she’d come so far to say.

I pushed the conflict from my mind. Right or wrong, I had no desire to talk to her. If she was hurting, so be it. She had brought this on herself. McKale owed her nothing. I owed her nothing.

I finished eating, paid the bill, then picked up my pack and headed north up the main road in search of the bed-and-breakfast. I stopped at a small market on the way and stocked up on water and supplies: Pop-Tarts, apples, trail mix, salami, oranges, protein bars, jerky, a baguette of hard crusted bread, and a few canned items: soup, chili, and stew.

I asked the cashier if she knew anything about the bed-and-breakfast, but, disconcertingly, she had never heard of it. I wondered how that was possible in a town of this size. I went back outside and continued to walk, worrying that I had unwittingly passed by the house in the dark. I had walked another mile before I came to a sign on the side of the road that read:

The Holly House

A Bed and Breakfast Resort

I wasn’t sure where the resort part came from, as the place looked more like the Brady Bunch house than a fancy resort. The building was lit outside with flood lamps, revealing an exterior decorated with holly leaves and wreaths.

I walked around the house and knocked at the side door. I was met by a middle-aged woman who I assumed was the “resort’s” owner.

“May I help you?”

“I need a room for the night.”

“Welcome,” she said, smiling broadly. “My name’s Dawna. Come in.”

I stepped inside what looked to be the home’s living room. The room had dark red shag carpet and forest green walls, covered with framed prints of Christmas-themed watercolors.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Alan.”

“Pleased to meet you, Alan. We have five rooms available and a cabin out back. I’ll show you around and you can tell me which room you’d like.”

“Are your rooms haunted?” I asked.

She looked at me with a strange expression. “Not that I know of. Did you need a haunted room?”

I grinned. “No. Unhaunted is fine.”

Dawna led me through all five of the rooms, beginning with the Western Room, which featured a replica of Wyatt Earp’s revolver, the USA Room, the Bridal Suite, the Harley Room (undoubtedly patronizing the annual motorcycle event in Sturgis), and the Victorian Room, which was decorated with Dawna’s mother-in-law’s christening dress and a working, antique Victrola.

The rooms all looked nice and I didn’t care much about which room I stayed in, so I selected the Western Room for the pragmatic reason that it was closest to the front door. That and I liked its tub, which was just about large enough for a cowboy and his horse.

“Fine choice,” Dawna said. “For breakfast tomorrow I’ll be serving my festive breakfast casserole. What time do you think you’ll be wanting to eat?”

“I usually get an early start,” I said, pleased at the offer of something festive for breakfast. “Maybe seven. Possibly earlier.”

“I’ll have breakfast waiting for you. Have a good night.”

I went to my room and turned on the television while I let the jetted tub fill. The television was tuned to a reality show about people bidding on the contents of abandoned storage units. They should do a show about a guy walking across America, I thought. Just not me.

I turned off the television, undressed, then soaked in water hot enough to turn my skin red until I was ready to go to sleep.

CHAPTER

Four

To say that one doesn’t know when to
quit is either an insult or a compliment,
depending on the outcome.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning I woke to the sound of dishes clanking in the dining room. I checked the clock. It was nearly eight o’clock. I showered, shaved, and dressed, then packed up and went outside my room for breakfast. Dawna walked into the dining room about the same time I did.

“Good morning, sleepyhead. Glad I got up at five-thirty to get breakfast on.”

“I’m sorry. I . . . ”

She waved her hand. “I’m just joshin’ you. I had another guest I had to get breakfast for. What would you like to drink? I’ve got coffee, orange juice, apple juice, milk, all of the above if you like.”

“Coffee and orange juice,” I said.

She walked back to the kitchen while I sat down at the table, which was set with a poinsettia print tablecloth and Christmas place settings trimmed in red and gold with holly leaf decorations. The centerpiece was a glass chimney and candle set in a holly wreath.

A few minutes later Dawna returned to the dining room holding a casserole dish and a silver serving spoon. “My festive breakfast casserole is one of our guests’ favorites,” she said. “It has pork sausage, cheddar, picante sauce, bread, and eggs. It’s delicious.”

“It looks good,” I said.

“It is.” She spooned a large serving of casserole onto my plate, then said, “Oh, I forgot your beverages.”

She went back to the kitchen, returning a minute later with my juice and coffee. She set the drinks down and sat down across the table from me, presumably to watch me eat.

I took a couple of bites, expecting her to say something, but she didn’t. She just sat there watching me, which, frankly, was a little uncomfortable. Finally I asked, “How’s business?”

She sighed. “A little slow but it’s picking up. It’s not tourist season yet. During Sturgis we just rent the whole place out. You know what Sturgis is?”

I nodded. “I had employees who went every year. The stories they would tell . . . ”

“Oh yes, there are stories. Last year there was a woman on a Harley who called herself ‘Lady Godiva.’ I don’t need to tell you what she was wearing. Or not wearing.”

The town of Sturgis, South Dakota, is the epicenter of the world’s largest annual gathering of Harley-Davidson motorcycle riders. Every August, thousands of bikers, from business magnates to Hells Angels, descend on the town. There’s nothing else like it in the world.

“How far are we from Sturgis?” I asked.

“A little over fifty miles.”

“I’d like to see that sometime.”

“There’s not much to see this time of year,” she said. “ ’Course it’s not as wild as it used to be. It’s like Christmas—it got commercialized.”

Just then I heard a doorknob turn and the back door opened. I looked over as Dawna’s other guest entered the room. It was Pamela.

“Hi, Alan,” she said softly.

I stared at her in disbelief. “I thought you’d given up.”

“No.”

I looked at her for a moment then stood. “Fine. Follow me to Key West if you want. But you should get some better shoes.” I turned to Dawna, whose eyes were nervously darting back and forth between us. “I need my bill.”

“I’ll get it,” she said, standing quickly. She walked over to her cubbyholed maple desk. “It will be eighty-nine dollars for the night.” She held up a handwritten invoice. “Ninety-two fifty-six with tax.”

Pamela stared at me. “Alan . . . Just five minutes. Please.”

“I told you no.”

I handed Dawna my credit card, then, as it was processing, went back to my room and got my backpack. When I returned to the dining room, Pamela was still there. I retrieved my credit card, signed the bill, then walked past Pamela to the front door.

“Please, just hear me out,” she said.

“I told you yesterday, we have nothing to talk about. Nothing’s changed since then.” I walked out the door, slamming it shut behind me.

As I reached the other end of the parking lot, Pamela stepped outside. “You owe me,” she shouted.

I spun around. “What?”

“You owe me.”

A flash of rage engulfed me. “I owe you?”

She walked halfway across the parking lot to me. “Yes. You do.”

“For what? For abandoning a little girl? For ruining my wife’s life?”

She looked me in the eyes. “Her life wasn’t ruined. She had you.” She stepped closer, and her voice was calmer. “If I hadn’t been a bad mother, would McKale have been yours the way she was? Would she have needed you like she did? Would she have even married you?”

Her questions took me aback. After a moment I said, “Go home, Pamela. Go back to wherever you’ve been hiding all these years. You had your chance.”

Her eyes welled up with tears.

I turned back to the road. I walked fifty yards or so before I glanced back. I couldn’t believe it. She was still following me. Though, this time, with a slight limp. It didn’t take me long to leave her far behind.

The strangest thing I saw that morning—other than Pamela—was a sign for Red Ass Rhubarb Wine. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry to flee my pursuer I might have stopped for a taste. I could have used some wine. Pamela’s questions bothered me.

Just outside Hill City I came to a place called Mistletoe Ranch, which wasn’t really a ranch, but a Christmas emporium. A sign in front of the building proclaimed it The Ultimate Christmas Store.

McKale was a die-hard fan of Christmas and, as she had in so many of her passions, converted me as well. Even in spring I couldn’t resist the allure of the season. Since I hadn’t seen Pamela for more than an hour I went inside.

The place was indeed full of Christmas. Tinny, banjo Christmas music played from overhead speakers, and the room smelled of pine and buttercream scented candles. The walls were shelved and piled high with hundreds of unique holiday decorations, knickknacks, and collectibles, from Betty Boop Christmas ornaments to Elvis stockings to miniature porcelain Christmas villages.

There were a few things I wanted but since purchasing anything I’d have to carry would have been absurd (although I did consider purchasing a Marilyn Monroe ornament to hang from the back of my pack) I left empty-handed. My stop wasn’t a waste of time, though. The visit had distracted me from the emotions stirred up by my encounter with Pamela. Whatever the season, a healthy dose of Christmas lifts the spirits.

As I opened the door to leave I looked both ways to see if Pamela was there. She was. I don’t know how she knew I had gone into the store—she was nowhere in sight when I’d gone in—but she was there, standing across the road waiting for me.

I started off again, walking even faster than usual. Within fifteen minutes Pamela was out of sight, though by now I no longer assumed that she’d given up her quest.

A few miles past Hill City, the highway split. I continued on 16 east until it ran north again. Around noon I reached the historic Rockerville Café, where I stopped to eat a hamburger and failed to learn what made the place historic. Actually, I didn’t care what made the place historic. After traveling through Idaho, where everything was historic, the label had lost its luster.

I didn’t stay long. I hoped I had lost Pamela where the highway split, but in case I hadn’t, I didn’t want to give her the chance to catch up. I was relieved she wasn’t standing there as I left the café.

A couple miles from the café a Forest Service sign informed me that I was leaving the Black Hills National Forest, though you wouldn’t know it by looking; as far as I could see, the road continued to be lined with forest, as well as tourist attractions, hoping to catch the crumbs from Mount Rushmore’s table.

I passed another Christmas shop (apparently Christmas is a moneymaker in South Dakota) and Bear Country USA—a 250-acre drive-through wildlife park, boasting the world’s largest collection of privately owned black bears. I could see some of the bears from the highway and I thought back to the grizzly I had encountered in the wild three weeks earlier in Yellowstone. These captive bears didn’t look nearly as lively or dangerous. In fact, they looked sedated and about as frisky as my father an hour after Thanksgiving dinner.

There were more tourist attractions in this stretch than perhaps anywhere else in America. I passed a reptile zoo, a wax museum, a corn maze, and a mountain zip line, the latter of which reminded me of my eleventh birthday.

That was a birthday to remember. Actually, it was impossible to forget. My dad, in a rare moment of introspection, decided that in the absence of a mother, a dutiful father should probably throw his only son a birthday party at least once in his life. This was something that he’d never done before, so, not surprisingly, he was clueless. I once saw my dad dismantle a five-horsepower Briggs & Stratton engine from our lawn mower, strip it down to its block, then reassemble it perfectly. But he couldn’t put a birthday party together to save his life.

He started by inviting random children from the neighborhood, many of whom I didn’t know, including two sisters whose family had just migrated to the U.S. from Hungary. The girls didn’t speak English, or at least not that any of us had heard, and they huddled together the whole time speaking in frightened whispers to each other.

My father borrowed a minivan and took all seven of us to a Pizza Hut (which wasn’t a bad call), then to a zip line he’d found a coupon for, located about forty-five minutes from our home.

The Hungarian girls only became relevant to the party when the younger of the girls (none of us ever learned either of their names) somehow got her long blond hair caught in the pulley, stopping her mid-ride and leaving her dangling hundreds of feet above the ground, screaming hysterically.

The rescue mission was well worth the price of admission. We, and a few dozen others from waiting groups, gaped as one of the zip line workers donned thick gloves and shimmied down the line until he was close enough to cut the girl’s hair with a pair of wire cutters, sending her rolling down the line. We clapped and hooted when she was free, unanimously judging the rescue operation a great success. All of us, that is, but the sisters, who apparently thought otherwise, evidenced by their red and tear-stained faces. The older girl kept examining her sister’s chopped hair and crying.

When we got back to our neighborhood, my dad dropped the sisters off in their driveway and sped away before they got to their door. I asked if he should tell their parents what had happened, but my dad just mumbled something like, “They don’t speak English that well,” and “They’re from a communist-bloc country, they’re used to things like that.” I pondered that statement for years, and every time I heard something about a communist country, I imagined unhappy girls with erratically lopped off tufts of hair.

By twilight I was close to Rapid City and had I been in a car I would have driven on to the city center, but I had already walked twenty miles and there was an ominously steep hill looming ahead of me, so I ended my day outside the city limits at the Happy Holiday Motel. I expected at any moment to see Pamela step out of a car behind me but she never did. I was foolishly optimistic that she had finally given up and gone home. I was wrong.

CHAPTER

Five

Last night I dreamt I was kissing McKale.

As I pressed my lips against hers I was
filled with the most exquisite joy. Then
my joy turned to horror when I realized
that I wasn’t kissing her, but giving
her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke the next morning wondering what Pamela wanted to say. If she had come to apologize, she was too late for that. The person she needed to apologize to was already gone.

After breakfast, I stretched my legs and back, then donned my pack and started walking.

I don’t like days that start with large hills; the same was figuratively true when I ran an advertising agency. In less than two hours, Rapid City loomed ahead of me.

Rapid City reminded me a lot of Spokane. Since it was the first city of any real size I’d walked through since Cody, Wyoming, I decided to bypass the truck route and walk through town. No doubt inspired by Mount Rushmore’s presidential fervor, there was a bronze statue on every street corner depicting a U.S. president engaged in some activity demonstrative of their term in office.

I didn’t recognize many of them. Actually, most of them. This wasn’t surprising. I mean, could anyone alive today pick James K. Polk from a police lineup or recognize Rutherford B. Hayes if they bumped into him in an elevator? Or what about William Henry Harrison, our shortest-lived president, who died just thirty-two days into office? I wondered what his statue looked like—a man in bed?

At the end of the strip, I turned left on East Boulevard to I-90. Walking in the city is always slower, and adding to my delay was some major road construction that forced me to dodge road maintenance workers and machinery for the next few miles. Not halfway through the city I was longing for the wilds again.

The only restaurant I encountered, other than the usual fast-food chains, was a Vietnamese restaurant, which sounded interesting. Once inside, though, I ended up ordering things that weren’t Vietnamese—sesame chicken and Thai curry shrimp. They both were good. I ate quickly, eager to get back on my way and out of the city.

I stopped at a grocery store to stock up on rations: canned fruit, beef jerky, Clif Bars, bread, Pop-Tarts, a jar of artichoke hearts, and water. A half hour past the grocery store I reached Interstate 90 and headed east.

The interstate was dangerously busy, and most of the way I was forced to walk on the freeway’s uneven, cratered shoulder.

By late afternoon the traffic eased as the landscape turned dull and barren. Acres of trailer parks and the lack of trees rendered the scenery drab. I felt like I was in eastern Wyoming again. That is until I saw my first Wall Drug sign.

Wall Drug is a legend, a true American success story and a case study in the power of advertising. Any adman worth his salt knows about Wall Drug.

The Wall Drug story began in 1931, when Ted Hustead, a young pharmacist working in Canova, South Dakota, made the fateful decision to strike out on his own. With a three-thousand-dollar inheritance from his father, he and his wife, Dorothy, hopped in their Model T and began scouring the state for a store to purchase.

Their search led them to the small, desolate town of Wall, South Dakota—an area of the state Ted’s father-in-law described as “about as Godforsaken as you can get.” The town was not only in the middle of nowhere, but it was poor as well—the residents were mostly the impoverished survivors of the Great Depression. Wall was hardly the kind of place to start a successful business.

In spite of the obvious drawbacks, Ted and Dorothy felt at home in the small town, largely due to the fact that it had a Catholic church where they could go to Mass every day. They prayed about their decision and, feeling divine guidance, decided to buy the struggling drugstore.

As the months, then years, passed, their drugstore floundered, constantly teetering on the brink of failure. In spite of his faith, Ted began to wonder if they’d done the right thing. He finally decided to give the store five more years. “Five good years,” he told his wife, “and if it doesn’t work by then . . . ”

Dorothy was more optimistic. “In a few years Mount Rushmore will be finished,” she reasoned. “There will be a lot more traffic and business.”

She was half right. Every year the traffic that passed by Wall increased, but their business didn’t. Day after day the couple sat on the porch of their store and watched the cars drive by—few of them stopping in the dusty town.

Then, one day, Dorothy had an epiphany. Being in the middle of nowhere meant that all those people passing them by had been driving a long time across the hot, desolate prairie. “They’re thirsty,” Dorothy said. “They want water. Ice-cold water. And we’ve got plenty of ice and plenty of water.”

The next day, Ted painted several signs offering FREE ICE WATER. Then, following the model of the famous Burma Shave highway signs, he planted his signs every mile or so leading to their store. By the time he got back to their drugstore, people had already begun stopping for free ice water and Dorothy was running around like crazy trying to keep up with their other purchases.

Today, the world-famous drugstore draws millions of visitors a year, up to twenty thousand visitors a day. Their advertising signs, like the one I’d just seen, were smaller than conventional billboards, but what they lacked in size they made up for in frequency, with appeals designed to reach everyone.

From the moment I saw that first sign, there was always a sign in view.

Get a Milkshake. Wall Drug

Get a Rootbeer. Wall Drug

Pretty Near. Wall Drug

Free Coffee & Donuts for Vietnam Vets. Wall Drug

Still a slave to an old advertising habit of mine, I took out my journal and began writing down the slogans. When I started my recording, I had already passed four signs and I was still more than forty miles from Wall.

By evening I had put in around nineteen miles through vast stretches of nothing but plains, fields, and Wall Drug signage. The last of the day’s light was beginning to fade, and I was looking for a place to camp when a car pulled up about fifty feet behind me. The door opened and Pamela got out. She thanked the driver, then shut the door.

“Alan,” she said.

Unbelievable, I thought. She’s the Energizer Bunny of stalkers.

I postponed my plan to camp and continued to walk. Pamela followed. I walked perhaps another five miles until there was no sign of her—or anything else—except a lot of nothing and the Wall Drug signs. It was a warm night and I rolled out my pad and sleeping bag under a freeway overpass. I wondered how Pamela was planning to spend the night.

The next morning I woke a little before sunrise. I looked around for Pamela but didn’t see her, though I was certain she was out there somewhere. I wondered how she was surviving. She had no provisions, no sleeping bag, no air mattress, just a simple ladies’ handbag and bad shoes. Had she really slept on the road?

I ate two Pop-Tarts, a Clif Bar, and an apple, then set off for a new day of Wall Drug signs.

Wall Drug. Historical Photos

Wall Drug. 33 Miles to Go

All Roads Lead to Wall Drug

Western Wear. Wall Drug

Road Trip. Wall Drug

Sheriff on Duty. Wall Drug

Western Home Décor. Wall Drug

Wall Drug or Bust

6 foot Rabbit. Wall Drug

Buffalo Burgers. Wall Drug

Free Ice Water. Wall Drug

Be Yourself. Wall Drug

Badlands Maps. Wall Drug

Frosted Mug Beer. Wall Drug

Dig it. Wall Drug

After an hour of walking, I made out the figure of someone walking ahead of me in the distance. Couldn’t be, I thought. Couldn’t be her.

It was. Pamela was walking in front of me. Even from a distance I could see that her limping had increased.

I crossed to the opposite side of the road. When I was adjacent to her I could see how bad she looked. Her hair was matted and she looked pale.

“Please talk to me,” she said. “I’m begging.”

“Go home, Pamela.”

“I’m not quitting,” she said. “I don’t care if it kills me.”

“It might,” I said.

“Please.”

I kept on walking.

Wall Drug USA exit 110

Wall Drug Since 1931

Coffee 5 cents. Wall Drug

A Dakota Must See. Wall Drug

Refreshing Free Ice Water. Wall Drug

Around noon I stopped along the side of the road to eat a can of fruit cocktail, another Clif Bar, and my own invention, a beef jerky sandwich. The land was flat but with the exception of the signs, there was nothing as far as the eye could see, including Pamela.

Tourist Info. Wall Drug

Skinny Saloon. Wall Drug

It’s cool. Wall Drug

Experience Wall Drug Mining Co.

American Icon. Wall Drug

Kids Love Wall Drug

As I walked through the unvarying scenery my mind wandered. I wondered how Kailamai and Nicole were doing. Nicole was the woman who had taken me in after I was attacked near Spokane. Kailamai was a young runaway I had met shortly after near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. I had introduced them to each other, and Kailamai was now Nicole’s roommate. It felt like months since I’d seen them. I counted back the days. Thirty-six days. Just thirty-six days. It felt like six months. At least.

I remembered that back in Spokane I had promised to call my father every week. He had bought me a phone for that express purpose. I wasn’t sure whether I would have reception or not, but I stopped, took my cell phone from my pack, and turned it on. There were two bars. I held down on the number 1, calling my father. He answered before the second ring.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Nowhere. I’m in South Dakota on Highway 90.”

“Did you pass Wall Drug yet?” he asked.

“You know about Wall Drug?” I asked.

“Everyone knows about Wall Drug,” he said. “It was in Reader’s Digest and Life magazine.” In my father’s world, everyone had read those magazines. Still did.

“No. But I’ve passed a bunch of their signs.”

“They’re famous for those signs. How are you?”

“I’m doing okay. And you?”

“You know me. Nothing changes.”

“Have you heard from Nicole?”

“Yes. We talk a couple times a week. She’s really a pleasant young lady. We’re taking things slowly. I got her into an IRA and some mutual funds.”

“How is she?” I asked.

“She’s doing great. She got that inheritance.”

“I didn’t mean financially,” I said.

“Oh. Well I wouldn’t know about that. She sounded well.”

“Did she mention Kailamai?”

“Who?”

“I guess not.”

“She asked about you. She wanted to know if I’d heard from you and how you’re doing.”

“Tell her I’m still walking.”

He laughed. “I’ll do that. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she sounds a little smitten.”

“With who?”

“Who do you think?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond so I changed the subject. “Something weird is happening. McKale’s mother . . . ”

“Pamela,” my father said. I was surprised he knew her name. But of course he did. He and Sam had been neighbors for more than a decade.

“Right. Pamela,” I said. “She’s following me.”

“Following you? In her car?”

“On foot.”

“She’s walking with you?”

“Not with me. She’s following me.”

There was a long pause. “What does she want?”

“I’m not sure. She says she wants to talk to me.”

“About what?”

“No idea.”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“I’m trying to avoid her.”

“I saw her at McKale’s funeral,” he said.

“I know. So did I.”

“Maybe you should just find out what she wants.”

“Maybe she should just go home,” I said.

He didn’t say anything. After a moment I said, “Remember that time you threw me that birthday party and we went to the zip line?”

“Yes. And that German girl got her hair stuck in the pulley.”

“She was Hungarian.”

“That’s right. What about it?”

“Thanks,” I said.

“For what?”

“For throwing me the party.”

He was quiet for a moment. “You’re welcome.”

“I’ll talk to you next week,” I said.

“Okay. Be safe.”

“Bye.”

I hung up the phone, stowed it in my pack, and kept walking.

Homemade Pie. Wall Drug

Fast Food. Wall Drug

Homemade Ice Cream. Wall Drug

Wall Drug as seen on CMT

5 cents Hot Coffee. Wall Drug

Western Wear. Wall Drug

Something to Crow About. Wall Drug

Homemade Donuts. Wall Drug

Free Coffee and Donuts for Honeymooners

That night I slept behind one of the Wall Drug signs—an advertisement for five-cent coffee. The road was flat and smooth, which made walking easy, but there were no services. Ted Hustead’s father-in-law was right, this place was as “Godforsaken” as you’ll find on the planet. Fortunately I was prepared. I had asked about this stretch at the grocery store back in Rapid City and was told that there was nothing until Wall. I had packed several liters of water, which, in spite of the weight, I drank sparingly.

This led me to wonder: where was Pamela getting water?

CHAPTER

Six

My stalker has forced my hand.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I didn’t sleep well that night. The ground felt harder than usual, if that was possible. My water was warm and free ice water at Wall Drug was sounding pretty good. Dorothy Hustead was a smart lady.

At breakfast I noticed that a field mouse had gotten into my pack and chewed off the corner of a peanut butter Clif Bar. I broke off the spoiled corner, then ate the rest of the bar, along with some bread and my last can of fruit cocktail. I packed up my sleeping bag then started off, my back aching a little. I was ready for a real bed.

After two miles the landscape opened to a valley—a welcome relief from the tedium of endless plains. The signs were still there.

New Dinosaur. Wall Drug

Camping Supplies. Wall Drug

Great Hot Coffee 5 Cents. Wall Drug

After such a psychological assault, could anyone possibly not stop at Wall Drug? This was clearly an instance where, like the California Raisins or Pepto-Bismol, the advertising became greater than the product.

After five miles I passed the town of Wasta. Strange name. I have no idea what it means.

Wasta wasn’t much of a town, really, but it was the first I’d seen since Rapid City. The highway crossed the Cheyenne River, which was the first body of water I’d seen in a while. A half hour past the river, I came to a rest area, where I stopped to use the bathroom. I took some extra toilet paper because I was running low. I filled up my water bottles with fresh water.

As I strapped the bottles to my waistband, the thought returned to me, what was Pamela doing for water? What if she really meant what she’d said about dying? I hoped, for her sake, that she’d gotten smart and caught a ride back to Custer, or wherever she’d left her car. She had to have. She couldn’t have made it this far without finding water somewhere.

After my stop at the rest area, the frequency of the Wall Drug assault increased, assuring me that I was getting close. At my current pace, I would reach Wall by late afternoon.

Black Hills Gold. Wall Drug

Exit 109. Wall Drug

Experience Wall Drug

Coffee 5 cents. Wall Drug

Conoco and Wall Drug

The Wild West. Wall Drug

Tour Bus Stop. Wall Drug

Free Coffee and Donuts for Veterans. Wall Drug

Famous Western Art Gallery—A Wall Drug Must See

I was still keeping track of the signs in my journal. Out of curiosity, I counted the entries when I stopped for lunch. Fifty-two. And that was just what I’d passed going east. I was sure there were just as many on the other side of Wall. That was more than a hundred signs. Considering where the signs were placed, on the outskirts of farms, I figured that the Wall Drug folk weren’t paying usual advertising rates, as an outdoor campaign of that magnitude would cost a fortune. It was probably handled as a neighbor deal, a weekly pie or two, or free ice cream for the farmer’s kids. Southern South Dakota still seemed to be that kind of place.

A couple of miles later, I saw train tracks on the south side of the road. I wondered where they had been for the last fifty miles.

An hour after lunch I came upon a decent-sized pond with inviting blue water. I climbed down the sloped shoulder of the highway to the edge of the pond. When there were no cars in sight, I stripped down and jumped in. I hadn’t bathed for two days, not since the Happy Holiday Motel, and I was as sticky as a roll of flypaper. The water felt magnificent. I washed my hair and body with a small bottle of shampoo I had left over from the Holly House Bed and Breakfast.

I bathed for about twenty minutes, dried myself off, dressed, and climbed back to the highway. I had been walking for two hours when I heard the familiar sound of a car stopping behind me. Pamela. At least she doesn’t have any trouble getting people to pick her up, I thought. Of course, if I saw a stranger—a mature woman—hitchhiking along this road, my conscience wouldn’t let me pass her by. But to me she was no stranger. I knew what she had done.

As I watched her climb out of the car, I could tell that something was wrong. The driver of the car was saying something to her; his words, though indistinguishable, sounded pleading. Pamela offered a curt “thank you” and shut the car door, staggering a little as she stepped back. Even from a distance I could see that she wasn’t okay. She was leaning to one side and her steps were awkward.

I had once read about people crawling to Mecca to atone for their sins. I wondered if, on some level, Pamela saw this journey as her penance. Maybe she really was willing to walk herself to death. I didn’t want to think about it. I continued on past two more signs.

Wall Drug, USA. Just Ahead

Homemade Lunch Specials. Wall Drug

A few minutes later I looked back. Pamela was farther behind than I thought she would be. Actually, it looked like she hadn’t taken more than a few steps since she’d left the car. I continued walking but turned back less than a minute later. Pamela was facedown on the ground.

I dropped my pack on the side of the road and started jogging back to her.

As I neared her I grew more anxious. She wasn’t moving. When I was maybe a hundred feet away I cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted, “Pamela!”

Nothing. I shouted again, “Pamela!”

She slowly raised her head so that her chin touched the asphalt. She looked at me with a confused expression. When I reached her, I crouched down next to her. “Are you okay?”

She didn’t answer. Her eyes darted quickly back and forth. Her face was scraped on one side, and her skin was bright red. Her lips were cracked. Her mouth was moving but she was having trouble speaking. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“When was the last time you had something to drink?” I asked, taking a water bottle from my waist belt.

“Long time,” she said, her words slurred.

I held the bottle up to her lips. She opened her mouth and I squirted the water inside. She gulped heavily, though much of it ran down the side of her mouth and face. She stopped drinking only a few times and drained the bottle in less than a minute. When the bottle was empty she lay forward again, her face in her arms.

She lay there for another fifteen minutes before she rolled to her side. “Thank you.”

“Would you like some more water?”

She nodded. “Yes.” Her speech already sounded better.

I brought out my other bottle, which was only half full. She held it herself this time and quickly drained it. When she’d finished the water I handed her a Clif Bar from my pants pocket. “Here, have this,” I said, peeling back the wrapper. “You need some carbs.”

She ate the bar quickly.

“That was stupid following me,” I said. “You’re not prepared for this. You could have died out here.”

She slowly looked up at me. “Would it have mattered?”

I looked at her for a long time then said, “There’s a hotel in Wall. Let’s get you there. Can you walk?”

“Will you talk to me if I do?”

“No,” I said.

“Then go,” she said. “Just leave me.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

In spite of her weakness, she shouted, “Leave me!” She lay her face back down on the asphalt. “Just leave me.”

I looked around. There was no one in sight. I breathed out slowly. “Okay. I’ll talk to you.”

She looked up at me doubtfully.

“Come on,” I said. “I mean it. Come with me to Wall and we’ll talk.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, then slowly struggled up to her knees. I took her arm and helped her to her feet. The front of her blouse was dirty and her arms were red and pocked from the rocks she had fallen on.

She took a step, leaning heavily against me. Then another. It took us more than twenty minutes to get back to my pack and nearly forty-five minutes to walk the mile to the Wall off-ramp. Only a few cars passed us, and even though I put my thumb out, none of them stopped. We passed three more signs on the way.

Wall Drug Exit

Wall Drug Keep Left. Free Mainstreet Parking

Wall Drug Straight Ahead, 4 blocks

Pamela was staggering and breathing heavily at the top of the highway off-ramp. “May I rest a moment?”

“Of course,” I said. I led her to the curved, aluminum surface of the guardrail where she sat.

I stepped back to the edge of the road and stuck out my thumb when I saw an approaching vehicle, which immediately slowed—a phenomenon not uncommon in small towns. The gray-haired man driving an old truck pulled off the road slightly past us. I walked up to the truck’s window as it rolled down. The man reached over and turned off his radio that had been blaring country music then looked out at me. “Need a lift?”

“Yes. Just into town.”

“It’s only a half mile. Hop in front.”

I walked back and helped Pamela to the truck, practically pushing her up into the cab and onto the bench seat. Then I threw my pack into the truck’s bed and climbed into the cab next to Pamela.

“How are you all this afternoon?” the man asked.

Pamela forced a smile. “Thank you for stopping.”

“My pleasure,” he said.

“We’re just going to the first hotel,” I said to the man.

“That’d be Ann’s,” he replied. “Right next to Wall Drug.” He signaled, checked his mirror, then drove into town.

Ann’s Motel was a small inn on Wall’s main drag, west of the Wall Drug complex. The man pulled into the motel’s parking lot and stopped his truck in front of the lobby door. I got out, then helped Pamela, holding her arm as she stepped down.

“Thanks,” I said to the man.

“Don’t mention it. Don’t forget your pack.”

Pamela said, “Thank you, sir.”

“My pleasure, ma’am,” he said kindly.

I shut the door after Pamela and grabbed my pack from the truck’s bed. I slapped the back of the truck and the truck rattled off.

Pamela limped over to a wood bench near the motel lobby while I went inside to check on rooms. Fortunately, the motel had vacancies and I got two rooms on the street level. There was a small, glass-door refrigerator in the lobby with beverages for sale and I bought a bottle of Gatorade. I got our keys from the clerk, then went back out to Pamela. I handed her a key and the Gatorade. “You should drink that right away. It will help.”

“Thank you,” she said, stowing the bottle in her bag.

“I got you a room on the main floor. One-eleven, right over there.”

Pamela stood on her own, her bag around her shoulder. “May we talk now?”

“Not yet,” I said. “I want you to drink that and get some rest. I’ll go see what they have to eat over at the drugstore then we’ll go to dinner later. We’ll talk then.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. You gave me no choice.”

“We always have a choice,” she said.

In light of the circumstances of our relationship I found her comment intriguing. I helped her to her room, then went to my own.

My room was a small rectangle, furnished with two full beds with stiff mattresses and aged floral pattern comforters. After so many days without amenities, it was as welcome to me as a suite at the Four Seasons.

I leaned my pack against the wall and flopped onto the bed. I wondered what could be so important for Pamela to say that she had risked her life to follow me. What could she possibly have to say in her own defense? Most of all, I wondered what McKale would have made of it all.

I remember the first time I asked McKale where her mother was. I was only nine years old and had lost my own mother less than a year earlier, so the topic of mothers was one of interest to me. Especially missing ones.

“We kicked her out,” McKale said.

I looked at her in amazement. “Why did you do that?”

“Me and my dad don’t want her anymore. We even threw away all her pictures so we don’t have to look at her.”

Her answer was the strangest thing I had ever heard. Even at that age I guessed there was more to her story, but I also knew better than to ask.

A week later we were in McKale’s backyard climbing an avocado tree when a piece of paper fell out of her pants pocket. I jumped down and picked it up, then unfolded it. It was a creased photograph of a woman.

“Who’s this?” I asked, holding the picture up.

McKale looked horrified. “It’s no one.”

“It’s someone,” I said.

McKale climbed down from the tree. “If you must know, it’s my mom.”

“I thought you said you threw away all her pictures,” I said, naïvely pleased to have caught McKale in a lie.

Her eyes welled up with tears. “You are so dumb,” she said. She ran into her house leaving me alone in her backyard holding the picture of Pamela and wondering what I’d done wrong.

With that memory replaying in my mind, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

CHAPTER

Seven

Once you have opened the book
to another’s life, the cover
never looks the same.

Alan Christoffersen’s Diary

I woke with a start. I hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but after three nights of sleeping on hard ground, I was out before I knew it. I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost a quarter to nine. I groaned. “Pamela.”

I went to the bathroom and washed my face, then went outside and knocked on Pamela’s door. She answered immediately. “I wondered if you’d changed your mind.”

“No. Sorry, I fell asleep. Are you ready?”

She had probably been waiting for several hours, but she only nodded. “I’m ready.” She stepped out, shutting the door behind her. “Thank you.”

Wall Drug is not the single store it started as—it’s now a long row of buildings that look like a cross between a strip mall and a movie studio’s back lot western town. Wall Drug’s restaurant was located near the middle of the complex.

I held the door for Pamela as we walked into a large dining room separated into two eating areas by an open kitchen and a long row of cafeteria-style tray rails.

The seating area closest to the street had an ice cream bar and pastry counter with pie, brownies, and other confections, including a platter of their famous “free for veterans” cake doughnuts.

The wood-panel walls were hung with cowboy art: paintings of cowboys, horses, and Native Americans. They were all for sale, which was true of pretty much everything in the building.

There was only one couple in the dining room. Pamela followed me over to a table in the southwest corner of the room—opposite the other diners.

“We can sit here,” I said. “What do you want to eat?”

“Whatever you get is fine,” Pamela replied.

After looking over the hand-scrawled menu board, I ordered a couple of Cokes, two cups of chicken noodle soup, and French dip sandwiches. I paid for the meal and went back to the table where Pamela was sitting quietly. For a moment we just looked at each other, then I clasped my hands on the table in front of me. “What did you want to talk about?”

Pamela took a deep breath. “I’m not sure where to begin.”

After a moment I said, “Why don’t you begin by telling me why you abandoned your daughter?” My words sounded harsher than I had intended.

She nodded. “All right.” She looked down for a long time. When she looked back up at me, her eyes had a dark sadness to them. “I want you to understand something. What I’m going to tell you isn’t an excuse. It’s a reason. If I could do things differently, I would.” She looked into my eyes to see if I understood.

“Okay,” I said.

She settled a little into her chair. “I should start at the beginning.” She took another deep breath. “I was too young when I married Sam. I was only eighteen. Way too young. My life at home was so terrible, and I suppose I was just looking for a way to get out. My parents were always fighting. They were always screaming and shouting at each other. Sometimes their fights would turn violent. Once the neighbors called the police, but when they arrived, my parents just yelled at them. The police left shaking their heads. It was madness.”

“Were they ever violent with you?” I asked.

“My mother hit me a few times. But seeing them hurt each other was worse. I used to hide in my closet with my hands over my ears so I wouldn’t hear them. But of course I heard every word. I always thought it was my fault. I know that’s not rational, but children aren’t terribly rational.

“This pattern went on my whole childhood. I don’t know why they didn’t get counseling or just leave each other. They were just sick, I guess. Or their relationship was. It was their cycle. But I never got used to it.

“When I was old enough, I got a job waitressing at a pancake house. I worked as much as I could, and when I wasn’t working I’d hang out with my friends. We would stay out really late, and I would sleep over at their houses. For months I barely went home. I hadn’t really run away from home, I just stopped going there.

“The first time I went home after I’d been away for more than a week, I thought my parents would be upset and worried about me. But it was more like I had never been gone. My father wasn’t there, and my mom didn’t even ask where I’d been.

“Once I graduated from high school, I stopped going home at all. I spent most of my time with one of the other waitresses at the restaurant. Her name was Claire. She was a friend from school and had helped get me the job in the first place. We’d work until closing, then we’d go out to parties, then sleep at her place. Eventually I just moved in with her.

“That’s where I met Sam. He was Claire’s cousin. Sam was a lot older than me. Eight years older.” She shook her head. “He was only twenty-six, but he seemed so old back then. I guess compared to me, he was. I had only known him a few weeks when he asked me out.

“He was different than the boys I’d been hanging out with. They were still kids. Sam was older. More mature. On our third date, he asked me to marry him. I said yes. I wasn’t sure if it was right, but it’s like they say—a drowning person isn’t picky about which lifeboat she climbs into. I wasn’t really sure about anything at the time except that I liked him. And if I was going to get married, I thought that marrying someone older would be safer.

“I didn’t know until two days before our wedding that Sam had already been married once before. I guess his ex was a pretty strong-willed woman, and he couldn’t take it, so he had the marriage annulled six weeks after their wedding. I found out later that he’d told Claire that his next wife would be someone younger. Someone who would obey him. I guess that’s why he married me. I was pretty submissive. I did whatever he told me to do.

“So we got married. Our wedding day was the happiest day of my life. I was so hopeful. Then, on our honeymoon, Sam told me to stop using birth control. He said he wanted a baby right away. He didn’t so much tell me he wanted one, as he demanded one—as if my feelings on the matter were irrelevant. We had never even discussed children before then. I told him that I didn’t think I was old enough to have a baby. I still felt like a kid myself. The truth is, I didn’t even know if I wanted one. I didn’t want anyone to have to live a life like mine.

“But Sam was older than me and he said he didn’t want to be an old man when his kids were in high school. I knew in my heart that I wasn’t ready. But Sam didn’t care what I thought. He had this stupid line he’d heard somewhere—‘they’re not your feelings, they’re your failings.’ He just got meaner every time I refused. We started fighting about it almost all the time. I couldn’t stand it. It was like we had become my parents.

“Then everything came to a climax. After months of fighting, Sam gave me an ultimatum. He said if I wouldn’t have his baby, he would find someone who would. He gave me until his birthday to make up my mind.”

As Pamela spoke I realized that in spite of all the times I’d seen McKale’s father, I really didn’t know him. To me he was a laid-back, easygoing guy, who worked a lot and listened to vinyl records when he wasn’t working, which was partially why McKale had always been with me. I wasn’t sure that I believed everything that Pamela was saying, but it was clear to me that she did.

“Sam said that he would leave you?” I asked.

Pamela’s eyes teared up. She nodded. “More than once. I was devastated. I don’t even think it was about the baby anymore; it was about controlling me. He was good at punishing me. At first he was passive-aggressive. He would go days without speaking to me. I was always more needy than him, so after a day I would be begging him to talk to me—to love me. Then he began treating me like a child. One night he said he was going to spank me. I thought he was joking. But he wasn’t. He made me go over his knee and he spanked me until I cried. It was so humiliating. I felt like a child again.”

Pamela suddenly started crying and I noticed that the diners at the other table were looking at us. I waited for Pamela to gain her composure. As we sat there, the counter bell rang. The woman at the counter said in a bright voice, “Your order’s up.”

Pamela was dabbing her eyes with a paper napkin. “I’ll get that,” I said. I walked up to the counter, got our tray, and brought it back to the table.

By the time I was seated, Pamela had settled some. “Do you want to eat or go on?” she asked.

“Go on,” I said. “So why didn’t you just leave him?”

“Would you have left your wife?” she asked.

“McKale wasn’t abusive.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know why. I didn’t really think of him as abusive. At least not then. To me, abuse was when you had bruises and broken bones, not just a broken heart.” She looked at me. “I don’t know. I guess you just have to go through it to understand. When people are in abusive situations, they measure things in contrasts. As much as Sam hurt me, leaving him would be even more painful. Besides, part of me always felt that I deserved to be treated poorly. It’s what I knew. I was always trying to earn somebody’s love.

“The thing is, I knew he would win. I knew, in the end, I would have to do what he said.

“I spent the next few days talking myself into it—telling myself what a good idea it was to have a baby and how great it would be to have a family. Or I’d tell myself, maybe once the baby came I’d feel differently, or what if I couldn’t even get pregnant and all this pain was for nothing? I finally decided that giving in would be my birthday present to him.

“I knew that it was wrong—that I wasn’t even close to being ready to be a mother. But there was nowhere else to go.

“On Sam’s birthday I got up and made him breakfast and brought it out on a tray. Underneath his coffee cup I put a note that said, ‘YES.’

“He looked up at me with this triumphant smile and said, ‘Then let’s get started.’ ”

Pamela was shaking her head. “Of course I got pregnant right away with McKale. I don’t get it. People pray and beg God for a baby and never have one, and here I am hoping I won’t get pregnant and I’m pregnant immediately.

“I was terrified. Sam just kept telling me that everything would be fine—that being a mother was a natural part of womanhood.” Pamela grimaced. “As if he knew anything about being a woman.” She looked into my eyes. “No matter what they say, it’s not always a natural thing—at least not for everyone. After she was born I remember sitting in bed holding this beautiful little baby and thinking that I was supposed to be feeling something magical and wondering what was wrong with me. I never should have had a baby until I was ready. It wasn’t fair to McKale. It wasn’t fair to me.”

Pamela wiped her eyes. “I felt insanely guilty that I didn’t connect with her. Truthfully, I resented her. And I hated myself for resenting her.

“Of course, I couldn’t tell Sam any of this. I tried once and he turned on me so fiercely, I was afraid he was going to hurt me.” Growing up, I had seen Sam blow up a few times so I knew he was capable of extreme rage. “He told me that I was just selfish.”

“What did you say to that?”

Pamela bowed her head a little. “I told him he was right.”

Neither of us spoke for a while. She was spent, and I wasn’t sure what to say. After a while she said, “Do you mind if I eat something?”

I realized that she probably hadn’t eaten much for several days. “No. Of course not.”

We both ate. Pamela wolfed down her sandwich, looking slightly embarrassed to be eating so quickly. When she’d finished the sandwich, she started on the soup, first with a spoon, then lifting the bowl. She must have been starving, I thought.

When she had finished everything she apologized. “I’m sorry. I haven’t eaten for a while.”

“No, I’m sorry, I should have let you eat. Would you like something else? Some pie?”

“No, thank you,” she said. “Shall I continue?”

“Please,” I said.

She looked down, collecting her thoughts. Her forehead furrowed. “Before I had McKale I was working as an office manager at a plumbing supply store. I had quit when McKale was born, but we struggled on just Sam’s income, so when she started school, I went back to work.

“One day this really handsome man came in. Jeremy. He was a plumber but he could have been a model. I was having one of those really hard days when it was all I could do not to burst into tears. He asked if I was all right, and I started to cry. He was really sweet. He asked if I needed to talk to someone and offered to meet me after work for a coffee. I told him thank you, but I was married and he backed off.

“But it wasn’t the last I saw of him. He became a regular customer and would come in several times a week. He would bring me a little box of chocolate cordials every time he came to sweeten my day. I began looking forward to his visits.

“One day Jeremy came in about lunchtime. As he waited for his order to be filled, we started in on our usual chat when he asked if I wanted to get something to eat. It was the right time, or wrong time, for him to ask. Sam and I had just had another big blowup that morning.” Pamela paused and her voice softened. “I said yes.

“We ended up at his condo. It was only the beginning. We started meeting every week. Jeremy was single and had a great business, so he had a lot of money and was always buying me jewelry and clothes. I couldn’t bring them home, not that Sam would have noticed. Sam was busy trying to get his insurance business off the ground so he worked late almost every night. He rarely called me during the day.

“After a year of our affair, Jeremy asked me to leave Sam and marry him. Sam and I had only grown more distant, so, honestly, Jeremy’s proposal sounded great. Except there was one hitch. He said that he didn’t want to be tied down to a kid. I understood that. I mean, I felt the same way. I had gotten married and pregnant so young that I’d never had the chance to see the world.

“I know it sounds awful.” She looked into my eyes. “It is awful. I considered it. But I couldn’t do it. McKale was only seven. I couldn’t just leave her.

“Jeremy said he understood. He said that that was what he really loved about me, that I had a good heart—but he loved me so intensely, that if our relationship wasn’t going anywhere, it would be best if we stopped seeing each other.

“He stopped calling me. He still came in to the store, but he wouldn’t speak to me. It was agonizing. I was so in love with him. I wanted to be with him more than anything.

“At home, things with Sam just got worse. He never outright called me an awful mother, at least not then, but I knew he was thinking it. Maybe it was because I was thinking it.

“Then, one day, I went to pick McKale up from her babysitter and McKale said, ‘I don’t want to go home with you.’ The babysitter was really embarrassed. She said, ‘You don’t mean that.’ McKale said, ‘Yes I do. I don’t like her.’ ”

Pamela’s eyes welled up again. “I know kids say dumb things, but it broke me. Sam hated me. Now McKale didn’t want me. I cried all night. The next day I called Jeremy from work and begged him to take me back. I said I’d do whatever he wanted if he’d just take me back.

“He came and got me. I didn’t go home after work. I just went straight to his place. I didn’t even pick up McKale.

“Of course the babysitter was frantic. She called Sam to see if I’d been in an accident or something.” Pamela wiped her eyes. “Or something . . . I got home that night after ten. McKale was in bed. Sam was waiting for me. He screamed at me for more than an hour. He said he had to cancel an important business meeting with a new client to pick up McKale. He told me that I was the most irresponsible mother on the planet—a horrible mother and wife.

“That was the final straw. I told him I was leaving. He said, ‘You can’t leave us.’

“I said, ‘Yes, I can.’ I went to our room, threw my things in a suitcase, and walked out to my car. Then I realized I hadn’t even looked in on McKale. I desperately wanted to see her. But what would I say? Sam wouldn’t have let me in anyway.” Her eyes welled up with tears. “I never said good-bye.” She wiped her eyes, then blew her nose into a paper napkin. “Jeremy and I were married a week after the divorce went through. We traveled. I told myself I was happy. But of course the marriage didn’t work. When you have an affair with someone, the affair itself becomes the core of the relationship. The secret of the affair fuels the passion and the excitement. But once it’s legitimized, it’s just reality like everything else. Less than two years later, Jeremy cheated on me. I wasn’t really surprised. It’s like they say, ‘If they’ll do it with you, they’ll do it to you.’ ”

Pamela sighed deeply. “Jeremy wasn’t a good man. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out, I mean, he was a cheater and he wanted me to leave my child. What more did I need to know? I guess I figured he was just like me.”

“Did you ever consider going back to McKale?” I asked.

“All the time. For weeks I’d skip lunch so I could drive to McKale’s school and watch her play at recess. I wanted to go back home, but the only way I could have gone back to Sam was on my knees. And he would have kept me there for the rest of my life. Maybe that’s what I deserved, but I knew I couldn’t do it. And what would that have taught my daughter?

“I eventually moved to Colorado to start a new life. But you can’t run away from yourself. I married again in Colorado. That only lasted twenty-nine months. James. He left me too. He sent me an email to let me know he’d moved on.” She laughed cynically. “I really know how to pick them, don’t I?”

I frowned.

“After that, I grew hard. I convinced myself that real love doesn’t exist and all men are pigs. But it was a lie. Real love does exist. You and McKale had it. It just didn’t exist for me.”

Pamela was quiet for a long time. Finally she said, “At least something good came out of my last marriage.” She reached into her purse and brought out her cell phone. She pushed a key, then held the phone up for me to see. On the screen was a picture of a young lady maybe sixteen or seventeen years of age. She was pretty, with big brown eyes, long brown hair, and freckles. She looked a lot like McKale did at that age.

“McKale has a sister?” I asked.

Pamela nodded. “Her name is Hadley.”

I took the phone and stared. “She looks just like her.” I handed back the phone. “What was it like when she was born?”

“It was the way it should have been. The way it should have been for McKale.”

“Was Hadley at the funeral?”

“No. She didn’t even know about McKale. I thought it would be too confusing to her. But after the funeral, I told her.”

“How did she respond?”

“She wasn’t as surprised as I thought she’d be. She said she knew I had had another baby. I don’t know how she knew that. But she thought I had given her up for adoption or aborted her. She was really upset that I hadn’t told her about McKale. She had always wanted a sister.”

“I can’t believe McKale has a sister.” At that moment there were a lot of different emotions swimming in my head, but anger wasn’t one of them. My rage for her was gone—I just wasn’t sure what had replaced it. Pity? Understanding? Maybe even sympathy. After a moment I said, “What do you want from me?”

She looked down at the table for a long time. When she finally looked up again her eyes were filled with tears. “Grace,” she said softly.

“Grace?” I frowned. “Grace isn’t mine to give. The one who needs to forgive you is gone.”

“I just thought . . . ” She exhaled. “When I saw you at the funeral . . . when I met you, I knew that you and McKale were one. I thought—I felt—that if you could find a way to forgive me then it would be the same as McKale forgiving me. And maybe I could find peace.” She looked into my eyes. “And maybe you could too.”

“What makes you think I don’t have peace?” I asked.

“Because you can’t hate and have peace.”

I thought over her words. When I finally spoke I shook my head. “I don’t know, Pamela.”

She looked back down, closing her eyes to conceal her pain, though tears stole through the corners of her eyes. It pained me to add to all she’d been through.

After a moment I said, “This is just a lot to process. It’s been a long day. I need to sleep on it.”

She nodded understandingly. “We can go back to the motel.”

I looked at her for a moment, then pushed my chair back from the table and stood. “Can I get you something else to eat? You could take it back to your room.”

She shook her head as she stood. “No. I’m okay,” she said softly.

We walked silently together back to the motel. I saw Pamela to her door. She inserted her room key, but instead of opening the door, turned to me. “Whatever you decide, thank you for listening. You have no idea how much it helps. Especially knowing that my girl found someone who truly loved her.” She opened her door and stepped inside.

“Pamela.”

She looked back at me.

“I’m sorry that you went through what you did.”

She smiled sadly. “Thank you. Good night, Alan.”

“Good night,” I said.

She shut her door, and I went back to my room. I was emotionally exhausted. I just wanted to go to bed, but I hadn’t washed my clothes in days and the motel had a tiny Laundromat. I gathered my clothes and put them in the washer, then went back to my room. I watched television until it was time to transfer my clothes to the dryer. Then I returned to my room and the television. Finally, at eleven, I returned to the Laundromat and gathered up all my things.

Back in my room, I threw everything on the dresser, then turned out the lights and climbed into bed. Only then, staring into the darkness, did I allow my mind to return to Pamela and the evening’s conversation. “What do I do, McKale?” I said aloud. “What do you want me to do?”

I fell asleep with those words on my lips.

CHAPTER

Eight

My father used to say, “Pity is
just a poor man’s empathy.”

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I’m not one to ascribe religious significance to psychological or natural phenomenon. I roll my eyes with incredulity when someone claims a higher power found him a parking spot in front of the local Wal-Mart or a potato resembles Jesus or the Virgin Mother—as if anyone has any idea what either of them look like.

Nor have I ever given much credence to the supernatural nature of dreams. I suppose that my beliefs follow the lines of mainstream psychology—that dreams are just repressed thoughts that slip out at night, like teenagers after their parents are asleep. Having said this, there was something so singularly powerful and peculiar about the dream I had that night that I couldn’t help but wonder about its source. I’ll leave it to you to determine its origin. As for me, it changed my heart.

I dreamt that I was back out on highway 90, sweaty and hot, my backpack heavy on my shoulders, my legs weary from the day’s travel. I was walking the same road where Pamela had fallen the day before. Actually, it was the same time that Pamela had fallen, as I could see her ahead of me on the ground, and myself, crouched over her, helping her. At least that’s what I thought I was doing. As I neared I could hear her screaming in agony. That’s when I saw that I held a hammer in my hand. I was nailing Pamela to a cross.

I shouted at myself to stop, but neither of the figures in my dream could hear me. I ran to my own side and tried, in vain, to stop my arm. “Leave her alone!” I shouted. “She’s suffered enough!”

Just then there was another voice, even more pained than mine. “Stop! Please, stop.”

The three of us looked up. McKale was standing in the road ahead of us. She was barefoot and tears were streaming down her cheeks. “Stop,” she said softly. “Stop hurting my mother.”

I looked back down and Pamela looked into my eyes. “Please,” she said. “Grace.”

I woke, my sheets soaked with sweat. I looked over at the red digits of the motel clock. It was almost 4 A.M. It took me an hour to fall asleep.

When I woke I took an extra long shower. I sat on the floor of the shower bath and let the warm water flow around me, relaxing my mind. I shaved in the tub, then got out and packed my things. A little after seven I knocked on Pamela’s door. It took her a couple of minutes to open.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was still getting ready.”

Somehow, she looked different to me. Whether the change was real, or only in my mind, there was a difference. When I was a teenager my father told me that when we hate someone we make them more powerful than they are. By that measure, Pamela had been a giant in my life. Not now. Not anymore. The curtain had been pulled aside. She looked small and vulnerable.

“Would you like to get some breakfast?” I asked.

“I’d love to.”

The Wall Drug diner served pancakes, fried eggs, sausage, and hash browns for breakfast. I waited for the food, carrying it over to the table when it was done.

“Here you go,” I said, setting the tray down. “Breakfast is served.”

“That’s too much food, but thank you,” she said. “How did you sleep?”

I sat down across from her. “I’ve slept better. How about you?”

“I slept a lot better than I did yesterday.”

“I bet,” I said. “Considering you slept on the ground without a blanket.”

“That was not a good night.”

I poured syrup on my pancakes. “Do you still live in Colorado?”

She nodded. “Colorado Springs.”

“How far is that from Custer?”

“It’s about seven hours.”

I cut the pancake with my fork, then took a bite. “So what I want to know is, how did you find me?”

“That took some detective work. I picked up your trail in Cody, Wyoming. The clerk at the Marriott hotel was very helpful.”

“How did you even know I was walking? Or where?”

“Oh,” she said. “I promised I wouldn’t tell.”

“You’re not going to tell me?”

“I made a promise,” she said. “Do you want me to break a promise?”

“Was it my father?”

She just looked at me.

“All right,” I said. “Keep your promise.” I took another bite. Pamela went back to eating, slowly picking at her food.

After a moment I said, “I’ve thought a lot about our conversation last night.”

She looked up at me.

“The thing is, I’ve hated you for as long as I can remember. I suppose I just felt it was my moral obligation to hate you—a way of being loyal to McKale. You know, my friend’s enemy is my enemy.”

“I understand,” Pamela said.

“But truth, at least knowing the truth, can change things in an instant.” I looked into Pamela’s eyes. “And the truth is, I don’t know what I would have done in your situation. But I can’t believe that McKale would have been the person she was without those experiences.” My eyes moistened. “And I really loved who she was. Some of our most powerful bonding moments were when she was the most vulnerable and upset that you had left her.

“Back in Hill City you asked if McKale would have been mine the way she was if you hadn’t been the way you were. The answer is no. And for that I do owe you.”

Pamela’s eyes welled up with tears.

“You’ve suffered enough. More than you deserved.” I looked into her eyes. “I forgive you.”

At first she just stared at me in disbelief, then she began to tremble. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Then she put her face in her hands and cried. I got up and walked to her side of the table and put my arm around her. “It’s time to move on. For both of us.”

When she could speak, she asked, “Do you think my girl will ever forgive me?”

“I believe she already has.”

“You have no idea how much this means to me. I can see why my daughter loved you. You’re a good man.”

I took her hand. She put her other hand on top of mine. “From the bottom of my heart,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied. “It’s my pleasure.” It truly was. My heart was full of joy.

After a moment she lifted a napkin from the table and wiped her eyes.

“Now what?” I asked.

“I need to go back to Custer and get my car. I left it in the hotel parking lot. Hopefully they haven’t towed it.”

“How will you get there?” I asked.

“The woman who runs the motel is driving to Rapid City this afternoon. She says she’ll take me. I’m sure I can find a ride from there to Custer.”

“Then what?”

“I finish raising my daughter.”

I smiled. “That sounds like a good plan.”

“And what about you?” Pamela asked. “You’ll keep on walking?”

“I’ll keep on walking.”

She laughed and it was joyful to hear. “You’re crazy, you know?”

My smile widened. “That’s exactly what your daughter would have said.”

We spent the next half hour in pleasant conversation, finding similarities between Hadley and McKale. When we’d finished eating I asked Pamela, “What time do you leave for Rapid City?”

“The woman’s leaving after her shift, around five. She said I could stay in the room until then. How about you?”

“I’ve got twenty miles to cover today. I’m going to do some grocery shopping then start back out.”

“Then I won’t keep you any longer,” she said. “Please stop by before you go.”

“I’ll do that,” I said.

Pamela leaned forward and put her arms around me. Then she turned and walked out of the restaurant. I watched her go, then walked over to the adjacent market—an eclectic store where I loaded up on basics and a few nonessentials, like a bag of cake doughnuts I knew would never survive my journey, and two bags of hore-hound candy, a hard-to-find treat I’d developed a taste for as a kid at Knott’s Berry Farm in California. In a moment of weakness, I bought myself a WHERE THE HECK IS WALL DRUG bumper sticker.

I walked back to my room and finished packing, applying the bumper sticker to the back of my pack. I checked the room twice to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. I felt as if I’d left something there. I guess I had. I knocked on Pamela’s door. She opened quickly.

“Ready to hit the road?” she asked.

“Back at it,” I said.

“At least you’ve got the shoes for it.”

I smiled. Then I leaned forward and hugged her. “Goodbye, Pamela. Good luck.”

“Good luck to you too,” she said. She handed me a piece of paper. “That’s my phone number and address. If you’re ever in Colorado, please come see us.”

I put the paper in my pocket. “I’ll do that. I’d really like to meet Hadley someday.”

“I’m sure she’d like to meet you. Maybe you could stop by on your way back from Key West.”

“I’d like that,” I said. “I guess we’ll see.” I ran a hand back through my hair and sighed. “I better go.”

Pamela leaned forward and we hugged once more.

“Good-bye,” she said. “Be safe.”

I slipped my pack on over my shoulders, put on my Akubra hat, then with a furtive smile turned around and began to walk. As I reached the end of the parking lot Pamela called to me.

“Alan.”

I turned back.

“God bless you.”

I smiled. “Take care, Pamela.” I turned, heading back toward the interstate. I sensed that I really was going to miss her following me.

CHAPTER

Nine

As we walk our individual life journeys,
we pick up resentments and hurts, which
attach themselves to our souls like burrs
clinging to a hiker’s socks. These stowaways
may seem insignificant at first, but, over
time, if we do not occasionally stop and
shake them free, the accumulation
becomes a burden to our souls.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Prior to leaving Wall, I had a conversation with the cashier at the Wall Drug gift shop about the road east and she talked me into taking the Badlands Loop, adding an extra ten miles or so to my journey.

My pack was heavy again, as I was assured it would be a while before I would find any decent shopping, so I had filled up at Wall with everything I needed.

Within minutes of leaving Pamela I was back on 90. The morning air was cool and the walking was easy—though I know, in part, because I felt good. In spite of the heaviness of my pack, I felt lighter. Forgiving Pamela had healed a wound I had never acknowledged existed.

Two miles from Wall I exited 90 for Highway 240, the Badlands Loop. It took me half the day, ten miles of walking, to reach the national park.

The road passed through a toll station. There was a seven-dollar entrance fee for “nonmotorized” visitors, and the ranger at the booth reminded me that I could only camp in designated areas. Just a half mile in I stopped to see the first of the remarkable formations.

The native Lakota tribe called the area Makhóšiša, which means “bad land.” Early French trappers were a little more descriptive, naming it les mauvaises terres à traverser—the bad lands to cross.

The Badlands’ name is well deserved. The area is a quagmire of slopes and crevices, slick clay and deep sand, all of which encumbered early travelers through the area.

Modern roads carve an easily accessible scenic route through the park, but, by nightfall, I was still a long way from any campground. Despite the ranger’s warning I had no choice but to find a place to camp that wasn’t designated as such. Near a spot called Panorama Point, I slid down a small ravine where I couldn’t be seen from the road.

I ate a can of cold Bush’s Baked Beans, an apple, and the last of my Wall Drug cake doughnuts, which were smashed into crumbs.

I started early the next morning. By eight o’clock, I reached Fossil Trail, where I paused to examine some of the prehistoric findings, including tortoise shells and saber-tooth tiger bones. I stopped at Cedar Pass Lodge for lunch and water, but passed by the visitors center because I was afraid I would not make it out of the park before dark.

Near the end of the loop, I came upon a trading post with a giant woodcarving of a woodchuck out front. I picked up a few things for dinner, then sat on the curb next to the giant wood rodent and ate a buffalo hot dog and a bean and cheese burrito that I had warmed in the store’s microwave.

Then I headed on toward 90, looking for a place to spend the night. On the service road before the freeway was an abandoned building with its sign still intact:

THE CACTUS FLAT CAFÉ

The windows were all broken out, and the front door was open, leaning on an angle from its rusted hinges. I looked inside. The place was full of trash. I cleared an area to sleep in at the back of the building and spent an uneventful night amid the trash and rodents.

The next morning I backtracked a mile to the trading post for breakfast—a sausage biscuit, cheese Danish, and banana—then returned to the service road.

The day’s highlight was encountering a sign that informed me that the movies Thunderhead—a 1945 movie starring Roddy McDowall—and Starship Troopers—a 1997 movie starring no one—were filmed in the area. Wall Drug billboards were now facing away from me on the opposite side of the highway. They grew sparser the farther I walked from Wall.

All success is imitated, so with the diminishing of the Wall Drug signs, other businesses posted their own, though most of them were homespun and poorly conceived. There’s a rule in outdoor advertising: a good billboard should never contain more than seven words, and five or less are preferable. I saw one billboard with seventy-three words. (I was so amazed that I actually stopped to count.) I just shook my head. Who was going to read that at seventy-five miles an hour?

I ended the day shy of nineteen miles in the tiny town of Kadoka: population 736. I stayed at the America’s Best Value Inn and, at the hotel clerk’s recommendation, ate dinner at Club 27. I had the filet mignon with a baked potato. It wasn’t nearly as good as the filet mignon I had in Hill City, but I wasn’t complaining.

After the last two days of solitude, I was in the mood to talk to someone. Anyone, really. Unfortunately, my waitress wasn’t, so I just listened in on other diners’ conversations.

The next morning I ate a ham and cheese omelet at the Nibble Nook Café, then started off. The service road had ended at Kadoka, so I resumed my walk along 90 for another five miles or so until another frontage road appeared.

A little after noon an old, loaded-down pickup truck sped by me, close enough that the wind of the vehicle nearly knocked me down. The truck disappeared over a slight incline. About twenty minutes later I caught up to the truck. It was pulled over to the side of the road, its hazard lights flashing, the road around it strewn with an eclectic array of items. I surmised that the truck’s cargo had been held in place by a queen-sized mattress, which had flown off.

The driver was grumbling and cursing as he collected his things, which were scattered over a fifty-yard radius up and down the service road, like a big, chaotic yard sale.

The man was a little shorter than me and much wider, probably carrying an extra fifty pounds. He wore a bushy beard and a Chicago Bears jersey. He reminded me of the kind of guy you’d see at a football game, shirtless with a painted face and wearing a rainbow Afro. He glanced over at me after throwing a pillow into the truck.

“Need a hand?” I asked.

He grimaced. “Sure. Why not?”

I slid my pack off and began picking up his things, most of them of little value, including a dozen faded T-shirts, some VHS cassettes of porn, and some plastic dishes—most of them now broken. The man just grunted and cursed.

“Looks like you’re moving,” I said.

“Got that right,” he replied. “Finally got smart and dumped the old nag.” He turned and threw a dish rack into the truck’s bed. “You know how you spell relief? D-I-V-O-R-C-E. You know what I mean?”

“No,” I said.

He bent over. “Then you’re not married, are you?”

“No,” I replied.

“Then you’re smarter than me. Life is short. You gotta grab it. You know what I mean? If you don’t look after yourself, who will?”

“You tell me,” I said.

“No one. No one looks out for you but you. You gotta watch your own back.”

I didn’t bother to point out that this was literally impossible. “Where are you headed?” I asked.

“Headed back to where life was good. You know what I mean, back in high school? Chicks and beer, we knew how to live back then. Life was one big party. That’s where I’m going.”

“Over the rainbow . . . ” I said, picking up a couple cassettes with skanky covers.

“What?”

“Nothing. Do you think what you’re looking for will still be there?”

He stopped and looked at me as if he was annoyed by my stupidity. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

I didn’t answer him. We finished gathering the rest of his things, then I helped him lift the mattress onto the heap and we crisscrossed a nylon rope over the mattress and secured it to the truck bed. When the last knot was tied, I picked up my pack. “Well, good luck.”

“Thanks for the help,” he said. “Can I give you a lift?”

“No thanks. I’m walking.”

“Suit yourself.” He slammed his door, fired up his truck, which backfired a couple of times, then peeled off, spitting gravel at me. I shook my head. I think of all the people I had met so far on my journey, he was the most pitiable.

A few hours later I came to a building with a sign that read:

Petrified Gardens

“Family Approved Site”

Bring your camera!

I didn’t have a family or a camera, but I was curious about this building in the middle of nowhere so I went inside. A bell rang as I entered, and a gaunt, middle-aged man who looked a little like Christopher Walken met me at the door. “Would you like to buy a ticket?”

“Sure,” I said.

“How many?”

“It’s just me.”

“One ticket,” he said. “That’ll be seven dollars.”

I paid him. He handed me a ticket. Then (I’m not making this up) he said, “Just a second.” He walked back ten feet to the museum’s entrance and held out his hand. “Ticket, please.”

I handed him back the ticket.

“Right this way,” he said, motioning me forward.

I walked into a long, dark room with displays of mounted rocks behind glass and chicken wire. The room was lit by ultraviolet light, causing the rocks to fluoresce. I stayed there a few minutes, then walked out of the room through a door that led to the backyard.

The yard was scattered with petrified wood, fossils, quartz, and dinosaur bones. There was a “petrified wood pile,” also an old cabin, about the size of a utility van, with a sign that read, “Eleven people survived the winter of 1949 in this cabin.” At first I envisioned pioneers huddled in buffalo skin blankets, stranded in a blizzard. Then I realized the sign said 1949, the same year Russia got the atom bomb. This place really was remote.

To leave I had to walk back inside the building, where there was a display of fossils, a collection of geodes, and drilled slabs of stone that were somehow used or discarded in the making of Mount Rushmore. The exit led into a gift shop, which had much of the same Mount Rushmore merchandise I’d seen at the monument, and a whole lot of polished rocks set in various accessories: cuff links, tie tacks, key chains, and earrings. I asked the man, who now stood ready as the gift shop attendant, how business was.

“This place has been in the family for fifty-seven years,” he said.

He hadn’t really answered my question, but I suspected that was probably all he wanted to share. I used the restroom, then said good-bye and headed back to the road.

That afternoon, six miles past the town of Belvidere, I encountered a billboard that read, “1880 Town. Dances with Wolves movie props next mile.”

I smiled as I read the sign. I thought back to the evening I watched the movie with Nicole. That was also the first night I heard her crying. I wondered how she was doing.

Less than a mile or so later I crossed north under the freeway, to 1880 Town. There was a large, painted wood sign out front that read:

1880 TOWN

DAKOTA TERRITORY

ELEVATION: 2391 FT

POPULATION: 170 GHOSTS

9 CATS

3 DOGS

3905 820 36 6 2 RABBITS

The entrance to the town was through a fourteen-sided barn (advertised as the only one in the world). The front fence was flanked by two train cars, an authentic steam engine, and a stainless steel dining car, which, appropriately, had been converted into a diner.

I walked inside the barn where I paid twelve dollars to a grumpy woman with blue hair.

The building was piled to the rafters with Old West antiques and Dances with Wolves movie memorabilia—including the sod house and tent from the movie set, the Timmons Freight Wagons, and scores of pictures of Kevin Costner and Mary McDonnell, the woman who played Stands With A Fist, Costner’s love interest. I got my phone out of my pack and called Nicole. She answered on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Nicole, it’s Alan.”

Her voice was animated. “Alan! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“It’s so good to hear your voice. Where in the world are you?”

“South Dakota.”

“South Dakota? Have you passed Wall Drug?”

“You know about Wall Drug?”

“Everyone knows about Wall Drug.”

“Yes, I stopped there.”

“How was it?”

“It was a really big drugstore.”

“I’ve got to go there someday,” she said.

“So, the reason I called. Do you remember that scene in Dances with Wolves, where Costner hunts the buffalo?”

There was a long pause. “Yeah. I think so.”

“I’m standing next to that very buffalo.”

“It’s still alive?”

“No, it never was. It’s an animatronic buffalo.”

“A what?”

“A robot buffalo,” I said.

She laughed. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m great. Really. How are things? How is Kailamai?”

“She’s exactly what you said she’d be. She’s a remarkable young lady. She’s already enrolled in college.”

“How’s my dad working out?”

“He’s been a lifesaver. We’re getting things in order. I’m getting IRAs, mutual funds, and a bunch of things I know nothing about. But who cares about my boring life? Tell me about your adventure.”

“Not much to tell you. I’m still on my feet.”

“I think about you every day, you know.”

I was quiet for a moment. “We had some good times together, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, we did. If you ever get tired of walking, there’s always a place for you here.”

“For the record, I was tired of walking before we even met. But thanks for the invite. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I’ve thought a lot about the time we spent together. I . . . ” She paused. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

“Promise me that I’ll see you again.”

“I promise.”

“Okay,” she said. “That will do for now.”

“May I talk to Kailamai?”

“She’s out with some friends. She’ll be disappointed she missed you. She has a whole new batch of jokes she’s been saving for you.

“Here’s one she told me this morning. A golf club walks into a local bar and asks for a beer, but the bartender refuses to serve him. ‘Why not?’ asks the golf club. ‘Because you’ll be driving later,’ replied the bartender.”

“That’s really awful,” I said.

“I know,” Nicole laughed. “But it’s so funny that she tells them.”

“It sounds like the two of you are doing well.”

“We are,” she said.

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“Good. Because you’re responsible for it.”

“Good to hear I’ve done something right.” I sighed. “Well, I better let you go.”

“Okay,” she said, sounding disappointed. “Call again soon.”

“I will. Take care.”

“See ya.”

It was good hearing her voice. Still, our conversation reminded me of how lonely I was. I stowed my phone back in my pack then walked out the back door of the barn into the park.

1880 Town was an ambitious re-creation of the Old West, covering more than fifty acres. There was a post office, dentist office, bank, pharmacy, jail, a one-room schoolhouse, a livery full of authentic horse wagons, and at least two dozen other buildings, the whole being even more ambitious than Montana’s Nevada City. The most peculiar exhibit was a live, pretzel-loving camel named Otis, who was corralled in a pasture behind the town’s church.

I didn’t plan to walk any farther that night, so I hung around the town for about an hour, long enough to wander through every building. When I’d seen all I cared to, I walked back to the diner car to get something to eat. There weren’t many other customers, just two families, and I sat at the opposite end of the train car, laying my pack on the red vinyl bench across from me. I looked over the menu, then sat back and waited until the waitress came over a few minutes later. She was young, with short red hair and a badge that read MOLLY.

“Hi,” she said. “Sorry for the wait. May I get you something to drink?”

“I’d like some water. A lot of it, like a carafe.”

“A what?”

“A pitcher,” I said. “A whole pitcher.”

“Okay. Do you know what you’d like to eat?”

“How’s your meat loaf?”

“It’s good. I had it for lunch.”

“I’ll have the meat loaf and the chef’s salad with Thousand Island dressing.”

She scribbled down my order. “You got it. I’ll be right back with your water and some bread.” She walked back to the kitchen.

Outside my window there was a Shell gas station. On the near side of the station was a family sitting on a grass patch next to their minivan. The father was looking at a map spread out over the hood of their car, while the mother assembled sandwiches for the three children. Watching them brought back memories of the family trips we took before my mother died.

My father, like me, was a sucker for tourist traps and probably would have stopped at the same places I had, the Petrified Gardens, Wall Drug, 1880 Town, all of them. As different as I had always thought I was from my father, I was discovering that there was still a lot of him in me.

Molly returned a moment later with a pitcher of water, a tall glass filled with ice, and a small plastic basket with a mini-loaf of bread and two foil-wrapped squares of butter. “There you go,” she said pleasantly. “Your meal will be right up.”

I looked back out the window at the family. The man was still bent over the map. The woman was now at his side, her hand resting on his back.

Something about this little drama both fascinated and conflicted me. The scene was so simple and real, maybe hopeful, yet it made me feel incomplete. Why did it make me feel so uncomfortable? As I pondered this I realized that what I was witnessing had been taken from me not just once, but twice. First, when my mother died. Second, when McKale did. I was missing my past and future simultaneously.

Would I ever have what this family had? Would I ever remarry? Would I ever have children? I honestly couldn’t imagine it. Yet . . .

My thoughts were interrupted by Molly returning with my dinner. I asked her if she knew of a place nearby where I could stay.

“There’s a KOA about a quarter mile up the road,” she said, pointing out the window. “A lot of my customers stay there. They have cabins for rent.”

“Are the cabins nice?”

“I wouldn’t know. But I haven’t heard anyone complain.”

“Would they complain if they didn’t like it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Some people complain if the ice in their cola is too cold.”

I grinned. “You’re right.”

I finished eating, got a piece of apple pie to go, then headed out toward the KOA. The campground had several vacancies and the man who ran the place reminded me that there were no sheets in the rentals.

“There’s a mattress but no sheets,” he said. “There’s a sink and toilet, but if you want to shower you come to this building right here.”

“Perfect,” I said. Maybe not perfect, but for forty-five dollars a night, with an air conditioner, porch swing, and television, I could do a lot worse. I rolled my sleeping bag out on the bed, turned on the television to the David Letterman show, then lay down and promptly fell asleep.

CHAPTER

Ten

My hair is getting long. I’ve got to
find a barber before someone
mistakes me for a rock star.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next day I did nothing but walk. It seemed like the same scenery kept repeating itself, like the background of a Flintstones cartoon. I only passed one house the whole day, until evening when I reached the town of Murdo. I ate at the Prairie Pizza and spent the night at the American Inn.

The next morning I woke with a headache, though it passed fairly quickly. I packed up then ate a breakfast of sausage and biscuits with white gravy at the diner at the World Famous Pioneer Auto Show.

While I was eating, I noticed that the time on the restaurant’s clock was an hour different than my watch. I asked my waitress about the time, and she informed me that the time zone changes at their city from Mountain to Central. I had officially passed through my second time zone since leaving Seattle. I adjusted my watch, then walked back out to 90.

I noticed one peculiar thing. I passed a lot of roadkill that day. I don’t know why there were more dead animals here than any other stretch I’d walked, but there were. I saw rabbit, deer, badgers, skunk, raccoon, and a few mammals past the point of recognition. McKale used to freak out at the sight of roadkill. She remedied this with outright denial, proclaiming that the deceased animals weren’t really that dead, they were just really tired.

Of course I teased her about this. “Look,” I would say. “That raccoon is sleeping.”

She would nod. “That is one tired raccoon.”

“I’d say. He’s sleeping so soundly, his head fell off.”

I came across the occasional cat or dog, which made me sad every time, knowing that somewhere someone was probably looking for the animal. I thought of the story The Little Prince. The only difference between the cats and dogs and the rest of the roadkill was that the wild creatures hadn’t been tamed. I suppose that if I were to die out here, I’d be no different. No one would know me. Strangers would think it tragic or horrible; they might scream or call 911, but they wouldn’t cry. They had no reason to.

A few people would miss me, but I could count them on one hand: my father; Nicole; Kailamai; and Falene, my assistant who had stuck by me when my business failed. So few. Was this a failed life?

I walked twenty-three miles that day, and counted thirty-six dead animals. I spent the night camped on the side of the road near a pond.

The next day was about the same. I walked twenty uneventful miles, stopping in the town of Kennebec. I ate dinner at Hot Rod’s Steakhouse and tried to stay at a place called Gerry’s Motel, but I couldn’t find anyone to help me. There was a large ice cream bucket on the motel check-in counter with a handwritten note penned in feminine script taped to it:

Tips for Barb

She really deserves it

She gets up early

I waited in the lobby for nearly ten minutes, but neither early-rising Barb, nor anyone else, came out, so I left and stayed at a hotel a block away.

The next day of walking was equally dull. No, more so, illustrated by the fact that the day’s highlight was when the shoulders of the road turned from brown dirt to red gravel. At the end of the day, I took exit 260 to Oacoma, a real town with a car dealership and, more important, Al’s Oasis.

Al’s Oasis was sort of a Wall Drug knockoff, a strip mall with an Old West façade and a grocery store, restaurant, and inn. I ate a roast beef dinner at Al’s Restaurant and stayed at the inn for seventy-nine dollars. My room had a view of the Missouri River.

The next morning I crossed over the river, passing the South Dakota Hall of Fame, which I had read about in a tourist brochure in my hotel room. South Dakotan inductees to the hall included TV news personalities Mary Hart and Tom Brokaw, Bob Barker (The Price Is Right), Al Neuharth (founder of USA Today), and Crazy Horse, though not in that order.

I walked twenty-four miles and spent the night in the town of Kimball, where I ate a basket of popcorn shrimp at the Frosty King and stayed at Dakota Winds Motel for fifty-four dollars.

The next morning, on my way back to the freeway, I passed a sign for a tractor museum. I was tempted, but I resisted the site’s magnetic pull and got on the freeway instead.

That evening I slept behind a grove of pine trees planted near the side of the road, which looked like a Christmas tree lot on the edge of a cornfield. I could have pushed myself to the next city, but I just didn’t feel like it. I wish I had.

CHAPTER

Eleven

Heroes and angels usually
arrive in disguise.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

When I woke the next morning everything was spinning. I felt as if I’d just gotten off the teacup ride in Disneyland. I lay in my sleeping bag, holding my head for nearly twenty minutes, hoping that whatever was making me dizzy and nauseous would pass. When my vertigo had eased a little, I packed my sleeping bag and started walking, skipping breakfast out of necessity.

I walked three miles to the town of Plankinton. By then I was feeling almost normal again, so I stopped for breakfast at a convenience store called the Coffee Cup Fuel Stop. A mile later I passed a sign for the Corn Palace.

Ears to You . . .

Visit the Corn Palace. Mitchell, South Dakota

Mitchell was the largest city I’d encountered since Rapid City. I figured that I could reach Mitchell by late afternoon and find a decent hotel to crash in.

During the next few hours, walking grew increasingly difficult, and three miles from the city the dizziness had returned worse than before. Everything began spinning so violently that I was staggering like a drunken man. Then I threw up. I stumbled a few more yards then threw up twice more. I fell onto my knees, holding my head in agony.

I slid my pack off and rolled over to my side. Walking was no longer an option. I didn’t know what to do. I hoped that a highway patrolman or a passing motorist might stop to check on me, but no one did. Cars sped past, either not seeing me, or, possibly, not wanting to deal with me. How do you not react to a body lying on the side of the road?

I lay there for several hours, throwing up six more times, until I was dry heaving, the taste of stomach acid sharp and bitter in my mouth. As darkness fell, I was in a quandary. I didn’t know whether I should roll farther off the shoulder to avoid getting run over, or stay where I was, hoping some Good Samaritan would stop to help—a prospect that seemed less likely with each passing car.

I had begun to panic, wondering how I would spend the night, when I heard a car pull up behind me. I heard a door open, followed by heavy footsteps. My mind, already spinning, flashed back to when I was attacked and nearly killed outside Spokane. Only this time I was even more vulnerable.

I looked up to see an elderly, gray-haired man dressed in nice but outdated clothing.

“Are you okay?” he asked in a thick accent that sounded to me like Russian.

“I’m very dizzy.”

He crouched down next to me. “Have you been drinking?”

I noticed his Star of David pendant. “No. Everything just started spinning.”

“Do you have family or friends I could call?”

“No, I’m from Seattle,” I said. “Could you take me to a hospital or a clinic?”

“Yes. There is a hospital in Mitchell. I will drive you there.”

“I would appreciate that.”

“This is your pack?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“I will put it in my car.”

The man put my pack in his backseat then returned and helped me to his car, an older-model Chrysler. I moved slowly, holding my head. He opened the door and eased me in.

“Do not hit your head,” he said. When I was seated, he shut the door and walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in.

“I’ll try not to throw up in your car,” I said.

He laughed a little. “I would appreciate that.”

“No promises,” I said.

He started the car. “Are you familiar with the town of Mitchell?”

“No, sir.”

“There is the Avera Queen of Peace Hospital on Foster Street. We can be there in fifteen minutes.”

I was leaning forward, my hands cupped over my eyes. “Thank you.” After a minute I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Leszek.”

“Lasik?”

He laughed. “Leszek. It is Polish. What is your name?”

“Alan.”

“Alan,” he said. “It is nice to meet you, Alan.”

The ride seemed agonizingly longer than fifteen minutes, as everything in my world was still spinning. Mercifully, the man didn’t ask any more questions. He didn’t say anything at all until he pulled up to the emergency room entrance. “We are here,” he said. “I will help you go inside.” He shut off his car and climbed out, then opened my door. He held my arm as I walked with him. When we were inside the building I said, “I forgot my pack.”

“It will be safe in my car,” he said.

I couldn’t believe I was back in a hospital. The smell of the waiting room made me feel more nauseous, and as we approached the registration desk I bent over and threw up on the carpet. Around me, voices seemed disembodied, tinny as a car radio. A woman asked, “What’s going on?”

“I do not know,” Leszek said. “I found him along the road. He is very dizzy.”

“Have him sit down,” another female voice said.

A nurse helped me sit back into a wheelchair.

“We need some admittance information,” the woman said to Leszek. “I’ll need to have you fill out this form.”

“I cannot help you. I do not know this man. I just stopped to help. His name is Alan.”

“You’re Alan?” she asked.

“Yes. My wallet is in my pack.”

“We need your insurance information.”

“I don’t have insurance,” I said.

I didn’t see her expression, but there was a pause.

“You cannot turn him down,” Leszek said.

“I didn’t say I don’t have money,” I said. “I’m not a bum. I just don’t have insurance. There’s a credit card in my wallet.”

“I will get your pack,” Leszek said.

I was wheeled back to an examination room. The room’s bright lights hurt my eyes.

A nurse with red hair and freckles entered the room about the same time I did. “I just need to check your vitals,” she said. She put a small plastic clip on one of my fingers and left it there while she ran an electric thermometer over my forehead and typed in the results on a computer. Then she fastened a blood pressure cuff on my arm and pushed a button. The cuff filled with air, tightening around my bicep. She read the gauge, typed in the results, and took off the cuff.

“What’s the verdict?” I asked.

“Your blood pressure is 117 over 78, which is good. Your temperature is normal. I’ll need to take some blood.”

She walked over to the sink and returned with a needle and a plastic bottle, which she set on the table next to me. “Do you care which arm I poke?”

“No.”

“Let me have you put your arm out like this.” She ran her finger over my inner elbow until she found a vein. “There will be a small prick . . . ” She tapped my arm a few times then slid the needle under my skin. “Okay. The doctor will be in in just a moment. Let me have you slip into this gown. Do you need help?”

“I can dress myself.”

She handed me a blue gown that was folded into a square, then left the room. I took off my clothes, pulled on the gown, and lay back on the bed.

I waited about ten minutes for a doctor, a young woman who looked as if she couldn’t be much older than twenty.

“Hi, Alan, I’m Dr. Barnes.” She glanced down at the paper she held. “Your blood pressure, oxygen, respiration, and pulse are all normal. How long have you been feeling dizzy?”

“It started this morning.”

“Were you involved in any physical activity at the time?”

“I was walking.”

“Do you do much walking?”

“Yes. I walk about twenty miles a day.”

“Very active. Had you been drinking?”

“You mean alcohol?”

“No, I meant liquids. Were you drinking alcohol?”

“No alcohol. I had water. I keep myself hydrated.”

“Even so, it’s still possible you were dehydrated, walking so far in the sun. Are you on any medications?”

“No.”

Her brow furrowed. “Okay. I’m going to run a few more tests. I’d also like to start you on an IV. I’ll be back to check on you in a bit.”

The redheaded nurse returned a minute later and ran more tests, then disappeared. I just closed my eyes and lay back in the bed, listening to the sounds of the ER flow around me. Too much time in ERs, I thought. The doctor returned forty-five minutes later.

“You, Mr. Christoffersen, are a mystery man. You look fine on paper. But then so did my last online date. How are you feeling?”

“I’m still dizzy.”

“I think we better watch you for a while. I’m going to put you on meclizine. It’s a motion-sickness drug that’s pretty effective for treating the symptoms of vertigo—dizziness, nausea. It will also make you very tired. Do you have any problem with sticking around?”

“I don’t have insurance, so I don’t want to stay any longer than I need to.”

“I understand,” she said. “Let’s get you on the meclizine and see how you react to it, then I’ll send you home to rest.”

Wish I had a home, I thought.

CHAPTER

Twelve

Leszek has taken me into his home to
care for me. Would I have done the
same for him? I’m ashamed to answer.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The doctor came back several hours later. The clock on the wall read 1:04 A.M. The meclizine had knocked me out, and even though I had slept most of that time, I was still very tired.

“I think you’re okay to go. But you’re not safe to drive.”

“I can get a taxi to a hotel,” I said. “Do you know where my backpack is?”

The nurse said, “Your friend has it next to him in the waiting room.”

“My friend?”

“The man who brought you here.”

“He’s still here?”

“I think he’s waiting for you.”

I put my clothes back on, and the nurse wheeled me to the lobby. Leszek was sitting in a chair in the corner, not reading or anything, just sitting, his hands clasped together in his lap. The nurse pushed me up to him.

“Ah, you are done,” Leszek said, standing.

“I didn’t know you were waiting for me.”

“Yes, the nurse said you would be out today. I thought you might need a ride.”

I looked at him in amazement. And doubt. Maybe my cynicism came from my years in advertising, or maybe it was because of the likes of my cheating ex–business partner, Kyle Craig, but I instinctively tried to figure out what the man’s angle could be.

“If you want to bring your car up to the door,” the nurse said, “I’ll wheel him out.”

“I will get my car,” Leszek said. He shuffled out of the waiting room.

My eyelids felt heavy. I desperately wanted to sleep and had started to doze when the nurse began pushing the wheelchair out to the curb. Leszek opened the car door, and I stood up and climbed in. He shut the door then got in the other side.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I will take you to my house. But first we will stop at the pharmacy for a prescription. The doctor prescribed meclizine, but we can purchase Bonine, it is the same thing, but it will cost you less money.”

“How do you know this?”

“The doctor wrote it down here.”

We drove to a Walgreens just a few blocks from the hospital. I stayed in the car while Leszek went inside. I dozed off, waking when he returned. He was carrying a small white sack. “Your prescription,” he said. “You should be feeling better soon. You just need rest.”

He drove me to his house. On the way to his home, he pointed down a lamplit street. “Down there, that is the Corn Palace. It is this town’s claim to fame.”

“It’s a building?”

“Yes, a building. An arena. They play basketball, have concerts and rodeos inside. It is known for the big corn festival. Every year they put up new murals made of corn.”

“Maybe I’ll walk by it when I leave,” I said.

“No, it is not worth the trip.” A couple minutes later he said, “We are here.”

I had my head down, my hands on my temples, and I slowly looked up. Leszek’s house was a humble, redbrick structure with an immaculate yard with pruned hedges and conically shaped pine trees. In contrast, the rest of the neighborhood looked blighted. The home next door looked like a crack house.

He pulled his car into the driveway. “It is not the Corn Palace, but it is home to me.” He laughed at this.

“You live alone?”

“Yes. I live alone.” He smiled. “No wife to wonder if I have been out with a girlfriend this late at night.”

He held my arm as we walked up the concrete stairs to his front porch. There was a green metal mezuzah case affixed to the right side of the door frame. I knew what a mezuzah was because one of my father’s clients was Jewish and my father had pointed it out to me once when he took me to his house.

Leszek unlocked his door and we stepped into his front room. The home smelled of some spice I didn’t recognize, and the aroma made me feel a little more nauseous. The interior was plain, but tidy and warm, with red shag carpet and a white-brick fireplace mantel. Above it was a picture that looked to be one of those color-by-numbers paintings that haven’t been popular for forty years. Most noticeably there was a grand piano that took up most of the room. The expensive instrument looked out of place in the humble home.

“Make yourself at home,” Leszek said. “Have a seat on the couch. I will get you some water to take your pills. The nurse said to take another dose before you go to sleep.” He left the room.

I slowly sat down. The couch was covered in a dated red-and-gold-pattern fabric, and it sagged a little in the middle. Leszek returned with a glass of water and two pills. “This will help you sleep,” he said.

I didn’t think I would need help.

I took the pills and popped them into my mouth, followed by a drink of water. The water was warm and I gagged a little.

“Now you should sleep. You can sleep in the bedroom next to mine. My grandson uses it when he visits, so it is a little messy. He is a messy boy. Come with me.”

I stood up and followed him down a short hallway. “Here is his room.” He turned on a light switch. “He is a messy boy.”

The room was actually quite neat. It was small and square, with dark, wood-paneled walls hung with cycling posters. The bed was covered with a patchwork quilt of red and blue.

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s perfect. I appreciate your kindness.”

“We need to make sure you are drinking much water.”

“They put me on an IV at the hospital.”

“Good. This medicine will make you very sleepy. You will feel better after you sleep. I would offer you something to eat, but I do not think it will be so good for you now.”

“No. I don’t think I’d keep it down.”

“When you wake up, you can eat. If you need something just call for me. I will bring your pack inside the house.”

“Thank you.”

After he left me alone, I examined the room more closely. There were three posters on the wall, one with a row of cyclists in blue jerseys, with the title Lance Armstrong Tour de France/2005; the second was a picture of cyclists in an array of bright jerseys on a road winding through the Swiss Alps. The third poster was of a beautiful young woman looking through the spokes of a bicycle.

On the dresser was an impressive collection of cycling trophies, one of them nearly three feet high. Next to the bed was a standing mirror in a gold frame and a nightstand with a porcelain lamp with a bright blue shade.

I shut the door, then turned off the light and walked over to the bed. I took off my shoes and lay back on the white, clean sheets. I don’t remember much after that.

CHAPTER

Thirteen

Whether cautionary or exemplary,
there has not yet been a life lived
that we cannot learn from. It is up
to us to decide which ours will be.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I didn’t know where I was when I woke. I had had crazy, lucid dreams, no doubt aided by the medication I had taken, but my reality was pretty crazy as well—I was in a city I’d never before heard of whose claim to fame was a Corn Palace, sleeping in the guest room of an elderly, Jewish Polish man I didn’t know. That was probably about as unlikely as anything I had dreamt.

I looked around the room. The window shades were dimly lit, as if the sun were barely rising. Considering what time I’d gone to bed, I hadn’t slept much. I sat up slowly. There was still some dizziness, but nothing compared to what it had been. At least I could walk if I had to.

I was hungry. I felt like I hadn’t eaten for days—which was almost true since I’d thrown up what I’d eaten the day before. I was relieved to see my pack leaning in the corner of the room. I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was matted to one side and my jaw was dark with stubble. I opened the door and walked out into the hallway.

Leszek was in the front room reading a book. He set it aside when he saw me. “Oh, Mr. Rip Van Winkle awakes.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“It is almost seven o’clock.”

“I only slept five hours?”

He laughed. “No, it is seven o’clock at night. You have slept the whole day.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Really?”

“It is true. How are you feeling?”

“Better than I was.”

“Is your dizziness gone?”

“Mostly.” I rubbed a hand over my eyes. “Seventeen hours. No wonder I’m so hungry.”

“I made dinner. I was waiting to eat, hoping you would join me.”

“I’d love to.”

“Come to the dining room. I must heat the soup. I think soup would be good. And some bread.”

I followed him into the dining room, which was separated from the kitchen by a laminate bar. “Please, sit down,” he said, walking to the stove. “I just need to heat the soup again.”

The table was already set with two bowls, soup spoons, a butter dish, and two teacups. As I sat down a single loud chirp came from a cuckoo clock above the oven, then music started playing as a group of figurines waltzed in tight circles, followed by seven distinct chirps from the cuckoo. The cacophony stopped as abruptly as it began.

“It is seven,” Leszek said.

“Your grandson has a lot of trophies.”

“He likes to ride his bicycle,” Leszek said.

“It looks like he’s good at it.”

“He rides his bicycle in races around the world. What good is that? He should get a wife, not more trophies for riding a bicycle.” He stirred the soup. “You know Rapid City?”

“I walked from there.”

“It is a long distance from here, almost three hundred miles. He rode his bike there in one day. He started at four in the morning and arrived in the evening.”

I was thinking, It took me two weeks. “He is fast.”

Leszek brought the soup and bread over to the table. “He is crazy. He rides his bicycle everywhere. You don’t get a good wife riding a bicycle.”

He ladled me three helpings of soup then pushed the bread plate toward me. “This bread is good. It is fresh this day from the bakery.”

“Thank you.”

The bread was cut in thick, airy slices. I took a piece and slathered it with butter, then dipped it into my soup and ate.

“This is delicious,” I said.

He got up and went back to the stove, returning with a teakettle. “It is Campbell’s Bean with Bacon soup.”

“Campbell’s?” I ate another bite of bread.

“I have no wife. You expect maybe something fancy homemade?”

“I like Campbell’s Bean with Bacon soup. My mother used to make it for me when I was a boy.” I ate another spoonful. “I guess you don’t really make it. You heat it.”

Leszek lifted the teakettle and poured my cup to the brim.

“What is that?” I asked.

He sat back down. “Ginger tea. Ginger tea is good for the dizziness. How do you feel? Are you still dizzy?”

“Not as dizzy,” I said.

“I am happy to know this.” He slapped his hands on his thighs. “Oh, it is good to have a guest in my home.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said.

He swatted at the air. “I do not need a thank-you. It is good to have the company.” He smiled. “You say you walked from Rapid City?”

“I came through Rapid City. But I started in Seattle.”

His bushy eyebrows rose in surprise. “You said you were from Seattle. I did not think you had walked from there. That is a long way. Why does a man walk from Seattle to Mitchell, South Dakota?”

I buttered another piece of bread. “To see the Corn Palace, of course.”

He looked at me as if he were trying to decide if I was telling the truth. Finally he said, “No.”

“You’re right. I’m kidding. I’m just passing through South Dakota. I’m walking to Key West, Florida.” I took another bite.

He watched me eat, then said, “Key West, Florida. Yes, I know Key West, Florida. So you are like my grandson, you have no wife to keep you home.”

I looked up at him. “No, I don’t.”

He nodded. “So why does a clever man walk from Seattle to Key West?”

“What makes you think I’m clever?”

“You use words that are clever. A man’s words say more about a man than his clothes. Because English is not my mother language I am more aware of words that are clever.”

“I was in advertising,” I said.

“Like to make the television commercials?”

“Yes. But I did more magazine ads and product design.”

“Have you made commercials I would know?”

“Probably not. My clients were mostly confined to Washington.”

“The capital Washington, D.C.?”

“No. Washington state.”

He nodded. “Of course. Of course. Seattle.” He took a bite of bread. “Were you good at your advertising?”

“Some people thought so. They gave me awards.”

“Is that what makes you good? The awards?”

“No. They are only symptoms of the disease. Not the disease itself.”

Leszek laughed. “See, you are clever. But you have not yet answered my question. Why does an advertising man, one with many awards, walk from Seattle to Key West? Plenty of time? Or, maybe, as they say in Poland, you stuck your head above the other poppies, so they chopped you off at the advertising business?”

“No,” I said. “I lost my wife.”

His smile disappeared. “Oh. I am very sorry. You have divorce?”

I shook my head. “No. She passed away.”

He looked distraught. “I am very, very sorry to hear. She was sick?”

“She was in a horse riding accident and broke her back. She died a few months later of infection.”

“That is very bad. And now I understand that is why you walk away from your job.”

“Mostly. The advertising agency I worked for was mine. While I was taking care of my wife, my partner stole all my clients and forced me into bankruptcy.”

“That is bad,” Leszek said. “Poor man.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by this. “Me?”

“Your partner. He is a poor man. I feel most sorry for him.” He stood up. “Let me get you some more soup.” He reached across the table and ladled more soup into my bowl. “There you are. Eat plenty.”

“Thank you,” I said, waiting for him to sit down. After he did I said, “You feel most sorry for him?”

“Yes. He has made for himself a world of no trust. Now he must spend his days afraid for when someone will steal his business. The things we do to others become our world. To the thief, everyone in the world is a thief. To the cheater, everyone is thinking to cheat him.”

“That is an interesting way to look at it,” I said.

“So what of you?” Leszek said. “Are you free yourself from this man?”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you forgiven your partner?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

He looked at me sadly. “Then I must feel much sorrow for you too.”

“Sorrow because I won’t forgive a thief? Actually, he’s worse than a thief, he’s a betrayer. Dante said the devil reserved the deepest level of hell for men like him.” I sat back. “No, I don’t think I will be forgiving him.”

He looked very distressed. “How can you live your life when you have given it to a betrayer and thief?”

“Some people don’t deserve to be forgiven.”

“No,” Leszek said. “You must forgive everyone.”

I gazed at the old man intensely. “You can’t be serious. You’re telling me that Holocaust survivors should forgive Hitler?”

The man looked at me with a peculiar expression. He clasped his hands in front of him then said softly, “I am.”

“You believe even Hitler deserves to be forgiven?”

The man looked at me without flinching. “That is not the question.”

“What do you mean?”

“To forgive Hitler, or his wspólnicy . . . ” He held up a finger. “ . . . people who helped him, has nothing to do with Hitler. Hitler is a dead man. Do you believe forgiving him will help him?”

I didn’t answer. Of course it wouldn’t.

“My friend,” Leszek continued, “we chain ourselves to what we do not forgive. So let me say again your question. Should a Holocaust survivor chain himself forever to Hitler and his crimes? Or should he forgive and be free?”

“That’s easier said than done,” I said.

“Yes, everything is easier said than done.”

I looked down at the table.

“But you did not answer my question. Should we forgive and be free?”

His question angered me. “Look, I appreciate all you’ve done for me. You’re a better man than I am. But when you know what it’s like to have everything taken away from you, then you can preach to me about forgiveness and moving on.”

He nodded slowly. “I am sorry to upset you. No, I have not had everything taken away from me.” He looked into my eyes with an expression of the deepest gravity. “ . . . But only because I was not willing to give up my humanity.” He put his arm on the table, then slowly rolled up his left sleeve. At first I didn’t see what he meant to show me. His skin was sun-spotted and wrinkled, but then I saw the number tattooed in blue ink on his forearm. I looked up into his eyes.

“I was fourteen years old when German soldiers came for my family and we were put on a train to Sobibor.” He looked into my eyes. “You have perhaps heard of Sobibor?”

I shook my head, still a little stunned.

“No,” he said, “I think not. For much time no one knew of the Sobibor camps. Even some Holocaust survivors denied it was. But those of us who were there know the truth. A quarter million people died there. Only a few of us survived. I was one of them.”

“Where is Sobibor?” I asked.

“Sobibor is in eastern Poland. It was the second camp built by the SS. It was a death camp. They kept only a few of us alive to help kill.

“The SS was very clever how they ran the camp. They would calm the people by telling them that they were being sent to a work camp. They did this so we would not resist. They did much to make the people believe this trick. They had prisoners in blue outfits waiting at the train station to greet the passengers. When we came out of the trains we were met by smiling bag porters.

“My father believed their trick. He even gave a tip to one of the porters, asking him to have our bags taken to our room.

“Arriving off the train . . . ” He rubbed a thick hand over his face. “You don’t forget a thing like that. The sound of the train brakes. The smell. There was an awful smell in the air—always that smell.

“The Germans and the Ukrainian guards separated us into two groups—men on one side, women and children on the other, with a space between us. They said that those boys fourteen and under should stay with their mother. I was barely fourteen, I could not decide whether I should go with her or my father. My mother made the decision. I do not know if it was because she had my younger brother and sister and did not want my father to be alone, or if she somehow knew what was to happen, but she told me to go with my father.

“The commandant who met us at the station had a speech. We were all so tired and hungry and thirsty, so we did not think right. We were ready to believe anything. The commandant told us that Sobibor was a work camp. That it would not be easy for us and we were to work hard, but because hard work was good for the soul we should thank them.

“They said that Sobibor was a safe place to be and as long as we did as we were told, we would be well off. But if we disobeyed, we would be punished.

“On the way to the camp a rumor had passed through the train that Sobibor was a death camp, so even as bad as things were, we thought this was very good news.”

Tears collected in the corner of Leszek’s eyes, but didn’t fall, as if he was unwilling to allow them.

“The officer who spoke to the arriving prisoners was an SS officer named Hermann Michel. We called him ‘the preacher,’ because he was a clever preacher of lies. It is a lesson I learned well, to never trust people with soft voices and guns.

“After he welcomed us to the camp, he told us that there had been an outbreak of typhus at one of the other camps, and since our health was important to him, before we were allowed inside our barracks, we would have to be showered and our clothes to be washed. He told us that was the only reason why men and women had to be separated but we would soon be together and would be able to live together as families. I remember seeing my mother smiling at my father. She believed we would be okay.

“Michel said, ‘Fold your clothes and remember where they are, I shall not be with you to help you find them.’

“Then the soldiers walked through the lines asking if anyone knew any trades. They were especially interested in carpenters, shoemakers, and tailors. My father was a shoemaker and I had worked with him since I was eleven. He told the soldiers we had a trade. They took us out of the line. Then young boys walked up and down the line giving people strings to tie their shoes together.

“The old and sick were taken first. They put them on carts. They were told they would be taken to a hospital for care, but they were taken directly to a pit on the other side of camp where they were shot.

“Everyone else was led off in groups past little pretty homes with gardens and flowers in pots. It looked very nice, but it was all part of the trick. They were taken down a path the Nazis called Himmelstrasse, the road to heaven.

“After the old people were gone, they took the women and children away. I waved good-bye to my mother and little brother and sister. My mother blew my father and me a kiss.”

His eyes welled up again. “I did not know it then, but my mother and brother and sister were dead within an hour. The Nazis were very efficient.”

He looked at me and there was a darkness to his gaze. “I heard the screaming once. I had been in Sobibor for three months and I was assigned to weed near the fence in camp two when they started the engines. Even through the concrete walls, the screams escaped. The sound of it froze my blood. It is a sound you never forget. Then they fell off until there was nothing but silence. When I have nightmares, it is that I hear. The silence.

“Sobibor had one purpose. To kill as many people as quickly as the Germans could. When I arrived there, the Germans had three gas chambers, with big truck engines. They could kill six hundred people at a time. But that was not fast enough for them. So three new chambers were made so they could kill twelve hundred people at a time. Imagine—twelve hundred at a time. They were Russian POWs, homosexuals, and gypsies, but mostly Jews.”

He went silent and I just looked at him, my heart pounding, my stomach feeling sick. After a moment he rubbed his eyes then met my gaze.

“In Sobibor, there were three camps. Camp one and camp two were where they prepared food for the officers and guards. Those prisoners who were there cooked or cleaned cars, or washed or made clothing, shoes, gold jewelry, or whatever the guards asked for.

“Camp three was away from us. It was a mystery. One of the cooks wanted to know what was going on in camp three so he hid a note in a dumpling. A note returned to the bottom of a pot. It said, death.

“Those who remained alive in camp three had one job, to kill and dispose of the dead. At first the Germans buried the bodies in big holes using tractors, but there were too many, so they began burning them. You could see the flames at night. Always burning. Like hell.

“Once, Himmler himself paid a visit to the camp. To celebrate his great coming, hundreds of young girls were killed in his honor.

“No one was safe. Even those helping the guards would be replaced every few weeks. It was frightful to be told to deliver food to camp three, because many times the deliverers would not come back.”

His words trailed off. He had again retreated within himself. My self-pity was swept away by the power of his story. After a few moments I asked, “How did you survive?”

“Hmm,” he said, nodding. “People think that the Jews just went like sheep to their graves—and no one resisted. That is not true. Many tried to escape. Many, many lost their lives because of it. The Germans had a rule. If one person escaped, then a dozen in the camp would be shot.

“It was horrible having death hanging over you at all times, but in one way, it was liberating. Once we knew for sure that it was only a matter of time before they would kill us, we had nothing to lose. We knew we all would die, so risk meant nothing.

“While we were planning our escape there came to Sobibor a Russian soldier with the name Pechersky. We called him Sasha. He planned the escape. Some of the men had axes from cutting trees, some made knives, and at the chosen hour one by one we killed the guards and took their guns. It went good until one of the guards was found. Then all was madness. The guards in the towers started shooting down with their machine guns. Our men fired back. It was every man for himself.

“There were forests just past the fence. We knew if we made it to the forest, it would be difficult for them to find us. There were seven hundred of us in the camp and maybe three hundred of us made it out of the camp. But the fields were planted with land mines and many did not make it to the trees. One land mine blew up near me and a man flew past me in the air.

“The Germans radioed for help and soldiers arrived with dogs to hunt us down. In the end, less than a hundred of us made it to freedom. And many of those were turned in or killed by Polish traitors in town.”

“Then it was a failure,” I said.

“No. It was worth it if even one escaped, because we all would have died—every one of us. I was a lucky one. A good farmer found me. He took me in and hid me until the war was over. I owe my life to him.”

I suddenly understood. “That’s why you stopped to help me.”

“Yes, I made a promise to God that I would never turn away from someone in need.”

“What did you do when the war was over?”

“I had much hate. I was asked to testify at the war criminal trials. I got to look some of the guards in the faces and point at them and condemn them. I do not regret this. Mercy should not rob justice.

“But my soul became dark. I trusted no one. I hated everyone. Even the Polish. Until I met Ania.” His expression softened as he spoke her name. “My dear Ania. She had suffered too. Not in Sobibor, but she saw death too. Her own father and mother were killed in front of her. But she was not like me. She was so beautiful. Not just her face, which I tell you was beautiful, but in her eyes. Somehow she could still smile and laugh.”

When he said this he smiled for the first time since he’d started his story. “Oh, my dear Ania. I could not keep myself from her. But she would not have me. Finally I said, ‘Why, Ania? Why will you not have me?’

“She said, ‘Because you are like them.’ I got very angry. I said, ‘I am not like them.’ She said, ‘Their hate for us—your hate for them, there is no difference. You have such hate in your heart, you might as well have died in Sobibor.’

“She was right. I was just like them. She showed me that the one thing they could not take from me was my choice. So I made a choice to be free of them. To be free of my past, my horrible, horrible past.” He nodded. “That’s when she married me. That’s when I became a free man, even more than when I ran from the camp. In many ways it was the same.”

“What happened to Ania?”

“My Ania died nine years ago. After she died I came to America to be with my son. He now lives in California.”

I looked down for a long time, then said, “I’m sorry. My problems are small by comparison.”

He reached over and put his hand on mine. “No. Your problems are not small. They are horrible too. All the more reason you must let them go.” Then he looked me in the eyes and said something that changed me forever. “What would your beloved have you do?”

My eyes welled up with tears. When I could speak I said, “She would tell me to be free.”

He nodded. “Yes, just like my Ania. Just like my Ania.” He looked me in the eyes. “Honor her wishes and you will honor her.”

I pondered what he’d said. “How do I do this? How do I forgive?”

“I had no one to go to. No one to say ‘I forgive you.’ But you can go to him, your partner. You can tell him you forgive him. But you must first say it to God. Then you may say it to him.”

“I don’t think he believes he did wrong.”

“He knows he did wrong. He knows. But it does not matter. This is your freedom. He must find his own.” The moment faded off into silence. Finally he said, “I have burdened you too much for your sickness.”

I shook my head. “No. You haven’t burdened me. I’ll think about what you’ve said.”

He nodded. “Would you like more soup?”

“No, thanks. I’m full.”

Suddenly his face lit up. “You would then, perhaps, like to listen to me play the piano.”

I smiled. “I would like that.”

He smiled wide. “I would be most pleased to play the piano for you.”

We both stood and walked into the front room. I sat back into the sofa as Leszek sat down at the instrument. For a moment he looked down at the piano, then he lifted his hands, his fingers hovering briefly above the keys, then he started to play.

I don’t know what it was that he played, but I could feel, as well as hear, Lezek’s soul pouring out through his music. He was no longer a gray, feeble old man, but vibrant and strong.

Even the room was changed, glorified by the power and brilliance of the music, and I might as well have been seated amid velvet tapestries and gold-leaf veneers in one of Europe’s finest concert halls. I closed my eyes and was lost in the passion of the moment—somewhere between anguish and hope, despair and triumph, past and future, nowhere and everywhere.

Then the music stopped as abruptly as it had begun, leaving the room quiet, the silence ringing powerfully.

There were tears rolling down my face. Both of our faces. Leszek was an old man again. He was mortal again. Without looking at me he said, “It is late. I think I will go to bed now.” He got up from the bench.

“Thank you,” I said.

He turned to look at me. “It is my pleasure, my friend. It is my pleasure.”

Then the old man shuffled off to his room.

CHAPTER

Fourteen

To forgive is to unlock the cage of
another’s folly to set ourselves free.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I lay in bed for hours unable to sleep—not just because I had already slept so late, but because my mind was too full. I thought mostly about the horror Leszek had seen in his life. I realized that in some ways the atrocities of the Holocaust had become cinema to me: a mental library of documentaries, movies, and books I had experienced growing up, erroneously believing that I knew something about the horror. I had never met anyone who had lived through it. It was the difference between reading a travelogue and talking to a native.

This was something I could never understand: how could a person be so inhumane to others? I put myself in that equation. Had I been a German soldier, would I have obeyed orders? Statistically speaking, I likely would have. What if I had been in Leszek’s position? Would I have attempted an escape or accepted my death? And wasn’t that question, in some ways, the very question I was facing right now?

In those dark, quiet hours, I found the truth of Leszek’s words. What he said was true—whether I had intended to or not, I had assigned a portion of my future to Kyle. I had deeded him a continual stake in my life—recurring at consistent intervals like a regularly scheduled program in the television network of my mind. As an advertiser, this was something I understood. We paid money to media to lease space in their viewers’ minds. That’s what I had given Kyle, a television series in my mind, a daily drama I visited, to create pain and hate and justification and . . . Then I saw it. Could it be that I held on to my hate and unforgiveness because I wanted to? That hate was as strong a lust as sex or violence? That I had some carnal desire to beat him mercilessly every day in the boxing ring of my mind? And how long would this show go on before I canceled it? For the rest of my days?

It could. I had met people who held grudges as their most prized possessions, clinging to bitterness and resentment even after the focus of their hatred was dead and buried.

That idea seemed absurd. If my life was, as my father always said, the sum total of my thoughts, then what would such a course of thought make of my life? And was I willing to give that away? No. I wanted to own my thoughts. I wanted to reclaim my mind. I wanted my time back. I wanted to forgive.

I don’t know what time I eventually fell asleep, but I woke the next morning around ten. It was light out, so I knew, this time, that it was morning. I didn’t feel dizzy. Actually, except for being off schedule, I felt normal. I lay in bed for a few minutes, revisiting the previous night’s thoughts.

Long ago I had learned that those middle-of-the-night thoughts didn’t always hold up to the light of day. There were times, in my advertising life, when I had jumped out of bed with a campaign idea I thought so brilliant I had to write it down. I kept a notepad next to my bed for that very purpose. I would jump up and scribble down my flash of genius, then go back to bed, only to wake the next morning, read the words, and wonder, What was I thinking?

But this time, that wasn’t the case. Everything Leszek had said was true. I owned no stock in Kyle’s life and I had no desire to vest him with stock in mine. I retrieved my cell phone from my pack, then, as I considered what I was about to do, hesitated. What would I say? How much would I say? In a way, it didn’t matter. It was the act itself. The less I said the better. I would call and say, I forgive you. Just those three words. I thought about Pamela. That’s what she had come so far to hear. What she had risked her life to hear. But Kyle wasn’t, as far as I could tell, seeking what Pamela had. Again, I reminded myself of Leszek’s words. It didn’t matter. What I was doing had nearly nothing to do with Kyle. How he responded to my forgiveness was up to him. Even if he met my call with hostility, it didn’t matter.

Then I remembered that Leszek had said I should first go to God. Surprisingly, calling out to God was harder to me than calling Kyle. What would I say to God? Of course, if God was God, then whatever I said was moot, as he already knew what I would say. I couldn’t plan what I was going to say like some kind of presentation, every word carefully scripted, timed for impact. Speaking to God was not about show.

I had once been present at a fund-raising dinner for a Washington State congressional candidate. A minister had gotten up to say a prayer but instead had read a poem. I remember thinking it was a nice presentation, but that it was no more sincere than my last advertising jingle. Maybe it was my father’s utter lack of pretense, but I had been taught to say what I meant and get to the point. It made sense to me that I should speak to God in the same way. Keep it simple. I looked up at the ceiling, then said aloud, “God, I forgive Kyle.”

Nothing. I felt nothing. I felt worse than nothing, I felt like a liar. I still wanted to beat Kyle to a pulp. I wanted to beat him and leave him on the side of the road like the gang in Spokane had done to me.

That’s when I found the truth about prayer. Like Mark Twain wrote, “You can’t pray a lie.”

I continued my prayer. “God. I want to beat Kyle Craig to a pulp. What he did was despicable. It was vicious and cruel and he is a bad, evil person.” Oddly, I felt at peace saying this. Now I was getting somewhere. “I want him to suffer, even as I have suffered.” I let the words ring. Powerful feelings began coming to me. “I don’t know why he’s that way. But I don’t want to be like him. I don’t want him to be a part of my life. I want to be free of him. I want to be free of this burden. I don’t want hate. I don’t want this.”

I stopped and sat in silence. Then I felt a remarkable thing. A warm feeling of peace came over me. “I want to forgive him.”

That was the answer. Desire. It is not the ability to walk that pleases God, it is the desire to walk. The desire to do the right thing. The truest measure of a man is what he desires. The measure of that desire is seen in the actions that follow. “I want to forgive Kyle Craig,” I said aloud. This time I meant it.

I picked up the phone and dialed Kyle’s phone number. His number had been disconnected. From what Falene had told me back in Spokane, I should not have been surprised.

I put the phone down and thought about what time it was on the West Coast. I had crossed into Central time, so it was only a little after eight. I dialed Falene’s number. She didn’t answer. I had forgotten that she never answered calls from numbers she didn’t recognize. I hung up and tried again, thinking to leave a message. To my surprise, she answered.

“Hello?”

“Falene, it’s Alan.”

There was a momentary pause. “Alan, where are you?”

“I’m in South Dakota. How are you?”

She paused. “I’m fine,” she said unconvincingly.

“How are you really?”

“I’ve been better,” she said softly.

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you remember me telling you about my little brother?”

“Didn’t he just get out of rehab?”

She sniffed. “Yes. But he’s gone back to using. I haven’t seen him for eleven days.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m really worried,” she said.

“I’m so sorry,” I said again. I didn’t know what else to say.

After a moment she sighed. “But that’s not why you called. What can I do for you?”

“I’m trying to reach Kyle.”

“Kyle Craig?”

I knew this would surprise her. “Yes. I tried to call him but his number’s been disconnected.”

“That’s because there’s a long list of people who would like to lynch him. Why do you want to talk to him?”

“Part of my healing, I guess. Can you help me find his number?”

“It might take me a while.”

“That’s okay. You can reach me here.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll call you back.”

“Thank you, Falene. Now what can I do for you?”

She sighed. “I wish there were something. But thank you anyway.” We were both silent for a moment. Then she said, “It’s so good hearing your voice.”

“Yours too,” I said.

“I’ll call when I find Kyle’s number.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’ll talk to you soon.”

We hung up. Then I lay back in my bed and looked up at the ceiling.

I missed Falene. After all she’d done for me I wished I could somehow comfort her. She was my truest friend, and without her I doubted that I would still be alive.

CHAPTER

Fifteen

I once heard a preacher say,

“The reason we sometimes connect so
quickly with a complete stranger is
because the friendship is not of this
life, but is the resumption of a friendship
from another.” I do not know if this is
true, but sometimes it feels true.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I lay in bed for a few more minutes, then stood without any difficulty. I was no longer dizzy. Time to leave, I thought. I put on some sweatpants and walked out to the kitchen. Leszek was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee, a newspaper spread out in front of him. He looked up as I entered.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning.”

“I am doing a crossword puzzle,” he said. “I am not much good at these puzzles. Do you know a five-letter word for worship?”

I walked over and looked at the paper.

“The second letter is a d,” he said.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I was never very good at those things either.”

“Maybe if it was in Polish,” he said, smiling. “But in English, too many words I do not know.”

“Adore,” I said.

He looked at the word. “Yes. Adore. That is very good.” He penciled in the word. “How do you feel today, Alan?”

“Good. I feel good.”

“Good is good,” he said standing. “I will make you some breakfast.”

“No hurry,” I said. “Finish your puzzle.”

“You will starve first,” he said. “I will never finish this puzzle.” He walked over to the kitchen. “I never finish the puzzles.” He turned on the electric stove beneath a frying pan. “I went to the market this morning. I bought some delicious syrup to go with our pancakes. I like the American pancakes. You say pancakes or hotcakes?”

“Both,” I said. “Usually pancakes. But a flapjack by any other name is just as satisfying.”

“Ah yes, Shakespeare,” Leszek said as he dropped batter onto a skillet. “You are clever.” He ran a spatula under the cake, then flipped it over.

“I thought a lot about what you told me last night. Have you written your story down?”

“I am writing it now,” he said. “For my children and grandchildren. I do not think my son will read it though.”

“Why?”

“I think maybe he does not want to think of such things.”

“He will want to read it someday,” I said.

“Yes. Perhaps after I am dead. People are always more interesting after they are dead. Especially parents, I think.”

I thought of my own father. What questions would I want to ask him once it was no longer possible?

“One of my father’s favorite books was written by a survivor of a concentration camp,” I said. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it, Man’s Search for Meaning by . . . ”

“Viktor E. Frankl,” Leszek said.

“Yes. Then you’ve read it?”

He smiled. “Yes, I have read it. I know the writer.”

“You’ve met Viktor E. Frankl?”

He smiled. “Viktor was a friend of mine. We wrote letters.”

“That is very cool,” I said. “Very cool.”

A few moments later Leszek brought the pancakes over to the table. He gave me the top two cakes, leaving a bottom one for himself.

“I have Aunt Jemima syrup,” he said.

“Thank you.” I poured syrup on my pancakes, spreading it out with my fork. I took a bite. “You make good pancakes.”

“Ha!” he said. “As good as my soup?”

I laughed. After we both had eaten a little, I said, “I want to thank you for what you said last night.”

“I said too much. Did it help?”

“It did. I tried to call Kyle Craig this morning.”

His heavy brow fell. “Who?”

“Kyle. My former business partner. The one who stole from me.”

“Oh yes. You called him?”

“I tried. But his phone has been disconnected. But I’ll find him.”

“Good. Good,” he said, nodding approvingly.

“I think it was actually more difficult telling God that I forgave Kyle.”

“Perhaps you have not yet forgiven God.”

“Perhaps,” I said. I knew there was truth in what he said.

“I understand,” Leszek said. “When Ania died I was very, very angry at God. I even shouted at him. This to me is most strange, because I did not shout at God when I learned the soldiers had killed my mother and brother and sister, or later when they killed my father. But I shouted at him when my wife died. I think because I could not blame her death on anyone but God.” He looked at me sadly. “I think God understands such things.”

“You think so?”

Leszek nodded. “I will tell you a story. When my son was very young he found a little knife. I took it away from him so he would not hurt himself. He got very angry and yelled at me. But I was not angry at him.” His expression lightened. “I am not saying my Ania was like a knife.” He leaned forward and grinned as if he were going to tell me a secret. “Even though sometimes her tongue was very sharp.”

I laughed.

“I am just saying that I am older and wiser than my little boy and I understand why he was much upset, so I did not take it so serious. God is older and wiser too. I think he understands too.”

This made sense to me. “I hope you’re right,” I said.

He grinned again. “So do I. Or I am in much trouble!”

I laughed again. As I looked at this grinning old man my heart was full of gratitude. The thought of leaving him filled me with sadness. We ate awhile in silence before I finally spoke. “I’m going to be leaving today.”

He nodded. “Yes, I thought you might.”

“I would like to shower first if that’s okay.”

“Yes, of course.” He looked sad. “Is there anything you will need before you go?”

“No. You’ve done more than enough.”

“I can drive you back to the freeway.”

Even though I had normally refused rides I could not refuse him. “Thank you. I would like that.” I took my plate over to the sink and turned on the water to wash it.

“No, no. Just leave it. Please. I will do dishes later. You go shower.”

“Are you sure?”

He waved his hands, as if brushing me away. “Yes. Go.”

At his dismissal I went to my room, retrieved clothes and a razor, then went into the bathroom. I shaved first then turned on the water and stepped into the tub. There were small slivers of soap in a plastic dish. Leszek was a man who had little and wasted less. I didn’t shower very long as I was conscious of using his hot water. I washed my hair twice, still amazed at how long it was. I could almost pull it back in a ponytail.

As I got out of the shower I could hear Leszek playing the piano again. I toweled off, dressed, then went to my room and finished putting my things back into my pack. I made the bed, then carried my pack out to the front room where Leszek was waiting for me. He looked very sad.

“You are ready to leave,” he said.

“I’m afraid so,” I replied.

“Okay, okay. We go.”

We walked out the front door to his car. I threw my pack into the car’s backseat, then climbed in as Leszek started the car. As we drove out of his neighborhood, Leszek pointed out the Corn Palace again, its façade adorned with murals made of corncobs. As we crossed under the freeway, I pointed to a small turnoff near the freeway on-ramp.

“How about right over there?” I said.

Leszek pulled his car off the side of the road and shut off the engine.

I felt surprisingly emotional.

“Well, my good friend,” Leszek said. “This is goodbye.” He reached out his thick hand. I grasped it.

“Saying thank you seems so inadequate. I am so grateful for all you’ve done for me.”

“It was my pleasure,” he said. “Is your father still alive?”

“Yes.”

“Then he must be proud of such a son. I hope we meet again.”

“Me too,” I said. “I didn’t get your phone number.”

“Then I will give it to you.”

I took out my journal and a pen. He told me his number and I scribbled it down. “I’ll call you when I reach Key West.”

“Yes. You call me. I will celebrate for you with toast.”

“Toast?” I said. “Is that a Jewish custom?”

“Yes. I will drink toast.”

I laughed. Then I shook his hand again and climbed out of the car. “Take care, my friend,” I said. “Be safe.”

“What so bad thing could happen to me in Mitchell, South Dakota?” he replied.

I laughed again. He waved, then started his car, signaled, and slowly pulled back out onto the road. I watched as his car disappeared in the merging traffic. All gold does not glitter, I thought.

CHAPTER

Sixteen

I have discovered the ladies of the

Red Hat Society. Or, more accurately,
they have discovered me.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Over the next three days I walked from Mitchell to Sioux Falls. My travel was without incident and full of corn. There was corn everywhere. At one point I passed what looked like a petroleum refinery, which vexed me, as it seemed totally out of place amid the acres of cornfields. As I examined the plant it occurred to me that they were making ethanol from corn.

On the first day out of Mitchell, I saw a sign for the Laura Ingalls Wilder home. When McKale was little, she was a huge fan of the Little House books, so I got off the freeway to see the house. Then, shortly past the turnoff, I saw a sign that said her home was more than fifty miles off my course. I turned around and walked back to 90.

I kept on walking. Again, there was a lot of roadkill. On one stretch I counted six “sleeping” raccoons in the course of just one mile.

On the third day from Mitchell, after twenty-four days on Interstate 90, I exited south on 29 toward Sioux Falls. I could see the city in the distance, and even though I was tired, I decided that a good hotel with room service and a hot bath would be worth the extra effort. At nearly twenty-six miles I stopped at a Sheraton.

I decided to take a rest day. For breakfast I ordered eggs Benedict from room service, ate, then put on my swimsuit. I borrowed the terrycloth robe that hung in my closet, then went downstairs to the hot tub.

The hotel lobby was crowded with hundreds of mature ladies wearing red hats and purple dresses, some of them accessorized with feather boas or red or purple fuzzy socks.

I crossed the lobby to the pool area. The hot tub was located on the far side of the pool. Two women were already in the tub, chatting loudly over the sound of bubbling water. They were wearing red hats as well. They stopped talking and looked at me as I folded my robe over the arm of a pool chair and stepped into the water. I closed my eyes and sank into the tub up to my neck.

When I opened my eyes the women were still looking at me.

“Hi,” I said.

“How are you?” the one nearest me said.

“I’m fine. And you?”

“Having the time of our lives,” said the other woman, who was a little taller and had unnaturally red hair.

“Why are you wearing red hats?” I asked.

“We belong to the Red Hat Society.”

“I’m not familiar with that.”

“We’re just a bunch of dames out for a good time,” the first lady said. “You haven’t heard of us?”

“Sorry, no. I’m not from Sioux Falls.”

“Oh, this isn’t just a Sioux Falls thing,” the tall lady said indignantly. “The Red Hatters are global. We have more than forty thousand chapters worldwide. We’ve been featured in Time magazine and on television shows. We’ve even been on The Simpsons.”

“The Simpsons?” I said. “I’m sorry, I guess I’ve been in a cave for a while. Actually, I’ve been on a walk.”

“That must be some walk,” the second woman said.

“I’m walking across America.”

“Oh my,” the first lady said, “that is a walk.”

“Really,” the second said. “Which side of the country did you start on?”

“I started in Seattle.”

“How long ago did you start?”

“It’s been nearly eight months. But I got held up five months in Spokane. I got stabbed just outside of the city.”

“Stabbed?” the second woman said.

I rose up out of the water to show my scars from the attack.

The first woman put her hand over her mouth. “Oh my. How horrible.”

The second woman glanced at my ring finger. “So how did you convince your wife to let you go? Or did she come with you?”

“You lost her,” the first said. “How did you lose her?”

I looked at her quizzically. “How did you know that?”

“Yes,” the second woman said, turning back. “How did you know that?”

“He’s wearing a ladies’ wedding ring around his neck,” she said. She turned to me. “If you were divorced, you wouldn’t be wearing it. If you were still together, she’d be wearing it, and if it belonged to another woman, your wife wouldn’t let you wear it.”

“Aren’t you the Sherlock?” the second woman said. “Is she right?”

I nodded. “She passed away last October. Two days after her funeral, I began my walk.”

Both women just looked at me. Then the second woman said, “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Tell me about the Red Hat club,” I said.

“ . . . Society,” the second woman corrected.

The first woman began, “It started when Sue Ellen, our queen mother—”

“You have a queen?” I asked.

“That’s what Sue Ellen calls herself,” she replied. “The society started when she bought a friend of hers a red hat for her fifty-fifth birthday. There’s a poem about a red hat. I won’t recite the whole thing, but it goes like this.” She straightened herself up a little.

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple,
with a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we’ve no money for butter.

“And I’ll learn to spit,” said the second woman.

The first woman nodded. “That’s in there too. It means we’ve spent our lives playing by the rules and being fuddy-duddies, now we’re going to kick off our shoes and have a good time.”

“And we have fun,” the second woman said.

“My wife would have been a Red Hat woman,” I said.

The first lady shook her head. “She’s not old enough.”

“She would be a Pink Hat lady,” the second said. “Those are our younger members.”

“She would do that,” I said.

I lowered myself in the water one more time, then rose back up. “I think I’m boiled enough.” I stood. “Nice meeting you.”

“So nice meeting you,” the first said.

“Good luck on your walk,” the second said.

“Thanks.”

I climbed out of the tub. I dried myself with a hotel towel, then put my robe back on and walked to the elevator. The lobby was not quite as crowded, but still boasted an impressive number of red hats.

As I walked toward the elevator I could see two of the red-hatted women inside. One of them, a very tall brunette with a red fedora, said, “Hold the door, Doris. Here comes some man candy.”

I smiled as I stepped in. “Red Hat Society.”

Fedora lady smiled. “Red Hot Society. And where were you last night at our Red Ball when I was looking for a dance partner.”

“I was resting my legs,” I said. “I’ve been doing a lot of walking.”

“You look like it,” she said. “How about losing the robe and giving us a little peek?”

“Janet!” Doris said.

“Oh, don’t be such a prude,” Janet replied. “He’s probably a male model. He’s used to this.”

“I’m not a model.”

“You could be,” Doris said.

“Ought to be,” Janet corrected.

“Sorry,” I said.

Just then the bell rang for my floor.

“Oh, come on,” Janet said. “Just a little peeksy.”

I stepped out of the elevator. “Have a good day, ladies.”

As the elevator door shut I heard Janet say, “Get his room number, Doris. That man is hot.”

The next morning I went downstairs and ate at the hotel’s restaurant. There were still red hats all around, but the women seemed subdued, as if a wild night had done them in.

I left the hotel by eight o’clock, getting back on 29 south. The road led through an industrial area and my walk was slowed considerably. I spent a lot of time maneuvering the on- and off-ramps, searching for roads that paralleled the freeway. It was difficult walking, but sometimes there’s no easy route.

I had walked for eight miles, to a town with the fantastic name of Tea, before the construction ended and the traffic started to thin out. The landscape turned again to plains, which I was glad to see again. That night I slept under an overpass. It had been a tedious day of walking and I was exhausted. I don’t know why some days are harder than others, but I had thought of McKale all day and my chest ached with loneliness. I was glad to finally sleep.

CHAPTER

Seventeen

One cannot judge someone by the
city they’re from, any more than
one can judge a book by which
bookstore sold it. Yet, still we do.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Over the next four days I covered the distance between Sioux Falls and Sioux City with little worth writing about in between. From Sioux City, my next major destination was St. Joseph, approximately 225 miles away. At my current pace I would make it in ten days.

The freeway leaving Sioux City was too busy and too narrow to safely traverse, so I walked along the Floyd River, which was beautiful with its sandy shore.

State lines converged on my route out of the city, and for much of the day I wasn’t sure whether I was in Iowa or Nebraska. I could have solved my quandary by consulting my map, but it didn’t really matter. I knew I was on the right road, and at the end of the day, that’s all that mattered.

Over the next seven days I followed I-29 due south. The road, for the most part, was in Iowa though at times it crossed state lines into Nebraska, as it did in Omaha.

This part of the country seemed old and good to me, reflected, perhaps, in the area’s claims to fame. Western Iowa gave us Donna Reed (Jimmy Stewart’s low-maintenance wife in It’s a Wonderful Life), the great orchestra leader Glenn Miller, and the performer Andy Williams of “Moon River” fame—a song I only knew because we performed it on our recorders in Miss Rossi’s class in the second grade.

The region didn’t just contribute actors and musicians to the American cultural pot. One of the towns I passed was Onawa, the place where Eskimo Pies were invented by a Danish immigrant named Christian Kent Nelson—a schoolteacher and candy store owner. (A delightfully congruent combination, I thought.) Nelson came up with the idea for the Eskimo Pie in 1920 when a child in his store couldn’t decide between an ice cream or a chocolate bar. He ended up patenting the bar and made an agreement with Russell C. Stover, the candy magnate, to produce the frozen treats under the name Eskimo Pie. At the height of their popularity, more than one million Eskimo Pies were sold in America each day. The American dream is made of such stuff.

As I walked, I felt as if I were discovering a side of America that was lost to the media, or at least ignored, written off as inconsequential. As I would discover over the next few weeks, these small towns are tinder boxes for some of the world’s greatest people and ideas. Residents from metropolises tend to look down on those from smaller populations—even in their big-city failures. I had an employee from Brooklyn who told me that when his driver’s education teacher informed his class that because of all the car robberies their borough had the highest car insurance premiums in the country, some of the students clapped and high-fived each other. Stupid as this mentality is, I don’t think it’s ever been different. People tend to grab onto whatever they can to make themselves feel superior—whether it’s a brand, a football team, or even a locale.

These were not bad days of walking. I passed large, well-organized fields and lilac-strewn countryside, always pleasant to look at, at best, idyllic.

Fifty miles past Omaha, I walked through Sidney, Iowa, the self-proclaimed “Rodeo Town, USA.” Sidney is a pert little town with a barbershop, a café, and two law offices—which seemed excessive to me until I remembered a story my father once told me about a town that had only one lawyer, who just about starved until a second lawyer moved into the town and then they both became rich.

In the center of Sidney I stopped at a small grocery store to stock up on food and water. I was the only customer in the store, and the market’s lone employee, an attractive, thirty-something woman at the checkout counter, was reading a magazine off the rack when I approached her with my purchases. She set her magazine down and smiled at me. She had short blond hair that framed a pretty, delicate face with striking features, almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones, and a slightly upturned nose. In contrast to her blond hair, she had brown eyes and dark eyebrows.

“I like your hat,” she said as she rang up my items.

“It makes my hair look shorter,” I replied.

She smiled. “No. It doesn’t.”

I smiled back. “Well, at least it keeps the sun off my face while I’m walking.”

“Where are you walking to?”

I picked up a package of gum and a tube of lip balm from a display next to the counter and added it to my purchases. “Key West, Florida.”

Her eyebrows raised. “Wow. You’re a long way from Florida. Actually, from here, you’re a long way from anywhere. Where did you start walking?”

“Seattle.”

“Seattle.” She thought about it. “Then you’re about halfway there, aren’t you?”

“Pretty close.”

“I bet you’re halfway,” she said. “What’s in Key West?”

I shrugged. “Sand, I guess.”

“Sand?”

“I guess. That’s why I’m walking. To find out what’s there.”

She smiled. “I like your answer.”

“So are there any hotels or bed-and-breakfasts in town?”

“Sorry. Not around here. The nearest one would be in Nebraska City, but you’re going the other direction, aren’t you? Probably St. Joseph. That’s about a hundred miles from here.”

“Thank you. I’ll just find a place to camp. Is there a park around here?”

She cocked her head a little. “A park? No. But you can stay at our place. My home is nice.”

“You’ve got a yard I can camp in?”

“We do, but I didn’t mean you had to camp. We have a guest room.”

I was surprised by her offer. That would never have happened in Seattle. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“It’s no trouble. Frankly, we’d love the company. It would be the most exciting thing that’s happened around here all year. Besides, I’m making spaghetti tonight with Chairman of the Board clam sauce.”

“Chairman of the Board?”

“It’s one of Emeril’s recipes. I’m kind of a fan. Actually I’m a big fan. I love to cook.”

“I’d be a fool to pass that up.” I looked at her ring finger. She wore a large diamond and emerald ring, set on a yellow gold band. “Are you sure it will be okay with your husband?”

“Matt will be fine. He’s really easygoing. He likes people.”

“All right. You talked me into it.”

She looked happy. “Great. I get off work at six.” She looked at her watch. “That’s in about forty minutes. If you don’t mind hanging around, I’ll drive you home with me.”

“Thanks. I’ll just wait outside.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she said. “Unless you want to. It’s not like anyone’s beating down the doors.” She put out her hand. “I’m Analise.”

“Alan,” I said.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Alan.”

“Are you from Sidney?”

“No. My husband is. His father owns a couple thousand acres just east of here. He grows corn.”

“There’s a lot of that going on around here.”

“Yes, there is a lot of corn going on around here.”

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“I was born about ten miles from here in Tabor. You probably walked through it.”

“I did. It was . . . quaint.”

“Quaint,” she said, smiling. “That’s a tactful description.”

“Do you have any children?”

“Two. Christian and Casey. Christian’s seven and Casey’s five.”

Just then a woman walked into the store. She was broad and red-faced, dressed in a blue velvet tracksuit. She was huffing as she walked. “Hello, Analise.”

“Hi, Terry.”

“Just need to pick up some cocoa powder,” she said, passing by the counter. She shouted back, “I forgot I was supposed to make brownies for Aiden’s den meeting tomorrow afternoon.”

“It’s in aisle three.”

“Got it. Is Christian coming to the den meeting?”

“He’ll be there,” Analise said. She turned back to me. “Where were we?”

“In Sidney,” I said. “Do you know everyone in town?”

She smiled wryly. “I know everyone’s business in town. You don’t have secrets in a town this small.” She leaned forward and whispered, “I could tell you things about Terry that would curl your toes.”

I looked down the aisle at the woman. “Please don’t,” I said.

She laughed. “Okay.”

A minute later Terry walked up to the counter. She had a box of brownie mix and some canned frosting. She also had a bag of coconut toasted marshmallows.

“So you decided to take the easy way out,” Analise said, checking the prices on the items.

“Oh, why go to the bother? I still have to get dinner on. Have any ideas what I could make Ben tonight?”

“Hamburger Helper usually does the trick.”

“Yeah, well the doctor told him he needs to cut back on red meat. He’s too fat. So what’s your secret, doll? You always look like a million bucks in the bank.” The woman turned to me. “You tell me, is this woman gorgeous or is she gorgeous.”

I nodded. “She is gorgeous.”

Analise rolled her eyes. “Please. You’re embarrassing me.”

The woman was still looking at me. She stuck out her hand. “Terry Mason, just like the old TV show.”

“You mean, Perry Mason?”

“Exactly. How do you do?”

I took her hand, wondering what could be so scandalous about this woman as to curl my toes. “Alan Christoffersen.”

“You visiting or just passing through?”

“Just passing through,” I said.

“Maybe you should stay awhile. The rest of America may be going to heck in a handbasket, but Sidney is a rock in the storm. A jewel in America’s crown.”

“Mr. Christoffersen is walking across the country,” Analise said.

“Oh, Lord. Maybe I should send Ben with you. He’d have to walk from sea to shining sea to get back to his fighting weight.” She turned back to Analise. “What are you cooking tonight, darling?”

“Spaghetti with clam sauce.”

“Well ain’t you fancy, cooking all ee-tal-yun.”

“It’s one of Emeril’s recipes.”

“Well you know I love Emeril on occasion, but give me Paula Deen any day. That woman ain’t afraid of butter.”

Analise laughed. “No, she’s not. That will be six forty-nine.”

“Here you go,” she said, handing her a bill.

“Out of ten. That’s three and fifty-one back.”

“Keep the penny in that little dish, honey.”

“Okay.”

“Casey’s diarrhea under control?” Terry asked.

Analise blushed. “Yes. Has been for some days.”

“Did you try carrot soup? Carrot soup and brown rice works wonders with the squirts. But so does turmeric.”

“She’s fine. I just got some Imodium.”

“That works too. Tell Christian not to forget to bring his kerchief to the pack meeting, we’re making kerchief rings. Have a good night.” She turned back to me. “You too, Mr. Christensen. I wish you well on your walk.”

“Thank you,” I said, smiling a little.

She walked out. Analise sighed. “Like I was saying, Mr. Christensen. There are no secrets in Sidney.”

“Clearly.”

At five minutes after six another woman walked into the store. She was younger than Analise, and wore tight Wrangler jeans and an open shirt with a tube top underneath. “Sorry I’m late, Lise. Rush-hour traffic.”

“Rush hour in Sidney’s a bear,” Analise said. “Don’t worry about it. Ciao.”

“Have a good night,” the young woman said to Analise, glancing at me suspiciously.

“Let’s go,” Analise said. She picked up her purse and a plastic bag with groceries.

“May I help you with that?” I asked.

“Thanks.”

She handed me a plastic bag, which contained spaghetti, a loaf of French bread, and cans of tomato sauce, then I followed her out to a brown Ford Ranger truck. “This would be my transportation,” she said, opening the door by remote.

I threw my pack in the truck’s bed and climbed in the passenger side.

Analise turned the key in the ignition and the Moulin Rouge soundtrack came on. She reached over and turned off the CD player.

“I live just a mile from here.” She backed out of the stall then pulled a U-turn in the middle of Main Street.

I thought back to the young woman’s excuse for being late. “Rush-hour traffic?” I said.

She nodded. “It’s code for her boyfriend. His name is Rush.”

Analise’s home was surprisingly large and beautiful, a two-story Folk Victorian house painted pale yellow with white trim, dark red shutters, and a ground-level wraparound porch. A large American flag hung from one of the porch’s posts.

“Your home is beautiful,” I said. “My wife would have loved it.”

“You’re married?”

“I was. She passed away.”

Analise looked at me with real sympathy. “I’m so very sorry.”

She pulled the truck up to the side of the home, and we both got out. I pulled my pack from the truck’s bed while Analise waited for me. As we approached the front porch, a little girl came running out. “Mama!”

“Hi, Case.” Analise squatted down and hugged the girl. “How was school?”

“Boring,” she said. “And Kyle picked his nose in front of everyone.”

“Well that doesn’t sound boring,” she said, standing back up. She looked at me and smiled. “The glamorous life of a mom.”

“Who are you?” Casey said to me.

“I’m Alan.”

“Alan?”

“Mr. Christoffersen,” Analise said.

“Hi, Mr. Christoffersen. Are you going to have dinner with us?”

“I think I am,” I said.

She smiled. “Good.” She turned and ran into the house.

Analise and I followed after her. I could hear the girl shouting, “Christian, Mommy’s home. And she brought someone.”

Analise turned to me, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “Sorry, it’s big news when someone visits. We don’t get many visitors this far from Earth.”

We stepped inside the house.

“I’m sorry, it’s messy. I’ve been working extra lately.”

“This is really beautiful,” I said.

She smiled. “Thank you. The guest room is right here next to the den. You’re probably tired. If you’d like to rest or wash up, it will take me about forty minutes or so to get dinner on.”

“When does your husband get home?”

“You never know,” she said. “The work of a farmer never stops. Working for family makes it worse. I’ve stopped waiting for him.”

“I’d be happy to help you cook. I’m not a bad cook. I mean, I’m not Emeril, but I can boil water.”

She nodded. “Great. You’re hired. The kitchen is right through that door.”

“I’ll go wash up,” I said.

I carried my pack into the room Analise had pointed to. The guest room was quaint and tidy, the kind of room you’d expect in a bed-and-breakfast. It had a high-mattressed canopy bed with white carved posts. There were pictures of the children on the wall. The largest picture was a portrait of the entire family. I figured the photograph was fairly dated as Casey was still a toddler. Matt, Analise’s husband, was tall and muscularly built. I thought he looked more cowboy than farmer. He was handsome. In fact, the whole family was rather attractive.

I washed my hands and face, then found my way to the kitchen. Analise had put on an apron and was standing at the stove frying something in a skillet. Next to her was a large pot with a high flame beneath it. The room already smelled wonderfully of garlic.

“Smells delicious,” I said. “What would you like me to do?”

“Would you mind helping me fry the garlic?”

“No problem,” I said.

She stepped away from the stove. “Great. I’ll get the clams and pepper ready. The garlic’s only supposed to cook for a few minutes. When you’re done, we add crushed red pepper and clams then cook for two more minutes.” She walked over to the counter and put the clams and peppers in a bowl, then brought them over to me. “The garlic should be about ready.”

“It looks ready,” I said.

She poured her bowl into my pan. The clams sizzled loudly. “Okay, do you know how to sauté?”

“Just stir, right?”

“Right.” She left, then returned with a cup of white wine, which she also poured into my pan. “All right. Just let that cook until the wine reduces a little, then we add the tomato sauce. I’ll get the pasta going.” She opened a package of spaghetti and dropped it into the boiling water.

“I think it’s ready for the tomato sauce,” I said.

She glanced over. “I think you’re right. Just pour it all in.”

I took the can and added the sauce to the sizzling mixture. The aroma was delicious.

“How long do I let it cook?” I asked.

“According to Emeril, just until the clams start to open.” She looked at me. “You’re from Seattle; you probably cook clams all the time.”

“No,” I said. “But I do love a good chowder.”

She stirred the noodles a little, then went to the door and shouted, “Casey, come here.”

A moment later the little girl walked into the kitchen. “What, Mama?”

“Where’s Christian?”

“He’s in his room. He’s playing video games.”

“Will you tell him to come down and help you set the table?”

“Okay.”

A few minutes later she returned with her brother in tow. Christian had long, blond hair and an excessive frown. “I was playing Xbox.”

“It’s time to eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I didn’t ask,” she said. “Help Casey set the table.”

He rolled his eyes and walked out. Analise shook her head. “You can’t live with them, you can’t lock them up in cages in the basement.”

She put on oven mitts, then squatted down at the oven and brought out a pan of garlic bread. She set the pan on the counter and stacked the bread on a plate. Then she lifted a piece and held it up to my mouth. “Try this.”

I went to take a bite but she pulled it away from me. “It’s hot,” she said. “You’ve got to blow on it first.”

I blew on the bread, then took a bite. “That’s good.”

“I use garlic salt, then add Parmesan cheese.” She took a bite as well then set the piece on the counter. “The pasta should be done.” She stuck a wooden fork into the pot and lifted out a noodle, dangling it into her mouth. “Perfect. Al dente.”

“Al dente?”

“To the teeth. It means it’s not overcooked. Now, if you’ll take the bread out to the table, I’ll drain the pasta.”

I took the plate of bread out to the dining room. Casey was putting the silverware next to the plates while her brother sat on the ground by the wall playing a handheld video game.

“Christian won’t help,” Casey said.

“Of course he will,” I said. “Won’t you.”

He didn’t look up from his game. “No.”

I set the bread on the table. “C’mon, Christian,” I said. “Give your sister a hand.”

He looked up, glaring at me. “Who are you?”

“I’m Alan.”

“You’re not my boss, Alan.” He returned to his game.

Honestly, my first instinct was to smack the kid, but I doubted that would fly with his parents. So, being unsure of how to handle the situation, I just went back to the kitchen. Analise was in the middle of draining the pasta into a plastic colander in the sink. Steam was rising up around her.

“Need a hand?” I asked.

“No, I got it.” She poured all of the pasta out, leaving some water in the pot. “You always save a little of the water, in case the noodles get too dry.”

“Got it,” I said. “Emeril?”

She nodded. “Emeril.” She carried the colander over to the stove, where she mixed the pasta in with her clam sauce. Then she turned to me with a satisfied smile. “It’s ready.”

She poured the pasta into a large ceramic bowl and we both went out to the table.

Christian smirked when he saw the pasta.

“Can I have Cap’n Crunch tonight?”

“No.”

“Can I have Lucky Charms?”

“No. You can’t have any cereal. I made spaghetti.”

“It looks gross. It looks like puke.”

Analise blushed. “Don’t talk like that.”

“You can’t make me eat it.”

I could tell Analise was doing her best not to lose her temper.

“You’re going to eat it.”

“No I’m not.”

“Then you can go to your room hungry. Go.”

He glared at her then pushed away from the table. “Fine. I didn’t want to eat that crap anyway.” He glanced over at me hatefully then stormed up the stairs.

“He’s mean,” Casey said.

Analise was embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she said to me.

“I couldn’t handle it,” I said.

“What?”

“Being a parent.”

“Well, apparently neither can I,” Analise said.

“You’re a good mommy,” Casey said.

Analise smiled wryly. “Thanks, sweetie. Would you mind saying grace?”

“Okay.” She reached over and took her mother’s hand. Analise reached over and took mine. “God is good, God is great. Bless the food we eat. Amen.”

“Amen,” I said.

“Amen,” Analise said. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, Mama.”

I grinned. Casey really was a cute girl.

Analise dished the pasta out onto our plates. It was delicious, though probably a bit exotic for a kid’s palate. After a few minutes Casey said, “Mom, can I be done?”

Analise looked at Casey’s plate. “You didn’t eat very much.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t you like it?”

She didn’t say anything. Analise sighed. “All right. Why don’t you make yourself a peanut butter sandwich? Take one to Christian too.”

“Okay.”

“Then get ready for bed. Don’t forget to brush.”

“ ‘Kay.”

When Casey was gone Analise turned to me with a look of exasperation. “Why do I bother?”

“Kids don’t know what’s good,” I said. “When I was little, my neighbor had an avocado tree. We thought they were the grossest things on the planet. We used to just throw them at each other. Now I pay two dollars for one.”

“I know. They’d be happier if I just poured them a bowl of cereal every night. It would make my life a lot easier.”

“Your husband might have something to say about that.”

She frowned. “The thing is, it’s not like I’m taking the easy way out. I get home from work and I’m exhausted, but then I cook and do the dishes. It’s never-ending.”

“It’s like they say, ‘A mother’s work is never done.’ ”

“Only when you die,” Analise replied. “Then you have eternity to think about everything you did wrong and how you screwed up your children.”

“You sound like an argument for birth control.”

“There are times I think Planned Parenthood could follow me around with a camera and use the video to keep young women from getting pregnant.”

I grinned. “Well, I think you do a really good job. Does your husband help out much at home?”

She looked like she didn’t like the question. “When he’s around,” she said.

“For the record, your spaghetti is fantastic. Emeril couldn’t have made it better himself.”

She smiled at this. “You think?”

“Bam!” I said.

She laughed. “You really do know who Emeril is. I thought you were pretending.”

“I haven’t always lived in a cave,” I said. “I even know who Paula Deen is.”

“Now I’m really impressed.” She looked down at my empty plate. “Would you like more pasta?”

“I would, but I usually try to stop after my third helping.”

“Okay.” She looked at me. “Do you mind if I ask you something about your wife?”

“No.”

“If you don’t want to talk about her, I understand.”

“It’s okay.”

“How did you lose her?”

“We lived in a suburb with a horse trail. She was riding one day and the horse got spooked and threw her. She broke her back.”

Her expression showed her distress. “I’m so sorry. Was she killed instantly?”

“No. She got an infection. She died a month later.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said again. She looked down for a moment. “I’ve wondered if it’s better to watch a loved one die over time, or to just lose them—never saying what you would have liked to say.”

“Watching her die wasn’t easy. But we said everything we needed to say. I guess if I had to do it again, I would choose to have that extra time together. But she was the one in pain, so I guess I’m selfish.”

“I don’t think that’s selfish. I think it’s beautiful.” She looked down at her plate. “I think I would choose the time too.”

The conversation stopped, swallowed into a cloud of sadness. After a moment Analise said, “That kind of killed the mood. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“No, it’s good to talk about it sometimes. I carry a lot of emotions and I never have a chance to let them out. Sometimes I think I’m going to explode.”

“How long was it after she passed away that you decided to walk?”

“Two days after her funeral. While I was taking care of her, I lost my business and our home was foreclosed on. The day after her funeral the bank gave me notice that they were taking my home.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yeah, it was. I had nothing holding me there anymore so I just packed up and started to walk.”

“I know I asked you before, but really, why Key West?”

“It was the farthest place on the map.”

She let my words settle. Then she said softly, “I understand better than you know.” She forced a smile. “So before you started your walk, what did you do?”

“I owned an advertising agency.”

“That’s the business you lost?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

She suddenly smiled. “Did you wear your hair that long when you were a businessman?”

“No, believe it or not, I used to look respectable. Short hair, clean-shaven, Armani suits, and Brooks Brothers button-downs, heavy on the starch. You kind of let things go when you’re on the road.”

“It works, though. I think it’s rather rugged-looking. You look like one of those guys on the covers of the paperback romances we sell at the store.”

“You’re saying I look like Fabio?”

She cocked her head with a wide grin. “Maybe a little. You’re not Italian. And you’re not as buff.”

“I’m not as buff as Fabio?”

“Don’t get me wrong, you’re in good shape, but just not . . . ”

“I know. Fabio buff.”

She smiled wryly. “Sorry.”

“So I’m not Fabio,” I said. “But I can do two things he can’t.”

She leaned forward. “Do tell.”

“First, I can use words with more than one syllable. And second,” I said, pausing for dramatic impact, “I do dishes.”

She gasped. “Wow. That is hot. I think you just edged out Fabio.”

“I thought so,” I said.

“Really? You do dishes?”

“Yes, I do. Come on,” I said, standing. “Let’s get them done.”

She stood. “You really don’t have to help.”

“Oh, good, because for a second there I thought you had a gun to my head and were making me do the dishes. Since you don’t, I’ll just go read or something while the exhausted, full-time working mother of two children who made the incredible dinner and invited me to stay in her home cleans up after me. Yes, I’ll feel really good about that.”

Analise laughed. “All right, you made your point. You wash, I’ll dry and put away.”

We carried our dishes to the kitchen, then, as she filled the sink with hot water, I cleared the rest of the table.

“What do you want to do with this?” I said, carrying in the half-full bowl of pasta.

“We’ll just put Saran over it and put it in the fridge. The wrap’s in that drawer right there, third down.”

I squatted down to the drawer. “Did you want to make a plate for your husband first?”

She looked at me quizzically. “What?”

“I thought maybe you would want to . . . ” As I looked at her, I suddenly understood. I stood up, setting the bowl aside. “There is no husband . . . ”

She didn’t answer at first. Then she said, “Of course I have a husband. There’s a picture of us in your room.”

“It’s an old picture.”

She didn’t say anything.

“What happened to him?”

She just stood there, looking at me anxiously. Neither of us spoke for what felt like minutes. Then she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I . . . ” She took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. “I couldn’t really invite some strange man into my home.”

“The picture in my room . . . ”

“That was taken three weeks before he was killed. Three years ago.”

“How was he killed?”

“Working. He was in a combine accident. He went to work one day and never came back.”

Suddenly everything made sense. Her interest in McKale. Our discussion about losing a loved one suddenly or over time. Her son’s behavior.

“How is your son dealing with it?”

“He’s very angry. I think he blames me sometimes. I know it’s not rational, but he’s a kid.”

“How are you taking it?”

She shook her head. “Not well. You know what it’s like. I can see why you would want to walk away. It’s been hard living here in this little town.”

“Why don’t you move?”

“I have no place to go. My friends are all here or in Tabor, and my siblings are all in the same financial boat that I’m in. My parents can’t help. They lost their farm a few years ago and are now living on welfare in Omaha. I would be too if it wasn’t for Matt’s parents. We didn’t have any life insurance. Matt said it was just a waste of money, since his parents have so much money and if anything happened, they’d take care of us.”

“And they do?”

“Yes. But it comes at a price. They won’t let me leave.”

“How can they stop you?”

“How can they not? If I leave, they’ll cut me off.”

“They told you that?”

“Directly,” she said.

“Could you sell your house?”

She shook her head. “Not in this market. Believe me, there’s not a lot of people moving into Sidney. Besides, my in-laws own the house. We borrowed the money from them.” She sighed. “I’m stuck. I have no skills, so I’d be working full-time just to survive in some dingy apartment while someone else raised my kids.”

“I don’t mean to be crass, but you could remarry.”

“Not in Sidney. The men are either married, twice my age, or there’s a clear reason why they’re not married. I’d just be trading one problem for another.”

“So you’re stuck.”

She nodded. “My in-laws want me to be stuck. A friend told me that my mother-in-law told her mother that they didn’t want me to remarry. They thought it would be too confusing for the kids and she was afraid I might take their grandchildren away. But I think there might be even more to it than that. My in-laws were really broken by Matt’s death. My father-in-law, Hank, was driving the combine when Matt was killed. I think he blames himself.

“What makes it even more complex is Hank’s own father died young and his mother never remarried. From things he’s said, I think he believes that remarrying would be dishonoring Matt. So, they financially force me into doing what they want.”

“That’s not right,” I said.

“No, it’s passive-aggressive. It’s how Hank and Nancy get their way and still sing in the choir every Sunday with a clear conscience.” She sighed. “I’m sorry to unload this on you. It’s just so good to have someone I can talk to. There’s no one here I could say that to without it getting back to them. I’m sorry that I lied to you.”

“No, you’re in a tough spot. I understand.”

We both stood there a moment in silence. Finally, Analise looked around the kitchen and untied her apron. “It’s late. I’ll finish the dishes in the morning. I take the kids to school early then go to work, so if you decide to sleep in, just help yourself to breakfast. There’s fruit and yogurt in the fridge and cereal in the cupboard.”

“All right,” I said. “Thank you.”

She gazed at me for a moment, then smiled sadly. “Good night, Alan. It was nice visiting with you.”

“Good night, Analise. Thank you for everything.”

She laid her apron on the table, then with a last, furtive glance at me, went upstairs to her bedroom. I walked to my room and went to bed.

CHAPTER

Eighteen

The trapped are less concerned
with rules than escape.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I don’t know what time it was when I woke. I’m not usually a light sleeper, but I woke to a dim light coming from outside my room. I looked over. Analise stood in the doorway, her petite figure silhouetted by the light from the foyer. She quietly shut the door, then walked over to the side of the bed. I lay there looking up at her. She was breathing heavily, but said nothing.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

For a moment she just looked at me. Then she knelt by the side of the bed. My room was bathed in the moon’s blue glow and I could see her eyes, dark and lonely and filled with hurt. “No. I’m not.” She took a deep breath. Then staring intently into my eyes, said, “Will you make love to me?”

For a moment I just stared at her. She looked vulnerable—beautiful, lonely, and vulnerable. My body screamed for her, but I slowly shook my head. “No.”

She lowered her head. After a moment she asked, “Aren’t I pretty enough?”

“It’s not that,” I said.

“Then what is it?”

“You’re not mine.”

She touched my arm. A tear rolled down her cheek. “I’ll be yours tonight,” she whispered. “I won’t ask anything of you. I won’t hold you to anything. I promise.”

I propped myself up on my elbow. “Analise . . . ”

“I just want someone to love me.”

I looked into her eyes. “I understand. But I can’t.”

After a moment she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m so embarrassed.”

“Do you want me to go?” I asked.

She was looking down, but shook her head. “No.” She rubbed her eyes. “You must think I’m horrible.”

“No. I don’t.”

She knelt there for another moment, then sighed and stood. “Good night.” She started to the door.

“Analise,” I said.

She stopped, slowly turning back. Her face was wet with tears.

“Come back.”

She just looked at me.

“Come here. Please.”

She walked slowly over to the side of my bed. I moved over, making a space for her. “Let me hold you.”

“But . . . ”

I pulled down the sheets then took her hand. “Lay down. I just want to hold you.” She sat on the side of my bed then lifted her legs onto the bed next to me. I put my arms around her, pulling her tightly in, our faces next to each other. I whispered into her ear, “I know what it’s like to feel so lonely that you just don’t care anymore. You’re a good girl, you just hurt. I understand. I hurt too. I want you too. But I’m not ready to share what belonged only to McKale and me.”

She was staring into my eyes. Then it was as if some great emotional dam burst, because she began sobbing so hard that the bed shook. I held her tightly until her sobbing slowed to a whimper. Finally she stilled and fell asleep.

I leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You are so beautiful,” I said. I lay back and fell asleep too.

CHAPTER

Nineteen

She is a rose, blooming amidst cornfields.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke the next morning to the first rays of dawn stealing through the room’s window. Analise was facing me, her eyes open. She looked soft and peaceful.

“Thank you,” she said, in a voice only slightly above a whisper, her breath warm on my face.

“For what?” I asked.

“For saying no and for holding me.”

“You’re beautiful,” I said.

“So are you.” She paused. “Do you think I’ll ever see you again?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope so. I hope someday you come back on a white horse and save me.”

“Analise . . . ”

She put her fingers on my lips to still them. “A girl needs her fantasies.” She laid her head against my chest, and I pulled her tight against me. Her warmth and softness were exquisite. She wasn’t McKale, but she was lovely.

After a few minutes Analise groaned slightly as she pulled away. “I better get up before the kids wake.”

“Wait,” I said. “What are you going to do now?”

“Get the kids ready for the day.”

I laughed. “I was thinking a little broader.”

“Like with my life?”

I nodded.

“I don’t know. But I feel so much better. I haven’t felt this peaceful since the day before Matt died.”

“You loved him,” I said.

“With all my heart.” She touched my face. “I’m glad your walk brought you through Sidney, Mr. Christoffersen.”

“So am I.”

She leaned forward and kissed my cheek, then climbed out of bed. She looked back from the door. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

She walked out, pulling the door shut behind her. I sighed, then lay back and looked at the ceiling. Then I got up and showered.

When I walked out of the room the two children were eating bowls of cereal, staring at the backs of the cereal boxes in front of them. Casey turned around and looked at me. “Hello, Mr. Christoffersen.”

“Hi, sweetie.”

“Are you going to be here tonight?”

“No. I’m going back out walking.”

She frowned.

Christian wouldn’t look at me.

“Hey, Christian,” I said.

“What?”

“I have something for you.”

He turned and looked at me. “What?”

I took my Swiss Army knife out of my pocket. “I thought you could use this.”

He sat there staring. I could tell he wanted it, but wasn’t sure how to accept the gift. I walked to the table and set it down next to his bowl. “It will come in handy with your Scouting.”

He nodded.

“Better not take it to school, though. I’m sure they frown on students bringing knives to school.”

He nodded again.

“Okay, you take care.”

He still didn’t say anything.

A few minutes later Analise walked into the dining room. She grabbed the milk carton. “Okay, kids. Run out to the car. I’ll be right out. Christian, don’t forget your pack.”

“Okay,” he said. Then he looked at me. “Thanks, Alan.” He grabbed the knife then walked over and picked up his pack.

Casey ran over and hugged me. “Good-bye, Mr. Christoffersen. Thanks for visiting.”

I smiled. “It was my pleasure.”

She went back and got her pack, then both kids walked out the front door.

Analise looked at me curiously. “What was that about?”

“Casey’s a sweet little girl.”

“No, with Christian.”

“I gave him a present. I hope it’s okay. It’s a Swiss Army knife.”

She shook her head. “He’s been asking for one for almost a year. I keep telling him no.”

“Sorry,” I said.

She grinned. “It’s okay. I’m just overprotective. Thank you for doing that for him.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Just a minute.” She left with the carton of milk, then returned. She walked up to me. “I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe I feel like I’m going to cry. I don’t even really know you.”

“You know me better than you think. We belong to the same club.”

She nodded. “I wish I could revoke my membership.”

“We all do.”

She stared into my eyes. “Thank you for giving me hope.” She took something out of her pocket. “Will you take this to Key West with you?”

“What is it?”

“It’s the bracelet I was making when I learned of Matt’s death.” It was a simple black cord with a small pewter oval that said, Believe.

I closed my hand around it. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. If you think of it, look me up sometime. You know where to find me.” We embraced. Then she looked into my face, wiping the tears from her eyes. “Bye.”

“Bye, Analise.”

She walked to the door, then turned around. “Just lock the door behind you.”

I nodded and she walked out. I went out to the porch and watched her climb into the truck. She glanced at me as she backed out. Casey waved. So did Christian. Then she drove away.

I took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. I wondered if I would ever see her again. I examined the bracelet she’d given me and put it on my wrist. Then I went back inside. I grabbed a banana from the counter, then lifted my pack up over my shoulders, and stepped back out onto the porch. I checked the door to make sure it was locked and pulled it shut.

At the edge of the yard I stopped and looked back at the house. Just another story under the sun, I thought. Then I turned back to the street. It took me less than twenty minutes to cross out of Sidney.

CHAPTER

Twenty

You can always trust a man
wearing a John Deere cap.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Outside of Sidney there was a lot of road construction and enough detours that at times, even with my map, I wasn’t sure if I was walking in the right direction. Kind of like my life. One detour led me to a road that didn’t even appear on my map. After an hour of walking along a narrow, two-lane country road, a man pulled up next to me in a red Dodge pickup truck. He was about my age and wore a John Deere cap. He rolled down his window. “You’re going the wrong way.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“The only people going that way, live there. Where are you headed?”

“St. Joseph.”

“Yeah, you know that last road you passed—about a half mile back?”

“The dirt one?”

He nodded. “Yeah. You wanted to take that. It’s only dirt for about a hundred yards, then it’s asphalt again. It runs south and reconnects with 29. I’m going that way, I’d be happy to give you a ride.”

“Thank you, but I’m committed to walking.”

“Good on ya,” he said. “Remember, back a half mile to that dirt road. There’s no sign and it breaks up a little bit in places, but don’t let it scare you. When you come to a T in the road you’re going to want to turn right. That will get you to the 29. Got it?”

“Take a right at the T.”

“Perfect.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t mention it.” He rolled up the window then pulled away, spinning a U-turn in front of me. I realized that he had actually gone past his turnoff to help me.

The road the man had directed me to alternated between pavement and dirt but was always surrounded by cornfields. Just as he said, the road led me south, intersecting again with 29, which ran all the way to the Missouri state line.

There wasn’t much to see, and my mind wandered. I thought a lot about Analise. I wondered what would become of her. I barely knew her, yet I cared about her. As I pondered this phenomenon I learned something about myself: I’ve always been a sucker for a damsel in distress. Always. And that included McKale.

Pamela had asked if McKale would have needed me the way she did if she had been a better mother. The question I’d never asked was, would I have been as attracted to McKale if she hadn’t needed me? Had I seen McKale in Analise’s pain?

I didn’t know. I don’t think I wanted to. So I forced my mind to other things and just kept walking. Four days later I reached the city of St. Joseph.

CHAPTER

Twenty-one

The man who robs a corner convenience
store is a thief. The man who robs
hundreds is a legend. And the man
who robs millions is a politician.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

St. Joseph was founded in the early 1800s by a fur trader named Joseph Robidoux. In its heyday it was a thriving wilderness outpost—the last stop on the Missouri River, and gateway to the Wild West. It was also the end of the line for west-bound trains.

Today, St. Joseph has a population of over seventy-five thousand residents. The town has several claims to fame, among them that it was the headquarters and starting point for the legendary Pony Express, which sped mail west to those cities inaccessible by rail. It is also the town where the infamous outlaw Jesse James was shot and killed.

Entering St. Joseph, I was struck by the city’s beautiful architecture. I walked into the city through an industrial section, then up through suburbs until I reached an area of shopping malls and hotels. I checked into an ambitious hotel called the Stoney Creek Inn, a Western-themed family hotel.

That night I ate at a barbecue joint called the Rib Crib. After looking over the menu I asked my server what the difference was between St. Louis ribs and regular ribs. He replied, “St. Louis ribs have less meat and aren’t as good.”

“Then I’ll have the regular ribs,” I said, pretty certain he didn’t sell many St. Louis ribs. I ate until I was full, then walked a mile back to my hotel and crashed for the night.

The next morning I decided to see the town’s three advertised tourist sites, beginning with the Patee House Museum.

The Patee House was originally built as a 140-room luxury hotel and was, in its day, one of the best-known hotels in the West. It also served as the headquarters for the Pony Express. I was surprised to learn that for all its infamy, the Pony Express only lasted for eighteen months. Today the Patee House is considered one of the top ten Western museums in the country.

Less than a block away from the Patee House Museum was the home where Jesse James was killed. This wasn’t a coincidence. For commercial reasons, the home was lifted from its original site and moved to its current location.

The killing of Jesse James in 1882 made national news. James had been hiding out in St. Joseph under the alias Tom Howard, hoping to start a new life with his wife and two children as a law-abiding citizen. After such a notorious career, and with a lengthy list of enemies, James was understandably paranoid, so he hired two brothers to protect him, Charley and Robert Ford—family friends he believed he could trust.

Unbeknownst to James, Robert Ford had been plotting with the governor to betray the outlaw. One day, while James stood on a chair to right a crooked picture hanging on the wall, Ford shot him in the back of the head.

Then the Ford brothers hurried to the local sheriff to claim the ten-thousand-dollar reward. Much to their surprise, they were arrested for first-degree murder, indicted, and sentenced to death by hanging, all in the same day. Fortunately for the brothers, the governor interceded and pardoned the two men.

History, while heralding the outlaw, has not been as kind to the Ford brothers, painting them as traitors and cowards. After receiving a portion of the reward money, Robert Ford earned a living by posing for photographs in dime museums as “the man who killed Jesse James” and appeared onstage with his brother Charles, reenacting the murder in a touring stage show, which was not well received.

Two years after the killing, Charles, suffering from tuberculosis and addicted to morphine, committed suicide. Robert Ford was killed a few years later by a man who walked up to him in a bar then said, without explanation, “Hello, Bob,” and unloaded both barrels of a shotgun into his neck.

As I purchased a book on Jesse James at the home’s souvenir counter, I wondered why it is that we humans have such a fascination with outlaws. From Billy the Kid to Al Capone, we have always revered gangsters. Do we do this because it makes us feel good, that we are not that bad—or because deep inside, we’re really not that good? Or maybe we’re just obsessed with fame—whatever its source.

On the way back to my hotel I stopped at the third most advertised site: The Glore Psychiatric Museum. I wish I hadn’t. There was something about the museum that reminded me of those haunted warehouses that pop up in cities every Halloween.

The four-story museum is a collection of horrific, life-sized dioramas, the role of the mentally ill played by mannequins donated by a local department store. The second-floor exhibits follow the history of the treatment of the mentally ill, from witch burnings and devil stompings (the idea being that evil spirits could be stomped out of a person) to the more scientific Bath of Surprise (a device not unlike the dunking booths found at today’s carnivals, except employing a massive vat of ice water).

There was also a working model of O’Halloran’s Swing, in which insanity was spun out of the mentally ill who were strapped into the device, which could make up to a hundred revolutions per minute.

On the third floor, the more contemporary exhibits held their own horrors, including mannequins strapped to tables and covered in sheets, lobotomy instruments, a hospital cage, and a fever-cabinet used for heating syphilis patients.

One exhibit displayed the 1,446 items swallowed by a patient, which included 453 nails, 42 screws, a plethora of safety pins, spoons, and salt and pepper shaker tops. The woman died during surgery to remove the items.

Another exhibit showed what the asylum’s television repairman discovered: more than five hundred notes crammed into a television set; answers to the questions a patient had been asked by myriad psychiatrists over the years.

The museum seemed to me as schizophrenic as some of those it supposedly championed. On one hand it blared the atrocities of mankind’s treatment of the mentally ill, citing that at one time residents of London used to pay to walk through the Bedlam asylum to see those inside chained to walls or strapped to beds. On the other hand it seemed to do precisely that, exploiting the plight of the mentally ill with all the theatrics of a carnival freak show.

After less than a half hour I fled the place and was still upset when I arrived back at my hotel, which was a few miles away. I couldn’t sleep so I watched a mindless TV sitcom to erase the memory of what I had seen.

It was time to leave St. Joseph.

CHAPTER

Twenty-two

History bears witness that our
lives are far more influenced by
imagination than circumstance.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I wrote earlier that small towns are tinder boxes for some of the world’s greatest people and ideas. U.S. Route 36 in Missouri may be the most illustrative example of my theory. Along this 160-mile stretch of highway the world was changed. This isn’t hyperbole. These are the people who came from the small towns on this one small stretch of American highway:

J. C. Penney

Walt Disney

General John J. Pershing

Mark Twain

And Otto Rohwedder, the inventor of sliced bread.

The day I left St. Joseph, I headed east on Frederick to 29 south, then made my way to the 36.

There were trees everywhere and, according to the book I’d purchased at the Jesse James Home, this was where James and his fellow “bushwhackers” hid out. I spent the night in the small town of Stewartsville (population 759) and ate dinner at the Plain Jane Café.

I started walking early the next morning and by noon I entered Cameron, a city of ten thousand, where I stocked up on supplies. The city of Cameron had a curious birth. In 1854 a group of settlers planned a four-block city called Somerville along the route of the Hannibal to St. Joseph railroad line. As it turned out, Somerville’s land was too steep for trains, so the settlers dragged the three buildings of their town a mile southwest and changed the town’s name to Cameron.

By twilight I reached Hamilton, the birthplace of J. C. Penney. I walked into the town expecting to find someplace to stay but there was no hotel. I passed by the J. C. Penney Memorial Library and Museum but it was closed for the evening. I bought food at a grocery store called HY-KLAS and camped in a small, overgrown park near the museum.

The next day I walked just shy of twenty-five miles to the town of Chillicothe—the home of sliced bread. They won’t let you forget it. It’s posted everywhere, from their newspaper’s masthead to their city sign: Welcome to Chillicothe, The Home of Sliced Bread. Their school mascot is probably a toaster.

I walked all the way into the historic downtown because I saw a sign advertising the Strand Hotel, a big redbrick building that unfortunately had been converted into apartments. Across the street was a beauty salon called Curl Up & Dye.

I walked back toward 36, where I had passed a hotel. I ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant called El Toro, then stayed at the Grand River Inn, where a large, white dog of questionable temperament roamed the lobby. It cost fifty dollars. The hotel, not the dog.

The next morning I felt a little dizzy again, but still managed an early start. After twenty miles I turned north off the freeway to the town of Laclede, the hometown of General John “Black Jack” Pershing.

General Pershing had a rather colorful military career, culminating in the highest rank ever offered a U.S. military leader: General of the Armies of the United States, a rank that Congress created especially for him after distinguished service in World War I. No other American soldier ever held such a rank, until 1976, when President Gerald Ford posthumously promoted General George Washington to it.

In addition to his rank, Pershing garnered another unique distinction: he had both a missile and a tank named after him.

Laclede was quiet and picturesque, with streets lined with large elm trees, tidy neighborhoods, and many historic houses and churches. There were no hotels in the town so I continued on to the next, Brookfield, where I stayed at the Travel Inn Motel, advertised as “Veteran Owned and Operated.” My room was only thirty-five dollars for the night and had a kitchenette. There was a plethora of Christian literature in the motel’s lobby. I picked up a brochure entitled “Why Do We Die?” which I perused on my bed before going to sleep.

The next morning I ate breakfast at the Simply Country Café, then turned south on Main Street to get back to the highway. There was a narrow paved road that paralleled 36 for a few miles and I stayed on that until I reached the turnoff for Marceline—the boyhood home of Walt Disney. I walked three miles from the Marceline exit to reach the small town.

As a boy I had two heroes: Thomas Edison and Walt Disney. When I was growing up in Pasadena, Disneyland was a favorite amusement of mine, and McKale and I had many memories of the park. The first time I publicly put my arms around her was on the Matterhorn ride. It’s also where I first called her “Mickey,” a nickname that stuck through her entire life.

Elias Disney, Walt’s father, had moved his family from Chicago to Marceline in 1906, when young Walter was only four, after two of their neighbor boys had attempted to steal a car and killed a local policeman in a shoot-out.

As a child, Walt spent more time in both Chicago and Kansas City, but Marceline had a far greater impact on his life than any other place the nomadic Disneys landed. Disney spoke of his years in Marceline as his halcyon days and was quoted by a newspaper as saying “To tell the truth, more things of importance happened to me in Marceline than have happened since, or are likely to in the future.”

I almost passed Disney’s boyhood home, a handsome but nondescript house, without recognizing its significance. It was not hard to miss. The home was a private residence, its status as a landmark denoted only by a small sign warning would-be tourists to respect the privacy of the residents.

I stood on the edge of the property and stared at the house, wondering how surprised the town’s citizens would have been to know that the little boy who ran the unpaved streets and climbed their trees would someday be known in every corner of the world.

A half hour later I reached the town’s main street. I had read that Disneyland’s Main Street USA was patterned after Marceline’s main street, but in looking at its simple and aging façades, I knew Disney’s re-creation was more the offspring of an imaginative memory than a replica of reality.

On Marceline’s main street I found a bed-and-breakfast located above the Uptown Theatre, the theater Disney had chosen to premiere The Great Locomotive Chase in 1956. The small apartment was decorated with Disney memorabilia and smelled like lemon-scented Pledge. While it lacked the charm of most bed-and-breakfasts, the fact that Disney had been there was enough to justify my stay.

The next morning I walked back to the 36, passing the Disney homestead again on the way out. I had once told McKale that I wanted to visit Marceline some day. I had assumed I would see it with her. I wondered if she knew that I had made it.

CHAPTER

Twenty-three

Today I met a self-described tramp
with a most unfortunate view of God.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

When I saw Israel he was leaning against the railing of the eastbound freeway on-ramp from Marceline, his backpack resting on the ground next to him. He looked like he was in his early to mid thirties; he was short with sandy red hair and wore thick-lensed glasses in round frames. He held a cardboard sign that read:

St. Louis

I nodded at him. “Hey.”

“How are you?” he asked cheerfully.

“Fine,” I replied. “How are you?”

“Perfect. Beautiful day to be outside.”

“Good walking weather,” I said.

“Where you headed?” he asked.

“Key West.”

“Nice place, Key West,” he said, nodding a little. He was the first person I’d told who hadn’t reacted with surprise.

“How about you?” I asked.

“Arkansas. I’ve got a job waiting for me down there.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a roofer.”

“That’s a long way to go for one house.”

He shrugged. “It’s what I do—I’ve been on the road since I was seventeen.”

“You’ve been walking since you were seventeen?”

“No, I don’t walk. I’m a tramp.”

“Tramps don’t walk?”

“Not if we can help it. But it’s a nice day. I’d be happy to walk a ways with you, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” I said.

He fastened his sign to his pack, then pulled it over his shoulders and walked up to me. The shoulder was wide enough that we could safely walk abreast.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Alan. Yours?”

“Israel. Israel Campbell.”

“And you’re a tramp.”

“Yes, sir. To regular folk, most homeless people look the same, but we’re not.” He held his hand out in front of him, extending his index finger. “First, you’ve got your mountain men—they’re easy to spot. They look like they just crawled out of a cave or something. They usually have a lot of facial hair and they only come out in public when they absolutely need something, then go back as soon as they can.”

He extended a second finger. “Then you have your crazies. I don’t mean serial killer crazy, but just a bit off, you know? Arguing with themselves. You can tell the elevator doesn’t quite reach the top floor.”

I nodded. “I’ve seen these people,” I said.

He extended a third finger. “Then you got your hobos.”

“Hobos and tramps aren’t the same thing?”

“No. Hobos give us tramps a bad name.”

“How’s that?”

“Hobos do a lot of panhandling—you’ll see them on off-ramps with cardboard signs begging for money. Tramps don’t beg unless we have to. Tramps work. It’s a point of pride with us. We just don’t have a home or vehicle, so we hitchhike.

“Hobos also ride trains a lot. I do that some, but only if I’m stuck somewhere. There are tricks to the trains. I’ve been thinking of learning the ropes.”

“Tricks? Like what?”

“What I know so far is that it’s the pushers, the engines in the rear, that you want to get into. They’ve got bottled water, refrigerators, and a bathroom.”

“There’s no one riding back there?”

“Not usually. But even if someone’s in there, they don’t necessarily throw you out. Once a guy let me stay on with my dog.”

“You have a dog?”

“I did,” he said quickly, as if he didn’t want to talk about it. “The thing is, they don’t really care that much. Having someone ride the train isn’t any sweat off their back, but they have to act like they care. You know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“The most important thing is to stay away from the bulls. That’s the railroad police. Most of them are lazy and don’t bother to search the boxcars, but if they see you, you’re in trouble. But, it’s like I said, that’s mostly hobo stuff. Not that I hate hobos or anything. I’m sociable with anyone on the road. A lot of homeless don’t want you around because they don’t trust anyone, but I’m not like that. I try to give others money if I have any and I always ask if they’re okay. The other day I left two dollars under a bridge and a note that said, ‘Have a beer on me. If you don’t really need this, leave it for the next guy who does.’ ”

“So how does one start being a tramp?” I asked.

He rubbed his chin. “That’s a good question. In my case, it just kind of happened. It’s not like I was in career day at school and I said, ‘I think I’ll be a tramp.’ It just kind of snuck up on me. I had a crappy home life, so when I was seventeen, a friend called and said he had some work for me in the next state. I didn’t own a car, so I hitchhiked my way there. When I finished the job, someone else called with a job, so I hitchhiked again. Since then I haven’t stayed in one place more than three or four months. I guess I’m always looking for greener pastures.”

“You’re always on the road?”

“If there’s work. But not always. Last winter, I dug myself a shelter six feet into the side of a hill. I even had a stove I made of three five-gallon steel buckets. It was kind of a nice place.”

“Where are you from originally?” I asked.

“I grew up near St. Louis.”

I looked at his sign. “Then you’re going home?”

“Not if I can help it. It’s just the next big city on my way to Arkansas.”

“You still have family in St. Louis?”

“If you call family a bunch of cutthroats who don’t care if you’re dead or alive. I have no need to see any of them again.” He looked down. “So, what are you, hobo or tramp?”

“Neither,” I said. “I’m just walking.”

“Hitchhiking’s faster.”

“I’m in no hurry.”

He nodded. “Where do you sleep?”

“Depends on the day. A lot of cheap motels. Sometimes in the fields.”

“There’s a trick to that too,” he said. “Ever been hassled by the cops?”

“Not yet. I’ve been mugged.”

He frowned. “Me too. Comes with the territory. But cops have been a bigger problem for me. The most important thing about sleeping on the road is to stay out of sight.”

I already knew this, of course, but I didn’t tell him as I wanted to hear what he had to say.

“Trees are usually your best bet for cover. I always scope out my sleeping spot from all angles to make sure I can’t be seen from the road. I always get up early, usually before the sun, to get back on the road. Nothing worse than having some itchy, tin badge wake you up at three in the morning to tell you to get going, regardless of the weather or how far you’re going to have to walk to get to the next exit.”

“I haven’t had that happen yet,” I said.

“You will. Another good place to sleep is under highway overpasses. There’s usually a ledge up top that makes a good bunk. Of course, first you need to check to see if someone else has slept there. Most transients leave a trail of beer cans, cardboard, old clothing, you know. If you’ve been on the road, you’ve seen it.” He shook his head. “Once I found a noose. Thankfully, there wasn’t a body attached to it.

“What you’ve got to do is make sure there isn’t any feces. That’s the big one. Also, if it’s cloudy, I check the ground for water trails, just to make sure that the bridge doesn’t leak.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I said. “So is it hard getting picked up?”

“Sometimes. Like anything, you’ll have your days when the fish aren’t biting, but not usually. You might say I’m good at it. Hitchhiking is all about psychology. For instance, I used to have a red sleeping bag. I had to get rid of it. Red, yellow, and orange signify danger and people are less likely to pick you up if they see that color. I’ve never seen like a research study on that, but I tell you, I’ve proven it.

“The truth is, most of the thinking that goes into picking up a hitchhiker isn’t logical. For instance, a lot of people won’t pick up a hitchhiker with long hair and a beard because they think he might be a serial killer. You can thank television for that. But it’s not the case. Look at Ted Bundy, the Zodiac killer, John Wayne Gacy, Son of Sam, the Green River killer—all of them clean-shaven, respectable-looking guys. So you might say that your best bet of getting picked up is to look like a serial killer.” He laughed at this. “Bottom line, if you want a ride, you need to look like you don’t need a ride. I always try my best to look presentable. I’d never wear my hair as long as yours. Scares people away.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not hitchhiking,” I said.

“Another thing you should know about are truck stops. Truck stops can be lifesavers if you know how to work them. First thing I do when I get to a truck stop is put my pack in the weeds outside so they don’t know I’m a hitchhiker. Then I can blend in with the truckers and sit in the truckers’ lounge and warm up or cool down, watch TV, whatever.

“You learn tricks, you know? When truckers fill up at a gas station they get a shower ticket. I can spot them a mile away. I’ll ask a guy on the way to his truck if he has an extra shower ticket and most of the time he’ll give me one. Sometimes I’ll ask the truck stop management for a ticket. I tell them I’m not a panhandler and I’m not going to bother anybody and sometimes they’ll just give me a shower ticket.

“But no matter how decent and respectable-looking you keep yourself, some people are still going to look at you like you’re a piece of garbage just because they’re in a car and you’re not. I stopped looking at the people in the cars years ago just to keep from losing my mind. I mean, some people look at you like you’re stuck to the bottom of their shoe. I’ve had people drive by me at forty miles per hour and lock their doors.

“And then there’s the head shakers. They look at you waiting on an exit and shake their heads no. It’s degrading. I look at their cars, so I don’t look like I’m spacing out like a weirdo, but I don’t look at the people. There are too many door lockers and head shakers in this world.

“Of course the best way to get a ride is to be a woman. Women can get rides from truckers no problem.”

That certainly seemed to be the case with Pamela, I thought.

“Someday I’m going to write a book called The Psychology of Hitchhiking. What do you think?”

“I think it sounds interesting,” I said.

“You don’t know anything about publishing books, do you?”

I shook my head. “Sorry. No.”

“Doesn’t cost to ask,” he said.

We walked a moment in silence.

“Seventeen,” I said. “You must get lonely sometimes.”

He frowned. “Yeah. Sometimes. I mean, I wish I could find a wife, but finding someone who would live this way isn’t very likely. There are women who like the road, but there are ten thousand guys to every one of them, so they get snatched up real quick. Besides, to meet women you have to stay in shelters or ride the trains, and I’ve never liked either.” He sighed a little. “So, what’s your story? Why are you on the road?”

I thought briefly about how much to share, then decided to tell him everything. “I lost my wife last year after she broke her back in a horse riding accident. While I was taking care of her, my business was stolen from me. I lost everything. In a matter of weeks I lost my wife, my business, my house, and my cars. All gone. So I packed up and started walking. Key West was as far as I could go without swimming, so that’s where I decided to go.”

“I’m sorry about all that,” he said sympathetically. “There’s a lot of bad in this world. What your brother doesn’t do to you, God will.” He looked around, raising his hands. “It’s dog eat dog out there. Those Sunday meeting minions will tell you that God’s beauty is witnessed in nature. But their view is selective. The truth is, nature is horrifying, red in tooth and claw.” He looked out over the corn. “Out there in that field right now there is death and terror.”

“I see a lot of corn to feed people,” I said.

“Sure there are sunsets and roses and all that crap, but there’s also the fly struggling in the web while a spider sucks the life from it. There are wolves hunting down a baby deer and eating it alive. These things were made by God too.”

“You don’t get invited to many parties, do you?”

He ignored me. “So what’s with this God who makes beautiful sunsets then soaks the ground beneath them in blood. If you ask me, I think God is the ultimate sadist. He’s like a kid who drops red ants and black ants together in the same jar just to watch them fight. I think this Earth is nothing more to God than a big cockfight.”

“That’s about the darkest view of God I’ve ever heard,” I said.

“Welcome to the real world, pal,” he said. “People going around saying that God is all just and good, but answer me this: how can God be just when according to almost every religion he damns sinners to an eternity of punishment for something that happens in a finite amount of time? It’s not a proportionate response. It’s not just and it’s certainly not good.”

I couldn’t answer him.

“Look at it this way. Let’s say a kid goes to a store where he sees a candy bar. He has no money, but he really wants that candy. So when he thinks no one is looking, he takes it. He’s broken the law. Of course he should pay—I don’t disagree with that. But what that poor kid doesn’t know is that the store owner has cameras everywhere and all he does is sit back in his office all day waiting to catch someone. So the store owner drags the kid out back behind the store, pours gasoline on him, and lights him on fire. That’s your eternal damnation. That’s your God. That’s your religion.”

“That’s not my religion,” I said. “I don’t believe in a God who created us to condemn us. I don’t believe that God is fear.”

“All religions teach God is fear,” Israel said. “Then they dress him up as the good shepherd. A wolf in shepherd’s clothing.”

“Sometimes good parents use fear,” I said. “To protect their children. It’s like a mother telling her child not to play in the road, because he might get hit by a car.”

“The difference,” Israel said, “is that God is the one driving the car.”

I nodded. “You’re right. That is the difference. You either believe in a God of grace and love or a God of damnation and condemnation, but you can’t believe in both, because he can’t be the same Being.”

“There is no God of grace,” Israel said. “You should know. He killed your wife.”

“He didn’t kill my wife. A horse did.”

“He could have stopped her from dying.”

“You mean he could have postponed her from dying. Because, in the end, everything in this world dies. Everything. That’s why people look to God for the next.”

Israel looked at me darkly.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t care what you believe about God. I’m not even sure what I believe. The truth is, much smarter men than us have discussed this question for millennia, and still haven’t come to a consensus.

“And as far as the world being fair or good, the question that baffles me most isn’t why bad things happen. In a world like this, I would expect that. What I can’t comprehend is why good things happen. Why is there love? Why is there beauty? Why did I love my wife so much? And why did she love me? That’s what baffles me. That’s what I can’t explain.”

Israel didn’t say anything but continued walking with his head down. After a minute he suddenly stopped walking. “I’ve bothered you long enough.”

I stopped as well. “No bother,” I said. “But it was nice talking with you. Travel safe. And good luck with your book. If I ever see it in a store, I’ll buy a copy or two.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I hope you make it to Key West.” He shook my hand, then shrugged his pack from his shoulders and sat down on the side of the road with his sign. I just kept on walking.

After Marceline, the towns seemed to change, becoming more Southern. Missouri was always split like that. Even during the Civil War, they weren’t sure which side of the conflict they were on.

By the end of the third day from Marceline I entered Monroe City, a quaint town, like Sidney. The houses were well kept with large porches and beautiful yards. It was also the site of the first Civil War battle in northeast Missouri. I learned this from a brochure I picked up at the town’s visitors center.

From what I read, the battle was an entertaining affair and the whole of the Monroe citizenry came out in buggies and wagons to picnic and watch the ruckus, which turned out to be a lot more bluster than blood.

The conflict started when a group of Confederate sympathizers gathered in Monroe and Federal troops, led by Colonel Smith, were sent in to break them up. The area was a hotbed of secessionists and Colonel Smith and his men were soon outnumbered and forced to take refuge in a building called the Seminary.

While the pro-secessionist troops surrounded the building, their leader, the Honorable Thomas A. Harris—known to love a good audience—began making a speech to the gathered crowd, who didn’t want words, but action.

Harris declared that without a cannon the best thing to do would be retreat and he dismissed his men. His troops declined his offer, and when their cannon arrived the battle resumed. The cannon was a nine-pounder, but the soldiers only had a few nine-pound balls, which they used up with great inefficiency. They then filled their cannon with six-pound balls, which fired so erratically that it dispersed both picnickers and Confederate soldiers who said they didn’t like being fired on by their own side. By the end of the attack, the pro-South soldiers claimed that the only safe place to be was in front of the cannon.

Federal reinforcements soon arrived to aid Colonel Smith and with one blast of grapeshot from the Union cannon, the secessionists retreated, hiding in buggies and wagons and mingling with the picnickers.

In the meantime, wild rumors of the battle spread and a day after the conflict had ended, Colonel Ulysses S. Grant arrived on the scene with more than two thousand troops. Learning the battle was over, he moved on to Mexico. Thus ended the battle of Monroe.

I passed the Rainbow Motel with a sign outside that read, “Look inside, then decide.” I looked inside. I felt as if I’d stepped back into the fifties. An old Pepsi vending machine stood next to the office door and a poster of the Ten Commandments.

I booked a room for the night. The next day I reached Hannibal.

CHAPTER

Twenty-four

Life is not to be found in a cemetery.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Aside from Disneyland, historic Hannibal was about as magical a town as I could hope to walk through—a storybook hamlet still blessed by its patron saint Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain.

Twain once wrote of his beloved hometown:

After all these years I can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then: the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer’s morning; the streets empty, or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water Street stores, with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the wall . . . the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun. . . .

Walking into Hannibal it is possible to still imagine it as Twain saw it. The city is picturesque, with carefully preserved historic architecture, its eastern panorama framed by the “magnificent” river. It was the kind of place I desperately wanted to share with McKale and wondered why I hadn’t.

I checked into the Best Western Plus On the River, which wasn’t really on the river, although, as a former adman, I could see how they could fudge this—since in 1993 the Mississippi overflowed its banks and flooded the town. So one could claim, in good conscience, that the hotel was, at the time, on the river. Or, more accurately, in it.

As the clerk handed me my room key she proudly said, “You might be interested to know that we just got a new treadmill in our exercise room. In case you feel the inclination to walk.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Good to know.”

I ate dinner across the street at a small, shoebox-shaped diner, Hannibal fried chicken with biscuits and sawmill gravy, then returned to the hotel to soak in the hot tub. I read a little of my Jesse James book, then retired early.

Being in Hannibal lifted my spirits, and, perhaps for the first time since I left Seattle, I felt more like a tourist than a man on a pilgrimage. The next morning I went for a walk around the town, stopping for breakfast and coffee at the Java Jive on Main Street. My waitress was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. I guessed her to be in her early to mid twenties, but she was dressed in retro clothing: a formfitting striped dress with a red beret and sash and high-heeled shoes. She reminded me of one of those girls that B-52 bomber squads painted on the noses of their flying coffins.

The pastry and coffee were good and I leisurely drank my coffee, the tourist traffic outside as meandering as the river the town parallels. It was a pleasure to watch others walk for a change.

I hadn’t planned on spending the day in Hannibal, but an hour into the morning I knew I would. After finishing my second coffee I walked north to see Twain’s home.

The Mark Twain historic complex was well preserved with cobblestone streets closed off to automobile traffic. Among the buildings still standing are Twain’s boyhood home, complete with the white fence Tom Sawyer hoodwinked the neighbor boys into painting, and the re-constructed home of Tom Blankenship—the boy Huckleberry Finn was based on. Twain wrote of his friend Tom:

His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy, and was envied by all the rest of us. We liked him; we enjoyed his society. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents, the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than of any other boy’s.

There was also Twain’s father’s justice of the peace office and the home of Laura Hawkins, the neighbor girl on whom Twain had based the character Becky Thatcher. In this, the author and I shared common ground—both of our lives were forever changed by the girl next door.

After touring the homes, I walked south along the bank of the Mississippi until I came to the loading plank of the Mark Twain riverboat. I paid fifteen dollars for a one-hour cruise and boarded the craft.

The boat didn’t cover much ground, or water, just paddling up the river a spell then back down, but the ride was as pleasant and smooth as a southern drawl.

Steve, the riverboat captain, was a jovial host and as we pulled away from the dock, he sang out over the boat’s PA system an obligatory “Maaaark Twaaaaaaain,” reassuring us that the water was two fathoms deep, which to the riverboat pilot meant safe water. Safe water. It is still a comforting reassurance to us today.

I climbed up to the boat’s wheelhouse and asked Captain Steve something I’d always wondered: why were the top of the boat’s smokestacks fluted?

“Mostly tradition,” he replied. “But back in Twain’s day the flutes helped keep the embers from the boat’s furnace from falling on the passengers’ heads.”

Satisfied with the answer I went back to the ship’s bow and drank a Coke.

On our return to shore, the captain blew the boat’s powerful steam whistle thrice before sidling up to the dock. I thanked Captain Steve and disembarked, then walked to Main Street, ate lunch at Ole Planters Restaurant, then wandered back to my hotel, perusing store windows on the way.

Two blocks from my hotel I passed an office with a sign in the window that read:

Haunted Hannibal Ghost Tours

I went inside to check it out. No one was inside, but there was a sign-up list for the evening’s tour. I added my name to the list.

Just about everything in Hannibal is haunted, and everyone in town had a ghost story they were eager to share. The first ghost story I heard was shared that morning by my waitress over breakfast. The renter in an apartment next to the Java Jive kept complaining about the creepy organ music that woke him every night at 3 A.M. He refused to believe that the coffeehouse management was not to blame even though the coffeehouse didn’t own an organ and closed at midnight.

Even the public library had stories of a fastidious apparition who, after closing hours, threw books on the floor that had been incorrectly reshelved.

After a nap at the hotel, I woke feeling a little dizzy again, but it soon passed. I ate dinner at the same diner I had the night before, then walked two blocks to the shop where I’d signed up for the ghost tour.

A long, gray passenger van was idling in front of the office and a small congregation on the sidewalk. I walked inside the office. A tall, pleasant-looking woman with long, dishwater blond hair stood next to the counter holding a clipboard.

“I’m here for the ghost tour,” I said.

“Then you’ve come to the right place,” she said, wagging a pen in front of me. “You must be Mr. Christoffersen.”

“That’s me,” I said.

She marked the list on her clipboard. “I’m Doreen. You’re alone, right?”

I felt it acutely. “Right.”

“Just go ahead and find a seat in the van out front.”

I walked back outside. The small group I’d passed on the way in was now seated inside the van. The van’s door was wide open.

There were five of us in the group: a young, fresh-faced couple who, from their glassy-eyed expressions, I guessed to be honeymooners, occupied half the front bench, and two women in their mid fifties sat in the middle row.

The driver was a thin, thirtyish man with a face shadowed with stubble. Even though it was already getting dark he wore Ray-Ban aviators, and he looked a little like Richard Petty, the former NASCAR champion. His head was bowed as he was evidently playing a game on his cell phone.

“Good evening,” I said as I climbed into the vehicle. Only the ladies greeted me back. The driver was fixated on his phone and the couple was still fixated on each other, oblivious to all other life on the planet. I squeezed through to the backseat of the van.

A few minutes later, Doreen poked her head in through the front passenger window. “We’re waiting for one more.”

The driver grunted and scratched his face, but still didn’t look up. About two minutes later Doreen returned. She was standing next to an elderly gentleman who wore a flat cap and gray sweater and carried a black, metal-tipped cane.

“There you are, Mr. Lewis,” Doreen said. “I’ll take your cane. Watch your step.”

Mr. Lewis was probably in his mid to late eighties, gray and bent with age. He struggled to climb up into the front row, sitting next to the honeymooners. Doreen helped him fasten his seat belt, then slid the side door shut and climbed into the front passenger seat. When she was settled, she turned around and smiled at us.

“Welcome, everyone, to haunted Hannibal. I have been guiding this tour for nearly twelve years now, and let me tell you, in those years I’ve seen some amazing things. Rest assured, your experiences on this tour are your own. We don’t judge the validity of your encounters, we just accept and let things happen. Most of all, you’re going to have a good time.

“Our first stop tonight is rife with paranormal activity: the Old Baptist Cemetery.” She turned to the driver. “Let’s go.”

The driver put down his phone, then looked over his shoulder and pulled out into the quiet, vacant street.

The cemetery was about five minutes from our pickup point and the last of the day’s light was gone when the van stopped. Doreen and the driver helped Mr. Lewis out of the van, then the rest of us followed.

I was the last one out and the small group had already formed a half circle in front of Doreen. Most of the cemetery was draped beneath a canopy of aged oak trees, which left us standing in a darker shade of night.

Doreen handed each of us copper rods that swiveled in wooden handles, like divining rods, the kind water witches use to find water.

“This little device will help you find spectral energy,” she said. “As you walk through the cemetery, hold the rods in front of you like this.” She demonstrated, holding the rods in front of her with both hands like she was holding a pair of guns. “If they start crossing, you might have found someone who wants to communicate with you. Sometimes the lines will just open up. I’ve even seen them spin. Go ahead and ask the spirits questions. The ghosts up here are used to us, so they know what to do. But do be careful, it’s dark, so watch where you’re stepping. We don’t want anyone tripping over anything. Now off you go. Have fun!”

At Doreen’s dismissal, everyone wandered off with their spirit wands, headed toward different sections of the cemetery. I stood there feeling stupid, holding the pointers in front of me.

Mr. Lewis was still next to me. He was moving slowly, his cane in one hand, both of the rods in the other. I thought that at his age, traipsing around cemeteries at night might be a bit too ambitious.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Certainly,” he said curtly, his voice low and gravelly.

“Have you done this before?”

“Countless times.”

“Oh,” I said, a little surprised. “Have you ever encountered anything?”

“Not what I’m looking for.” He turned and looked at me, his eyes as dark as the cemetery. “I’m looking for my wife.”

His response jarred me. I had never considered looking for McKale in this way. Nor did I want to. Everything about it seemed wrong.

“You’ve been looking for her for a while?”

“Yes,” he said. Then he hobbled away, mumbling something as he crossed the grounds.

I walked off alone toward the cemetery’s northeast corner, holding the rods in front of me. About ten minutes later, Doreen joined me. “How’s it going?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said.

“Good,” she said brightly.

Nothing had happened, except the rods had moved a little, something that was almost impossible to prevent, even if you were trying.

“Tell me,” I said. “What do you know about Mr. Lewis?”

“Mr. Lewis is a retired insurance salesman from Tulsa, Oklahoma. His wife died a while back and since then he’s spent most of his time traveling the country to séances and ghost tours, looking for proof that she still exists.”

“Has he had any luck?” I asked.

“Apparently not. A lot of people have claimed to find her, but none have passed his test.”

“What’s his test?”

“He had a pet name he called her. If they can’t tell him what it is, he knows it’s not her.”

“When you say a while, how long are we talking about? A few years?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Try forty.”

“Forty years,” I said. “He’s been traveling the country for forty years looking for his wife?”

She nodded. “He’s spent his life and fortune trying to find her. At least that’s what he told me when he signed up for the tour.”

“Doesn’t he have any family?”

“He has four adult children. Sounds like he’s estranged from them. I guess he was pretty broken up about losing her.” Doreen read the look of disapproval on my face, then said, “I know, I wouldn’t do it. But you can’t judge someone until you’ve walked in their moccasins, can you? So have you found anyone tonight?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Well let’s get busy,” she said.

For the next half hour Doreen followed me around the cemetery looking for traces of paranormal activity. My lines crossed several times—actually, several dozen times—and, at Doreen’s encouragement, I found myself in a one-sided conversation with a grave marker named Mary Stewart. My divining rods had rotated backward and Doreen was certain that Mary’s spirit was hugging me.

I’ll admit to one peculiar phenomenon. I kept feeling the sensation of walking through spiderwebs, even when I was out in the open.

An hour later as we reboarded the van, the two women were chatting excitedly, one claiming she’d found a spirit who knew her recently deceased grandmother. The honeymooners were still just staring at each other, clearly desperate to get back to the hotel.

Mr. Lewis was the last to return, only doing so at Doreen’s insistence. As he struggled into the van he looked sad or angry, I couldn’t really tell which, as his face was sufficiently hard that it was difficult to read any emotion except unhappiness. Watching him had a powerful effect on me.

The van took a circuitous route back to Doreen’s office, passing by a series of buildings that were supposedly haunted, including the Old Catholic Church, which was up for sale. Doreen told us that one of her clients claimed to have placed a recorder in the church and, within minutes, recorded the sound of an invisible choir.

A few blocks past the Old Church, Doreen pointed out a Victorian home. “Up ahead here, to your left, is LaBinnah Bistro. I recommend that you eat there if you get the chance. Can anyone figure out where the restaurant got its name?”

We all looked out at the building, even the honeymooners.

“It’s French,” one of the women said.

“Or Cajun,” said the other.

“No, that’s not it,” Doreen said.

“It was the chef’s wife’s name,” the male honeymooner said, the first word he’d spoken to anyone but his wife.

“No,” Doreen said.

“I know,” I said.

Doreen looked at me. “You think you do?”

“LaBinnah is Hannibal spelled backwards.”

Doreen clapped. “You’re the first person in twelve years who’s gotten that right,” she said. “Twelve years.”

When we’d returned to the office and disembarked from the van, Doreen asked me what I’d thought of the tour. “It was life changing,” I said.

She beamed at my report. “I’m so pleased. Thank you for coming. And come back soon.”

“Good night,” I said, then turned and walked back to my hotel.

I meant what I said to Doreen, just not for the reasons she had likely assumed. The experience had had a profound impact on me. Not the paranormal aspect of the tour—which I had found mildly amusing—but rather my experience with Mr. Lewis. In this man I had seen something far more frightening than any graveyard specter or poltergeist. I had seen the bitterness of unaccepted loss. I had seen the possibility of my own future and my own ruin.

CHAPTER

Twenty-five

What’s wrong with me? Something’s broken.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

A man’s experiences of life are a book. There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

—Mark Twain

I hated to leave Hannibal. On the way out of town, I stopped at Mark Twain’s Cave, the same cave Twain explored as a boy and referenced in five of his books—most famously in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, where Tom and Becky get mixed up with Injun Joe.

I left my pack behind the counter at the cave’s gift shop, then entered the cave with a tall, boyish-looking guide and a small group from a Church of God Bible class visiting from Memphis, Tennessee.

Mark Twain’s cave was a remarkable thing—a labyrinth of shelved limestone that tangled and twisted in the belly of the hill for more than six miles.

“One could get more lost in here than on the New Jersey Turnpike,” our guide announced. How he had come up with that exact comparison I wasn’t sure. I decided that he’d probably been lost in New Jersey at some time.

For the next hour we wound our way through a few dozen of the cave’s more than 260 passages. Inside, the cave was chilly, as it maintained a year-round temperature of 52 degrees, and many in our group complained that they hadn’t brought their sweaters.

Among the many things we saw was the signature of Jesse James, who hid out in the cave after the robbery of a train in a nearby town.

Our guide led us to Grand Avenue, the largest room in the cave, where Tom and Becky were lost in darkness after a bat doused Becky’s candle. This story was, of course, a natural segue into the climax of the tour (of all cave tours, for that matter) when our guide turned out the lights with the exhortation, “Put your hand up to your face and see if you can see it.”

We couldn’t, of course. “Dark as sin,” McKale would have said. Actually she never would have come in the cave; she was crazily claustrophobic. Amusingly, someone said “ouch” after hitting himself in the nose.

Our guide turned the lights back on then said, “Let me share with you an interesting fact. The human eye needs light to survive. If you got lost in this cave, you would be permanently blind in six to eight weeks.”

“Imagine that,” the woman next to me said. “That would be horrible.”

“If you got lost in this cave, you’d be dead long before you went blind,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of that.” Peculiarly, the woman smiled, as if this were a comforting thought.

Our guide continued. “At one time this cave was owned by a Hannibal doctor named Joseph Nash McDowell, who bought the cave to do ‘scientific’ experiments with mummification. When his daughter died, he brought her in and embalmed her. He did his experiments in that crevice about fifty yards back.”

“Wait,” I said. “He did experiments with his daughter’s corpse?”

“Yes, sir,” the guide said.

I shook my head. Just when you think people couldn’t get any more bizarre, a Joseph Nash McDowell turns up.

At the completion of the tour I retrieved my pack, then started back to historic Hannibal. That wasn’t my original plan. I had stopped at the cave on my way to highway 79, a scenic route that followed the Mississippi River south along the Missouri–Illinois border. But as I verified my route with a clerk at the cave’s gift shop, I learned that the river had recently washed out the road and the highway was closed. I reasoned that I could always walk around construction crews, but the clerk wasn’t sure that was possible. Considering that a closed route might mean backtracking for days, I decided not to take the chance.

My only other option was to take U.S. Route 61 southeast to St. Louis. It would be a considerably busier route but I really had no other choice.

Over the next three days, I passed through New London, Frankford, Bowling Green, Eolia, and Troy. I woke in Troy feeling dizzy and nauseous again, but forced it aside, vowing to rest properly once I reached St. Louis.

I had had a headache all day, and about six miles from the 70 junction into St. Louis, my vertigo returned with a vengeance. Oddly, my first thought was that there was an earthquake, as the spinning was much worse than before. I staggered then fell, landing partially on my pack, which cushioned my fall. I rolled to my stomach and began violently vomiting, struggling to hold myself upright as my head throbbed with pain. What was happening to me?

“McKale,” I groaned. It’s the last thing I remember before passing out.

CHAPTER

Twenty-six

Déjà vu.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke in the hospital. I couldn’t believe that I was in a hospital again—it was the third time since I’d left Seattle. I hadn’t been in a hospital that many times in my entire life. The room was dim and I could hear the beeping and whirring of machines. I looked over at my arm. It was bruised and there was an IV taped to it.

“It’s about time you woke,” a voice said. I looked over to see a young, African-American nurse standing to the side of the room reading a machine.

“Where am I?”

“You are at the St. Louis University Hospital.”

“How did I get here?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I wasn’t here when you arrived. Do you remember anything?”

“I was just walking, when I suddenly got dizzy and everything started to spin. I must have blacked out.” I looked at her. “What’s wrong with me?”

“I’ll leave that to the doctor to talk to you about,” she said. “In the meantime, there’s someone here to see you.”

I couldn’t imagine who it could be. “I don’t know anyone around here.”

“Well, she knows you. She’s been in the waiting room for three hours. I’ll send her in.” She walked out of the room.

I stared at the door, wondering who could possibly be here to see me. Falene suddenly appeared in the doorway.

“Hi,” she said sweetly.

“Falene. What are you doing here?”

She walked to the side of my bed. “The police called me. I was the last number you dialed on your cell phone.”

“ . . . You came all this way?”

“Of course I did. You needed me.” I noticed that her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“What is it, Falene?”

The tears fell faster. She furtively wiped her eyes then looked away from me.

“Falene . . . ”

She reached over and took my hand. Her hand felt soft and warm. “Your father will be here soon,” she said. “Can he tell you?”

“Is it bad?”

She just stared at me, tears rolling down her cheeks.

I looked down for a moment, then I said, “When McKale was hurt, you called me. When Kyle stole my business, you called me. You’ve always told me the truth, no matter how hard. I’d rather hear it from you.”

She wiped her eyes. “Oh, Alan,” she said.

“Please. What’s wrong with me?”

She looked into my eyes, her eyes welling up in tears. “They found a brain tumor.”

EPILOGUE

To learn grace is to discover God.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Who am I? Or perhaps a better question is, what am I? A refugee? A fugitive? A saunterer? Henry David Thoreau, in his essay on walking, wrote that the word sauntering was derived from “people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages under pretense of going à la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “ ‘There goes a Sainte-Terrer,’ a Saunterer—a Holy-Lander.” Maybe this is the truest definition of who I am—a Pilgrim. My walk is my pilgrimage. And, like all worthwhile pilgrimages, mine too is a journey from wretchedness to grace. Grace. I have learned much on my walk, but most recently, I have learned of grace.

As a boy, I heard my mother sing “Amazing Grace.” She said grace over meals and praised all graciousness. My father, on the other hand, rarely spoke the word, relegating it to Sunday vernacular, with little use in an accountant’s calculated life. But he showed grace through his actions, by caring for me the best he could even when his own heart was broken.

For most of my life I have thought of grace as a hope of a bright tomorrow in spite of the darkness of today—and this is true. In this way we are all like Pamela, walking a road to grace—hoping for mercy. What we fail to realize is that grace is more than our destination, it is the journey itself, manifested in each breath and with each step we take. Grace surrounds us, whirls about us like the wind, falls on us like rain. Grace sustains us on our journeys, no matter how perilous they may be and, make no mistake, they are all perilous. We need not hope for grace, we merely need to open our eyes to its abundance. Grace is all around us, not just in the hopeful future but in the miracle of now.

And, if we travel well, we will become as grace and learn the lesson meant from the journey, not to dismiss error, but to eagerly forgive the err-er, to generously share the balm of mercy and love for, before the eyes of Heaven, we all walk as fools. And the more we exercise our portion of grace, the better we receive it. The abundance of this grace is only limited by ourselves, as we cannot receive that which we are not willing to accept—be it for ourselves or others.

It’s been written that, He who does not forgive is guilty of the greater sin. That verse had always confounded me. I had considered it unjust at best and cruel at worst. But these words were not meant as condemnation—rather as illumination of an eternal truth: that to not extend forgiveness is to burn the bridge that we ourselves must cross.

I have found grace in my walk. I saw it in the joy of Pamela’s freedom, in the hope in Analise’s eyes, and in the forgiving heart of Leszek. I found it in Washington in the wisdom of Ally and the friendship of Nicole, and walking through Idaho in the gratitude of Kailamai. And even now, in my moment of uncertainty and fear, I see it in the presence of Falene. Grace is all around me. It always has been. How could I have been so blind?

I am still in the hospital. My father arrived a few hours after I woke. Tests have been done, and, no doubt, there will be myriad more to come. We do not yet know if my tumor is malignant or benign, and whether or not it has spread. I know only enough to fear. I fear death, as any sane man does, but I’m a creative man so my fears are greater than most.

Still, part of me—a dark or light part I’m not yet certain—hungers for death’s sleep, perhaps to wake in the brightness and warmth of McKale’s arms. This might seem a fool’s hope—to seek love in death—but, truthfully, I do not know where McKale is but death.

I don’t know. Not since I set out from Seattle has my journey been more uncertain. I don’t know if or when I will be walking again. I do not know whether or not I will reach Key West. But this much I know—whether I accept the journey or not, the road will come. The road always comes. The only question any of us can answer, is how we will choose to meet it.

SIMON & SCHUSTER

READING GROUP GUIDE

Introduction

In the third book in Richard Paul Evans’s bestselling series, former advertising executive Alan Christoffersen continues his walk across the United States in an attempt to find solace after the death of his wife and the betrayal of his business partner. When a mysterious woman begins to follow him on his journey, Alan is forced to confront his past and some hard truths about his late wife’s family.

TOPICS & QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Many characters in both film and literature embark upon journeys as a reaction to unexpected life events. How does Alan’s journey compare to other “journey” narratives you’ve encountered? What is significant about Alan’s determination to cover hundreds of miles by foot?

2. Do you think that Pamela’s explanation of her behavior justifies what she did to McKale? Are her actions understandable?

3. Based on your knowledge of Alan’s history with his former business partner Kyle Craig, were you surprised that Leszek was able to convince him to initiate contact with Kyle? What does this say about how Alan may have felt on a deeper level? How does Leszek’s own story help Alan put things into perspective?

4. Discuss Alan’s reaction to Analise when he wakes in the middle of the night. Did you guess at her secret before she told it to Alan? Could you understand Alan’s reaction? Why are Analise and Alan able to form a bond so quickly? Have you ever experienced a similar, immediate connection with someone?

5. Were there any towns that Alan visited that held particular interest for you? What was interesting about them? Have you been to any of the places he visits during the novel?

6. Discuss Alan’s memories of the one birthday party his father threw for him. Why does he thank his father for throwing this party? What is Alan thankful for? What has happened in the novel up to this point that may have changed Alan’s view of his past?

7. Israel asks an interesting question: How could a just God give an eternal punishment for a sin that took place in a limited time? How do you feel about this question?

8. Of all the different individuals Alan encounters during The Road to Grace, who do you think had the greatest overall effect on Alan’s character? Which character did you most enjoy reading?

9. Alan says that some of America’s small towns “were tinder for some of the world’s greatest people and ideas.” Discuss this statement. How might small-town living breed greatness in people?

10. How has Alan changed since the beginning of The Walk series? How do you describe the concept of grace? Do you think Alan has found grace?

11. During the ghost tour in Hannibal, Alan learns that the elderly Mr. Lewis has been searching for the ghost of his wife for decades and thinks, “I had seen the possibility of my own ruin.” What do you think Alan means? Why does Mr. Lewis’s behavior have such a great impact on him?

12. Analise tells Alan that she understands his impulse to walk across the country after McKale’s death more than he knows, while Leszek is at first confused by Alan’s journey. How do the different ways characters respond to Alan’s walk reflect the state of their own lives? How does the theme of seeing ourselves reflected in others recur throughout the novel?

13. Were you surprised by the news Alan learns from Falene at the end of the book? Did you expect something like this to happen? How did Evans foreshadow this news earlier in the book? Given what Alan learns at the end of The Road to Grace, where might you see his journey leading next?

14. Discuss the theme of forgiveness in the novel. Consider Alan’s conversation with Pamela and Leszek’s story of his captivity and escape in your response. Have you ever been confronted with the choice of whether or not to forgive? Is there any action that you would consider to be truly unforgivable?

ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB

1. Create a playlist of songs that inspire you and listen to them on a long walk around your neighborhood or a local park. Reflect on any problems or issues you are currently facing and use your walk to begin thinking of steps toward a solution. You’re guaranteed to raise your spirits! At your next book club exchange playlists or share ideas generated during your walk with the rest of the group.

2. Watch the 2011 movie The Way, directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his father, Martin Sheen, which tells the story of a grief-stricken father who, after the death of his son, decides to walk hundreds of miles through Spain on an ancient spiritual route. Discuss the similarities between this movie and The Road to Grace.

3. The Road to Grace is full of interesting facts about American history and culture—Wall Drug to Walt Disney to Mark Twain. Put together a list of the notable Americans you admire most, and the attractions, town, and museums you’d most like to visit. At your next book club, map out a fantasy road trip based on where your members’ interests intersect both geographically and topically. Maybe it will even inspire you to start planning a real trip!

4. To learn more about Richard Paul Evans, visit his website at www.richardpaulevans.com and become a fan of his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/RPEfans. To find our more about his charity, The Christmas Box International, visit www.thechristmasboxhouse.org/wp.

Coming Spring 2013, book 4 of The Walk series:

A Step of Faith

To learn more about The Walk series or to join Richard’s mailing list and receive special offers and information please visit: www.richardpaulevans.com

Join Richard on Facebook at the

Richard Paul Evans fan page
www.facebook.com/RPEfans

Or write to him at:

P.O. Box 712137 • Salt Lake City, Utah • 84171

Richard Paul Evans is the #1 bestselling author of The Christmas Box. Each of his twenty novels has been a New York Times bestseller. There are more than fifteen million copies of his books in print worldwide, translated into more than twenty-four languages. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Mothers Book Award, the Romantic Times Best Women’s Novel of the Year Award, the German Audience Gold Award for Romance, two Religion Communicators Council Wilbur Awards, the Washington Times Humanitarian of the Century Award and the Volunteers of America National Empathy Award. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife, Keri, and their five children. You can learn more about Richard on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RPEfans, or visit his website, www.richardpaulevans.com.

ALSO BY RICHARD PAUL EVANS

The Walk Series

The Walk

Miles to Go

A Winter Dream

Lost December

Promise Me

The Christmas List

Grace

The Gift

Finding Noel

The Sunflower

A Perfect Day

The Last Promise

The Christmas Box Miracle

The Carousel

The Looking Glass

The Locket

The Letter

Timepiece

The Christmas Box

For Children and Young Adults

The Dance

The Christmas Candle

The Spyglass

The Tower

The Light of Christmas

Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25

Simon & Schuster Paperbacks

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Paul Evans

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Paperbacks Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition March 2013

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Designed by Davina Mock-Maniscalco

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Evans, Richard Paul.

The road to grace : the third journal of the walk series / Richard Paul Evans.—1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed.

p. cm.

1. Executives—Fiction. 2. Life change events—Fiction. 3. Walking—United States—Fiction. 4. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 5. Diaries—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3555.V259R63 2012b

813'.54—dc23                    2012004985

ISBN 978-1-4516-2818-0

ISBN 978-1-4516-2828-9 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4516-2833-3 (ebook)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the following for their assistance: Once again, my writing assistant, travel companion and daughter, Jenna Evans Welch. (And Ally, who came along for the ride. And Sam, who also came, but against his will.) My friends at Simon & Schuster: Jonathan Karp, Carolyn Ready, my editor Trish Todd (and Molly) and copy editor Gypsy da Silva. Mike and Cathy Hankins of the Southern Hotel in Ste. Genevieve, Kelly Glad, Judge Samuel D. McVey, Dr. Steve Schlozman, and The Cancer Learning Center at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah.

My staff: Diane Glad, Heather McVey, Barry Evans, Karen Christoffersen, Doug Osmond (Osmonds rock!), Lisa Johnson, and Camille Shosted. And my agent, Laurie Liss. Good work. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning. (Just seeing if you really read my books.)

To my daughters, Jenna Lyn and Allyson-Danica.

The Okefenokee wouldn’t have been the same without you.

I love you, girls.

Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.

—Helen Keller

More than once, usually after getting a strange glance from an occupant of a passing car, I’ve wondered what people think of me—a lone man, unshaven, long hair spilling from beneath his hat, walking alone along some forsaken stretch of highway. They wouldn’t likely guess that I once owned a prestigious advertising agency, or a multimillion-dollar home, or shared a love that others only dream about. Nor would they guess how badly my heart’s been broken. We don’t think those things about strangers.

The truth is, they probably don’t think about me at all. Or at least not for very long. We have become proficient at blocking each other out. Just like we block advertising noise. I’m not claiming this is a sign of societal decay or moral deficiency. I think it’s a necessity. There are far too many people for us to think about each of them during our short stay on earth—like the thousands of books in a library we haven’t time to read in an afternoon. But this is no excuse to cease browsing. For every now and then, we find that one book that reaches us deep inside and introduces us to ourselves. And, in someone else’s story, we come to understand our own.

I don’t know how you found me, but my name is Alan Christoffersen. And this is the story of my walk.

PROLOGUE

Maybe, if we just accepted our deaths, we might finally start to live.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Am I dying?

It’s a stupid question, really, as we’ve all got an expiration date. I guess the real question is not if, but when.

As I was walking through the South Dakota Badlands—before I knew something was wrong with me—I had this thought: What if we all carried little timers that counted down the days of our lives? Maybe the timer’s a bit dramatic. Just the date would do. It could be tattooed on our foreheads like the expiration date on a milk bottle.

It might be a good thing. Maybe we’d stop wasting our lives worrying about things that never happen, or collecting things that we can’t take with us. We’d probably treat people better. We certainly wouldn’t be screaming at someone who had a day left. Maybe people would finally stop living like they’re immortal. Maybe we would finally learn how to live.

I’ve wondered if, perhaps, at some deep, subconscious level, we really do know our time. I’ve heard stories of people spontaneously buying life insurance or writing wills just days before an unforeseen calamity takes their lives.

In my own life I’ve seen evidence of this. My mother—who died when I was eight—told my father more than once that she didn’t think she would live to an old age or, to her great sadness, to see her grandchildren. Some might say that she jinxed herself, but I don’t think so. My mother wasn’t a pessimist. I think she knew.

Whether we know our time or not, it doesn’t change the truth—there is a clock ticking for all of us. I suppose this weighs heavily on my mind right now because my clock seems to be ticking a little more loudly lately. A brain tumor will do that to you.

If you’re picking up my story for the first time, my name is Alan Christoffersen and I’m walking across America. I started 258 days ago from my home (or what was my home) in Seattle, Washington. I’m walking 3,500 miles to Key West, Florida.

A day ago I was found unconscious on the side of Highway 61, about forty-five miles from where I am now—the St. Louis University Hospital. All I know for certain about my condition is that the doctors found a brain tumor. This came to me as a complete surprise.

Almost as surprising as my wife’s death—which is why I’m walking to begin with.

Nearly ten months ago my wife, McKale, was paralyzed in a horse-riding accident. While I cared for her, my advertising agency’s clients were stolen by my partner, Kyle Craig, and the loss of income coupled with mounting medical bills sent me spiraling into bankruptcy. My cars were repossessed and my home was foreclosed on. A month later, when McKale died of complications, I lost everything.

At the time, I wanted to take my life. Instead, I decided to take a walk—one that would take me as far away from Seattle as physically possible. I’m a little more than halfway. Perhaps death has been following me all along.

CHAPTER

One

The strength of a friendship can be measured by the weight of the burden it’s willing to share. (If you want to test this just ask someone to help you move.)

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Where was I? My stomach ached. My head spun. Then remembrance returned. St. Louis. I’m in a hospital in St. Louis. McKale is gone. Still gone. Always gone.

My room was dark and still except for the soft humming and occasional beeps from the monitors next to my bed. I was awake for nearly a minute before I realized that I wasn’t alone. My friend Falene was sitting quietly next to me. My anxiety softened at the sight of her.

“Hi,” I said. My mouth was dry.

“Hi,” she echoed softly. “How are you feeling?”

“Fantastic.”

She smiled sadly. “Are you still dizzy?”

“A little.” I shut my eyes as a wave of nausea passed through me. When I could speak, I opened my eyes. “What time is it?”

“It’s a little past nine.”

“Oh,” I said, as if it meant something. “. . . Day or night?”

“Day. I kept the blinds down so you could sleep.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I’ve been here all night. With your father.”

I slowly looked around the small, dim room. “My father?”

“I made him get something to eat. He hadn’t left your side since yesterday. I don’t think he’s eaten since he got here.”

“That’s not good.”

“No, it isn’t.” She reached over and took my hand. “He didn’t want to leave your side. People love you, you know.”

“I know,” I said softly. I squeezed her hand as I looked into her eyes. I could see the fear in them behind her tears. She was so beautiful. And she was so good to me. Why was she so good to me? I hated seeing her so afraid. “Everything is going to be okay.”

She leaned forward and raised my hand to her cheek. A tear fell on my hand. Then another. After a moment she leaned back and wiped her eyes. “You’d better be okay.”

“I will be,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

It was a hollow assertion. We both knew that I had no idea whether or not I would be.

The room fell into silence. After a moment she said, “I never got back to you with Kyle’s number.”

Several weeks earlier I had asked her to find my former business partner Kyle Craig’s phone number for me. With all that had happened since then, I’d forgotten about it. “Did you find him?”

“Sort of . . .” she said, her expression turning dark. “Remember I told you that there were a lot of people looking for him?”

“Yes. Is he in trouble?”

“He’s dead.”

Her words stunned me. “Dead?”

She nodded.

“Someone killed him?”

“He committed suicide.”

I didn’t speak for nearly a minute, my mind processing this new reality. “When did it happen?”

“About a month ago.”

I closed my eyes. I had tried to call Kyle to tell him that I forgave him for what he had done. I now realized that even though I hadn’t had the chance to say it to him, I truly had forgiven him, because the strongest emotion I felt at the news of his death wasn’t the need for revenge or even anger, but sorrow. Not for me, but for Kyle. Sorrow for the choices he’d made that led him to where he’d ended up.

I slowly breathed out. “Oh, Kyle.”

My mind skipped back to when I’d brought him on at my newborn agency. Those were adventurous days, and even though we worked too much, there were good times and lots of laughter. To celebrate our first million-dollar client we bought a dozen laser-tag guns from the Sharper Image catalogue and played laser tag in our office after work. McKale thought we were crazy. I remember her rolling her eyes and saying, “Boys and their toys.” We just thought we were unstoppable. Our sky had no limit. Kyle had not only shared my dreams, but helped fuel them. He helped me dream them. Those were the best of days. I was sincerely sorry that Kyle was gone.

“He didn’t deserve that,” I said softly.

Falene narrowed her eyes. “You’re a better person than I am,” she said, “because I thought he got exactly what he deserved.”

“What he did to me was wrong, but he could have changed. He could have been the man he once was.”

“You amaze me,” Falene said. “After all that he did to you, you still forgive him?”

I turned and looked at her. “I suppose I have.”

It was another ten minutes before my father walked into the room. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on the day before. When I was younger this would have embarrassed me.

“Hi, son,” he said. His eyes were dark, ringed with exhaustion. More disturbing to me was his expression—the same stoic, gray mask he wore the week my mother was dying. I hated seeing it on his face again, though not as much for my sake as his. He walked up to the side of my bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” I said. It was a fib—the kind of reply you give when you don’t want to give one. I was glad he didn’t press me on it.

“I just checked at the nurses’ station. The doctor will be here around noon with your test results.”

“I feel like I’m waiting for the jury’s verdict,” I said. I looked back at Falene. “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay,” she said.

“How’s your brother?”

She frowned. “I still don’t know where he is. He’s disappeared.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t want to cause her more distress so I let it go. “Think I could get something to eat?”

“I’ll let the nurse know that you’re awake,” Falene said. She stood and walked out of the room.

I turned to my dad. “Falene said you haven’t been eating.”

“I haven’t been hungry.”

“You still need to eat,” I said.

“You worry about yourself.”

Just then there was a short knock and someone else entered my room. At first I thought it was a nurse. It wasn’t. It was Nicole, the woman I had stayed with in Spokane after being mugged. When she saw me, her eyes welled up with tears. “Alan.” She walked quickly to me and we embraced. “I got here as soon as I could.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I told her,” my father said.

My father, an accountant, had taken on Nicole’s finances after she had inherited money from her landlord.

Nicole kissed my cheek, then leaned back, looking into my eyes. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay.”

“I can tell you’re lying,” she said. “This feels like déjà vu, doesn’t it? You’re spending way too much time in hospitals.”

“I feel like I’m just walking from one hospital to the next,” I said. “Hopefully there’s a good one in Key West.”

“Hopefully you’ll never find out,” she replied. She kissed my cheek again, then stood, looking at my father. “Hello, Mr. Christoffersen. It’s good to see you again.”

He reached out his hand. “It’s good to see you again too.”

“Your dad has been such an angel,” Nicole said. “I’d be lost without him.”

My father looked very pleased. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I wish all my clients were so pleasant.”

Nicole smiled, then turned back to me. “It’s just so good to see you.” She leaned over and hugged me again. When we parted, I noticed that Falene had slipped back into the room. Her eyes were darting back and forth between Nicole and me.

“They’ll be here with your breakfast in a few minutes,” Falene said.

“Thank you,” I said. “Nicole, you remember my friend, Falene.”

Nicole looked at Falene. “Of course,” she said. “You came to my house in Spokane.”

“That’s right,” Falene said softly.

Nicole quickly turned back to me. “So what happened? What are you doing here?”

“I started getting dizzy a few weeks ago. On the way to St. Louis I passed out on the side of the road. I woke up here.”

“Thank goodness someone stopped to help you,” she said. “So they don’t know what’s going on?”

“He has a brain tumor,” Falene said, sounding slightly annoyed.

Nicole looked at her. “I know,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“The doctor will be in around noon to give us an update,” my father said.

Nicole took my hand. “Then I got here just in time.”

The room fell into silence. Falene looked at Nicole for a moment, then said, “I’m going to get some rest.”

“Of course,” I said.

“I’ll watch over him,” Nicole said.

Falene glanced furtively at her, then said, “I’ll be back before noon.” She turned and walked out of the room. I watched her go, feeling uncomfortable about the tension between the two women. The room again fell into silence. After a moment I asked Nicole, “How is Kailamai doing?”

“She’s doing really well. I couldn’t ask for a better roommate. You were definitely inspired to match us up.”

“Did your sister ever come to visit?” Nicole looked as if she didn’t understand my question so I continued. “. . . You were going to get together for a vacation at Bullman Beach.”

“I can’t believe you remembered that,” she said. “Yes, she came in May. We had a great time. It was . . . healing.” She took a deep breath. “So, back to you. Was this a complete surprise?”

“A gradual surprise,” I said. “I got dizzy partway through South Dakota and ended up in a hospital in Mitchell. But the doctor there thought it was just vertigo and gave me some pills. It didn’t hit me hard again until just before St. Louis.”

“We’re lucky it was someplace you could be found,” my father said. “Instead of some country back road.”

“You do know that you’ve walked more than halfway,” Nicole said. “I looked it up on MapQuest. Your halfway mark was a town in Iowa called Sydney. You probably don’t even remember walking through the town, do you?”

I thought about Analise and the night I had spent at her house. “Yes, I remember,” I said simply.

Just then a nurse walked in carrying a tray. “Breakfast, Mr. Christoffersen.”

Nicole stepped back as the nurse prepped the meal, setting it on the table over my bed. Almost everything on the tray was mostly water. Jell-O. Juice. Melon. I took a few bites.

After the nurse left, I said to Nicole, “Think you could find me some real food?”

CHAPTER

Two

“Wait and see” is no easier now than it was as a child.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Falene returned to my room about ten minutes before noon. She looked more tired than when she had left and still looked upset.

“Did you sleep?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not really. The only place I could find was the waiting room. There were a lot of screaming kids.”

“You should have just rested in here,” I said. “Like my father.”

I pointed my thumb at my father, who was reclined in a chair, his head back, and mouth wide open as he snored.

“That’s okay,” Falene said. “I don’t think I could have slept anyway.”

My doctor arrived a few minutes after noon, studying an iPad as he walked in. He glanced up at all of us and said, “Good morning. Or afternoon. Whichever it is.” He looked at me. “I’m Dr. Kelson. How are you feeling?”

“Tired.”

“Still dizzy?”

“A little.”

My dad woke, wiping his eyes and yawning loudly before realizing where he was. “Sorry,” he said.

“Welcome back,” Nicole said.

“Did I miss anything?”

“No,” she said. “The doctor just got here.”

“I’m Dr. Kelson,” the doctor said to my father. He turned back to me. “Are we free to speak, or should I send everyone out?”

I didn’t like the question or the way he asked it. It sounded foreboding. “I’d like them to be here,” I said. “For the verdict.”

He nodded. “All right then.” He raised his voice a little. “You already know that we found a tumor. The question is what kind. After another review of your MRI and CT scans and after consulting with a few of my colleagues, we feel confident that the abnormality detected is a meningioma.” He paused as if the word might mean something to me. It didn’t, but it sounded bad.

My father’s brow fell. “What’s that?”

“A meningioma is a tumor of the membrane that surrounds the brain and spinal cord.”

Falene lifted her hand to her forehead.

“I know it sounds bad,” the doctor said. “But it could be much worse. Most meningiomas are operable and benign. Not all, but most.”

“How do you know if it’s benign?” my father asked.

“That will require a biopsy. Meningiomas are generally slow-growing, so sometimes we take a wait-and-see approach, but since you’re already experiencing symptoms, it’s likely that the tumor is putting pressure on your brain. I recommend that we perform surgery to remove the tumor and relieve the pressure. Then, after the surgery, we’ll do a biopsy and determine whether the tumor is benign or malignant.”

“If it’s benign?” my father asked.

“Then there’s no need for further treatment and we send you on your way.”

My father nodded. “And if it’s malignant?”

“Then we’ll determine whether or not the cancer has spread to other parts of the body and go after it with all the arrows in our quiver.”

“Which means I won’t be able to walk,” I said.

The doctor turned back toward me. “No, you should be able to walk.”

“He means cross-country,” Falene said. “He’s walking across America. He’s already halfway.”

The doctor looked at Falene for a moment as if he was trying to decide whether or not she was being serious, then turned back to me. “No, you would have to postpone that. So Missouri isn’t your home?”

“No,” I said.

He nodded thoughtfully. “You’ll probably want to be treated closer to home. It wouldn’t make sense traveling this far for care.”

“If I had a home,” I said.

“You can come back with me,” Nicole said. “I’ve quit my job, so I could take care of you full-time.” She looked at me fondly. “It will be like old times.”

I noticed the look on Falene’s face.

“It’s your decision,” my father said. “But I think you should come back to Pasadena with me. I’d like to have you close, and we’re just four miles from the UCLA medical center.” Then he added, “It would be a good place to start rebuilding your life.”

I looked at him, wondering what he had meant by his latter comment.

“UCLA is a top-ranked cancer hospital,” the doctor said. “In fact, a former colleague of mine is out there. He’s one of the top neurosurgeons in the country. I’d be happy to contact him.”

“We’d appreciate that,” my father said.

“I could still come down to help,” Nicole said.

“We could write it off,” my father said, always in accountant mode.

“What if I do nothing?” I asked.

Falene glared at me.

Peculiarly, the doctor looked less surprised by my question than everyone else in the room. “If you weren’t already showing symptoms, maybe nothing. At least for a while. But even if it’s benign, a brain tumor can still cause significant problems. In the short term, you’ll only get sicker. In the long term, it could cause disability or take your life. Of course it’s up to you, but I don’t see that doing nothing’s a real option.”

Falene was still glaring at me.

“Any more questions?” the doctor asked.

“When can I leave?” I asked.

“You should spend the night,” he said. “You can leave in the morning.”

“I’ll have to book our flight anyway,” my father said.

“With your permission I’ll contact the cancer center at UCLA and make a referral,” the doctor said.

“You have our permission,” my father said.

The doctor looked at me for confirmation. “Is that all right with you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll tell the nurses to prepare for your discharge in the morning.”

“Thanks, Doc,” my father said.

“Don’t mention it,” he replied. He walked out of the room.

“That’s good news, right?” Nicole said. “Meningioma?”

“Considering what it could have been, I think you might have just dodged a bullet,” my father said. He put his hand on my arm. “It will be nice having you around for a while. Just like old times.” He looked at me for a moment, then said, slightly smiling, “Hopefully better.”

I nodded.

“So you’ll be leaving in the morning,” Nicole said. “I’ll book my flight for tomorrow afternoon. That way I can spend the night.” Nicole turned to Falene. “I can spell you.”

“I’m okay,” Falene said.

“You look exhausted,” my father said bluntly.

“I’m okay,” Falene repeated. She looked at me. “What do you want me to do?”

She looked exhausted, but I could tell that she was bothered by Nicole’s intrusion. “Whatever you want.”

For what felt like a long time she looked at me with an expression I didn’t understand. Then she walked up and kissed me on the forehead. “Okay. Get some rest.” She walked out of the room and I watched her go, sensing that something terrible had just happened. I wanted to call her back. I almost did, but Nicole broke my train of thought.

“When would you like me to come to Pasadena?”

CHAPTER

Three

I’m going home. Wherever that is these days.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke the next morning just a little after sunrise, the first rays of dawn stealing through the blinds, striping the wall across from my bed with amber, horizontal bars. Nicole was sitting next to me. Her blond hair was slightly matted to one side and she was looking at me. “Morning, handsome,” she said softly.

I rubbed a hand over my eyes. “Good morning.”

“You slept well.”

“You’ve been here the whole night?”

“Every minute of it,” she said. “But I wasn’t awake the whole night. I fell asleep around one, so I got some rest.”

“You didn’t need to do that,” I said.

“I know. I wanted to.”

“Thank you.” I looked around the room. “Where’s my father?”

“He went back to his hotel. He said he’d check out, then come over here to get you. He’ll be here before nine.”

“Where’s Falene?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since she left yesterday afternoon.” She brushed a long strand of hair back from her face. “How are you feeling?”

“A little better than yesterday.”

“That’s encouraging,” she said.

It wasn’t, of course. The tumor wasn’t going away until it was cut out of me.

Nicole reached over the bedrail and lifted the St. Christopher that lay on my chest. “You’re still wearing the medallion I gave you.”

“I never took it off.”

She smiled as she ran her thumb over the token. She looked into my eyes. “Do you ever think about the time we spent together?”

“Of course.”

“What do you think about it?”

“That depends on if I’m thinking about Angel or Nicole.”

“Angel,” she said softly. “I almost forgot about her.”

“That’s a good thing,” I said.

She kissed me on the cheek. “That is a good thing. You saved my life.”

“I don’t—”

She put a finger on my lips. “You did. I’ll never be able to repay you for what you did. And I’ll never forget the time we spent together. It was the most loving and beautiful experience of my life.” Her eyes began welling up with tears. “And here you are again. If something had happened to you . . .” She pulled down the railing, then laid her head on my chest, her eyes meeting mine. “You have to be okay.”

I put my hand on her head, my fingers plying through her silky blond hair. “I’m going to be okay. You don’t have to worry.”

After a moment she raised her head. “Do you remember what you said to me the last time we spoke on the phone?”

I shook my head.

“You promised that I’d see you again. And here we are.”

“I hadn’t expected it to be quite this soon,” I said.

“I’m not complaining.” After a moment of silence she said, “The nurse said the doctor would be coming by to see you again before you leave.”

“When is that?”

“Your flight’s booked for a little after noon. I told them we’d be leaving around ten. Are you glad to be going back with your dad?”

“It will be interesting. It’s been more than a decade since I lived at home.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t know what he’s expecting. He made that comment yesterday about rebuilding my life. I wonder if he means now.”

“He’s just excited to have you home. Why wouldn’t he be?” She glanced up at the room’s clock. “Would you like me to ask the nurse to bring your breakfast?”

“I’d rather have another catheter put in.”

She grinned. “Can I get you something from the cafeteria?”

“Sure. How about waffles or pancakes. Whichever you think looks better. And a side of scrambled eggs.”

“Scrambled it is. Anything to drink?”

“Cranberry juice if they have it.”

“Pancakes, scrambled eggs, and cranberry juice.”

I raked my hair back with my hand. “I’ll get dressed while you’re gone.”

She stood. “I’ll hurry.”

I watched her as she walked out of the room. I knew she had feelings for me. I just didn’t know what to do with them. Nicole was beautiful and sweet and I knew her almost as intimately as I had ever known anyone. I guess that happens when you walk with someone to the edge of their life.

It’s an ancient Chinese custom that if you saved someone’s life, you were forever responsible for them. I understood that. I suppose, in a way, I felt that way about Nicole. I loved her. But I wasn’t in love with her. That’s not to say I couldn’t be. Maybe I just didn’t know. I hadn’t yet hung a vacancy sign on my heart.

And then there was Falene. My feelings for Falene were as complex as the changes in my world. Falene was more than beautiful and loyal: she was my one constant—the safe ground in the emotional tsunami in my life.

My feelings for both women were confusing and, perhaps, moot. I still didn’t know whether or not I was going to live.

I climbed out of bed and walked to the bathroom. It had been a while since I had looked at myself in the mirror and I looked about as rough as I had expected. My skin was dark with tan and dirt and my jaw was covered with a fresh beard. My hair was long and as tangled as a rat’s nest.

On a metal shelf above the bathroom sink was a personal hygiene kit with a plastic comb, a disposable razor and a small travel-size can of Barbasol shaving cream. I lathered up my face, then, stroke after stroke, shaved off my beard. I turned on the shower. I hadn’t showered since Hannibal, and the warm water felt marvelous as it washed away several days of grime, coalescing in a steady stream of dirty water on the floor pan. The shower had a retractable seat and I adjusted the shower head, then sat down and bowed my head beneath the stream, letting the water flow over me. Fifteen minutes later I got out and toweled off. I pulled on some fresh underwear and pants, then opened the bathroom door to let the steam out.

“I’m out here,” my father said.

He was sitting in the same chair he had occupied the day before, again wearing the same clothes as before.

“Morning,” I said.

“Good morning. How are you feeling?”

“Good,” I said.

“The nurse said the doctor was going to drop by before we left.”

“Nicole told me.”

“I didn’t see Nicole.”

“She went to get me some breakfast.” I toweled off my hair, then combed it back and came out of the bathroom. I dug through my pack for a clean shirt.

“Our flight leaves at twelve twenty-seven,” my father said. “We should be at the airport at least an hour early, so we should leave here by ten-thirty. That leaves us fifty-seven minutes to get to the airport.”

My father was crazily precise about numbers. I had wondered before whether his obsession came from years of accounting or if he was just born that way and it led him to accounting. Cause or effect.

“How long ago did Nicole leave?” he asked.

I buttoned up my shirt. “About a half hour. She should be back soon.”

“She’s a great gal,” my father said. “I’ve enjoyed helping her with her finances.”

I was getting a pair of socks from my pack when a wave of nausea swept over me. I grabbed the plastic tub they’d given me to vomit in and leaned over the bed.

“You okay?”

It was a moment before I answered. “Yeah. Still nauseous.”

It was a couple minutes before the nausea passed and I set down the tub. “Have you heard from Falene this morning?”

“She left,” he said.

I looked up at him. “Left? Where?”

“She went home. She left last night.”

I looked at him in disbelief. “Without saying goodbye?”

“She asked me to say goodbye for her.”

“I don’t understand.”

Just then Nicole walked into the room carrying a plastic tray crowded with food. “You’re up,” she said brightly.

“Mostly,” I said.

I looked at the tray.

“I know it’s a lot. But the pancakes and waffles both looked good, so I got you both. I also got you a side of bacon. I thought you needed the protein.” She turned to my father. “Good morning, Mr. Christoffersen.”

“Good morning, Nicole,” he replied.

Nicole set the tray down next to my bed. She poured the cranberry juice into a glass of ice, then handed it to me. “Here you go.”

“Thank you.”

She sat down. “Did the doctor come by?”

“Not yet,” I said. I sat down on the side of the bed.

“You look a little pale,” Nicole said.

“He just had another bout of nausea,” my father replied.

“I’m feeling better,” I said.

I poured syrup on the waffles and began to eat. I was halfway through breakfast when the doctor walked into the room.

“Good morning, everyone. How are you feeling, Alan?”

“A little dizzy.”

He nodded. “Like I said yesterday, you can expect that to continue until the tumor’s removed. We’ve contacted the cancer center at the UCLA hospital and they have you registered into their system. You have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow morning. I’ve sent over your files, including your MRI, so they are just awaiting your arrival.”

“That’s fast,” my father said.

He smiled. “I’ve got some pull. And I have more good news. I spoke with Dr. Schlozman last night and he’s agreed to take you on. You’re very fortunate to get him. If I had a brain tumor, he’s the one I’d go to. But I should warn you, he’s a little . . . interesting. He might take a little getting used to.”

“Arrogant?” I asked.

Dr. Kelson grinned. “No, not that. He’s just quirky. Don’t worry about it.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” I said.

“No problem. Do you have any questions?”

I shook my head. No one else spoke.

“All right, then have a safe flight home. Good luck, Mr. Christoffersen. I hope you’re back on the road soon.”

“Thank you,” I said. “So do I.”

“Let’s just get you better,” my father said. “We can worry about this walking jazz later.”

CHAPTER

Four

I’ve never before realized that it’s a privilege to be allowed to make up for the hurt we’ve done in our lives. This is most evident to me now that I have broken a heart and not been allowed to pick up the pieces.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

A half hour later I checked out of the hospital. Nicole’s flight to Spokane was scheduled to leave three hours after our flight to Los Angeles, so we said goodbye in the hospital lobby and she went back to her hotel while my father and I took a taxi to the airport.

The St. Louis airport has notoriously slow security and I had another bout of nausea as I was going through the security line. I threw up on the floor outside the security stanchions, which created no small stir.

My father helped relieve some of my embarrassment by loudly announcing, “He has a brain tumor,” which had the remarkable effect of turning everyone instantly sympathetic. More than a dozen people wished me well.

After we had boarded the plane and settled into our seats, I took the airsickness bag from the pouch in front of me and opened it on my lap.

Even with everything I had to think about, Falene’s abrupt departure weighed heaviest on my mind. Once we were in the air, I asked my father, “Did Falene say anything before she left?”

My father reached into his carry-on bag and brought out an envelope. “She asked me to give you this. I wanted to wait until we were alone.”

I extracted from the envelope an ivory-colored card embossed with an iridescent foil seashell. Inside the card was a folded square of papers. My name was written on it in Falene’s handwriting. I unfolded the pages and began to read.

My dear Alan,

Sometimes a girl can be pretty deaf to the things she doesn’t want to hear. I should have heard your answer in your silence. I’ve asked you twice if I could be there when you arrived in Key West and you never answered me. I should have known that was my answer. If you had wanted me there, you would have answered with a loud “yes.” Forgive me for being so obtuse (I learned that word from you). But there’s a good reason I ignored the obvious. The truth was too painful. You see, I love you. I’m sorry that you had to learn it here, so far from me. I looked forward to the day when I could say it to your face. But I now know that day will never come.

I love you. I know this. I really, truly, deeply love you. I first realized that I had fallen in love with you about two months after I started working at the agency.

Of course, I wasn’t alone. I think all the women at your agency had a crush on you. Why wouldn’t they? You were handsome and funny and smart, but most of all, you had a good heart. Truthfully, you seemed too good to be true. You were also loyal to your wife, which made you even more desirable.

Up until I met you, I thought all men were users and abusers. Then you had to come along and ruin my perfect misandry. You are everything a man should be. Strong but gentle, smart but kind, serious but fun, with a great sense of humor. In my heart I fantasized about a world where you and I could be together. How happy I would be to call you mine!!

I know this will sound silly and juvenile, like a schoolgirl crush, but I realized that your name is in my name. You are the AL in FALENE. (As you can see, I’ve spent way too much time fantasizing about you!) But that’s all it was. Fantasy.

When McKale died, I was filled with horrible sadness and concern for you. I was afraid that you might hurt yourself. Seeing the pain you felt made my love and respect for you grow even more. Please forgive me, but the afternoon of the funeral, when I brought you home, I believed, or hoped, for the first time, that someday you might be mine. I didn’t feel worthy of you, but I thought that you, being who you are, might accept me.

When you told me you were going to walk away from Seattle, I was heartbroken. I was so glad that you asked me to help you, giving me a way to stay in your life. Then, when you disappeared in Spokane, I was terrified. I didn’t sleep for days. I spent nearly a hundred hours hunting you down. I’m not telling you this so you’ll thank me; I just want you to finally know the truth about the depth of my feelings.

But, like I said, a girl can be pretty deaf sometimes. I wanted to hear you say that you loved me and cared about me as more than just a friend. Yesterday, when I saw how close you are to beautiful Nicole, my heart broke. I realized that I had already lost my one chance of being yours. And there I was with nothing to offer. Not even my apartment in Seattle to go to anymore.

I didn’t tell you, but I took the job in New York. I needed to get out of Seattle. I failed to save my brother. I failed to save your agency. I failed to make you love me. I’ve failed at everything I’ve hoped for.

I’m sorry I didn’t finish the task you gave me. I gave all your banking information to your father. He’ll do a better job than I could anyway. I’m so sorry to not be at your side in your time of need, but it is now obvious to me that you don’t need me. I’m just noise in the concert of your life. And this time I need to be selfish. I have to be. The risk to my heart is too great. They say that the depth of love is revealed in its departure. How true that is. I’m afraid that I’m just learning how deep my love is for you, and it’s more than I can stand. I love you too much to just be a bystander in your life.

Well, I guess I’ve finally burned the bridge. I couldn’t help myself. Please forgive me for being so needy. Please think of me fondly and now and then remember your starry-eyed assistant who loves you more than anything or anyone else in this world.

I know you will reach Key West. I know you’ll make it and that you’ll be okay. That’s all I need. It’s not all I want, but it’s all I need——to know that you are okay and happy. Damn, I really love you.

Be safe, my dear friend. With all my love,

Falene

I put the letter down, mechanically folding the pages back together. Falene was right. The depth of love is revealed in its departure, because my heart ached. How could I have taken her so much for granted? I had been so obsessed with my pain that I had been oblivious to hers. She had given me her heart and I had handled it carelessly. I had thrown away love.

CHAPTER

Five

Roses can grow in slums just as weeds can grow around mansions.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Even though we had met in Seattle, Falene and I were both raised in California. Same state, but different worlds. While I was raised in a relatively prosperous suburb of Pasadena, home of the Rose Bowl, Caltech, and Fuller Theological Seminary, Falene was born and raised north of me in Stockton, California, a city ranking among California’s top ten in crime and listed as number two in Forbes magazine’s list of America’s Most Miserable Cities.

Her home life was as broken as the city. Not that it was apparent from knowing her. The Falene I first met was kind and beautiful, but guarded. It took many months before she revealed any of what lay behind her psychological curtain.

Falene knew little about her father other than that the last time she saw him was right before her brother was born and that he was of Greek descent, something she was reminded of every time she looked in the mirror. Her mother was an alcoholic. Falene’s brother, Deron, was five years younger than her and her only sibling, though, in many respects, he was more like Falene’s child, as she had been his primary caregiver for most of his childhood. By the age of nine she was collecting shopping carts at a nearby Safeway for a dime apiece, to help buy food. It was all she could do to keep child welfare from splitting up her family.

How two people raised in the same environment can turn out so differently, I’ll never understand. According to Falene, Deron had started drinking by the age of ten, smoking pot by eleven and joined a Stockton street gang by thirteen, when he began both using and selling harder drugs.

Falene’s mother passed away from alcohol poisoning when Falene was eighteen. Two days after the funeral, Falene packed what she could in the back of her mother’s Dodge Dart, forced Deron into the passenger seat of the car, and didn’t stop driving until eight hundred miles later when they reached the outskirts of Seattle.

Falene had chosen Seattle because she had a former boyfriend who had moved there the year before, and even though he was ten years older than her and frequently abusive, he had offered Falene a place to stay while they made a new start.

Falene was always a little vague (and embarrassed) when she talked about her early days in Seattle, though once, during a difficult time, she told me that before she started working as a model, she had worked three months at a strip club to make enough money to take care of Deron. It was a humiliating secret, and she was certain I would look down on her, but the truth is I admired her for sacrificing so much to take care of her brother.

Thankfully, Falene was one blessing that Kyle couldn’t take away from me. Even though it was he who had discovered her on a model shoot and offered her the job, she had a battle-earned instinct about men and from the beginning never trusted him.

Of necessity, Falene was pretty hard in those early days, and I watched her change—first her wardrobe and vocabulary, then her demeanor. She became soft and polished, shedding the skin of her past with the graceful ease of a woman coming to her true self. She was just naturally good. She began studying yoga and the Bible and began asking me questions about God, which I could never answer.

Falene had been the one to tell me that McKale had been in an accident. She was also the only one on my staff who had stood up to Kyle as he stole my agency, and she’d tried to warn me about his treachery. She had watched over me and taken me home the afternoon of McKale’s funeral when I was in emotional shambles. She had personally overseen the selling of all of my things and put the money in an account to fund my walk. She had always been there, asking for nothing in return. Besides my father, she was the only person I knew I could trust my life to. And when you find someone in your life like that, you’re a fool to let them go.

Apparently, I was a fool.

CHAPTER

Six

I’ve returned to my childhood home. Little has changed, including my father. I don’t mean this derogatively. In a tumultuous sea a small anchor goes a long way.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Our flight to LAX was broken up by a layover in Cincinnati. The moment my father and I exited the jetway, I took out my phone and dialed Falene’s number. It rang once, followed by a phone service message.

We’re sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service.

After we’d sat down, my father said, “Falene?”

“She’s disconnected her phone. I have no idea where to find her.” I looked at my father. “She didn’t leave you any contact information?”

“No. Don’t you know where she lives?”

“Not anymore. She moved to New York City.”

“How hard could it be to find her there?”

I looked at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah.” After a moment he said, “I’m surprised that you didn’t see it.”

I glanced up at him. “See what?”

“That she loves you.”

“I wasn’t looking,” I said.

My father looked at me thoughtfully. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. I don’t know if you remember, but for Grandpa’s seventieth birthday he went back to Utah Beach to see where he had fought on D-Day. Do you know what struck him as most peculiar about the experience? He said, ‘I never noticed how beautiful the beach was. I guess a million bullets will change your perspective.’ ”

“No one’s firing bullets at me,” I said.

“Don’t kid yourself, you’ve had your own war. With casualties.”

I shook my head. “I just can’t even think about replacing McKale.”

“No, no one can replace McKale. And trying to do so would only bring misery. There’s only one reason for remarrying.” He held up his index finger. “Just one.”

“Love?” I said.

“Joy. You marry because it enhances joy.”

I thought over his words. “I just feel so selfish. I’ve been so consumed with my pain that I . . .”

My father put his hand on my knee. “Cut yourself some slack, son. You’re entitled.”

“To what? Self-pity?”

“No,” he said firmly. “To your grief. Grief isn’t a luxury, it’s an appropriate response to loss. You don’t just will it away. If you allow it to run its course, it will fade with time, but if you ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist, it only gets worse.”

I breathed out slowly. “I guess so.”

“May I give you some advice?”

“Sure.”

“Let it settle. You don’t know if Falene will change her mind and come back. And we still don’t know how bad this tumor is. Let’s focus on one problem at a time.”

“All right,” I said. “That’s good advice.”

My father looked content. Few things pleased him more than people liking his advice.

I started feeling dizzy again, so I took a Dramamine and slept through the entire next leg of our flight, which touched down in LAX around six o’clock. We picked up our luggage, then I waited with it at the curb while my father brought his car around. We stopped on the way home at a Jack in the Box. I wasn’t hungry, so my father ordered his meal to go. Then we continued on to the house of my youth.

Even without her, McKale’s home is still a memorial to my first and only love.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I hadn’t been back to Pasadena for more than four years. I was surprised by the depth of emotion I felt at seeing McKale’s childhood home next door. The house looked serene and unchanged, as if no one had informed it that its former occupant had passed away.

My father carried my pack to the guest room. “I think you should stay here,” he said. “It’s bigger than your old room. And it’s got the connected bathroom. This way I’ll be close if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Can I get you anything now?”

“Dad, I’m home. I can take care of myself.”

“Right. Sorry.” He carried his hamburger into the front room. “I’m going to watch some TV. They’re re-airing the ’74 Ali and Foreman title fight. The Rumble in the Jungle. You’re welcome to join me.”

Out of habit, I stopped in the kitchen and lifted the lid of the cookie jar, but there was nothing inside. Probably hadn’t been for a decade. “The Rumble in the Jungle?”

“You haven’t seen it?”

“Nineteen seventy-four? I wasn’t born yet.”

“Great. You can bet on Foreman. I’ll give you a million-to-one odds.”

“That’s very generous,” I said. “Let me put some laundry in first.”

“Let me—”

I raised my hand. “I got it, Dad.”

“I was just going to say I need to empty the dryer.”

“I’ll take care of it. Eat your burger and watch your fight.”

I retrieved my pack, dumped the contents on the laundry room floor, then put my whites in the washing machine and went to the front room. A crescent of a hamburger was lying on its wrapper on the end table next to my father’s La-Z-Boy chair and he was eating a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream. In spite of all the internal turmoil I felt, or perhaps because of it, the scene made me smile. My father was a man of habit. He had the same routine when I was a boy—TV and a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

I got myself a bowl of ice cream, then sat down on the sofa. The fight was in its third round. Truthfully, watching two guys pound each other when your own head is aching isn’t terribly amusing. During the sixth round the washing machine’s timer buzzed and I got up.

“I’m going to finish my laundry,” I said. “Then go to bed.”

My father didn’t look up. “We need to leave tomorrow a little before nine. We’re going to hit traffic.”

“I’ll be ready.”

I moved my wet clothes to the dryer, put my darks into the washing machine, then went to my room. I didn’t sleep well and got up the next morning around 5 A.M. I went down the hall to my childhood bedroom, which looked exactly the way I had left it fifteen years earlier, with my Jurassic Park, U2 and Red Hot Chili Peppers posters still on the wall.

On top of my dresser was a sizable cluster of prom pictures of McKale and me. With the exception of one girls’-preference dance during my junior year, McKale was the only one I had gone with to the school proms.

I sat down on the avocado-colored shag carpeted floor in front of my bookshelf, and pulled out my high school yearbooks and began leafing through the pages. In my senior yearbook there was a picture of McKale and me eating lunch together in the school cafeteria with a caption underneath that read “Most Likely to Marry,” which, like the “Most Likely to Succeed” nod, is usually a harbinger of future disaster, but in our case was prophetic.

My father got up an hour later. He went out for his daily two-mile jog, then did calisthenics in the garage. When he’d finished exercising, he showered and dressed, then came out to the kitchen and made oatmeal. The doctor hadn’t said whether or not I should eat anything, so I skipped breakfast.

We left for the hospital at a quarter of nine. The registration process was interminable, and it was an hour and a half before I met my neurosurgeon, Dr. Schlozman, a bald, skinny man wearing a bright red bow tie. He greeted us warmly as he walked into the room.

“Sorry for the wait. You’d think that foursome in front of us had never golfed before.” He reached out his hand. “I’m Dr. Schlozman.”

I smiled. “I’m Alan.”

“I’m Alan’s father,” my dad said.

“Nice to meet you both—let’s jump into this.” He turned back toward a series of MRI scans posted on light boxes mounted on the wall. “According to exhibit A, you have a tumor.” He set his finger on a golf-ball-sized mass on the film. “. . . Either that or you’ve got a golf ball growing on the outside of your brain.” He turned back and looked at me. “I don’t know how much they told you in St. Louis, or, with their accents, how much you actually understood, so I’ll begin from the beginning. The twenty-four-thousand-dollar question is, ‘Is this tumor malignant or benign?’ And the answer is, I don’t know. We can’t be certain without a biopsy.” He turned back to the image, running his finger along its edge. “Meningiomas are classified by where they are located. As you can see, yours is located on the surface of the brain—it’s called a convexity meningioma. If it were located in New York, it would be called a book agent, but we’ll stick with your scenario.

“Your type of tumor often doesn’t produce symptoms until it gets big, which is, holy cow, exactly what you’ve got going on in your head. I read in the Cliff’s Notes that you’ve been suffering from headaches and dizziness—is that true?”

“Pretty much every day,” I said.

“Which is why five out of five doctors would recommend a craniotomy as the next step. The good news is that because of the tumor’s shape and location I believe we can remove it safely in a procedure called a gross total resection, which is appropriately named because it is totally gross. Trust me, you don’t want a souvenir video. The surgery will relieve the pressure on your brain, which should alleviate your symptoms. This procedure has a very high success rate and afterwards you’ll be able to continue on with your life and play the piano.”

I could tell his personality was off-putting to my father, but I liked him a lot.

“Will I need radiation or chemotherapy afterwards?” I asked.

“If the tumor’s completely resected, then there’s no need for further treatments. That’s not to say you’re forever home free. After surgery it’s best that we monitor the area with periodic MRIs. Like crazy ex-girlfriends, meningiomas have a nasty habit of coming back, so it’s best if you have annual scans throughout your life.”

“This craniotomy,” my father said. “Does it have any risks?”

“No surgery’s without risk, but in this case the risks are quite minimal. The greatest risk, though it’s about as likely as me finding true love, is stroke. Also, some neurological functions like motor strength or coordination may become impaired immediately after surgery, but in most cases those issues are resolved with time and rehabilitation.” He turned to me. “Mostly you’ll just feel really, really crappy for a while.”

“How soon could we do this?” I asked.

“The soonest we can schedule your operation is the nineteenth. Then you’ll need to plan for at least six to eight weeks of recovery time.”

“Six weeks,” I repeated. I hated the idea of that much downtime, but it could be worse. I had spent nearly five months recovering at Nicole’s house.

“Six to eight,” my father said. “At least.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s do this thing.”

“Good,” Dr. Schlozman said. “I was hoping you’d say that. I’ve been looking at a new boat.”

The drive home from the hospital was quiet. My father was the first to speak. “That doctor was weird.”

“I looked up his credentials. He’s brilliant,” I said. “Brilliant people usually are a little weird.”

He shrugged. “Want to stop for pancakes? The IHOP is still there.”

“Love to. Let’s get pancakes.”

CHAPTER

Seven

Sometimes it seems as if my life has been more intermission than show.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Nicole called the house later that afternoon. It was good to hear her voice.

“Hey, handsome. How’d your appointment go?”

“Well, I think. They’re going to operate on the nineteenth.”

“Why are they waiting so long?”

“That’s their first availability.”

“Then how long is your recovery?”

“Six to eight weeks,” I said. “If everything goes well.”

“I’m sure it will go well,” she said. “But you’ll go insane waiting.”

“Probably.”

“So, may I come down and take care of you?” she asked. “Please.”

“I would love for you to come,” I said. “When are you thinking?”

“I’d like to come before the surgery. How about the sixteenth? Two weeks from today.”

“That would be great,” I said. “Now I have something to look forward to.”

“Me too,” she said.

We talked for a few more minutes before saying goodbye.

My father walked into the room after I hung up. “Was that Nicole?”

“Yes. She wants to come down for the surgery.”

“What did you say?”

“I told her I’d love to see her.” I frowned. “Do you think I’m leading her on?”

“She’s a friend and she cares. Where’s the crime in that?”

I shrugged. “I just don’t want to hurt her. She means too much to me.”

“She’s a big girl,” he said. “When is she coming?”

“The sixteenth.”

He nodded. “It will be nice having a woman around.”

The next two weeks were miserable. As my surgery date neared, I started sleeping more—sometimes as much as fourteen hours a day. Dr. Schlozman had warned me that I would likely become more fatigued, but I think it was more than the tumor. I was also fighting depression. There was just too much around to remind me of McKale, too much time to think, and too little to do. You don’t realize how many memories of someone a place can hold until they’re gone.

My dizzy spells and headaches were increasing in frequency and duration, and I began to have trouble walking. Still, I hated lying in bed. My father had an elliptical machine in his garage, which, with some difficulty, I used twice a day, though probably as much out of boredom as a desire to keep active.

My father’s routine was as rigid as it had been when I was a boy. We ate dinner every night at six-thirty sharp, followed by dishwashing, then television in the family room with his customary bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

There was one gradual and unwelcome change to our routine. Every night during dinner, when I was captive at the table, my father began pressing me with questions about my future, specifically my employment. He asked whether or not I was going to stay in advertising, if I planned to work for another firm or start a new agency, and if I would accept investors. “I know money people,” he said on more than one occasion.

With his typical fastidiousness he would verbally walk me through a list of pros and cons for each option. Then, during his free time, he began searching the Internet for job openings at Los Angeles agencies and writing down their phone numbers just in case I wanted to “test the waters.”

For several days he got on a kick about me getting a car, which he offered to buy even though I was in no condition to drive. Although I appreciated his support, I knew what he was doing. He was trying to nail me down.

I suppose just as telling was what he never talked about. He never mentioned McKale, and he never talked about my walk. I could understand why he wouldn’t bring up McKale. But I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t talk about my journey. There was so much to talk about.

From all appearances he resented my walk even though he had endorsed it back in Spokane.

I humored him through it all, but it seemed that each dinner got gradually more uncomfortable. Nicole couldn’t get here soon enough.

The day of Nicole’s arrival I moved my things to my childhood room so she could have her own bathroom. We picked her up at the airport around three in the afternoon. After our reunion, I began feeling unwell, so my father drove me home, then the two of them went shopping for dinner.

I had forgotten what a good cook Nicole was. She made broiled salmon with polenta and acorn squash soup. Dessert was a lemon meringue pie from the Marie Callender’s in Arcadia.

Somewhat surprising was that my father, who drank as infrequently as I did, opened a bottle of Chardonnay. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him that happy or loose.

Later, after my father had gone to bed, Nicole knocked on my bedroom door. “It’s me,” she said softly.

I opened. Nicole was wearing sweat pants and a Victoria’s Secret PINK T-shirt. She looked cute.

“Come in,” I said.

She walked inside, running her hand down my arm as she stepped past me. “Your dad’s home is nice,” she said. “It’s very . . .”

“Seventies?”

She grinned. “I was going to say cozy.” She walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. “Which home did McKale live in?”

“That one,” I said, pointing. “The little ranch-style house.”

“You married the girl next door.” She spotted the prom pictures on my dresser and walked over to them. She lifted one and burst out laughing. “Is this you?”

“In my defense, my dad cut my hair back then.”

“No, you look great.” She looked at the picture, then back at me. “You were adorable as a teenager.” She smiled at me. “You still are.”

“Thanks.”

“And this is McKale?”

“That’s McKale.”

“She’s beautiful.” She looked at each of the pictures, stopping at the one odd one. “Who’s this?”

“I think her name was Jennifer. Or Jodie. Or Justine. Actually, I have no idea what her name was. That was a girls’-preference dance at another school.”

“I take it she didn’t get the memo that you were taken?”

“Apparently not. First and last date.”

“How did McKale take it, you going out with someone else?”

“She handled it with her usual passive aggressiveness. She said it didn’t bother her, then went out on a date the next weekend with some football jock. I think she just wanted to remind me that she had options.”

“We girls are like that.” She stepped away from the bookshelf. “How is it being back here with your father?”

“It’s been difficult. He’s made it pretty clear that he wants me to stay.”

“Yeah, he told me that while we were shopping. He asked if I’d help talk you into abandoning your walk.”

I looked at her and frowned. “He really said that?”

She nodded.

“I’m finishing my walk.”

“I know. I tried to explain to him how important it is to you.” She took my hand. “Don’t be angry with him. He’s just worried about you. Remember how upset he was when he found out you’d been mugged? And now you have a tumor. You may be over thirty, but he’s still your father. And you’re the only family he has.” She took my hand. “He just cares.”

I thought about what she’d said, then breathed out slowly. “I know.”

“Other than that, how have you been feeling?”

“It’s getting worse,” I said. “The doctor said it would.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It will be over soon.”

Something about the way I said this affected her. Her eyes welled up.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She wiped her eyes, then looked into mine. “Sorry. I didn’t like how that sounded.”

I put my arms around her and she fell into me. I held her for several minutes. Then she leaned back. “I better let you get your rest.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” I said. “Thank you for coming.”

“There’s no way I was going to let you go through this alone. Besides, I kind of like you.”

I smiled. “The feeling’s mutual.”

“Night,” she said. “Sweet dreams.”

That night I dreamt I was kissing McKale. When I pulled back, it was really Falene.

CHAPTER

Eight

Looking at someone’s brain is a little like looking at the outside of a movie theater.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The morning of the nineteenth my father drove us to the hospital several hours before my scheduled surgery time, so we’d have plenty of time to wind our way through the labyrinth of admissions. After filling out a pile of forms, we sat in the waiting room for nearly an hour before I was called to the preoperative holding area, where they put me in one of those ill-fitting, tie-in-back gowns, then sent at least a dozen people in to see me in my humbled state.

“You look cute,” Nicole said, lifting her phone. “I’m taking a picture.”

“No pictures,” I said.

She brought out her phone. “I’m taking one anyway.”

“No pictures,” I said again.

She snapped a picture. “Too late.”

Shortly before surgery a young man came in to shave my head, which, considering the length of my hair, was no simple feat. When he was done, I just stared at myself in the mirror.

“I’m bald.”

“As a bowling ball,” Nicole said.

“A billiard ball,” my father corrected.

“They’re both hairless,” I said.

“Like you,” Nicole said.

“Thanks. Are you going to take another picture?”

“No.” She held up a lock of my hair. “But I’m keeping this.”

“You know, they didn’t have to shave all of it,” my dad said. “They could have shaved just one side.”

“What do you do with half a head of hair?” I asked. “That’s like half a mustache.”

“Or one eyebrow,” Nicole said. “Then again, you could have had the mother of all comb-overs.”

“Being here reminds me of when you were seven,” my father said. “You had to get your tonsils out. That used to be considered major surgery.”

“I remember,” I said. “Mom read me a story about a baby whale. And I got a stuffed Snoopy doll. I wonder what happened to it.”

“I probably left it in Colorado,” he said.

My father and Nicole were still at my side when the anesthesiologist came in to introduce himself and make sure I was properly prepared for surgery. He told me that they would come for me in five minutes. As he walked out, Nicole began crying.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing. I’m just a crybaby. I get so worried.”

“Everything is going to be all right,” I said.

She wiped her eyes, forcing a smile. “I know.”

A few minutes later two surgical techs arrived to take me to the operating room. Nicole kissed me on the cheek. My father, in a rare show of affection, took my hand. “You’ll be fine,” he said, sounding more as if he were trying to convince himself than comfort me. I think I was the least worried of all of us.

The techs wheeled my entire bed to the operating room, and Nicole and my father followed me down the hallway until we came to the NO PUBLIC ADMITTANCE doors of the surgical center. Nicole was teary-eyed again and blew me a kiss. I smiled at her and touched my lips.

Once inside the operating room, the anesthesiologist put the mask on my face and told me to count backward from ten. I only made it to nine.

When I woke in recovery, my father was sitting by my side. He was reading a Popular Science magazine, but set it down when I stirred.

“Welcome back.”

My head felt thick and my words came slowly. “Thanks.”

“How do you feel?” Nicole asked.

I slowly turned my head to look at her. “My throat hurts.”

“That’s from the breathing tube,” another female voice said. A nurse leaned over me. “Alan, I’m Rachel. I just need to check a few things.” She lifted a small flashlight. “Let me have you look forward.” She shone the light at my pupils. “Can you tell me what day your birthday is?”

“Are you planning a party?”

She grinned. “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor. Do you know when it is?”

“June fifth,” I said.

She looked to my father for verification. He nodded.

“Very good,” she said. She got up and walked to the foot of my bed. She lifted the sheet, then cupped my feet with her hands. “I want you to push your feet into my hands.”

“Why?”

“Just for fun,” she said.

I must have done a good enough job at it because she wrote something on her clipboard, then left. After she was gone, I turned to my dad. “Do we know the verdict?”

“It’s benign,” he said.

“Benign. That’s the good one, right?”

Nicole laughed. “Yes, it’s good.”

“Good.” I groaned out slowly. “I’m tired.”

“The doctor said you’d be out of it most of the day,” my father said.

“I think he was right,” I said. I fell back asleep.

Dr. Schlozman came in to check on me an hour later. My father stood as he entered.

“It went well,” he said to me. “I’m sure they told you the tumor was benign, so we can all high-five, or chest bump, however you want to celebrate.”

“Why do I feel so crummy?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it’s because you just had brain surgery.” He grinned. “You’ll feel a little better tomorrow.”

“What’s next?” my father asked.

“He’ll have an MRI in the morning to make sure we got it all, then, if all’s well, he heads home on Thursday.”

“That soon?” Nicole asked.

“If the MRI checks out, so does he.” He smiled at me. “Thanks for staying alive, Alan. It looks good on my résumé.”

The rest of the evening I drifted in and out of sleep. When I woke the next morning, I had been given a catheter, something I was always very afraid of. It was an infection caused by her catheter that had killed McKale.

A little before noon, I was taken by wheelchair for an MRI. On my way down the hall I saw myself in the reflection of a window. In addition to being bald, my head was swollen and I had a long row of staples in my scalp, with a deep indentation along the line of the incision. I looked like a monster.

Later in the afternoon I was moved into a private room. Dr. Schlozman came in to see me shortly after lunch.

“I’ve got great news,” he said.

“You got the tumor?” my father asked.

“That too,” Dr. Schlozman said. “But my good news is that my new book came out today and it’s a bestseller on Amazon.com.”

I was still a little foggy and wasn’t sure I was hearing him right. “You wrote a book?”

“It’s called The Zombie Autopsies. It’s a medical journal about the origin of the zombie virus.”

“You wrote a book about zombies?” Nicole asked.

“Yes, and it’s currently number fifty-seven on Amazon. Right between David Baldacci and Nicholas Sparks.”

My father looked annoyed. “But my son’s okay, right?”

Dr. Schlozman waved him off. “He’s fine, we got it all. Every crumb of it.”

“Thank goodness,” Nicole said.

“I still feel crummy,” I said.

Dr. Schlozman smiled. “I guess we can’t have everything, can we?”

The next morning the nurses prepared for my discharge. They gave my father prescriptions for pain medications and a sheet of instructions for caring for my incision. I just wanted to lie quietly without distractions—no talk, television or reading. It was as if words and sounds pricked my brain.

Around noon an orderly wheeled me out of the hospital and helped me into my father’s car. Frankly, I didn’t feel a whole lot better and I felt more tired than I had the day before. I felt overstimulated by everything around me. More than anything, I wanted to be left alone.

Through it all Nicole was helpful and kind, but she also seemed sad. It was nearly a week before I found out why.

Six days after my surgery I was lying in bed when Nicole came into my room. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying.

I sat up. “What’s wrong?”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “I’m going back to Spokane.”

“I thought you were staying longer.”

She avoided eye contact. “I was going to, but I think I should be going.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“It’s not your fault.” She took another deep breath. “When you were in recovery, you kept asking for Falene. At the time I told myself it was the anesthesia . . .” She looked me in the eyes. “You love her, don’t you?”

I looked down for a moment, then back at her. “I don’t know. I suppose I don’t know how deep the waters go, since I wasn’t really fishing.”

She was quiet for a moment, then said, “I love you. Not just because you saved me, but . . .” She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m just making this more difficult.” She took my hand. “I’ll go.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you for all you’ve been to me. I’ll always love you.”

“Nicole . . .”

She looked at me, but I had no idea what to say. After a moment she said, “It’s okay, Alan.” She walked out of my room.

Now I’d lost her too.

CHAPTER

Nine

I have become an expert at chasing those I love out of my life.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Early the next morning my father drove Nicole to the airport. After he returned, he came into my room.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“She’s hurting. Unrequited love is a painful thing.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her. I do love her.”

“I know.”

I sighed. “Now what do I do?”

He leaned against my wall. “What do you want to do?”

“Since when has that mattered?”

“It’s always mattered. It doesn’t mean you’ll get what you want, but what you want always matters. That’s what defines you.”

“I want my life back.”

“Your life or wife?”

“They’re the same thing.”

“No, they’re not,” he said, frowning. “What do you want for your life that’s within the realm of possibility?”

“I want to figure out my feelings. I need to talk to Falene. But I don’t even know where she is.”

“Someone knows where she is.”

“That’s not helpful,” I said.

My father thought a moment, then said, “I have a client who’s a private investigator. A few years ago he fell on hard times, and I did his taxes for free. He keeps saying, ‘Let me do something for you.’ That’s his expertise, hunting down people—child support dodgers, bail jumpers, corporate embezzlers. He’s darn good, too. I bet he could find Falene.”

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Carroll Albo.”

“Let’s give him a call.”

That afternoon I spoke with my father’s friend Carroll. He didn’t sound like I expected him to, though, admittedly, my perception of private investigators was largely shaped by Columbo and Magnum, P.I. reruns. This man sounded squeaky and timid, more fit for accounting than man-hunting and intrigue.

I told him everything I knew about Falene, which wasn’t especially helpful. Her past had little to help us in the present.

“You say she got a job with a modeling agency in New York?”

“Yes.”

“There’s probably a couple hundred of them. At least. We could start looking. What about friends or family? Old boyfriends?”

“Her old boyfriends were all bad news, so she wouldn’t have told any of them where she was going. She didn’t really have any girlfriends that she hung out with.”

“Family?”

“She has an aunt. I’ve never met her, but she owns a furniture consignment store.”

“Do you know her name?”

“No, but I know the store. It’s called the Fifth Avenue Consigner. It’s in Seattle.”

He paused as he wrote it down. “Anyone else?”

“She has a brother. But he’s MIA. She doesn’t even know where he is.”

“Why is that?”

“He was in a gang and messed up with drugs.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” Carroll said. “I mean, it’s horrible for him, but for our purposes, it’s not bad. What’s his name?”

“Deron Angelis.”

“Spell it.”

“D-e-r-o-n A-n-g-e-l-i-s.”

“Got it. Do you know where he spends his time? What city?”

“He used to live with Falene.”

“In Seattle?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be back with you as soon as I have something.”

Carroll called just three days later. Truthfully, I hadn’t expected to hear from him so soon. A part of me didn’t expect to hear from him at all.

“Her aunt’s name is Chloe Adamson,” Carroll said. “But she doesn’t know where Falene is. Or if she does, she’s not telling. But I found her brother. Deron Angelis, twenty-three years old, born January 20, 1989, in San Joaquin County.”

“How did you find him?”

“Hunting drug addicts and gang members isn’t hard. Eventually they end up in one of three places: hospital, jail or the morgue.”

“Which one was it?”

“He’s in the King County jail.”

“King County?”

“In Seattle. He was caught in possession of meth and was sentenced to prison for several years, but had the sentence suspended. He has to serve a county jail sentence for six months, then when he’s released, he’ll be on probation for a couple of years.”

“I can see him there?”

“Visiting hours are determined by inmate location. I checked on it for you. He’s assigned Sundays from noon to one-thirty and Tuesdays from five-thirty to seven.”

I wrote down the information.

“In the meantime I’ll keep hunting your girl. My secretary has called at least fifty modeling agencies so far, but only found one Falene, and she’s from Brazil. Your friend didn’t go by a different professional name, did she? You know, like movie stars sometimes do if they don’t have a fancy enough name?”

“Falene isn’t fancy enough?”

“It is to me, but all my taste’s in my mouth.”

“Not that I know of. She went by Falene in Seattle.”

“Oh, one more thing. I should have asked you last time if you know any of her past employers.”

“I’m her past employer,” I said.

“Holy cow, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I guess I thought you knew.”

“No, I didn’t. Can you track down her Social Security number?”

“I think so. I just need to call my old accountant.”

“That’s our golden ticket. As soon as she applies for a job, or welfare benefits, we’ll find her.”

“I’ll track it down,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. I’m happy to be able to do something for your pop. He’s been a lifesaver to me.”

“He’s a good man,” I said.

“You said it. You’ve got to be grateful for an old man like that. Mine just beat the crap out of me, then threw me out when I was seventeen. You count your blessings.”

Within the hour I had Falene’s Social Security number, which I passed on to Carroll. He called back a few hours later.

“Nothing on her yet,” he said. “But she’ll turn up. Unless she’s bypassing the system.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes people pay under the table.”

“Maybe I’ll go visit her brother. I can’t imagine that she won’t be looking for him.”

“Good idea,” Carroll said. “No stone unturned.”

CHAPTER

Ten

We have found Falene’s brother. I hope he knows where she is almost as much as I hope she doesn’t know where he is.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I called the King County jail to confirm Deron’s visiting hours, then booked a one-day flight into Seattle for the Sunday after next. I was still struggling with my health and I wanted to be up for the encounter. I also figured this would give Carroll more time to track Falene down and possibly save me the trip.

He didn’t find her and nine days later, my father drove me to LAX. The flight into the Sea-Tac airport was around three hours, and I had planned my trip to arrive an hour before visiting hours were scheduled to begin. I had no luggage and took a cab from the airport to the jail. It was surreal being back in Seattle. It was my first time back since I had walked out ten months ago. I had purposely scheduled my return flight for the same day so I would spend as little time in Seattle as possible. I wasn’t ready to face all of the memories that the city held for me.

At the jail I went through a security screening into a long, open visiting room. I was given a booth number, then sat down in front of a thick Plexiglas window. I could see my reflection in the glass. I had forgotten how odd I looked—bald-headed with a row of staples running horizontally across my scalp.

Even though I’d never seen Falene’s brother before, I knew it was he when he came into the room. He looked like a male version of Falene. He wasn’t big, maybe just a few inches taller than her, and his head was shaved. He had tattoos on his neck of two entwined snakes and Gothic letters, which I guessed spelled out the name of his gang. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit with his last name printed above his left breast. Even though he was trying to look tough, I could sense his anxiety.

He sat down at a chair on the other side of the window, his dark brown eyes staring into mine. There were phones mounted on the side of the booth next to the window, which we both picked up.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“My name is Alan Christoffersen. I’m a friend of your sister.”

“You know Falene?”

“Yes.”

“You one of her lowlife boyfriends?”

“No. She used to work for me. At my advertising agency.”

“You her boss?”

“I was.”

“I know who you are. You’re the guy whose stuff I helped Falene move.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that was my stuff.”

“What happened to your head?”

“I just had a brain tumor removed.”

He glanced once more at my head, then said, “What do you want?”

“I’m looking for Falene.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“I was hoping you could help me find her.”

“Call her.”

“She changed her number.”

“She worked for you and you don’t know her address?”

“She moved to New York.”

He looked surprised. “She doesn’t live in New York.”

“When was the last time you saw her?” I asked.

“I don’t know. A few months ago. Before I came in here.”

“She got a job offer from a modeling agency back East. She wasn’t going to take it, but after you took off, she gave up.”

He flinched. “What do you mean, she gave up?”

“Just what I said. She said she failed with you and gave up.”

“Falene never failed at anything.”

“She said she failed with you.”

In spite of his practiced defiance, he actually looked upset. Finally he stammered out, “What I do with my life has nothing to do with her.”

“Do you really believe that? She picked up her life and moved here to keep you out of trouble.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I don’t know anything about you except that you’ve brought Falene a lot of pain.”

He slammed the glass barrier. “I love my sister.”

“I can see that,” I said. “Your sister has done everything she could to help you and you repay her by breaking her heart.”

He pounded the window again.

“Deron!” a guard shouted. “Knock it off.”

“What do you want?” he said. “You came here to tell me that?”

“I came here to see if you knew how to find her.”

“I’m in jail. How would I know how to find her? Why didn’t she tell you where she was going? She like worshiped you.”

I felt ashamed to hear that. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to see you. Maybe you’re the reason she left.”

“Maybe,” I said. “She’s been carrying a lot of people by herself for a long time. Maybe she just hit her limit. If you love her, now’s a good time to start showing her.”

I expected another outburst. Instead he looked down for a moment, then to my surprise said, “Thanks for looking out for her. She deserves that. If I hear from her, I’ll let her know you came by.”

“Thank you,” I said. I hung up the phone and walked out of the room.

My flight arrived back in Los Angeles that evening at eight. The effects of my surgery were exacerbated by my traveling, and I was feeling so exhausted I wasn’t sure I could make it through the terminal. Gratefully, my father picked me up at the terminal curb.

“How’d it go?” he asked as I climbed into the car.

“He was no help at all.”

“Sorry,” he said. A moment later he asked, “What was he like?”

I reclined my seat. “Nothing like Falene. Nothing at all.”

CHAPTER

Eleven

I’ve read that there are specific, predictable stages of grief. But there must be as many manifestations of those stages as there are bereft.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Over the next few weeks I was hoping to hear from Carroll about Falene, but he never called. Physically, I was getting stronger, though my recovery was coming slower than I had hoped, and I was tired most of the time. Emotionally, I was depressed. Sitting in one place made it easy for all my negative thoughts to circle and land on me, like flies on roadkill. All I could think about was getting back out on the road.

Three weeks after my surgery I went back to the hospital to have my staples removed, which I expected to be painful, but the skin around my incision was still numb from where the nerves had been cut and I felt no pain. The next day I began walking again. I started at two miles, then, a week later, increased to three, then four. The dizziness was gone. I still got occasional headaches, but that, and exhaustion, seemed to be the extent of my complications.

A month after my surgery I went back again to see Dr. Schlozman. After telling me a pretty funny joke about Superman in a bar, he gave me a clean bill of health and we scheduled my next MRI for a year out. That afternoon I started making plans to return to the road.

A couple nights later, at dinner, my father said, “I noticed you had your maps out.”

I looked up at him. He had been strangely quiet all afternoon, like he was brooding. I finally understood why. “Yes, I was planning my route.”

“Then you’re going back out after all.”

“That was always the plan.”

I couldn’t read his expression. “When are you leaving?”

“August thirtieth,” I said.

“That’s next week.”

“It’s next Tuesday.”

He was quiet for a moment, then said, “Are you up to it?”

“I’m not all the way back, but Dr. Schlozman didn’t see any problem with it.”

He pushed his plate away, then said, “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Why not just stay here and get on with your life?”

“Right now the walk is my life.”

“Walking is no life,” he said. “It’s just walking.”

“What about what you said on the way here? You said I’m entitled to my own grief, and that I need to allow it to run its course.”

“Yes, but allowing it to run its course doesn’t mean running from it.”

“I’m not running from my grief. Believe me, it follows me every step of the way.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“You said in Spokane that you understood why I needed to do this.”

“I understood why you left. But it’s been almost a year. I don’t understand what you hope to accomplish by this.”

“I’m not trying to accomplish anything.” I looked at him. “Or maybe I am. I can’t explain why it’s so important. I just know that I need to finish what I started.”

For a moment he didn’t say anything. Then he shook his head. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“But it does to me. And that’s what matters. You need to let me deal with my grief the way I need to deal with it.”

“But you’re not dealing with it. You’re running away from it. No, you’re walking away from it.”

“So let me not deal with it the way I need to.”

He breathed out in exasperation.

“Dad, you know what I’m going through. After Mom died, didn’t you want to just escape?”

“I had you,” he said. “I couldn’t just walk away from everything.”

“But did you want to?”

He looked at me for a moment, then stood and took his plate over to the sink. Then he went to his bedroom and shut the door.

I just sat alone at the table. Is there anyone else I can run out of my life?

CHAPTER

Twelve

You should always be careful of what you say in parting.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Over the next week my father didn’t say much—at least not about my leaving. As the time for my departure neared, things between us became increasingly tense, which I dealt with by walking more. Two days before my flight back to St. Louis, my father and I were eating dinner when I just couldn’t stand the silence anymore.

“My flight’s Tuesday morning,” I said.

He kept on eating, meticulously cutting off bite-sized pieces of flank steak, then spearing them and putting them into his mouth.

I breathed out in exasperation. “Dad, I’m leaving. Can we talk about this?”

He kept at his steak. “You’ve made up your mind. What’s there to talk about?”

“Can we talk about why you’re so angry?”

He looked me in the eyes. “Do you think that there’s something magical about Key West? That the moment you reach the city line your life will just miraculously change and everything will be good again?”

“No, Dad, everything will never be good again.”

He shook his head. “You need to have faith,” he said.

“Faith in what?”

“That life is still worth living.”

“What did you think, that I was going to come home and abandon my walk?”

My father’s demeanor softened. “No. But I was hoping.”

I exhaled slowly, regaining my composure. “Look, I’m sorry. I know you want me to stay. But it’s not my path. At least not yet.”

“If not now, when?”

I looked at him for a moment, then said, “As soon as I figure that out, I’ll let you know.” The room fell into silence. Finally, I pushed back from the table. “I’m not hungry.” I got up and went to my room.

The next morning I woke with a headache, which I hid from my father at breakfast. Most people would think it strange that we didn’t say a thing about our previous night’s conversation, but that was predictable. It’s just the way we communicated. Or didn’t.

Around noon my headache eased some and I walked two miles to the grocery store for supplies, then returned home and laid out my clothes for packing. I felt more alone than I had on the road. I desperately wanted to talk to someone. But Falene was still a vapor and I didn’t dare call Nicole.

I called Carroll to see if he had any news about Falene. He had nothing new to report but said he hadn’t given up. I told him I was leaving and gave him my cell phone number in case he found her. To my surprise, Nicole called later that afternoon.

“Hey,” she said softly. “How are you?”

“I’m so glad you called,” I said. “I’ve missed you.”

“Me too,” she said. There was a long pause. “So you’re leaving tomorrow?”

“You’ve been talking to my dad?”

“He’s my accountant,” she said. “We talk every week.”

“He’s pretty upset.”

“I know.”

There was another long pause.

“I’ve managed to run off everyone I love,” I said.

“Maybe we just all love you too much.”

“Then I could use a little less love about now.”

She laughed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I kind of screwed things up between us.”

“No you didn’t. There’s nothing you could do to make me not care about you.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I feel the same way about you.” She breathed out into the mouthpiece. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Emotionally or physically?”

“Let’s stick to physically.”

“I’m really tired. I still get headaches.”

“Maybe you should wait a few more weeks before walking again.”

“I can’t. I’m going crazy here.”

“I know. But you need to be careful. I don’t want to hear about any more hospital visits.”

“I’ll be careful. And I think that getting away from here will help. I need to reboot myself, you know?”

“Yeah, but you be careful out there. And if you ever need anything, call. I don’t care what time it is. You know I mean that.”

“Thank you.”

“Is there anything I can do for you right now?”

“You can look out for my dad.”

“Gladly,” she said. “He’s a good man.”

“I know,” I said. “Thanks for calling. It’s really good talking to you.”

“You’re welcome. It’s good talking to you too. Let’s talk again soon.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

“Alan.”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” I replied. I hung up the phone and went back to packing.

To avoid a repeat of the previous night’s dinner, I made myself a tuna fish sandwich, then sequestered myself in my room. Later that evening my father knocked at my door.

“Come in,” I said.

He stepped inside. “I made tacos,” he said.

“Thanks. I already ate.”

“I know. I wrapped up two tacos in foil in case you get hungry later. They’re in the refrigerator.”

“Thank you,” I said.

He just stood there, nervously swaying. “What time does your flight leave tomorrow?”

“Ten-thirty.”

“Then we should leave by eight-fifteen. We’re going to hit rush-hour traffic.”

“You don’t have to take me,” I said. “I can take a cab.”

“You’re not taking a cab. We’ll have breakfast at seven-thirty. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He walked out of my room.

The next morning we shared a long, quiet breakfast together. It was one of my father’s specialties, Swedish pancakes with lingonberries and pork sausage. I suppose he had made a statement by making one of my favorites. After breakfast I finished packing, then my father drove me to the Los Angeles airport. We said two words on the way. Literally.

“United?”

“Delta.”

He pulled up to the Delta curb and put the car in park. I got out and pulled my pack from the back seat. My father got out of the car. His eyes were red.

“You got everything?”

“Yeah.” I walked over to him, leaning my pack against the Buick. “Thank you for everything.”

He just nodded.

I exhaled heavily. “I love you, Dad.”

His eyes welled up, which I knew made him uncomfortable. He leaned forward for a quick hug, then stepped back and, without a word, gently squeezed my shoulder.

I picked up my pack and walked back to the curb. I was near the airport door when my father shouted, “Hey, Al.”

I turned back.

“Be safe.”

I smiled, then waved and went in to catch my flight.

CHAPTER

Thirteen

I am back in St. Louis. I was so intent on resisting my father’s attempts to abort my walk that I ignored my own body’s warnings.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

After a ninety-minute layover in Detroit, I arrived in St. Louis too late in the day to start walking. I took the hotel shuttle from the airport to the Hyatt Regency at the Arch and planned for a restful evening. I still didn’t feel well and I was worried by how much the flight had wearied me. My recovery wasn’t nearly as complete as I had led myself to believe. This shouldn’t have surprised me. Dr. Schlozman had warned me that it could take as long as six months before I felt like myself again. I just hadn’t wanted to hear it.

My room was on the east side of the hotel and had a view of the Arch. The sun, now in the west, gleamed off the monument’s stainless-steel surface, making it almost too bright to look at.

The Gateway Arch is one of America’s most spectacular national monuments, and a symbol of the western expansion of the United States. A national contest was held in 1947–48, and Finnish-American Eero Saarinen’s design was chosen from more than 170 entries. Construction began on the memorial in 1963 and was finished two and a half years later. The Arch is a remarkable feat of engineering and, at 630 feet tall, the tallest man-made monument in the United States—nearly 100 feet taller than the Washington Monument and almost 70 feet taller than the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota.

For several minutes I lay back in my bed, my gaze fixed on the monument. Even though the Gateway Arch was designed as a symbolic gateway to the West, gates go both ways and it was fitting that I had returned to the Arch after my medical intermission. I had passed the halfway mark of my journey east without fanfare. The Arch made it official—I was on the downhill slope of my walk. But it didn’t feel downhill. I felt as if my mountain had only grown steeper.

I rubbed my legs, wondering how my body would hold up on the road. When I was ten, I broke my left arm playing dodgeball at school. When my cast came off, I was surprised at how much smaller my arm looked than the other one and how quickly my muscles had atrophied. As I looked at my calves, I realized how the weeks in Pasadena had taken their toll. Even with my practice walks at home, I doubted I’d make twenty miles my first day. I wondered if I would even make ten. No matter. I wasn’t in a race. I closed my eyes and took a nap.

CHAPTER

Fourteen

Everybody needs love. Everybody. Those who don’t believe that frighten me a little.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

My room was dark when I woke. I glanced over at the digital clock: 8:27 P.M. I got out of bed and washed my face with cold water, then took the elevator downstairs to the Ruth’s Chris Steak House, which was off the hotel lobby. The restaurant is one of the reasons I had picked the hotel. McKale and I had celebrated our first year of the agency at a Ruth’s Chris, along with Kyle Craig and his girlfriend du jour. It was a good time and one I would never forget—an evening of triumph and confidence and gratitude. I remember that McKale looked so incredibly beautiful that night. Indescribably beautiful.

Seeing couples around me in the lobby intensified my memories and my loneliness.

In this setting I understood something. I didn’t want to live without McKale. But I also didn’t want to live alone. I wasn’t born to be celibate. Refusing Analise in Iowa had taken all the strength I had. Everyone needs love. Everyone. And, as my dad was fond of saying, “If you build a fence between a cow and its water, it’s going to take down the fence.”

Nearly four years ago McKale and I had talked about this very thing on our vacation to Italy. We were on a tour of the Roman Forum, standing near the ruins of the Temple of Vesta, when our guide told us about the three vows made by the Vestal Virgins. First was complete allegiance to the goddess Vesta. Second was a vow to keep the sacred fire of her temple burning. The third was a vow of chastity.

The punishment for breaking the third vow was the most severe. If caught, the male lover would be whipped to death in front of the woman, then she would be wrapped in linen, given a loaf of bread and an oil lantern, then be buried alive.

I asked our guide if, given the extremity of the punishment, any of the Vestal Virgins had ever broken their vow.

“Oh yes,” she said solemnly. “Eighteen of them.”

“Eighteen!” McKale exclaimed.

“Does this surprise you?” the guide asked in her strong Italian accent. She shook her head. “It does not surprise me. Everyone must have love.”

Later that evening, as we stood in front of the Trevi Fountain, McKale asked me something peculiar. “If I were to die, would you remarry?”

I looked at her quizzically. “You’re not going to die.”

“But if I did, would you remarry?”

“I’ve never thought about it,” I finally said. “I’ve always assumed I’ll die first. Would you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think I’d probably die of a broken heart.”

I smiled and squeezed her hand. A minute later, after we’d started walking again, she said seriously, “If something happens to me, I want you to remarry. I don’t want you to live without love.”

“Enough of this,” I said. “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

She stopped and looked up into my eyes with a curious gaze I’ll never forget. “You never know,” she said.

I wondered what McKale would think of me with Falene. I knew that she liked her, which, frankly, was unusual. Most women took an immediate dislike to Falene just because of the way she looked, or, often, because of the way their men looked at her.

McKale wasn’t intimidated by Falene—at least she never expressed it. I guess she was just confident in herself and her hold on me. Why wouldn’t she be? I had tunnel vision. McKale was everything.

In spite of my melancholy, or maybe because of it, I decided to make my dinner a celebration of three things. First, passing the halfway mark of my walk. Second, returning to my walk. And third, surviving my tumor.

I ordered the same meal I had the night I dined at Ruth’s Chris with McKale: sweet potato casserole with pecans, asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, and the Cowboy Ribeye steak. In keeping with my celebration, I complemented my meal with a small glass of red wine, and, alone, made a symbolic toast to the journey. “To Key West,” I said. I sounded pathetic. There were better things to toast. I raised my glass again. “To McKale.”

I didn’t rush, giving myself time to digest both my food and the significance of the moment. When I’d finished eating, I ordered a decaf coffee to go, then went back up to my room. Again, I was surprisingly exhausted.

Outside my window, the arch was lit by spotlights. I ran my bath and lay back in it, closing my eyes and letting my body soak. I wondered when I’d have that luxury again. Not soon, I wagered. I told myself it was just as well. I was getting soft, and it was time to get back to the road.

CHAPTER

Fifteen

I have been taken in by a Pentecostal pastor who speaks openly of miracles and the “fruits of the spirit.” I don’t know if there are fewer miracles today or if, in times past, all unexplained phenomena was just ascribed to divine providence. It seems today that we see less spiritual fruit than religious nuts.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I forgot to request a wake-up call and woke after ten, which upset me, as I had planned on getting an early start. I quickly dressed, then, taking my pack, went downstairs for breakfast. For the sake of time I opted for the buffet, which was quite good, and checked out of the hotel. Then, without ceremony, I resumed my walk.

I don’t think the Gateway Arch can be fully appreciated until one stands at its base and looks up. In spite of my late start, I walked across the street to the monument. I was tempted to take the tour, but it really wasn’t an option. There was a security checkpoint at the monument’s entrance, and I had my backpack, which they wouldn’t allow inside—especially since I was still carrying the gun my father had given me after I was mugged outside of Spokane.

There was no easy way out of the city and, after an hour of trying to navigate a labyrinth of roads and highways, passing through industrial areas of questionable safety, I finally just hailed a cab, which I took twelve miles to the Lindbergh Boulevard freeway exit. I got out near a HoneyBaked Ham store and began walking toward Highway 61.

I was in a suburban part of St. Louis County and the landscape was green and pretty. I crossed the Meramec River before reaching the town of Arnold, introduced by a sign that read:

ARNOLD

“A Small Town with a Big Heart”

It could just as well have read, Another small town with an unoriginal slogan, as I had seen the exact claim at least a dozen times before on my walk. The town was unremarkable in appearance as well, consisting of weather-worn aluminum-sided buildings housing used car dealerships, thrift stores, and hardware shops—the kind of commerce that springs up naturally in small towns, the way willows grow near slow-moving streams.

Around two o’clock, just shy of ten miles into the day’s walk, I reached Bob’s Drive-In, which boasted the “Best Burger in Town.” The claim was probably more than hyperbole, as I hadn’t seen another hamburger place since I entered Arnold. Of course, claiming the title by default would also make them the “Worst Burger in Town,” but it rarely pays to advertise our faults. Sometimes, but rarely.

Bob’s was a true takeout—there was no inside dining—and I stood in front of the boxy diner studying Bob’s sizable menu, which was hand-painted on a board hanging over three sliding-glass windows. I walked up to the middle window and rang a bell for service. A brunette woman in her mid-thirties slid open the window.

“What can I get you?”

I took a step forward. “I’ll have a Pepsi and your Arnold Burger.” I looked back up at the sign. “What’s fried okra?”

“It’s just okra. Fried.”

I smiled at her description. “What’s okra?”

She looked at me in disbelief. “It’s a vegetable. Some people call it gumbo.”

“Like shrimp gumbo?”

“Shrimp gumbo has okra in it,” she said. “It’s good. You’ve really never had fried okra?”

“It’s new to me.”

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

“I’m from the northwest.”

“That explains things. What brings you to Arnold?”

“I’m just passing through. I’m walking across America.”

Her eyes widened. “Shut the door! What city did you start in?”

“Seattle.”

“Seattle! Wow. That is so cool. Tell you what, that Pepsi’s on me. Are you gonna try the okra?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Great. I’ll put your order in.” She walked away from the window and I heard her calling out my order to someone in back. A moment later she returned with my drink.

“Here’s your Pepsi.”

“Thank you.”

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Alan,” I said.

“Nice to meet you, Alan,” she said. “I’m Lori.”

“Pleasure,” I said. “You’re from Arnold?”

“No. I live four miles south of here in Barnhart. I’m telling you, you coming through here is the most exciting thing that’s happened in Arnold this month.”

Hearing this made me a little sad for the people of Arnold.

A bell rang and Lori said, “There’s your order. I’ll be right back.” She returned with a tray holding a hamburger wrapped in yellow waxed paper and a paper sack with my okra, which was lightly fried, the interior a greenish-yellow pod. She rang up my bill. “That’ll be six forty-nine.”

I took out my wallet and paid her. “Thank you.” I carried my food over to one of the little tables. The burger and Pepsi were good. The okra I could pass on. I finished eating my burger, then said goodbye to Lori.

“What did you think of the okra?” she asked.

“I’m glad I tried it,” I said, finishing the thought in my head, so I know not to order it again.

“Glad you enjoyed it,” she said happily. “Can I refill your cup?”

“Actually, could you just put some ice and water in it?”

“Of course. You can just toss that, I’ll get you a new cup.” She returned a minute later with my water.

“Thank you,” I said. “Have a great day.”

“You too. Good luck on your walk.”

I shrugged on my pack and started off again.

Over the next several miles the landscape grew more rural, and homes and buildings became farther apart. An hour from Arnold, I reached Barnhart, the hometown of Lori at Bob’s Drive-In.

Two hours later the landscape changed to broad, green cornfields. It was already getting dark, and I began looking for a place to spend the night. In trying to prove to myself that I was fully recovered, I had done the opposite. My head was aching and I felt too exhausted to erect my tent, but the sky was threatening, so I started looking for a structure I could sleep under. After wandering a while I came to a church with a sign that read:

Connection Worship

Experience Pentecost

On the side of the church was an open, three-walled shed. I walked up a wide, gravel drive to the building and knocked on the door to the church. A minute later a corpulent, red-faced man, with curly, receding hair and a broad smile, welcomed me.

“Good evening. What can I do for you, my friend?”

“I’m just passing through town. I was wondering if I could sleep in your shed over there.”

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be very comfortable. But you can sleep inside. We have an extra bedroom.”

“I really don’t want to be any trouble,” I said.

“I live for trouble,” the man said wryly. “Come in, come in.” He stepped back from the door and motioned me inside. “You can set your pack there on the floor. Can I get you a hot tea and some banana nut bread? One of our congregation brought some over this afternoon.”

“Really, I don’t want to be a burden.”

“What burden?” he said. “I was just about to make myself a cup of tea. I would enjoy the company.”

“I would love some,” I said.

He led me down a long, dark hall to a small, boxy kitchen with a glass-topped table for four. “Have a seat. I’ve got a fruits-of-the-forest blend herbal tea that’s quite nice. And there’s no caffeine to keep you up.”

“Thank you,” I said.

He turned a flame on beneath the kettle, then dropped four slices of banana nut bread into the toaster. He joined me at the table, putting out his hand. “I’m Pastor Tim.”

“Alan Christoffersen,” I said.

“Pleased to know you, Brother Christoffersen. Good name you have there.”

“How’s that?”

“Christ-offers-son. Not theologically correct, I suppose, but close enough. Could be ‘God offers Son,’ or ‘Christ, the offered Son,’ but any name with Christ in it is a blessing.” The toast popped up. “Would you like yours with butter?”

“Yes, please.”

He buttered the bread and returned to the table. Almost the instant he sat down, the kettle began whistling and he popped back up. He poured the steaming water into a teacup. “Honey or sugar?”

“Honey,” I said.

He brought the tea and honey over to the table. “Be careful, it’s a bit hot.”

I squeezed some honey into the cup, then tried a sip.

“I can get you some ice if it’s too hot,” he said.

“It’s fine,” I said. “It tastes good.”

“Good. Good.” He took a bite of bread. “Sister Balfe makes a mean banana bread loaf.”

I smiled at his choice of words. I took two Tylenol from my front pocket and took them with my tea.

“Headache?” he asked.

I nodded, then took another sip of tea. “Your sign out front says to experience Pentecost. What does that mean?”

“Are you familiar with the Bible?”

“Some.”

“In the New Testament we read that following the resurrection of Christ, the spirit was poured down upon the Apostles during the Feast of Pentecost. The celebration had brought large crowds of people to Jerusalem, and the Apostles were given the gift of tongues and taught the people about Christ in their native languages.

“The event was prophesied by the prophet Joel, ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’ In the Pentecostal faith we welcome such gifts.”

“People really speak in foreign languages?”

“Yes, they do. The Bible tells us that God’s the same today as He was yesterday. Why would the gifts change?”

“I guess you don’t hear about them much.”

“No, you don’t. Gifts of the spirit require faith. People today don’t want the gifts. They don’t want the mystical, they want something they can quantify. They want science. If someone today saw a burning bush like Moses did, they’d douse it with a fire extinguisher.” He smiled. “The gifts of the Spirit are the fruit of the tree of faith. The gift of tongues, healings and miracles are the blessings of faith. We live in an age of unbelief, but I promise you, miracles still abound. Are you going to still be in town on Sunday?”

I shook my head. “No. Sorry.”

“Shame. I think you’d enjoy our meeting. If you ever find your way back here, I invite you to join us.”

“Thank you. I will.” I wasn’t just being polite. His explanation of spiritual gifts made me curious to see them.

When we’d finished our tea and bread, I retrieved my pack and the pastor took me to a bedroom near the front entrance, a small room painted eggshell white with a simple twin bed without a headboard.

“Sorry it’s not the Ritz, but it’s definitely a notch up from the shed you requested.”

“It’s great. Thank you.”

“The bathroom’s at the end of the hall. If you need anything, just holler. My wife’s in Fort Wayne visiting her sister, so you don’t have to worry about running into anyone.”

“Thank you for everything,” I said. “Good night.”

“Night, my friend.” He shut my door and I listened to his footsteps disappear down the hall.

I was still hungry, so I ate an apple, a Pop-Tart, nuts and some jerky. Then I turned down the bed, undressed and turned off the lights. As I lay in bed, I thought about what the pastor had said about miracles. Did they still happen today? Had they ever? I hadn’t seen miracles in my life, but perhaps it was my own fault. I certainly wasn’t looking or asking for them.

No, that’s not true. I had asked for miracles before. I had prayed as sincerely as a man could for McKale’s life to be spared.

I rolled over and went to sleep.

CHAPTER

Sixteen

Everyone has suffered more than you know.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning I lay in bed taking stock of myself. My body was sore all over from my first full day back walking, but especially my feet, ankles and calves. In spite of my workouts in Pasadena, I felt as if I’d pushed too hard. Thankfully my headache was gone. My head itched a little along the line of my incision and I ran a finger down the scar. Even though my hair had grown long enough to partially conceal it, the skin around it was still raised and numb.

There was a light knock at my door.

“Come in,” I said.

The door opened just enough for the pastor to look in. “Sorry to wake you.”

“I was just lying here,” I said.

“I’m making breakfast. How do you like your eggs?”

“I’m not picky. However the spirit moves you.”

He laughed. “All right, divinely inspired eggs. I’m still making biscuits, so you’ve got twenty minutes or so. Help yourself to the shower.”

After he left, I took some clean clothes and a razor from my pack, then went into the bathroom. A hot shower was an unexpected treat, and I stood beneath the spray for at least ten minutes, shaving in there as well. Then I dressed and went into the kitchen. Pastor Tim already had breakfast on the table.

“Sorry I took so long,” I said.

“Not at all. I love a long hot shower.” He lifted the lid off a pan, exposing a mound of scrambled eggs and patty sausage. “Help yourself. The sausage has a little kick to it.”

I loaded up my plate, then took a couple biscuits. Pastor Tim did the same. As I lifted my fork to eat, he said, “Would you join me in prayer?”

I set down my fork. “Of course.”

He bowed his head. “Dear Lord, we are grateful for our many blessings. We are grateful for our meeting and ask a blessing to be upon Alan. Please keep him safe on his journey. We ask Thee to bless this food to our good and us to Thy service, Amen.”

“Amen,” I said.

“Here’s some Tabasco sauce for your eggs if you’re so inclined,” he said, pushing the bottle toward me. Then he tore open his biscuit, layering sausage and eggs inside. “I love a breakfast sandwich.” He looked at me. “After we parted last night, I realized that I hadn’t asked you where you’re going.”

“I’m walking to Key West,” I said.

“Ah, beautiful Key West. That’s quite a ways. Where did you begin your journey?”

“Seattle.”

“My, that is a journey. What’s in Key West?”

“It was the farthest distance I could walk from Seattle.”

His eyes narrowed with interest. “Then the real question is, what’s in Seattle?”

“Memories,” I said.

He nodded slowly. “Good ones or bad ones?”

“Both. My wife was killed in a horse-riding accident. I lost her, my home, and my job. I just had to get away.”

“I understand,” he said. “I lost my first wife. Not in an accident, though. She left me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Me too,” he replied. “Perhaps that’s why I felt so compelled to let you in. We’re kindred spirits.” He looked at me soulfully. “You know, I’ve wondered if it’s more painful to lose someone you love to death or to lose someone you love because she no longer loves you back.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“On the surface it seems an easy question. It should be much easier to lose someone who doesn’t love you, because why would you want to be with someone who doesn’t want you? But rejection’s not an easy road. A part of you always wonders what made you so unlovable.”

“She must have been crazy,” I said. “You’re one of the kindest people I’ve met on my walk.”

He smiled sadly. “You are being kind. But you’re not a woman, and the truth is I’m not much to look at. No one’s ever mistaken me for Ryan Goosling.”

“I think it’s Gosling,” I said. “But you’re being too hard on yourself.”

“No, I’m truthful. I just look at myself in the mirror each morning and remind myself that God looks on the heart.” He looked at me. “You’re a handsome guy. You probably have women chasing you through every town you walk through.”

I ignored his observation. “But you’re remarried now?”

He smiled. “Yes. Her name is Melba. Like the toast. We’re happy. A virtuous woman is more precious than rubies.

“So, Alan Christ-offers-son, what happens when you reach Key West?”

I shrugged. “Good question. When I left Seattle, I had so far to go that I didn’t think about it. I’m not sure that I really believed I would make it.”

“Think you’ll stay in Key West?”

I shook my head. “No. Maybe I’ll go back to Seattle and start my business up again.”

“Think you’ll ever remarry?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should. It’s not good for man to be alone.” A wry grin crossed his face. “We get into all kinds of mischief.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“Anyone in the wings?” he asked. “Prospects?”

“Actually, there are two women . . .”

“Ah, that’s troubled geometry. The infernal triangle.”

I smiled. “One of them used to work for me. The other I met on my walk. I was mugged and beaten and she took care of me.”

“A good Samaritan. You can’t go wrong with someone like that.” Suddenly his expression changed. For a moment he didn’t speak, then he said, “Is one of them dark-featured, with long black hair? Ample-chested? Maybe she’s Greek. Very pretty, like a model.”

I was stunned. “You just described Falene. How did you know that?”

He shook his head slowly. “It’s nothing.”

“No, it’s something,” I said. “You just described her. How did you know that?”

He just looked at me, hesitant to answer.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“I just had a vision of her.”

“You just had a vision? Right now?”

He nodded.

“What else did you see?”

“She was wearing a wedding dress.”

“A wedding dress? Was she with me?”

“She was alone.”

For a moment I wasn’t sure what to say. “Do you have visions often?”

“No. Occasionally. That’s how I knew my wife was cheating.” He shook his head. “She ran off with the choir director.”

I was quiet a moment, then said, “Never trust a musician.”

He looked at me, then burst out laughing. “I suppose you’re right.” He sighed. “I’m glad you stopped by, Alan.”

“Me too,” I said. When we’d finished eating, I said, “Let me help you clean up.”

“No, you’d better get on your way. You’ve got a long walk ahead of you.”

We stood up from the table. I retrieved my pack from the room, then met Pastor Tim at the front door.

“I have something for you,” he said. He held out a small pewter coin engraved with the word FAITH.

“Powerful thing, faith,” he said. “All journeys are an act of faith.”

I nodded. “My father said I needed faith.”

Pastor Tim smiled. “Then there you are.”

I took the coin from him and put it in my pocket. “Thanks.”

“And about the vision. Don’t think about it too much. Just have faith that God’s at the wheel.”

I wasn’t sure how to take that. I finally just said, “Thank you for everything.”

“My pleasure. God be with you on your journey, Brother Christoffersen.”

“And on yours,” I replied.

“Well said,” he replied. “Well said.”

I put on my hat and set out again, grateful for the man’s kindness.

Again, I had gotten a late start, but this time I was glad for it, as I felt rested. In spite of the pastor’s admonition, I couldn’t stop thinking about his vision. Falene in a wedding dress? This had to be a sign, didn’t it?

CHAPTER

Seventeen

People can become so blinded by their own perceived victimhood that they make victims of everyone around them.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next town I walked through was called Pevely, where I came across a cultural relic of the American past—a drive-in theater. I couldn’t tell if it still functioned as a drive-in, but I doubted it. The screen was still there, but it looked a bit worn and tall weeds grew up from myriad cracks in the asphalt. The sign out front read:

Pevely Flea Market

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for drive-in theaters. I have fond childhood memories of lying between my parents in the back of our green, wood-paneled Dodge station wagon watching a Disney movie. I once wrote an essay on drive-in theaters in a high school English class.

You probably don’t realize that someone actually holds a patent on the drive-in theater. The original drive-in was created by a Camden, New Jersey, man named Richard Hollingshead. His idea was to create a “family experience,” a solution to finding a babysitter. “Now it doesn’t matter how much the baby cries,” the first advertisement for his theater read. I suppose Hollingshead failed to realize that parents actually went out to get away from the crying baby. Not that it mattered. He still hit the bull’s-eye, just on a different target. The theater became a make-out haven for youth who knew they wouldn’t run into their parents.

Drive-in theaters always reminded me of what might be the most bizarre thing I did as a teenager. One midsummer afternoon McKale, one of her cousins and I were just sitting around the house bored when McKale said, “We should go see a drive-in movie tonight.”

The closest drive-in was a one-screen theater located in the nearby town of Monrovia. The movie playing that night was Braveheart, an Academy Award winning movie about Scottish rebel William Wallace, played by actor Mel Gibson.

That’s when a bizarre idea struck me. “I’ve got a better idea,” I said.

The three of us took some of my father’s old clothes, stuffed them with newspapers and rags, and then safety-pinned them together, making a life-sized dummy. We made its head out of a garbage sack stuffed with wadded-up newspaper. McKale dubbed our creation “Mr. Vertigo” in homage to the Hitchcock movie starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak.

Carrying our dummy and a ball of kite string, we walked along the wooden fence at the back of the theater until we found a hole someone had dug beneath it, and snuck inside. This is the crazy part. Slinging the dummy over my shoulder, I climbed up the back of the screen about a hundred feet to the very top.

The prank seemed like a much better idea from the ground, as shimmying seven stories up the rusted metal railing was terrifying—especially when I startled a flock of nesting starlings who weren’t pleased to encounter a human in their neighborhood.

When I reached the top of the screen, I clung for my life with one hand and pulled the dummy from my back with the other, laying him across the horizontal beam that ran the length of the screen. I tied the end of our ball of string to the dummy and threw it down over the front of the screen to McKale and her friend, then shimmied back down.

When I reached the ground, McKale yanked the string. To our dismay, the string snapped six feet above us, dangling just out of reach. Unwilling to abandon our prank, I climbed the screen again, retied the string to the dummy and climbed back down. This time I carefully tugged the string until Mr. Vertigo fell over the front of the screen, hurtling headlong to his death. I think the movie viewers appreciated our prank, judging by the honking horns and screams.

McKale spotted a group of people running toward our dummy from the projection house so we ran too, leaving Mr. Vertigo behind to answer for our crimes.

Two evenings later my dad called me in to his den. “Did you drop a dummy from the top of the Monrovia Drive-in Theater?”

It was pointless denying my involvement in the affair, as the very fact that he asked meant he somehow already knew. Though I was afraid of getting in trouble, I was more curious as to how he’d found out. “Yes, sir.”

“How did you get the dummy up there?”

“I carried it up.”

“You climbed to the top of the screen?”

“Yes, sir.” I left out the part about doing it twice.

“That sounds dangerous.”

“I know.”

“Don’t do it again. I don’t want you hurting yourself.”

“Yes, sir. How did you know?”

“I got a call from the theater. There was a dry cleaner’s slip in the pants pocket. Next time ask before taking my clothes. I still wore those pants.”

“Sorry,” I said.

He went back to his paper. “You can go.” As I was walking out, he said, “Al.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Did it look real? Like someone falling?”

“I think so.”

He nodded. “That’s pretty funny. I would have liked to have seen it.”

He never brought the incident up again. I think I liked him more after that.

Two miles from Pevely was the town of Herculaneum, named after the ancient Roman twin city of Pompeii. It was also the city where the fictional character Richie Walters in the musical A Chorus Line was born.

An hour later I passed through a town called Festus. (The name made me think of the singing deputy of Gunsmoke. I used to watch the reruns with my father.) Festus had a population of 11,643—double that of Pevely—evidenced by the town’s largest edifice: a Walmart.

As Americans stopped building town squares and piazzas, Walmarts took their place.

—Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I was glad to see a Walmart as I was running low on supplies. I bought fruit, a bag of mini bell peppers, a half dozen energy bars, a can of salted peanuts, a dozen flour tortillas, a package of sliced turkey, a bottle of Tabasco sauce, two large bags of beef jerky, Pop-Tarts, four cans of chili, and batteries for my flashlight.

For lunch I bought a V8 juice and a foot-long sandwich from the deli section. As I waited at the register, a large, unkempt woman stepped in line behind me, setting an industrial-sized bag of cheese puffs and a six-pack of beer on the conveyor belt.

The clerk was handing me my change when the woman suddenly clutched her chest and groaned out. “Oh, I’m having a heart attack. Call 911!”

The young woman behind the counter just stood there, frozen, her eyes wide with panic.

“Call 911!” I said. This time the young woman grabbed her phone and dialed. I helped the gasping woman to the floor in the middle of the checkout aisle. “How do you feel?” I asked.

“My chest,” she wheezed. “It feels like an elephant’s sitting on it. I can’t breathe!”

“Try to stay calm,” I said. “Help will be here soon.” I looked back up at the clerk. “Did you call 911?”

“They’re on their way.”

“Help me over to the bench,” the woman said.

“No,” I said. “I think you should just stay here.”

“No,” she insisted. “The bench.” To my surprise, she climbed to her feet, then waddled to a bench about twenty feet away from the aisle. I followed her, unsure of what to do. Fortunately it was only a few minutes before we heard the wail of sirens. Just seconds later, two paramedics rushed into the store carrying bags of gear. I stood and waved them over.

As the lead paramedic neared, I saw his expression change. He looked at the woman with unmistakable annoyance. When he got to her side, he knelt down and took her hand, placing a pulse oximeter on the end of her index finger. Then he glanced back at his partner.

“Ninety-seven,” he said.

His partner handed him a blood pressure cuff. The paramedic said, “All right, Rosie. You know the drill.”

The woman pulled up her sleeve and the young man strapped the cuff on.

“How am I, Doctor?” she asked.

“I’m not a doctor,” he said. “Hypertensive. Nothing unusual.” He turned back to his partner. “One fifty-eight over ninety-three.”

As quickly as he had arrived, the paramedic unfastened the cuff and began returning his gear to its bag. His partner just stood there, his arms folded at his chest, his expression dour.

I watched the incident unfold with confusion. “How is she?”

The paramedic looked at me with a dull expression. “She’s fine,” he said. “She’s diabetic and has mild hypertension, but other than that, she’s fine.”

I glanced over at the woman, then back. “Really? But she . . .”

“Rosie’s always fine.”

“What do you mean, always?”

He stood up with his bag, turning away from the woman. “Rosie here is what we call a ‘frequent flier.’ She fakes heart attacks, then tells people to call 911.”

I looked at the woman, who seemed oblivious to our talking about her, then back at the paramedic. “Why would she do that?”

“Because she can,” he said sharply. “It’s a rush for her. She gets a lot of attention and feels powerful that we all have to come running. And every time we do, it costs the taxpayers five grand.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I wish I were.”

“Can’t you do something about it?”

His eyebrows rose. “Like what? You tell me. Even if we knew it was her, if we didn’t respond, some ambulance chasing lawyer would sue the city. The worst part is, last week while we were playing her game, a man on the other side of town had a real heart attack. Some bystanders kept him alive for nineteen minutes, four minutes short of what it took us to get to him.”

“You’re telling me that she killed him.”

“We can’t say that for sure, but he sure as hell would have had a better chance of living if we’d been there.”

I turned back and looked at the woman with disgust. “Did you know that? This game you play cost a man his life.”

She scowled at me. “You think just because I’m poor I’m not entitled to the same care everyone else is?”

“This has nothing to do with rich or poor,” I said angrily. “It has to do with need.”

“It has to do with crazy,” the other paramedic said.

“I have problems,” the woman said.

“Clearly,” I replied. “You’re an awful person.”

She just stared at me, her mouth gaping like a fish on land. I went back and got my groceries, then left the store.

Drama aside, the rest of the afternoon was decent walking as Festus gave way to more rural landscape. Physically, I felt better than I had the day before, giving me hope that perhaps the worst was over. As night fell, I reached the Good News Church, a golf course, and Mary’s Market, where I stopped for hot coffee. I pitched my tent and camped in a gully on the side of the road.

Every time I thought about that woman at Walmart, I wanted to slap her.

CHAPTER

Eighteen

We cannot enslave others without enslaving a part of ourselves.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I had set up my tent on a slight incline and woke the next morning with a crick in my neck, which I tried to release by cracking it, but it didn’t help much.

I walked back to Mary’s Market and bought some yogurt, coffee, and a giant homemade blueberry muffin. I sat on the curb outside the store and ate my breakfast, then set out for the day.

The morning sky was clear and brilliant blue, and I walked on a smooth road of light-colored asphalt. I was on the “Great River Road” which, technically, was still U.S. 61 South.

Two and a half hours later I reached the tiny town of Bloomsdale, and stopped at the side of the road at the not-so-cleverly named Roadside Park. I ate an early lunch of tortillas stuffed with sliced turkey, bell peppers and hot sauce, then laid my map out over a picnic table. Twelve miles ahead was Ste. Genevieve. I packed away my food and pressed ahead, eager to reach the historic town before nightfall.

Ste. Genevieve, named for the patron saint of Paris, was founded in 1735, more than a quarter-century before America declared its independence. I passed through a neighborhood of small, nondescript houses, built close together, to the town’s historical district, which was quaint and pleasing.

There were several bed and breakfasts in the center of town, but one in particular caught my eye:

The Southern Hotel

An Historic Bed & Breakfast Inn

Innkeepers Mike and Cathy Hankins

I rang the buzzer and a pleasant looking woman wearing an apron opened the door.

“Good evening, may I help you?”

“Do you have any vacancies?”

“Yes we do,” she said, pulling the door open. “Come in and I’ll show you what we have available.”

I stepped inside. The foyer was wood-paneled and adorned with beautiful paintings, shadow boxes, and wall hangings, which included several patchwork quilts.

“Come into the parlor,” she said.

I followed her through a set of saloon doors into the parlor and carefully set my pack down.

“We just had these doors put in,” the woman said. “These front rooms were used as a saloon until prohibition time, so we thought it would be a nice nod to the history of the place.”

The parlor had a two-person settee and several wingback chairs upholstered in red velvet. There was a bookcase full of old-time parlor games and a large fireplace with a walnut mantel.

“What is your name?” she asked, holding up a pen.

“Alan Christoffersen.”

“Alan,” she repeated. “My name is Cathy. When we’re done, you can park your car on the side of the house.”

“I don’t have a car.”

She looked at me quizzically. “Oh? How did you get here?”

“I walked.”

“From where?”

I was more tired than talkative so I just said, “St. Louis.”

She still looked impressed. “That’s a long way. You must be tired. Let’s get you a room. We have three rooms available for tonight, and they’re all the same price. Would you like to see them before checking in?”

“I’m sure one of them will be fine,” I said.

She nodded. “I think you’ll be pleased.”

I handed her my credit card and she ran it through a machine, then handed it back to me. “Let me tell you a little about the house.” She pointed to a framed picture above the fireplace mantel. “That’s the Valle family, the home’s original owners. They had seven children and fifteen slaves.”

“Slaves?”

“Yes, the home is more than two hundred years old,” she said. “That nonsense was still going on. The slaves slept on the top floor. Actually, in one of the rooms we have available.

“If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you the dining room.” She led me across the parlor to the dining area. “Breakfast is served at eight o’clock and nine o’clock. We’ve won awards for our food, so come prepared to eat.”

“That won’t be a problem,” I said.

Cathy led me to the staircase and we walked all the way to the top floor. At the top of the stairs I noticed another steep stairway leading up to a hatch door in the ceiling.

“Is that the attic?”

“No, that’s the belvedere,” she replied. “It’s a rooftop structure designed to give you a view. It comes from an Italian word meaning good view—at least that’s what Mike told me. You’re welcome to go up, but it’s hotter than heck. This time of year we just call it the sauna.”

“I’d like to see it,” I said.

Cathy frowned a little. “I was afraid you would.”

I followed her up the creaking stairs to the trap door, which she pushed open, and light and heat flooded down on us. She was right about the “sauna.” I followed her through the hatch and climbed up into a small room, which was hot and humid enough that it was difficult to breathe. The octagon-shaped structure had windows on all eight sides giving an unobstructed, 360-degree view of the city.

Cathy turned to me. She was panting a little and perspiration beaded on her face and neck. “During the Civil War, the Union Army occupied the building. This was their lookout. As you can see, they could keep an eye on the entire town from up here.”

The heat prohibited us from spending much time up there, and my underarms and back were damp with sweat when I climbed back down to the cooler floor below. Cathy led me into a room near the stairway.

“This is the Quilt Room,” she said. “It’s one of the rooms where the slaves were kept.”

“How do you know?”

“It was pretty standard to keep slaves in the attic at the time. They slept up here during the winter when heat would rise from the fireplaces, and they stayed downstairs in the cellar during the hot summers. But there’s other evidence.” She pointed across the room to a ball-and-claw-foot tub. “If you look under the tub, you can see the metal ring that slaves were chained to at night to keep them from escaping.”

I walked over to the tub and leaned over it. “Over here?”

“You can see it better from the floor. You’ll have to get down on all fours.”

I got down on my knees and looked underneath. Six inches from the wall was a large, rusted metal ring secured to the floor. “They chained people to this?”

“Unfortunately.”

The idea of it sickened me. I didn’t want to stay in the room.

“As I said before, the original owners had fifteen slaves. Two of their slaves were assigned just to chopping wood and keeping all the fireplaces going. There was also a tale that they owned a very large slave who was fathered out to other slaveholders in the area. Some said the slave was buried in the home’s cellar after he died. A few years back, Mike let an archeologist dig in there for his bones, but he didn’t find anything.”

We walked through two other rooms. I chose the third, the “Buttons and Bows” room, which featured a shadow-box button collection from 1720, a working fireplace, two tubs, and a black and white wedding photograph accompanied by the bride’s actual veil. The room was wallpapered with golden fleur-de-lis over a rose-colored background. The bed was unlike any I’d seen before: polished rosewood with four posts and a canopy extending over just half the bed.

“This kind of bed’s called a half tester,” she said. “It was made in 1775. They’re hard to find.” Cathy pointed to the two bathtubs, standing side by side in the corner of the room. “Those are made of cast iron and porcelain, the combination really keeps the heat in. Whenever we have couples staying in this room, we hear that the woman gets the longer tub and the man gets stuck with the shorter one.” She smiled at me. “But you’re lucky—you won’t have that problem.”

I let the comment roll off of me. I followed her back downstairs, retrieved my pack, then said goodnight and went back up to the room. I filled up both of the tubs, one for soaking my dirty socks and underwear and the other for me. After a long, relaxing bath I rinsed out my laundry and hung it over the radiator, which wasn’t on but was still the best surface I could find for laying out my things. I climbed into bed and went to sleep.

The next morning I slept until seven-thirty. My headache was back, a dull ache near my incision. I collected my washing, which, fortunately, was dry, dressed and packed, then, taking my backpack with me, went downstairs for breakfast. There were two couples in the room, but neither of them acknowledged my entrance.

Cathy greeted me as I entered the dining room. “How did you sleep, Alan?”

“Well, thank you.”

“You can sit wherever you like,” she said.

I chose a small, round table away from the other guests. Across the room from me, a tall, walnut-cased grandfather clock chimed the hour.

“I think you’ll enjoy this morning’s breakfast,” Cathy said. “It’s our guests’ favorite: crustless quiche with sausage, and our special cream cheese blackberry muffins.”

“It sounds delicious,” I said.

She smiled. “Trust me, it is.”

A few minutes later she returned with my plate, then left me alone to eat. I ate slowly, not in a particular hurry to get back on the road. In spite of a good night’s rest, I still felt tired. A half hour later, Cathy emerged from the kitchen.

“How is everything?” she asked.

“As good as you said it would be.”

She smiled. “Well, I didn’t mean to boast.”

“You should,” I said. “How’s business?”

“Pretty good. We’re not going to be buying the St. Louis Cardinals anytime soon, but we enjoy what we’re doing.”

“That’s better than owning the Cardinals,” I said.

“I’ll have to take your word for that.”

“My wife would really like it here,” I said.

“Then you’ll just have to bring her next time,” she said. “Excuse me. I need to check on the oven.” She walked back to the kitchen, but returned a few minutes later with a basket of hot muffins.

“Here you go, hot out of the oven.”

I took one. “How do you like living in Ste. Genevieve?”

“I love it here. It has so much history and charm. Ste. Genevieve is a very old town. In fact, it’s older than our country. It was settled mostly by French-Canadians, and a lot has been done to preserve the original French-colonial style. Did you see the Old Brick House?”

I shook my head.

“It’s just around the corner. It’s a restaurant now, but it’s famous for being the first brick building west of the Mississippi.”

“Did you grow up here?” I asked.

“No. I actually came to stay at the Southern Hotel just a few years after Mike’s first wife Barbara passed. I brought my granddaughter for a special trip, and the second Mike opened the front door, I was smitten. It took him a little longer to come around, but when he did, he just about ran me over.”

“Mike owned the hotel before he met you?”

“Yes. He and Barbara were just passing through town. They were at the candle shop across the street when they noticed a big FOR SALE sign in front of the hotel. In less than a week they were the owners. It took nine months and more than forty people to restore it, but the place has been receiving guests ever since.”

“How long have you and Mike been married?”

She counted on her fingers. “Five years this Thanksgiving.”

“What’s it like being married to a widower?”

“That’s an interesting question,” she said. “I suppose it’s like any marriage.” She suddenly grinned. “Except I don’t hit him if he calls me by another woman’s name.”

“Does he ever do that?”

“Call me Barbara? Every now and then. Usually when he’s in a hurry. Old habits die hard.”

“Does it bother you?”

She thought for a moment, then said, “No, not really. In a way it’s a compliment. He loved his first wife dearly. And even though I never met her, I feel a connection to her that I can’t quite explain. I think we would have been good friends.” She shook her head. “That probably sounds strange.”

I thought of McKale and Falene. “No,” I said. “It’s actually quite beautiful.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

I finished my muffin, then said, “I guess I’ve delayed the inevitable long enough, I better get going.” I stood up from the table and lifted my pack. “Breakfast was terrific. Actually, everything was. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Stop by again sometime. And next time, bring your wife.”

“That would be nice,” I said.

As I walked toward the door, Cathy said, “Oh, don’t forget to sign the quilt.” She pointed to a stitched quilt mounted to the wall. “We have all our guests sign it.” She handed me a marker.

I signed my name, then walked out of the house. McKale definitely would have loved this place.

Following Cathy’s directions, I left Ste. Genevieve on a different road from the one I came in on. Before I left the city, I passed a shop with a sign in its window advertising “KEY WEST.” I walked up to read what it had to say. Key West turned out to be the name of a local “island” band.

The route Cathy gave me bypassed the residential areas, taking me directly back to 61 South. The longer I walked, the more I wished I had stayed another day in Ste. Genevieve. In addition to feeling crummy, I had to deal with the weather. The sky was dark and gray, and a little before noon it began raining hard enough that water ran off the brim of my hat. I was walking on a narrow shoulder of highway, and the fast traffic on slick roads not only put my life in peril, but guaranteed that I was frequently splashed by passing vehicles. The air was muggy, thick with humidity and the loud sound of bugs and birds distressed by the rain.

Thankfully, the rain and my headache lightened some by late afternoon as I entered the town of Brewer. It was another small, rural town, and what struck me as most peculiar about the place was that it had the biggest front lawns I’d ever seen. These folks don’t need tractor mowers, I thought, they need combines.

Two miles later I reached Perryville, the largest town of the day with a population of more than 8,000. I walked into town wet, tired and shivering. I took a room at the first hotel I found, a Budget Inn. I took off my wet clothes, showered, then ate dinner at a nearby Hardee’s.

The sky cleared during the night. The road still wasn’t much for walking, narrow and grated with a severe rumble strip, and I stumbled more than once. Still, it wasn’t raining and I was grateful for that. And the scenery was bucolic. I passed beautiful red barns, and long, expertly cultivated rows of crops, marked and numbered with agricultural signs from the seed vendors for commercial demonstration.

A little over six miles into the day I reached my first town, Longtown, with a population of just 102. For such a small town it had an impressive church—Zion Lutheran—a large structure with pointed-arch windows and a tall white steeple. In addition to the church, Longtown also boasted an abnormally large number of plastic deer in its residents’ front yards, which are only slightly weirder than plastic pink flamingos.

That afternoon I saw one other peculiar thing—a herd of cows gathered around a small bonfire. There were no humans in sight and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I was fairly certain that the cows hadn’t started the fire, so I just kept on walking.

That evening I set up my tent in a grove of trees near a picturesque farm with three silos.

CHAPTER

Nineteen

I have so often compared my life to a whirlwind that I should not be surprised to find myself facing a real one.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning I woke to the sound of howling wind and rain pelting my tent. Another day in paradise, I thought. My map showed that I was still about eight miles from the nearest town, so I ate breakfast in my tent, then lay back, waiting for the rain to weaken. After an hour the weather still hadn’t relented, so I gave up and started off for the day.

My pace was slowed by the storm, and by the time I reached the town of Fruitland, I was cold and drenched. I stopped at a gas mart called Casey’s for supplies, then walked to the nearby Jer’s Restaurant for lunch.

A broad, surly-looking woman glanced up from the counter. “You’re all wet,” she said.

I wasn’t sure if she was annoyed that I was dripping on her floor or if she just had a penchant for stating the obvious. “I’ve heard that before,” I said.

She just glared at me.

After a moment I said, “It’s raining.”

“It’s going to get worse,” she said. “We’ve got a severe weather warning. Maybe even tornadoes.”

“Tornadoes?”

She nodded.

Outside of The Wizard of Oz and the Weather Channel, I had never seen a tornado. It was one experience I didn’t care if I missed. “Is there anyplace in town to stay?”

“Closest hotel is a couple miles ahead in Jackson.”

I took off my hat and scratched my head. “A couple of miles, huh?”

“You want something to eat?” she asked sternly.

“Yes.”

“Pick a table,” she said.

I looked around. The restaurant was empty except for a truck driver in a corner booth who was nursing a cola and playing a video game on his cell phone.

I sat down at a booth on the opposite side of the diner, then lay my pack on the chair next to me and put my hat on top of it. When Miss Congeniality returned, I ordered fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy.

In spite of the woman’s warning of worsening weather, I ate slowly, hoping the rain might ease up a little. As predicted, it got worse. I ordered a piece of peach pie to buy me more time in the shelter, then, finally accepting my inevitable drenching, paid my bill, put on my hat and walked out into the storm, hoping for better hospitality from the next town. Or the tornado.

Although Jackson was just two miles from Fruitland, in weather conditions like these, it seemed much farther. At one point my hat blew off and I chased it for several minutes.

As I neared the town, the rain came down harder. The sky had turned black, lit with what seemed an increasing frequency of lightning strikes—sometimes even simultaneous with the thunder. It occurred to me that even though I hadn’t seen a funnel cloud, this was what tornado weather looked like on the Weather Channel.

As I crossed the Jackson city line, the rain suddenly turned to hail, bouncing off me and the street like water on a hot griddle. Some of the hail was nearly golf-ball-sized and it hurt. Lifting my pack over my head, I made a fifty-yard dash for cover beneath a highway overpass.

When I reached the shelter of the bridge, my heart was pounding heavily from my sprint, and I was as wet as if I had fallen into a lake. Both sides of the overpass were opaque with white sheets of hail. I lay my pack on the ground, then sat down on the curb next to the highway to rest. That’s when I heard the sirens.

CHAPTER

Twenty

Is it possible for those on the other side to intervene on our behalf? Millions of dollars have been spent on this very hope.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Tornadoes are rare in both Los Angeles and Seattle—there has never, in the recorded history of either city, been a death caused by one—so, not surprisingly, I had never heard a tornado siren before.

Outside of the bridge there was no shelter in sight. I grabbed my pack and had started to climb up a weeded incline so I could hide under the bottom of the bridge when a navy-blue Nissan Sentra braked below me and honked its horn. The car’s passenger window rolled down and I heard a young woman shout, “Get in.”

I slid down the embankment, threw my pack in the car’s back seat, then opened the front door. The driver was maybe five years younger than me, pretty, with full lips and long, bright red hair, windblown around her face. She had an exotic look, almost feline.

She smiled at me, and her hazel green eyes were bright and kind. I pulled the door shut behind me as she reached forward and turned off the radio, leaving only the sound of my heavy breathing and the wind battering her car.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m drenched.”

She smiled at me. “And I’m Paige.”

I reached over, taking her hand. “My name is Alan.”

“Put your seatbelt on, Alan,” she said. “We better get out of here.”

As I fastened my belt, she checked her mirror, then pulled out onto the road. As soon as we came out from under the bridge, the sound of the storm exploded. The hail beat against her car like a snare drum.

“That’s going to be an insurance claim,” she shouted over the noise. She turned to me. “You’re crazy being out in this storm. What are you, an extreme hiker? Didn’t you hear the sirens?”

“I didn’t have a lot of options,” I said. “I thought the overpass would be safe.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You’d probably be safer low to the ground. The higher up you are the more exposed you are to flying debris.”

There was a loud thunderclap and she jumped a little.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“There’s a hotel just up ahead. We can stay there until this blows over.”

The hail lessened, but not the rain, and the car’s wipers whipped violently—though mostly ineffectually—against the downpour. A quarter-mile ahead of us we finally saw the hotel: Drury Inn & Suites. The front of the building was crowded with cars and we parked as close to the entrance as we could.

Paige grabbed a small travel bag from the back seat. “Ready?”

“Let’s go.”

We simultaneously jumped out of her car. I grabbed my pack from the back seat as she ran for the hotel. She held the door for me as I entered.

Once we were both inside she asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I said, panting. “Just wet.”

“You’re definitely wet.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I was born wet.”

She laughed.

The hotel’s lobby was crowded with the storm’s refugees, probably more than a hundred people in all, surrounded by their pets and belongings and huddled together in small clans. I quickly surmised that most of the people weren’t hotel guests.

There was a television on in the dining area off the lobby, and a group of men were sitting around it at tables, drinking coffee and, to my surprise, watching football instead of the weather.

Paige and I worked our way through a labyrinth of people to a small corner of the room that no one had yet claimed. I took off my pack and we both sat on the floor. Paige took off her coat, then pulled her long hair back from her face.

“How long were you out there?” she asked.

“A few hours. I walked from the last town.”

“No wonder you’re so wet,” she said. “Where are you from?”

“Seattle. We don’t do tornadoes.”

She took a brush out of her travel bag and began brushing her hair. “It’s Alan, right?”

“Yes. And you’re Paige.”

“Right. Where are you headed?”

“Key West, Florida.”

“All the way from Seattle?”

“That’s the plan,” I said.

“That’s amazing. The farthest I’ve ever walked at one time was ten miles for a breast cancer fundraiser.”

A cardboard box crashed loudly against the window next to us and Paige screamed, then laughed at herself. “Sorry, I’m just skittish.”

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“I was born in St. Louis. That’s where I live now.”

“What brings you down here?”

“I’m headed to Memphis to see my grandma. I was hoping to make it by tonight, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to clear up anytime soon.”

“I was planning on walking to Cape Girardeau by evening,” I said. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“Not likely,” Paige said.

“I wonder if the hotel has any vacancies,” I said. “I think I’ll check.”

I got up and walked to the hotel’s front desk. The woman behind the counter was listening to the weather report on the radio, and I could hear a hysterical caller screaming over the sound of the wind that a semi had been blown over. The clerk glanced up at me as I approached. “May I help you?”

“Do you have any rooms?”

“We have two left,” she said. “They’re both nonsmoking, first-floor rooms with two queen beds.”

“I’ll take one,” I said. I gave her my credit card and driver’s license.

“How many room keys do you need?”

I glanced over at Paige, wondering if she trusted me enough to stay with me. “Two,” I said.

She slid two plastic cards through her encoder, then handed them to me with my credit card. “There you go. It sounds as if the worst of the storm is over, but if another tornado touches down, the safest place to be will be in the hallway outside your room.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I walked back over to Paige and lifted my pack. “I’ve got a room. It’s got two beds. You’re welcome to hang out with me in there.”

“That would be nice. Thank you.”

We gathered our things and walked to the room, which was only halfway down the hall off the lobby. The window’s curtain was drawn back and rain pelted the glass, coagulating in long streams of runoff.

I threw my hat on the TV cabinet, lay my pack on the floor near the corner, then sat at the foot of the bed and took off my shoes. “How long do these things usually take to pass?”

Paige ran her hand down the length of her bed. “You never know. It’ll probably die down in the night.” She pulled back the covers and sat down on the bed to take off her shoes.

“You’re from St. Louis?” I asked.

“Mostly,” she said. “I live there now.”

“What do you do?”

“I work for a hospice company.”

“Hospice? You help people . . .”

“. . . Die,” she said. “I know, it sounds sad.”

“What’s that like?”

“The worst part is that just about the time you start caring for someone you lose them.”

“That sounds awful.”

“In a way it is. But it’s also really rewarding. I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life right now.”

She lay back on the bed, her long red hair splayed out over her pillow.

“Do you want to watch TV?” I asked.

“Whatever you want,” she replied.

“I was asking for you. I’m going to take a shower and get into some dry clothes.”

“Oh. Sure,” she said.

“Do you need to use the bathroom first?” I asked.

“No. I’m good.”

I took some clean clothes out of my pack, then tossed Paige the TV remote and went inside the bathroom. I stayed in the hot water until the bathroom mirror was dripping with condensation. When I came back out, Paige was watching the weather on a local station.

“How is it?” I asked.

“It’s looking better.” She smiled at me. “You look like you feel a lot better.”

“Much,” I said. “Any news on the storm?”

“It looks like the tornadoes are gone. It’s supposed to clear up by morning.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

As I sat down on the bed, she turned off the television. “Tell me about your walk,” she said.

“What do you want to know?”

“What states have you been through?”

“I started in Washington, walked through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, then Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and here I am. Six more states to go.”

“You’ve walked nonstop?”

“Mostly. I stopped twice, but not by choice. Once was in Spokane when I was mugged.”

She blanched. “You were mugged?”

“A gang attacked me. I was stabbed three times.”

She stared at me with wide eyes. “Really?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Want to see the scars?”

She nodded and I lifted my shirt.

She gasped. “Oh, my.”

“Another inch higher and I probably wouldn’t be here.”

“Wow,” she said. “I didn’t realize Spokane was such a tough place.”

I laughed. “It’s not. But there’s crime everywhere and when you’re on the street you’re at risk. Gangs, tornadoes . . . redheads.”

She smiled. “If it wasn’t for a redhead, you might still be under that bridge. Like a troll.”

I laughed. “I’m in your debt.”

“It’s my pleasure. I almost didn’t see you. I think I was inspired.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every morning when I pray, I ask God to let me help one of His children. As I was approaching the underpass, I had a strong feeling that I needed to slow down. When I looked up, there you were.”

“You pray for that every day?” I asked.

“Almost,” she said. “It’s amazing the opportunities that have come to me since I started doing that. Most of the time it’s someone I’m working with in hospice. Sometimes I’ll get these flashes of insight into their lives.”

“You should be sainted.”

“I was thinking the exact same thing,” she laughed, holding her hands open around her face. “St. Paige.”

I couldn’t help but think how cute she looked.

“You said you stopped twice on your walk.”

“The second time was in St. Louis. I found out I had a brain tumor after I passed out just outside the city.”

“Is that why you have that scar?” she asked, looking at my head.

I nodded. “I was taken to the hospital in St. Louis, then ended up flying home to Pasadena for treatment.”

“I thought you said you lived in Seattle.”

“I did,” I said. “But I left when my wife died.”

She frowned. “I’m so sorry. Was she ill?”

“No. She died from complications after a horse-riding accident.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said again. “Does that have something to do with why you’re walking?”

“It’s the reason I’m walking.”

She shook her head slowly. “It’s hard losing a loved one.”

“You experience it all the time,” I said.

“No, I see death,” she said softly. “But it’s not the same as losing family.”

“You’ve lost someone close?” I asked.

She didn’t have to answer. I could see in her eyes that she had.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I want to tell you. I think you might be one of the few people who would understand.” She leaned forward on the edge of the bed. “When I was sixteen, my parents decided to take a trip to Denver. I was the oldest, I had a sister who was just a year younger than me and two little brothers. I had cheerleading camp so I couldn’t go with them.

“The morning they left, my mother was stressed about leaving me alone and kept nagging me about keeping the house clean while they were gone and ‘no parties’ and ‘no boys’ and all the things parents say to irresponsible teenagers. I finally yelled at her and said, ‘All right, you’re making me crazy. Just get out of here! Just go already!’ ” Paige frowned. “I’ll never forget the hurt in her eyes. She kissed me and told me she loved me, then got up and walked out of my room. I felt so embarrassed for having behaved badly that I didn’t even go out to see them off. I just watched from the window.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “It was the last time I saw my family.

“My father had just gotten his pilot’s license, so he wanted to fly the family to Colorado. On the flight home it was foggy. He got disoriented and crashed into a mountain. Everyone was killed.

“I was taken in by my grandmother, but it was hard. I was a mess. I was grieving and had survivor’s guilt. I became really self-destructive. I changed my friends and started drinking. Then I started smoking pot and taking painkillers. I became promiscuous, which made me hate myself even more.

“My grandmother tried to help, but I was too much for her. I told her that she wasn’t my mother and to just keep out of my life or I’d move in with my boyfriend. My boyfriend was a worse train wreck than I was. He got me most of my drugs.

“Around that time I developed an eating disorder. I got down to eighty-four pounds. I’m pretty sure that I was trying to kill myself.

“One night I was at a party and one of the boys had brought some heroin. The guy didn’t really know anything about the drug, he was just acting cool and handing it out.

“As usual, I was up for anything. My best friend Kylee and I tried it. We took what the kid gave us, which was way too much, especially for our first time. I passed out.

“When I woke, I was in the back of an ambulance throwing up into a bucket. I was so drenched with sweat I thought I had fallen into a swimming pool. I can’t describe the pain.” She shook her head. “It was . . . horrendous.

“They stabilized me at the hospital. The next morning I started asking about Kylee. It took a while to find someone who knew anything about her, but I eventually found out. She’d died before the paramedics got there.

“Two days later my grandmother came and picked me up. She was so upset that she didn’t say a word to me the whole way home. But as soon as we were inside, she said, ‘When are you going to stop this insanity?’

“I said, ‘I almost just died.’

“She said, ‘Yes, I know.’

“Then I said, ‘My family died.’

“She said, ‘And you think that gives you a pass to stop living? My daughter died! And now I’m watching my granddaughter kill herself. Should I just give up on life like you did? Should I be just like you?’

“I told her that I hated her, then I broke down sobbing and ran to my room and locked the door.

“That night I had a very intense dream. I was lying in bed when I suddenly realized that my mother was sitting at the foot of my bed. She looked very sad. I was scared, but I was also so glad to see her. I said ‘Mom!’ She looked into my eyes and even though she didn’t speak, I could hear what she was thinking. She said, ‘You are loved, Paige.’

“It took a moment for the message to sink in. I began to cry. I said, ‘I don’t deserve to be loved.’

“She said, ‘Love is not earned. It is a gift from our Father.’

“I said, ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t go with the family. I should have been with you,’ but she said that it wasn’t my time. Then I started to apologize for what I’d said to her the morning they left, but before I could finish, she said, ‘Paige, you are loved.’

“I just broke down and wept. When I could speak, I said, ‘What do I do?’ and she told me to fill my life with love. I said I didn’t know how, but she just smiled and said, ‘Of course you do. You love me, don’t you?’

“When I told her yes, she said, ‘Begin there. Begin by treating my mother as if she were me.’

“I asked her if I was dreaming, and she smiled and said, ‘Tell Grandma that Babbo says he’s still waiting for her answer. And tell her to be patient with the little rose. It’s been a tough winter.’ Then she said, ‘Remember to love my girl,’ and she was gone.

“I got up early the next morning. I felt like a new person. I cleaned my room, then I went into the kitchen and made breakfast. Grandma came into the kitchen to see what was going on. She was so surprised. But there was still a lot of tension between us, so she didn’t say anything. She went to get her tea and I said, ‘Sit down, Grandma. I’ll get it.’

“I got her tea and poured it for her. Then I sat down at the table with her. We looked at each other for a moment, then I said, ‘I’m very sorry about what I said last night. I didn’t mean it.’

“She said, ‘Maybe you did.’

“I began to cry. I said, ‘No, I think I just hate myself.’

“She stared at me a little longer, then said, ‘You came to this last night?’

“I said ‘Yes.’ We just sat there for a while, then I said, ‘I saw Mom last night.’

“She gave me this concerned look. I’m sure she just thought it had something to do with the drugs. I said, ‘I don’t know what it means, but she said to tell you that Babbo says he’s still waiting for an answer.’

“I thought she was going to faint. She turned white as a sheet, then she began to cry. When she could speak, she said, ‘Did she say anything else?’

“I said, ‘She said to be patient with the little rose. It’s been a tough winter.’ ”

“Little rose?” I asked.

“I found out later that before I was born, Grandma would pat my mother’s belly and call me her little rose.”

“And Babbo?”

“Ten years after my grandfather died, my grandmother fell in love again. He was from Italy and his children called him ‘Babbo.’ It’s an Italian term of endearment, like ‘Daddy.’ She started calling him Babbo too.

“He asked her to marry him. She said she loved him, but she had been single for so long that she wanted to take the weekend to think it over. He joked that he’d come by on Sunday night to collect his ‘yes.’

“She made up her mind that she was going to marry him, but he never came by. She called his house the next morning and his son answered. Sunday night he had passed away from a stroke.”

Paige paused. I looked down for a moment, then took a deep breath. “What happened next?”

“I changed. I stopped drinking and partying. I got help for my eating disorder and I went with my grandmother back to school to meet with my counselors. I was able to get my grades back up enough to graduate.

“After that, I started working with hospice. Every now and then I’m able to share some of my own experience to help a patient. I have a good life.”

“You’re headed back to see your grandmother now?” I asked.

“Yes. She’s in the final stages of cancer. I guess it’s her turn.” She looked up, smiling through her tears. “I don’t know what she’s going to do with both Grandpa and Babbo up there!”

We both laughed.

Later, after we had turned out the lights to go to sleep, Paige asked, “Do you ever feel your wife near you?”

I thought about it. “Sometimes,” I said. “Sometimes.”

CHAPTER

Twenty-one

The storm has passed. As usual, the world looks deceivingly safe.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The storm died in the night. When I woke early the next morning, Paige was already up and getting ready for the day. She came out of the bathroom holding a blow dryer.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I wake you?”

“No. I’m an early riser. You look nice.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t know which is more beautiful, your inside or your outside.”

“Are you hitting on me, Alan?”

“No,” I said.

“Darn,” she said, turning away. “I was hoping you were.”

We ate breakfast together in the hotel’s dining room. She wrote down her cell phone number and made me promise to contact her when I reached Memphis.

“I’ll take you for barbecue at Vergo’s Rendezvous,” she said.

We said goodbye, hugged, and then, for our own reasons, both headed south.

It was hard to believe that it had only been a week since I had resumed my walk.

In the sunlight, Jackson looked nothing like it had the night before. I turned left at the city hall building and soon found my way back to 61 South. I reached Cape Girardeau by noon, a decent-sized city with a population of more than 38,000. I ate lunch at the Huddle House, where I ordered breakfast—the Mansion Platter, a rib-eye steak, three fried eggs, hash browns, and biscuits with sausage gravy.

I left the town on Kingshighway, ending up on I-55 to Scott City, where I took exit 89 (a dangerous roundabout for pedestrians) leading back to 61 South. I took the highway for two more miles until I reached the tiny town of Kelso. There were nice homes, but no hotels, so I ended up camping in a grove of trees near an elementary school.

I woke the next day before the sun came up. I ate an orange and a protein bar, then folded up my tent and started walking. It was a beautiful morning and the sun painted the pristine landscape in golden hues. In addition, I had no headache and my muscles weren’t sore. It was the nicest walking I’d done since I’d resumed my journey.

The first town I reached was Benton. I stopped to eat breakfast at Mario’s Italian Eatery, a prefab building painted dark green with an Italian flag draped over the entrance. It had dozens of hand-painted signs mounted to its exterior, advertising daily specials. I had a breakfast calzone stuffed with mozzarella cheese, eggs and ham, then got back on my way.

The next town was Morley, which was a vestige of small-town Americana, the kind of place where people decorated their yards with old tractors and American flags.

The walking continued to be good. The roads were smooth, with wide, flat shoulders. The air smelled sweet and was alive with the cacophonous song of insects. One peculiar thing I noticed was that along one long stretch all the power poles were bent toward the road at a fifteen-degree angle.

By late afternoon I reached Sikeston, which I quickly deduced was a religious community as I passed nine churches on the way into town. I ate dinner at Jay’s Krispy Fried Chicken, then, following my waitress’s advice, walked to the other side of town and booked a room at the Days Inn.

CHAPTER

Twenty-two

Our culture’s quest to hide death behind a facade of denial has made fools and pretended immortals of us all. Perhaps it would be more helpful and liberating to begin each day by repeating the words of Crazy Horse, “Today is a good day to die.”

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next day began pleasantly enough, with ideal weather and open cotton fields, the air fragrant with the smell of cotton.

I stopped and picked a boll, just to see what picking cotton was like. Fiddling with it as I walked, it took me nearly fifteen minutes to liberate the seeds from the plant, which did more to explain to me the historical impact of the cotton gin than a whole middle school semester studying the Civil War.

Around noon I suddenly got a strange, sick feeling that something was wrong. I stopped and looked around. I was alone, miles from the nearest town. I took off my hat and wiped the sweat from my forehead. Had I forgotten something? Was it a premonition? I hadn’t felt anything like that since . . . It came to me. It was one year ago from that very hour that McKale had broken her back. I put my hat back on and kept on walking.

After eighteen miles I reached the town of New Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid), which seemed more southern to me than northern.

Of all the Civil War states, Missouri was, perhaps, the most complicated. Politically bipolar. Officially, the state was pro-Union, but many, if not most, of its residents were Confederate or sympathetic to the South’s cause.

A mile into town I turned off onto Dawson Road, where I ate dinner at the local eatery, Taster’s Restaurant, then, at my waitress’s recommendation, walked to the Hunter-Dawson State Historic Site.

The Hunter-Dawson house is a monument to the lifestyle enjoyed by wealthy southern families in the late 1800s. The fifteen-room mansion was built by William and Amanda Hunter, owners of a successful mercantile business that capitalized on New Madrid’s location on the Mississippi River. William died of yellow fever before the home was completed, but Amanda and her seven children moved into the house in 1860, and the home remained in the family for more than a century until it was purchased by the city of New Madrid and restored to the 1860–80 period. Today it contains the Hunters’ original furniture as well as family portraits and a large portion of the family’s library.

I walked to the site’s visitor center, a long trailer planted directly across the street from the mansion. The guide, a young female park worker wearing a baseball cap, informed me that it was nearly closing time but that she’d give me an abbreviated tour of the mansion free of charge.

The Hunter family had owned thirty-six slaves. During the Civil War, New Madrid leaned heavily toward the Confederate cause, and one of the Hunter sons joined the Confederate Army. During the Siege of New Madrid by Union forces, the mansion was occupied by General Pope and one of the Hunter boys joined the Union Army to keep the family home from being burned.

In one of the upstairs rooms there was a display of mourning dresses, bonnets and armbands. I was told that at the loss of a family member, women wore the black dresses for two years, while men wore black armbands for three to six months. My guide explained that mourning was much more formalized back then and that even Queen Victoria had mourned the loss of her husband, Prince Albert, for forty years. It made me wonder why modern culture has so painstakingly removed the rituals of death. Today, society pressures the bereaved to sweep their grief under the carpet of normality—the sooner the better.

When the tour concluded, I tipped my guide, then walked back to the street while she locked her office, then drove away. After she was gone, I returned to the home and pitched my tent on the soft grass beneath the maple, oak, and walnut trees behind the house.

CHAPTER

Twenty-three

You can tell as much about a culture from their diet as from their literature. Sometimes, perhaps, more.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

My headache and exhaustion returned the next day, and I didn’t walk far, barely sixteen miles, stopping at a hotel called Pattie’s Inn. The first thing I noticed was the large NO PETS ALLOWED warning on the hotel’s marquee. Then, just in case you missed it, there was another NO PETS sign on the hotel’s front door. I walked into the hotel’s lobby and there was yet another NO PETS sign on the wall behind the check-in counter, with, oddly, a dog lying on the floor beneath it.

The next morning I felt better again. As I walked back to the highway, I came upon a young man standing near the freeway on-ramp with a large handwritten poster-board sign around his neck. As I got closer, I read the board.

I CHEATED ON MY WIFE.

THIS IS MY PUNISHMENT.

I stopped a couple yards from him, read his sign, then looked up at him. He was red-faced with embarrassment and just stood there, avoiding eye contact. After a moment I said, “She made you do that?”

Glancing furtively at me, he said, “Yeah.”

“For how long?”

“Today. And all day tomorrow.”

I shook my head, then continued walking.

Highway 61 South turned into a bigger, busier road with a speed limit of seventy miles per hour. Fortunately it had a wide shoulder. I kept thinking back on the guy with the sign around his neck and chuckling.

I crossed into Pemiscot County and left the highway for a frontage road lined with cotton fields. Four hours into my walk I stopped at Chubby’s BBQ for lunch.

South of the Mason-Dixon line, barbecue restaurants are as plentiful as deviled eggs at a church picnic. In the same vein that the state of Washington prides itself on the creative naming of coffee shops, the South holds the titling of barbecue joints in high regard. I dedicated a page in my journal to writing down some of their names.

Fat Matt’s

Kiss My Ribs

Squat and Gobble

Swett’s

Bubba’s

Porkpies

Birds, Butts and Bones

The Boneyard

The Bonelicker

Barbecutie

Butts

Bubbalous Bodacious Barbeque

Dixie Pig

Bone Daddy

Prissy Polly’s

Pig Pickins Parlor

The Boars’ Butts

The Prancing Pig

Holy Smokes (A bbq joint in a converted Lutheran church)

Sticky Lips

Adam’s Rib

The Rib Cage

The Butt Rub

The Pig Out Inn

Hog Wild

Half Porked

Lord of the Swine

Big D’s Piggy Strut

The Swinery

Some of the restaurants’ slogans were noteworthy as well.

“We shall sell no swine before its time.”

“A waist is a terrible thing to mind.”

“No pig left behind.”

After a lunch of chopped brisket, collard greens and cheesy mashed potatoes, I returned to the interstate. I disliked walking such a busy road. The draft created by semis traveling at seventy-plus miles per hour would hit my pack like wind against a schooner’s sail and almost knock me over. Twice I lost my Akubra hat, chasing it across more than one lane of traffic. Still, I made decent time and after twenty-six miles I took exit 8 off 61 and walked to the Deerfield Inn. For dinner I ate a meatball sandwich and a tuna salad at the local Subway restaurant.

CHAPTER

Twenty-four

Missouri calls itself the “Show Me” state. I’m not sure if they’re claiming skepticism or voyeurism.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning I reached the town of Steele in less than an hour. Running parallel to the road was a slow-moving train, and I saw several men clambering onto the outside of one of the cars. The scene reminded me of Israel, the hitchhiker I had met outside Marceline, Missouri, which now seemed like a decade ago. It was hard to believe that after all these months I was still in the same state. But not for much longer. Just before noon I saw a small arch spanning the road in front of me. As I approached, I could see that it had the word ARKANSAS written across it.

A hundred yards from the border, I passed a dilapidated white house with a plaque in front of it. I stopped to read it.

EDGAR HAROLD LLOYD

MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENT FROM WWII

It was a poor monument, but a monument just the same, and the fact that a hero came from such an unassuming locale made me glad.

Like my transcendent experience of crossing from Wyoming to South Dakota, shortly after crossing the Arkansas state line, the landscape and architecture improved and soon I was walking past country club estates with beautiful manicured lawns and minicolonial mansions. I stopped for lunch in the town of Blytheville, where I ate southern fried chicken.

Unfortunately, not far past the restaurant, the scenery changed from beautiful mini-mansions to pawnshops and boarded-up buildings, making me think the place was only Blytheville for some. I walked another five miles and spent the night at the Best Western Blytheville Inn. That evening I turned on my cell phone to check for messages. No one had called.

CHAPTER

Twenty-five

To challenge the rules of conventionality is to open ourselves to an entirely new universe. One cannot pioneer new worlds from old trails.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next day felt like a rerun of earlier days, with seemingly endless cotton fields and, again, the mysteriously leaning power lines. The tilt of the poles was so perfectly symmetrical that I wondered if they had been purposely set in this manner or if their leaning was caused by some natural phenomenon, like the famed bell tower of Pisa. I vowed to ask someone when I got the chance, which settled my mind on the matter enough that I never actually got around to asking anyone.

I felt physically more able than I had in days and I was eager to get through this lonely stretch, so I walked nearly twenty-five miles until I reached the quaint little town of Wilson. Wilson had once been a thriving logging town, built around a huge sawmill and lumber yard which, decades before, had been closed down, cordoned off by an eight-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire.

What distinguished Wilson from the other towns along that stretch was the architecture—which, peculiarly, was more British than southern. I stopped for dinner at the Wilson Café and my server gave me some of the history. The town was founded by Robert E. Lee Wilson, who, after cutting down the trees, used the land for agricultural purposes. Wilson pretty much owned the town, but he was a generous public benefactor, and every town resident had use of the company doctor for just $1.25 annually, about $17 in today’s money.

Wilson’s son, Wilson Jr., and his bride, returned from a honeymoon to England fascinated by British architecture. Apparently their excitement was contagious, because shortly thereafter all the town’s buildings were either built or retrofitted with Tudor elements, giving the town a distinct and charming British appearance.

I finished my meal of split-pea soup and pork ribs, then camped the night behind a screen of trees in the park next to the restaurant.

CHAPTER

Twenty-six

For centuries the spiritually seeking have asked God for a sign. Perhaps that’s why there’s so many of them planted out front of southern churches.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next day marked two weeks since I’d resumed my walk. Unremarkably, I passed more cotton fields and walked through a string of small towns: Bassett, Joiner and Frenchmans Bayou (the latter town so named because no one could pronounce the French name the original French settler had given it).

My route led to Highway 77, which I reached just before sunset. I ate fried chicken and Baskin-Robbins ice cream I bought at a gas station, then stopped for the night at the small town of Clarkedale, making camp on the far side of the railroad tracks that ran parallel to the highway. I set my tent too close to the tracks, and when a train whistled in the middle of the night, I woke, all but certain my life was over. I slept fitfully the rest of the night, anticipating the advent of another passing train, which never came.

Early the next morning I reached a town with the biblically inspired name of Jericho. Appropriately, the first street I passed was Praise the Lord Boulevard. Perhaps not so appropriately, the first building I passed was the Jericho Liquor Store. I was always surprised to see more than one church in a town with so few residents, and this town contained many. I walked by a church sign that seemed especially apropos to my circumstance:

Are you on the right road?

I should write something about church signs. Walking from Seattle—the third-least Christian city in America—to the pious southern roads of the Bible Belt, one of the things that stood out to me (in addition to the sheer number of churches) was the phenomenon of church signs. Pretty much all of the churches had signs or marquees. Some were designed to lure people to their meetings, while others were sermons unto themselves. A few of them bordered on the bizarre.

As I had with the Wall Drug signs along Interstate 90 in South Dakota, I decided to dedicate a few pages of my diary to writing down some of these messages.

Walomart is not the only saving place.

God’s last name isn’t “damn”!

Stop, drop and roll won’t work in Hell.

You have one New Friend Request.
From Jesus. Confirm or Ignore.

Santa Claus never died for anyone.

Don’t make me come down there.—God.

Read the Bible.
It will scare the Hell out of you.

Yes, our A/C is out.
But there’s no A/C in hell either!

Free Coffee. Everlasting life.
Membership has its privileges.

Life is a puzzle.
Look here for the missing PEACE.

Forbidden fruits create many jams.

God is like TIDE soap.
He gets the stains out others left behind.

Why pay for GPS?
Jesus gives direction for free.

Honk if you love Jesus.
Text while driving if you want to meet Him.

What is missing from CH**CH? U R

There are some questions that can’t be answered by Google.

Be an organ donor.
Give your heart to Jesus.

Sign broke. Message inside.

People use duct tape to fix everything.
God uses nails.

Prayer isn’t the only thing that can bring you to your knees.

For all you do, His blood’s for you.

Then there were some that could only be described as bizarre.

Don’t let worries kill you.
Let the church help.

Jesus said, “Bring me that ass.”

To ERR is human. To ARRRRR is Pirate.

Face powder may get a man, but it takes baking powder to keep him.

God does not believe in Atheists.
Therefore Atheists do not exist.

Midnight Mass and Toga Party. B.Y.O.B.J.
(Bring your own Baby Jesus)

7 pm Hymn singing. Come prepared to sin.

Keep using my name in vain.
I’ll make rush hour longer.—God

Before noon I passed through Marion, a town with a sizable population, then changed roads to Interstate 55 leading to Memphis.

The road into Memphis wouldn’t have been easy even if I had been at my physical peak. I had a long and difficult day walking, more than twenty-six city miles. Despite my exhaustion, I kept on because I didn’t feel safe enough to camp anywhere. The outskirts of Memphis are a blighted landscape of gutted buildings and stockyards.

When I finally reached the city, I booked a room at the first hotel I came to, the Super 7 Inn Graceland on Brooks Road. I could tell that it was a rough area from the inch-thick, bulletproof partition between me and the angry-looking Indian man working at the reception counter.

Once I was in my room, I found Paige’s phone number and called, but my cell went straight to voicemail. I wondered if her grandmother had died. I left my phone number for when she was ready to talk. I wondered if I would ever hear from her again.

I was too exhausted to leave my room, so I ate an entire box of Pop-Tarts and fell asleep.

CHAPTER

Twenty-seven

Elvis may have left the building, but some of the audience have kept their seats.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning both my head and body ached, which I attributed to pushing myself too hard the day before. Still, I got up earlier than usual, as I planned to put in a normal day of walking but also wanted to take the time to see Graceland, Elvis Presley’s mansion, which had been turned into a museum.

I took a quick shower, dressed, then fled the dumpy little hotel.

It wasn’t hard to find Graceland. In Memphis, all roads lead to Elvis. At the first block I made a right on Elvis Presley Boulevard, then, following the abundant signage, walked a little more than a mile to Elvis’s mecca.

I have a confession to make, one that I fully realize may lessen me in your eyes. I don’t really like Elvis’s music. Before you abandon me on the side of Elvis Presley Boulevard, let me clarify my position. I’m not saying that I don’t like Elvis. I do. Actually, I like the idea of Elvis. And I think that if more people were completely honest, they’d admit the same thing. Elvis is much more than his music, he’s the image, the flash, the iridescent sparkle of rhinestones, the entire American dream wrapped up in a lip-curling, pelvis-gyrating, hunk-a-burnin’-love. Elvis succeeded because we wanted him to succeed—a God-fearing young man from a sharecroppers’ shack speaking out for a generation of American youth with an ingratiating “yes, sir,” and “yes, ma’am.” Of course the fact that women, young and old, found him insanely good-looking didn’t hurt any.

Only in walking through Memphis can one truly realize the extent of the adulation bestowed on the young man from Tupelo who sold a billion records and inspired ten thousand impersonators. Elvis was more than an entertainer—he was divinity in rhinestones. It would not surprise me in the least if someday, perhaps a century from now, a religion springs forth from his legacy. The Church of Elvis. Its followers would wear pompadours, dress in holy white leather rhinestone-studded robes, and resolve to “love each other tender.” The theological possibilities are endless. Hell would be referred to as the Heartbreak Hotel, and at funerals the Elvisian minister would say, “Brother Jones has left the building,” “He’s joined the choir,” or “He’s off to the Graceland in the sky.”

Graceland wasn’t open yet, so I ate breakfast at the adjacent Rock & Roll Café, then waited outside the park in a growing line of Elvis fans. When I got inside the visitor center, I bought a ticket for the whole tour, which included Graceland, Elvis’s auto museum, and his two airplanes.

Graceland is marvelously kitsch, preserved in full seventies splendor, with a black baby grand piano on white carpet, red fur, leopard skin, a jungle room with an indoor waterfall, and stained-glass peacocks. Words like “gaudy,” “garish,” “tacky” and “tasteless” come to mind.

McKale would have laughed herself silly. She would have said something like, “It looks like a Liberace nightmare.” I just thought it was cool. The experience was worth the admission. Heck, it was worth the walk to Memphis.

After the Graceland tour, I took the shuttle over to the auto museum and planes. The Elvis Presley Car Museum houses more than thirty of Elvis’s vehicles, including his famous pink Cadillac, Stutz Blackhawks, a 1975 Dino Ferrari, two Rolls-Royce (one black, one white), a six-door Mercedes limousine, Harley-Davidson motorcycles and the John Deere tractor Elvis drove at Graceland.

Elvis also had two airplanes. His largest, the Lisa Marie (named after his daughter), was a 1958 Corvair 880. Elvis spent nearly a million dollars remodeling the plane with a living room, conference room, sitting room and a private bedroom.

Not to be outdone by Graceland’s kitsch, the airplane has leather-topped tables and suede chairs, a television and telephone, gold-specked bathroom sinks and 24-karat gold-plated safety belts.

His second plane was a smaller Lockheed JetStar, less impressive, but also customized by Elvis with a yellow and green interior.

Finally, succumbing to the commercial allure of the shrine, I broke down and purchased a Graceland T-shirt, then set off, walking south down the bustling boulevard back to Highway 51 South. An hour later I crossed the state border into Mississippi.

CHAPTER

Twenty-eight

Some towns, like people, seem to attract history. I suppose this is as much a curse as it is a blessing.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Over the next six days I followed Highway 51 south to Batesville, then walked east on Highway 278. Tolkien wrote that easy times do not make good stories, which is why I have little to write about that part of my journey. The pleasant exception was my stop in Oxford, a historic town between Batesville and Tupelo.

Oxford is a picturesque college town, home of the University of Mississippi (aka “Ole Miss”) and laden with history.

During the Civil War, Oxford was invaded by Generals Sherman, Grant, and Andrew Jackson Smith, the latter of which left his mark by burning the buildings in the town square. Oxford is also the hometown of American writer and Nobel Prize Laureate William Faulkner, who based several of his novels on the small town.

In 1962, Oxford gained national attention twice, first when Faulkner died, then, later that fall, when Mississippi state officials attempted to prevent James Meredith, a black man, from entering the university.

U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered federal marshals to escort Meredith to school. In response, thousands of protestors rioted, damaging property and killing two men, one of whom was a French journalist sent to cover the affair.

President Kennedy responded by mobilizing the National Guard, which restored order to the small town. Meredith enrolled without further incident and eventually completed his degree, though he was constantly harassed and spent the rest of his time at the university with U.S. marshal bodyguards who escorted him from class to class.

Today, Oxford is a vibrant, charming town patterned after its British namesake, with a bustling town square complete with London-inspired double-decker tourist buses and red telephone booths.

Encouraged by the temperate weather, I spent a leisurely day in the town. I rode the double-decker bus, ate lunch in the town square at the Ajax Diner, browsed books at the famous Square Books bookstore, then spent the rest of the afternoon at Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s home turned museum. I thought it might be interesting to camp somewhere on the twenty-nine-acre estate, but discovered that the site was as well guarded as it was maintained. I spent the night closer to the highway.

I suppose it was destiny that my road south led through Elvis’s hometown of Tupelo, a route I traveled in reverse of the path the King took to global stardom. Five days from Memphis I exited the Appalachian Highway into Tupelo.

Tupelo is a sleepy, brittle town, little more than a memorial to Elvis’s life. Not surprisingly, its downtown was decorated with vinyl banners silk-screened with heroic-sized images of Elvis’s face.

Less heralded than the King’s birthplace is the site of the Civil War Battle of Tupelo, a standoff between Union General Andrew Jackson Smith and confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. At that point in the conflict, the tide had already turned on the South and it was the last time Forrest’s troops would see war.

It was dark when I reached the city center, so I ate dinner at Romie’s Barbeque and booked a room at the Hilton Garden Inn.

CHAPTER

Twenty-nine

Today I walked through Tupelo, Elvis’s birthplace. Those who wish a magnified life should remember that no one is born great. No one. Every entertainer began in the audience. This is encouraging. Elvis began life in a sharecropper’s shack. Lincoln, a log cabin. Jesus a manger.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning I ate the hotel’s complimentary breakfast, which, in addition to the standard fare, also included grits. After breakfast I walked to Elvis’s birthplace.

Elvis’s home was tiny, a sharecropper’s shack, about a tenth the size of the museum built to celebrate it. In its day the home cost $180 to construct and was built with borrowed money. The Presley family lived there until Elvis’s father, Vernon, was sent to jail for eight months for forging a check (he had altered the amount from $4 to $14) and the home was lost. Elvis repurchased the home and property the same year he bought Graceland.

I didn’t spend much time in Tupelo, just long enough to get the rest of Elvis’s story, then, avoiding the interstate, headed south on Highway 6 toward 278, then east, crossing into Alabama. My route led me through two of the most peculiarly named towns I had encountered, the neighboring municipalities of Guin and Gu-win. I sensed there was a story there, so I asked an employee of a Guin gas mart how the towns got their names. I was told that the town of Guin, with a population of less than a thousand, was seeking to annex the neighboring town of Ear Gap. (Really, who comes up with these names?) The owner of the drive-in theater in Ear Gap—a justifiably influential man in a town of less than a hundred—was about to put up a new sign at his theater, so he lobbied to change the town name to Gu-win, close enough to Guin that he wouldn’t have to change his sign if the annexation went through. The town’s name change succeeded, but the annexation failed.

Highway 278 intersected with Interstate 78, a busier, but better-constructed road, which took me southeast into the heart of Birmingham. I walked through Homewood (the site of Red Mountain with its famous Vulcan statue—the largest cast-iron statue in the world) and Vestavia Hills, stopping for the day in Hoover.

Birmingham is Alabama’s largest city and, like all metropolitan areas, wasn’t the easiest walking. Still, Birmingham has a welcoming southern ambience that made me glad to be there. I considered staying an extra day, but eventually decided to keep on walking.

If someone had told me what I would encounter on the next leg of my journey, I never would have believed them.

CHAPTER

Thirty

Those willing to trade freedom for certainty are certain to find the cure worse than the ailment.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

My next target destination, Montgomery, Alabama, was a little more than ninety miles south of Birmingham, which, health willing, I could make in four days at a reasonable pace. Departing Birmingham from Hoover, I walked twenty miles the first day to the little town of Pasqua, then, feeling strong, followed up with a grueling twenty-four miles to Clanton and almost sixteen miles the third day to a tiny dot on my map called Pine Flat. Actually, I didn’t quite make it to Pine Flat. As my day wound down, about a mile before I reached my day’s walking goal, I had one of the strangest and most frightening experiences of my entire walk—one that haunts me to this day.

In the flammeous, retreating light of a fading day, it took me a moment to be sure of what I was looking at. Or maybe it was just my difficulty in believing it. There, in the middle of nowhere, about twenty yards back from the road near a grove of dogwoods, a woman was tied by her wrists to a tree. She was young and reasonably attractive, in her mid-twenties, with long, golden hair that rested on her shoulders. She was partially obscured by the tree, and had it not been for the bright yellow T-shirt she wore, I might not have seen her at all.

I couldn’t make sense of the situation. The woman wasn’t struggling nor did she seem distressed. I briefly looked around to make sure there wasn’t anyone else nearby before I crept toward her.

When I was ten yards away, I asked, “Are you okay?”

I startled her. She looked at me warily. Silently.

After a moment I said, “You’re tied up.”

She didn’t respond.

“Do you need help?”

Still nothing.

I looked around me, then walked closer, wondering if she were perhaps deaf. “Would you like me to untie you?” I said, making gestures to my own wrists.

“Stay away,” she barked.

I hadn’t expected that response. “Why are you tied to a tree?”

“My master tied me here.”

“Your master?”

“Master El.”

I definitely hadn’t expected that response. “Is Master El going to untie you too?”

“If it is His will.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s because you are of this world.”

I stood there wondering what to do when someone said, “It wouldn’t matter if I cut her loose, she still wouldn’t leave.”

At the sound of the voice the woman gasped. I turned to see a tall, thick-lipped, redheaded man walking toward us. “. . . Would you, dear?”

The woman bowed as far as her constraints allowed. “Please forgive me, Master. This Earthman spoke to me.”

“You’re forgiven, KaEl.” He turned to me. “KaEl asked to be tied to the tree. Isn’t that true, KaEl?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Why would she do that?” I asked.

“She feared that in a moment of weakness her carnal self would rebel and she might run away, so she wisely asked for help. But I don’t think she really needs it. She’s been very obedient.”

“Thank you, Master.”

He turned to face her. “How goes your purification?”

“The flesh is weak, Master. But the spirit is willing.”

I looked back and forth between the two of them. Part of me wanted to bolt, the other part wasn’t willing to abandon the young woman. “Why is she tied to the tree?” I asked.

“I just told you,” the man said curtly.

I rephrased my question. “Why is she standing here?”

“She’s learning to overcome the carnal nature within. She’s on the last twelve hours of her five-day purification and submission.”

“Submission?”

“Each member of our society must purge the world from their heart by undergoing the purification and submission ritual. It’s a privilege. She forgoes earthly food for five days and drinks only blessed, holy water mixed with frankincense. During this time she cannot speak to anyone but her Master. Unfortunately, you interfered with her sanctification.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Don’t worry, I can absolve her of her commission. Our religion is not without mercy.”

“Religion? This is a church?”

“Not a church. The church. We are the church of the AhnEl.”

I looked at him quizzically. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“You have now.”

“What kind of church are you?”

A slight smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “We are a pearl of great price—a rarity of rarities. A church of truth.”

“What kind of truths?”

“The word is not plural. There is one truth, simple and unified, and millions of extrapolations, subterfuges and delusions.”

“Tell me about this . . . truth.”

He crossed his arms, his gaze leveling on me. “Are you prepared to receive it? I have neither the time nor inclination to cast pearls before swine.”

His arrogance surprised me. “Try me,” I said.

“If you have ears to hear, you may ask me anything.”

“Does your church believe in the Bible?”

“Do we believe in the Bible, or do we believe the Bible? Be specific.”

“Do you believe the Bible to be the word of God?”

He grinned. “Now that’s a question. The answer closest to your intent is yes. Of course we do. Not that it’s His word. It’s not. He didn’t write it. But we do know that it’s a record of His teachings and history. But, unlike the rest of the Bible-blind world, we actually understand the book.”

Again, I was taken aback by his arrogance. “You don’t believe that anyone, besides you, understands the Bible.”

“I’m quite certain of it,” he said. “For centuries, before Gutenberg came along, the clergy hid the Bible from the people. Today, the people shroud it in mystery and hide it from themselves.

“You see, the Bible must be understood in context. The Bible is true, at least it was in its earliest, unadulterated renditions. It’s common knowledge, or should be, that through time there have been tens of thousands of alterations to the Bible. In fact, there have been more words changed in the book than there are words. But, that aside, even assuming that it was all truth and preserved as such, it would still only be true within the realm of its authors’ experiences, since all writing is tainted by the context of the writer.”

“What do you mean?”

“Allow me to explain it this way. If an aborigine should find a radio and hear a voice coming from it, he might say that there is a spirit in the strange box. He isn’t being deceitful, he’s just explaining his experience from what he understands. Even if he were to break the radio open and examine its parts, he still couldn’t possibly understand what he sees—the circuit boards and transistors that make the sound possible. His explanation doesn’t make him a liar, it’s the best he can do given his cultural and educational limitations. The interpreters of the Bible are the same as this poor aborigine.”

After a moment I said, “That makes sense.”

The man smiled, pleased with my answer. “KaEl, could it be that we have found an Earthman who is more interested in truth than patching up the holes in his own leaking belief system?” He took a few steps toward me. “What is your name?”

“Alan.”

“I am Master El. You may call me El. Why are you wandering the world, Alan?”

I didn’t want to tell him. “I’m just walking.”

He examined my pack. “Where are you walking to?”

“Key West, Florida.”

“Where did you begin your journey?”

“Seattle.”

“You’ve walked the whole distance?”

I nodded.

“Then you are a man with stories. I would like to hear them. A man who has walked all day must be hungry. Come dine with me.”

For a moment I said nothing, hesitant to go anywhere with a religious nut who would tie someone to a tree. “I have food,” I said.

“I’m sure you do, but, if you’re eating from your pack, I guarantee I can do better. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll provide you with a hot meal and you can tell me of your travels. Agreed?” He put out his hand.

I just looked at him.

“Come on, Alan. You have nothing to fear. I may be sly as a serpent but I’m harmless as a dove. Come with me and I will feed you—body and, should you desire, soul.”

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“Just a mile or so from here,” he said pointing east. “I have a vehicle.”

I thought a moment more, then my curiosity got the better of me. “All right.”

“Splendid,” he said. “Splendid.” He turned toward the woman. “We will leave you to your quest. The celestial spirit abide with you, KaEl.”

She bowed her head. “Praise be to my Master.”

I followed him about twenty yards to his car, a brand-new Range Rover with the paper dealer plate still in the window. Kyle Craig had owned a similar model. I knew enough about the vehicle to know it was worth more than a hundred thousand dollars.

“You can lay your pack on the back seat,” he said.

I started feeling hesitant again, wondering what I had gotten myself into, but still I opened the back door and set my pack inside. I climbed into the passenger’s seat.

El started his car and pulled out of the grove onto a dirt road, which we followed back for nearly two miles.

“How far have you walked today?” El asked.

“About sixteen miles.”

“Is that how far you walk every day?”

“I usually try for twenty. Sometimes more.”

“You must be in very good physical condition.”

“Walking twenty-five hundred miles will do that,” I said.

“Indeed it would.”

We drove almost ten minutes before we came to a fenced compound consisting of a large, rustic-looking red barn, an A-framed house and two log buildings. A garden and a vineyard ran the length of the front fence.

There was a guard booth near the compound’s front entrance and the gate opened at our approach. El pulled the car to the front of the barn and put it in park, leaving the vehicle idling. A muscular young man wearing the same style of yellow T-shirt as the woman at the tree ran out of the building as if he’d been waiting for El’s return.

“This is where we’ll be dining,” El said.

The man stood at attention as El handed him the car keys. “Welcome home, Master,” the man said.

“Thank you, MarkEl,” he replied.

El walked around the side of the car where I was standing. “Follow me,” he said.

I opened the back door to retrieve my backpack.

“You can leave it,” El said. “It will be safe.”

I pulled it out anyway. “I would be more comfortable having it with me.”

He looked annoyed, but said, “Whatever makes you more comfortable.”

I shut the car door and the man pulled the vehicle away, disappearing around the side of the barn. Behind us the large gates shut. I wondered if I was a prisoner. I thought about the gun my father had given me, stowed in the bottom of my pack.

“This way,” El said, motioning to an open door.

I followed him inside. Even though the building looked rustic on the outside, inside it was clean and nicely furnished in a modern European style. The high-ceilinged room was spacious and open and three of its walls were painted with murals. The largest wall depicted the moai statues of Easter Island, while the other two were of the Egyptian Pyramids and the Mayan Pyramids of Tikal. The vaulted ceiling was painted dark blue, with constellations, and the exaggerated stars had eyeballs in their centers. The floor was hardwood, with areas covered by rugs.

Most surprising to me was that the room was filled with people, maybe forty or more, all dressed in the same yellow T-shirts. They all stared at us as we entered, looking curiously at me. I felt like a stray their “master” had brought home. Near the center of the room were two long dining tables. As we entered, El said to a young man with long, dark blue hair, “DarEl, bring us something to eat.”

“Yes, Master. What would please my Master?”

“Surprise us,” he said. The young man quickly disappeared behind a white door splattered with blue and red paint. “Come,” El said to me, gesturing. Every eye in the room was still on us as I followed him to the first table.

“Sit. Please,” he said.

We sat down on a long bench lined with red vinyl cushions.

A stunningly beautiful redheaded woman walked up to us and knelt in front of El. “How may I serve my Master?”

“Bring us something to drink,” El replied. “My usual. And some tea. What will you have?” he asked me.

“Just water,” I said.

She glanced at me, then back at El. “Yes, Master.” She leaned down and kissed his feet, then stood, hurrying off behind the white door. I watched in amazement. El seemed used to such adoration.

The man with blue hair quickly returned, carrying a bowl of red hummus and a stoneware plate piled with pita bread.

“Your service is accepted, DarEl.”

The man smiled. “Thank you, Master. Praise Master.”

El motioned to the bowl. “Eat. It’s quite good. It’s hummus with red chili.” He dipped a triangular piece of bread into the bowl, scooping up a dollop of hummus. “Tell me, Alan, before you were a sojourner, what did you do?”

Just then the redheaded woman returned carrying our drinks on a tray. She set a glass of red wine on the table in front of El, followed by a teacup and a teapot. She poured the tea, then put in a spoonful of sugar, stirred it, then looked at El. “May I serve my master anything else?”

“I am satisfied, my dear. Your service is accepted.”

“Thank you,” she said. She handed me a glass of water, knelt again and kissed El’s feet, then took the tray and walked away. I waited until El looked back at me.

“I was in advertising,” I said.

He nodded. “We are in similar fields then. We both are engineers of the mind. Are you a religious man?”

“Not particularly.”

“Do you believe in a God?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe in the Bible?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“You think so?” He gazed intently into my eyes. “Have you even read it?”

“Parts,” I admitted.

He shook his head condescendingly. “Parts,” he said. “Then you do not really believe it. Or, at least, that it might lead to your eternal salvation. Otherwise you would cling to it as an overboard sailor clings to a life ring.” He lifted his glass of wine and drank. “Unlike you, I’ve read the Bible more times than I can remember. I’m more fascinated by it each time I read it. As I said before, the truth of the Bible must be understood in context.”

He leaned toward me. “The Bible is as ancient as time, but more modern than ours. To the enlightened, the book describes spaceships and interstellar beings, rocket launches, weapons of mass destruction, holograms and, most importantly, the origin of the species.”

“What species?” I asked.

“Our species, of course. You see, the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, it’s all truth, contextually shaded, but as truthful as today’s newspaper.” He grinned. “Actually, given the state of today’s media bias, more truthful. In fact, DNA evidence has proven conclusively that our entire species descended from a single female. This isn’t conjecture, it’s proven fact. The idea that mankind gradually descended from monkeys is intellectually absurd. What do you think of that?”

“I think most scientists would disagree with you.”

He smiled. “Only the foolish ones. You see, scientists are just as dogmatic as the religious. Maybe more so. They rarely change their minds, they just die off and the next generation’s thinking emerges. The difference between them and me is that I have a viable explanation for the species and they don’t.

“You see, even the most ardent Darwinist must admit that there is a fundamental flaw in his belief when it comes to the evolution of human beings. For millions of years, hominids, a half-ape, half-man beast, roamed the world. Then suddenly, boom”—he flourished his hands dramatically—“there are homo sapiens. Intelligent, self-aware, language-speaking beings capable of building pyramids, advancing complex mathematical formulas, understanding advanced aerodynamics and mapping the universe. They even performed successful brain surgery. Yes, there was successful brain surgery more than a thousand years ago. We have the archeological evidence.”

He shook his head. “What a culture we live in. We are swimming in an ocean of information, and drowning in ignorance. In the late 1800s archeologists discovered the ancient Sumerian cuneiform texts, writings of earth’s oldest-known civilization. When scholars translated their writings, what they discovered surprised them. The Sumerian tablets actually agreed with the Old Testament; the genesis of the earth, the Garden of Eden, even the story of Noah and the Great Flood. Of course, even the oldest Chinese writings, carved into tortoiseshells, tell of the great flood. You do believe in Noah and his ark, don’t you?”

“Not literally,” I said.

His brow fell with disappointment. “If not literally, then how?”

“Noah’s ark isn’t feasible. You couldn’t carry that many creatures and their food in a boat ten times the size the Bible describes.”

El grinned. “You could, of course, if you were carrying their DNA.”

“DNA?”

“Exactly. Truth, my friend, is found in the gray space between religion and science.”

“DNA wasn’t discovered until the 1950s.”

“No, that’s when it was rediscovered. We modern humans want to believe that we are at the pinnacle of evolution and intellectual thought.” He said this with a mocking grin. “So we conveniently ignore everything counter to that belief, including architectural marvels that are thousands of years old that we cannot duplicate today. We are not more intelligent. Greater cultures have lived and died, not just in the universe, but on this planet.

“Did you know that in 1913 a farmer in a tiny South African town called Boskop discovered a skull unlike anything anyone had seen before? It was so unusual that it made its way to the top scientists and anthropologists around the world. What was so unusual about the skull was its dimensions. The skull was larger than ours, but its face was smaller. In fact, it was less apelike than we are. You might have seen these pictures—they’re the same face we see in people’s descriptions of today’s aliens.

“At first, scientists thought that these skulls might be an anomaly, an aberration, caused by a disease, like hydrocephalus, or some such thing. But this theory was quickly disproven when scores of similar skulls were discovered.

“These beings had brains twenty-five percent larger than ours. Scientists estimate that their average IQ would be close to 150, which means, on average, they were geniuses.” He leaned forward. “Do you understand what I’m saying? They were smarter than us. They were more advanced than us. We are an intellectual step backward.” He leaned forward again. “If you still haven’t caught my deeper meaning, let me spell it out for you, Alan. They were not us. We are not alone.” He studied my eyes for my reaction. “The evidence is everywhere, carved into the records of our earth. On every continent there are carvings and hieroglyphs of spacemen and spaceships. They are described in great detail in the Bible. Just open to Ezekiel.”

“You’re talking about aliens,” I said. “You believe in UFOs?”

“My belief system isn’t predicated on faith. I have knowledge. And the term UFO is a misnomer. The crafts you’re referring to aren’t really unidentified flying objects if they’ve been identified, are they?”

“Are you saying that you’ve seen them?” I asked.

“Seen them, touched them, with gloves, of course, they’re remarkably hot once they’ve traveled in our atmosphere, I’ve even been inside them. But it’s not the crafts—it’s the pilots I find most intriguing. Seeing them for the first time, if you don’t wet yourself, is a mind flush. Trust me, everything you think you know about the world is immediately down the toilet. The first time I saw them, it took me days to stop shaking.”

I just looked at him.

“Of course you’re skeptical. It’s safer that way. But believe me, they are as real as you or me.”

“You’re telling me that you’ve seen an alien from another planet?”

He smiled. “I’ve sat in councils with them. I would say that we are, intellectually, like children next to them, but I would be doing them a disservice in the representation. We are more like apes, our spiritual and mental development so rudimentary, it would be like enrolling a chimpanzee in advanced Harvard physics and theology classes. Their translators speak our crude language so exquisitely, it’s like listening to Mozart.” He leaned forward. “Let me teach you something, Alan. Have you ever wondered why it is that whenever there’s a major technical breakthrough, it seems to appear around the globe at the same time—advancements like the pyramids, the airplane, the electric filament or radio waves? That’s because when the Guardians believe our species is ready to advance the idea is released to us.”

“Guardians?”

“That’s what I call them, but that’s only because our inefficient language doesn’t have the proper title for them. They call themselves the Ahn, which roughly means ‘parent’ or ‘enlightened caregiver.’ But most people just call them God. The truth is, they are a collective—a fully cohesive society.”

“You’re telling me that Marconi and the Wright brothers spoke to aliens?”

El grinned. “Heavens, no. As brilliant as those men were, they weren’t ready. Even Moses had to view them through a holographic light wave transmission, which he, out of ignorance, called a burning bush. The Guardians don’t need to reveal themselves to teach us. They have their means of feeding our minds. It’s fascinating, really, a technologically produced telepathy. Think of it as a mental download. They’ll seed a half dozen people at the same time with the same revelation, and let them compete to come out first with the invention—much the same way a farmer will overplant his field to ensure a bountiful harvest.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Alan, I know this is difficult for you to accept. Changing a paradigm is never easy. But think about it. There is nothing more globally ubiquitous than the belief in extraterrestrial existence. The president of Russia spoke of aliens living among us, President Kennedy was caught on tape talking about secret alien captures, even Jimmy Carter publicly claimed to have seen a flying saucer. What surprises me is that you, or anyone else, would be surprised. Or, in this age of ‘reason,’ insist on living in denial.

“It is, perhaps, the only common ground that religionists and scientists share, both fighting to defend the indefensible argument that we are alone in the universe. And why? Because they don’t want to know the truth.”

“Why wouldn’t they want to know the truth?” I said. “It’s in their best interest.”

El laughed. “Is it? Forgive my amusement, but for an advertising man you have a poor understanding of the human mind, Alan. People have always preferred mystery to truth. Most people don’t even know the truth of their own beliefs. Ask them about the inner workings of their own religion or their religion’s history and they pull their heads in like turtles. It’s understandable. Religion is like sausage—it’s best not to know what goes into it.” He laughed again. “But there are those who are not afraid of the truth. People like you and me. It is our obligation and burden to act as shepherds to guide the flock.”

Just then, the blue-haired man brought out our dinner. Sliced turkey breast, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes and gravy. I was as glad for the distraction as I was for the food.

“Ah, time to eat,” El said.

“Looks like Thanksgiving dinner,” I said.

“We are thankful,” El said. “Our path is the way of gratitude. Please, allow me to give thanks for this food.”

He raised his hands above his head and said in a loud voice, “Our God, who looks favorably upon thy chosen vessels, we praise Thee for thy goodness and power and our knowledge of Thee, the only truth, the only way, the only salvation. In the name of He who is worthy of worship throughout the universe, Jesus the Christ, Amen.”

A chorus of “amens” filled the room. El looked at me. “Please, partake. The food is delicious. DarEl was a chef at the Four Seasons New York before he was enlightened.”

El was right, about the food at least. Everything was exceptional. Thankfully, my host allowed me a moment to eat in silence. As I ate, I observed what was going on around the room. There was a bank of tables near one side where a dozen or more people were sitting with headphones on. There were others reading, all from the same book, a hardcover volume with a bright red and gold cover. A few others were cleaning. Everyone was busy.

A few minutes later I pointed to the group of people with headphones. “What are they listening to?”

El turned around to look at them. “Sermons. They listen for three to four hours a day. Usually after they finish their chores.”

“Whose sermons?”

“Mine, of course.”

“And the red books?”

“The Celestial Scripture. Prophecies I’ve received, including those of the last days before Christ returns and the earth receives its nuclear baptism of fire.”

“Then you believe Christ will return?”

“Of course we do. And what a sight it will be, when legions of crafts in the thousands and tens of thousands descend upon the earth, ushering in a new age of power and glory. The AhnEl will be there to assist in the transference of that power. Then we will be called up to our rightful place, and the kings and queens of this earth will be as our servants and our enemies will be as dust.”

I gestured to the people in the room. “These people?”

“They shall rule the world.”

“Where are they from?”

“The earth, of course.”

“I assumed that.”

“Assume nothing,” El said. “They are the children of light. They are like the first stars in the twilight sky before nighttime is upon us and the fullness of the galaxy is seen in all its brilliance. But these are only a few of the enlightened. I have thousands of followers, in dozens of countries. I have nearly a hundred ordained missionaries out gathering the pure in heart, those not so darkened by their lusts and fears to hear truth. They are out seeking the tinder that is ready for the spark of enlightenment to blaze in their hearts and souls.”

“These followers will do whatever you say?”

“I am their teacher and representative to the Guardians. Though, truthfully, I am merely a substitute teacher, filling in until the real teachers arrive—the Gods hasten that day! They could step in anytime. They are all around us. They have been for millennia.”

“Your followers seem . . .” I hesitated.

El squinted. “They seem what?”

“. . . Brainwashed.”

His expression turned fierce. “Do you even know what that term means?”

“People whose brains have been coercively washed clean by some outside force,” I said.

“. . . And filled by another? Or should I say, programmed by another. You, of all people, should not be casting stones,” he said, his voice ripe with disgust. “An advertising man.”

“Our job was to inform,” I said.

He laughed. “Is that what you told yourself?” He leaned on one elbow. “Your job was to change behavior to profit your clients. Am I right?”

“Yes,” I relented.

“My motives are much more pure. I’m informing these people of the truth and providing them a practical structure in which the truth can flourish. Tell me, do these people look unhappy?”

I had to admit that they looked content. “No.”

“Their service to me, is it beneath them?”

“Some would say—”

He pounded his fist on the table. “Don’t patronize me. I’m not talking about some ambiguous cultural psychobabble. What do you say, Alan?”

His sudden outburst unnerved me. “Making others serve you seems self-serving.”

He looked at me for a moment, then said with a softer voice, “Fair enough. But it is in losing themselves that they find themselves. It is in their service that they find use and meaning. Do you think they are suffering?”

“I don’t know.”

He tilted his head. “Then why don’t you ask them? AshEl,” he said, motioning over a young, strawberry-blond woman. She walked over to us, knelt at El’s feet and kissed them. “Yes, Master.”

“This Earthman wants to know if you are suffering.”

“Suffering?”

“Yes, he’s afraid you might be suffering here,” he said. “You may speak to him.”

She looked at me with a vacant expression. “Why would you think I’m suffering? Outside these walls the world is full of confusion and hate. For the first time in my life I feel peace.” She turned back to El. “My master is to be praised for my salvation.”

“Tell the Earthman about your life in the dark.”

“I was an exotic dancer and an alcoholic. For the first time in my life I’m free.” She again kissed El’s feet.

He ran his hand over the crown of her head. “Thank you, AshEl. You may wait for me in my pod.”

A large smile crossed her face. “Yes, Master. Thank you, Master.”

She glanced back at me, then ran off.

“Suffering?” El said. “She’s never been happier.”

“What about the woman I met by the road?”

“Her sanctification is the most important thing she’s done in her previously inconsequential life, as it is for all of them. I take their mental and spiritual anarchy and organize it, even as the Gods organized the chaos of space into this world and universe. I’m giving them order. And with it, joy, freedom and peace.”

“I can see peace,” I said, “maybe even a sense of happiness, but freedom?”

“Definitely freedom. Freedom from the burden of choice. The human mind, cynical as it may be, is seeking to be controlled. And, when you understand the mechanics of the human brain as the Guardians do, it is a very easy thing to control. Even one as intelligent as yours.”

I said nothing and he looked at me with a dark, wry stare. “Well done, Alan. You’re as wise as I thought.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You didn’t say that you couldn’t be controlled. Ironically, the most susceptible to mind control are precisely those who don’t believe they are susceptible.”

My head was hurting. “Are you saying that your followers will do anything you say?”

He looked at me for a moment, then said, “Anything and everything. As they should.”

“Would they kill for you?” I immediately regretted asking the question, realizing that I might have endangered myself.

His eyes turned dark. “I would not ask.” Then, to my relief, his expression softened. “Enough of this. How was your dinner?”

I breathed out. “It was good.”

“It was exquisite,” he said. “I am fatigued. Do you have any other questions?”

“Just one. Do you believe in the devil?”

“Of course. But, again, we actually understand him. Actually, them. Like God, Satan is a group. More of a movement, a faction if you will.”

“Explain,” I said.

“The Guardians are democratic. They support the Father, Alpha and Omega, as their Supreme Leader. But, in all societies, there are dissenters. Especially when it comes to the issue of homo sapiens. The Guardian Supreme, or Godhead, believes that mankind has intrinsic value. They believe, if you will, in our potential. But not all of the Ahn are of the same opinion. Many, especially the Satanists, believe that humans are beasts, only good for servitude. They believe that too much knowledge has been given to humans already, wasted on us. They, like the Guardians, have access to the same telepathic technology. They use it to tempt us to defy the Guardians and to follow our baser, animal instincts, proving that we are, truly, primitive beings—something not easily disputable given the current state of humanity.”

“Tempt?”

“Yes, temptation. Think of how inspiration works. It is simply the enlightening of the mind with an idea. Isn’t temptation just inspiration with a negative bend?

“We are living in a spiritual war zone, Alan. Deny it at your own peril. Let he who has eyes see, the war rages on and soon everyone must choose a side. Freedom or eternal bondage. That is the only question. So let me ask you, Alan. Which side are you on? Will you join us? Or will you continue to wander, as you have, lost in a dark, confused world?”

“You’re asking me to stay?”

“I’m inviting you to stay. At least for the night.”

I hesitated. “I don’t think so.”

“Come on, Alan. Where will you go tonight? Sleep in the woods somewhere? It’s late.”

I looked around, weighing my options, not sure that I had any. I still wasn’t sure what El was capable of and I was definitely outnumbered. If I needed to escape, it would be better at night. “All right,” I said.

El tapped his glass with his fork and the blue-haired man appeared. “DarEl, please show Mr. Alan to a suitable pod. Show him the restroom facilities as well.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Thank you for dinner,” I said to the young man.

“It was my pleasure,” El replied. “A most enjoyable conversation.”

DarEl showed me to the bathroom, which was unisex with no stalls and no locking door, then he took me to a “pod,” as they called it, a small bunkroom with six beds, just off the main room where we had dined. I claimed a bottom bunk and slid my pack under the bed. I didn’t sleep. Even though El hadn’t threatened me, I still felt like a prisoner. The entire experience was surreal. I wondered if this was how all of El’s followers had begun. Had they initially been as skeptical as I was? Frankly, I was terrified. I knew that I had to get out of there.

Five others came into the room during the night and fell asleep. I just lay there quietly, waiting for something to happen. I wasn’t disappointed.

CHAPTER

Thirty-one

The shackles of belief, when reinforced by fear, are difficult to break free from and rarely done.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The sound I heard was a strained, painful whimpering, like the muffled cry of a wounded animal. I checked my watch. It was three thirty-six in the morning. No one in the pod stirred. I reached into my pack and felt for my gun. I didn’t take it out, I was just reassuring myself of its presence. Then I got out of bed and crept to the door and looked out.

It was dark in the main room, illuminated only by the moonlight through the windows. In the far corner, near the audio tables, a woman was kneeling on the ground. Her hands were clasped around the back of her neck and her forehead was pressed to the rug. I looked around to make sure we were alone, then stole out, crossing the room. I knelt down next to her.

“Are you okay?” I whispered.

She jumped, startled by my voice, but, like the woman tied to the tree, didn’t answer.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She hesitated again, then, with her face still to the ground, whispered, “I’m being punished.”

“Why?”

“I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

“It’s okay.”

For a moment she lay there, struggling with what to do. Then she looked up at me. She was young, probably not even twenty. She had short, sandy brown hair and dark brown eyes, large with fear. “Who are you?”

“You can trust me,” I said.

She swallowed. “I asked to see my sister. I shouldn’t have asked. So I’m being punished.”

“Why can’t you see your sister?”

“She’s not a believer. It’s for my own good.”

“No it’s not,” I said. I put my hand on her back and she flinched. I looked to where her blouse was raised over her waist. There were red welts. “They did this to you?”

“I deserved my punishment.”

“You need to get out of here,” I said.

“I can’t,” she said. “Master El said I can’t leave.”

“I’ll get you out of here.”

She hesitated for a moment, then looked into my eyes. “You will?”

“Yes. But we have to leave now.”

“The gate is guarded.”

“We’ll get out,” I said. “Come on.”

We silently crept back to my room. I took the gun out of my pack, checked the safety, then shoved a magazine into it and put it in my trousers. Then I put on my pack. The young woman sat on the floor next to me, shaking with fear.

“What’s your name?” I whispered.

“EmEl.”

“What’s your real name?”

“My real name?”

“Your earth name,” I said.

She hesitated and I wasn’t sure if she’d forgotten it or was afraid to say it. “Emily,” she said slowly, breathing out. “It’s been a while since I’ve said that name.”

“I’m Alan. Just do what I say and stay close to me.”

We crouched down next to the door until I was sure no one was awake, then we crossed the main room to the entrance I’d come in through. I turned to Emily. “Is there an alarm?”

“I don’t know.”

“Be ready to run.” I unbolted the door, then slowly opened it. Nothing. We quickly slipped out and I shut the door behind us. About five yards from the door we must have tripped a motion detector as several floodlights turned on.

“Hurry,” I said, taking her hand. The gate was closed and we ran to the guard booth. A man was standing inside reading the red book. There was a red button on the wall next to him.

“Open the gate,” I said.

My voice startled him. “What are you—”

“Open the gate,” I repeated.

“I can’t do that. Not without Master’s permission.”

I took out my gun and leveled it at him. “Then we’ll do it ourselves. Step away from the button.”

He still didn’t move.

“You’re illegally keeping us here. I’m within my rights to shoot you and open it myself. Either open it now or raise your hands and step back. Don’t make me shoot you.”

He hesitated just a moment, then raised his hands above his head and stepped back.

“Emily, push the button.”

She looked at the man fearfully.

“If he touches you, I’ll shoot him.”

The man raised his hands higher. “I won’t touch her. Please don’t shoot me.”

Emily stepped past him and pushed the button. There was a mechanical click and the gate began to open.

“I’m sorry, BarEl,” she said to the man.

“Don’t follow us,” I said. “And don’t sound an alarm.”

The man swallowed but didn’t move, paralyzed by fear. “It’s no use running,” he said. “The Guardians will find you.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I replied.

I took Emily’s hand and we ran out the gate, following the dirt road El and I had driven in on. The moon lit our path and I kept us moving at a brisk pace. Emily was struggling to walk and, even with my pack, I was faster than she was. We had gone about two hundred yards when she asked to rest.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She was breathing heavily but nodded. A flood of lights turned on at the compound.

“We’ve got to hurry,” I said. I grabbed her hand again and we ran as fast as we could.

Emily kept looking back. “They’re coming!” she said.

I turned to see car lights coming up the road.

“This way,” I said. I took her hand, and we ran off the road into the trees. Fortunately the entire drive was lined with forest. We went about twenty feet into the woods, until I was confident that we were invisible in the shadows, and squatted down. I took off my pack and checked my gun, then just sat on my haunches, waiting.

About two minutes later a minivan caught up to where we’d left the road. It was moving slowly, maybe five miles an hour. The passengers in the car had utility flashlights and were panning them around on both sides of the road.

“Stay low,” I whispered.

Emily began to whimper.

I put my arm around her. “Everything will be okay. But I need you to be really quiet right now.”

She nodded, even though her entire body was shaking with fear.

I was pretty keyed up as well. I didn’t know what these guys were capable of, but from what I’d seen, likely anything El told them to do. I was sure of what I was capable of. If they came at us, I would shoot them. I’d been attacked before, and I wasn’t going to let it happen again. And this time I had someone else to protect. I hoped it didn’t come to that.

The car drove on past us until the red glow of their tail lights disappeared from our view. I figured we were still at least a mile from the main road. If they didn’t come back, I’d have to assume they were watching the road and we’d have to hike through the forest to the highway. I wondered if they would be waiting for us.

“What do we do?” Emily asked.

“We just wait,” I said. “They won’t find us. Not here.”

We sat there for about a half hour. The car never returned. Emily cradled her knees with her arms and rocked back and forth nervously.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She looked pale. “BarEl was right. The Guardians can find us. They can track our DNA from space.”

“El told you that?”

She nodded.

“Have you ever seen the Guardians?” I asked.

“No. But Master El has.”

“No he hasn’t,” I said.

Ten minutes later I said, “Wait here.” I crept out to the edge of the trees. Nothing. It occurred to me that they might not be looking for us at all, but may have just gone for the woman tied to the tree. That would make sense. Especially since BarEl had probably told them I had a gun. I went back to Emily. “They’re gone. Are you tired?”

She nodded.

“We should get some sleep,” I said. “Then start out in the morning.”

“Okay,” she said.

“How is your back?” I asked.

“It’s okay.”

“Really?”

“It kind of hurts.”

“I have something for it.” I took my hygiene bag out of my backpack and brought out a tube of Neosporin. “Let me put this on you.”

She turned away from me and lifted her shirt. I gently rubbed the salve across her welts. When I was done, I put the ointment away and she turned back to me. She still looked scared.

“I have a phone,” I said. I pulled it out of my pack and turned it on. “We can call your sister.”

Emily didn’t respond.

“What’s her number?” I asked.

She just sat there staring at the phone, as if she were afraid of it. “In the morning,” she said. “I’ll call in the morning.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then let’s get some sleep.” I put the phone back in my pack, then led her deeper into the forest. I unpacked my tarp and mat and laid them both out behind a thicket of scrub oak. I brought out my sleeping bag and laid it over the tarp. “You can use my sleeping bag,” I said.

“What about you?”

“I’m okay. I’ve got the mat and my coat.”

She took off her shoes, then climbed into the bag.

I lay down on the ground with my head against my pack. “Emily, how did you get involved with this group?”

“I met a boy at a dance club.”

“He was a member?”

“Yes. He was really sweet.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s a missionary. So I don’t see him.”

“Did he bring other girls here?”

She didn’t answer.

“Were you lonely?”

“Yes.” I could hear her softly crying. After a moment she said, “Alan?”

“Yes?”

“What if Master El’s right?”

“He’s not.”

“But how do you know? He said someone would come and try to take me away. And you came.”

“Every cult says that,” I said. “The first rule of a cult is to make you afraid of the rest of the world. Do you think that’s what God wants? To make you hate the rest of His children?”

“But God’s angry at us.”

“Why is He angry at us?”

“Because we don’t do what He tells us to do. He hates us.”

“If you had a child, would you hate her because she didn’t always do the right things?” When she didn’t answer, I said, “No, you wouldn’t. You’d love her. And because you’re an adult, you’d understand her mistakes and want to help her, for her good. That’s who God is. If He made us flawed just to condemn us, what does that say about Him?”

She looked even more distressed. After a minute she said, “I have a child.”

I looked at her. “Where?”

“My sister has her.”

“You need to go back to her.”

“KarEl won’t love me with a child.”

“Is KarEl the boy who recruited you?”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t really love you,” I said. “He had an ulterior motive.”

She sobbed softly for a few minutes. When she finally stopped, she said, “I’ve made a mistake.”

“We all make mistakes,” I said. “Everything will be okay. I promise.”

After a moment she said, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now let’s get some sleep.”

She lay back and closed her eyes. I watched her for a few minutes, then rolled back over and fell asleep.

It was late morning when I woke. My head ached, and I felt drained from the night before. The sound of insects filled the humid, morning air. But that’s all I heard. I bolted up. Emily was gone. I looked around. There was no sign of her anywhere. She had gone back.

I remembered her words from the night, “I’ve made a mistake.” I completely misunderstood her. How stupid could I be?

I folded up my tarp and sleeping bag and stowed them in my pack, then, holding my gun, walked down the road back out to Highway 31. When I got to the highway, I returned my gun to my pack. No one was there.

CHAPTER

Thirty-two

Sometimes we can only find ourselves by first losing ourselves.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

My next stop, in Prattville, was eighteen miles away. For the first few hours I was anxious that El might send someone after me and, as traffic was light along this section of highway, the sound of each approaching car filled me with trepidation. But nothing ever happened.

All day long I thought about Emily. I couldn’t get the fearful look in her eyes out of my mind. I wondered what El would do to her once she returned. I should have been smarter. I had underestimated the pull the cult had on her and the thickness of those chains of fear and belief. I should have made her call her sister. I should have known that she might go back. What if she had been my daughter or sister or wife? What if she was Falene? Would I go back then? Of course I would. I felt guilty for failing her and cowardly for leaving her now. I might have been her only chance for freedom.

Spurred on by my anxiety and anger, I made good time, stopping only a few minutes for lunch by the side of the road. I reached Prattville by 5 P.M. and ate dinner at Fat Boy’s Bar-B-Que Ranch on 1st Street. For the first time in years, I drank too much beer. Then I booked a room at the Days Inn on Main Street and went to bed early.

The next morning I woke feeling hungover. I felt even worse emotionally. I felt guilty and lonely. I dialed information and was connected to the Alabama office of the FBI. I spent about forty-five minutes telling an agent about my experience with the cult and Emily. Though the agent seemed genuinely sympathetic, he warned me that cases like this generally didn’t turn out well.

“The victims rarely cooperate against the group or its leader,” he said. “And it’s nearly impossible to prove someone’s being held against their will if they’re unwilling to leave.” He added wryly, “If psychological manipulation was a crime, my wife would be on death row.”

Still, he agreed to look into the group. I gave him my phone number and hung up.

Montgomery was only thirteen miles from Prattville, and I reached it before noon. I stopped for lunch, but no longer. Montgomery is a beautiful town with a rich history, but I had no desire to stick around and see the sights. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was the darkness I’d carried with me since leaving the cult. Or maybe it was just that after walking more than twenty-five hundred miles, I was just a few weeks from Florida. I suppose the closer the magnet is to steel the stronger the attraction.

At lunch I casually glanced over my map, then, for the first and only time on my walk, I started off in the wrong direction. Instead of traveling east on Highway 82, I went south on 53. I had walked nearly three hours before I realized my mistake. Had I been in a car, I would have just turned around—but I wasn’t in a car and miles, on foot, are hard-earned. After looking at my map again, I decided to continue on the route I’d taken, placating my mistake with fatalism: maybe there was a reason I’d gone this way.

Over the next five days my improvised route took me through a series of quiet, meandering roads—many through quiet little neighborhoods—south to Orion, then east at Troy to Clayton and Eufala before reconnecting with Interstate 82. In the end, I probably would have saved miles if I had just walked back to 82, but the road I’d chosen was worth the extra steps. The towns and suburbs I passed through fulfilled my expectations of a South I had hoped to find—a place still slow and rich, with southern drawls as thick as praline, faded Coca-Cola signs, and hand-drawn placards advertising homemade pecan brittle and boiled peanuts.

On one of those long stretches I remembered something Falene had said to me a few months after coming to work at the agency. We were pulling an all-nighter on a campaign for a brand of clothing called Mason-Dixon. Falene’s job was to keep us swimming in coffee. It was probably three or four in the morning, and we were getting pretty punchy when she said to me, “I should have been born a southern girl.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because I’m a rebel.”

Maybe it was the hour, but I laughed for several minutes.

Thirty-nine days and seven hundred miles from St. Louis, I crossed the Chattahoochee River at Eufala into Georgia. I walked twenty-three miles along the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway and camped for the night just a mile west of Cuthbert. I was in a dark mood, and it wasn’t until I was making camp that I realized why. It was the one-year anniversary of McKale’s death.

CHAPTER

Thirty-three

I’m beginning to pick up the language down here. “Jeet?” means, “Have you eaten?” A “far truck” is useful in putting out “fars.” “Bard” is past tense of borrow. There are four “tars” on a truck and “did” is the opposite of alive. Shopping carts are “buggies,” buttons are “mashed” not pushed, and “Wal-Mart’n’ ” is a pleasant pastime.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Cuthbert, Georgia, is famous for three past residents: former world heavyweight boxing champion Larry Holmes, former NFL defensive lineman Rosey Grier (who went on to work as a bodyguard for Robert F. Kennedy and was responsible for subduing Kennedy’s shooter, Sirhan Sirhan), and Lena Baker, the only woman ever executed in the Georgia electric chair. There’s a story there.

Lena Baker, an African-American woman, was born in 1901 in a slave cabin to a family of sharecroppers. She spent her life in dire poverty. At the age of forty-four she was taking in laundry to help support her mother and three children when a local gristmill owner and heavy drinker named Ernest Knight broke his leg and hired Baker to care for him.

Soon after taking the job, Knight, twenty-three years older than Baker, began forcing himself on her. When she tried to flee, Knight locked her in his gristmill. Baker escaped but was tracked down by Knight, who beat her and threatened to kill her if she left again. After weeks of living as his slave, she decided she couldn’t take it anymore and one night, when he came for her, they “tussled” over his pistol. A shot was fired and Knight fell dead.

Baker was brought to trial under Judge William “Two Gun” Worrill, and it took the all-white jury less than a half hour to reach a verdict of murder. Baker was taken to Reidsville State Prison, where she was kept in the men’s section until, less than a month later, she was executed in “Old Sparky,” making her the only woman in Georgia to ever die in an electric chair. Her last words were, “What I done, I did in self-defense. God has forgiven me. I have nothing against anyone. I picked cotton for Mr. Pritchett, and he has been good to me. I am ready to go. I am ready to meet my God.”

As I approached Cuthbert that morning, the city looked incapable of such a deed. It looked kind and welcoming and today I’m sure it is. Besides, I always liked a town where the first thing you see is a baseball field. I stopped for breakfast at the Ranch House Restaurant, drawn in by their advertised “Buffet Every Day.”

Cuthbert is an old southern town and had survived the war with some of her colonial homes intact. The city center had a roundabout, a large clock tower, a tea parlor, and the not-so-vintage Dawg House, a hot dog emporium.

Leaving the town, I saw something I had never seen before, a billboard cautioning travelers of an approaching intersection.

Dangerous Intersection Ahead

There must have been more than a few accidents, because, in addition to the billboard, I passed four more warning signs, three with flashing lights, all contributing to my general excitement to cross the “intersection of doom.”

To my dismay, the crossroad looked identical to any other intersection. I walked through it without even stopping, wondering what all the excitement was about.

The road from Cuthbert took me along miles of pecan trees intermingled with fields of cotton. Shortly before noon I stopped at a lone, ramshackle roadside store called Bruce’s Country Corner. An A-framed sign out front read:

Cooking Today:
Muscadine & Scuppernong Jelly

From what I could see, I was the store’s only customer, so I lay my pack down on the open porch and walked inside. Just inside the door was a woman sitting near a cash register reading a romance novel. She looked up as I entered. “Mornin’.”

“Good morning,” I said. I glanced around a moment, then asked, “What is muscadine and scuppernog?”

“Scuppernong,” she said. “They’re grapes. They grow wild around here.”

I surveyed the store, a long, narrow hall of a place stacked with jams, jellies and preserves, handmade wooden knickknacks, pecans, pecan logs, pecan ice cream, and pecan candies.

“There’s more in back,” the woman said. She pointed toward a narrow door as her eyes returned to her book.

I went to explore. The items in the back room were as eclectic as those in the front: Christmas decorations, saddles, farm implements, hard candies, boiled peanuts, and, most peculiar, carved walrus tusks and whale teeth. I asked the woman about the latter and she said, “Once a year a man comes by and trades them for pecans.”

She offered me a sample of pecan brittle that, in all honesty, was the best I had ever had. I purchased a half pound, then, before leaving, doubled it.

My afternoon walk was pleasant, made more so when a parade of antique and vintage cars drove past me. There were Model A’s, Model T’s, Studebakers, LaSalles, Thunderbirds, Cadillacs—eye candy, all of them. Most of the drivers were men my father’s age or older.

I reached the town of Dawson around six. I learned something about myself in Dawson. Priding myself, as most Seattleites do, for being racially “color blind,” I realized that it’s easier when you’re in the majority. This was the first town I’d walked through where I hadn’t seen a single other white man. Outside of my foreign travels, for the first time in my life I truly felt like a minority.

I stopped at a gas station for bottled water and on the way out asked a man idling near the gas pumps in a Dodge pickup truck if he knew of a nearby hotel.

“You want the cheap one or the special one?” he asked.

“The cheap one,” I replied.

“Hop in,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride.”

I put my pack in the truck’s bed and climbed inside.

As he pulled out of the station he asked, “Where you walking from?”

“Seattle.”

He looked at me like I was pulling his leg. “You come all the way from Seattle?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why would you go and do a thing like that?”

I looked at him for a moment, then said, “I guess I was bored.”

He laughed the rest of the way to the hotel, a Budget Inn, where he wished me well on my journey. I thanked him, retrieved my pack from the back of his truck, then went inside. The rooms were just $24.99, and I ate a dinner of a T-bone steak and halibut at the Main St. Steak & Seafood restaurant, then went back to my hotel and to bed.

It took me two days to reach my next destination, the town of Sylvester. Nuts are big business in Sylvester, and the town has proclaimed itself the Peanut Capital of the World, although it was pecan stores and brokerages that lined the main thoroughfare.

I ate dinner at a Pizza Hut and booked a room at the Worth Inn, a small hotel with Pepto-Bismol pink room doors. The hotel had a Laundromat and I spent most of the night eating pecan brittle while doing my laundry and reading from a paperback book someone had left in the laundry room, The Secret Life of Bees by author Sue Monk Kidd. I thought it curious that the abandoned book was autographed, until I read on the book’s back flap that Sylvester was Kidd’s hometown.

CHAPTER

Thirty-four

I’m not a fan of boiled peanuts. Just because you can boil something doesn’t mean you should.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next day I passed through the tiny township of Poulan—a town famous for giving out speeding tickets. Poulan was followed by the peculiarly named town of Ty Ty, where, at a small grocery mart, I tried my first muscadine grape. A muscadine is larger than any grape I’d ever seen; in fact, it looked more like a small plum than a grape, but it didn’t taste as good as either.

That evening I reached Tifton, a tidy town with all the amenities of home. I ate dinner at the Hog-N-Bones Bar-B-Q & Breakfast and stayed at a Hilton Garden Inn. The hotel had a nice hot tub and swimming pool and I made good use of both.

I started the day with breakfast at the Waffle House. I decided that if I ended up going back to Seattle, I would think about buying a franchise. Who doesn’t like waffles?

It was a hot day, and I stopped at noon for a swim in Hardy Creek, then walked on to a town called Enigma, where I stopped for lunch at the Corner Café. I thought the town’s name curious, so I asked my server about it. Even though she didn’t live in the town, it wasn’t the first time she’d been asked and she was prepared.

Originally the town was called Gunn and Weston, until the city’s founder, a man named John Ball, decided that wasn’t a real name, so he presented two new names to state officials—Lax and Enigma. Astonishingly, Lax, Ball’s first choice, was already taken, so the town was named Enigma. When he was asked why he chose the name Enigma, Ball replied, “I guess because it was a puzzle what to name it.”

That night, as I began looking for a place to camp along the highway, I found an old, abandoned building hung with a faded sign:

C&C Woodcraft

The front door was slightly ajar, so I pulled it open and went inside. The building had a large front room with several smaller rooms in back. Surprisingly, the interior of the shop was partially intact, with hanging blinds, chairs and bookshelves. Most peculiarly, there was an upright piano in the corner.

The windows were almost all broken out and the place was full of garbage, which was true of every abandoned property I had passed through since Seattle. What it is that possesses people to throw garbage in these buildings I can’t figure out. Were they just carrying their garbage around with them, saw a building and thought, There’s an old building. I think I’ll throw my garbage in there! Then again, back in Wyoming, people went out of their way to throw garbage into the beautiful Morning Glory Pool in Yellowstone National Park, so maybe people are just crazy with their garbage.

I cleared an area on the floor next to the piano, laid out my mat and sleeping bag and went to sleep.

Physically, I was getting better. It had been more than a week since I’d had a headache of any concern and my legs and ankles didn’t hurt anymore. I still tired more easily than I had pre-surgery, but even that was manageable. The next two days I averaged twenty-two miles and camped out both nights, nearly depleting my food and water. Fortunately, I was just a half day from the town of Waycross and the famous Okefenokee Swamp.

The swamp presented a problem. The Okefenokee is the largest “black water” swamp in North America, covering nearly a half million acres, or six hundred square miles. Waycross marked the beginning of the north border of the swamp and was the last major town along the highway until Folkston, which was more than thirty miles south. I wouldn’t reach Waycross until noon. But even if I had started my day in town, I’d be hard-pressed to make Folkston by nightfall and I had no desire to camp outdoors near the critter-infested swamp. I would have to stop in Waycross and start early the next morning for one of the longest walking days of my entire journey.

I reached Waycross by twelve-thirty, booked a room at a Quality Inn, then walked to the neighboring Walmart for food, supplies and bug spray. I took everything back to my room, where I ate a club sandwich and Caesar salad for lunch.

I hadn’t always known that the Okefenokee Swamp was a real place. I first heard of the swamp from the Pogo cartoons my dad loved and in the contraband issues of MAD magazine I used to smuggle home and hide under my bed. (My mother said the magazine was “perverted” and banned me from reading it, which, of course, made it much more desirable. It wasn’t until I was sixteen, eight years after my mother’s death, that my dad found one of my hidden magazines. He picked it up, took it to his den and read it without saying a word. As it turned out, he had no objection to the magazine at all, which, for me, had two effects. First, it made me feel stupid for hiding them for all those years. And second, I lost interest in reading them.)

With a name as absurd-sounding as Okefenokee, I had always assumed that it was just a made-up place, like Shangri La or El Dorado. Okefenokee is a Native American Hitchiti tribe word meaning “shaking waters.”

With most of my day left, I had the hotel call a cab to take me the eight miles to the Okefenokee Swamp Park. The road from the park’s entrance to the visitor center was five more miles. There were fewer than a dozen cars in the park’s parking lot.

The visitor center had a gift shop featuring shelves of alligators, and alligator parts, fashioned into bizarre novelties: alligator-claw key rings, necklaces and back-scratchers; gator-skinned wallets, business card holders, and iPhone covers; lacquered alligator heads, stuffed baby alligators dressed as golfers or brides and grooms, and full-grown stuffed alligators guaranteed to keep the neighbors’ dog off your lawn.

I signed up for a boat tour, which I was told would be departing in five minutes. I hurried to the boarding dock. There were already people in the boat, an elderly couple in the back row and a family in the front two rows: mother, father and two teenage boys. I took a seat in the center.

As we waited for our guide, the man sitting in front of me turned around and said, “We’re the Andersons. I’m Boyd and this is my wife, Dawn.”

“Like the sunrise, not the Trump,” Dawn said.

“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Alan Christoffersen.”

“Where are you from, Alan?” she asked.

“Seattle.”

“You’re a long way from home,” Boyd said. “Where are you headed?”

“Key West.”

“So are we,” Dawn said. “Maybe we’ll run into you there.”

“You’ll probably be long gone by the time I get there,” I said.

“Oh?” she replied. “Making other stops on the way?”

“I’m walking.”

“You’re walking from Seattle to Key West?” Boyd asked.

“Every step of the way,” I said.

“Did I hear that right?” the elderly man behind me said. “You walked here all the way from Seattle?”

I turned around. “Yes.”

“That’s amazing,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to walk across America and you’ve done it.”

His wife looked at him quizzically. “You have?”

“I’ve thought about it many times.”

“Probably just to get away from me,” she said.

The man offered his hand. “Pleased to meet you. We’re the Pitts of Montgomery, Alabama. I’m Eric and this is my beautiful wife, Peggy.”

I shook her hand, then his. “It’s a pleasure,” I said. “I’m Alan Christoffersen. I walked through Montgomery a week or so ago.”

“What did you think of it?” Peggy asked.

“It’s a beautiful town,” I said.

She smiled. “We’re pleased you enjoyed it.”

Two men walked along the dock and one of them stepped off into the back of the boat, next to the outboard motor. He squeezed a black rubber priming ball, then pushed a button and the motor fired up, sputtering in the water behind us.

“Good afternoon, y’all.” He was an older gentleman, maybe in his late sixties, thin, with a straw hat and an accent as thick as the swamp water. He wore denim jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt. “My name is Herman and I’d like to welcome y’all to the world-famous Okefenokee Swamp. Before we set sail, let me tell you a few things. In case we sink, the exit is all around you. Secondly, y’all will want to keep your hands inside the ride at all times. Some of the critters are always looking for a handout.” He laughed at his rehearsed jokes, and we politely laughed.

Herman untied the boat and his helper shoved us off with his foot, then he put the boat in gear, driving us forward. Thirty feet ahead we passed under a walking bridge and the canal narrowed to about fifteen feet wide.

“If you fall in, it’s not deep,” Herman said. “But I wouldn’t stay in too long.”

“The water looks gross,” one of the teenage boys said.

“Looks like beer,” Eric said.

Herman took the boat out of gear, then reached a bucket over the side and scooped up a gallon of the water, tilting it slightly forward so we could see it. “You might think there’d be a lot of skeeters in this water but there ain’t. That’s because it’s so filled with tannic acid, it kills them.” He handed the bucket to Eric. “Here, y’all tell me if it tastes like beer.”

Eric pursed his lips. “I’ll pass, thank you.”

“It stinks,” Peggy said.

“That’s methane gas,” Herman said. “Same stuff cows emit from their backsides.”

She grimaced and Herman laughed. “Every now and then somethin’ will ignite the swamp gas and you’ll hear an explosion out here like a shed o’ dynamite.” He put the motor back in gear and the boat plowed ahead.

“What kind of trees are these?” Peggy asked.

“These right here are cypress. I’ll tell y’all somethin’, these cypress trees can live up to six hundred years. Every inch of thickness equals twelve and a half years of growth. So, you can see, some of these trees are hundreds of years old.

“As you probably know, the swamp’s full of all kind of critters. There are thirty-four different kinds of snakes in the swamp and I seen every one of ’em. Six of ’em are venomous, includin’ the famous water moccasin, or cottonmouth, eastern diamondback rattler and the coral snake.

“We also got some fine specimen of spiders,” he said to Dawn. “Like the one right above your head.”

Dawn looked up and screamed. The spider was yellow and black and nearly the size of my hand. Its web spanned the width of the creek.

“Now watch this,” our guide said. He grabbed a section of the web and plucked it like a banjo string. “Now that is strong! The government is studyin’ this, tryin’ to duplicate it. Inch per inch, this web is stronger than steel.”

We were more intent on the massive spider hanging above us than its web, which, in spite of our guide’s provocation, seemed content to stay where it was.

“If y’all look to the port side on the bank there, you’ll see a big ol’ hole with the brush all pushed back. That’s an alligator nest. The gator there we call Miss Daisy and her eggs hatched just last week. We got a half dozen of her babies back at our center for their own protection. These baby gators get gobbled up by just about everythin’ that can get to them, raccoons, birds and other gators.

“An interestin’ fact about gators, the temperature determines their gender. During their incubation if the temperature averages above ninety-three degrees, they’ll be male gators. If it’s cooler than that, you got females. It’s been hot lately, so this brood was all male.”

The boat continued up the canal. Nailed to a tree overhanging the bank twenty yards ahead of us was a sign, printed backward and upside down. “Y’all might want to get a picture of this before our waves make it hard to see.”

The sign’s reflection in the water read:

MIRROR
LAKE

The boat churned up the narrow black waterway for another five minutes before our guide started speaking again.

“That big ol’ rusty kettle up on your left is a still. Back durin’ Prohibition, the swamp was lit up like Christmas with all the stills pumping out illicit moonshine. We’ve got two kinds of stills in here, turpentine and whiskey. It’s best not to get them mixed up, but sometimes there’s not a whole lot of difference ’tween the two.

“This still right here was for alcohol. It was owned by a feller they called Lightnin’ Larry. The locals gave his moonshine whiskey a special name: Autumn Leaves. Anyone wish to venture a guess why they called his brew Autumn Leaves?”

“Because he only made it in autumn,” Peggy said.

“No,” Herman said with a grin, “it’s because you’d take one drink of the stuff, change colors and fall.”

We all laughed.

“Now take a moment to notice some of the unique foliage around us. On your right is the pitcher plant. It’s one of several carnivorous plants in the swamp, includin’ the Venus flytrap. Even the plants in the swamp have a bite.”

Our excursion lasted about forty-five minutes in all. We didn’t encounter a single alligator, which was disappointing to me. After we had docked and tipped Herman, I walked around the park for a while, looking down from the boardwalk into wood-sided pens filled with alligators and snapping turtles, all of which looked more dead than alive.

A little more than an hour after I arrived, I returned through the visitor center, where I purchased a cold bottle of water and a Snickers bar. I had just stepped out onto the curb to call the cab company from my cell phone when a minivan pulled over in front of me. I walked up to the passenger-side window where Dawn sat.

“Sure you don’t want a ride to Key West?” she said.

“We’ve got room,” Boyd added, “if you don’t mind sitting in back with the boys.”

“Thank you, but no. I’m hoofing it.”

“Then how about a lift to town?” Dawn said.

“I’ll take you up on that,” I replied.

“Brandon,” Boyd said, “open the door.”

The boy slid the side door open, and I climbed in, shutting the door behind me.

“Are you really going to walk all the way to Key West?” Brandon asked.

“I really am.”

“You’re nuts,” he said.

“Brandon!” his mother said sternly.

“He’s right,” I said. “I am.”

“What’s that on your head?” the other boy, who looked a little older, asked from the back seat.

“Chris!” shouted Dawn. She turned to me. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I turned to Chris. “About three months ago I had a tumor about this size removed from my brain.” I made a circle with my thumb and forefinger.

“Cancer?” Dawn asked.

“No. It was benign.”

“What does that mean?” Brandon asked.

“It means it’s not going to kill me,” I said.

“Praise God,” Dawn said.

“Does that have something to do with why you’re walking?” Boyd asked.

I shook my head. “No. It just made it a little tougher.”

After about ten minutes, Boyd rolled the van to a stop in front of my hotel. I slid open the door and climbed out. “Travel well,” I said.

“You walk well,” Boyd said.

“We’ll warm up Key West for you,” Dawn added.

“Thanks. Have a good time.” I pointed at the two boys. “Especially you two.”

They were both playing video games on their phones and just kind of nodded. I shut the door and Boyd turned back to the highway. I ate dinner at the El Potro Mexican Restaurant, then went to bed early.

I didn’t sleep well. Mexican food isn’t the best choice for a good night’s rest, and I was nervous about the upcoming stretch. It had been a while since I’d walked more than thirty miles in one day and that was before my craniotomy. Don’t worry, you’ll make it, I told myself. You always do.

CHAPTER

Thirty-five

Some so fear the future that they suffocate the present. It’s like committing suicide to avoid being murdered.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

My alarm rang at five-fifteen. Getting up before the sun wasn’t as easy as it had been in times past. I didn’t feel my best but convinced myself that it was just the early morning and I’d soon walk my way out of it. I packed and went down to the hotel lobby for breakfast. I had a couple of waffles, coffee and some scrambled eggs with chili sauce.

I asked the hotel clerk about the availability of rooms in Folkston. He named several hotels and assured me that they would have rooms available at this time of year. I finished my breakfast, then set out on Highway 23.

As any long-distance runner can attest, there are days when you feel light-footed as a gazelle—as if the law of gravity has been temporarily repealed and the ground itself seems to propel you. Then there are those days your feet feel like anvils. Unfortunately, this, of all days, was the latter.

After just three miles of walking, my pack felt heavier than it had in weeks, the road harder, my footwear less comfortable and my balance less keen.

I doubted my physical state was a coincidence and wondered if my body was rebelling because I was forcing it to do what it didn’t want to do and probably shouldn’t—walking a marathon plus a 10k, while still recovering from brain surgery and carrying fifty-plus pounds on my back. I felt like I was dragging myself every inch of the way.

Around noon I stopped along the side of the road to eat lunch, a somewhat smashed ham, turkey and cheese hoagie I had bought at Walmart the day before, an apple, string cheese and a Clif Bar, hoping the carbs might help my lagging energy. If they did, it wasn’t noticeable.

I didn’t stop long but doggedly trudged along the highway corridor—the swamp and railroad tracks to my right, thick brambles and forest to my left, a seemingly endless road in front of me. Around three in the afternoon I began doubting I was going to make it to Folkston. Around four I was almost certain of it and began telling myself that camping in the swamp might not be that bad after all. Truthfully, I didn’t sound all that convincing, so I kept walking.

Around six o’clock I was practically staggering when a turquoise and beige Chevy pickup truck with two rifles visible through its back window pulled up to the side of the road about thirty yards ahead of me and turned on its hazard lights. The truck was far enough ahead that I wasn’t sure if the driver had stopped on my account or for something else.

As I approached the vehicle, I casually looked over. “Evening.”

The driver, a sixty-something balding man wearing a hunting jacket and Seminoles ball cap, said in a gruff voice, “You need a ride?”

The man looked like the sheriff from Deliverance.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “How far are we from Folkston?”

“About twelve miles.”

I thought I was closer. I didn’t have twelve miles left in me. “Are you headed to Folkston?”

“No. I’m headed home. It’s about a mile up ahead.” He squinted. “Were you thinking of hoofing it to Folkston tonight?”

“I was planning to. But it’s farther than I thought. I might just have to camp. I have a tent.”

His brow furrowed. “You’re in the swamp, son. A little nylon ain’t worth nothing for protection. If the skeeters don’t get you, there’s the gators, rattlers, cottonmouths, panthers and bears. And if one of them don’t, the moonshiners will. Somethin’s always huntin’ somethin’ in the swamp.

“I’ve got a camping trailer at my place. Not air-conditioned or nothin’, but it’s comfortable and safe.”

I thought about it for a moment, then said, “All right. Thank you.”

“Just put your pack in the back.”

I slid off my pack and heaved it over the side of the truck’s bed, then opened the door and climbed in the front seat. The seat was dusty and there were crushed beer cans on the floor.

“Just kick’ em out of the way,” he said. He turned off his hazards, then put his truck in gear and we lurched forward. When we were up to speed, he said, “I’m Dustin.”

“Alan,” I said. “You’ve lived here your whole life?”

“Most of it. I was born in Tallahassee.” He looked over. “Where are you from?”

“I was born in Colorado, but raised in Pasadena.”

“California boy,” he said somewhat disparagingly. “What part of Colorado?”

“Near Denver.”

“I’ve got a cousin in Pueblo,” he said. “Where are you walkin’ from?”

“Seattle.”

“Jiminy Christmas,” he said. “You’ve walked that far?”

“Yes.”

“You were plannin’ on walkin’ from Waycross to Folkston in one day?”

“I’ve walked that far before,” I said. “But I had a brain tumor removed a few months back and I guess I’m not all the way back up to speed.”

“You stopped your walk to have a brain tumor removed, then came back out?”

“Yes.”

He smiled. “You’re a manly man.” We drove a minute in silence, then he said, “See any gators on the highway?”

“No. Do they ever come out that far?”

He smiled. “Oh, they’re there. People usually just mistake them for old tires.”

I had actually wondered why so many people had thrown out their tires along this stretch of road. I realized I had probably walked by more than a dozen of them without even knowing it.

“Do you know where alligators got their name?”

I shook my head. “Never thought about it.”

“The first explorers in Florida, the Spaniards, called them El Lagarto. Sounds like al-li-gator. Lagarto means ‘lizard’ in Spanish.”

“Big lizards,” I said.

“I’ve seen plenty of big ones,” he said. “You have to just assume that any body of water around here has a gator in it. Had a real tragedy a couple years back, a mother left her four-year-old son on a picnic blanket while she ran just ten yards to get something out of the car. She wasn’t gone thirty seconds, but when she turned around, all she saw was her son missin’ and the tail of the gator goin’ into the water.”

“That’s horrific,” I said.

“Extremely horrific,” he said.

We drove for what seemed several miles, farther than he said his place was, but then, at the first available turnaround, he pulled a U-turn and headed back a mile or so before turning east off the highway. We drove up a forest-lined dirt road for about a quarter mile before we reached his property, crossing two creeks over wooden bridges made with railroad ties.

An eight-foot-tall chain-link fence topped with barbwire surrounded his place and the opening gate was locked and chained. It reminded me a little of the AhnEl cult’s compound, though much humbler and not nearly as orderly or clean.

At the entrance, Dustin pulled a large ring of keys from his ignition, then got out of the truck, unlocked the padlock, then unwound the chain that held the gates together. He dragged open the gate and we drove inside.

The home was maybe 1,500 square feet and had barred windows and concrete walls with a forest green corrugated tin roof that had been enhanced with flourishes of spray-painted camouflage. Connected to the home was a propane tank covered with a steel grate.

Partially visible near the back of the house was a wooden storage shed and to the side of the house was an eighteen-foot-high carport, which covered two ATVs and an older model twenty-six foot Winnebago RV. There was also a Fleetwood camping trailer.

The place looked a little like an automobile graveyard, with an assortment of vehicles scattered around the yard. In addition to the RVs, there were two and a half trucks in disrepair, an old station wagon up on blocks and an aged yellow Caterpillar wheel-loader tractor that looked powerful enough to clear forests.

He parked the truck next to the house and we climbed out.

“You can stay in the Winnebago over here,” he said, nodding toward the RV. “It’s the most comfortable.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I grabbed my pack and we walked over to the trailer. He again took out the massive ring of keys and opened the door. We both went inside.

“The big bed’s just at the end of the hall. You can use the toilet if you want. I’ll turn the pump on.”

“This looks really comfortable,” I said.

“Better than sleeping with the gators,” he said.

I lay my pack down on a bench in the kitchen.

“Have you had dinner?” Dustin asked.

“No, not yet.”

“You carryin’ it in your pack?”

I nodded. “As usual.”

“I’m makin’ stew. It’s been in the Crock-Pot all day. You can join me if you like.”

“That sounds better than anything in my pack. I’m pretty hungry.”

“Let’s eat.”

I followed him back out of the RV. The sun was beginning to set and the yard was already obscured with shadow. “Come into the house.”

I followed him inside. His front door was thick metal with two deadbolts and set in a metal frame.

“How long have you lived back here?” I asked.

“Five years. It’s my ark.”

“Ark?”

“Like Noah,” he said. “When the rains come, I’ll be ready.”

I walked into the front room. Dustin was clearly a hoarder, and all the countertops, shelves and chairs were piled high with clutter.

Against the one windowless wall was an ancient console television. On top of it was a ham radio and a 12-gauge shotgun shell press filled with buckshot. On the carpeted floor below it were tubes of black powder and empty casings.

On the other side of the console were several framed pictures—one a family portrait with a younger Dustin standing next to a woman and a teenage boy and girl. The other two pictures were of the same woman, though in one of the pictures she looked twenty years younger than the other.

“Is this your family?” I asked.

I noticed his expression fall a little. “Yeah. Just a minute.” He walked out of the room, returning a few minutes later carrying a loaf of white bread. Then he took two bowls from a cupboard above the stove. He set them on the counter next to the Crock-Pot and dished out two heaping ladles of stew into each. He carried them over to an oblong wood dining table, which divided the front room from the kitchen.

“Supper’s ready,” he said.

I walked over and sat down while he grabbed some spoons, two blue enamel cups and the bread. He sat back down, tore off the end of the loaf and handed it to me with my bowl.

“The stew’s hot,” he said.

I lifted a spoonful, blowing on it before putting it in my mouth. It was surprisingly good.

“You’re a chef,” I said. “What kind of meat is this?”

“Venison. I know it don’t taste like it, that’s because I let it stew all day. Takes the gaminess out of it.”

He took a piece of bread and scooped up some of the stew. “With that brain tumor did you have to go on chemo or anythin’?”

“No. It was benign. And they were able to cut it all out.”

“You’re lucky,” he said.

“I am.”

When I finished the bowl, he asked if I wanted more.

“Please,” I said. “If there’s enough.”

“I made plenty,” he said. “I usually make enough for three or four days. It freezes well.”

As I finished my second bowl, Dustin said, “I suppose walkin’ like you do, you can eat a lot.”

“That’s true. I figure I burn five-to-six thousand calories a day.”

He nodded. “Want more?”

“No. Two bowls is plenty. It’s good, though. Thank you.”

“Glad you liked it.” He reached across the table and took my bowl, then grabbed his own and carried them to the sink. He came back a minute later and tossed a couple packages of Twinkies on the table. “Like Twinkies?” he asked.

“Who doesn’t?”

“They last forever,” he said.

The Twinkie actually looked good. As I tore back the cellophane wrapper, he stooped down into a cupboard and brought out a large jug filled with a clear liquid.

“You drink?” he asked.

“On occasion,” I said.

“I’ve got a still out back, makes some of the best rotgut in these parts. Pour you a swig?”

“Sure,” I said. I had always wondered what moonshine tasted like.

He poured the two cups halfway. He took a short drink, then looked at me, waiting for me to follow. Ignoring the smell, I took a drink. It was like swallowing rubbing alcohol and burned my throat. I gagged, then coughed loudly, which made Dustin laugh.

“Got a little kick to it,” he said.

“Shotguns have less kick,” I said. “Are you sure that’s not turpentine?”

My question pleased him. “Oh it’s moonshine all right,” he said. “Made from corn mash. Distilled it myself. Not for the faint of heart.”

“I guess I’m fainter of heart than I realized.” I tried a little more, but it wasn’t for me. With a condescending look he reached across the table and took my cup and downed it. He didn’t cough, but his face turned red.

“It’s an acquired taste,” I said.

“Not for the faint of heart,” he said again. A minute later he asked, “Why are you walkin’? You’re not runnin’ from the law, are you?”

“With all the guns you have around here, do you think I’d tell you if I was?”

He laughed. “Not if you’re smart.”

“No, I didn’t do anything criminal. I started walking because my wife died.”

His countenance immediately changed. “I’m sorry. How’d you lose her?”

“She was in a horse-riding accident. She broke her back.”

He shook his head empathetically, then breathed out slowly. “I lost my wife too,” he said.

“Is that her over there?” I said, pointing to the pictures on the console.

He nodded. “That’s Janean.” He looked down at his drink, then lifted it and took another swig. “You know what Janean means? It means ‘God is gracious.’ ” His eyes moistened and I could tell that the moonshine was taking effect. “He was gracious with her, at least. She was everythin’ a man could want.”

“How did you lose her?”

“Wasn’t a horse,” he said. “A horse’s ass, maybe.” He sighed. “I dunno.”

“You’re divorced?”

“Not that I know of. I mean, who’s going to serve me papers out here? They’d never be found again. Not that it matters. She’s been gone for two and a half years.”

“What happened?”

He took another drink before answering. “She didn’t want the life out here. It’s ironic, you know. I built this place to protect her from the world and keep her safe, and I lost her because of it. She said she was sick of living holed up like a badger. She said she was sick of livin’ paranoid and if the world was goin’ to end then she wanted to end with it, not go out fightin’ it. She poisoned the kids against me.” His demeanor turned angry. “I built this place for their good. When the world goes to hell, they’ll be back.” He nodded as if assuring himself. “They’ll be back. They’ll see I was right.”

“What if it doesn’t go to hell?” I asked.

“It will. It’s just a matter of time before the whole house of cards comes fallin’ down. This country’s been movin’ in the wrong direction a long time. It’s just a matter of time.”

“And if you’re right, then what?”

“I’ll be ready. It will take an entire army to get me out of here. I can blow the bridges on the way in. I’ve got an arsenal Bin Laden would’ve envied. I’ve got AK-47s, M-16s, shotguns, knives, machetes, dynamite, even a thousand gallons of gasoline under the house. You know what I’ve got? This will blow your mind. I’ve got a flame-thrower.”

“Where’d you get a flame-thrower?”

“I made it myself from a book I found on the Web. Shoots a fifty-foot flame. I’ve also got MREs, and a five-thousand-gallon water tank filled by my own well.”

“How do you think it will go down?” I asked. “. . . In the end.”

“I don’t know. I’ve thought through a couple dozen scenarios. You’ve got your world government, you’ve got terrorist groups with nuclear and chemical weapons, or, worse yet, EMPs. Do you know what EMPs are?”

“Electromagnetic pulse,” I said.

“Do you realize how easily someone could take us out with an EMP? One EMP blast could fry all of the computers and wires within a thousand miles. Shut down entire cities, all commerce, all refrigeration, all transportation, all communication, all hospital machinery. Hundreds of thousands of people would die the first week.

“Then you’ve got your pandemics. Do you know how many people were killed by the Black Death? Half of Europe. And that was back when the world was isolated. Today a pandemic would kill more than three billion people. I know it sounds like movie stuff, but a couple years ago there was a super virus discovered in Israel. If it had gotten out of quarantine, they estimate it would have been worse than the Black Death. We’re that kid with his finger in the dike, you know. It’s just a matter of time before it goes.”

I poured myself a little of the moonshine and this time forced it down without gagging.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“You probably don’t want to know,” I said.

“Try me,” he said in a low voice.

I wiped my mouth, then looked up at Dustin. “I think if terrorists blow up our largest cities with nuclear weapons, we lose all power and a pandemic ravages what’s left of the world while roving gangs prey off the weak, I’d just as soon not stick around for it. What’s the worst thing that could happen to us? We die? We’re all going to die.”

“It’s not just about you,” Dustin said. “You could lose your loved ones.”

I looked at him for a moment, then said, “Like you already did?”

He just stared at me for a moment, then, grabbing the jug, got up and went into the other room.

Stupid thing to say, I thought.

When I decided he wasn’t coming back, I got up and went out to the Winnebago. I felt bad that I’d offended my host. He’d been kind to take me in. Still I locked the door and got my gun out. I didn’t know what kind of a drinker Dustin was, and with the arsenal he had at his disposal, I feared him more than anything else in the swamp.

CHAPTER

Thirty-six

Why did the man cross America? To see what was on the other side of himself.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke early the next morning, packed up, then went over to Dustin’s house and knocked on the door. His truck was still there, so I assumed he was too. After my third time knocking, I decided that he was probably still asleep or hungover from the moonshine he’d ingested the night before. I tore a page from my journal and left him a note thanking him for his hospitality, then set off for the day.

Physically, I felt much better than I had the day before, which made me believe my difficulty walking had been, at least in part, psychosomatic. It was an easy, brisk walk down the dirt road back to the highway, then only eleven miles south to the town of Folkston. I could have easily walked farther, but I didn’t. My planned route into Florida went from Waycross to Folkston over the Florida border to Callahan, then southeast into Jacksonville. I wanted the crossing of my last state border to be more than an afternoon side note.

Four miles before Folkston, I passed a billboard that read:

Florida Lotto Tickets,
9 miles ahead.
Gas n’ Go Boulogne

Florida. If you had asked me as I left Seattle if I would make it here, I would have shrugged. But I had. I was on my last lap, so to speak.

Like Waycross, Folkston also calls itself the “Gateway to the Okefenokee.” I ate a buffet dinner at the Okefenokee Restaurant, with pork chops and popcorn shrimp, then found a room at a bed and breakfast called the Inn at Folkston, a quaint, restored 1920s heart-pine bungalow. McKale would have loved it.

The only room they had available was the English Garden Room—which is also their bridal suite—themed after an English country inn, with a large sitting area and a gas fireplace. The room was beautiful and reportedly inhabited by a ghost, but the only thing that haunted me that night was my thoughts.

Long into the night I lay there thinking. The next day I would cross into Florida. I was nearing the end of my walk. Then what? Where was I going next? What would I do with the rest of my life? In response, what kept playing through my mind was the last thing McKale said to me as she lay dying: “Live.”

At that time, when I had no desire to go on, I had only considered that she had meant not taking my life. Now I realized that she had meant more than that. To truly live is more than taking the next breath—it’s to hope and dream and love. That’s what she really meant. She, who was my hope and dream and love, was telling me to go on without her.

Here, on the final stretch of my walk, I realized that what I wanted most was love. After all I had been through, I couldn’t bear the idea of reaching Key West only to walk across the border without a single person to share it with. And that was true of the rest of my life. Why hadn’t I understood this sooner?

Perhaps it was, like my father had said, as simple as a matter of faith. Faith that life could be worth living again after my love’s death. Faith in life itself. Faith in love itself. I hadn’t been willing to risk loving again, because I wasn’t willing to risk losing again. I had feared the future so much that I was killing it.

I was not so different from Dustin, the man in the swamp. Fearing the future, he had isolated himself with fences and barbwire and guns, just as I had done emotionally. And the result was the same—we had both run love out of our lives.

Somewhere in the internal dialogue of that night, I confronted the truth about myself and, in so doing, found the courage to obey McKale’s final request. I was ready to take a chance. I was ready to live again.

CHAPTER

Thirty-seven

A good read should introduce new drama in each chapter. But that’s just in books. What may be enjoyable in literature is not so in real life.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The weather the next morning was as balmy as one expects of Florida. The weather in my heart was equally serene. I knew what I wanted. I wanted love in my life. I wanted Falene.

When I had read her letter on the plane, I was not just surprised by her feelings but by my own. I cared more deeply for her than I had ever allowed myself to admit. Now, in this new day, I was ready to face those feelings. I was going to see this through. I wasn’t going to Key West without her. I was going to find Falene if I had to park a month in Jacksonville to do it, or visit every modeling agency in New York. As I thought about this, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a very long time. I felt alive.

Breakfasts at B&Bs are always good and the Inn at Folkston was no exception. I ate breakfast outside on the wood-planked patio. I had a stack of blueberry pancakes, honeydew melon, baked ham and “Chicken George’s” fresh eggs.

The clear, warm air smelled of the sweet fragrance of tea olive and honeysuckle.

After breakfast I went back to my room to check my cell phone. It had been a while since I’d turned it on and I wondered if Carroll had called.

I discovered that my phone was dead. I found the charger and plugged it into the wall. After about thirty seconds the phone turned on and immediately vibrated. I looked at its screen. I had eight missed calls and two voicemail messages. All of the calls were from the same two numbers. I didn’t recognize either, but both had Pasadena area codes.

I played the first message.

“Alan, this is Carroll. Sorry it took so long but I found your friend. Her phone number is area code 212, 555–5374. Good luck.”

My heart pounded. This was my miracle, wasn’t it? An answer to my night’s epiphany?

I played the message again and wrote down Falene’s phone number on a piece of note paper next to the room’s telephone. I nervously held the paper in one hand, my phone in the other, until I started laughing at myself. After all the time I’d known Falene, I was flat out terrified to call her. Where would I begin? What if she’d changed her mind about me? I felt as awkward as a teenager calling for a first date.

As I thought over what I would say, I looked back down at my phone. There was still the other message. I pushed play.

“Alan, this is Nicole. Please call as soon as you get this. It’s an emergency.”

Her voice was strained. Why was she calling from Pasadena? I dialed the number. It rang just twice before Nicole answered. “Alan?”

“Nicole? What’s wrong?”

“You need to come home,” she said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Your father’s had a heart attack.”

For a moment I was speechless. “Is he still alive?”

“He’s in intensive care.”

“Is he going to make it?”

There was a long pause. Then she said, “You just need to come home.”

EPILOGUE

Again, my world is in commotion. The only thing that hasn’t changed in my life is the uncertainty of it all.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I took a cab to the Jacksonville airport, just thirty-six miles from Folkston. Just. By foot that’s two days of travel—by car it’s less than an hour. By plane I’ll have traveled as far as I’ve walked this last year before evening.

My flight to Los Angeles left Jacksonville at 5 P.M., with an hour layover in Atlanta. I never called Falene. There was already too much on my emotional plate.

I called Nicole from my layover to see if there were any changes in my father’s condition, but she didn’t answer. This intensified my fear. Did I regret not staying home with my father as he’d wanted me to? Of course I did. But I pushed the thought from my mind. Regret is a useless emotion: it’s like brushing your teeth after you find a cavity.

As I write this, I am about twenty minutes from touchdown in Los Angeles. What am I going to find? My heart is a battleground of hope and fear, each, in turn, seizing control. I’m afraid of the news that will shortly come. I’m afraid that I may already be orphaned.

Honestly, I do not have faith that I will see my father again. But I have hope. I hope that my father is still alive and that he’ll be okay. I hope that I can see him again and tell him everything that’s in my heart. But most of all, if it is his time, I hope for the chance to be there for him as he always was for me. I don’t know if God will grant me this. But I hope.

For now Key West must wait. For the third time since I began, my walk has been delayed. In the beginning, I had considered these stops on my journey as interruptions—but I’m coming to understand that perhaps these detours are my journey. No matter how much I, or the rest of humanity wishes otherwise, life is not lived in smooth, downhill expressways, but in the obscure, perilous trails and rocky back roads of life where we stumble and feel our way through the fog of the unknown. Life is not a sprint. It was never meant to be. It is just one step of faith after another.

To be continued.

Coming May 2014, Book 5 of The Walk series.

Coming May 2014, book 5 of The Walk series

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INTRODUCTION

Alan Christofferson is a broken man. Following the sudden death of his wife and the betrayal of his former business partner, the once-successful advertising executive leaves everything behind to embark upon an incredible cross-country journey—on foot. Carrying only his backpack, Alan is determined to walk every step from Seattle to Key West. A Step of Faith is the fourth book in Evans’s bestselling series and picks up directly after the shocking events of The Road to Grace. As he walks, Alan meets a number of people whose own stories help him come to terms with his grief and anger. But a life-changing event threatens to bring an end to his journey, and Alan must decide what is truly most important to him.

TOPICS & QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Alan writes in his diary, “Maybe, if we just accepted our deaths, we might finally start to live.” How is this sentiment echoed throughout the novel? Consider some of the people Alan meets, like Dustin, who is preparing for doomsday, and Paige, who works in hospice care. How are various characters living their lives based on their acceptance or nonacceptance of death?

2. Of his mother’s death when he was eight Alan says, “Some might say that she jinxed herself, but I don’t think so. My mother wasn’t a pessimist. I think she knew.” He later reflects on a conversation he had with McKale and her request to Alan to remarry should anything happen to her. Do you think McKale may also have somehow sensed that she was going to die? Have you experienced people in your life having similar premonitions?

3. When Falene shares the news about Kyle, Alan realizes that he is actually sorry to hear it. Falene says she believes he deserved his fate. How is Alan able to feel compassion for Kyle? Do you think he is right to feel this way? Or do you agree with Falene?

4. Why is Alan blind to Falene’s feelings for him until he reads her letter? Falene writes that “the depth of love is revealed in its departure.” What does she mean by this? Do you think Alan’s feelings about Falene would have changed without her letter and move to New York? What else influenced his feelings toward her during his journey?

5. Before Alan’s surgery, Nicole and Alan’s father are very nervous. “The truth was, I was the least worried of all of us,” Alan says. Why is Alan able to remain so calm? Do you think he just has a feeling that he will be fine, or that he has become more at peace with the idea of his own death?

6. Why is Alan’s father so against Alan returning to his walk? Given what you learn by the end of the novel, do you think his father’s reasons were more complicated than you previously believed? How has their relationship changed over the course of the series?

7. When Alan spends the night at Pastor Tim’s church, they discuss the existence of miracles. “We live in an age of unbelief, but I promise you, miracles still abound,” Pastor Tim says. Later that night Alan reflects on their conversation and determines that he “had prayed as sincerely as a man could for McKale’s life to be spared,” to no avail. Do you think his view of miracles might have changed by the end of the novel? If so, what would have caused this shift?

8. What was the significance of the scene in which Alan helps the paramedics attend to the woman who says she is having a heart attack? How might this event have affected Alan?

9. In Missouri, Alan, a longtime ad man, makes note of the many whimsical restaurant names and slogans he sees. How else does Alan display and use his “adman” background during his journey? How else does his career experience influence the way he looks at the world?

10. When Alan first encounters “Master El,” the two have a conversation about how people interpret the Bible. Before you learned more about El and his group, did you agree with anything he was saying? Did any part of what he said to Alan during dinner ring true or seem plausible? Or was he completely wrong?

11. Why did Alan choose to accompany El to his compound despite his suspicions about him? Did this seem in character for Alan? El tells Alan that those “most susceptible to mind control are precisely those who don’t believe they are susceptible.” Why might El think this? What did you think about this section of the novel?

12. Do you think that if Alan’s feelings for Falene hadn’t developed that he may have chosen to be with Nicole despite his conflicted feelings about her? Given his revelation about wanting to share his life with someone, do you think he would choose to settle down with someone he wasn’t fully in love with rather than spend his life alone?

13. Near the end of the novel Alan begins to believe that “perhaps these detours are my journey. No matter how much I, or the rest of humanity, wishes otherwise, life is not lived in smooth, downhill expressways, but in the obscure, perilous trails and back roads of life where we stumble and feel our way through the fog of the unknown.” Discuss this passage. How does this theme resonate throughout the novel, and, if you’ve read them, the other books in the series? Can you think of a time in your life when you had a similar realization?

14. Have you been to any of the towns or sites that Alan visits throughout the novel? What did Alan’s general impression of the southern United States seem to be? Did his journey make you interested in exploring any new places for yourself?

15. If you had to use only three words to describe this book, which words would you choose?

ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB

1. While Alan isn’t a huge fan of Elvis’s music, he thoroughly enjoys his visit to Graceland. If you’re more partial to Elvis than Alan is, create a playlist of his music for your next book club. If you’ve been to Graceland, bring in your photos and souvenirs to share with the group. Or have an Elvis-themed dinner; there are a number of cookbooks containing recipes of his favorite dishes available from amazon.com and other bookstores.

2. Following in Alan’s footsteps, plan a rambling walk with your book club (pick a day with a sunny forecast). Perhaps there are some landmarks in your town you’d like to get a closer look at. Or find an out-of-the-way grassy spot that’s perfect for a picnic.

3. Share with the group a memory of a trip that you took—no matter how far away or nearby—that changed your life in some way. Were you sightseeing when a revelation hit you like a ton of bricks? Did you sample your favorite cuisine for the first time? Did you meet someone who shared valuable knowledge with you? Was it simply the most fun you’ve ever had?

4. Learn more about Richard Paul Evans, his books, and his charity, The Christmas Box International, at http://www.richardpaulevans.com/, http://www.facebook.com/RPEfans and https://www.thechristmasboxhouse.org/.

A little more than a decade ago, I was signing books in Dayton, Ohio, when one of my readers, a schoolteacher, handed me an envelope filled with money. “My students raised this for your charity for abused children,” she said. Then she asked, “Is there any way you could come thank them?”

I was in Dayton for another day, so I set a time to meet her students the following afternoon. I had expected to visit with the students, thank them for their contribution, and say a few words on the importance of reading and literacy. When I arrived at the venue, I was surprised to find buses waiting outside. Unbeknownst to me, my visit to a few students had been turned into a district-wide assembly. “You have an hour to talk to the youth,” the teacher said to me.

As I frantically considered what I would say to this room full of students, the idea came to me to share with them everything I wished I knew when I was their age.

That’s precisely what I did. For the next hour I spoke from the heart, and the teens sat in complete silence. About halfway through my talk, I noticed that some of the youth were crying. When I finished, the students stood to applaud, then lined up to meet me. Some of them wanted to share with me their own stories and struggles. Some of them just asked to be hugged.

That afternoon was the beginning of a journey for me, one that has taken me all around the world, sharing this message with hundreds of thousands of people from remarkably diverse groups ranging from the American Mothers, Inc., Harvard MBA graduates, and the Million Dollar Round Table (a global association of the world’s top insurance agents and financial service professionals) to recovering drug addicts and convicted felons. And just like the first time I shared these principles, in each of those subsequent presentations I have also witnessed a powerful reaction. And, after every presentation, audience members have asked for a written copy of my talk so that they too could share these principles with those they care about. This book is the result of those requests.

Initially, my talk didn’t have a name and I just referred to it as “the talk.” It was more than five years after that first presentation before I began calling my talk “The Four Doors.” I liked the metaphor of the door for two reasons. First, because passing through a door requires knowledge, intent, and action. We can’t pass through a door we can’t find and we can’t pass through a door without moving ourselves.

Second, once we’ve crossed a door’s threshold, we are not in the same place as we were before. These characteristics are true for each of the doors, or principles, in this book.

I believe that the greatest thing that all humanity has in common is the desire to make their lives matter. In the last two decades, I have met thousands of people and heard many of their stories. Far too many are living what Thoreau termed “lives of quiet desperation.” They live far below their own potential for joy, accomplishment, and power, caged in the prisons of their own unknowing. To some degree, this describes all of us.

The Four Doors is about how to live life joyfully, with freedom, power, and purpose. I have witnessed the powerful effect each of these doors carries—in both my own life and the lives of those with whom I have shared this message. If you are willing to follow even just one of these principles, you will find immediate, positive change in your life. If you choose to live them all, you will soon be in a very different place than you are now. The choice is yours. And, as you will soon learn, the Four Doors are entirely about choice.

© DEBRA MACFARLANE

RICHARD PAUL EVANS is the #1 bestselling author of The Christmas Box. Each of his more than twenty novels has been a New York Times bestseller. There are more than seventeen million copies of his books in print worldwide, translated into more than twenty-four languages. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Mothers Book Award, the Romantic Times Best Women’s Novel of the Year Award, the German Audience Gold Award for Romance, three Religion Communicators Council Wilbur Awards, the Washington Times Humanitarian of the Century Award, and the Volunteers of America National Empathy Award. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife, Keri, and their five children. You can learn more about Richard on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RPEfans, or visit his website, www.richardpaulevans.com.

FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Richard-Paul-Evans

MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

SimonandSchuster.com

ALSO BY RICHARD PAUL EVANS

The Walk Series

The Walk

Miles to Go

The Road to Grace

A Winter Dream

Lost December

Promise Me

The Christmas List

Grace

The Gift

Finding Noel

The Sunflower

A Perfect Day

The Last Promise

The Christmas Box Miracle

The Carousel

The Looking Glass

The Locket

The Letter

Timepiece

The Christmas Box

For Children and Young Adults

The Dance

The Christmas Candle

The Spyglass

The Tower

The Light of Christmas

Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25

Michael Vey 2: Rise of the Elgen

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Richard Paul Evans

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Acknowledgments

A s I wind up this journey, my own as well as Alan’s, I wish to thank all those who helped me cross this country, especially my very talented daughter Jenna for her companionship, navigation (both literal and literary), research, and overall brilliance in helping me craft Alan’s journey.

Thank you to my agent, Laurie, for her immediate enthusiasm for this series.

I wish to thank those at Simon & Schuster who have done so much to push Alan along: Jonathan Karp, Carolyn Reidy, Trish Todd (and Molly), Gypsy da Silva, Richard Rhorer for suggesting the title of this book, and the Simon & Schuster promotional and sales teams. Thank you to David Rosenthal, who was there at the beginning of the journey and believed that this series was precisely what America needed at this time.

I wish to thank Glenn Beck and Kevin Balfe for helping to spread the word about this series, as well as Hoda and Kathie Lee.

Blessings to my staff: Lisa Johnson (the angel midwife), Diane Glad (thank you especially for all your help in Florida), Heather McVey, Barry Evans, Doug Osmond, and Cammy Shosted. Thank you to my dear friend Karen Roylance for helping me brainstorm and believe in the mission of this series.

A special thanks to my neighbor, Joel Richards, for sharing his stories from Vietnam. (You’ve become an action figure to me.) Thank you to Karrie Richards, Madison Storrs, Natalie Hanley, Ally , Kelly Glad (again!), and Alexis Snyder for their assistance with medical research, as well as Ronda Jones for advising us on Danish names, Earl Stine for sharing with us his experiences of biking the Keys, and Ted and Alease at the Inn at Folkston for their warm welcome.

To Karen Christoffersen, the widow of the real Alan Christoffersen, I hope this series has helped heal your heart and kept your love close to you.

Thank you to my family, Keri, David, Jenna and Sam, Allyson, Abigail and Chase, McKenna, and Michael. And Philly. You are my hope, comfort, and reason.

Most of all, thank you to my beautiful readers around the world, who have made this walk possible—especially all those who have gone outside themselves to tell their friends, families, and colleagues about the series. (Please don’t stop!) Without your sharing, we never would have reached so many people.

In memory of my parents, who taught me to walk

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive at where we started

And know the place for the first time.

—T. S. Eliot

PROLOGUE

When I was eight years old, three days after my mother’s funeral, my father found me curled up on the floor of my bedroom closet.

“What are you doing in there?” he asked.

I sat up, wiping the tears from my face. “Nothing.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

My father, who was never comfortable with outward displays of emotion, had no idea what to do with a crying boy. “All right, then,” he finally said, rubbing his chin. “Let me know if you need something.”

“Why did she have to die?”

My father looked at me pensively, then took a deep breath. “I don’t know. We all die sometime. It’s just the way it is.”

“Is she in heaven?”

I could see him struggling between telling me what I wanted to hear and telling me what he believed. Even at my age I knew that he didn’t believe in God. Finally he said, “If there’s a heaven, you can be sure she’s there.”

“What if there’s not a heaven?”

He was quiet for a moment, then he tapped his index finger against his right temple. “Then she’s here. In our minds.”

“I don’t want her there,” I said. “I want to forget her. Then it won’t hurt so much.”

He shook his head. “That would be worse than hurting.” He crouched down next to me. “It’s our memories that make us who we are. Without them, we’re nothing. If that means we have to hurt sometimes, it’s worth it.”

“I don’t think it’s worth it.”

“Would you wish that she had never been your mother?”

“No,” I said angrily.

“To forget her would be exactly that, wouldn’t it?”

I thought about it a moment, then said, “Will I ever see her again?”

“We can hope.”

As hard as I tried not to, I broke down crying again. “I miss her so much.”

My father put his hand on my shoulder. Then, in one of the few times in my life that I can recall, he pulled me into him and held me. “Me too, Son. Me too.”

Imagine that you are sitting on an airplane, holding a pen a few inches above a blank journal page. Now imagine that whatever you write will be read by hundreds or thousands of people. Just imagine. What will you write? Will you share some hidden piece of yourself with those unseen souls? Will you impart some wisdom to help them on their journeys? Are you arrogant enough to believe that anything you write could possibly matter? I suppose that’s where I am right now.

My name is Alan Christoffersen, and this is the last journal of my walk across America. For those who have been following my journey from the beginning, you know where I am, what I’ve seen, and who I’ve met. You know about my broken heart, the love I’ve lost, and the one I hope to find. For those who have been walking with me, we’ve been through a lot together. And we’re not through. Not by a long stretch.

For those new to my journey, I began my walk in Seattle seven days after my wife, McKale, died from complications after a horse riding accident. While she was still alive and I was caring for her, my advertising agency was stolen by my partner and my home was foreclosed on. With no place to live and nothing to live for, I considered taking my life. Instead I decided to walk as far away as I could—Key West, Florida. I have already walked nearly three thousand miles to the Florida state line.

Though I’m close to my destination, in some ways, I’ve never been further from completing my journey. Once again, I’m unexpectedly headed back west. My father had a heart attack and is in critical condition at the Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. Right now I’m sitting on this airplane not knowing if he’s alive or dead. It’s almost too much to process. He didn’t want me to go back out on my walk, but I did. I feel guilty about that. Did he know something was going to happen to him? If I had stayed would it have made a difference? There are too many questions with answers I don’t want to know.

By the time you read this, I will have already passed through many of the doors I’m facing right now. Only these words will be stuck in time. And you, like I am now, are alone with these words. Use them as you will. Every life can be learned from, as either a flame of hope or a cautionary flare. I don’t know yet which one mine is. By the time you read this, I probably will.

CHAPTER

One

Sometimes our arms are so full with the burdens we carry that it hinders our view of the load those around us are staggering beneath.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

My flight from Jacksonville, Florida, landed in Atlanta, where I had a brief layover before changing planes. My second flight was more crowded than my first. The woman in the seat next to mine, the middle seat in a row of three, held a child on her lap. The woman was crying. I noticed her swollen eyes and tear-streaked cheeks as I got up to let her and her young child to their seat. I didn’t know what was wrong with the woman, but she was clearly in pain.

She was a few years younger than I was, pretty even though her eyes were puffy and her mascara smeared. I guessed the child on her lap was around two. She was especially active, which added to the woman’s stress. After we had taken off, I took out my phone, set it to a game, and offered it to the woman for her child.

“Maybe this will help keep her occupied.”

“Thank you,” she said softly. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess. My husband died yesterday.” She paused with emotion. “I don’t know how to explain it to my daughter. She keeps asking for her daddy.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

The little girl dropped my phone on the floor. The woman was embarrassed but unable to retrieve it with her daughter on her lap.

“No worries, I’ll get it,” I said. I unfastened my seat belt, got out of my seat, and picked up my phone.

“Would you mind handing me that bag?” the woman asked.

I lifted a red leather bag from the space on the floor between our feet and handed it to her. She brought out a fabric book and gave it to her daughter.

“Are you from LA?” I asked.

“LA County. I was born in Pasadena.”

“I lived next door in Arcadia,” I said.

She nodded. “I live in Atlanta now, but my parents are still in Pasadena. I’m going to stay with them for a while.”

“It’s good to be with family at times like this,” I said. “Was your husband’s death expected?”

“No. He was in a car crash.” Saying this brought tears to her eyes again. She was quiet for a moment, fighting back emotion. Then she said, “The thing is, it was just another day.” She shook her head. “Then the police showed up on my doorstep . . .” She breathed in, then exhaled slowly. “It was just another day.”

“That’s how I felt after my wife died.”

“You lost your wife?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Was it sudden?”

“The accident was. She was thrown by a horse and broke her back. She was paralyzed from the waist down. A month later she got an infection. That’s what took her.”

“Then you know how I feel.”

“Maybe something of what you feel.”

The woman closed her eyes as if suddenly lost in thought. A moment later she turned back to me. “Did you love her?”

The question surprised me. “With all my heart.”

She looked down a moment, then said, “My husband and I were fighting when he left. The last thing I said to him was ‘Don’t come back.’ ”

I frowned. “That’s rough.”

“They say be careful what you ask for.”

“I’m sorry.”

She took a deep breath. “Me too. We were probably going to get divorced anyway. I just don’t like being to blame for his death.”

“You can’t—”

“I am to blame,” she said. “At least partially. If I hadn’t shouted at him, he wouldn’t have left. If he hadn’t left, he wouldn’t have been in the accident. I can’t tell you how guilty I feel. I don’t know what’s worse, the guilt or the loss.”

“Did you fight a lot?”

“Constantly.” She hesitated for a moment, as if trying to decide whether or not to tell me more. Then she said, “He was a lawyer. I caught him with his secretary parked in a Kroger’s parking lot about a mile from his office. I was going to get a coffee when I saw his car and I pulled up behind them. I asked him what he was doing. He said, ‘Nothing, we were just talking.’ I said, ‘In a Kroger’s parking lot?’ He just stared at me, and I could tell he was making up an excuse. Then he said, ‘It’s nothing. I forgot one of my briefs and I had her meet me here with it.’ I said, ‘Do I have stupid tattooed on my forehead?’

“His little girlfriend looked so guilty I thought she was going to faint. That night I gave him an ultimatum, fire her or divorce me. He fired her. But I’m pretty sure he never stopped seeing her.

“Two days ago we were sitting together at the breakfast table and it suddenly hit me how alone I was. We were just six feet from each other and we might as well have been on different planets. He was reading the news on his iPad. I told him that I was thinking of going to LA to see my sister; he didn’t say anything. Then I said, ‘I think I’ll probably stay a year or two.’ Still nothing. Finally I said, ‘I’ll probably shack up with my old boyfriend in Irvine.’ He looked up and said, ‘Who’s Irwin?’

“I just looked at him, then said, ‘I’m making pasta tonight; try not to be late.’ Then I got up and walked out. That night he came home six hours late. I had tried to call him to see where he was, but his phone was off. By the time he got home I had already gone to bed. The next morning he kept apologizing; he said he’d had to work late. But I knew he hadn’t been at work because he reeked of alcohol and perfume. Chanel No. 5. How unoriginal is that? I said, ‘So how was she?’ He looked panicked. Then he said, ‘Who?’ That’s when I told him to get out and not come back.”

“And he left?”

She nodded. “Three hours later the police showed up on my doorstep.”

“I think most women would have done what you did.”

“I suppose.” She looked into my eyes. “What happens? There was a time I used to cry when he’d leave me at night. Where does it go?”

“It changes,” I said.

“Did it change for you?”

“In ways. Relationships are always changing. My wife and I had our storms, but instead of pulling us apart, they drove us closer together.”

“How does that happen?”

“I don’t know. I just loved her.”

She breathed out heavily. “I wish I could hurt that way.” The child had fallen asleep on the woman’s lap, and she adjusted her head against her mother’s breast.

“Will you stay in Atlanta?” I asked.

“No. The only reason I was in Atlanta was for his job. His funeral is going to be held here. Then I’ll have to go back and sell the house and get rid of everything.” She looked at her child. “I suppose I’m lucky to have her to keep me focused. Do you have any children?”

“No. We kept putting it off. It’s my biggest regret.”

She looked down at her daughter and kissed the top of her head. She turned back to me. “So what do you do to forget?”

“You don’t forget,” I said.

“Then what do you do to survive?”

“I think everyone has to find their own way. I walk.”

“You take long walks?”

I hid my amusement at the question. “Yes.”

“And it helps?”

“So far.”

“I’ll have to try that,” she said. She leaned back and closed her eyes, pulling her daughter into her. It was maybe five minutes later that she was asleep. I wished that I could have slept too. There was just too much on my mind. She didn’t wake until the pilot announced our descent into LAX. After we landed she said, “I never got your name.”

“It’s Alan.”

“I’m Camille.”

“It’s nice meeting you,” I said.

“Thank you for being so sweet,” she replied. “I’m glad I sat next to you. Maybe it was a God thing.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Keep walking,” she said.

I turned my cell phone back on as I walked up the Jetway. I was feeling incredibly anxious, simultaneously eager and afraid to ask how my father was. I went into the men’s room and washed my face, then walked back out to the terminal corridor and called Nicole. She answered on the first ring.

“Are you in LA?” she asked.

“I just landed. How is he?”

“He’s still in the ICU, but he’s stable. He’s sleeping now.”

I breathed out in relief. “Thank goodness.”

“How are you getting to the hospital?”

“I’ll take a cab.”

“I can pick you up.”

“Do you know how to get here?”

“I’ll ask one of the nurses.”

“I’m on Delta. I’ll meet you at the curb.”

“I’ll call when I get there.”

It was good to hear Nicole’s voice, even though the last time I’d seen her I’d broken her heart. I wondered how long we’d be able to pretend that hadn’t happened. Down in baggage claim, a sizable group was crowded around the baggage carousel even though there were just a few pieces of luggage on it, unclaimed stragglers from an earlier flight.

I walked to the carousel and waited, leaning against a long, stainless-steel coupling of luggage carts as I looked over the eclectic gathering of humanity. McKale once told me that airports were “stages of mini-dramas.” She was right. All around me stories played out. There was a joyful reunion of an elderly woman and her children and grandchildren. There were lovers, entwined and impatient to be elsewhere. There was a returned soldier dressed in camouflage, his wife’s cheeks wet with tears and his two children holding balloons and a hand-drawn welcome home sign. There were the lonely businessmen with loosened ties and tired, drawn faces flush from cocktails, impatiently checking their watches and smartphones.

Camille, my acquaintance from the plane, was halfway across the room from me. She was being held by a tall, silver-haired man as tan as George Hamilton. I guessed he was her father. She said something to him and they both turned and looked at me. She waved and I waved back before they both turned away.

I saw a beautiful young Hispanic woman who reminded me of Falene. I took my phone back out and replayed the voice mail I’d received just before hearing about my father from Nicole.

“Alan, this is Carroll. Sorry it took so long, but I found your friend. Her phone number is area code 212, 555-5374. Good luck.”

My friend, he called her. Was that what Falene was? She’d been my executive assistant when my life was good. She’d been my comforter after McKale’s funeral. She’d been my support throughout my walk. Then, after expressing her love for me and disappearing, she’d become an enigma. Friend was too inadequate a word.

I had hired Carroll, a private investigator and friend of my father’s, to find her—which he had. At least physically. Emotionally, I had no idea where she was. I wondered if she still cared about me. The thought of calling her crossed my mind, but I quickly dismissed it. I was in the middle of enough emotional turmoil. Besides, it was already past 2 A.M. in New York.

It was nearly a half hour before my pack appeared near the end of the long parade of baggage. I lifted it over one shoulder and walked out of the terminal to the curb to wait. Five minutes later my cell phone started ringing. It was Nicole. “Did you say Delta?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve got my pack.”

“I’m just entering the airport now. I’m driving a red Pontiac Grand Prix.”

“I’m near the second exit,” I said. “I’ll watch for you.”

A few minutes later I spotted her and waved. She sidled up to the curb, popped the trunk, then got out of the car. It had been three months since I’d last seen her, and she looked different. She’d lost weight even though she had little to none to lose, and her hair was styled differently. She looked different but pretty. She was always pretty.

I laid my pack on the ground and we embraced. “It’s good to see you,” she said.

“It’s good to see you,” I replied. “Thank you for being here.”

I threw my pack in the trunk and slammed it shut; then Nicole handed me the car keys. We both climbed in and I drove off toward the hospital. Another hospital—the sixth since McKale’s accident. I was spending way too much time in hospitals.

Even though it was October I rolled my window down a little. The night air was sweet and cool. I love California; I always have. But I couldn’t believe I was back so soon.

CHAPTER

Two

As happy as I am to see Nicole again, we’re living in denial, ignoring the fact that the last time we saw each other I broke her heart. I wonder how long our fiction will last. It’s like repairing a leak with duct tape and wondering how long it will hold.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

“How was your flight?” Nicole asked.

“Long.” I adjusted the rearview mirror. “How did you find out about my father?”

“We were supposed to have our weekly phone call to go over my finances. You know your father—he’s never late, and he never misses anything. So when he didn’t call I called his cell phone. A client of his answered. He told me that your father had been rushed to the hospital with a heart attack. He said they’d been at lunch when your father started to complain of chest pains.

“The client had had a heart attack before, so he recognized what was going on. He called 911 and they rushed your father by ambulance to the hospital.”

“How did you get down here so fast?”

“I took the first flight from Spokane to LAX. He had just gotten out of surgery when I arrived.”

“Thank you for coming,” I said.

“I care about him,” she said softly. “He’s been good to me.”

As I listened to her, it occurred to me why Nicole was so close to my father. I had initially assumed it was because of her inherent kindness—which was, no doubt, part of the reason. But her closeness to him transcended mere kindness or friendship. It was something much deeper. She had been close to her own father before he committed suicide. I believe that she was looking to fill that hole—first with her landlord, Bill, the man who had unexpectedly left her a sizable inheritance, then with my father. It made sense. No wonder she had caught the first flight here, and no wonder my father loved her so deeply. She was the daughter he’d never had, and she gladly played the part.

I reached over and took her hand. She put her other hand on top of mine.

“What else do you know about his condition?” I asked.

“Not much. They won’t give me the full details since I’m not family. I had to tell them I’m his niece just so they’d let me see him. The doctor will talk to you.”

“He’s there this late?”

“No. But he said he’ll be there in the morning.”

“But you’ve seen my father?”

“Yes.”

“How does he look?”

“He looks like he’s had a heart attack,” she said. “When I saw him he was still pretty drugged up. I held his hand for a while.”

“I should have been there,” I said. I looked over. “I shouldn’t have gone back out. He didn’t want me to go. Maybe he knew.”

“Don’t do that. No one knew. He was glad you were going to finish your walk.”

“He said that?”

“Yes. He knew how important it was for you. I know he didn’t see that at first, but he came around.”

I breathed out slowly. “It really is good to see you again. The last time we talked . . .”

She stopped me. “Let’s not go there. I’m here for you. That’s all you need to know.”

I squeezed her hand.

“So how is the walk going?” she asked.

“One step at a time.”

“How far did you get?”

“Almost nine hundred miles. I made it to Folkston, Georgia, just a few miles from the Florida state line.”

“Meet anyone interesting?”

“Very.”

“More interesting than me?”

“I found a woman who had been tied to a tree by a cult leader. I ended up spending part of the night in their compound and helping another woman escape.”

“That’s got me beat,” she said. “You should write a book about your walk. I’d buy it.”

“I’d have to say it’s fiction.”

“Why is that?”

“No one would believe it was true.”

CHAPTER

Three

It is an inevitable and frightening moment in our lives—the day we realize our parents might be as flawed as we are.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

We arrived at the hospital a few minutes past midnight. I had been to Pasadena’s Huntington Hospital before. Actually twice. The first time was when I was nine and I’d had pneumonia. The second time was a year later when I was playing punchball at school and broke my arm.

It had been a long time since either of those events, and the hospital didn’t look the same as I remembered it.

Following Nicole’s directions, I parked near the east tower. We went inside and took the elevator to the second floor.

The corridors in the ICU were wide and lined with glass walls separating patients’ rooms. We approached the nurses’ station. A tired older woman with tousled hair and wearing dark blue scrubs looked up at me with heavy eyes. “May I help you?”

“I’m here to see Robert Christoffersen.”

She pushed a few keys on her computer, then looked back up at me. “Are you family?”

“I’m his son. I just got into town.”

“Just a minute.” The woman looked back at the screen. “He’s in B237.”

“Thank you.”

Nicole and I walked to the room, stopping outside the door. R. CHRISTOFFERSEN was printed on a sheet shielded behind a plastic holder.

“You go in first,” Nicole said. “You should have some time alone with him.”

I nodded, then pushed the door open and slowly stepped inside. The room was dark, lit indirectly by a fluorescent panel behind the bed and the lights of the monitors. It smelled of antiseptic.

The man in the bed didn’t look like my father. His usually perfectly coiffed hair was uncombed and matted to one side, and his chin was covered with stiff gray stubble. He looked old. Too old. It had been only seven weeks since I’d last seen him, but he looked like he’d aged years. He had an IV tube taped to his arm and an oxygen tube running to his nose. His mouth was partially open as he snored.

I just stood there, looking at him. It was hard to believe that this was the same man who had towered over my childhood like a giant—solid and unyielding as a granite fortress. I gently touched his arm, but he didn’t wake. After a few minutes I sat down in one of the padded armchairs near the side of the room.

After a while I glanced down at my watch. It was five minutes past twelve, California time, three in the morning eastern time. Exhausted, I slumped back in the chair. I’d come completely across the country to be with him, but I felt like I was still miles away.

A wave of sadness washed over me, and my eyes welled up. I had been worried about leaving my father, but the truth was, he was leaving me. Maybe not tonight, maybe not even this year, but things were changing. Time was gaining on us.

The possibility—the eventual inevitability—of his death would mean more than just losing my father. It would be the end of the world I had known, a world once inhabited by my mother and my wife. My father was the last, fraying line to my past, the sole witness of who I was and where I had come from. It may have been only the emotion of the moment, but somehow I could already feel the growing vacuum.

I had sat there for maybe twenty minutes before Nicole quietly opened the door and slipped into the room. She walked over to the side of my father’s bed and gently touched his arm, then came and crouched down next to me. She pulled my head into her neck, gently running her fingers along the nape of my neck the way McKale used to do. She felt good. Comforting.

“Has he woken?” she asked.

“No.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was soft and caring. “Are you okay?”

I didn’t answer, which I suppose was an answer. After a few minutes she whispered, “You need to get some sleep. It’s late. Especially for you.”

“I’ll just sleep here,” I said.

“Why don’t you go home and get a good night’s rest? He’s not going anywhere.”

“Home?” I asked.

“Your father’s home.”

I looked back at my father’s sleeping form. Nicole was right. I was so tired that I could have easily fallen asleep in the chair, but it would have been a miserable night and I was exhausted enough already. “All right,” I said. “Where are you staying?”

“At the Marriott,” she said. “It’s close.”

“Why don’t you just stay at the house?”

“Maybe later,” she said ambiguously. She took my hand. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

I stopped at the foot of the bed and looked at my father, then touched his leg. “I’ll see you in the morning, Dad,” I said softly.

He groaned lightly, but never opened his eyes.

On the way to the parking lot I handed the keys back to Nicole and asked her to drive. Neither of us said much on the way to my father’s house. I was just too tired, emotionally and physically.

With the exception of the front porch light, which came on automatically, the house was dark. The first thing I noticed was that there were leaves on the lawn. Of course there were leaves on every lawn on the street, but on my father’s lawn they were as out of place as penguins. My father didn’t abide unraked leaves. After I turned ten, it was my job to see that our lawn was free of them, a responsibility he taught me to take seriously.

Nicole said, “I forgot his house key.”

“No worries,” I said. “My father always keeps one outside for emergencies.”

“Are you sure?”

“If the key isn’t there, it would be the only thing he’s changed in the last seventeen years.”

“Wave if it’s there,” she said, reaching over to unlatch the trunk. “Then call me in the morning when you want to go to the hospital.”

“If my dad’s car’s here, I’ll just drive myself.”

“Let me know,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said. “Good night.”

“Night,” she replied.

I retrieved my pack from the trunk, then crunched through the leaves to the house. At the front porch I laid down my pack, then squatted down and reached behind the potted kumquat tree next to the door, my hands groping around its flaking plaster circumference. As I expected, the house key was there—just as it had been when I was sixteen. My father had placed it there when I started dating so I wouldn’t have to wake him if I forgot my keys.

I waved to Nicole, and she backed out of the driveway. The car’s headlights flashed across the front of the house as she pulled into the street. I unlocked the door and stepped inside.

CHAPTER

Four

The further along we get on our life journey the more we wonder about those who traveled before us and paved the road.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The house was as dark as a cave, which wasn’t surprising. If my father had a religion, it was thrift, and to leave a light on was a cardinal sin. But at that moment the dark seemed greater than the lack of light. There seemed to be a lack of life, a vacuum of energy. Even after I had turned on the foyer light, standing in the silent and cold entryway filled me with a sense of foreboding. The house felt different than it had just a couple of months earlier when I’d stayed there. Now it felt less like a home and more like a museum. Or a mausoleum.

I laid my pack against the wall, then adjusted the thermostat, which, in spite of the month, was turned all the way down. I waited until I heard the furnace kick in; then I walked to the end of the hallway to my father’s bedroom and turned on the light.

Not surprisingly, his room was immaculate. The bed was made with tight military corners, covered in a bedspread that I recognized from my youth. My mother had purchased the spread in the eighties—several years before she died and my father and I moved to California. My father just didn’t buy things like bedspreads or linens. He was pragmatic that way. If an object still fulfilled its purpose, there was no reason to replace it. A few years back, when I had suggested that he get a new couch to replace the ancient one he’d had for as long as I could remember, he replied, “What’s wrong with this one? It still keeps my butt off the floor.”

The austerity of his room highlighted what few pieces of art he possessed. On top of his bed stand was a statue I’d never forget—a twelve-inch resin replica of Rodin’s The Kiss. The lovers are, of course, nude, and, when I was a boy, the figurine embarrassed me more than I could bear. I remember once sneaking into my father’s room with McKale. I had told her about the statue and, to my dismay (actually, horror), she said she wanted to see it. We stood there, next to each other, just staring. Finally McKale said, “It’s beautiful.”

I was dumbstruck. In the sexual naïveté of youth I had just figured that my dad was a pervert. Now McKale was too? Or maybe something was wrong with me. It was all so confusing. “Really?” I finally said.

“Someday I want to kiss someone like that.”

Hearing her say that made me feel funny inside—something I wouldn’t understand for a few more years.

On the wall closest to the foot of the bed was a homemade decoupage plaque, an uncharacteristically crafty piece my father had made for my mother when they were poor and first married.

Kate,

Wherever you are, wherever you go, I love you and I always will.

-Bob

Something was different about the plaque. There had once been a seashell mounted on the side, but it was now gone, leaving an exposed patch of faded wood and hard, yellowed resin. I looked around on the floor, wondering if the shell had fallen off, but it wasn’t there. This was a detail my father would not have missed. It bothered me that the shell was missing.

Outside of the statue, I suppose the plaque was about the only evidence I had that my father was capable of romance—not that the lack of evidence bothered me. The idea of parents having a romantic relationship has been nauseating children for millennia.

I knew my parents locked their door now and then, and I had some idea that something dodgy might be going on inside, but, again, to a child that doesn’t equate to romance. Just weirdness. So the fact that I never saw my father be affectionate with my mom didn’t register with me until I was older and had started dating McKale. One night I asked my father why I had never seen him kiss Mom.

“We kissed. It just wasn’t any of your business,” he said gruffly. “Or anyone else’s.”

For so many years my father had slept without the warmth of a wife. My heart hurt for him and his years of loneliness. No wonder he had wanted me back.

On his nightstand was something out of place—a white plastic binder. I walked over and picked it up.

CHRISTOFFERSEN FAMILY HISTORY

Compiled by Robert A. Christoffersen

My father had never told me that he was working on a family history. I opened the binder. The title page read:

CHRISTOFFERSEN FAMILY HISTORY

(1882–20—)

I turned the page. There was a drawing of a five-generation family tree.

The next page was an official-looking genealogical form that started with me and went back four generations. In spite of my exhaustion I wanted to read on, but I considered that perhaps my father meant to surprise me with it. Why else wouldn’t he have told me about such a major project?

I turned out the light and walked down the hall to the guest room. I pulled off my clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor near the door, then climbed into bed.

As I lay there in the dark looking up at the ceiling, my mind reeled with questions. How was this all going to play out? How long would it be until my father came home again? Why did I feel like such a stranger in the home I grew up in?

The house didn’t feel right without my father. He needed to get better. He needed to come home. Something told me that he wouldn’t.

CHAPTER

Five

My father has more women waiting outside his door than a Nordstrom’s before a sale. I wonder why he’s never been caught.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke the next morning with the sun. I hadn’t checked my watch before bed, but I had probably gotten less than five hours of rest. I was more eager to see my father than I was to sleep. I took a quick shower and shaved, then dressed in the last of my clean clothes—a pair of jeans and a polo shirt.

I dumped my pack out onto the laundry room floor, threw my socks, underwear, and T-shirts into the washing machine, added the requisite chemicals, and turned it on.

Then I checked the garage. I was glad to find my father’s twelve-year-old olive-green Buick Riviera parked inside. I went back to the kitchen and looked for the car keys in the drawer where he always kept them, but they weren’t there. Then I remembered that someone else must have driven the car home. I went back out to the garage and found the keys on the driver’s seat. I put them in my pocket, then texted Nicole.

Have car. Meet you at hospital.

She texted back almost immediately.

Be there in 45

I looked inside the refrigerator for something to eat. My father kept a lean fridge, and, besides the usual condiments, there was only fruit, milk, an open box of baking soda, and two packages of batteries.

In the pantry there were two boxes of cereal, Cheerios and Wheaties. As a boy I’d begged my father for the sugar cereals—Cap’n Crunch, Trix, the good stuff—but he never gave in. My father was anti-sugar long before the cereal manufacturers began pulling the word from the front of their boxes.

I poured myself a bowl of Wheaties, drowned it in milk, and wolfed it down, wondering what my father found so remarkable about the cereal. It occurred to me that that was probably the point—it was completely unremarkable, as practical a use of grain as imaginable. I put my bowl in the sink, then turned off all the lights in the house. It was time to go see my father.

As I opened the front door I was surprised to find a woman standing on the front porch. She was in her late forties and attractive. She was dressed in a form-fitting, baby-blue running outfit, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was holding a basket of muffins. I must have looked surprised.

“I’m sorry to startle you,” she said. “You must be Alan.”

“Yes.”

“It’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you. Is your father home?”

“No. He’s not here.”

She frowned. “I heard that he”—she grimaced—“had some health problems . . . When I saw the lights on, I thought maybe he was back. How is he?”

“He’s had a heart attack, but outside of that I don’t know. I’m headed to the hospital now.”

“I won’t keep you,” she said, holding out her basket. “I baked some muffins for your father. Please tell him that Susie sends her love and best wishes.”

“And muffins,” I added, taking the offering. “Thank you.”

“Thank you. Bye.”

She turned and walked back to the road. I wondered how many women my dad had chasing him. I’d wager dozens. He was handsome, fit, and solid as a savings bond. I locked the door, then drove my father’s Buick to the hospital.

CHAPTER

Six

The doctor has informed me that what my father has suffered is sometimes called “the widow maker.” In my father’s case the term is irrelevant.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The Huntington Hospital was less than a fifteen-minute drive from my father’s house. In spite of its age, the hospital was modern looking and bright—well lit from an abundance of window space. I took the elevator to the second floor and walked up to the nurses’ station. The nurse sitting behind the counter glanced at the basket of muffins, then back at me. “May I help you?”

“I’m here to see my father. Robert Christoffersen.”

“Robert Christoffersen,” she repeated. She looked at her screen while she typed in the name. “Your father’s doctor is in this morning. I have a note that you’d like a consultation. Would you like me to page him?”

“Yes. Please.”

As I stood there, Nicole walked out of the elevator. Even though her eyes were still heavy, she looked pretty with her hair pulled back. She smiled when she saw me.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Good morning,” she echoed.

I set the muffins down on the counter and we hugged.

“Have you seen your father?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

The nurse said, “Excuse me. Dr. Witt is on his way.”

“Thank you,” I replied. I turned back to Nicole. “I’m going to meet with the doctor first.”

She grinned. “Looks like you stayed up to bake muffins.”

“Yeah, right. A woman came over this morning bearing gifts.”

“I’m not surprised. Your father has women chasing him from all over,” Nicole said.

Just then a man wearing a white coat over mint-green scrubs walked up. He was tall and thin with slightly graying temples. He was probably only a few years older than me. “Are you Mr. Christoffersen?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Dr. Witt,” he said, extending his hand.

“Call me Alan,” I said.

He looked at Nicole and smiled. “This is your wife?”

“No,” Nicole said. “I’m a friend of the family.”

He nodded. “All right, let’s find a room to talk.”

I retrieved the basket of muffins, and Nicole and I followed the doctor down the hallway until he stopped and opened a door. “This will do.”

Nicole touched my arm. “May I listen in?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Have a seat,” the doctor said, sitting down on an examination stool. His demeanor turned more serious. “I don’t know how much you already know, so I’m just going to walk you through the events of the past few days. Your father has suffered a serious heart attack. When he arrived in emergency we ran a catheter up through his femoral artery to his heart, looking for blockages. We found one, so we placed a stent in the artery to open it and allow the blood to flow through. He was then brought up here to the ICU, where we started him on medications to help his heart pump.

“The next morning we ran an echocardiogram. We do this to make sure the entire heart is functioning normally, or, if it isn’t, to find where there might be muscle damage.” His expression fell a little. “Frankly, what we found wasn’t good. What your father had was a very serious type of heart attack—a blockage to the LAD.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“LAD stands for left anterior descending artery. This type of blockage is sometimes called the widow maker, because the LAD is responsible for supplying blood to the left ventricle, which is primarily responsible for pumping blood to the rest of the body. If this area of the heart is oxygen deprived for a long time, the heart won’t pump effectively, which is what we term heart failure. There’s been damage; we’re just not sure of the extent.”

Nicole looked afraid.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

The doctor breathed out slowly. “Right now, it’s a bit of a game of wait and see. As I said, we’ve got him on medications to help his heart pump. As long as he’s being given these medications he’ll have to be monitored closely, which means he’ll be required to stay in critical care. If his condition improves, we might send him to a step-down unit. But for now, we just need to see how his body responds to his treatment. Fortunately, aside from his heart issues, your father is in good physical condition. Otherwise he probably wouldn’t still be with us.”

Nicole took my hand. The doctor looked at her, then back at me. “I’m sorry the news isn’t better. But your father’s a strong man. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him recover. I’ll keep you informed. Are you in town for a while?”

“Indefinitely,” I replied.

“Good. It always helps to have family near. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Yes, thank you,” Nicole said.

“You’re welcome,” he replied. He looked at us for a moment, then said, “I need to check on a patient. You’re welcome to stay in here if you like.”

“Thank you,” Nicole said again. He smiled at her, then stood and walked out of the room, leaving my head spinning a little. Nicole wiped a tear back from her cheek.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should be comforting you.”

After a moment I stood. “I’m going to go see him now. Do you want to come?”

She stood too, then grabbed a couple of tissues from a box on the counter and wiped her eyes. “You go ahead. You two need some time to catch up.” As I started to walk out she said, “Don’t forget the muffins.”

I grabbed the basket from the counter and walked down the hall to my father’s room. I set the muffins on a stand near his bed, then stood at his side, watching him. A monitor beeped with his heart, and I could see its motion on a digital screen. My father’s life was that jagged little green line on the monitor.

It was several minutes before his eyes flickered, then opened. For a moment he just looked at me, as if he wasn’t sure who I was.

“Hi,” I said softly.

He swallowed, then pursed his lips, wetting them with his tongue. “What are you doing here?”

“Nicole called.”

“Did you finish your walk?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because Nicole called.”

“You came all the way back because I was in here?”

“Of course I did.”

He closed his eyes again and slowly breathed out. “You should have finished your walk. Let the dead bury the dead.”

“You’re not dead,” I said.

“Not yet,” he replied.

I raked my hair back with my fingers. “What does that mean anyway? The dead don’t do burials. The dead don’t do anything but rot.”

“No one knows,” he said. “It’s in the Bible.”

“Since when do you read the Bible?”

“I read a lot of things,” he said. “Fiction and nonfiction.”

I almost asked him which one he considered the Bible to be, but I held back. “Your neighbor came by. She brought some muffins.”

“Diane?”

“No.”

“Who?”

With so much on my mind, I had already forgotten her name. “I don’t remember. She was blond. Pretty.”

“Susie?”

“That’s the one,” I said. “How many girlfriends do you have?”

“None that I know of. They just come over sometimes. Susie’s a divorcée. I help her with stuff around the house sometimes and we play tennis every now and then. Tell her thank you if you see her again.”

“She’s a beautiful woman.”

“How far did you get?”

I grinned. “With Susie?”

He didn’t smile. “On your walk.”

“Florida.”

“Did you walk through the Okefenokee Swamp?”

“Not through it. Around it.”

“On Highway One?”

“Yes. You’ve been there?”

“No. Almost.”

More silence. He reached up and adjusted the oxygen tube that ran to his nose.

“Do you need any help?” I asked.

“No.” He put his hand back down. “They’ve got me strung up like a marionette. Has the doctor talked to you?”

“Yes.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He said you’re going to be okay.”

“You don’t need to lie. I know what happened. Damage to the LAD. They call it the widow maker.”

“He didn’t say you were going to die.”

“They never tell you you’re going to die.”

“They tell people they’re going to die all the time,” I said. “If they’re going to die.”

He didn’t reply.

“I’m not lying,” I said. “I’m just more positive than you are.”

“I’m positive,” he said. “That I’m probably going to die.”

“That’s not helpful,” I said.

“I’m not trying to be helpful. I’m being honest.”

“Being negative is no more honest than being positive. You should be more positive. Attitude is everything. You always used to tell me that. How would you have felt if I had talked that way when I was in the hospital?”

“Which time? You spend so much time in hospitals these days I’m thinking of buying you your own gown and having it monogrammed.”

I shook my head. “You’re cranky.”

He was quiet a moment, then said, “You’re right, I wouldn’t have liked it. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“Where are you staying?” he asked.

“At the house.”

“Smart. Did you turn the lights out?”

“Of course.” I took a deep breath. “I noticed that you’re working on your family history.”

“You went into my room?”

“I’m sorry. I just . . .” I stopped. I wasn’t sure why I had gone into his room. “What brought this on? The family history . . .”

“I don’t know,” he said. His voice softened. “There’s just something about getting older. You feel yourself drawn back.”

“Back where?”

“Back to your roots. When you get older something makes you want to know where you came from. Who knows? Maybe it’s a way to compensate for not knowing where you’re going.” He rubbed his chin. “These days they have all these online genealogy sites. I’ve met some relatives I didn’t even know I had. It’s been nice catching up.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were doing this?”

“You weren’t around.”

“I was here for two months. You never once mentioned that you were working on your history.”

“I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

“I’m interested.”

I sensed that he was pleased.

“Do you mind if I read what you’ve written?”

“No. Of course not. Who else would want to?” A moment later he asked, “Is Nicole here?”

“She’s in the hall.”

“Good,” he said. “She’s a good girl.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “Was it hard seeing her? After your last parting?”

“It was a little awkward. But she’s been great.”

“She has a heart of gold,” he said. He paused a moment, then asked, “How about Falene? Did you find her?”

“Your friend Carroll found her. I haven’t talked to her yet.”

“Why not?”

“He just called yesterday. There was already too much on my mind.”

“You mean with me?”

“Yes.”

He took a deep breath. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“I do worry . . .” I paused, suddenly filled with emotion. “I’m sorry I left. I should have been there for you.”

He looked at me for a moment, then said, “No. You did the right thing. You couldn’t have seen this coming. Hell, I didn’t see it coming. I’ve been eating wheat bread and egg whites for the last ten years, I jog two miles every day and never miss my morning calisthenics. I thought I was going to live forever.” He shook his head. “No, you did the right thing. You need to finish your walk.”

The room fell into silence. After a while he said, “Why don’t you tell Nicole to come in?”

“I’ll get her,” I said.

I walked out into the corridor. Nicole was standing near the door clutching a crumpled Kleenex. She looked up at me as I came out. Her eyes were swollen. “My dad wants to see you.”

“I don’t know if I should go in,” she said. “I can’t stop crying.”

“It’ll be okay,” I said. “He wants you there.”

She wiped her eyes one more time, then walked to the side of my father’s bed and reached over the rail to take his hand. “Good morning,” she said.

“It is,” he said. “I’m with my two favorite people.” He looked into her eyes. “Why are you crying?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m a crier.”

“Me too,” he said. “It’s a curse.”

In spite of her tears, Nicole started laughing. Then my father did as well. “Come give me a hug,” he said. “Does this rail thing go down?”

Nicole dropped the side railing, and my father extended his arms toward her. She put her head on his chest and he put his arms around her, consoling her. She broke down crying. After a while she leaned back and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything will be okay.”

“I know,” she said. “I know you will.”

“So what’s on the agenda today?” I asked.

“I have no agenda,” he said.

“How about some chess?” I said.

“Chess will do.” He looked at Nicole. “Do you want to play?”

“I’ll watch,” she said.

The hospital had a chess set, and my father and I played just one game before he stopped to take a nap. He won, of course. I had never beaten him at chess. Even when I was young and he was teaching me he showed no mercy.

I stayed with him for the rest of the day, except when I went down to the cafeteria for lunch and Nicole spelled me.

He woke around two and ate lunch. We talked for several more hours, mostly about the last leg of my walk, though several times while we were talking he dozed off, once in the middle of a sentence. A nurse came in to check his vitals, and I asked her if sleeping this much was normal. She assured me that it was.

My father fell asleep around four and didn’t wake again until after six. He looked surprised to see us.

“What are you still doing here?” he asked. “Afraid you’re going to miss something?”

“We didn’t want to leave you alone,” Nicole said.

“I’ve spent most of my life alone,” he replied. “Why change things now? Besides, you’ve seen how often these nurses come banging in here. I couldn’t be alone if I wanted to.”

“Maybe we don’t want to go,” Nicole said. “You think it’s always about you?”

My father smiled. Nicole knew how to talk to him. While he ate his dinner, I helped him search the television for a channel with boxing. After he had settled in, Nicole and I said good night. Nicole kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

“Don’t come too early,” he said. “It’s a waste of your time. And you need your rest. You look more tired than I do.”

“Don’t be so bossy,” she said. He smiled at her. She squeezed his hand, then left the room.

My father said to me, “Good night, Son.”

“Night, Dad. See you in the morning.”

As I started to walk out he said, “Al.”

I turned back.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too.”

Nicole was waiting for me in the hallway. “Want to get some dinner?” I asked.

“I’m glad you asked,” she said. “I’m starving.”

“Good,” I said. “I know a place.”

CHAPTER

Seven

Over dinner Nicole asked about Falene, which spoiled my meal as effectively as if she had poured the entire shaker of salt on it.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

DiSera’s is an authentic little Italian restaurant with a wood-fired pizza oven, red checked tablecloths, paper menus, and centerpieces made from candles melted over empty wine bottles. There were black-and-white, framed photographs of pretty Italian girls on vintage Vespa scooters and a series of pictures of a young Sophia Loren.

The food was cheap and good, and even though my father and I didn’t eat out much, we had eaten here more times than I could remember. I had taken McKale here at least a dozen times on dates.

After the waitress had left with our order, Nicole asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m all right.”

“It must be hard seeing your father like that.”

I nodded. “When you’re young you think of your parents as omnipotent—like Oz the Great and Powerful. Seeing him like this is like seeing the little man behind the curtain.”

“I know what you mean. I think every son or daughter eventually experiences that.”

“He’s been writing his family history.”

Nicole nodded. “I know. He told me a few weeks ago.”

I thought it peculiar that he’d tell her but not me. “I asked him why he was doing it. He said something was just drawing him to it. Mortality.”

Nicole shook her head. “He has plenty of life left in him.”

“I hope you’re right.” I took a drink of ice water. “How long are you going to stay?”

“As long as he needs me.”

“That could be a while,” I said.

“I know. I have the time.”

A few minutes later our waitress brought out our food, and we ate awhile in silence.

Nicole suddenly asked, “Did you find Falene?”

I looked up at her. “Just a few days ago.”

“How is she?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her yet. I’ve been too worried about my father.”

Nicole didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Fortunately, she didn’t say anything more about Falene. After dinner I drove Nicole back to her car in the hospital parking lot.

“Thank you for dinner,” she said.

“My pleasure.”

She looked sad as she lifted her purse. “Where did I put my key?”

“Why don’t you just stay at the house?” I said again. “It will get expensive staying at a hotel.”

“You sound like your father.”

“Is that bad?”

“No,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

From the way she said it I was pretty sure she had already made up her mind not to. She rooted through her purse until she found her car key. “Found it. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good night,” I replied.

She waved as she drove off to her hotel.

I suppose it was no mystery why she didn’t want to stay at the house. I couldn’t give her what she wanted. I loved her, but I wasn’t in love with her. I don’t know why. She was beautiful, kind, loving, and fun to be with. In spite of Falene, part of me wished I were in love with Nicole. It would certainly have made things easier. Unfortunately, the heart rarely takes requests.

CHAPTER

Eight

The roots of a family tree are oftentimes more twisted than what we see above ground.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

It was a little after ten when I pulled into the driveway. There was a package on the porch about the size of a shoe box. It was from someone named Pam. As I unlocked the door, I noticed another package lying sideways in the bushes. I practically had to climb over a bush to lift it out. There was a card on top. It was from another woman. Margie. I grinned. Pam was ruthless.

I walked into the kitchen and set both of the women’s packages on the counter, then went to the laundry room. I moved my underwear, socks, and T-shirts to the dryer and put in another load to wash. Then I walked to my father’s room and retrieved his family history, carrying it back to my own room. I lay on my bed and began to read.

INTRODUCTION

The history of a family begins with a name. Throughout history the name Christoffersen has been recorded in more than seventy different derivations, including Cristofori, Kristofer, and Christof. One might easily conclude that the Christoffersen name is of Christian origins, but that is incorrect. Christoffersen is of pre-Christian origin, derived from the Greek word kristos, which literally means “leader.” The Roman Christopherus is also from Greek with the added pher, which means “to follow.” So Christoffersen literally means “leader to follow.”

While the name did not originate with Christianity, it was adopted by the Crusaders, who gave their children biblical names. Our surname, Christoffersen, is a variation of the Danish Kristoffersen.

I

Jon Kristoffersen/Finn Christoffersen

My great-grandfather, Jon Kristoffersen, was born in rural Denmark in 1882. He was the fourth of seven children and (as far as available records show) the only one in his family to emigrate.

Jon was born into a time of economic turmoil. Throughout the mid-1800s the Danish population had grown dramatically due to what some historians referred to as “the danger of peace, prosperity, and population.” Peacetime, combined with the introduction of vaccinations and the abundance of potato crops, drastically decreased mortality rates, creating a population surge that the country’s economy could not support. While these advances had many positive effects on the Danish people, they also created economic hardship for families like the Kristoffersens, who supported themselves through farming. Family farms could only be passed on to one child (typically the oldest son), which created a predicament, as most Danish farming families had many children.

Children from families like the Kristoffersens knew there was little hope that they would ever gain the capital needed to buy their own farms, and jobs outside of the family farm became scarce as more and more children of farmers became adults and sought to make their own way in the world. When Jon came of age, he found work as a farmhand for a very low wage and kept his eye open for something better.

Around this time a wave of Danes began immigrating to the United States. Their letters home described a land of opportunity where the government sold large tracts of land and a man could become successful so long as he worked hard. Danish newspapers began publishing the letters, and although many of their claims were exaggerated, they were effective in catching the attention of young men like my great-grandfather, who decided to immigrate to the United States.

At that time most immigrants traveled by steamship, and although the trip would take only ten days, it took Jon more than a year to save up for the journey. He left Denmark through the port of Copenhagen on July 7, 1901. He was nineteen years old, and it was the last time he would ever see his homeland. Two weeks later he landed at Ellis Island. It is unknown whether the spelling change of Kristoffersen to Christoffersen was initiated by my great-grandfather, immigration inspectors, or mistakes in the ship’s manifest, but the immigrant logs show that Jon’s name was recorded as Jon Christoffersen.

Jon followed the example of many other immigrating Danes and made his way to the Midwest, where he found work in Minnesota as a farmhand for another Danish immigrant, Poul Johansen, who raised cattle and hogs. Jon earned double the amount he had in Denmark. His plan was to work the ten years necessary to earn the money for his own farm, but his plans changed when he fell in love with Johansen’s daughter, Lena, who was seventeen when Jon began working for her father. Just a year later they were married. They lived on Johansen’s farm, where Lena gave birth to their first child, Finn, in 1903.

Once again, Jon was swayed by promises of a new and better life farther west. He left farming behind for good when he and Lena decided they would travel nearly one thousand miles west to Butte, Montana, to start a new life. They had heard that several major mines had recently struck gold (true) and that all the miners were getting rich (not so true).

In 1908 Butte was a bustling Western town of more than sixty-five thousand inhabitants, where, as Will Rogers wrote, men “still wore ten-gallon hats and red neckerchiefs.”

While gold was what drew men to the area, copper was what kept them there. Jon got a job at the Anaconda Copper Mine and worked there for the rest of his life.

Shortly after their arrival in Butte, Lena gave birth to two more children, another boy, Lars, who died from fever at the age of three, and a girl, Hanne, who was stillborn. After the loss of two children, Lena was so heavily grieved that some thought her “touched.” The family’s surviving child was sensitive to his mother’s pain, as observed by his father:

Finn is a sensitive and melancholy child. He is much endeared to his mother and seeks to earn her love, which she withholds not out of spite, but because her broken heart has none to give.

—Diary of Jon Christoffersen

Finn was a hardworking and enterprising young man. At the age of twenty-one, he opened his own grocery store, which prospered. That same year he married Genevieve Crimmons, a young woman from a second-generation Butte Irish family. While he was looked down on by Genevieve’s parents, Finn was lauded by his own family for marrying into an established local family. Finn seemed to have realized the American dream. A year after they married, Genevieve gave birth to their first child, a girl whom they named Paula. Genevieve was a demanding woman and wanted more than her husband could provide. She convinced Finn to abandon the business, although Jon counseled against it. Finn and Genevieve extended the family’s western migration to the larger city of Seattle, Washington, where her aunt and uncle lived. Here, they thought they could have greater income, and they opened a new store.

I found it interesting that I was not the first Christoffersen to go to Seattle looking for greater opportunity.

Less than a year after Finn’s family moved, Jon contracted yellow fever and passed away. He was followed only a week later by his wife, Lena. Finn was unable to return to Butte for his own parents’ funerals, as the store was highly demanding—almost as demanding as his wife. In spite of his best efforts, the store did not do well. In the meantime Genevieve gave birth to two more children, both boys: Peter and Thomas.

In October 1929, just four years after their relocation to Seattle, the Great Depression hit. As was the case with thousands of enterprises, Finn’s store failed. Creditors demanded payment or took back their wares, sometimes both. Genevieve’s complaining became intolerable, and she blamed Finn for their family’s suffering. According to Finn’s journal, he was kicked out of their marital bed. Genevieve was cruel.

Genny was at me again tonight. I long for her affection but am utterly alone in my failure.

—Diary of Finn Christoffersen

Genevieve moved in with her aunt and uncle while Finn, with a thirty-five-dollar loan from Genevieve’s uncle, returned to Butte to attempt to resurrect his former store. Unfortunately, the Depression had affected Butte even more than Seattle, and rebuilding his store was more difficult than Finn had hoped. He was lonely and wrote Genevieve daily, entreating her to bring the children and come and be with him, but only once did she answer his letters. She wrote,

Do not think to win me back until you are man enough to support your wife and children.

Finn lived in the direst of circumstances, sending what little profit the store generated to Genevieve and the children. In the cold Montana winters he slept on the potatoes to keep them from spoiling. After eight months of loneliness he met a woman, the widow of the town’s constable. She would come to the store daily, sometimes just to talk. Both were hungry for affection. They had an affair, and the woman became pregnant with Finn’s child.

Around that same time Genevieve’s aunt and uncle grew weary of their demanding niece and sent her back to Butte to be with her husband. When Genevieve learned of her husband’s infidelity, she did what she could to punish him. She made him sleep at the store and would not allow him to eat with the family. During this time, Peter, now eight, and Thomas, seven, worked with their father at the store. As much as Finn begged for his wife’s forgiveness, it never came.

I must wonder if I am to ever have Genny’s love again. I have despaired of it. If I were a dog I would receive more affection.

—Diary of Finn Christoffersen

After several difficult years of Genevieve’s cruel treatment, Finn, struggling with guilt, loneliness, and despair at not being able to adequately provide for his wife and family, decided that they all would be better off with the insurance money from his death. He shot himself in the head. His body was found by his oldest son, Peter.

Because Finn had committed suicide, his body was not allowed to be buried in the cemetery near his parents but was buried by Peter and a neighbor in a nearby wooded area. A wooden cross was constructed, but it has been lost to time and no one today knows for certain where my grandfather’s body lies.

I set the book down, both disturbed and fascinated by what I had read. Like my great-grandfather, I had gone to Seattle to seek my fortune. And, when things turned, I had also considered taking my life. I now better understood my father’s interest in discerning and recording this history. It was a way to understand himself. In a way, I had walked thousands of miles for the same reason.

I looked over at the clock. It was late, and it had already been a long day. I turned off the light, then lay back in my bed, my thoughts drifting from the past to the present and the future. I thought about Nicole asking about Falene. Then I thought about Falene and wondered what she’d been doing since she’d left me in St. Louis. Most of all, I wondered what McKale would think of it all and, if she were here, what she’d tell me to do. But that was nonsense. If she were here to tell me what to do, there would be no question of what to do.

“Why did you leave me, Mickey?” I said to the darkness. I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

CHAPTER

Nine

I now remember why I stopped playing chess with my father. I feel less like a sparring partner than a punching bag.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The first thing my father said to me the next morning was, “I had a dream last night.”

I sat down in the chair next to his bed, expecting him to tell me about it, but he didn’t. I had brought with me my father’s chess set, a heavy walnut inlaid board with carved wooden chessmen with felted bottoms.

“You brought my set,” he said.

“The other one was too flimsy.”

“Are you saying that’s why you lost?”

“No, I take credit for that,” I said. “Are you going to tell me about your dream?”

“It was about your mother,” he said. “And McKale.”

This piqued my interest even more. “Tell me about it.”

“We were in this garden. It was big. Miles and miles of the most beautiful flowers and plants. It reminded me of the arboretum, but with more flowers. Thousands of them.”

“Where McKale and I were married,” I said.

“Right,” he said. “It rained.”

“It typhooned,” I said.

He nodded. “We got wet. Anyway, in my dream, the girls were in this garden sitting on the bank of a brook. As I walked up to them they both looked up at me.” My father paused, and his voice took on a faraway tone. “She was so beautiful. They both were. It was as if light was coming from their skin.” He looked into my eyes. “It seemed so real.”

“Did they say anything?”

“Your mother asked why I was there. She said I wasn’t expected yet. Then—” He stopped abruptly.

“Then what?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It was just a dream.”

I looked at him curiously, wondering what he was holding back.

“Get out the chessboard,” he said. “Time to take you to the woodshed.”

“Really, you’re trash-talking?”

I set up the chessboard on his table and pushed it toward him.

“You go first,” he said.

“You’re a gentleman,” I said. I moved a pawn.

“You always move the same piece,” he said.

“It works for me.”

“What do you mean by works? You always lose.”

“Always is a bit strong.”

“When was the last time you won?”

“Never.”

“Exactly.”

“You should let me win sometime,” I said.

“Then it wouldn’t be winning.”

After a few moves I said, “There were more offerings on the porch last night. They were from Pam and Margie.”

He just nodded.

“Margie’s gift was in the bushes. I think Pam threw it there.”

“Pam’s a determined woman,” my father said. “She calls too frequently.”

“How many women do you have chasing you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll bring their gifts tomorrow if you want. I’m sure there will be more by then.”

“More baked goods?”

“Probably.”

“You can have them.”

“You liked the muffins,” I said, looking at the empty basket.

“The nurses ate them,” he said. “Have you heard from Nicole?”

“Not this morning. We had dinner last night.”

He moved his knight. “Is she coming by today?”

“I think so. That’s why she’s here.”

“She’s a good girl.”

“That’s what you said yesterday.”

“Probably still true.” My father suddenly went quiet as he studied the board. We played for nearly five minutes without talking. Then he asked, “What’s going to happen with her?”

“What do you mean?”

“You and her.”

“I don’t know. She asked me about Falene last night.”

He looked up at me with concern. “What did she say?”

“She asked if I had found her. I told her I had, but I hadn’t talked to her yet.”

He went back to the board, taking my queen with his knight. “You need to be more careful,” he said.

“Are you still talking about the game?”

“Yes. If you want advice about women, you could do better than me.”

“So the dream you had. Did it make you wonder?”

“About what?”

“If some part of it was real.”

I expected my father to dismiss the idea, but he didn’t. “I think there might be more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in my philosophy.”

“You’re softening about religion?”

“Religion? No. But God, that’s a different matter. Never confuse the clock with the time.”

“But you’ve changed your mind about God?”

“Maybe getting closer to the finish line does that to a man.”

“What’s with all the references to the end of life?” I said. “You’re still young.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s the heart attack talking.” He took another one of my pieces. “The other day I had this thought. If you look around, there’s an order to things. The way the planets revolve around the sun is remarkably similar to the way electrons revolve around a nucleus. If science proves anything, it’s that nothing comes from nothing. Something caused those things to act. It’s not too hard to believe in the creator of that order. If you want to call that God, then maybe I do believe in God.”

“What about an afterlife?”

“What about it?”

“Do you believe in one?”

“What you’re really asking is, is there such a thing as a soul?” He looked over his move for a moment, then said, “It’s hard to believe that there’s nothing more to us than electrical impulses.”

“Where do our souls go after death?”

Still looking at the board, he said, “Toledo.”

I laughed. “Toledo?”

“Why not? It’s as likely a destination as any.”

We played a bit more in silence. As usual, I found myself in trouble.

“You’re too impatient,” he said. “You shouldn’t move until you know it’s right.”

“Obviously I thought it was right.”

“It wasn’t,” he said.

“I can see that now.” I looked over the board. “I think I’m dead.”

“You are.”

“Speaking of dead, I read in your family history last night.”

“That’s an interesting segue. How far did you get?”

“I got to where your grandfather committed suicide.”

He frowned. “Dead is right. It was tragic. Such unnecessary pain.”

“Were you close to your grandmother?”

“No; I met her only once. At my mother’s funeral. She was very old. I think she was just too mean to die. Or maybe it was her curse to see all her children die before her.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“I told her that I was Peter’s son. I thought it was pathetic that I had to tell my grandmother who I was. I still do.”

“What did she say to that?”

“Nothing. She just grunted. Her selfishness carried its own punishment. She died alone. They found her body by the smell. They guessed she had already been dead for at least five days.” He moved his queen. “Check.”

I shook my head again.

“You’re too impatient,” he said again.

“It’s my curse,” I said. “Always has been.”

“It’s not a curse, it’s a habit.”

“Same thing,” I said.

“Sometimes,” he replied.

My father took a nap around ten thirty. Nicole arrived a little before noon. My father was still sleeping, so we went down to the cafeteria for coffee. She asked how my father was, but for the most part she was quiet. She looked as if something was bothering her. I finally asked her what was wrong.

“Nothing.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“If you change your mind, I’m here.”

“I know.”

An hour later, we returned to my father’s room to find him awake. He looked especially happy to see Nicole.

“Hi, handsome,” Nicole said. She leaned over his bed and they embraced. “How are you feeling today?”

“Like a million bucks,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. But a million bucks ain’t what it used to be.”

Nicole laughed. They talked for a long while. Twice I walked around the unit to stretch my legs. About six o’clock my father was getting sleepy again.

“You two run along,” he said. “I’m going to rest a little. Or maybe a lot. Go to a movie or something.”

“We’re not going to a movie,” Nicole said. “There’s nothing I want to see.”

“It doesn’t matter what you watch, as long as it’s more interesting than me.”

“What could be more interesting than you?” She kissed him on the cheek. “Good night, Bob.”

As we walked out of the hospital I asked Nicole if she’d like to get some dinner.

“Thanks, but I think I’ll just go back to the hotel.”

I looked at her quizzically. “Are you sure? You’ve got to eat.”

“I’m sure. Good night.”

“Good night,” I said. As I watched her walk to her car, I wondered what I had done.

I stopped at Vons grocery store on the way home and picked up a stack of TV dinners, some fruit and nuts, and a case of bottled water, something I never would have done had my father been home. (He couldn’t understand why someone would pay for water when you could get it for free.)

When I got home there was a plate of sugar cookies on the doorstep. I heated up one of the dinners in the microwave, ate, then went to my room and continued reading from the family history.

II

Peter Christoffersen

My father, Peter, was a lanky, quiet child. Some called him withdrawn. He was known for having a fierce temper and was in more than a few fights with boys often much older and bigger than him. Considering the circumstances in which he was born, it’s no surprise that he was of such a temperament. He was ten years old at the time of his father’s death—old enough to recognize his mother’s hand in it. To his dying day he never forgave her.

Nine weeks after Finn’s death, Genevieve sold the store in Butte and, with the five thousand dollars she received from her husband’s insurance, moved the family to Denver, Colorado. For a while, they lived a life of relative ease and prosperity. Peter took an apprenticeship with a local print shop setting type, but soon found he didn’t have the patience for the work. For a time he also sold newspapers.

In 1941, when Peter was fifteen, Genevieve married a man named Winton Clark, a worker at the local Eaton Metal Products Company. Winton was a violent man who drank too much. He frequently beat Genevieve and the boys. One November night Winton came home late from work, drunk and belligerent. Finding his dinner cold, he began beating Genevieve. When Peter tried to intervene, Winton beat him so severely that his life was only spared by his mother’s pleading.

Several hours later, after Winton had fallen asleep, Peter washed the blood from his face, packed a knapsack, said goodbye to his brother and sister, then struck Winton over the head with a heavy cast-iron skillet, emptied his pockets of $1.43, and left home for good.

Peter took a bus to a Denver army enlistment center, where he lied about his age and signed up to fight. The tide of the war was already turning as the Axis powers were stopped in Stalingrad and Midway. Peter was enrolled in the infantry and was eventually sent with the Allied troops to Utah Beach, where he saw the sand run red with blood and foam. His battalion pushed on to liberate France, then saw action in the Battle of the Bulge. He marched with the 99th Division in Moosburg as they freed the POWs. In his own words:

It was war, and I saw and did things that must change a man for the rest of his days.

Peter was honorably discharged thirty-six days after V-E Day (1945). He returned to Denver to see his brother and sister. His mother was still married to Winton, who had boasted that he’d beaten Peter “within an inch of his life” and vowed to “take him the final inch” should he ever “show his sorry face” in the home again. Unfortunately for Winton, Peter was now not only larger and stronger than him but battle hardened and trained in combat. He had killed men in war whom he had far less reason to dislike than Winton.

After taking a sound beating from Peter, Winton, who ironically was saved when Genevieve intervened, locked himself in his room and threated to call the police if Peter ever returned. The last thing Peter said to Genevieve was “Congratulations, Mother. You have found a man of your own quality.”

Peter learned that his sister had married and moved to Pueblo, Colorado. His brother, Thomas, had also attempted to enlist in the army but, looking much younger than Peter, was rejected. Instead, he followed his grandfather’s trade and went to work in the Kennecott Copper Mine in Bingham, Utah. In a cruel twist of irony, Thomas had been killed in a mining accident, thousands of miles away from the war.

Postwar America was a place of unbridled consumerism, and Peter got a good-paying job managing a downtown Denver appliance store, where he worked for several years. On October 17, 1947, at the age of twenty-one, he married Sara Krys White, a pretty waitress at the Rise’n Shine Diner, where he stopped every morning for coffee and pie. Sara baked her own wedding cake, and their wedding consisted of a brief ceremony held at the diner. That same day, Peter learned that his stepfather, Winton, had been killed in an automobile accident. Peter said it was the best wedding present he got.

He didn’t attend his stepfather’s funeral, though he later said he regretted not being there. “Not that I wished to pay my respects to the louse; rather, I wished to see the man in a state he most decidedly deserved.”

I put the book down. I never knew my grandfather, but I could see how his temperament had influenced my father. Still, in many ways, my father was nothing like him. My dad had always been strict and serious of nature, but he wasn’t violent. He had never spanked me and he rarely raised his voice. My father had done a lot to cultivate our family tree.

CHAPTER

Ten

My father is wiser than I’ve ever dared give him credit for.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning my father was in the best mood he’d been in since I’d returned. I again cleared off his breakfast tray and set up the chess set.

“You got more cookies last night.”

“From who?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“I suppose not,” he said.

“I also read more in the history.”

“How far did you get?”

“To just before you’re born.”

“You’re just getting to the good part,” he said, smiling.

We started playing. A few moves in I asked, “Remember that time we went to that dude ranch in Wyoming?”

“Juanita Hot Springs. I mention it in the book.”

“Was that your idea or Mom’s?”

“Your mother’s,” he said. “I remember a horse almost ran away with you. You never liked horses after that.”

“I didn’t like them before,” I said. “I like them less now.”

He frowned. “Of course. McKale . . .”

“Did Mom know she had cancer then? During that trip?”

He nodded. “That’s why we went on the trip. She wanted to create as many memories for you as she could.” His voice became thoughtful. “You were the sun, moon, and stars to her. The last thing she said to me was ‘Take care of our boy.’ ” He paused for a moment, then looked me in the eyes. “Did I?”

“Did you what?”

“Take care of you.”

“Of course you did.”

“I wonder sometimes. I didn’t do the job that she would have. That wasn’t going to happen. When we got married I warned her that I wasn’t good with children.”

“What did Mom say to that?”

“You know her, hope springs eternal . . .”

“No, I didn’t know that about her.”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t. But she was the most hopeful person I have ever known. She said we’d just learn together. She told me that the most important things a parent could give a child were roots and wings. She said she’d provide the roots and I could teach you how to fly. I figured I could handle that part. I just didn’t expect that she wouldn’t be around.” He frowned. “You spent most of your time with McKale anyway.”

“Did that bother you?”

“No. I figured you needed the feminine interaction, and she filled the void.”

“Did you ever think we would end up together?”

“No. Those things don’t usually work out. But I thought it was good for you in the meantime.” He went back to examining the board. “So what are you going to do with the rest of your life after your walk?”

“That’s a good question,” I said.

“Does it have a good answer?”

I looked up at him. “Lately I’ve been reconsidering things. I’m thinking that maybe I’ll go to work in-house for an advertising agency. It doesn’t have the growth potential of opening my own company, but it would be okay. I’d get the satisfaction of creativity without the pain of bill collecting or hassling with clients . . .”

“Or having someone steal your clients?” my father said. His gaze leveled on mine. “You’re too talented to limit yourself, Al.” He lifted one of the bishops he’d taken from me. “The past makes a good bishop but a poor king.”

“What does that mean?” I said.

“It means that it’s good to take counsel from the past but not to be ruled by it. Otherwise we end up using today to fight yesterday’s battles and miss tomorrow’s promise.”

“That’s pretty profound,” I said.

“So what are you going to do with the rest of your life?”

“Stick around and find out.”

“I’m planning on it.”

Hearing him say that made me feel good.

“Is Nicole coming by today?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I think being around me is hard on her.”

“Maybe.” He frowned. “Be good to her.”

“Of course I will.”

“Did you call Falene?”

“No.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’d better figure it out.”

CHAPTER

Eleven

It’s a shame that hearts don’t come with manual overrides.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

My father was asleep when Nicole arrived at the hospital that afternoon. She looked as upset as she had the day before. “How is he?” she asked.

“Good,” I said. Then I added, “He looks better than you do.” She just kind of shrugged. “Do you want to talk?”

She slowly breathed out. “Okay.”

We walked out of his room. The ICU waiting room wasn’t crowded and we sat in a vacant corner.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

She looked down for a moment, then slowly shook her head. “This is hard.”

“I know how much he means—”

She looked up. “I don’t mean your father, I mean us. Do you have any idea how hard it is to love someone who doesn’t love you back?”

“I do love you.”

“I don’t mean like that,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking, coming here. I thought I could ignore my feelings, or that maybe they would just go away. But they’re not.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “They just get stronger. I love you too much to just be friends.”

I didn’t know what to say.

A tear rolled down her cheek. “Maybe I should just go home.”

“Do you want to go home?”

She shook her head.

I took her hand. “I’m grateful that you’re here. For both of us. But if it’s too hard, I understand. So will my father.”

For a moment she just sat there, wiping her eyes. Then she said softly, “I don’t want to go.”

“I don’t want you to go,” I said. “But I don’t want to hurt you, either. I do love you.”

“I know you do.”

I kissed her forehead. Then I put my arms around her and held her. I felt like such an idiot. Why didn’t I love her?

CHAPTER

Twelve

It’s hard to believe that my mild-mannered accountant father was a warrior action figure.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

When Nicole had regained her composure I walked her to my father’s room and left them alone. My heart ached for her, but I knew that her being with my father would help. He was good for her. They were good for each other.

After I got home I thought about what my father had said about calling Falene, but I couldn’t do it. Especially not tonight. It felt like I would be throwing salt on Nicole’s wounds. Instead I did some laundry, ate another one of my TV dinners, and lay down on my bed to read about my father.

III

Robert Alan Christoffersen

On June 16, 1953, Sara gave birth to her first and only child, Robert Alan Christoffersen. A week after my birth, my father lost his job after a scuffle involving the store owner’s son. He took a brief stint as a bouncer at a bar, then found more steady work as a truck driver for the Vail Truck Line. His new profession provided a steady income, though it took him all across the country. He was home only three weekends a month.

I remember my mother as a lonely but dutiful wife and mother who devoted most of her time to raising me. On the weekends that Peter was home he drank heavily, and Mom waited on him hand and foot, eager to please him.

I never really knew my father. It seemed he had little interest in me. I learned, at a young age, that if I asked him about the war, he was eager to talk, so I would think up questions to ask him.

Though my father was often harsh and aloof, he was not abusive. The only time he ever struck me I likely deserved it, as I was a teenager and I had taken some money from his wallet without asking.

The money he made driving was sufficient for our needs, and I never felt deprived like some of the other children in our neighborhood did. During the summer of my fourteenth birthday, we moved to a better neighborhood in the suburban area of Lakewood. I attended Lakewood High School, where I played forward on the school’s varsity basketball team. My senior year I played on the team that placed third in state, the farthest our school had ever progressed in the tournament.

I had always been a little shy around the opposite sex, but, beginning in my sophomore year of high school, I dated several girls. My first real girlfriend was Jodi Reynolds. She was a pretty blond girl and was the first attendant at the sophomore “sock hop” prom. Then, halfway through my junior year, I fell in love with a girl named Kate Mitchell, a beautiful brunette who looked a little like a combination of a young Audrey Hepburn and Annette Funicello. We got along well, and my heart was broken that summer when her father took a job in Phoenix and she moved out of state with her family. We wrote for a few months, but once September came we both found ourselves swept into life at school and eventually met others.

During these years, it was important to my father that I work. I had a job at a hot dog stand called Der Wienerschnitzel, and then at Peck & Shaw, a used car dealership where I detailed cars before they went on the lot to be sold. It was a volatile time in the world, a time of social unrest and protests, much of it over the war in Vietnam. In 1969, during my junior year, the first draft lottery since World War II was initiated. A year later, four students were killed in a protest at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. My father was a vocal critic of “the hippies,” and the back window of our station wagon bore a decal that read:

AMERICA.

LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT.

I suppose that was why I offered no resistance when my draft notice arrived a week after my high school graduation in June 1971. While some of my high school friends were burning their draft cards or relocating to Canada, I reported to basic training in Fort Lewis, just south of the Seattle-Tacoma area of Washington, not far from where my grandfather had lived during the Depression.

The transformation from civilian to soldier is a fascinating, if not painful process. On the first day everyone arrives with the accoutrements of their own class and social caste. The military is the great equalizer. At the end of the day, we all had the same haircut, our clothing was the same, and our status was equally lowly. Our pay matched our status: we were paid seventy-five dollars a month to risk our lives. For some it was the most money they had ever seen.

During my sixth week in basic training I was called in by my sergeant and told that my father had died. I was in shock. I was told that I could take a hardship leave, but it would have meant starting all over again with a different group. At that moment I realized that I had, in part, gone into the war to win my father’s approval. Now he was gone. I called my mother, and she agreed I should stay.

After eight weeks we were given our MOS—military occupational specialty. This is when each of us should have received an assignment that matched our individual skill set, but at that point in the war they were sending everyone they could to infantry. One member of our group raised his hand and said he spoke Chinese. The captain said, “We don’t care, soldier. We need bodies.”

They needed soldiers in the jungle. I was classified 11B. The B stands for “Bravo,” but the veterans just say it stands for “bush.” There was no way around it: we were all going to see combat, up close and personal.

From basic training we were sent to AIT—advanced infantry training. Jungle training. Same discipline and drilling as basic training, but more classes. We had to take apart our rifles and put them back together in sixty seconds—blindfolded. We learned how to throw grenades, dig foxholes, fire and service a .50-caliber machine gun, and set up ambushes or establish a perimeter with M18 Claymore mines. Most of all, we learned how to move as a platoon.

After we completed AIT we were given another test. I must have scored high, because that afternoon a colonel called me in and told me he thought I was NCO (noncommissioned officer) material. He told me I’d make more money and get to lead some people. I said it sounded good to me. He wanted to send me to Fort Benning in Georgia for NCO school but first wanted me to extend my service a year.

I had no desire to make the military my life, so I said no to the extension. They sent me to NCO school anyway. I guess they were short on leaders. NCO school lasted a couple of months, and although I’d only been in the military for a total of five months, I came out the same rank as my drill sergeant, who had served for six years.

During our second week in NCO our orders came to report to Fort Carson in preparation for being sent to Vietnam. Fort Carson is located near Colorado Springs, just a couple of hours from my home in Denver.

As I prepared to go, I was presented with another opportunity. I was called in and asked to go to OCS (officer candidate school) at Fort Benning. Again I was asked to extend my time in the army, and again I turned them down. Again, they sent me anyway.

In OCS I was trained to lead. I learned how to read maps and was taught communication and leadership skills. I would graduate as a second lieutenant—the rank of a platoon leader—and I would be calling the shots in the bush. I was in OCS for fourteen weeks, and at the end of the training I was sent back to Colorado to await my combat orders.

While I was there I saw my mother twice. She was handling the death of my father better than I had expected. She told me that my father had been gone so much that a part of her just felt he was still out on the road.

The second time I went to see her was two days before I was to fly to Vietnam. The reality that it might be the last time she saw her son was difficult for her to bear. She broke down as I started to go and she told me to “be careful,” which was like telling a surfer not to get wet. I told her that I would do my best.

On February 7, 1972, about two hundred of us were sent by military transport from Denver to San Diego, where we boarded a TWA airliner to fly to Vietnam. We were flown into the base at Long Binh, about thirty-three kilometers from Saigon. Long Binh was the largest US Army base in Vietnam, with more than fifty thousand men and women.

We arrived at night, and after we landed the lights in the airport and on the plane were all turned off, keeping us from being an easy target for mortars and rockets.

I’ll never forget stepping from the plane. Even at night the hot, wet air hit me like a blast furnace. I had never before experienced such humidity. Or such uncertainty. I briefly wondered what my father would think of where I was, or if I felt the same emotions he had on D-Day, but I quickly dismissed the thoughts. My father’s opinions had become irrelevant—not just because of his death, but because my new circumstances demanded it.

Just as oppressive as the humidity was the country’s smell. The jungle is thick and wet, a massive, living compost that fills the air with heat and the stench of decay.

We were immediately taken to bunkers to sleep. That night we came under mortar and rocket fire, and most of us newbies stayed up expecting an attack until one of the MPs asked us why we weren’t sleeping. When we told him he laughed. He said this was just the Vietcong welcoming us to Nam.

Early the next morning we were rushed out onto a large, fenced-in field to be given our assignments. An officer with a bullhorn addressed us with a greeting I’ll never forget.

He said, “Welcome to Vietnam. This will likely be the most interesting year of your life. Some of you will go home. Some of you won’t. Try to be one of those who goes home.”

Then he walked around shouting out our assignments. The parceling took about an hour. I didn’t have to wait long before he shouted, “Christoffersen, First Cavalry.”

The 1st Cavalry was an air-mobile unit, meaning we were flown into combat by helicopters. As we walked to our assignments, we passed soldiers going home. They were on the other side of a chain-link fence, and most of them were pretty ragged looking. One of the soldiers came up next to the fence and waved us over. “Hey, newbies.”

Me and two others walked up to him.

“If I were you,” he said, “I’d kill myself right now.”

The first month in the jungle is the most critical for survival, because you don’t know what you don’t know. I was there to take over for a platoon leader who had just three weeks left. I had to learn fast. I was fortunate to have a new best friend, a Chinese-Cambodian man named Tac Fuhn. He was what the army called a Kit Carson Scout, but he was really just a mercenary and was paid for every VC we killed. I asked him why he worked for us instead of the North Vietnamese. He replied, “The Americans pay more.” Every day I was glad he was on our side.

My first firefight came after two weeks in the bush. We walked into a clearing and saw four VC in their black pajama-like uniforms. Both sides were equally surprised, and we both fired. I shot off about thirty rounds. I told Fuhn that I thought I got one of them. He laughed and said, “Only if he was hanging from the top of the tree.”

I had wondered if, when the time came, I would be able to shoot another man. I discovered that, when someone’s shooting at you, it’s pretty easy to shoot back. I was fortunate that my first encounter with the enemy was just a few VC and not an ambush with a dug-in army.

Pasted in the book was a picture of my father I had never seen before. He was fifteen years younger in the picture than I was now. This was not an image of the staid accountant I knew. My father was an action figure.

I spent the next ten months in the bush. We became soldiers. Tough. Confident. Skilled. We learned to remain calm under fire. My biggest fear wasn’t death, it was being captured or, worse, losing one of my men. I have heard that new mothers have dreams about losing their babies. Sometimes I had dreams about losing one of my men. There’s a bonding that takes place that only someone under such duress can understand.

Everyone had a nickname: Val, Slim, Abe, Sparky, Willy-boy, Wailin’ Wagers, Forkey, and Flash. My men just called me L.T. or Lieutenant, though after a few months some took to calling me Lucky, since I never got hit in battle.

In some ways, I knew my men better than their own mothers knew them; when a man faces mortality, you see who he really is. I learned that, in the face of death, these men I commanded would come through for me. I loved them, and I discovered that I worried about them more than I worried about myself. I’m proud to say that I only lost one of them, though by the end of my deployment, most of them had been wounded.

The Vietnamese were deadly opponents, and every firefight reminded us of that. The VC created remarkable underground bunker complexes. I remember Tac Fuhn saying to me, “We are close to a bunker.” I said, “Where?” He pointed to the ground and said, “We are standing on it. See the airhole?”

There is one firefight that stands out to me more than the others. We had stumbled upon a huge VC complex. We were extremely outnumbered and taking a lot of fire. I called in a B-52 strike. By the time the planes arrived, most of the enemy had scattered into the jungle, disappearing like sand through our fingers.

Following a major firefight we were required to report a body count, so after the ground was secure and our wounded cared for, we patrolled the compound for dead VC. There was one casualty I’ll never forget. As I approached the still body of a dead soldier I found that she was a woman and pregnant. Her eyes were wide open, and her hand was on her stomach. There were two bullets through her throat, one through her forehead, and one through her abdomen. I don’t know what she was doing in combat, but she had been carrying a gun, which made her a justifiable target.

Justifiable or not, I dreamed about the woman many times. Her wide, lifeless eyes would suddenly blink and she would stare at me, her face distorted with fear and hatred. Then she would ask, “Why?”

The environment itself seemed to be our enemy. I arrived in Nam during the monsoon season, and coming from Colorado I had never seen anything like it. Rain would fall, uninterrupted, for weeks on end. We were always wet. We didn’t wear socks, as they would only cause fungus to grow. There were times we went more than a week without being dry.

There were also snakes. There was a particularly nasty little green pit viper, with bright red eyes, that hung from trees. They were hard to see and I had a few snap at me as I brushed by. They posed enough of a danger that our medics carried antivenom for them. One of our guys was bit, and even with the antivenom it was several days before he was himself again.

Maybe the most annoying of Nam’s creatures were the leeches. One morning one of my men woke with a leech on his eyelid. By the time we got it off, his eye was pretty messed up. We wore leech garters to keep them from climbing up to the soft tissue of our crotches.

IV

Coming Home

I had been in the jungle for nearly ten months when our platoon was engaged in our largest firefight. Twenty-two of my thirty men were injured and had to be medevaced out. With most of my men out of commission, I was brought back with them to Long Binh. I assumed I would be given a new platoon, something I wasn’t happy about.

While waiting for my orders in Long Binh, I was informed by my commander that my request for an early release to attend college had been granted. I was done. The war was over for me. Two days later it was me walking on the other side of the fence watching as frightened newbies lined up to take their assignments. As the plane lifted, everyone on board spontaneously broke into applause.

We flew into the Oakland airport, and I kissed the tarmac as I got off. We were taken to a big hangar to be processed out. It took three days for me to be released.

I was still in my uniform as I flew from Oakland to Denver. I didn’t see what some returning Vietnam veterans reported—angry, jeering crowds calling us “baby killers” or spitting on us. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, it just didn’t happen to me. My mother met me at the airport. It had been only eleven months since she’d sent me off from Fort Carson, but it felt like a lifetime. She had changed a lot since I’d seen her last. She had aged. Her hair was completely gray, and she seemed weary.

Just two weeks later I was a student at the University of Colorado in Boulder, wearing bell-bottom jeans and a polyester disco shirt. Reentry into civilian life had its challenges, but having been in Vietnam gave my life context. I remember talking to a fellow student who was upset about our upcoming final. He said to me, “Why are you so calm? It’s half our grade!” I replied, “Because even if we fail, we’ll still be alive in the morning.”

Vietnam was the most controversial of conflicts, and even with my rank and decorations, I wondered if my father would have been proud of me. I discovered that there was a smugness to many of the older vets. Some of them seemed to believe that what they had done mattered and what we had done didn’t. No matter the rightness of the cause, we, like them, answered the call of our country. We felt the same fear, the same pain, and faced the same risks. But, unlike them, we came back not to ticker tape parades and celebrations but to a largely indifferent and ungrateful nation.

We had put our lives on the line for a war that had initially been popularly ratified by both the politicians and the people. We had risked our lives for their decisions, not ours, yet they hated us for it. But no matter the country’s schizophrenia, to me the war was more than a news story. It was a part of my life. And though it all seemed to have passed by like a dream, sometimes, in those dreams, I would still see the pregnant Vietnamese woman, her neck and forehead pierced, her dark eyes open, staring at me. And each time she would ask, “Why?”

CHAPTER

Thirteen

Wandering through just one paragraph of my father’s history has changed Key West for me more than walking a few thousand miles.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Why didn’t I know any of this about my father?

It was past midnight when I set down the book. I suppose we as children are selfish by nature, judging our parents in the context not of their worlds and challenges but of our worlds and how they meet our needs. Even as we mature we rarely think of them as having been young like us.

Reading about my father, more than a decade younger than I was right now, leading a group of men through a murderous jungle, cast him in a different light. He was stronger and more courageous than I had ever given him credit for. He was better than me.

Of course I knew that my father had served in the war, but I’d never given it much thought. I certainly had never understood it from his perspective. The only time we had spoken about Vietnam was when my eighth-grade history class was studying the war and I asked my father if he knew anything about it—which was like asking the pope if he knew anything about Catholicism. Outside of that discussion, he never spoke of it. I didn’t think he was traumatized by the experience, but rather that he had moved past it, and chose not to be defined by it any more than any other experience in his life. Perhaps it had made him more serious, but, considering his father, I think he would have been a serious person whether he served in the war or not.

I think the war might have affected him in another profound way. It taught him the true and temporary nature of all things—that nothing remains the same forever. Perhaps that’s what got him through my mother’s death.

I arrived at the hospital the next morning eager to talk to my father about what I had read, but he was asleep when I got there. I sat there for nearly an hour, reading, before he woke.

“What time is it?” he asked.

His voice startled me. “It’s nearly ten.”

“I slept in,” he said in a deep voice. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“I’m sorry. Do you want some breakfast?”

He didn’t answer immediately, but looked around the room. “Maybe in a little while.”

“I read pretty late last night,” I said.

“What did you read about?”

“You. Your childhood. Vietnam.”

“Nam,” he said, as if he were speaking of a person. “That was an interesting time.”

“Interesting or terrifying?”

“Both,” he said. Then, surprisingly, he suddenly grinned.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

He looked back up at me. “I just remembered something funny.”

“In Vietnam?”

“I’m sure even hell has its occasional humor,” he said. “This one time after we’d been in the bush for six weeks they flew us to Long Binh for some R and R. When we landed I was told that we were going to be inspected by a new general, and I wasn’t real happy about that. After fighting in the jungle for more than a month, the last thing I wanted was some starched stateside general casting judgment on us.

“As he looked us over he focused his attention on this one guy, Private Forkey, who was standing kind of slumped. Forkey was regular military. He’d been in the army for eighteen years and was still a private. He’d been promoted to sergeant twice before, but both times was busted back down for insubordination.” My father grinned at me. “Forkey had trouble with authority. The general shouted, ‘Soldier, stand up straight and show some respect.’ Forkey looked the general in the eye and said, ‘What are you going to do? Send me to Vietnam?’

“Even though we tried to keep straight faces, we all burst out laughing. Fortunately, it turned out the general was a regular guy after all, and he said, ‘I guess you have a point there.’ ” My father shook his head. “It was a crazy time. I had these two kids in my platoon from South Chicago. We called them the Polaski brothers, which was funny because they weren’t named Polaski and they weren’t brothers. They were both Polish and had come over together. Those boys were fearless. They had belonged to a gang on the tough Chicago streets and were what we called ‘two or ten.’ That means they’d been arrested and the judge gave them an option, two years in Vietnam or ten years in prison.” My father smiled. “Most of their conversations were about how they would get a mortar back to South Chicago. They eventually devised a plan to bring one over piece by piece.”

“Did they ever do it?” I asked.

“Probably not,” he said. “You would have heard about it on the news if they did. I think it was just an idea to keep their minds occupied.” His eyes grew serious. “In moments of crisis, you do what you need to do to survive. Mentally and physically. You’d be surprised what the mind is capable of.”

“You’re a strong man,” I said.

“So are you,” he replied. He settled back a little in his bed. “So you and Nicole had a talk yesterday.”

“She told you?”

He nodded. “Breaks my heart. She’s a sweet girl. You’re sure you’re not in love with her?”

“It would be convenient.”

“Love is rarely convenient,” he replied. “You still haven’t called Falene?”

“No. Not yet.” Before he could ask why, I changed the subject. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m still here.”

“That’s a good thing.”

“That depends on which alternative destination you’re thinking of,” he replied.

“Want to play some chess?”

He breathed out slowly. “No. Not today. Maybe I’ll read.”

“Can I get you something?”

“I could use one of the newsmagazines. I feel like I’ve lost touch with the world.”

“I’ll find you one,” I said.

I went downstairs to the gift shop and purchased copies of both Newsweek and Time. When I returned to my father’s room he was asleep again. I read the magazines while I waited for him to wake, but after an hour he was still snoring.

I left the magazines next to his bed and went out to the nurses’ station to see if Dr. Witt was in. A nurse told me that he would be in around one. I checked on my father again, then went out and got some lunch, then went to a bookstore and picked up a couple of thriller novels, then went back to the hospital. When I walked into the room my father was sitting up and reading Time. “Thanks for getting these.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “Have you heard from Nicole?”

“She said she’d be here around three.”

“Maybe I’ll leave before she gets here.”

“That might be better,” he said.

It was already a few minutes past two, so I said goodbye and went out to find Dr. Witt. He was in the hall, and he looked up at me as I approached. “Alan, right?”

I was surprised that he remembered my name. “Yes. I wanted to ask how my father’s doing.”

We stepped to the side of the hall. “He’s stable, but I’m not seeing the progress I had hoped for. His heart still isn’t pumping effectively on its own, so he still requires medication and close monitoring.”

“What do we do?”

“Just what we’re doing. Wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Change.”

I was feeling restless, so on the way home I stopped by a gym where I purchased a temporary membership along with some gym shorts and a T-shirt. I lifted weights and rode a stationary bike until I was soaked with sweat. Then I went back to the house and showered.

After working out I wasn’t very hungry, so I had just a bowl of Cheerios, then went to my room and went back to reading.

V

Kate

I went to the University of Colorado for three reasons: First, tuition was, at the time, relatively cheap; second, there was work available in the area; and third, they had a decent accounting program.

One October evening I was having a beer with some classmates at a restaurant-bar called The Sink when a beautiful young woman walked in. One of my buddies stood to talk to her, and I realized she was Kate Mitchell, my high school sweetheart who had moved to Phoenix. Kate seemed as happy to see me as I was her, and we spent the rest of the evening catching up on our lives since we’d last seen each other. That evening I walked her back to her dorm and we ended up talking until the sun came up. I was smitten. Or re-smitten. After that we spent every possible moment together.

A week before Christmas break, William Guest, one of my comrades from Nam (aka Willy-boy), called to say he was getting married on December 18 and asked me to be his best man. He lived south of Miami in Florida City. I invited Kate to accompany me to Florida and she accepted. We flew into Miami, and William and his soon-to-be bride, Sally, picked us up at the airport. We stayed at William’s parents’ house. The morning after the wedding we borrowed Sally’s car and drove two and a half hours south to Key West for the day.

It was a beautiful day, a far cry from Denver’s snow and subfreezing temperatures. We ate conch fritters and key lime pie and visited some of Ernest Hemingway’s haunts, like Sloppy Joe’s Bar and his home on Whitehead Street, which had been turned into a bookstore.

At sunset we sat on a small strip of beach near the southernmost tip of the island. I rolled up my pant legs, walked out into the water, and found a shell. I brought it back and gave it to Kate and asked her to marry me. I don’t know if she was completely sure I was serious, but she said yes. She might be the first girl ever to be proposed to with a seashell.

Later that night, we called our parents and told them our news. Kate’s parents were happy. So was my mother, who had always liked Kate. When we got back to Denver I bought Kate a real ring and we picked a date in June to get married.

We spent Christmas Eve and morning in Denver with my mother, then flew to Phoenix and stayed with Kate’s family until New Year’s Day. Her family treated me really well, even though Kate’s father was recovering from surgery. He suffered from severe diabetes, and the surgeons had just amputated most of his toes. I wondered if it might be his last Christmas, which, unfortunately, it was. He lived to see us married, though. We were married on June 28 at the Brotherhood of Man Desert Chapel in Scottsdale, Arizona.

I graduated with my BS on December 13, 1976, with a major in accounting. It was my great fortune that I graduated with a job. Twelve weeks before graduation I went to an on-campus interview with Peat Marwick of Denver, one of the big eight accounting firms. Back then you didn’t need to complete a master’s program to be a CPA, and I was hired on the spot as a staff monitor.

After graduation, Kate and I moved to Thornton, Colorado, a pleasant, growing suburb just ten miles northeast of Denver. The next week I reported for work in the auditing division on the twenty-first floor of the Peat Marwick building in downtown Denver.

I was given eighteen months to get my accounting certificate. I took my CPA exam and passed four of the five sections on my first attempt. I went back three months later and finished. I received my certificate after I’d been there for six months. Unfortunately there wasn’t much time for celebrating. Kate’s father died two days later.

I lay back in bed, my head swimming with these revelations. Not only had my parents been to Key West but they were engaged there. Why hadn’t my father told me? How could he have kept something that important from me?

CHAPTER

Fourteen

What I read in my father’s book tonight was difficult. It was like watching a rerun of a show I hated the first time.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning my father was eating breakfast as I walked into his room. I was less than subtle. “Why didn’t you tell me that Key West was such a significant place for you? You didn’t even tell me that you’d been there.”

He looked up at me for a moment, then said, “You didn’t ask.”

I shook my head. “No, that’s not a good enough answer.”

He saw how upset I was and set down his fork. “No. You’re right.” He looked at me, waiting for me to calm a little. “When I heard you were walking to Key West, I wanted to say something. But I knew I shouldn’t. It was a difficult time for you, and this was your journey, not mine. Key West means something entirely different to you than it does to me. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not even the same place. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

My anger dissipated. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

“There’s more,” he said. “I had planned on being in Key West when you arrived. But seeing how things have gone south for me, I’m not sure that’s going to happen.” He must have read the concern in my face because he quickly added, “I’m not saying I won’t be there, but just in case I’m not, I want you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“In the nightstand next to my bed there’s a yellow envelope with your name on it. I want you to take it with you to Key West. Will you do that for me?”

“What’s in the envelope?”

“You’ll see when you get there.” He looked me in the eye. “You’ll do it?”

“Of course, but only if you’re not there.”

He forced a smile. “I hope I’ll be there.”

I sat down next to him. “I’m sorry I came blustering in here like that.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re entitled to your feelings.”

“How are you feeling today?”

“Same old.”

“Have you talked to Dr. Witt lately?”

He frowned. “Yes. I don’t think things are going the way he was hoping they would.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I asked him when I could go home. He said it might be a while. Either that or he’s trying to keep Nicole around.”

“Nicole?”

“He’s got his eye on her. He’s asked me about her a few times. And he lights up like a Christmas tree whenever she’s around.”

This was news. “Really? Has Nicole noticed?”

“I don’t know.”

I didn’t know what to say. I felt funny about it.

My dad’s eyebrows fell. “You’re not jealous, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t have a right to be,” he said.

“I know.”

“Besides, it’s a good thing.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I get more attention from the doctor this way.”

I saw Nicole briefly that afternoon. Changing of the guard. She didn’t look as upset as she had the last time I’d seen her. “You okay?” I asked.

“I’m okay,” she said softly. She touched my arm. “Thank you for being so sweet to me the other day. I know it’s hard for you too.”

“You’re my friend,” I said. “Maybe my only friend.”

She hugged me. “How’s your dad today?”

“I don’t know. He said he’s not feeling any better.”

Nicole nodded as if she already knew. “It may take time,” she said. “Time heals all wounds.”

“I’m counting on that.”

“Have a good night,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The first thing I did when I got home was look in my father’s nightstand for the envelope he’d told me about. It was there near the front, a standard number 10 envelope made of bright yellow paper. The envelope contained more than just a letter. It bulged at one end. I put it back in the nightstand.

It had been nearly a week since I’d done any walking, so I put on my gym shorts and shirt and went for a long walk, passing the arboretum where McKale and I had gotten married. It felt good to see the old places and relive the memories they brought back. It also felt good to get out on the road again. I find that I can think better when my legs are moving.

I walked for nearly three hours, returning just as the sun had begun to fall. Then I took my dad’s car to the store and bought some more groceries. I broiled a steak, which I ate with an arugula salad.

After I finished eating I cleaned up the kitchen, took a shower, then went to my room for the evening, ready to get back to my reading. The next chapter held special interest. It was about me.

VI

A Son

In October of the following year, Kate informed me that she was pregnant. I was as excited as I was terrified. I worried about what kind of father I would be. I didn’t exactly have a sterling role model. I thought I could approach fatherhood the way I had approached survival in the jungle of Vietnam: I’d figure it out as I went. The difference was, I had more training for war.

Being a mother was natural for Kate. In fact, it was as if she had come into herself. My son, Alan Christoffersen, was born June 5, 1979. He weighed eight pounds and one ounce and was twenty-one inches long. Kate wanted to name him after me, but I didn’t think Bob would be a popular name in the future, so we used my middle name, Alan. He was a beautiful boy. He was healthy with a strong pair of lungs and a head full of hair. In his birth I discovered a paternal side of me that I didn’t know existed. I became fiercely protective.

Kate was as smitten with her son as any mother has ever been. She called our boy “mister” and “little dreamy.” Alan was a smart kid and inventive, and showed an early interest and talent in art. At the age of three, he was drawing pictures of animals and people. He was also a very handsome boy, and every year his grade school teacher would inform us that the girls in his class all had crushes on him.

As much as I loved him, there were times I felt awkward about my inability to emotionally connect with my son. Fortunately his mother more than made up for it.

With the exception of the death of Kate’s mother, the next eight years of our life were idyllic. I continued to climb the ladder at Peat Marwick while Kate raised our son and made our house a home. On June 9, 1987—everything changed.

•  •  •

It was early on a Wednesday morning. I was shaving in the bathroom and Kate was in the shower when she found a lump in her breast. We were both concerned, but she continued her morning ritual of getting Alan off to school. She promised she would call her doctor that day.

That afternoon she called me at work to tell me that her doctor had taken her right in and scheduled a biopsy. Two days later the biopsy came back as malignant, and her doctor made an appointment for her with a cancer specialist, Dr. Mark Haroldsen, whom we saw just three days later. To our relief, he told us that he believed we had caught the cancer early, but we needed an MRI to confirm his diagnosis, which we got immediately.

The results came back that same week. The tumor was larger than Dr. Haroldsen thought. Also, the surrounding tissue was all precancerous, so Kate would need a mastectomy. As bad as the news was, there was more. Dr. Haroldsen pointed out a dark shadow under Kate’s arm requiring a second biopsy, this one of Kate’s lymph nodes.

That evening we sat Alan down and told him that his mother was sick. As usual he was very inquisitive and wanted to know what a tumor was. When we finally used the word cancer he began to cry. He told us that one of his classmates’ fathers had died of cancer that year. Kate just held him and told him not to worry. She said, “Don’t worry, little man. Your mama’s not going anywhere.”

I had slept in the jungle drenched by monsoon rains and lying in mud two inches thick within a hundred yards of the VC, but I didn’t sleep at all that night.

My mind was flooded with painful memories. I remembered the talk. It was after dinner, and my mother, father, and I were in the living room. I knew something was very wrong. Children sense these things. I was sitting cross-legged on the red and green couch. The amber curtains with their odd, Nazca-like designs were drawn for the night. The gilded macaroni art I had made at school hung on the wall. I remembered the musky scent of my father’s Old Spice and the pattern of tiny red diamonds on his navy blue tie. Most of all I remembered the look of fear in his eyes.

I continued reading.

Two days later the results came back from the second biopsy. The cancer had spread to the lymph nodes. The operation was changed to a mastectomy with a full lymph node removal. Just one week later Kate had the operation. It was another very long week before we got the results. The cancer was even worse than previously thought. Much worse. It had spread to other parts of Kate’s body, including her lungs. Dr. Haroldsen said that, as it was, Kate likely had less than six months to live, but, with heavy chemotherapy, we could buy a few more months. I broke down crying. Kate squeezed my hand tightly, and tears also filled her eyes. But I honestly don’t think they were for her. All she said was “Oh, my little Alan . . .”

I had to pause a moment, as my eyes had filled with tears.

Kate became determined to make the most of the time she had left. Over the next twelve weeks we took a trip to Juanita Hot Springs, a dude ranch in Wyoming, with a stop in Yellowstone National Park. She went home to her family in Arizona twice (with Alan; she was always with Alan) and we visited Bryce Canyon in southern Utah.

Though sometimes it was practically all she could do to get out of bed, she made that Christmas magical. We saw plays and attended concerts. She baked Christmas cookies and even frosted Pop-Tarts with Christmas holly. It was a season of the most incredible love and beauty and denial.

The new year slapped us back to reality. Kate spent most of her time in bed. On January 12 she decided to stop the chemo. The next day we had the most difficult talk of our lives with Alan. Kate told him that she wasn’t going to get better. Alan cried, but he didn’t break down. A change in him had already begun. I had noticed that he was more serious. He rarely laughed anymore.

Over the next weeks he missed a lot of school to be with his mother. Kate read dozens of books to him, but mostly they just talked and talked. There were good and bad days, but each new week brought more of the latter as her condition worsened.

On the night of February 13, Alan made her a Valentine’s Day card and left it at the side of her bed. She never saw it. She never woke up again.

It was as if I was reliving it all. I set the book down and wept.

CHAPTER

Fifteen

I suppose that to be a parent is to be misunderstood. Perhaps this is the greatest evidence of parental love.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I had a fitful night. I dreamed of my mother’s death over and over. I dreamed of seeing her dead, her still, lifeless body growing cold. I woke sweating and tangled in my sheets. And then I would fall asleep and dream it again—only sometimes it was McKale I saw.

The next morning my father knew I was in pain as soon as I walked into his room. I suppose it was written across my face.

“You read about your mother, didn’t you?”

I sat down, my fingers knit together between my knees. “Yes, sir.”

“Those were hard days,” he said softly. He looked at me with sadness. “Hard, horrible days. I’m sorry you had to go through them at such a young age.”

I looked up at my father and wondered if I was about to go through horrible days again.

The next week passed in a haze. Though I came to the hospital every day, my father slept most of the time. When he was awake we didn’t talk any more about the family history. I had stopped reading, preferring instead to anesthetize my brain with whatever was on television that night.

Things weren’t going well. It was becoming more and more clear that my father wasn’t getting better. I had been back in California for thirteen days when my father said gravely, “Al, we need to talk.”

“About what?” I asked.

“My affairs.”

I was about to protest when he weakly raised his hand. “I’m not giving up the ghost. But I’m going to die sometime, so we might as well prepare for it. You’ll be grateful later. I’ve handled more inheritance and probate problems than I care to remember. It’s better to take care of things in advance.” I must have still looked distressed, because he added, “It will make me feel a lot better to get this off my chest.”

I felt like that little boy again sitting cross-legged on the sofa. “All right.”

“You need to find something to write on.”

There was a notepad by the phone. I picked it up.

“No, you need something substantial. I’m sure there’s a shop somewhere in the hospital. Go buy a steno pad and pen.”

“All right,” I said.

I took the elevator down to the lobby. The gift shop was right next to the entryway. It had arched French glass windows with cream trim and racks of flowers for sale near the front door. I purchased a yellow notepad and a mechanical pencil. I’m not sure why, but I also bought a bright bouquet of pink, yellow, and orange gerbera daisies. I had never bought flowers for my father before.

When I got back to the room my father was lying still with his eyes closed.

“I’m back,” I said. I set the flowers down on the windowsill.

He opened his eyes, then gestured to the flowers. “What are those for?”

“They’re flowers. What do you think they’re for?”

“Save them for my funeral,” he said. “No, scratch that. I don’t want flowers. I want donations made to the American Red Cross.”

I sat down in the chair next to his bed. “We’re not talking about your funeral.”

“Of course we are. Write that down,” he said. “No flowers.”

I took the notepad and flipped it open. “All right, no flowers . . .”

“Instead of flowers, I want donations made to the American Red Cross or the American Cancer Society. Make sure you provide an address or contact phone number on the obituary, or they won’t do it. They’ll intend to, but they won’t get around to it.”

I scrawled his directions.

“Designate a page just for my funeral,” he said. “Write it down on the top.”

I looked up at him. “Dad, this . . .”

“This is no time to be squeamish. I just had a major heart attack. My heart could stop at any moment. Let’s get this over with.”

Knowing that he wouldn’t bend, I wrote Funeral Directions at the top of the first page.

“I’ve already purchased the plot next to Mom in the Elysium Gardens Cemetery in Denver. I want to be buried next to her. I’ve made arrangements with Beard Mortuary to handle everything. Write that down.”

“Beard Mortuary? How do you spell it?”

“Just like the facial hair. 555-0121. It’s a Pasadena number.”

I wrote down the number.

“Did you get it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just tell them you’re calling regarding Bob Christoffersen. Everything is paid for. I purchased one of those pre-need plans. There will be a memorial service at their little chapel, then the casket will be shipped to Colorado for burial. You won’t need a headstone; I bought one of those couple stones when Mom died. They just need to engrave the final date on my side. Beard will take care of that as well.” He looked up at me. “You got all that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Start another page. Head it Miscellaneous.”

I wrote it down.

“After I die, you’ll have to cancel things. Cable, Internet, newspaper, magazine subscriptions. There are at least a dozen things you’ll need to shut down. I keep the automatic monthly charges on the blue Visa card. Once you cancel that, it will put everyone on notice. There’s a list of everything with my final instructions inside the top drawer of my desk—the long, thin drawer, not the one on the side. I put the Visa card in an envelope next to the list.”

“When did you do all this?” I asked.

“Two years ago,” he said. “I’m an accountant. I do this for people all the time.”

I wrote on my pad.

“My password is TacFuhn72. It’s spelled T-A-C-F-U-H-N.”

I remembered the name. Tac Fuhn—the mercenary from the war. Seventy-two was the year my father had served. I said, “It’s the name of that Cambodian man in Vietnam.”

He nodded. “I use that password on everything except my bank accounts. They require that I change the password yearly, so it’s TacFuhn87. Start a new page. Write Financial.”

“Okay.”

“My investments are handled by Susan Balogh. Her number is 592-9145.” He repeated the number slowly. “Write this down, it’s very important. I have copies of everything inside the fire safe in my den. It’s in the bottom drawer of my gray file cabinet. It requires a key and a combination. The key is in the top drawer of my desk next to the credit card. You’ll recognize the key. It’s one of those stubby ones with a black plastic bow.”

“A black what?”

“Bow. It’s the part of the key left outside the lock.”

That was the kind of detail only my father would know.

“The key next to it, the funny-looking one, is for my safe deposit box at Chase. I’ve put you down as an owner, so you’ll have access. The combination to the safe is 4-16-63. The instructions are on a sheet next to the key. I think you turn clockwise until you pass the first number three times, then counterclockwise . . . You don’t need to write this down, it’s on the instructions. You’ve opened a safe before, haven’t you?”

“Of course.”

“There’s nothing in there that Susan can’t help you with. I have an IRA, a Keogh, three mutual funds, and two insurance policies. You are the sole beneficiary. After I die, you can do what you like with the funds, but I don’t recommend that you cash out in one lump sum. You’ll get slaughtered by taxes, and the temptation to blow it all might be too great.

“I don’t expect you to remember that; just call Susan. I’ve already talked her through all of this. She’ll help you set up an annuity with a monthly dividend. If you don’t go crazy and loot the principal, there’s enough in there to take care of you for the rest of your life.”

I was feeling more and more uncomfortable with the conversation. But my father had always been direct. “Why do you have two insurance policies?”

“It’s complicated. Each one has a different investment vehicle, but since you’ll be awarded the death benefit, it doesn’t matter.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then said, “Write down Home.” Again, I did as he said. “The house is paid for, so you can live there. Or, if you decide to move back to Seattle, you can sell it. Whichever suits you. You know I’m not sentimental. It’s your house; do with it what you will.

“If you decide to sell, I recommend that you work with—write this down—Michelle Tripp. She goes by Shelly. I’ve known her for almost twenty years. She’s one of my clients and is one of the top real estate agents in Pasadena. She helped me find my office and negotiate the rate. She’ll take good care of you.

“I know this is a little overwhelming, but most everything I’ve just told you you’ll find typed up inside the top drawer of my desk next to the keys. It’s in a yellow file folder. You can’t miss it. It has your name on it.”

I wrote this down on my pad. When I looked back up my father was staring at me. “Any questions?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you’re not thinking about it hard enough.”

“I’m sure I’ll have questions later.”

His gaze faltered, and he rubbed his chin. Then he said, “It’s good that you’re prepared. Who knows if I’ll ever leave this place?”

I felt anger rise up in my chest. “Why all this talk about death? You’re still young.”

“Everyone dies.”

“Not at your age,” I said. We both knew it was foolish to say. My mother had been much younger when she died.

“You’re right,” he said. He looked down for a moment as if he were thinking, then he said, “You know that dream I told you about? The one about your mother and McKale?”

“Yes.”

“You asked what I left out . . .” He paused. “Mom said I wasn’t expected yet . . . but that I’d be with her very soon.”

Neither of us spoke for a moment. Then I said, “It was only a dream.”

He looked at me sympathetically and said, “You’re right. It was only a dream.” The room fell into silence again. After a moment he said, “Let me look through your notes.”

I handed him the notepad. He looked through it, then gave it back to me. “You got everything.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “I think I’ll take a nap. You can go if you like.”

I sat there fighting my growing emotion. Finally I said, “Okay. Have a good rest.”

“Al.”

“Yes?”

“I love you, Son.”

The words caught me off guard. “I love you too,” I said.

I drove back to the house, my mind reeling from our conversation. I realized that I had preferred living in denial, something my father, always the pragmatist, did not. It didn’t mean he was going to die, I told myself. He was just being prepared. My excuse rang hollow.

My cell phone rang a little after ten. It was Nicole.

“Your father told me he’d had an uncomfortable discussion with you, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was about.”

“We went over his funeral plans.”

She hesitated. “You know how he is. Planful.”

My father loved to use that word. Planful.

“Is that even a real word?” I asked.

“Your dad might have invented it.”

I breathed out slowly. “He told me that he loves me.”

“He does love you.”

“I know. But it’s not like him to say it.” I hesitated a moment. “He’s planning on dying.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Yes, I can. It’s like you said. He’s planful.”

There was a long pause, then she said, “What can I do for you?”

“Just being here is enough.”

“Call if you need anything. I mean it. Call anytime.”

My reply caught in my throat. “Thank you. Good night.”

“Good night, Alan,” she said.

I slowly hung up the phone. Part of me wanted to be back out on the road, where I could hide from this. I tried to watch television, but nothing kept my interest. I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. Finally, at two in the morning, I surrendered to my insomnia. I turned the light on and opened the family history. It was time to finish reading what my father had written.

VII

A New World

Kate’s death was the most difficult thing I have ever experienced. I felt as if I had been ripped in two. As hard as it was for me, I think it was even worse for Alan. His entire world seemed shattered. He was changed. Once I had to get angry with him to get him to eat because he’d lost so much weight. A couple times I found him crying, once in his closet.

Pretending to live as we had before was like living a lie. It wasn’t long before I came to the conclusion that we needed to make a new life or be consumed by the old one.

A few weeks before I had come to this conclusion, a friend of mine from college had contacted me to tell me he was taking over his father’s auto dealership in Pasadena. He needed someone to handle his accounting. He even offered space in his office where I could start my own CPA firm. At the time I told him I would think it over. Now the idea appealed to me.

One of Kate’s neighborhood friends took Alan in while I flew to California. I found us a little home on Altura Street in Arcadia, just east of Pasadena. I met one of the neighbors, a recently divorced man with a girl who was Alan’s age. He told me that the area was a good place to raise a family. I put an offer down on the home, then came back and told Alan that we were going to move. He didn’t seem any more upset than he already was, which I took as a good sign.

We moved just five weeks later. While uprooting our lives was difficult at first, the change turned out to be good for Alan, as it kept him occupied. Not long after our move he became friends with McKale Richardson, the girl next door, and from then on he spent most of his time with her. I think she filled a hole his mother left.

VIII

And So It Goes

Five years after Kate’s passing I met a woman named Gretchen O’Connor. She was a saleswoman at the car dealership. I suppose she reminded me of Kate in both looks and personality. Like me, she had lost her spouse to cancer. She had four children, the youngest just eighteen months old. I considered marrying her; we even talked about it, but she was so focused on the circumstances of her own children and their pain that I worried about how much attention and love she could provide Alan. As much as I desired companionship, I decided that she wouldn’t be good for him and I told her that it would be best if we didn’t see each other anymore. Saying goodbye wasn’t easy for either of us, but I have never regretted the decision. My son needed me.

As I read this I felt ashamed. More than once I had criticized him for not finding love again. I had never known, never even really considered, just how much my father had sacrificed for me. He had given up his job and home in Denver, then the chance to marry again. How could I have been so unaware? How could I have been so ungrateful?

Life went on. In January 2001 Alan informed me that he was going to ask McKale to marry him. I thought that they were still a little young to get married, but he was smart and I’m not one to intervene in his choices. She accepted his proposal, and they were married on October 28, 2001.

Alan was accepted to the Art Center College of Design, and he and McKale moved to an apartment in West Pasadena, near the school. The house was quiet without my son. I was grateful to see them most Sundays, when we gathered for dinner.

Just three weeks after Alan graduated he was offered a job with Conan Cross, a prestigious advertising firm in Seattle. I was pleased that he got the position but upset that he would be living so far away. He did well at the agency and won a wall-full of awards.

Three years later Alan struck out on his own, starting a firm called Madgic. Again, it seemed as if my son could do no wrong. The firm grew by leaps and bounds, and Alan continued to win award after award. He and McKale purchased a large, beautiful home in Bridle Trails, an upscale suburb near Bellevue. Then, on September 8, 2011, McKale was thrown by a horse and broke her back, paralyzing her from the waist down. A month later she died of an infection. During this time Alan’s business partner, whose name does not merit mention here, stole all of his clients, leaving my son bankrupt.

Alan had lost everything a man holds dear: his sweetheart, his home, and his business. The loss of any one of those things has brought lesser men to their destruction, but my son has persevered.

I learned in the jungles of Vietnam that when faced with overwhelming loss and stress, a man must choose to live and find his own way through his broken heart. Alan chose to endure. He decided to walk away from Seattle, Washington, to as far as he could go in the continental United States—Key West, Florida—the very place our family story began.

As of this writing, Alan has nearly completed his journey. I have no doubt that he will. I don’t know if it was a coincidence that led him to Key West or if maybe he was guided by some ethereal force, but either way, Alan has shown himself to be a man of courage and substance. He is a good man with a good heart—his mother’s heart. It is hard for me to fully express my feelings to him, but I love him more than I could ever say. I am honored to be his father.

My father’s writing ended there. I turned the page. There was a note in an unsealed envelope taped to the inside back of the binder. I extracted the paper from the envelope. The note was handwritten in my father’s disciplined script.

My dear son,

This brings our family history to the present. The rest of the story is yours to complete. You are the last leaf on this branch of the Christoffersen family tree. Whether your leaf turns into another branch, or even another tree, is up to you and God. Should you choose to continue our family name, then this book will contain your story and your children’s and grandchildren’s stories as well. Your experiences on your walk will be a great addition to our family history and will inspire all who read it.

I have compiled this history so that someday, after I’m gone, you will know who you are and where you belong. Always remember that you are not alone. I may not have always said it, but I always tried to show you that I love you. I am proud to be your father. Always remember this, my son, and Godspeed, until you have finished your walk to Key West and your even greater journey after.

I finally understood. My father hadn’t written our family history for himself. He’d written it for me. Only for me. He knew that someday he’d be gone and I would be completely alone. He was giving me a harbor from the squalls of time; he was giving me a place to belong.

CHAPTER

Sixteen

It is the heroic spirits in flawed men of flesh—not the whitewashed, heroic-sized renditions society fabricates—that deserve our adulation.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I brought the book with me to the hospital the next morning. There was so much I wanted and needed to say to my father. Most of all, I wanted to thank him for all he had done for me. For all the sacrifices he had made for me.

When I arrived he was still asleep. I sat down next to his bed and looked at him, my heart full of emotion. Now I knew the Great and Powerful Oz was not an illusion. The man behind the curtain was far greater than the contrived illusion of my flawed childhood perspective. What would I say to him? I sat there for nearly two hours listening to his heavy breathing, worrying about what to say. I never got the chance.

Suddenly my father’s breathing stopped, then he groaned. His eyes opened wide and he looked over at me. “Al . . .”

“Dad?”

He clutched his chest and grimaced. Perspiration beaded on the side of his face. An alarm went off.

“Dad, what’s wrong?”

“Alan,” he said. Another alarm went off.

I jumped up. “I’ll get help.” I ran out of the room. A nurse was already hurrying toward us. “I think my father’s having another heart attack,” I said.

The nurse ran into the room. She looked at my father, then shouted out the doorway to the woman sitting at the nurses’ station. “I need some help in here. Get me an EKG and page the doctor.”

I put my hand on my father’s shoulder. He was clutching his chest and breathing heavily. Suddenly he went limp. “Dad, stay with me.”

The nurse tilted my father’s head back, then put two fingers to his wrist. “Mr. Christoffersen? He isn’t breathing. Code blue!” She pushed a button on the wall next to the bed, then turned to me. “Stand back, please.” She lowered the side bar of the hospital bed and began performing chest compressions.

I heard a voice over the intercom. “Code blue, second floor, room B237.”

Two more women ran into the room, one pushing a cart packed with medical equipment. They rolled my father onto his side and placed a board under him. The nurse continued doing chest compressions.

The room exploded with action as more people began rushing in. One nurse put a mask over my father’s nose and mouth while another placed pads on his chest.

I stepped back toward the corner of the room, my eyes riveted on my father. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“He’s gone into cardiac arrest,” the first nurse said.

Just then Dr. Witt hurried in. He looked at the monitor on the cart and began directing the rest of the team. “Give him one milligram of epinephrine,” he said.

A nurse inserted a syringe into my father’s IV. “One milligram of epinephrine in.”

“Pause the compressions,” Dr. Witt said. He studied the screen for a moment. “Start again. We have a shockable rhythm. Let’s prime one more minute and then we’ll start. Two hundred joules.” The defibrillator made a high-pitched noise as it charged up.

“Clear.”

My father’s body heaved.

“Two hundred joules delivered,” said the nurse.

“Continue CPR for two minutes, then check for a pulse,” Dr. Witt said.

“No pulse,” the nurse said.

“Again,” Dr. Witt said.

Again my father’s body jumped.

An alarm went off. They repeated the cycle many more times, but my father showed no response.

After what felt like hours, the doctor turned to me. “I’m sorry.” He said to the nurse, “Stop the compressions. I’m calling it.” He looked at the clock. “Time of death is eight fifty-three.”

One of the nurses walked to the machine and pushed some buttons. The room suddenly became quiet. Dr. Witt turned back to me. “Alan, I’m sorry. We did everything we could, but your father is dead.”

Even though I had witnessed the entire scene, the pronouncement still, somehow, came as a shock. I walked to the side of the bed, and the nurses stepped aside, allowing me to take my father’s hand and feel the last of his warmth. I leaned over him and kissed his forehead. Already the heat was leaving his body. The difference just a few seconds of life make—just a few breaths make. I felt cheated. I still had things I wanted to tell him. There was gratitude left unexpressed. I knelt down next to his bed and wept.

CHAPTER

Seventeen

The last line to my past has snapped. My father is gone.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Everyone just stood around the bed for a moment; then Dr. Witt touched my arm, said he was sorry, turned, and left. The nurses followed him out.

I don’t know how long they left me alone, but it seemed a while. Then one of the nurses walked back into the room. She said to me gently, “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to pull the sheet up.”

I nodded. I watched as she draped the sheet over his head. I stood there, still. More time passed. A petite, thirtysomething woman walked into the room. She had long, nut-brown hair pulled back over her elvish ears. She wasn’t dressed as a nurse, and even though I had never seen her before, I knew who she was. Or at least why she was there. A social worker had come to me after McKale’s death.

“Alan?” she said softly.

“Yes.”

“I’m Gina. I’m a social worker for the hospital. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

I didn’t reply.

“If you would like to talk, I’d be happy to.”

“I’ll be okay,” I said.

“Do you have any questions about what will happen now?”

I shook my head. “No. I just went through this with my wife . . .” My eyes filled with tears, and I was unable to speak. The woman looked at me sympathetically, then reached out and touched my arm. “I’m so sorry.”

After a moment I said, “I can’t think. What do I need to do?”

“Your father’s body will be kept in the hospital mortuary until you arrange for a funeral director to collect it. Have you made any contacts, or would you like some help?” I swallowed, trying to compose myself. “Take your time,” she said.

I breathed out slowly. “He made arrangements . . . Beard Mortuary.”

“I’m familiar with them,” she said. “Would you like me to contact them for you?”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“In just a moment we will bring you a medical certificate that shows the cause of death. You’ll need to register the death and a few other minor details. There’s a little checklist to help. Do you know if he wanted his body cremated?”

“He’s going to be buried in Colorado. Next to my mother.”

She nodded. “Very well. Let me go see if I can expedite the certificate.” She left the room.

A minute after she left I took out my phone and called Nicole.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m on my way over right now.”

I didn’t respond. Emotion had frozen me.

“Alan?”

“He’s had another heart attack,” I said. “He’s gone.”

There was a long pause. Then I heard her crying. In a muffled voice she said, “I’ll be right there.”

The social worker returned carrying an envelope. “Here you are. I put the checklist inside. You’ll need to sign the certificate, and we’ll need to gather your father’s possessions. The nurses will do that; I’ll remind them.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m happy to help.” She took out a business card. “Grief can be an unpredictable thing. If you change your mind and would like to talk, please give me a call.”

Nicole arrived a few minutes later. Her cheeks were tearstained and her eyes were red and puffy. She was out of breath. At first she looked only at me, afraid to look at my father. Then she turned toward his shrouded body. She gasped lightly. Then she softly said, “Oh, Bob.” Tears fell freely down her cheeks.

She walked to the side of the bed and slowly peeled back the sheet. When she saw his face she groaned out, “No.” She pulled the sheet back up, then turned back and fell into me. I wrapped my arms around her. She laid her head against my shoulder and began to sob with such emotion that I had difficulty holding her. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

A few moments later a nurse walked in carrying a canvas bag. She waited until I looked at her. “I’m sorry to disturb you. These are your father’s belongings. Would you mind signing that you received them?”

Without a word I signed the form.

“And the certificate,” she said.

I took the form out of the envelope, signed it as well, and handed it back to the nurse.

“Thank you.”

Nicole broke down crying again. I put our family history inside the bag. I don’t know how long we were there. A half hour, maybe more, but finally I couldn’t stand being there any longer. “I need to go.”

We both walked over to the bed. I touched my father once more. “Goodbye, Dad,” I said. Then I walked out of the room.

Nicole came out a moment later. As I held her, Dr. Witt walked up to us.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking at Nicole. “There was nothing more I could do.”

His tone wasn’t that of a doctor, and I realized that there was something to what my father had said about them.

She looked into his eyes. “Thank you, Mark.”

“May I check on you later?”

She nodded. “I’d like that.”

He glanced over at me with an anxious expression, then turned and walked away. I looked at Nicole. I sensed that she wanted to say something about them, but it wasn’t the time.

We took the elevator to the main floor and walked out to the parking lot. I stopped on the sidewalk and looked into Nicole’s eyes. “Stay with me.”

Her brow fell. “Alan . . .”

“I don’t want to be alone,” I said. “Would you come over? Please?”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “I need to get my things from the hotel.”

I walked her to her car, where she broke down crying again. “I’ll see you in a minute,” she said. She wiped her eyes and climbed in.

I walked back to my father’s car and drove to his house.

CHAPTER

Eighteen

While flailing about in an ocean of grief we must be mindful not to drown those trying to rescue us.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

There were more of the women’s offerings on the porch when I got home. I didn’t bother to pick them up or even look at them; I just pushed them out of the way with my foot. I went to my room and lay down on the bed to wait for Nicole. I heard her car pull into the driveway about twenty minutes later.

I opened the front door and met her on the porch. We embraced. After a moment she said, “Come here.” She took my hand and led me inside to the dimly lit living room.

Heavy with grief, we sat next to each other on one end of the couch. Then she lay back and pulled me into her. I laid my head against her breast while she softly rubbed the back of my neck.

“I feel like everything’s finally gone,” I said. “There’s nothing left to lose.”

“You have a lot to lose,” she said. I looked up at her. Her deep blue eyes locked on to mine. For a moment we just looked at each other. The power and complexity of our emotions rose around us like a vapor. Then the vacuum of our loss and want collapsed the void between us, drawing us to each other. We kissed. I pulled her into me, and our kissing grew more and more passionate. Suddenly she pulled away.

“Wait,” she said breathlessly.

I looked at her. She had a blank, dazed expression.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s not right,” she said. “It doesn’t feel right.” She looked into my eyes. “I’m so sorry. It feels like—” she stopped. “You’re going to think this is so weird after the way I’ve been chasing you . . .”

“What?”

Her face strained with pain. “Please don’t take this wrong; you know how much I love you . . .”

I had no idea where she was going with this. “What, Nicole?”

“It feels like I’m kissing my brother.”

CHAPTER

Nineteen

Déjà vu. Again. (I know that’s redundant. I suppose that’s my point.)

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning I woke in the familiar haze of grief. It wasn’t as heavy as it had been when I lost McKale, or even the same as when I’d lost my mother. It was different. When my mother died, it felt like my world had ended. When McKale died, my future had vanished. When my father died, I felt like I’d lost my past.

Nicole had slept upstairs in my old bedroom, and now I could hear her outside the room where I’d slept. I didn’t know what time it was, but my room was bright with a late sun. I pulled on the shirt and pair of pants I’d worn the day before and walked out to the kitchen. It smelled of bacon and pancakes.

“Hi,” Nicole said sweetly.

I raked my hair back with my hand. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost eleven,” she said. She took the frying pan off the flame and came over and hugged me. “I’m glad you got some sleep. The next morning is always the hardest.” She held me for a moment, then asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”

“I made blueberry pancakes and bacon.”

“Where did you get the food?”

“I had to go shopping. All your dad had was Wheaties and TV dinners.” She walked back to the stove. “Sit. I’m just about done.”

I sat down at the table. Nicole brought over a stack of pancakes with a glass of orange juice, then another plate with bacon. “Go ahead and start,” she said. “I just need to finish this pancake.”

I poured syrup over the stack. “How’d you sleep?” I asked.

“Not very well,” she said. “I got up early.” She brought her plate to the table and sat down across from me. “As you can see.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“It’s okay, I like cooking. It’s peaceful.”

“I meant for not leaving me,” I said.

She smiled sadly. “You’re my best friend. You always will be.”

“Like a brother, huh?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.” She looked at me sheepishly. “You don’t feel bad, do you? I mean, you’re the one who rejected me first.”

“It’s just a bruised ego,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“At least I don’t have to worry about you disappearing on me again.”

“No, you don’t,” she said. She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, then sat back down. “So what are you doing today?”

“Details,” I said. “My father left me a checklist. This morning I need to call the mortuary and set a date for the viewing.”

“They beat you to it,” she said. “They called an hour ago. I wrote the number down next to the phone. What day is the viewing?”

“I need to decide. I don’t even know what day it is today.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

“Maybe we should have it this Friday.”

“Friday would be good,” she said. “That should give the mortuary enough time.” She looked at me for a moment, then said, “Then what?”

“After I take care of everything here, I’ll go back out.”

She looked a little surprised. “You’re going to finish your walk?”

I nodded. “It’s odd, but there’s a part of me that feels like I need to finish the walk as much for my father as for myself.” I took a bite of the pancake, then asked, “What about you? What’s next?”

“I was planning on staying until the viewing. Then I need to get back to Spokane to check on things. I talked to Kailamai last night, and she said one of the tenants was complaining about her plumbing. Sometimes I forget I’m a landlord.” She sighed. “What do you need from me?”

“Just you,” I said.

“Do you mind if I read your family history?”

“No. I think that would please my father.”

Nicole was quiet a moment, then she said, “You need to call Falene.” When I didn’t reply, she said, “You need to call her today. She needs to know about your father. You need to share this with her.”

“I know,” I said.

Neither of us spoke for a moment. Then she said, “I think I know why you haven’t called her.”

“Why?”

“It’s because deep inside you’re afraid that she might have moved on. Sometimes it’s easier to live with the uncertainty than to confront the truth.”

I thought over her theory, then replied, “Maybe you’re right.”

“Call her,” she said again. “Today. She deserves to know. So do you.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll call her.”

CHAPTER

Twenty

I have found Falene only to discover that I have less of an idea of where she is now than I had before.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

After breakfast I returned the call to Beard Mortuary. As my father had told me in the hospital, he’d taken care of every possible detail—everything except the date of his viewing and the writing of his obituary. I scheduled a viewing at the Beard Mortuary Chapel for Friday evening. Then, with Nicole’s help, I wrote my father’s obituary.

Robert Alan Christoffersen

1953–2012

Robert “Bob” Alan Christoffersen, husband, father, and friend, unexpectedly passed away of heart failure on November 2, 2012, at the age of 59. Bob was born in Denver, Colorado. He was drafted into the Vietnam War, where he saw combat and was a highly decorated lieutenant of the First Air Cavalry. He returned from the war and enrolled at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he graduated in accounting. He married his high school sweetheart, Kate Mitchell, in 1974. In 1979 Kate gave birth to their son, Alan. Eight years later his sweetheart passed away from cancer, and he never remarried. Bob was a skilled CPA and worked eleven years for Peat Marwick of Denver before moving to Pasadena, where he opened his own firm. Bob was a good man with impeccable integrity and will be missed by all who knew him. He is survived only by his son, Alan Christoffersen. A viewing will be held at the Beard Mortuary Chapel at 396 Colorado Blvd. on Friday night from six to nine p.m. He has requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the American Red Cross, Los Angeles Region, at www.redcross.org or the American Cancer Society at https://donate.cancer.org.

Nicole read it over. “Do you need to put in the Web addresses?”

“It was my father’s idea,” I said.

“Then it’s perfect,” Nicole said.

I took a deep breath. “It seems so inadequate.”

“I know,” Nicole replied. “How do you condense someone’s life into a couple of paragraphs?”

While Nicole went shopping for a dress for the service, I sat down to read over my father’s checklist.

I’ve heard horror stories of people settling their parents’ estates, but they didn’t have my father watching over them. He knew I wasn’t good with money, so he had pretty much taken care of everything.

When I first started making a decent salary in Seattle, I went to him for financial advice. He was explaining the pros and cons of different types of IRAs and investment funds when finally I stopped him and said, “Hold on, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Explain this to me like I’m ten years old.” A minute later I stopped him again. “Explain it like I’m five years old,” I said, which is exactly what he did. And he was still doing it. Each document was accompanied by a page with step-by-step instructions, contacts, and phone numbers.

Financially, my father had left me more than I even knew he had. I didn’t know that he was a millionaire, but that shouldn’t have surprised me. He once told me that most millionaires don’t live like millionaires—that it is usually the faux millionaires who go for the show: driving expensive, depreciating cars and living in oversized homes mortgaged to their rooftops. (At the time I suspected he was trying to make a point, as McKale and I fit his description.) My father was industrious, a skilled money manager, and religiously frugal—a combination that pretty much guaranteed financial success.

Nicole was gone less than two hours. After she returned we went over my father’s funeral list. There was a spreadsheet listing the names of his friends and clients with their contact information. At the bottom of the list he had added, And anyone else you would like to invite.

Nicole looked up at me. “Did you call Falene?”

“Not yet.”

“You should do it now.”

“I’ll get to it.”

“Now,” she said.

“Why are you suddenly so interested in me calling her?”

“Maybe because I suffered enough over not having you and I want at least to know it wasn’t in vain.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll call.”

I went to my room and found the note Falene had written me when she left St. Louis.

My dear Alan,

Sometimes a girl can be pretty deaf to the things she doesn’t want to hear. Or maybe it’s just easy to ignore the answers that are shouted but never spoken. I should have heard your answer in your silence. I’ve asked you twice if I could be there when you arrived in Key West and you never answered me. I should have known that was my answer. If you had wanted me there, you would have answered with a loud “yes.” Forgive me for being so obtuse (I learned that word from you). But there’s a good reason I ignored the obvious. The truth was too painful. You see, I love you. I’m sorry that you had to learn it here, so far from me. I looked forward to the day when I could say it to your face. But I now know that day will never come.

I love you. I know this. I really, truly, deeply love you. I first realized that I had fallen in love with you about two months after I started working at the agency.

Of course, I wasn’t alone. I think all the women at your agency had a crush on you. Why wouldn’t they? You were handsome and funny and smart, but most of all, you had a good heart. Truthfully, you seemed too good to be true. You were also loyal to your wife, which made you even more desirable.

Up until I met you, I thought all men were users and abusers. Then you had to come along and ruin my perfect misandry. You are everything a man should be. Strong but gentle, smart but kind, serious but fun with a great sense of humor. In my heart I fantasized about a world where you and I could be together. How happy I would be to call you mine!!

I know this will sound silly and juvenile, like a schoolgirl crush, but I realized that your name is in my name. You are the AL in FALENE. (As you can see, I’ve spent way too much time fantasizing about you!) But that’s all it was. Fantasy.

When McKale died I was filled with horrible sadness and concern for you. I was afraid that you might hurt yourself. Seeing the pain you felt made my love and respect for you grow even more. Please forgive me, but the afternoon of the funeral, when I brought you home, I believed, or hoped, for the first time, that someday you might be mine. I didn’t feel worthy of you, but I thought that you, being who you are, might accept me.

When you told me you were going to walk away from Seattle, I was heartbroken. I was so glad that you asked me to help you, giving me a way to stay in your life. Then, when you disappeared in Spokane I was terrified. I didn’t sleep for days. I spent nearly a hundred hours hunting you down. I’m not telling you this so you’ll thank me, I just want you to finally know the truth about the depth of my feelings.

But, like I said, a girl can be pretty deaf sometimes. I wanted to hear you say that you loved me and cared about me as more than just a friend. It was a stupid dream. Yesterday, when I saw how close you are to beautiful Nicole, my heart was breaking. I realized that I had already lost my one chance of being yours. And there I was with nothing to offer. Not even my apartment in Seattle to go to anymore.

I didn’t tell you, but I took the job in New York. I needed to get out of Seattle. I failed to save my brother. I failed to save your agency. I failed to make you love me. I’ve failed at everything I’ve hoped for.

I’m sorry I didn’t finish the task you gave me. I gave all your banking information to your father. He’ll do a better job than I could anyway. I’m so sorry to not be at your side in your time of need, but it is now obvious to me that you don’t need me. I’m just noise in the concert of your life. And this time I need to be selfish. I have to be. The risk to my heart is too great. They say that the depth of love is revealed in its departure. How true that is. I’m afraid that I’m just learning how deep my love is for you, and it’s more than I can stand. I love you too much to just be a bystander in your life.

Well, I guess I’ve finally burned the bridge. I couldn’t help myself. Please forgive me for being so needy. Please think of me fondly and now and then remember your starry-eyed assistant who loves you more than anything or anyone else in this world.

I know you will reach Key West. I know you’ll make it and that you’ll be okay. That’s all I need. It’s not all I want, but it’s all I need—to know that you are okay and happy. Damn, I really love you.

Be safe, my dear friend. With all my love,

Falene

I took out my phone and listened to Carroll’s message for Falene’s phone number. I took a deep breath, then dialed.

Someone answered on the first ring. “Pronto.” There was loud music in the background, and I couldn’t tell if it was Falene’s voice.

“Hello? Falene?”

“Hold on a minute, please. I need to step outside.”

A moment later the voice said, “Hi, sorry about that. Who is this?”

I recognized her voice. “Falene, it’s me.” When she didn’t respond I added, “Alan.”

There was an even longer pause. “Alan. How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t easy.”

“Are you in Key West?”

“No. I’m in Pasadena.”

“You’re still sick?”

“No. My father had a heart attack.”

Her voice softened. “Oh, Alan. Is he okay?”

“He passed away yesterday.”

“I’m so sorry.”

For a moment neither of us spoke. I finally broke the silence. “How are you doing? How’s New York?”

“It’s not Seattle,” she said. “But it’s good.”

“Are you modeling?”

“Yes. Full-time.”

“How’s it going?”

“It’s going well. I did a shoot for Maxim last week. It’s not a cover, but it’s good just to make the magazine, you know. And I have a contract with a new energy drink company. We start shooting next week.”

In spite of my pain I felt happy for her. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

After a moment I said, “I miss you.”

She hesitated, then said softly, “I miss you too.”

“You left without saying goodbye.”

“I just thought it would be best . . . under the circumstances.”

“What circumstances? That I had a tumor?”

“No,” she said, angrily. “Have I ever left you in need?”

“Not until now.”

“That’s not fair,” she said.

“I’m sorry; you’re right.” More silence. I felt stupid. I was stupid. Why would I attack her when I was trying to get her back? I waited for her to say something, but after a moment it didn’t seem that she would.

“I saw your brother.”

“You saw Deron? Where?”

“In Seattle. He’s in jail.” I regretted the words as they came out of my mouth. More pain. I was surprised that she didn’t just hang up on me. “I’m sorry.”

“I haven’t heard from him since May, when he started using again,” Falene said. “How did you find him?”

“I was looking for him.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I was hoping he could tell me how to find you. You did a good job of disappearing.”

“You went to all that work to find me?”

“Of course I did.”

She was quiet a moment, then asked, “When is your father’s funeral?”

“It’s just a viewing. It’s this Friday.”

“In Pasadena?”

“Yes.”

“Would you mind if I came out?”

“I was hoping you would.”

“We can talk then,” she said. “There are things to be said.” Her voice was laced with sadness.

I breathed out slowly, wondering what she meant. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll talk then.”

“I’d like to contact my brother. Can you tell me where he is?”

“He was in the King County jail in Seattle.”

“Thank you. And thank you for looking for me.”

“Like you did when I disappeared in Spokane.”

She didn’t reply.

“Call me when you’re in town,” I said.

“I will. Bye.”

“Goodbye,” I said.

I hung up the phone. The call hadn’t gone the way I’d hoped it would. Actually, I’m not sure what I’d hoped for—except that she would sound more excited to hear from me. Or that she would tell me she still loved me. Instead, it sounded as if something had changed in the time we’d been apart.

Nicole was in the living room reading the family history when I walked in. She set the binder down. “Did you call?”

“Yes.”

“How did it go?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

I shook my head. “No. But she’s coming out for the viewing.”

CHAPTER

Twenty-One

Kailamai is back. Fortunately she brought her jokes with her.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next two days were busy, which was a blessing, as it kept my mind from all the things I would rather not think about, including my conversation with Falene. Something had clearly changed. Still, she was coming out. That had to be significant.

I systematically worked down my father’s list. I decided that until I knew what I was going to do after I finished my walk I would just keep the house. Maybe I would live in Pasadena for a while. Maybe forever. At this point anything was possible.

Kailamai flew in from Spokane on Thursday night around six.

Kailamai was the young woman I had rescued from a group of men just outside of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. She had run away from her foster care family just before her eighteenth birthday. I had connected her with Nicole, and the two of them now lived together.

We went directly from LAX to dinner, a little sushi restaurant in Pasadena called Matsuri. It had been more than six months since I’d seen Kailamai, and she had changed quite a bit. Her appearance was different. She looked like a student. She wore a Gonzaga college sweatshirt and purple-framed glasses. She had taken out her nose piercing and wore only one pair of earrings. But the more significant change was less tangible. She seemed . . . domesticated. After we had ordered our meals Kailamai said, “I’m so sorry about your dad.”

“Thank you. He was a good man.”

“Nicole said that all the time. She’s going to miss him.”

“We all will,” Nicole said.

“So how’s school?” I asked.

“It’s going really well,” Kailamai said.

“Straight As,” Nicole said.

“And I met someone.”

Nicole’s eyes widened.

“Someone?” I asked.

“His name is Matt. He’s also prelaw. He’s pretty special.”

“This is news,” Nicole said.

“Well, you’ve been gone like two weeks. Things happen fast with me.”

“Apparently,” Nicole replied.

“You’ll meet him when we get back. If you ever come back.”

“I’m coming back,” Nicole said.

Kailamai turned to me. “How far have you gotten on your walk? The last I heard you were in Alabama.”

“I made it to the northern border of Florida—a little town called Folkston.”

“Are you still going to finish?”

“I’m planning to.”

“And we’re planning on being there when you arrive in Key West,” she said. “So just make sure you don’t do it around any of my finals.”

Nicole rolled her eyes.

After we had started eating, Kailamai said, “So a woman is sitting in a bar when someone says, ‘Hey, you’re really hot.’ She looks around but can’t see anyone looking at her. Then she hears, ‘Is that a new blouse? You’re lookin’ good, girl.’ She suddenly realizes that it’s the bowl of pretzels in front of her that’s talking. She tries to ignore it and orders a Chardonnay. The pretzels say, ‘Hmm, Chardonnay. You’re one classy babe.’ The woman says to the bartender, ‘Hey, your pretzels keep saying nice things to me.’ The bartender replies, ‘They do that. They’re complimentary.’ ”

“You live with this?” I asked Nicole.

“Daily,” she said.

“She loves me,” Kailamai said.

Nicole lifted a piece of sushi with her chopstick. “I do,” she replied. “But I also love raw tuna.”

I went to bed around ten while Kailamai and Nicole stayed in the kitchen and talked. As I plugged in my cell phone to recharge it, I received a text from Falene. All it said was that she would be in LA around noon. I texted back to see if she needed a ride or a place to stay, but she didn’t respond.

CHAPTER

Twenty-Two

Today I said goodbye to two people I love.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke the next morning to Nicole’s and Kailamai’s voices in the kitchen. I pulled on a robe and walked out. The kitchen was a mess.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Nicole said.

“What are you concocting in here?” I asked.

“Eggs Benedict,” Nicole replied. “It will be a few more minutes.”

I sat down at the table. Kailamai sat down next to me. “Do you want to hear a joke?”

I rubbed a hand across my face. “Sure.”

“A new preacher was asked to speak at a country funeral. He had never been to the area where the funeral was and he got lost in the woods. After wandering around for nearly an hour he came upon some men gathered around an open grave. The preacher apologized for being late and started in. Feeling bad that the deceased man only had the diggers around his grave, the preacher tried to make up for it by giving the best eulogy he could. He preached with such passion that even the workers were shouting, ‘Praise God’ and ‘Glory be!’

“After the eulogy one of the diggers said to the preacher, ‘Preacher, that was inspirin’. I ain’t never seen anything like that before, and I’ve been puttin’ in septic tanks for twenty years!’ ”

“Kailamai,” Nicole said indignantly. “Really?”

She flushed. “I asked if he wanted to hear it.”

“About a funeral?” Nicole said.

“I’m sorry,” Kailamai said.

“It’s okay,” I said. I whispered to her, “It was pretty funny.”

Kailamai grinned furtively. “I thought so.”

A few minutes later Nicole brought over our breakfasts.

“You really don’t need to go to all this trouble,” I said. “I’m used to eating light.”

“Who said I’m doing it for you?” she said, grinning.

After Kailamai went upstairs to get ready, Nicole said, “I’m sorry about that joke. Kailamai doesn’t know how to deal with death.”

“That makes two of us,” I said. “After all she’s been through, it’s amazing the changes she’s made. You’ve done a remarkable job with her.”

“Thank you,” Nicole said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m her mother.”

“You are,” I said.

She smiled. A moment later she asked, “Have you heard from Falene?”

“Just a text. She said her flight will be in around noon.”

“That’s good.” She breathed out. “Are you picking her up?”

“I offered, but she never responded.”

“Give her some time,” Nicole said. “Things will work out.”

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur. Unlike Nicole, I hadn’t really thought about what I would wear to the viewing, and I ended up running out at the last moment to buy some loafers, a dress shirt, and a two-piece suit. I got home just in time to shower and get dressed. I borrowed one of my father’s ties.

Before leaving I went to my room and got the letter that Falene had written. I folded it in half and put it in my coat pocket.

Nicole suggested that we drive separately to the funeral home, so I would be free to stay out late with Falene. I wondered why I still hadn’t heard from her.

The viewing was scheduled to start at six, and at the funeral director’s request we arrived an hour early. I had taken just a few steps into the chapel when I froze. Seeing the casket at the front of the room brought forth a rush of such painful memories that I had to sit down. Nicole stood next to me, rubbing my back. It took me several minutes before I could look at my father’s body.

He was dressed in his navy blue suit with a solid, light blue tie and a matching handkerchief. After I had walked away from the casket Nicole and Kailamai approached. Nicole said softly, “He looks good.”

“For being dead,” Kailamai replied.

“Stop it,” Nicole said.

“I’m sorry,” Kailamai said.

The chapel wasn’t large, but it was more than sufficient for the modest attendance we expected. In one corner of the room there was a Steinway grand piano. Near the entryway there was a round burled walnut table with an easel holding a gold-framed picture of my father in his military dress uniform and a wedding picture of my parents. There was also a felt-lined case of his war medals, something my mother had put together for him before I was born. I hadn’t provided the memorabilia, so I assumed my father had left it with them years before.

A few minutes before six o’clock a woman sat down at the piano and began playing “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha. If lives had theme songs, “The Impossible Dream” would have been my father’s.

Guests began arriving a few minutes before the hour. There was a sizable crowd, much larger than I’d expected. It was a testament to the man my father was. I believe every client he’d ever had was there.

I stood next to the casket and thanked people for coming. Some of them were grieving heavily, and I heard story after story about how good my father had been to people. I felt sad that I hadn’t known all this about him, but my father wasn’t one to talk about the good that he’d done.

There were many women, some whose names I recognized from the packages that had been left on the doorstep over the last few weeks. An attractive, middle-aged woman with short, dark hair introduced herself as Gretchen O’Connor. I remembered the name from the family history. She was the woman my father almost married. I noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

There were many of my father’s buddies from Vietnam. They approached the casket as a group. They spoke of my father’s courage and leadership. One told me that a common occurrence in Vietnam was fragging, where platoon leaders were so disliked by their soldiers that they were killed by grenades thrown by their own men. He said, “That never would have happened with your father. Every one of us would have taken a bullet for him.” As he said this all the men nodded in agreement.

An hour into the viewing Nicole brought me a glass of water. “Are you doing okay?”

“Yes.”

“Has she come?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“She’ll come,” she said.

It was a little past eight thirty when I saw Falene standing at the end of the line, near the chapel entrance. As always she looked strikingly gorgeous. Still, she looked different. Though she always dressed nicely, tonight her clothes looked expensive. It might sound strange to say it, but she looked expensive—her makeup and jewelry and shoes, even the way she carried herself. Her new world had changed her appearance. I wondered if the change was more than skin deep.

Our glances met, and I motioned for her to come up. Her beautiful brown eyes were filled with tears as she put her arms around me. “I’m so sorry, Alan. You don’t deserve this.”

I just held her. After we separated she said, “I’m sorry I’m so late.”

“I was wondering if you were going to make it.”

“Me too,” she said. “The taxi driver took me to the wrong place. Twice. He barely spoke English.”

“I’m glad you made it,” I said. “You look beautiful.”

She smiled sadly. “So do you.” She glanced back at the line of mourners. “You have a lot of people here. We can talk after you’re done.” We embraced once more, then she walked to the back of the room.

It took another full hour to go through the rest of the line. One of the visitors was my father’s friend Carroll, the private investigator who had found Falene for me. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said gruffly. “Your father was a fine man. A man’s man. The world’s a darker place without him.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“By the way, did you get my message about the woman you were looking for?”

I nodded. “Yes. Thank you. In fact, that’s her right there.”

He turned and looked at Falene, his gaze lingering on her longer than was appropriate. “Wow, she’s a looker,” he said, finally turning back. “No wonder you wanted to hunt her down. I’m glad that worked out.”

I just nodded, bothered by his assessment but still in his debt for finding her. “Thanks for your help.”

“Anything for your father,” he said. “You make him proud.”

At one point I noticed Nicole talking to Falene. To my relief they both looked comfortable. When the line had finally dwindled, Nicole walked up to me. “Kailamai and I are going back to the house. Do you need anything?”

“I’m okay,” I said. “Thank you for everything today.”

She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Good luck.” She walked off. Falene had been sitting quietly in a tucked leather chair across the room. She stood and walked to me. “May I see your father?”

“Of course.”

She walked to the side of the casket. Her eyes filled with tears. I stepped up beside her. She said, “I know you two weren’t always really close, but he loved you. When I was looking for you in Spokane . . . he was so upset.” She turned and looked at me. “What I would have given to have had a father like that.”

A moment later the funeral director walked up to us. “It’s after nine thirty, so I’ve locked the front door,” he said. “It was a beautiful evening—a real tribute to your father.”

“It was nice,” I said.

“I tell you, your father was a pleasure to work with. We don’t need to talk about the details right now, but at your convenience, give us a call and we’ll go over his burial plans in Colorado.”

I nodded my assent.

“Oh, and on your way out remember to take your pictures and medal display. I’m sure you’ll want those.”

“Of course.”

“I’m going to shut the casket now. Would you like another moment?”

“Please.”

The director stepped aside. Again I approached the casket. I looked at him for a moment, then said, “Thank you for being my father. I hope you’re with Mom.” I closed my eyes as they filled with tears. Then I leaned forward, kissed his forehead, and turned to the director. “Okay.” I stepped away from the casket, my eyes still fixed on my father’s body.

The funeral director stepped forward. He reached inside the casket and unlatched the lid, then slowly shut it. Another pang of emotion filled my chest, and Falene put her hand on my lower back.

The director turned back to me. “I need to turn the lights out in about fifteen minutes. You can let yourself out the front door.” He walked out of the room.

I took a deep breath, then turned to Falene. “We can talk in my car.”

“Okay,” she said softly. As long and as well as I had known her, at that moment I couldn’t read her.

I collected the pictures from the display, and Falene carried the case of my father’s medals.

“It’s a beautiful night,” I said.

“It’s a lot warmer here than it is in New York. It was in the thirties at JFK. Maybe not even that.”

“How was your flight?”

“Long,” she said. “The guy sitting next to me had sneaked a fifth onto the plane. He was sloshed by the time we landed. He kept trying to touch me. The police had to carry him off.”

“Lovely,” I said.

“At least he didn’t throw up on me,” she said.

We put the pictures and medal case in the trunk. Then I opened the door for her and she climbed in. I got in the other side and started the car.

“Do you want to go somewhere?” I asked.

“Whatever you want,” she replied.

I drove to the arboretum. It was after hours and the park was closed, but after spending so much of my childhood there I knew how to sneak in. We walked in the dark along the back fence to a section of the grounds near a pond where McKale and I used to catch crayfish. There was a streetlamp about thirty yards from the bench, providing enough illumination for us to see. We sat down next to each other.

“This is where you got married, isn’t it?” Falene said.

“Over there on the other side of the entry. It’s a little better weather tonight.” I looked into her eyes and could see the moon’s reflection from the pond. “Thank you for coming,” I said.

“I wanted to be here for you.”

“You’ve always been there for me,” I said.

“Except for when I wasn’t,” she replied. I guessed that she was referring to what I’d said to her on the phone, which made me regret saying it even more.

I said, “You asked how I found you. I hired a private investigator. It took him a while to track you down. I think he called every modeling agency in New York.”

She looked at me quizzically. “Why would you go to so much trouble?”

“You don’t know why?”

She lightly shook her head.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out the letter she had written me. “It’s like you wrote: love doesn’t know its depth until its absence. It wasn’t until after you left that I knew how much you meant to me. And how much I wanted you in my life.” I tried to read her face for a reaction, but she looked more upset by my confession than pleased. Finally I said, “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

She looked up at me. “You know I care about you, right?”

I hated the sound of that. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “When I was a freshman in high school I wanted to make friends, so I tried out for cheerleading. You had to do this routine. I had never taken gymnastics or dance classes like the other girls, but I thought that maybe I could watch the others and learn fast.

“The tryouts were held after school. I sat there alone waiting my turn. Just before my routine a couple of the popular girls came up to me. I was nervous but kind of excited that they would talk to me. One of them said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘The same thing as you.’ She rolled her eyes and said, ‘I doubt that.’ Then the other girl said, ‘I guess they’ll let anyone try out.’

“I was crushed. I still tried out, mostly just to show them that they couldn’t intimidate me, but it was humiliating. And I failed miserably. They didn’t even let me finish my routine. Those two girls became cheerleaders and I was the girl behind the bleachers with whatever boy wanted me. That experience taught me that the surest way to misery was to try to be something you’re not.”

“What does that have to do with us?”

“It has everything to do with us,” she said. “Our worlds are completely different. I wanted to believe otherwise, but I was just lying to myself. Look at tonight. Your father loved you. I don’t even know my father’s name.”

“And that was your fault?”

“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, it’s just what it is. I’m from Stockton, you’re from Pasadena. You graduated from one of the best graphic colleges in the country, I barely got out of high school.”

“And you’re smarter than most of my clients,” I said. “You were a teenager and providing for your family, taking care of an alcoholic mother and keeping your brother off the streets. Half the graduates of Harvard couldn’t have pulled off what you did.”

“You don’t get a degree for survival,” she said.

“In the end, survival is the only degree that matters,” I said. “It’s the core human experience.”

“Have you forgotten who I was before you found me? I worked in a strip club.”

“I don’t care about your past. Look at who you’ve become.”

She shook her head. “Who I’ve become? I’m the same person I’ve always been. I used to think I had changed, but I haven’t. Inside I’m still that same girl behind the bleachers. Even at the modeling agency. Why can’t you see that?”

“Why can’t you see how good you really are? When everything came crashing down in my life, you were the only one who was loyal. The only one. When my heart was broken and I was alone, you took me in. When I disappeared in Spokane, you looked for me until you found me. The only other person who has stood by me like that was McKale.”

“I’m not McKale,” she said angrily.

“I didn’t say you were. I said you were loyal like her. And good like her.”

“I’m not good.”

“I know you’re good, Falene. I’ve seen it. You don’t think McKale had her faults?”

“McKale never danced nude for drunk old men.”

“McKale was never homeless with a wayward brother.”

She leaned closer and said softly, “Alan, you’re not being honest. I am what I am.”

“You’re the one who’s not being honest. I know who you are, even if you don’t. I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

She turned away from me.

“You said you loved me,” I said. “I love you too. That’s the reality.” I took her chin in my hand and lifted her head to look at me. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Falene, I’m willing to take a chance on us. Why won’t you?”

She again turned away from me. Tears rolled down her cheeks. When she could speak she said softly, “Because I can’t, Alan.”

“Why not?” I said. “Give me one good reason.”

She looked back, her eyes filled with tears. “Because I’m getting married.”

I was stunned. When I could speak I said, “Married?”

She again turned away from me.

“To whom?”

It was a full minute before she spoke. “His name is Jason. He’s one of the owners of the agency.”

“How long have you known him?”

She didn’t answer.

“Falene, how long have you known him?”

“It doesn’t matter how long I’ve known him.”

“Do you love him?”

Again she said nothing.

“I’ll take that as an answer,” I said.

“Love isn’t everything,” she blurted out.

I must have looked at her for a full minute before I said, “Then what is?”

She sat quietly for a moment, then stood up and walked back the way we had come in. She never answered my question.

The drive to Falene’s hotel was silent except for her occasional sniffling. I tried to think of something powerful to say, but words failed me. I parked in front of the hotel. We sat a moment in silence, then I said, “Whatever you’ve planned can be undone. It’s not too late.”

She looked at me with red, puffy eyes and said softly, “I love you, Alan. I always will. But it was too late before we even met.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, then opened the door and walked into the hotel.

I just watched her disappear. My Dulcinea. I didn’t think my heart could break more than it already had. But I was wrong.

CHAPTER

Twenty-Three

Two million steps forward, three million back.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Nicole walked into my room around noon. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor going through my pack. Clothes and supplies were strewn all around me.

“Kailamai get off all right?” I asked.

Nicole nodded. “Yeah. Her flight was a little delayed, but it finally left.” She sat down on my bed and sighed. “I’m sorry, Alan. I don’t know what to say.”

“Maybe some people just weren’t meant to be happy,” I said.

“You don’t believe that.”

“Maybe,” I said.

She took a deep breath. “When are you leaving?”

“As soon as I finish my father’s list. Maybe next Friday.” I nodded as if I’d just made an agreement with myself. “Next Friday’s good.” I looked at her. “How about you?”

“Maybe I’ll leave Friday too.”

“You don’t need to stay here for me.”

“Yes I do,” she said. The room fell into silence as I arranged my belongings. Nicole reached down and lifted the yellow envelope with my name written on it. “What’s this?”

“My father asked me to take it with me to Key West.”

“What’s in it?”

“I don’t know. He asked me not to open it until I get there.”

She set the envelope back down. “How much longer will it take you to get to Key West?”

“It’s a little more than five hundred miles. About a month.”

“Then you’ll get there just before Christmas.”

“Probably. I’ll call you when I reach Miami.”

“And we’ll be there when you cross the finish line. I promise.”

We just looked at each other for a moment; then she held open her arms. “Come here.”

I stood up and went and sat down on the bed next to her. She wrapped her arms around me. “I’m going to miss you. I love you, you know.”

I laid my head on her shoulder. “It’s a good thing. You’re the only one left in my life.”

CHAPTER

Twenty-Four

When you’ve got nowhere to go, walk.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

There’s a saying among frequent fliers that the routes to heaven and hell pass through the Atlanta airport. I’ve mostly experienced the latter. The last time I passed through Atlanta I was worried about my father and anxious about Falene. Now, returning to Jacksonville through Atlanta, I was mourning both of them. My heart felt almost as heavy as it did leaving Seattle.

In Jacksonville I retrieved my pack from the carousel, then took a cab about forty miles northwest up Highway 1 to the town of Folkston, Georgia, where I had ended the last leg of my journey. Before leaving California I had again booked a room at the Inn at Folkston—the bed and breakfast I had stayed in before returning to California. The B&B had undergone a change of management since my last stay, so the new innkeepers, Pastor Ted and his wife, Alease, didn’t know me. I doubted that the previous owners would have remembered me from my short stay, but B&B owners tend to make you feel like you’re part of the family.

The room I had booked was called the Funnel Room—a peculiar name derived from the town’s nickname, the Folkston Funnel. Because of its unique location, Folkston is on one of the busiest train routes in the world, and all the trains in Florida “funnel” through the small town. Train watchers (previous to my stay I hadn’t known there was such a thing) come from all around the world to watch the trains pass through town—up to seventy a day.

Folkston also lays claim to being the Gateway to the Okefenokee—a title also claimed up north by Waycross, where I had toured the swamp.

I left my pack in my room, then returned to the front lobby. Pastor Ted was sitting in his office just right of the front door. He looked up from his paperwork as I walked by.

“May I help you with something?”

“I was just going to get some dinner,” I said. “Do you have any recommendations?”

“If you like southern food, I’d recommend the Okefenokee Restaurant.”

“Is it within walking distance?”

“Everything in Folkston is within walking distance,” he said. “But the restaurant is only a few blocks from here. Just walk out the door, turn right, and go about five blocks. You’ll see it on your right-hand side.”

“I’ll give it a try,” I said. “So how’s the inn business?”

“It’s glorious,” he said. “We’re still getting our bearings, but Alease and I are both people people, so it’s a treat getting to meet new people each day. It’s like traveling without going anywhere.”

“Are you from Folkston?”

“No, sir. I was born and raised in Jacksonville. As a matter of fact, I’m still the assistant pastor at the Jesus Christ Community Baptist Church in Jacksonville.”

“How did you end up in Folkston?”

“The wife and I had decided to purchase a B&B once we retired. We’d been researching B&Bs for a couple of years, and one weekend we came up here to Folkston to get away for a few days. We asked the previous owners a lot of questions about the business. They asked why we were so curious. When we told them, they made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. So I ended up taking an early retirement and we bought the place.”

“And so far so good?”

He chuckled. “The wife hasn’t left me yet, so yes. So far so good.”

“Well, you hang on to her,” I said. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

“Enjoy your dinner,” he replied.

I followed his directions to the Okefenokee Restaurant. The walk was pleasant. The road was wide and lined with trees and interesting old homes. Many of the trees were draped in Spanish moss.

About halfway to the restaurant, the residential area turned into the business district, and I had to cross a wide swath of railroad tracks. There were people standing on both sides of the tracks waiting for trains.

The restaurant was just a couple blocks from the tracks. A young black woman with tightly braided hair and deep purple eye shadow greeted me at the door, then led me to the closest table, which was set with utensils rolled in paper napkins.

“We got our buffet,” she said. “There’s a menu too.” She pointed to a folded sheet of paper. “You want something to drink?”

“Just water,” I said.

“I’ll get your water. If you decide to have the buffet, just help yourself. Most everyone just gets the buffet.”

She walked away. I lifted the paper menu. I quickly deduced that you didn’t have to order the buffet, but it was near sacrilege not to. The menu said:

If you don’t want our buffet, this is what we can offer.

It offered a grilled cheese sandwich and hamburgers in various stages of dress. I got up and walked over to the buffet tables. Pastor Ted was right about the cuisine—it was as southern as cotton. There was okra, mustard greens, grits, fried catfish, fried shrimp, fatback, fried chicken, biscuits, and clam chowder. To the back of the room was a salad bar with sweet coleslaw and bread-and-butter pickles, which were delicious. I loaded up my plate, then went back to the table.

When my waitress returned with my water, I asked her what fatback was.

Her forehead furrowed. “You don’t know what fatback is?”

“No, ma’am.”

“It’s fried bacon fat.”

“Like chicharrón?” I asked.

She looked at me blankly. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Fried pork rinds?” I asked.

“Y’all just try it,” she said. A moment later she returned with a bowl full of fried strips of fat. The first piece I tried was too chewy for my taste, and I ended up discreetly spitting it out and wrapping it in my napkin. So much for fatback.

The chicken and fish were good, as were the biscuits, but I wasn’t used to ingesting so much fried food, and I left the restaurant with a stomachache.

As the sun fell, I walked back to the inn. The lights were on, and Ted and Alease were sitting on the porch next to two middle-aged women who were bent over a large cardboard box full of mail.

“Good evening,” I said.

“Evening,” they all replied.

“We’d shake your hand,” the blond woman closest to me said, “but we’ve been handling all this mail. I’m sure it’s got nasty germs all over it.”

“You get a lot of mail,” I said. “You must be a celebrity.”

The redheaded woman next to her laughed. “She’s the queen of England,” she drawled.

The blond woman shook her head. “It’s my brother’s mail. He’s recently passed away, and we came down to settle his affairs. He had all this mail piled up.”

I thought of my father and what I’d just been through working down his list. I thought of mentioning it but decided not to. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.

“Thank you,” she replied.

I sat down in a wicker chair between the pastor and his wife and the two women.

“How was dinner?” Ted asked.

“It was fine,” I said. In a town as small as this it was likely that he knew the owner, and I didn’t want to insult a friend of his.

As the sun set, the street fell into darkness. The moss on the trees looked as black and intricate as lace.

“It’s beautiful here,” I said.

“Yes it is,” Ted said. “The leaves turn later in the South. One doesn’t think of southern Georgia or Florida for changing leaves, but we’ve got red maple, sugarberry, persimmon, black cherry, maple, flowering dogwood, sassafras . . . Course, it’s nothing like the Carolinas, but it’s still beautiful.”

“It’s the snap of cold that turns the colors,” Alease said. “So the farther south you go, the later the leaves turn. You’ll see it. The turkey oaks turn a brilliant red in December.”

“I love the Spanish moss,” I said. “It’s so uniquely southern. We don’t have it on the West Coast.”

“We’ve got plenty here,” Ted said. “In the old days, they used it to stuff bed mattresses and furniture cushions. The problem is, it’s full of chiggers.”

Alease nodded. “You have to boil the moss before you use it. Otherwise, you’ll get those chigger bites.”

“Oh,” groaned the redheaded woman. “Itches like the devil. A couple years ago I had them all over my legs. Took forever to get rid of them. They burrow under your skin.”

“No they don’t,” the blond woman said. “They’re just so small, you can’t see them.”

“Have you ever had chigger bites?” the redhead asked sharply.

“When I was a teenager,” the blonde replied. She turned to me. “Have you ever had chigger bites?”

“Not that I know of,” I said.

“You’d know if you had them,” the redhead said.

“If you get them, don’t scratch them,” the blonde said. “That’s when the torture really begins.”

“It’s best to put nail polish on them,” the redhead said. “It reduces the itchiness.”

“I’ve heard that,” Alease said. “I’ll have to try it.”

“Hopefully you’ll never have cause,” the blonde said.

“Here’s an interesting fact,” Ted interjected. “Henry Ford used Spanish moss for padding the seats in the first Model Ts, but failed to boil it first. That resulted in the world’s first auto recall.” He laughed. “The more things change the more they stay the same.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” the redhead said.

Alease nodded, then said, “It sure is a beautiful night to be out here.”

“The temperature is just right,” I said.

We sat a moment in pleasant silence as the women continued shuffling through the mail, either dropping it in a garbage sack or piling it on the table next to them. Occasionally they would discuss one of the pieces.

Finally I said, “I guess I’ll retire.”

“What time will you be wanting breakfast in the morning?” Ted asked.

“What time do you serve?”

“Six to eight thirty.”

“Eight would be good.”

“Eight it is,” he replied. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

“I put out some banana bread in the hallway near your room,” Alease said. “It should still be warm.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Outside my room was a small round table with a plate of warm bread. Even though my stomach still ached a little from dinner, I took a slice. On the wall next to my door was a framed sampler that read:

Having a place to go is a home.

Having someone to love is a family.

Having both is a true blessing.

I had neither. Did that make me truly unblessed? Cradling the bread in one hand, I unlocked the door to my room and stepped inside. I sat down on my bed and ate the bread, then pulled off my shoes, undressed, and lay down on the duvet.

I was back again. Why? Why had I come back? I felt like I was on the edge of the cliff about to step over. From here on my walk was due south, straight down the coast of Florida, over five hundred miles to Key West. I wasn’t sure if I was up to it—emotionally or physically.

The bellow of a train’s horn interrupted my thoughts. The horn was followed by the metallic clacking of a train across the rails. I wondered if the noise was something the locals ever got used to.

I sat up and took out my map to review my route. Highway 1 ran the length of the coast all the way to Key West. It seemed simple enough, but I knew from experience that my path would likely change once I hit asphalt, based on the road and the availability of hotels and restaurants. Interstate 95 also ran south and would likely provide access to both, but I always felt vulnerable walking on freeways, and in a state as populated as Florida, many stretches would be closed to pedestrians.

I traced Highway 1 down past Miami to where the keys began, at the southeastern tip of the Florida peninsula. I studied the route for just a moment, then tossed my map on the floor and lay back in bed. On the wall behind the bed was a framed sampler that read:

Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark.

—Tagore

After all this time it was hard to believe that I was actually this close. McKale and I had once talked of visiting Key West, and, had she lived, we likely would have.

I reached over and turned out the nightstand lamp, then lay listening to the train horns that blew every fifteen minutes or so. I don’t know what time I fell asleep, but I didn’t sleep well. I dreamed all night of oncoming trains.

CHAPTER

Twenty-Five

Usually the most interesting stories are written not on paper but hearts.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke with the sun streaming through my window. I checked my watch, and, seeing that it was a quarter after seven, I climbed into the shower. I sat on the tile floor with my head bowed, letting the water fall over me. I was feeling a little jet-lagged, but I wasn’t going to let it slow me down.

I washed myself, shaved, then dressed. With the exception of what I’d worn the day before, my clothes were all clean, and I had several outfits to choose from—a luxury that wouldn’t last for long. The dining room was just across the hall from my room, and as I dressed I could hear the clinking of silverware on plates.

The two women I had met the night before were sitting at the main table, joined by a man I hadn’t met. He was wearing a short-sleeved Harley-Davidson shirt.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Morning,” they returned in a chorus. The man stood and extended his hand. “I’m William. Kelly’s husband.”

“I’m Kelly,” the blond-haired woman said. “We didn’t share names last night.”

“And I’m Naomi,” the redhead said.

“It’s a pleasure,” I said. “My name is Alan.”

At the sound of my entrance, Ted emerged from the kitchen, smiling. “Good morning, Mr. Christoffersen.”

“Alan,” I said.

“I just like saying your last name,” he replied. “Must be the pastor in me. Please, Alan, take a seat.”

“May I join you?” I asked the others.

“Of course,” Naomi said.

I pulled out a chair and sat down at the long table.

Ted stood at the end of the room, clasping his hands in front of him as if he were about to address a congregation. “This morning we have eggs and bacon, fruit, and homemade biscuits from scratch.” He winked. “Maybe not from scratch. A pastor shouldn’t lie.” He looked at me. “Now, Alan, you’re not from the South. Have you had grits?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve walked through Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, so I’ve eaten a bucket of them. Maybe a wheelbarrow.”

Ted laughed. “Glad to hear it. I’m especially partial to ours.”

“Then I look forward to trying them.”

He walked back to the kitchen.

“Did you say you walked through all those states?” William asked.

“Yes. And many more. I’m walking across America. I started in Seattle, Washington.”

“Oh my,” Naomi said.

“What’s your profession?” William asked.

“Right now it’s walking,” I said.

“How does it pay?”

“It doesn’t,” I said. “In my former life I owned an advertising agency in Seattle.”

“That explains it,” William said. “Lots of money in advertising.”

“There can be,” I replied.

“How many miles are we from Seattle?” Naomi asked.

“Nearly three thousand,” I replied.

She shook her head. “The stories you must have to tell.”

“I have a few.”

“Where are you headed?” William asked.

“Key West,” I said.

“Key West’s a little more than five hundred miles from here,” William said. “You taking the Ninety-Five?”

“You can’t walk the Ninety-Five,” Kelly said. “It’s an expressway.” She turned to me. “And they’ve always got it tore up. Take the One—the Old Dixie Highway. It ends in Key West.”

“No, he should take the A1A,” Naomi said. “That’ll give you the prettiest view of the ocean.”

“The A1A doesn’t go all the way through,” William said. “He’d have to backtrack.”

“I’ll probably do a little of each,” I said. “I’ve looked through my maps, but I’m sure things will change. I’ve learned that the maps aren’t the road.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Kelly said.

Ted and Alease’s teenage daughter, Mariah, came out of the kitchen carrying a glass of orange juice. She was a pretty, tall girl wearing a yellow apron and a bright crimson blouse that seemed to glow against her smooth ebony skin. She seemed a little shy as she set the glass in front of me.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” she said, walking back to the kitchen. A moment later she returned with a bowl of fruit topped with yogurt and granola.

“Thank you,” I said again.

She smiled. “You’re still welcome.”

I was hungry and the fruit tasted good. My table companions let me eat a moment in silence. Then William said, “Did you come down from Waycross?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you visit the swamp?”

“I took the tour.”

“The tour’s better down here,” Kelly said. “It’s federal run. You should take it.”

“I don’t think I’ll have the chance,” I said. “I’ve got to get on my way.”

“How far do you walk each day?” Naomi asked.

“It depends. I’ve gone as far as thirty miles.”

“Lord, almighty,” she said.

“But I usually walk around twenty to twenty-four.”

“Is it dangerous?” Kelly asked.

“Of course it’s dangerous,” William said. “There’s a lot of crazies out there.” He turned to me. “I’d be carrying if I were you.”

“Sometimes it’s dangerous,” I said. “I walked over those tracks last night. That seemed a little dangerous.”

Naomi nodded. “With this many trains you’ve got to keep both eyes open. We’ve had our losses. Like Uncle George and Beth.” She looked at Kelly.

Kelly frowned. “Yes, George and Beth.”

“They were killed by a train?” I asked.

“About four years ago,” Kelly replied.

“Darndest thing,” William said, shaking his head.

“What happened?”

“They were coming back from Chucky’s baptism—”

“Chucky’s their grandson,” Naomi said.

“It was late,” Kelly said. “Their car stalled on the tracks and George couldn’t get it going again. Then he heard a train coming. He got out and went to help Beth out of the car, but she panicked and locked the door.”

“They were older,” Naomi said. “In their eighties.”

“Beth wasn’t all there,” William said. “Hadn’t been for years.”

Naomi added, “George’s friend, Marshall, was in a wheelchair across the street. He saw it all.”

Kelly looked annoyed. “Will you please just let me tell the story?”

“Sorry,” William said.

“I was saying, Beth locked the car door. George pled with her to open the door, but she wouldn’t. Then he looked down the track at the coming train, walked back to the driver’s seat, and got in.”

“The train took both of them,” Naomi said.

“He didn’t want to go on living without her,” William said. “It was tragic.”

“It’s tragic and beautiful at the same time,” Kelly said, surrendering the story. “They got to go together.”

After a moment I said, “I can understand why he would do that.”

Mariah came out carrying a plate with three strips of bacon, two biscuits, and scrambled eggs with cheese melted on top. Ted followed her out but stopped near the doorway, as if supervising her.

“There’s blackberry jelly right there,” Mariah said. “For your biscuit.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Ted smiled proudly. “Does everything look satisfactory?”

“Yes. Thank you. It looks delicious.”

Mariah walked back into the kitchen.

“The eggs are real fresh,” Ted said. “In fact, you just missed Chicken George.”

“Chicken George?”

“He lives just down the street. He brings us fresh eggs every morning. Would you like some coffee?”

“Please,” I said. “Thank you.”

He walked back to the kitchen. I broke open a biscuit, forked some eggs inside, then folded a piece of bacon and put it inside, making a breakfast sandwich. My companions watched in silence.

I asked Kelly, “You said you’re here for a funeral?”

“My brother’s,” Kelly said.

Sometimes, in the pain and loneliness of my losses, I forgot that I was only one of hundreds of thousands bidding their loved ones goodbye. It’s like standing at the airport and not seeing anyone around you.

“Your brother lived in Folkston?” I asked.

“Just a half mile north of here,” William said.

“Are you also from Folkston?” I asked.

“We live in Macon now,” Kelly said.

“I’ve got a machine shop in Macon,” William added. “Naomi lives in Jacksonville.”

“How far will you walk today?” Kelly asked.

“Hopefully twenty miles. I’m breaking myself back in to walking. I went home for a few weeks, so I’ve gotten a little out of shape.”

“I bet your family was glad to see you,” Kelly said.

“There’s only my father,” I said. “But he passed away.”

“I’m sorry,” Naomi said.

“We all have our losses, don’t we,” Kelly said.

Ted returned with my coffee. A few minutes later Kelly, Naomi, and William excused themselves to get ready for the funeral. I finished eating, then looked in the kitchen to thank Ted and Mariah, but they were gone. I left a five-dollar bill on the table for Mariah, then went to my room and packed.

As I was about to leave the inn, Alease and Ted walked into the foyer. Alease handed me a brown paper sack. “I put some of the banana nut bread in there,” she said. “Just in case you need a snack on the way.”

“You be sure to come back,” Ted said. “We’ll leave the light on.”

“You’re very kind,” I said. “Thank you for everything.” I stepped outside. It was time to continue my walk.

CHAPTER

Twenty-Six

Perhaps the greatest mystery of death is why it’s a mystery.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The day was overcast and the road was wet, spotted with occasional puddles. Soon a comfortable mist filled the air—much like what I was used to in Seattle.

Walking east, I crossed the railroad tracks again. There were even more people gathered to watch the trains. After the tracks, I continued along Main Street to Second until I reached the edge of town.

Less than five miles from the inn I reached the Florida state line and the border town of Boulogne. Across the border it was easy walking along smooth, flat stretches with grassy shoulders hemmed in by a corridor of tall trees.

After two hours I reached the town of Hilliard. My legs were already sore. I walked another mile and a half, then stopped for lunch at the R&R Wings Café. I had a bowl of the Underground Chili and a half-dozen garlic honey wings, then hurried back out before my legs cramped up.

I had walked another mile when I came to a Winn-Dixie supermarket. I stopped inside for supplies, which included bottled water, canned fruit, pork and beans, protein bars, jerky, and raw almonds. I also purchased some Epsom salts to soak in later. I shopped for just half an hour, eager to keep moving.

A block from the store was a sign for the next town:

CALLAHAN 11 MILES

Callahan would put me at around twenty-two miles for the day. I thought it was a respectable goal for the first day back. I just hoped my legs had it in them to walk the whole way. As I left Hilliard the speed of the traffic increased, while mine steadily declined. I reached Callahan at around six p.m. The city sign boasted:

Home of the

FLORIDA CHEERLEADING

STATE CHAMPIONS

The first motel I came to was called the Ship Inn—a long, narrow row of rooms. The rental office was situated apart from the hotel in its own building near the road. I went in to reserve a room.

An Indian man was sitting on a mat on the floor playing a card game with a woman who was dressed in a saffron-colored sari. The office smelled of incense and curry. The man seemed annoyed that I had interrupted his game.

I got a room for just forty-five dollars. Once inside, I fell back on the bed, exhausted, my legs cramping. I lifted my legs and pulled them toward me until my hamstrings stretched. As hungry as I was, I was too tired to walk to a restaurant, so I ate Alease’s banana nut bread and cold beans and fruit. Then I filled the tub with hot water and the Epsom salts and soaked until the water started to cool. That night I slept much better than I had in Folkston.

The next morning as I lay in bed, I saw where someone had written on the wall:

Where will I go when I die?

My mind went back to the conversation I’d had with my father about the afterlife. I couldn’t help but smile. I took a pen from the nightstand and wrote beneath the query:

Toledo

I remembered a story one of my former employees, a graphic artist named Charles, told me. He said that when he was young he’d had a cousin with leukemia. He said that one night he woke in the middle of the night to see her standing next to his bed. When he asked her what she was doing in his room she said, “Tell my mother and father that all is well.” Then she was gone. The next morning his parents told him that his cousin had died in the night.

I don’t know if Charles had really seen the girl or not, but I’m certain that he believed he had.

Toledo. I wondered where my father was—physically—if the word still applied. Was he walking with me? Would I even know it if he was? I thought of his dream about sitting in the garden with my mother and McKale. I hoped he was there. The thought made me feel peaceful.

I dressed, then sat down on the thinly padded carpet and again stretched my back and legs. When I felt sufficiently limber I grabbed my pack and set off for the day. It had rained during the night, and the sky was still overcast. All around me the ground and roadway were pooled with water. Walking on water, I thought. A mile and a half into town I reached a Huddle House restaurant. I stopped for a breakfast of blueberry pancakes.

Shortly after I left the restaurant the highway speed limit rose to sixty-five again, which affected me only because of the danger of speeding cars on wet roads. An hour later I entered Duval County and reached the Jacksonville city limit. Peculiarly, someone had hung the hoods of a dozen cars along a fence. I had no idea why. Maybe it was art.

Thirteen miles into the day I climbed the on-ramp to Interstate 295. The freeway traffic was dense and fast, at least in comparison to where I had been walking, but there were also a wide emergency lane and broad, grassy shoulders.

My legs were still not a hundred percent, so I exited the freeway short of twenty miles at Commonwealth Avenue. The shoulder was under repair, and I had to hike around barricades to get to the bottom of the off-ramp and the Comfort Suites.

There was a Wendy’s drive-in adjacent to the hotel’s parking lot, and I had a chicken salad, a bowl of chili, and a baked potato for dinner, then went back to my room and soaked in the last of my Epsom salts before going to bed.

The next day was stressful going. As I’d been warned back in Folkston, the expressway was “tore up” in myriad places, making it difficult to walk. At one point I was forced to climb over barricades because of road construction.

Around noon I took the Roosevelt Boulevard exit and ate lunch at one of my favorite stops, the Waffle House. I was in no hurry to return to the 95, so after lunch I tried to keep to local roads, but after an hour I could see the freeway was the only sensible route. I walked nearly five miles more, then got off on the Old St. Augustine Road.

As I descended the off-ramp I saw a sign for a Holiday Inn Express. I turned left, crossing beneath the overpass and into a well-groomed business district not a quarter mile from the exit. I had again walked less than twenty miles, but it felt like more.

The hotel shared a parking lot with a steak and seafood restaurant called LeGrand’s. I lay down on my bed for about a half hour; then I got up, washed my face, and walked across the parking lot to the restaurant.

The restaurant was crowded, but, being a party of one, I was seated quickly. I had the best meal I’d had since I left California: skillet corn bread, a wedge salad, sweet potato pecan soufflé, and a twelve-ounce rib eye steak garnished with sautéed mushrooms.

There was a couple sitting just two tables away from me that I guessed to be about my age. They had a toddler, a boy, who was celebrating a birthday. The family looked so remarkably happy that I couldn’t help but watch them. I surprised myself by laughing out loud when their boy smashed his hands into his piece of birthday cake. As they got up to leave, the young mother glanced over at me. I smiled. She smiled back, then turned away and pulled her child close. Suddenly, all the reasons I’d given McKale for putting off having a child seemed petty.

When I got back to the Holiday Inn I went for a long swim, then relaxed in the hot tub until it closed around eleven.

The hotel provided a free breakfast. I ate a cheese omelet with bacon and sausage, biscuits and gravy, and sticky cinnamon rolls. I went back to my room for my pack, then walked back out to the freeway.

I had walked about an hour when I exited onto the 1, which, at this part of the state, was called Philips Highway. (I was to learn that Highway 1 has more name changes than Zsa Zsa Gabor.) An hour later I passed through the town of Bayard. The skies were clearing a little, but I noticed that the shoulder to my right was filled with water, so, likely in unwarranted paranoia, I kept an eye open for gators.

Since passing the Okefenokee Swamp I’d thought a lot about alligators. There’s a myth that the best way to outrun an alligator is to run zigzags, the rationale being that the reptile cannot easily adjust its path. This is wrong on two counts. First, the fastest an alligator has been recorded running is ten miles an hour, half the speed of a human sprinter and still considerably slower than any average adult can run. Second, an alligator has little endurance on land and rarely chases anything more than fifteen feet away from it. So the fastest way to put distance between you and a gator is to run in a straight line. While I realize that this information is probably useless, it does make for good conversation.

As evening fell I turned off on Palencia Village Drive and stopped at a small strip mall restaurant called Pacific Asian Bistro, where I ate edamame, miso soup, and unagi don—eel over sushi rice. After finishing my meal, I asked the proprietor, a middle-aged Chinese man, if there was a hotel in the area. He replied, “Yeah, it’s close. Just keep driving another ten minutes.”

Ten minutes by car was four hours by foot. I walked around the area until I finally found a clump of trees big enough to conceal my tent. I felt like I was hiding in plain sight.

CHAPTER

Twenty-Seven

Some people spend so much time hunting treasure that they fail to see it all around them. It’s like sifting through gold to find the silt.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I didn’t sleep well. I woke early, broke down my tent, and walked back out to Highway 1. I wasn’t too concerned with my lack of sleep, since I planned to walk for only a few hours anyway. The city of St. Augustine was only seven miles away, and I wanted to spend some time there.

St. Augustine is America’s oldest European-settled city. It was founded more than two centuries before the Declaration of Independence was signed and served as the capital of Spanish Florida for over two hundred years. The town, like most of early America, has a bloody past, and control of the region has changed hands multiple times. It was first colonized by the French, then seized by the Spanish and traded to the British.

A quarter mile into the town was a parking lot and booth with a sign that read:

Old Town Trolley Tours

I purchased a ticket and waited for the next trolley to arrive. Tourism was light that day, and I took an entire bench on the trolley for myself and my pack, behind a family I deduced was from Kansas from their Jayhawks sweatshirts.

It was pleasant sitting on the trolley as it wound through the city’s historic streets accompanied by the driver’s commentary. The trolley ticket was an all-day pass, so I got off in the old town near Aviles Street, the oldest street in America, walked around awhile, then reboarded and crossed the Bridge of Lions to Anastasia Island, where I took a tour of the St. Augustine Alligator Farm, which, for a reptile lover like myself, was well worth the admission.

The park had all twenty-three living species of crocodilians, the most interesting being the gharial, with its long, toothy snout as narrow as a French baguette.

In the center of the park was a pool filled with some of the largest alligators I had ever seen. They were monsters, motionless as statues. They were obviously well fed, because during a feeding demonstration a dead chicken landed on one of the alligators’ heads and it was still there when I left ten minutes later.

After the farm, I walked over to the St. Augustine Lighthouse, 140 years old and striped white and black like a giant, monochromatic barber pole. I checked my pack at the front registry, then walked through the lighthouse keeper’s house (which had been converted into a museum), then to the lighthouse.

McKale loved lighthouses, and I thought of her as I climbed the 219 steps to the deck on top.

I had been warned by the ticket taker to remove my hat before I reached the top, and the reason became obvious as I walked out on the deck. The sea winds were powerful enough to remove hats and sunglasses.

The deck provided a 360-degree view of St. Augustine, the Intracoastal Waterway, and the Atlantic Ocean.

I climbed back down the lighthouse and caught the trolley to the mainland. I asked the driver about a good restaurant, and he recommended Meehan’s Irish Pub & Seafood House, which was near one of his stops.

Even though it was the town’s off-season, the restaurant was crowded. The hostess, a pretty young blond woman with a (I hoped temporary) shamrock tattoo on her cheek, informed me that there was a twenty-five-minute wait for a table unless I wanted to eat at the bar, which I elected to do.

I sat at the end of the bar, where I could keep an eye on my pack, and perused the menu. The pub’s motto was “Eat, Drink, and be Irish,” so I ordered their Irish specials: a Reuben roll (which was something like an Asian spring roll but was filled with corned beef and sauerkraut), conch chowder, and shepherd’s pie.

I was finishing my meal when a man sat down next to me. He was probably a little older than my father, tan with sun-spotted, leathery skin. His blond hair was streaked with gray and pulled back in a ponytail. He wore a Tommy Bahama flowered shirt and cargo shorts. He glanced over at me and nodded his head a little.

“Evening,” I said.

“Evening,” he replied.

He ordered a beer and shepherd’s pie. He glanced past me at my pack, then asked, “Passing through town?”

I nodded. “I’m headed to Key West.”

“Good place to be headed,” he said. “I’m Gaspar.” He extended his hand.

“Alan,” I replied. “Gaspar. That’s an unusual name.”

“Not so unusual around here,” he said.

“So you’re from here,” I said.

“I was born near Vero, but I’ve lived here for the last twenty-six years. You?”

“Born in Denver, raised in Pasadena. But I moved to Seattle for work.”

“What do you do?”

“I used to be in advertising,” I said. “Now I just walk.”

“There’s a profession. Are you paid by the mile or the hour? Actually, a better question is who pays you? And why?”

“It’s pro bono,” I said.

He grinned. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“What do you do?” I asked.

“I’m a treasure hunter.”

“Really. What kind of treasure do you hunt?”

“Buried, mostly.”

“You’ve found buried treasure?”

“Some. The big one’s eluded me, but I’ll find it someday. It’s just a matter of time.”

“There’s a lot of treasure around here?”

“Florida has more lost treasure than anywhere else in the world, and only a fraction of it’s been found. A few years back road crews were building a road in Brevard County and unearthed thirteen chests of coins.

“Every now and then Spanish doubloons and pieces of eight from shipwrecks will wash up on the beaches after heavy storms, but most of the loot was buried on land by pirates.”

“Pirates?”

“These waters were full of them. Captain Morgan, of the rum fame, Calico Jack, Black Caesar, and the most famous, José Gaspar. My namesake.”

“I’ve never heard of Gaspar,” I said. “But I’m not much on piratology.” I wasn’t sure that was a word.

The bartender returned with Gaspar’s food and drink. In one swig Gaspar downed a quarter of his mug, then wiped the foam from his mouth and turned back to me.

“Gaspar’s big in Florida. There’s a Gasparilla celebration in Tampa every year.”

“Why would they celebrate a thief?” I asked.

“We celebrate worse,” he said. “Columbus wiped out thousands of indigenous peoples, and we have a holiday for him. It all depends on how you view it. To some, Captain Morgan was a pirate, but he preyed on enemies of Britain, so he was knighted by the British Crown. One man’s hero is another man’s criminal.”

“Gaspar too?” I asked.

“No, he was pretty much in it for himself. He was just born bad, I guess. He committed his first crime at the age of twelve. He kidnapped a girl and held her for ransom. Being so young, he was easily caught. He was given the option of prison or the Spanish navy. He chose the sea.

“Apparently Gaspar was quite handsome. When he was older he was involved in a love affair with the king’s daughter, until he was accused of stealing the royal crown jewels. Before he could be arrested, he fled Spain, then, supposedly with the money from the jewels, purchased a ship and crew, sailed to the Florida coast, and began attacking any ship flying the Spanish flag. It’s believed that he attacked more than four hundred ships, including the vessel carrying the twelve million dollars in gold bullion that the United States paid Napoleon for the Louisiana Purchase. Some of the gold was lost at sea, but most of it was buried.”

“How do you know that?”

“I feel it,” he said, pounding his chest. “In here.” He took another drink, then said, “Every now and then there’s a story that confirms it. Just before the Revolutionary War, one of Gaspar’s last living confederates came out of hiding. He asked a farmer for his help in recovering the gold, promising him a share of the booty. The farmer was doubtful but decided to help out the old man. After they raised the first chest, he was pretty eager to continue. But the old man said he wasn’t feeling well and needed a few days’ rest. Two days later the farmer went to see him and found him dead in his cabin. The farmer went through the cabin, and all he found was a jar of gold coins and a code he had engraved in copper.” Gaspar reached into his pocket and brought out a piece of paper.

“I carry this with me wherever I go. It’s a Xerox of a pencil rubbing from that sheet of copper.”

O-X-NXW-W-VER-VAR

LEGUA 1/10 O-X-SWXW-VER-VAR

HASTA X

“I’ve been trying to decipher it for twenty-six years now.”

“You’ve spent half your life searching for treasure?”

“At least.”

“What did you do before that?”

“I drove a truck. Before that I took people on tours of St. Augustine. That’s where I learned so much about the history of this place.”

“Are you married?”

He took another long drink, pounding his glass down with a loud thud. “No. I planned to get married, have a family, the usual, but after I found treasure, time just sort of slipped away.”

I nodded.

“How about you?”

“I was married.”

“Was?”

“She passed away a year ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

I took a drink of my beer, then said, “She was my treasure.”

He looked at me for a moment, then turned and drained the rest of his mug. He had nothing else to say.

CHAPTER

Twenty-Eight

What was true three thousand years ago is true today: the end of the siren’s song is death.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I got a late start the next day, leaving my motel around noon. I followed Ponce de Leon to US 1 to 95 south, into Flagler County. If you travel through Florida, it’s impossible not to see the name Flagler. Henry Morrison Flagler was a railroad and oil tycoon and a founding partner, along with John D. Rockefeller, of Standard Oil.

By 1896 his railroad, the Florida East Coast Railway, reached all the way south to Biscayne Bay, where he dredged a channel, built streets and utilities, and even founded the first newspaper.

The grateful locals wanted to name the city Flagler, but he declined the offer. Instead he convinced them to use an Indian name, Mayaimi, later shorted to Miami. It was a good call. Somehow the Flagler Dolphins doesn’t have the same ring to it.

I stayed overnight in Palm Coast at a Microtel Inn & Suites, then set out again the next day. Interstate 95 met up with Highway 1, which again changed names, this time to Dixie Highway. I walked through Volusia County to Ormond Beach, then, as the sun set, into the city of Daytona Beach. It was nearly dark when I reached a city sign that read:

Welcome to Daytona Beach

Ten yards after it was another sign that read:

We’re glad you’re back.

Please keep the noise down.

I walked over a bridge and east until a neon sign stretched across the road.

World’s Most Famous Beach

December is the off-season in Daytona—a lull before the hordes descend in February for the Daytona 500. Still, there was less traffic in the city than I expected.

As I walked toward the ocean I heard reggae music playing. After a dull day of walking, I liked the idea of losing myself in the party atmosphere, so I walked past the beachfront buildings to investigate.

The music was coming from an outdoor bar called Il Galli, and the sign in front had a picture of a rooster. The crowded bar had a fire pit in the middle of the bricked terrace—the flickering, orange-yellow flames illuminating the band. I walked up to a hostess, who glanced up as I approached.

“Do you have a table?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yes, are you alone?”

“Yes,” I said.

She grabbed a menu from the hostess stand, then said flippantly, “Not for long.”

I followed her to the far side of the bar near the band, whose music seemed to be increasing in volume.

As I looked through the menu, a waitress walked up to me. She almost had to shout to be heard over the music. “What can I get you to drink?”

“Just a beer,” I said.

“What kind would you like?”

“What’s this Dark Lord Russian?”

“It’s a local brew. It’s popular. It has the taste of coffee and molasses. It’s a little pricey, but most say it’s worth it.”

“I’ll try it.”

“I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Do you want anything to eat?”

“I’ll have one of your pulled pork sandwiches. With Swiss cheese and coleslaw.”

“Fries or chips?”

“Fries. And a side Caesar salad.”

“You got it.”

I sat back in my chair. It felt good to be off my feet. The weather was nice, and the air was sweet and moist with the ocean breeze.

The band’s main singer and drummer wore dreadlocks. They weren’t Bob Marley and the Wailers, and I suspected that what they lacked in talent they tried to make up for in volume. I tore off a couple pieces of napkin, rolled them into marble-sized balls, and put them in my ears.

The people around me were mostly younger. With the exception of a few older men sitting at the bar, I was the only one alone—something that wasn’t new to me, but in this kind of setting it made me feel self-conscious.

Sitting at the far end of the bar were two women, likely in their late twenties, one blond, the other brunette. The blonde had a petite build and wore a black string bikini with a sheer cover-up that didn’t cover up much. The other woman, a tan brunette, was slightly taller and voluptuous. She was wearing turquoise short-shorts, frayed at the bottom, with an orange bikini top. They were both gorgeous, a fact that wasn’t lost on the men around them, who were almost all gawking at them or at least stealing glances—some more obvious than others.

The brunette looked a little like Falene, which intensified my loneliness. The truth is, seeing them reminded me that I wasn’t wired to be celibate.

The brunette looked at me and smiled. I smiled back, expecting her to turn away, but she didn’t. She continued staring at me, her eyes dark and piercing. Her friend noticed her gaze and looked at me as well and smiled. She waved me over, but I just smiled. She turned back to the barkeep and said something, smiled at me again, then turned away. A moment later a waiter brought me a beer.

“You’re a lucky man. This is from the ladies at the end of the bar,” he said, glancing back at my benefactors. “They would like you to join them.”

I followed his gaze over to the women. They were both smiling at me. The blonde cocked her head and raised her eyebrows.

“All right,” I finally said. I pulled the extemporaneous earplugs from my ears, then, leaving my pack at the table, picked up my beer and carried it over to the women. They both preened a little as I neared. They were even prettier up close. To tell the truth, I wasn’t used to this kind of thing and I felt a little awkward.

“Thanks for the beer,” I said, setting it on the counter.

“You’re welcome,” the brunette said.

“I’m Alan,” I said.

“I’m Lindsi,” the blonde replied, reaching out her hand. I took it. Gathered at her wrists were clumps of gold and silver bracelets. Her hair fell to her shoulders except for a single braid that lay to the side of her face. She had on bright red lipstick that accentuated her full lips. She wore a long gold chain that was tied together above her cleavage and fell to her taut stomach.

“And I’m Renny,” the brunette said. I thought she was even more striking than Lindsi. Her eyes were amber-brown and almond shaped above high cheekbones. She had a tattoo of a mermaid on her shoulder. She looked even more like Falene up close.

“Renny,” I said. “That’s a different name.”

She just smiled. I doubted she’d heard me.

“First time here?” Lindsi asked.

I moved closer to them so they could hear. “It’s my first time in Daytona,” I said. “I’m just passing through.”

“Where are you headed?” Renny asked.

“Key West.”

“Key West is wild,” Lindsi said. “It’s like a big, twenty-four-seven freak party.”

“The last time I was there,” Renny said, “I got so drunk, I woke up on the beach with a chicken pecking at my earring.”

“They’ve got chickens all over down there,” Lindsi said. “It’s crazy.”

“Hunter Thompson said, ‘Key West is where the weird go pro,’ ” I said.

“What?” Renny said.

Just then the band ended a song, leaving my ears ringing.

“Hunter Thompson said that ‘Key West is where the weird go pro.’ ”

“Who?” Lindsi said.

“Hunter Thompson. The writer.”

Renny rolled her eyes. “Lindsi’s not much on reading.”

“Like you are,” Lindsi said.

Renny looked at me. “I’m into . . . other things.” Her smile grew. “Where are you from, Alan?”

“Seattle.”

“I’ve been to Seattle,” she said. “I have some friends there. You’re a long way from home.”

“Other side of the continent.”

“What brings you to our side?” Lindsi asked.

“Just seeing the country.”

“Where are you staying in Daytona?” Lindsi asked.

“In a hotel.”

“Which one?”

“I haven’t found one yet.”

“You can stay at our place,” Lindsi said. “It’s not far from here. Why don’t you come back with us for a few drinks and . . . whatever?”

They both looked at me intently.

“Thanks, but . . .”

Renny brought out a small baggie from her bikini top. There were pills inside. “I’ve got candy.”

I just looked at them.

“Come on,” Lindsi said. “It will be fun. I promise.”

“I don’t . . .”

Lindsi smiled, moving her hand to my thigh. “You don’t what?”

“I’m married,” I said.

Lindsi looked at me skeptically. “I don’t see a ring.”

“I don’t see a wife,” Renny said. “Did you lose her?”

“Finders keepers,” Lindsi said playfully.

Renny slid forward on her stool. Smiling seductively, she put her hand on my arm. “Come on. Let’s have some fun.”

“Really, I . . .”

“Come on,” Lindsi said, taking my hand.

I pulled my hand away from her. “No.”

Lindsi’s smile vanished. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I told you, I’m married.”

“Then why’d you come over and hit on us?” she asked.

I looked at them a moment, then said, “You bought me a drink.”

“You came over because you liked what you saw,” Lindsi said.

“What’s the matter?” Renny asked. “Are you afraid of us?”

I picked up my beer. “I’m afraid I’ve given you the wrong impression. I’m sorry to waste your time.”

I turned and walked away.

“Loser,” Renny said, loud enough for half the bar to hear.

I walked back to my table and sat down. A moment later I glanced back at the women. They had already walked over to a table of men. My waitress brought my sandwich and beer.

“Here you go.” She set the plate before me. “One pulled pork sandwich and . . . another Dark Lord.”

“Thanks.”

“Anything else?”

“Just the check.”

“I’ll be right back.” She hesitated for a moment, then said, “For the record, you made the right choice.” She turned and walked away.

When she returned with my check I said, “What do you mean I made the right choice?”

“Those two girls, Lindsi and Renny. They’re bad news. They’ve sunk more men than the barrier reef.”

“Sunk?”

“Hearts, marriages, bank accounts, souls. Pick one.” She smiled. “You’re one of the smart ones.”

In light of the humiliation the girls had just flung at me, it was good to hear this. “Thank you.”

“Thank yourself,” she said, then turned and walked away.

A few minutes later I looked back over to where the women had been standing, but they, and the men, were already gone.

I finished eating, drank just one of the beers, then grabbed my pack and walked back out to the frontage road. I walked a quarter mile more before finding a hotel. For one of the few times since I’d left Seattle, I was glad to be alone.

I got up early the next morning and went for a short walk along the beach. In Daytona, cars are allowed to drive on the beach, and as I walked a dozen or so vintage Corvettes passed by.

I ate breakfast at the hotel, which I realized catered to the elderly, as I was the only one in the dining room under seventy. The complimentary meal included runny eggs, chipped beef, and Cream of Wheat. When several of the women began taking an overt interest in me, I grabbed my pack and left.

About a half hour later I walked past the famous Daytona Beach Drive-In Christian Church, where you come as you are, tune your radio to 680 AM or 88.5 FM, and hear God’s word. I had to smile. It was a far cry from what McKale and I used to do in drive-ins.

The next three days were peaceful and, frankly, not worth writing about. My walk took me through New Smyrna Beach, Edgewater, Oak Hill, and then to Titusville, aka Space City, USA. I entered the town, walking past Astronaut High School. I found a room at the Budget Motel, paying forty-five dollars to a smiling, toothless woman at the front desk, ate dinner next door at the Your Place Restaurant, then went to my room and crashed. I felt like I was coming down with something.

CHAPTER

Twenty-Nine

Humanity is always looking for the next great world, the next frontier. I wonder how different this world would be if we were content with where we were.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke sick. I wasn’t coughing, fortunately, but I felt feverish and achy, so I decided to rest for a day—which, frankly, I was planning on doing anyway so I could tour the nearby Kennedy Space Center. I ate breakfast at the restaurant next door, then walked a block to a drugstore, where I purchased some cold-relief capsules. Then I took a cab to the space center on Merritt Island.

My father was fascinated by space travel. I’ll always remember the look on his face as he told me about watching the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969, repeating Neil Armstrong’s words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” My father told me that Armstrong had not only prepared the speech himself after landing on the moon but had unintentionally dropped the word a before man, which technically changed the quote’s meaning.

When I was twelve my father took me to see an actual moon rock at the California Science Center, and for the next week I drank nothing but orange-flavored Tang, the drink of astronauts. Most interesting to me were the exhibits and museums that displayed actual artifacts from space history, including the original Mercury mission control consoles, and the Rocket Garden—an exhibit of the actual Mercury-Redstone, Atlas, and Titan rockets that the first astronauts rode into space. There were also the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules.

Seeing the space center made me miss my father.

The space center closed at five p.m., so I called a taxi to take me back to the hotel. I was still feeling crummy, so I ate a light dinner at Your Place Restaurant, then went to bed before nine.

Fortunately, I woke feeling better. I got an early start, walking US 1 through Bellwood, Delespine, Port St. John, Frontenac, Williams Point, and Sharpes, stopping for the night at a hotel on Merritt Island.

The next day I took SR 520 east until I reached SR A1A south, which took me through the south end of Merritt Island and Cocoa Beach, past Patrick Air Force Base, home of the 45th Space Wing, assigned to NASA and outer space. As I passed the base’s entrance I felt a twinge of anxiety. The last time I had passed an air force base was just outside of Spokane, the night I was stabbed.

I had sporadically encountered long stretches of roadkill in the Midwest, but that was nothing compared to the A1A, where I saw more run-over animals than anywhere else on my walk. Except on this side of the continent the deceased creatures were crustaceans. Crabs—thousands of them smashed and baked into the pavement. Outside of Orchid Island I had to watch my step, as there were plenty of them still alive, running sideways in waves across the asphalt splattered with their brethren. I had no idea what motivated them on their suicidal trek, but I did make a bad joke about it.

Why did the crab cross the road? To get to the other—Crunch.

Two days later I reached Vero Beach at around two thirty in the afternoon. Vero Beach is one of the wealthiest cities in Florida, evidenced by a plethora of boutiques and art galleries.

As I entered the town I stopped at the Village Beach Market. I purchased some food, then asked Marge, a pleasant, lavender-haired woman at the checkout counter, about the area. She told me that the bulk of the hotels were spread out over the next two miles along the beach. After that I would encounter miles of condominiums and gated residences.

It would be only four by the time I reached the beach, which was earlier than I usually stopped but too late to make it to the next city. I knew from experience that it was difficult to camp in residential areas, particularly an upscale one like Vero Beach, which meant my best bet would be to find a hotel nearby. Marge recommended that I stay at the Driftwood Resort.

I sat on the grass in front of the store and ate a lunch of pineapple cucumber juice, a tuna wrap, and spears of freshly cut pineapple. Then I walked down Mango Road toward the beach until I reached Ocean Drive. I had walked about a mile when I reached the Driftwood Resort.

The Driftwood is a rustic-looking place, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in the early 1900s with cypress logs and cypress paneling cut from the swamps around the Blue Cypress Lake, about twenty-five miles away. Parts of the building were constructed without plans, which, considering the vernacular architecture, wasn’t hard to believe. Scattered around the grounds was an eclectic collection of memorabilia ranging from captains’ wheels to ship bells—one of which was said to have been owned by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

I told the woman at the registration counter that Marge at the Village Beach Market had recommended I stay there, so she gave me a deal on their last room, a cottage about fifty feet from the lobby.

There was a hand-painted wooden sign above the room’s entrance with a picture of a large fish, which I assumed was a tarpon, since my room was named the Tarpon Cottage.

I went inside and took a long nap. I woke after dark, started the water in the jetted tub, and lay back down on the bed. Unfortunately, the hot water ran out long before the tub was filled, so I skipped the bath and went to dinner instead at the hotel restaurant, Waldo’s, which claimed to be “The Last of the Great American Hangouts.”

The food was good. I ordered crab cakes, peel-and-eat shrimp, and Bermuda triangles, which I followed with “Crazy Harry’s” Cobb salad. I never asked who Harry was or why he was crazy.

There was a band playing near the pool in back, so after I finished eating I went outside to listen as the moon rose above the Atlantic. After a while, the crowds around the pool made me feel lonely, so I went back to my room and turned on the television. There was a football game on—the Seattle Seahawks and the Miami Dolphins. I watched the game for only a quarter, then turned off the television and went to bed.

CHAPTER

Thirty

To deny our pasts is to burn the bridge we must cross to self-understanding.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

From my room I watched the sun rise from the horizon, turning the sky a beautiful rose-gold hue, then pure gold.

I emerged from my room feeling refreshed and rested. The Atlantic air was already humid and sweet, smelling of the perfume of flowers I couldn’t name and hadn’t ever smelled in the West.

I returned my room key to the front office, then headed off, walking south along Ocean Drive. Ocean Drive turned west onto Club Drive, which led me through a residential area as thick and tangled as a jungle. It was like walking through a labyrinth, and I had to retrace my steps twice, setting me back at least twenty minutes. I finally emerged from the neighborhood, crossed a bridge, then headed south through Fort Pierce, walking past beautiful golf courses and lush landscapes.

I noticed that in Vero Beach many of the streets were named after flowers, but in Fort Pierce the roads had nautical names, like Sea Mist, Oyster Bay, and Harbor Lane.

For more than an hour I walked along the beach listening to a soundtrack of screeching gulls, the crashing ocean, and the singing of cicadas. The noon sun was hot, but it was mercifully tempered by the ocean’s breeze.

Fort Pierce is the place of origin of the Navy SEALs, and I passed the National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum before Highway A1A turned west into Shorewinds Drive and Fort Pierce. I crossed a drawbridge over the Indian River, followed the Old Dixie Highway to the next intersection, where it turned into US 1, then walked another ten miles before calling it a day.

As the sun fell, I booked a room at the Days Inn. The man at the front desk recommended I eat dinner at a place about two blocks from the hotel called Lottie’s Eats. I took my pack to the room, then went out looking for the restaurant. It turned out to be one of the strangest stops of my entire walk.

From the road, the restaurant looked deserted, and if it weren’t for the hotel clerk’s directions I probably would have just walked on by without noticing it. A carved wood sign above the door read LOTTIE’S EATS, the words framed with sharp-petaled flowers of alternating pink and white. The door squeaked on its hinges as I pushed it open.

The room had a dingy, bar-like atmosphere, with peeling tile floors and a half-dozen round tables, some with cloths, some without. The place was empty except for four men who sat at one of the tables in the corner, their eyes glued to a television mounted to the wall. They were watching a football game. Their table was cluttered with mostly empty bottles and mugs and a bowl of pretzels.

As I walked in, all of the men turned and looked at me, which might have been intimidating, but it wasn’t. They looked slightly inebriated and happy to see me.

“Welcome,” one of the men said, lifting a beer bottle. “C’mon in.”

“Thank you.” I couldn’t tell if the men were customers or restaurant staff, but, as there appeared to be no one else in the restaurant, I decided on the latter. “Can I get something to eat?” I asked. Even though the sign out front read EATS, it wasn’t immediately clear to me that the place served food.

“Course,” the man said. He turned to one of the others, a curly-topped man with a boyish face. “Leonard, get him a menu and something to drink.”

The man pushed his chair back. “What are you drinking?” he asked.

“Just water,” I said.

“You can join us over here,” the first man said.

“Thank you.” I walked over to the table and sat down.

“You got a name?” he asked.

“Alan.”

“I’m Lottie,” he replied.

“You’re Lottie,” I said. “So you own this place.”

“She owns me,” he said. “This here is Otis and Troy.”

The two men looked at me with half-shuttered eyes, their heads bobbing over mostly full glasses of amber liquid.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey,” said Troy. Otis looked too drunk to talk. The lanky man returned with my water and a menu.

“And that’s Leonard.”

“Hey,” he said, sitting back down.

“Where you coming from?” Lottie asked.

“Seattle.” I looked at him. “Usually, people ask where I’m going.”

“What’s the point of that?” Lottie said. “Where you going ain’t nothing.” He lifted his glass. “Look at Leonard here. When he came to us he was headed somewhere.” He paused. “Where was you headed?”

“Don’t remember,” Leonard said, his brow furrowing beneath the weight of the question.

“He left his home and just never went back.”

Leonard rubbed his chin. “I think it was a couple a years ago. Maybe it was just last Christmas. I’m sure the house is gone by now. Probably someone I don’t even know sleepin’ in my bed.”

“Probably some guy sleepin’ with your wife in your bed,” Troy said.

“Probably,” Leonard replied matter-of-factly. “She’s somebody else’s problem now.” He laughed, and all three men joined him.

I suddenly realized who the men reminded me of—Steinbeck’s Mack and the boys from Cannery Row. I looked over the menu. “What’s good?”

“We’ve got buffalo wings and the Lottie’s Burger,” Lottie said.

I wasn’t sure if he was recommending those things or if they were all they had. “Sounds good,” I said.

“You heard him,” Lottie said to Leonard. Leonard stood and walked to the kitchen.

“Troy, get Alan a beer. The special.”

“I’m okay,” I said.

“Didn’t say you weren’t,” Lottie said.

Troy staggered over to the bar, returning a moment later with a foaming mug of beer.

“House draft,” Lottie said. “Courtesy of the house.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Try it,” he said.

Not wanting to offend my host, I took a drink. It was different from anything I’d ever tasted. Strong.

“What is this?”

“Specialite de la maison. I call it Lottie’s Brew.” He looked at me. “Drink up.”

Stupidly, I took another drink. It burned.

“Why are you here?” Lottie asked.

My face felt hot. “The guy at the hotel recommended you.”

“I mean not in Seattle.”

“I’m walking.”

He looked at me with an odd expression, then said, “Drink some more.”

I’m not sure why, but I again lifted the glass. There was buzzing in my ears. I’ve always been able to handle my drinks, but after just a few gulps of his “brew” I was feeling fuzzy. Or drugged.

After a moment I said, “I better go.”

“Your food hasn’t come out yet,” Lottie said.

I took out my wallet. “It’s okay, I’ll pay. I just need to go.”

“Need?” Lottie said. “Everything a man needs is right here. Why are you walking, anyway?”

I rubbed my face. “What?”

“I asked, why are you walking?”

“I don’t know.”

Lottie nodded. “Like most of humanity, out looking for something that’s ultimately not worth finding. I’ve been there, the corporate grinding stone. You know what grinding stones make? Powder.”

“They make flour,” Troy said.

Lottie slapped him on the head. “What’s flour, moron? It’s wheat powder—like your mealy brain. That’s all men are today, powder. Except us.” He eyed me carefully. “I bet there’s a woman tangled up in this.”

I took a deep breath. “My wife—”

Lottie clapped his hands. “Was I right, boys?”

“You called it,” Troy said.

Otis grunted.

“Women are just another grinding stone. We got everything we need right here. Beer, television, lively conversation.”

“Where’d you say you’re headed?” Otis asked, surprising me that he could speak.

“He didn’t,” Lottie said.

“Key West,” I said.

“What you lookin’ for in Key West?” Troy asked.

Even without the buzz I’m not sure I could have answered the question.

Just then Leonard walked out with my food. He set the plates in front of me, then sat back down at the table. With the way I was feeling, the sight of the food made me want to throw up.

“I’ll tell you what’s in Key West,” Lottie said. “Some good booze, but nothing worth the walk.” He leaned forward. “I’ve never done this before, but I’m inviting you to join us. Right here, right now. We’ve got a spare room in the back. You can help out around the place to earn your board.”

I felt the room spinning. “That’s generous,” I said. “But no thank you.”

“No?” Lottie looked offended. “What are you holding on to?”

“I had a wife . . .”

“Had?”

“She’s gone.”

“Exactly. They all up and leave.”

“She didn’t leave me. She died.”

“What’s the difference?” Lottie said. “Either way she’s gone and you’re alone.” He looked into my eyes. “Why are you really walking? Do you even know?”

I couldn’t think.

“What you looking for, Alan?”

“Hope,” I said.

He burst out laughing. “Hope? Thank goodness you haven’t found it. Hope was the worst thing to come out of Pandora’s box. Hope is what tortures us. It’s what keeps us driving the nails deeper into our palms. You want happiness, then let hope go. Let it all go—forget the past. It’s nothing but regret and pain.”

I had to force myself to speak. “To forget the past is to erase ourselves,” I said.

“Well said,” Leonard said.

“Exactly,” Lottie said. “We are the great erased.” He raised his glass. “And this is the great eraser.”

“You can’t erase the past,” I said.

“You’re wrong,” Lottie said. “Just look at Leonard. He has no past.”

Leonard grinned. “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”

The men laughed.

“It eventually catches up,” I said. “The past is hunting us.”

“You’re right,” Lottie said. “You can’t outrun the past. But you can kill it. Some things should be killed. It’s the memories that bring pain. Only an idiot would choose pain over pleasure.”

“Life is pain,” I said.

Lottie grinned. “What are you, a Buddhist monk?”

“He’s one of those gimps,” Otis said. “He likes the pain.”

“It’s our memories that make us who we are,” I said. “Killing them is a betrayal of life.”

“He’s talking gibberish,” Troy said.

“No. I’m not.” I stood up, my knees wobbly. “I’ve got to go.”

“You go out there,” Lottie said, pointing to the door, “and your past will find you. I promise you that.”

“The past finds everyone,” I said. “Even you. Even in here.”

He lifted his beer. “Not in here it won’t. In here we drown it with my brew.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “The past floats.”

I turned and staggered out of the bar.

CHAPTER

Thirty-One

I’ve wondered why the famous congregate with each other. Perhaps it’s to assure each other that they really are as important as they think they are.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke the next morning with a throbbing headache. I didn’t even remember walking back to my hotel. I wondered what Lottie put in his “brew.”

After throwing up, I took a long shower, then went downstairs to the hotel’s breakfast nook. I drank two strong cups of black coffee and ate some oatmeal and toast before I headed out on US 1 through the commercial section of Port St. Lucie.

Around noon I was feeling human again. I stopped at a Walmart to stock up on supplies. I walked past a faded Volkswagen Jetta with a bumper sticker that read:

I’M NOT ANTISOCIAL.

I’M JUST NOT USER FRIENDLY.

I got the usual supplies, including water and disposable razors. I walked another mile south, then stopped to eat lunch at the Original Pancake House. I’ve always been a fan of pancakes, and the Original Pancake House has some of the best. I had Swedish pancakes with powdered sugar and lingonberries.

Next I walked through Jensen Beach, passing myriad red and yellow signs marking turtle nesting areas. Around twilight I reached the town of Hobe Sound. I couldn’t see any hotels, so I stopped at Twin Rivers RV Park to see if I could camp there. A sign directed me to a small trailer home. I knocked on the door. A voice shouted out, “Be right there.” A moment later the door opened and a man stepped out. He wore a faded blue T-shirt printed with a picture of a marlin.

“What can I do for you?”

“Do you allow campers?”

“Of course. We’ve got lots of campers. Also RVs and trailer homes.”

“I mean just with a tent.”

“Just you? Sure, I’ve got a place near the back. Need hookups?”

I wondered what he was thinking I’d need hookups for. “No, I just need a place to stake my tent. Do you have showers and a restroom?”

“Yes. We’ve got a full clubhouse with showers, a pool table, and a dartboard. And a washer and dryer.”

“Perfect,” I said. I got out my wallet. “How much?”

He had to think about it. “Hmm. Twenty.”

I handed him two tens. “How do you pronounce the name of this city?”

“Hobe,” he replied. “Like hope but with a b. People up north always say Ho-bee, like it’s got a y on the end. Where are you from?”

“Seattle.”

“Do tell. My wife’s from the Seattle area. Renton.”

“I had some employees from Renton,” I said. “I lived in Bridle Trails. Near Bellevue.”

“I’ve been there,” he said, nodding. “Nice area. Wealthy. If you want to see some real wealth, go up ahead a bit and turn left on Bridge Road. There’s a bunch of celebrities that live up there. Tiger Woods lives there. At least he did; I’m not sure if he’s still there—after all that ruckus in the media—but there’s a bunch of them. Alan Jackson, Celine Dion, a few supermodels, Burt Reynolds . . . You should see it.”

I thought it a little peculiar that he seemed so proud of the wealthy area when he lived in an RV park.

“Thanks for the tip,” I said. “Maybe I’ll check it out.”

He picked up a map from a patio table near the trailer’s door, marked an X on it, and handed it to me. “You’re right there,” he said. “In back, right across from the club.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Have a good night.”

It was clear that many of the residents had been there for a while, as there were satellite dishes, barbecue grills, even a few gardens. There was a small swimming pool, but it was plastered with signs saying that it wasn’t open to RV residents.

I set up my tent, then went to wash my clothes, but there were only two washing machines and they were both in use. I took a shower and shot some pool before going back to my tent to sleep.

Maybe it was the park owner’s talk of models on Jupiter Island, but as I lay in my tent my thoughts drifted to Falene. I had been so surprised when she told me that she was getting married that I hadn’t even asked her when. For all I knew, she already was. At that moment I recalled the Pentecostal pastor I had stayed with in Pevely, Missouri. He had seen a vision of Falene in a wedding gown. I guess I had just assumed that it would be my wedding too.

The next morning I ate breakfast from my pack. The park manager’s excitement over Jupiter Island had made me a little curious, so I decided to check it out. I took the turnoff to the island, and the road led me over a small bridge, then through a tunnel of trees.

I walked around the island for a while. It was an interesting detour but definitely not what I had expected. There were no huge gated homes or spacious mansions with long driveways. In fact, the homes looked surprisingly normal.

The area was not easy to navigate, and I ended up walking in a circle back to the same road I’d entered from. Returning to US 1, I passed Burt Reynolds Park, followed by massive road construction. I ended my day at a Hampton Inn in Juno Beach and ate dinner at the Juno Beach Fish House.

The next two days I logged nearly forty-three miles, passing through the upscale city of Boca Raton, announced by its luxury car dealerships, plastic surgery offices, and funeral homes.

I had always thought that the name Boca Raton meant “rat’s mouth” in Spanish, an odd name for such a wealthy area, but I was wrong on several counts. In Spanish ratón means “mouse,” not “rat”—but the name of the city doesn’t mean that either. In nautical terms, boca refers to an inlet. And ratones in old Spanish maritime dictionaries refers to rugged or stony ground. So the name basically means “rocky inlet.”

Wealthy city or not, I lived economically that night. I booked a room at a Comfort Inn just a few blocks from the ocean and ate dinner at the Subway sandwich shop next door.

The next morning I ate the hotel’s complimentary breakfast, then I donned my pack and walked east over the bridge to US 1.

I was able to walk on sidewalks for most of the day until I reached Fort Lauderdale, made famous by the hordes of college students that overran the town every spring break. As I reached the city I wasn’t feeling all that tired, so I decided to push on to the next city: Hollywood.

Hollywood is a resort town, beautifully landscaped and aesthetically pleasing. Even the town’s water tower, above Hallandale Beach, was painted to look like a giant beach ball.

I walked along Hallandale Beach Boulevard, then followed Ocean Drive north until I came to the luxurious Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa. I decided to live a little, so I booked a room, which was available only because of a last-minute cancellation.

After dinner I changed into my swimsuit and went down to the pool area to soak in the hot tub. The sun had set, and the air was moist with the ocean’s cool, dark breath.

In the midst of the luxurious setting I was more troubled than I had been for months. Oddly, I wasn’t sure why. At first I blamed my anxiety on the usual suspects: McKale’s and my father’s deaths, and Falene’s rejection. But as I peeled back the layers of my discontent, I realized there was something different at the core of my pain. Fear. Fear of completing my journey. My walk was winding down, like a spinning top losing power. My wobble had begun. What was I going to do when my walk was finally over?

It’s been said that every new beginning is some other beginning’s end. Perhaps my transition would be more tolerable if I had any real idea of what would come next.

You would think, after all this time on the road with nothing to think about but my next step or the next town, that I would have thought of where I was going. But I hadn’t.

I had always thought of my walk as an escape from the past, but now I could see that it was also an escape from my future—a future that I wasn’t any more prepared for now than I had been when I first set foot outside my house in Seattle.

Would I ever be ready? Could one really ever be ready for the unknown? If the road has taught me one thing for certain, it is this—one never knows who or what the next mile will bring.

I dried myself off, then went back to my room and lay in bed. The next day likely wouldn’t be any better. I disliked walking through big cities, and I was headed straight into downtown Miami.

CHAPTER

Thirty-Two

Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” But on the road, desperation is not always so quiet.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

Not surprisingly, the next morning I was in no hurry to leave the hotel. I easily rationalized that I had pushed myself the day before so I deserved a lighter day. Besides, the room was paid for until noon. I ordered room service, then, after breakfast, went to the pool area and relaxed in the hot tub. I decided to ignore the questions that had troubled me the night before. I still had plenty of miles to torture myself.

It was a little after eleven when I left the hotel. Donning my pack, I walked west on Hallandale Beach Boulevard, west over a coral pink bridge, then headed south again on US 1.

At the first stoplight there was a group of men standing around the intersection collecting money. They wore pink T-shirts that read HOMELESS VOICE. I must have looked homeless, because they didn’t ask me for a donation. They didn’t offer me any help, either.

After several hours, I stopped for a late lunch at the Dogma Grill—which was basically a fancy hot dog stand. I had a Reuben dog, with melted Swiss cheese and sauerkraut, and an El Macho dog, with spicy salsa, brown mustard, melted cheddar, and diced tomatoes and jalapeños.

When I looked around the place I noticed that as a white man I was a minority, which I’d gotten more used to in the South. Since walking through this part of the country, I’d had some thoughts on America’s racial makeup.

In Travels with Charley John Steinbeck wrote:

Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners . . . California Chinese, Boston Irish, Wisconsin German, yes, and Alabama Negroes, have more in common than they have apart . . . The American identity is an exact and provable thing.

I don’t know if this is still the case in America. I may be wrong, but it seems that there may be some unraveling of the American tapestry. I see people getting so caught up in celebrating diversity that they are neglecting their commonality. I don’t see this as a good thing. The Chinese culture has survived for more than five thousand years in part because the Chinese have embraced the same language and culture.

I hope I am wrong about this, and that the flame is still on beneath the great American melting pot. Americans need each other, and a house divided, no matter the color of its occupants, is still divided. And divided we all fall.

I finished my meal, then headed back out to the street. Like those of most American metropolises, Miami’s outskirts were scattered with the homeless, and I walked past people sleeping on benches and underneath overpasses.

Around four p.m. I entered the heart of the city. It was close to rush hour, and the traffic was thick. The roads looked more like parking lots than thoroughfares, and, for once, I had an advantage over the car-bound.

I didn’t log as many miles as usual, but I’d gotten a late start, and city walking was always slow. I spent the night at the outskirts of the city at Hotel Urbano—a funky little sixty-five-room hotel in a residential area. I had promised Nicole that I would let her know when I reached Miami, so just before going to bed I called her.

“Hi, handsome,” she said. “Where are you?”

“Miami,” I said.

“So what day will you cross the finish line?”

“I’m about eight days out.”

“Today is the fifth, so you’ll reach Key West on the thirteenth. That means we’ll have to fly out the afternoon of the eleventh, spend the night in Miami, then drive down the next day. That will put us in Key West the evening before.”

“That sounds good,” I said. “It will be good to see you.”

“I can’t wait to see you,” she said. “Can you believe you’re almost there?”

“No. I can’t. It feels surreal.”

“It’s going to be fantastic,” she said. “Should I alert the Key West newspaper?”

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“All right. Just your two favorite girls.”

“Travel safe,” I said.

“You do the same,” she replied. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

We hung up. If it wasn’t for Nicole, there would be no one. What if I had walked all that way and no one noticed? I suppose it would be like writing a book, then burning it before anyone read it.

CHAPTER

Thirty-Three

If God came to save the world, why are so many of His professed followers intent on damning it?

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The hotel offered breakfast in the lobby, and I poured myself a cup of coffee, then prepared two packages of instant oatmeal that I topped with brown sugar and sliced bananas. As I was finishing my breakfast a man, thirtyish with a narrow face and a light beard, approached me. “Have you found God?” he asked.

I looked at him for a moment, then replied, “I didn’t know He was lost.”

The man stared at me stoically. “I’m from the Miami Church of Christ Risen, the only true church on the earth.”

“The only true church?” I repeated.

He read my skepticism and replied, “Obviously there can be only one truth. I’ve heard fools say that churches are like spokes on a wheel, all leading to the same place, but anyone with half a brain knows that can’t be right. Truth isn’t duplicitous. You don’t tell a mathematician that there’s more than one answer to a math problem—either you get it right or you don’t, and the level of a person’s sincerity or commitment doesn’t change the truth an iota.” He leaned toward me. “Has the truth saved you?”

“That depends on what you mean by truth,” I said.

“If you are not living the doctrine of truth, you cannot be saved.”

“You mean the ‘truth’ your church teaches.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And only those in your church are saved?”

“That is correct.”

“Then I guess not. How many are in the Miami Church of Christ Risen?”

“We are growing rapidly,” he said, his voice becoming animated. “We have nearly five hundred.”

“That many,” I said, couching my sarcasm. “So the other seven billion plus inhabitants on this earth . . .”

“Lost.”

“Lost,” I repeated. “What exactly does that mean?”

“To be lost is to exist eternally in a state of spiritual limbo, lost to God, damned in eternal progression.”

“So everyone in the world is lost but you and your five hundred souls.”

He nodded.

“Doesn’t that seem a little . . . wrong?”

“God is never wrong. God’s ways are not man’s ways. We don’t make the rules. God does. And He does as He, in His infinite wisdom, deems righteous.”

I looked at him for a moment, then said, “Actually, I think that you, or whoever runs your church, made up the rules to exalt yourself and damn others. If there is a God, I don’t think that would please Him.”

He shook his head sadly. “You are lost.”

“Well, at least we have that settled,” I said. He was looking at me with such an expression of self-righteousness that I wanted to punch him. “Tell me, who is this God you worship?”

“Our God has many names. Elohim, Chemosh—the God of Moab, Yahweh, the only True God.”

“And your God is just?”

“Of course.”

“And you think it’s just that billions of people who were raised differently than you or in other places of the world are not saved?”

“They are the sons and daughters of perdition,” he replied. “Unless they repent and come unto Christ, through our church, they cannot be saved.”

It was hard for me to believe that he could so easily throw all of humanity under the bus in the name of God. “Your little five hundred represent a grain of sand in the vast beach of human existence. If that is all your god is able to save, he is not very powerful. And if it’s all he’s willing to save, then he is certainly not very loving. Frankly, I think you worship a pathetic god.”

The man looked at me in horror. “That’s blasphemous. I fear for your soul.”

“Don’t bother,” I replied. “Your god doesn’t scare me. I’ll stick with a god who is great enough to love all his creation.”

I finished my coffee, picked up my pack, and started out of the hotel, leaving the man and his god behind.

US 1 again became the South Dixie Highway as I reached the town of Coconut Grove. The most unique thing about the town was that the traffic lights were horizontal instead of vertical, something I hadn’t seen anywhere else on my walk.

That night, as I ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant, I looked over my map. At my current pace I would reach Key West in just seven days. Walking through the Florida Keys would be unlike any walking I had done elsewhere in the country.

The Florida Keys consist of more than seventeen hundred islands, though only forty-three of them are connected by bridges. I would cross forty-two bridges on my way to Key West, including the longest bridge of my walk, the Seven Mile Bridge.

The keys’ history is as colorful as their landscape. Because of their location, the keys have always been a hot spot for drug smuggling and illegal immigration. In response to these problems, in the early 1980s the US Border Patrol created a series of roadblocks to search cars returning to the Florida mainland.

When the measures began to affect Key West’s tourism industry, Mayor Dennis Wardlow declared Key West an independent and sovereign nation, renaming it the Conch Republic and appointing himself its prime minister. Wardlow’s first act as prime minister was to declare war on the United States, then, in the same hour, surrender and apply for a billion dollars in foreign aid.

Hunter Thompson was right.

CHAPTER

Thirty-Four

I have entered the Florida Keys. If I listen carefully, I can hear the first musical strains of the movie credits beginning to roll.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next morning I began walking around eight, stopping an hour later at a McDonald’s to eat. Shortly after I left the United States mainland. The road changed to two lanes divided by a waist-high, blue concrete median. There was a wide, grassy shoulder on each side hemmed in by a tall chain-link fence.

The scenery remained the same all day: black-gray asphalt, a green shoulder, and miles of blue ocean infested with mangrove forests. At around twenty-four miles I entered Monroe County and left the highway at Pirate Hat Marina. After a long and monotonous day, I had hoped for some kind of service, but there were only darkened residences and rental homes. I pitched my tent in a lush, secluded part of the marina and ate dinner from my pack.

I woke early the next morning eager to leave the place. Less than a mile from the marina the highway’s name changed to Florida Keys Scenic Highway. I walked through a group of convicts wearing Day-Glo orange jumpsuits who were picking up litter on the side of the road. The men pretty much acted as if I were invisible, except for the two correctional officers who were managing the detail. They watched me closely.

I realized that I had spent the night in the first of the Florida Keys: Key Largo. To tell the truth, I knew of Key Largo only from the Beach Boys’ mention of it in the song “Kokomo,” which they supposedly wrote on the island.

Billboards advertising scuba diving and snorkeling tours flanked both sides of the highway, which is what you would expect in the self-proclaimed “diving capital of the world.”

I stopped at a Circle K for something to eat and to look for a more detailed map of the keys. I asked the female clerk if there were many hotels in Key West, but she didn’t know. In fact, she said that she had never been there. I was surprised, even more so when she told me that she had lived in the Florida Keys her entire life. I asked her if she ever planned to visit Key West, and she just shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. I wondered why someone would choose to live in such a small world.

She gave me a free map and a Key West coupon book. I bought some sunscreen, an orange, and an egg-and-cheese breakfast burrito, then sat down to eat as I looked over the map. From what I could see, many of the keys seemed nearly deserted, and I would be camping some nights.

By evening, I had logged twenty miles, ending at the district of Tavernier. I booked a room at the Historic Tavernier Inn, a tiny hotel on the east side of the thoroughfare, then ate dinner at the Café Cubano, a homespun diner run by a Cuban family. I ate clam chowder and pork chops, which came with a side dish of sweet plantains, then retired to my hotel for the night.

The next morning it took me only an hour to make it to the township of Islamorada, which is technically a village consisting of Plantation Key, Windley Key, Upper Matecumbe Key, Lower Matecumbe Key, and two offshore islands.

A little way into the village I came to a long building with a sign out front that read

HISTORY OF DIVING MUSEUM

I went inside to check it out. There was a sign above the museum entrance that read

Man has left footprints on the moon but still hasn’t walked on the ocean floor

I was the only one there. Even though the museum was small, it was crowded with exhibits and artifacts that the owner had spent his lifetime collecting. I thought it was pretty interesting, especially the deep-sea diving outfits that looked like robots from sixties sci-fi novels.

After the museum I stopped at the Islamorada Restaurant & Bakery—home of the famous Bob’s Bunz—for lunch. I ordered a Reuben o’ the Sea sandwich, which was basically a Reuben sandwich with fish instead of pastrami, a side of sweet potato fries, slaw, and one of their cinnamon buns.

While I was waiting for my food I read about the bakery’s history, which was printed on the back of their menu. The bakery’s owner was a Philadelphia native who, some twenty years ago, had come to the keys for a season and never left. It was something I could understand.

More than once I had fantasized about reaching Key West and never leaving. Of course that’s all it was—a fantasy. I had no idea what I’d do there. A city as small as Key West could never support an advertising agency or even a single ad guy. Maybe I’d buy a fishing boat and take tourists out. I’d name my boat the McKale. Of course I would. When people asked who McKale was, I’d tell them she was a beautiful girl in a dream I once had and leave the rest to their imaginations.

I finished my meal, then started off again. At fourteen miles I reached Indian Key. It was narrow enough that I could have easily thrown a stone from one side of the key to the other. There were cars parked alongside the road, and people had gotten out to swim in the ocean.

The next key was the Lower Matecumbe Key. It was linked to Long Key by a long bridge with dozens of people fishing from it.

The sun was setting as I reached my day’s destination, Fiesta Key and the Fiesta Key RV Resort, a twenty-eight-acre RV park. I was tempted to stay in one of their cottages overlooking the sea, but the price the guy in the rental office quoted me was too much—$250 per night with a two-night minimum. For five hundred dollars I would sleep in my tent again.

I rented a small campsite, about fifteen by fifteen feet, marked by oiled railroad ties. Even with sleeping in my tent, the park was more luxurious than most of my camping; there was a pool, bathrooms, a laundry, a mini-mart, and a small diner called the Lobster Crawl Bar & Grill.

I set up my tent while there was still light. Then I put a load of whites in the washing machine and went to dinner at the restaurant. I had calamari rings, coconut shrimp, and a mushroom Swiss burger.

Then I went back to the Laundromat and put my whites in the dryer. No one else was using the place, so I left my clothes and went back to my tent to sleep.

CHAPTER

Thirty-Five

Today I crossed one of the longest bridges in the world—a fitting, though trite, metaphor for the completion of my walk.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

The next day’s walk was more of the same—more keys, more ocean, more bridges. An hour and a half into my walk I reached the Long Key Channel Bridge, which was the longest I’d encountered in the keys so far, almost two and a half miles, spanning south to Conch Key. There was a narrow pedestrian lane, but I was the only one using it. The turquoise water below looked inviting, but I remembered once seeing a video of a massive hammerhead shark stealing a fisherman’s catch in the Long Key Channel, which was reason enough to stay on the bridge.

Next I passed through Duck Key, then Marathon Key, where I ate lunch at a place called The Wreck. Marathon is one of the larger keys, a full residential community with hotels, banks, and schools. I walked the rest of the day on Marathon and spent the night at the Ranch House Motel.

The next morning I ate breakfast at the Wooden Spoon restaurant, where I had coffee and a chili omelet with a side of grits. Less than an hour later I reached the famous Seven Mile Bridge.

Seven Mile Bridge was, at its creation, one of the longest bridges in the world, connecting Knight’s Key to Little Duck Key. Near its center, the bridge rises in an arc to sixty-five feet, high enough to provide clearance for boat traffic. Like the Long Key bridge, Seven Mile Bridge has a narrow pedestrian lane, its outer edge flanked by concrete safety barriers. It took me about an hour and a half to cross the bridge, and, in spite of the danger inherent in walking such a narrow space, the view was worth the hike.

To the east of the bridge was the remnant of the older bridge (with the unfortunate name of Knights Key–Pigeon Key–Moser Channel–Pacet Channel Bridge), which had been constructed in the early 1900s by Henry Flagler but had been damaged by the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935—the most intense hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States.

Late afternoon I entered Big Pine Key. The key is a preserve for a tiny endangered species called key deer. The road was enclosed on both sides with chain-link fence and posted with deer crossing and myriad endangered species signs. I saw one of the deer as I walked. It was just a few yards behind the fence eating leaves off a bush. The animal seemed to have no fear of humans and didn’t even stop to look at me. I don’t know if it was an adult or not, but it was barely two feet high at the shoulders.

Even though I had walked less than twenty miles, I stopped for the day. Key West was thirty miles away, with another four or five miles to reach the southernmost end. It was a distance I had walked before, but not easily, and I didn’t want to reach Key West exhausted and in the dark, so I broke up the final leg of my journey into two trips of twenty and ten miles.

I booked a room at the Big Pine Key Motel, and the man at the front desk suggested that I eat dinner a few blocks away at the unoriginally named Big Pine restaurant. I ordered a mixed green salad, fried clams, and the HE-MAN ribs.

As I was finishing my meal I checked my watch. If their flight wasn’t delayed, Nicole and Kailamai should have landed in Miami almost two hours earlier. They planned to stay in a hotel near the airport, then rent a car and drive to Key West in the morning, passing me somewhere along the way. The thought of mixing my two worlds seemed a little surreal. I turned on my phone just in case they called.

I was grateful that they were coming and that someone, besides me, would witness the end of my walk. Still, I couldn’t believe my walk was finally at its end.

CHAPTER

Thirty-Six

Nicole and Kailamai have arrived in Key West. I realize that I have compartmentalized my life, as it’s peculiar having them here. It’s like daddy-daughter day at the office.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke with the realization that it was my last full day of walking. I ate breakfast at a café called the Cracked Egg. I had coffee, orange juice, and their specialty, the Gut Buster—potatoes covered with shredded cheddar cheese, sausage gravy, and two scrambled eggs.

My phone rang while I was eating. It was Nicole.

“Good morning, handsome,” she said brightly.

“Good morning,” I replied. “Are you in Miami?”

“Yes, we’re just leaving the car rental. The man at the counter said it would probably take us about three and a half hours to reach Key West.”

“It took me a bit longer than that,” I said.

“I’m sure it did. Where are you?”

“I’m on Big Pine Key. So, in three and a half hours you’ll probably catch me around Sugarloaf Key. You won’t miss me—I’m the guy with the big pack walking along the side of the road.”

“I can’t wait,” she said. “I’ll try not to hit you.”

“Much appreciated,” I replied.

By lunchtime I had passed through a series of small keys with interesting names: Little Torch Key, Big Torch Key, Ramrod Key, Summerland Key, and, finally, Sugarloaf Key, where I was passed by a young woman wearing a blue polka-dot bikini and driving a mint-green scooter with a cooler on the back. She personified the uninhibited spirit I expected of the islands. She looked like a party waiting to happen.

Around two o’clock I was passing by Sugarloaf Shores when I heard a car horn honking behind me. I turned back to see a bright yellow Mustang convertible with its top down, flashing its lights. It took me a moment to realize it was Nicole and Kailamai. They slowed by my side and blew kisses, then pulled off the road, jumped out of the car, and ran to me.

“You made it,” I said.

“We went topless the whole way,” Kailamai said.

Nicole shook her head. “The car top was down,” she said. “Which is why I look like I did my hair in a wind tunnel.”

I shrugged off my pack and hugged the women.

“The weather is so nice here,” Nicole said. “I can’t believe it’s December.”

“It’s like twenty degrees in Spokane,” Kailamai said. “I think I’m moving here after school.”

“How far have you walked today?” Nicole asked.

“About fourteen miles,” I said.

“Where will you be stopping for the day?”

“In about six more miles. Saddlebunch Keys.”

Nicole processed the information. “Okay, we’ll go on to Key West and check into our hotel, then I’ll book a restaurant in Saddle . . . back . . .”

“Saddlebunch,” I said.

“Saddlebunch,” she repeated. “That’s an odd name. Anyway, I’ll make reservations and we’ll have dinner together. How long will it take you to get there?”

“Maybe an hour and a half,” I said.

“Okay, we’ll hurry.” She hugged me again. “It’s so good to see you. We’re so excited for you.”

“Yeah, you’re the man,” Kailamai said. “The walking man.”

I waved at them, watched their car disappear, then picked up my pack and trudged on after them.

Nicole called me an hour later. “We’re checked in,” she said. “We’re staying at the beachside Marriott. It’s not even fifty yards from the entrance to Key West. The clerk helped me make reservations at a restaurant called Kaya Island Eats. I said we’d be there at six fifteen.”

“About forty-five minutes,” I said, looking at my watch. “That’s good. I’m about a half hour from Saddlebunch Keys right now. Where’s the restaurant?”

“It’s on the highway, so you’ll pass right by it. But we’ll wait out front for you. Kailamai and I are headed there right now.”

“I’ll see you there,” I said.

I put my phone back in my pocket. It took me about forty minutes to reach the restaurant. As I approached I could see Nicole standing alone out front, next to the Mustang.

“Where’s Kailamai?” I asked.

“She’s inside. They seated us a little early.”

“Can I put my pack in the car?”

“Of course.” I stored my pack in the trunk, and we went inside. Our table was next to a large window and had a beautiful view of the Gulf of Mexico. Kailamai was holding a drink with a pink umbrella.

“What are you drinking?” Nicole asked.

“Piña colada,” Kailamai said. “Don’t worry. It’s virgin.”

“It better be.”

Kailamai smiled at me. “How was your walk?”

“You mean from Seattle or from Sugarloaf Key?”

“Both.”

“Long,” I said. I pulled out Nicole’s chair, and she sat down. Then I sat between the ladies.

“I bet you’re hungry,” Nicole said.

“Famished.” I looked over the menu. The selections were as colorful as the restaurant. I ordered the Chicken Cherryaki, chicken covered with teriyaki sauce and black cherry preserves, and Scott’s Tomato Salad with Mozzarella and Mascarpone. Kailamai ordered the Jamaican Jerk Wings with goat cheese, and Nicole had the No Worries Shrimp Curry, glazed shrimp with coconut red curry sauce.

Nicole also ordered a bottle of wine. The wine list was the most interesting I’d ever seen, and she ended up selecting a bottle called Hey Mambo Kinky Pink Rosé, which claimed to taste like strawberries, soft plums, and apricots.

She poured the wine, then lifted her glass to me. “We should toast the completion of your walk.”

“It’s too soon,” I said.

“It ain’t over until the fat lady crosses the finish line,” Kailamai said.

Nicole grinned. “I think you said that wrong.”

“I saw this YouTube video of a bike race. About fifty feet before the finish line the guy who’s in first place raises his hands to celebrate his victory, but his tire hits something and he crashes. By the time he gets going again, the second- and third-place guys have crossed the finish line.”

“I get it,” Nicole said. “No premature celebrating. Then what should we toast?”

“How about the two of you being here with me?” I said.

“That works,” she said. “To being together.”

“And the sun,” Kailamai added. “It’s pretty nice too.”

“And the sun,” I said.

We clinked each other’s glasses. The wine was as fruity as promised. Nicole’s phone rang, and she checked to see who was calling. “I need to take this,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

I looked at Kailamai. “Sounds important.”

Kailamai just shrugged, then asked, “What time will you reach Key West tomorrow?”

“I’m not sure. Probably around noon. When our waitress returns I’ll ask exactly how many miles we are from Key West.”

It was about five minutes before Nicole returned. “Sorry about that,” she said, sliding into her seat.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“Everything’s fine,” she said, smiling.

Our waitress came over to the table with our food. She set down our plates, then asked, “Does everything look all right?”

“Everything looks beautiful,” Nicole said.

“Great. Anything else?”

“I have a question,” I said. “About how far are we from Key West?”

“Not far,” she said. “It’s just down the road. About twenty minutes.”

“He means walking,” Kailamai said.

She looked back at me. “No, it’s too far to walk. I could call you a taxi.”

Nicole said, “He just walked all the way here from Seattle.”

She looked back at me. “Across the country?”

I nodded.

“In that case, it’s really close. Maybe eleven miles.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She walked away.

“How long will that take you?” Nicole asked.

“A little less than three hours. I’ll probably start a little later.”

“So, depending on when you leave, you’ll reach Key West by early afternoon.”

I nodded. “That’s about right.”

“I still can’t believe you’re really here,” Kailamai said. “Do you remember our first day walking together? I had never even heard of Key West. I asked you if you knew how to get there.”

I smiled. “Yes. That was right before you asked me if I believed in aliens.”

“You remember that?”

“How could I forget? You had a theory that aliens are really just humans in the future, so they aren’t traveling in spaceships but time machines.”

“I can’t believe your memory,” Kailamai said. “You’ve got to admit it makes sense.”

“I remember the first time I saw you,” Nicole said. “I was just outside Waterville with a flat tire.”

“You had lost your lug nuts,” I said.

She grinned. “That sounds rude.”

I laughed. “Then you told me that you didn’t need any help because your husband was on his way.”

“What was I supposed to say? I was completely alone when this long-haired, unshaven stranger shows up out of nowhere . . . even though you were pretty gorgeous.”

“I’m glad you got that flat,” I said.

Nicole’s countenance turned more serious. “Thank God for flat tires.”

“Sometimes life is like that,” Kailamai said. “Things that seem bad at the time are really blessings.”

Nicole took another sip of wine. “Sometimes.”

The food was delicious, and after our main course we shared a piece of key lime pie, the first I’d had since reaching the keys. I wasn’t used to taking so much time to eat, and it was dark outside when we finished. I asked the restaurant’s hostess where I could find the nearest hotel. She replied, “Key West.”

“Why don’t we just drive to Key West and you can stay at the Marriott with us?” Nicole said. “Then I could just bring you back in the morning.”

“You can’t do that,” Kailamai said. “That would be anticlimactic.”

“She’s right,” I said. “It’s okay. I passed a camping area about a mile back. I can do one last night in my tent.”

“Can we at least drive you there?” Nicole asked.

“Of course.”

I got in the car with them, and we drove back along the highway to where I had seen the camping area. It was on the beach, and the only amenities were a crude, single-pipe shower and concrete fire pits. We set up my tent using the car’s lights to illuminate the grounds.

“Remember the night we met?” Kailamai said. “It’s hard to believe that we slept together in this very tent.”

“You were trusting,” I said.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she said. “You’d just saved me from being raped.”

“Do you still pray?” I asked.

“Every night. Except now I spend more time thanking God for what I have than asking for what I don’t.”

“You’ve always been that way,” I said. “That’s what I like most about you.”

“I thought it was my jokes,” she replied.

After we had finished setting up the tent, we gathered some wood, then lit a fire and sat around it, the orange, lapping flames illuminating our faces. The sky was a brilliant blue velvet with sequin stars.

“This is living,” Kailamai said. “You’re lucky that you’ve gotten to do so much of this.”

“It’s better with friends,” I replied.

We sat around the fire and talked for nearly an hour. Finally Nicole said, “It’s late; we better let you get some sleep. Kailamai, would you wait in the car for a minute while I talk to Alan?”

She glanced back and forth between us, then stood. “Sure. Good night, Alan.”

“Good night,” I said.

“See you in Key West.” She walked back to the car and got inside.

I turned to Nicole. “You wanted to talk?”

She looked at me with a concerned expression. “Are you okay?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I’ve just been worried about you. I don’t know what you thought would happen when you finally reached Key West . . . After all this way, I just don’t want you to . . .”

“Get my hopes too high?” I said.

“Maybe,” she said. “You don’t need to know all the answers right now. You know that, right?”

I thought about her question, then said, “Yes, I think so.”

“I wouldn’t be alive right now if you hadn’t decided to walk,” she said. “In the end, if all that comes from your walk is saving Kailamai and me, I hope that won’t be too disappointing. For us, it means everything.” She took my hand. “I’m sure that McKale is very proud of you. And so am I.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “Whatever happens tomorrow, remember that. And don’t lose hope. Things have a way of working out.” She smiled. “Good night, Alan.”

“Good night.”

“Call when you’re an hour out. We’ll be waiting for you at the WELCOME TO KEY WEST sign.”

She turned and walked to the car. I watched the taillights disappear. Then I sat down next to the dying fire thinking about what she had just said and wondering if I really believed it.

CHAPTER

Thirty-Seven

Last night I had a dream that I reached Key West. I walked all the way to the southernmost point of the island. When I stepped into the water it was as hard as concrete. So I just kept on walking.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

I woke late the next morning with the sun turning the inside of my tent a brilliant gold. This is it, I thought. Let’s finish this. I rooted through my pack for breakfast but managed to find only a crushed box of frosted strawberry Pop-Tarts, which I ate with a bottle of water.

Call it nerves, but I still wasn’t ready to go. There was no one else at the campsite, so I took off my clothes and waded out into the ocean. I sank to my chest in the crystal blue waters, riding the smooth rocking of the waves. My body had changed. I was lean and strong, a far cry from the shape I’d been in during my advertising days.

I had seen America as few ever would. I had walked thirty-five hundred miles through forests, swamps, and mountains, small towns with silly names and big towns with lonely people, apple, orange, and pecan orchards, corn and cotton fields. They say that before you die your life flashes before you, and in some ways that’s what I felt like then.

It was nearly noon when I rinsed myself off, dressed, and packed my tent. I strapped on my pack and started off for the last time.

The next twelve miles passed quickly. The traffic grew heavier. There wasn’t much to see along the way, or perhaps the scenery was just obscured by the density of my thoughts. It was nearly three o’clock when I spotted the sign.

At the entrance to Key West there is a grass island about the size of a small parade float separating the incoming and outgoing traffic. In the middle of the island is a large, colorful sign that reads:

WELCOME to

KEY WEST

PARADISE USA

The Rotary Club of Key West

About the same time I saw the sign I heard Kailamai screaming and saw her waving frantically. A few cars, caught up or confused by her excitement, honked their horns. Kailamai and Nicole were standing on the right shoulder of the road beneath a line of trees.

When I reached the sign I was filled with emotion. The women ran up to me. I shrugged off my pack and embraced them. Nicole began crying. “You did it! You made it to Key West!”

I took a deep breath and let the moment sink in.

“Let’s party!” Kailamai said.

“I’m not done yet,” I said.

She looked at me quizzically. “What?”

“My goal was to walk as far from Seattle as I could. I’m not there yet. I need to walk to the southernmost tip.”

“That bites,” Kailamai said.

“May we walk with you?” Nicole asked.

“I’d like that,” I said. “But I need to get some lunch. Have you eaten?”

“Just an hour ago,” Nicole said. “But that’s okay, we’ll watch you eat.”

We were standing right next to a restaurant, the Tavern N’ Town, but they weren’t open for lunch, so I put my pack in the trunk of Nicole’s car and we walked around the back of the Marriott hotel to the poolside bar—the Blue Bar. I ordered drinks and a fruit plate for the women and a bowl of conch chowder and a prime rib panini with coleslaw for me.

“How was your hotel?” I asked Kailamai.

“Good,” she said. “How was your tent?”

“You know, room service was lacking. But I think I might miss it.”

Suddenly she started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Check out that sign.”

Mounted next to me on the wall was a picture of a chicken standing in the middle of a highway. Written in the sky above the chicken were the words

I dream of a day when a chicken can cross the road without having its motives questioned.

Nicole and I laughed as well.

“I have one,” Kailamai said. “Why did Alan cross the country?”

I looked at her and smiled. “To get to the other side.”

The real answer would take me years to completely understand.

While we ate, Kailamai did most of the talking, filling us in on her classes, her teachers, and every detail she could remember about Matt, the boy she was dating—he was a Libra, spoke German, and came from Butte, Montana, which she decided must be some kind of a sign, as that was where I had first connected Kailamai and Nicole.

Kailamai rambled on like a radio talk-show host, and the truth is I heard only half of what she was saying. My mind was elsewhere. I could tell that Nicole understood where I was at. She just silently watched me, occasionally interjecting with Kailamai when I didn’t respond to something.

After an hour I paid the bill, then stood. “Let’s go,” I said. We walked to the front of the hotel. “I need to get my pack.”

“Why don’t you just leave it in the car?” Nicole asked.

“It came with me this far, I think it should finish the ride.”

We walked back to the parking lot. Nicole popped the Mustang’s trunk, and I lifted out my pack.

“How far is it?” Kailamai asked.

“Maybe four miles,” I said.

“Four miles,” she said. “That far?”

“I’ve sleepwalked farther than that,” I said.

“Now you’re just showing off,” she replied.

We walked west across the Marriott’s parking lot, then out along the northern split of Highway 1. To our right was the gulf and the lapping water on the shore. In many places the water was thick with mangrove trees.

There are a lot of cyclists in Key West. Most of the bikes looked like antiques, recycled, rebuilt, and resurrected over and over again. I’m sure Hemingway’s bicycle is still in rotation out there somewhere.

The cyclists weren’t especially attentive to us in spite of the many signs warning cyclists to yield to pedestrians.

We walked past seven hotels the first mile, two of which were closed for renovations.

“Check these out,” Kailamai said. She lifted a pair of men’s shorts off the sidewalk. “Someone lost their shorts.”

“Don’t touch them,” Nicole said.

“It’s Key West,” I said, which seemed explanation enough.

In the second mile we passed two white herons standing on the bank. They were beautiful birds, and for a moment we all just looked at them. Then Nicole said, “The white heron symbolizes peace.” She turned to me. “It’s a good sign.”

The herons weren’t the only birds we saw. There were wild roosters and chickens everywhere.

“What’s with all the chickens?” Nicole asked.

“They’re protected,” Kailamai said. “There’s a five-hundred-dollar fine for harassing them.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“I read it,” she said.

“Where did they come from?” Nicole asked.

“Cuba,” Kailamai said. “They’re Cuban chickens.”

“I’m sure they’re all US citizens by now,” I said.

Near the Parrot Key Hotel & Resort, road construction forced us to cross to the other side of the street. We walked past a Pizza Hut building that had been turned into a medical clinic, then we turned off onto Roosevelt, then Truman, which led us into a residential area.

A rusted Toyota pickup truck drove past us, then stopped about twenty yards ahead of us where a red and gold sofa was sitting near the curb. A thin, balding man got out and opened his tailgate, then walked over to the sofa. Then he just stood there for a moment looking at it. As we approached I could see a handwritten sign that read

FREE. TAKE ME.

Mustering his strength, the man lifted one end of the sofa and began dragging it to his truck.

“Would you like some help?” I asked.

He looked at me with relief. “Yes, thank you.”

Kailamai lifted the front of the sofa with the man while Nicole and I lifted the other end. They set their end on the tailgate, then the man hopped up into the truck’s bed and began pulling while Nicole and I pushed our end forward. The sofa was longer than the truck’s bed and hung out a few feet.

“It’s too long,” Kailamai said.

“It’s all good,” the man replied. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said.

We continued walking. We turned south at White Street and walked past the National Weather Service building. I stopped to read the plaque they had posted out front, a memorial to the sixty people who drowned in the 1846 “Havana” Hurricane.

I walked another half block, then saw it. There was ocean, straight ahead of me.

CHAPTER

Thirty-Eight

There are few precious moments in life that we can look up to the universe and say “It is done.” This is one such moment. My walk is over.

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

We continued on toward the water, and a block later we crossed the street to a long, sidewalk-skirted sandy beach. We had reached Higgs Beach along the south bank, but we still weren’t at the southernmost end of the island, which, I knew from the myriad of pictures I’d seen of Key West, was prominently marked with a buoy.

We continued to walk west along the oceanfront until the road turned north on Reynolds, which we followed to South Street, then turned west again. We walked five blocks along South until we reached the southern end of Duval. Again, I could see the ocean ahead of us and a small gathering of people, crowded around the famous southernmost buoy.

On the southwest corner of Duval and South was the Southernmost House inn. There was a gift shop at the west end, and a sign out front had a picture of a pirate next to the words

I went on a rum diet. So far I’ve lost three days.

Just a few yards ahead of us was the iconic ten-foot concrete buoy, painted red, white, black, and yellow. At the top of the buoy was a large yellow triangle with a drawing of a conch shell in its center surrounded by the words

THE CONCH REPUBLIC

Beneath it were the words

90 MILES TO CUBA

SOUTHERNMOST POINT

CONTINENTAL

USA

KEY WEST, FL

In spite of its fame as Key West’s most popular tourist site, the buoy is basically a farce. First, it’s not, as it claims, really the southernmost point of the continental United States. Another island, Ballast Key, is even farther south. The buoy is not even the farthest point south in Key West, as some of the shore around it is obviously farther. Second, it’s not really ninety miles to Cuba, since Cuba is ninety-four miles away. And third, the structure isn’t really even a buoy. It’s actually an old concrete sewer junction that was too heavy to move, and since the original southernmost sign kept getting stolen, the city painted the junction to look like a buoy.

Notwithstanding the fraud, there was a gathering of tourists taking turns having their pictures taken next to the buoy.

“We’ve got to take your picture with it,” Nicole said.

“All right,” I said. The three of us took our place in line. When it was our turn, I walked up to the buoy and, still wearing my hat and pack, leaned back against its cool, rough surface, raising my fingers in a victory sign. “How’s this?”

Nicole held up her phone and took a picture. “Perfect,” she said.

“Take one with me,” Kailamai said.

Nicole took several pictures of the two of us, then said, “Let’s get one with all three of us.” She turned to the man standing in line behind her. “Would you mind taking our picture?”

“No worries,” he said with an Australian accent.

She handed him her phone. “Just push this button.”

“Brilliant,” he said.

The women stood at my sides while the man snapped picture after picture with Nicole’s phone. Finally, after six or so shots, Nicole said, “Thank you. I think that’s enough.”

As we walked from the buoy Nicole looked down at her phone, then texted something.

Kailamai said, “Well, Al my pal, you’ve done it. You’ve walked all the way to the end of the country. You can’t go any farther without drowning.”

“Actually,” Nicole said, glancing over the railing surrounding the buoy, “I think that beach right there is farther south.”

I looked out toward it. “She’s right,” I said. Farther south or not, I liked the idea of the beach. Ever since I had begun, every time I pictured myself reaching Key West I had seen myself walking into the water. “Let’s get in the water.”

We retraced our steps along South Street, then walked south down a short side road.

The beaches of Key West were not what I had imagined when I first set off, though, to be honest, I had never really given the details of my destination much thought. I had assumed that I would find long white sandy beaches stretching the length of the island, like in Hawaii. Like most things, the dream was greater than the reality. Key West is little more than a coral rock in the sea. If there’s sand on the ground, someone likely put it there.

At the end of the road was a strip of sandy beach, surprisingly vacant, which I suspect had to do with both the season and the late hour.

As I walked onto the sand I felt like I was in a dream. I wished it were a dream. I wished I could wake up and look at my beautiful McKale and say, “You’ll never believe what I just dreamed.”

I slid my backpack off, then sat down in the sand and untied my shoes, which were trashed. They were the seventh or eighth pair since I’d left Seattle—I had lost count. I think my socks were original. At least they looked like they had borne the brunt of thirty-five hundred miles. I peeled them off and threw them aside. Then I stood and turned back. Nicole and Kailamai were standing at the edge of the sand as if they didn’t dare step on it.

“Are you coming?”

Nicole shook her head. “This is your moment. We’ll wait here.”

I took off my hat and threw it on the ground. Then I reached into my pack and pulled out the yellow envelope my father had given me.

I walked to the edge of the water. I stepped onto the firm, wet sand, and the gulf waters rushed over my feet and ankles, cooling them, blessing them for their journey. That’s the moment I knew I had reached the end of my walk. That’s when I felt my journey end. The realization washed over me as clearly as the water over my feet.

I tore off the end of the envelope, then tilted it, holding my hand beneath the opening. A pinkish-red seashell slid out into my palm. It took me only a moment to recognize what I was looking at. It was the seashell my father had affixed to the plaque in his room—the one I had noticed missing that first night back—the same seashell he’d asked my mother to marry him with.

There were two letters inside the envelope. The first was handwritten on lavender parchment. It was a letter from my mother to my father, written just a week before she died.

February 7, 1988

My dearest heart,

Soon I will sleep. What shall I dream of, my love? I will dream of you, of course. I will dream of you standing in the waters of Key West, your pants rolled up to your knees, and you pointing your little Instamatic at me while I posed for you. I will dream of you lifting that shell and giving it to me and asking me to be yours forever. And, forever, I will kiss you and say “yes.”

I will dream of our little boy and his bright eyes and happy smile.

And I will dream for the three of us, a place for us to be, a sanctuary where hearts will never break again. This is my dream, my heart. Never forget that there is no end to us, as there can be no end to love. Love must last forever, or why else would there be love? Until then, I will dream,

Always,
your Kate

I opened the second letter, which was typed on plain white stationery. This letter was addressed to me.

My Dear Son,

If you are reading this letter it means that I was not able to be with you when you reached Key West. I am sorry for that. It was a hope of mine to see you reach this great goal. You have reached many of your goals, for which I am justly proud. But then I have always been proud of you.

When I lost the love of my life I thought that God or fate or the great cosmic roulette wheel was cruel to make me walk through life alone. But time has brought clarity. I wasn’t alone. How grateful I am for the time I have had with you, to see you grow into a man. I have seen you suffer, even as I suffered, and though you never saw it, in dark hours I too have wept for your pain. Son, learn from my mistakes. Don’t hold so tightly to the past that you can’t hold anything more. Believe in love. Believe that love can last forever. In this I have come to believe that your mother was right all along.

You have completed one journey. I wish you well on the next. And the next. May God watch over you every step of the way.

Love,

Dad

P.S. Please do me this kindness and return this shell to the waters of Key West. It has served its purpose.

My eyes were wet as I folded the letters back together and returned them to my pocket. Then I examined the shell in my hand. It was a little smaller than my palm, ridged and fanned out perfectly, the outer edge a deep red. I held it for a moment, then, as my father had requested, threw it back into the sea. That was it. Life had come full circle.

As the sun continued to sink I looked out over the glowing horizon. “I made it, Mickey,” I said. I lifted the chain from around my neck, the one with McKale’s wedding ring, and held the ring in my hand. “I did it.”

As I looked at the ring I realized just how much I had changed. I remembered holding that ring my fourth night on the road, huddled in the small shack on the east slope of Stevens Pass, as the hail beat down around me. I had clutched the ring as I cried out to McKale, “Why did you make me promise to live?” Now, as I looked at the ring, I understood why.

“I did what you asked, sweetheart. I lived.” A strong breeze brushed by.

Perhaps even more important than understanding why, I now understood how. The same way I had walked—one step at a time. My walk had never been about moving on, or moving past my love. I would never be past her. It was about moving forward—even if it were just one step at a time. If I could walk across an entire country, I could do that. My father was right. I had completed only the first of many journeys. Perhaps an even greater journey now awaited me.

“Mickey, if you’re here, I want you to know that I love you more than anyone in this world and always will. I will hope that we can be together again. But I won’t die in the meantime. There is still life to be lived.”

A wave splashed up my shins. I looked down as the water peaked, then receded from the shore. I took a deep breath, then walked back to my pack and sat down in the sand. I took a handful of sand and put it in my pocket for Ally the waitress at the 59er Diner. Then I reached into my pack and took out my journal and began to write.

I made it to Key West. I have walked as far as I could. I have reached the end of my journey only to realize that it is just the beginning.

As I looked over the paper a soft voice behind me said, “I knew you would make it.”

I turned around. Falene was standing behind me. A breeze blew her long dark hair, and she pulled a strand back from her face. For a moment we just stared at each other.

“I never doubted you would make it,” she said.

I looked at her in disbelief. “Falene . . .” Her gaze was locked on me as I set down my journal and stood. “What are you doing here?”

“Where else should I be?”

I looked at her for a moment, and then I glanced back over at Nicole, suddenly understanding the phone calls she’d been taking. She looked at me and smiled. I turned back to Falene, and for a moment neither of us spoke. Then I asked, “Are you married?”

She slowly shook her head. “No.”

“You said you were getting married.”

“I also told you that love wasn’t everything.” She took a step forward, looking more deeply into my eyes. “After you dropped me off at the hotel I cried all night. As soon as I got back to New York I called off the wedding.” She nervously looked at me. “I’ve loved you for so long, I never thought life would give me a chance to be with you. And when it did, I got scared. I didn’t feel worthy of happiness.” Her eyes welled up with tears. “Am I too late?”

I just looked at her for a moment, then said, “No. You’re just in time.” Then, for the first time ever, we kissed. And we kissed. After we parted I took her hand. “Come on,” I said.

A broad smile crossed her face. “Where are we going?”

I smiled. “Let’s go for a walk.”

EPILOGUE

Dear fellow sojourner,

It’s been more than a year since I last wrote. It’s March 4 (no need to read anything into that) and I’m here in the living room of my father’s home in California. The weather is beautiful. It’s almost always beautiful in Southern California. I suppose that’s why so many people live here.

A lot has happened since Key West. Nicole is happy. Her doctor is smitten. He proposed to her a few weeks ago on Valentine’s Day, but she’s in no hurry to get married, which, of course, only makes him more eager. I think they’re a good match. It makes me happy to see Nicole with the love she deserves. There’s a side benefit to the doctor (besides free house calls). If they marry, they’ll likely move to Pasadena.

Kailamai is doing well. She still hopes to get into law school and to someday be a judge. Or a stand-up comedian. Either way the world will be a better place.

In January I opened an advertising agency here in Pasadena—a new agency with an old name: MADGIC. My first client was the car dealership my father did accounting for. My second was Wathen Development, the company I was pitching the day I learned of McKale’s accident.

Things are going well, and I already have as much work as I can handle. I doubt I’ll ever move back to Seattle, even though I have a few clients from there.

Falene is here with me in Pasadena. After she broke off the wedding, the agency dropped her contract. It’s one of the best things that has ever happened to her. She’s been working with me at the agency and volunteers weekends at a drug rehabilitation clinic for teenagers. I think she’s finally starting to believe that she’s more than just the girl behind the bleachers.

On New Year’s Day, Falene and I went to the arboretum and sat on the same bench we had the night of my father’s viewing. I asked her to marry me. She smiled and said, “Why do you think I’ve been following you around all this time?”

We plan to get married May 3. Someplace indoors. Falene asked if we could honeymoon in Key West. I told her I’ve been there.

I think about McKale every day. I suppose that the hole never really goes away, but I’ve learned that you can fill it with things. Good things. My memories of her are no longer just a source of pain. They are also a fountain of gratitude for the time and love we shared. I still have my days, but I don’t think it would be right if I didn’t.

I sometimes think about those angels I met along my walk: Leszek, the Holocaust survivor in Mitchell, South Dakota, who lifted me from the road and taught me how to forgive; Paige, the young woman who rescued me from a tornado outside Jackson City, Missouri; and Analise, the lovely, lonely woman I stayed with in Sidney, Iowa. As I promised, I sent an envelope filled with sand from Key West to Ally, the wise waitress from the 59er Diner near Leavenworth, Washington, and I’ve spoken twice with McKale’s mother, Pamela, who followed me all the way from Custer, South Dakota, to Wall Drug. I am grateful for each of them and the role they played in my journey.

Every now and then people ask me about my walk. They seem surprised or amazed by it, not seeing that it’s really no different than what they do every day. Whether they realize it or not, we are all on a walk. And, like me on my journey, none of us know what experiences we’ll face or who we’ll meet along our road. The best we can do is set our hearts on a mark in the distance and try to make it. For some the road will seem long, while, for others, it will end all too soon. There will be days of clear skies and pleasant walking, and there will be long, bitter stretches trudged through storms. But either way we must walk. It’s what we were made for.

I have fulfilled my final promise to McKale. I am living. But the journey seems different to me now. I suppose that the trail never changes as much as the traveler.

When we are young, the road seems so sure and firm. We tell ourselves that we have tomorrow—then we waste our todays in fear of what might be and regret of what wasn’t. And we miss the truth that the road is an illusion, and that there are no guarantees of a new day—there never have been, there never will be.

In the end, it is not by knowledge that we make our journeys but by hope and faith: hope that our walk will be worthy of our steps and faith that we are going somewhere. And only when we come to the end of our journeys do we truly understand that every step of the way we were walking on water.

A Letter from the Author

I’m sometimes asked how I came up with the idea for The Walk series. The simple answer is, I was walking. The better answer is that I was walking the four-mile dirt road to my ranch near Zion National Park when the idea came to me to write a story about a man walking across America. The mental conversation that followed went something like this:

Why did the man cross America?

I don’t know.

Does he really need a reason?

I’ve always wanted to walk across America.

Then why don’t you?

Because I’m married, I have a family, a home, a job. I’m tied down to responsibilities.

What if you lost all that?

That’s when the potential of the series hit me: if you take away everything a man lives for, then what does he live for? That was a question worth writing about.

As I sat down to write this story, I soon realized it could not happen from my den; I would have to make the journey myself. I asked my eldest daughter and writing assistant, Jenna, if she would make the trip with me, and she happily agreed. I hadn’t realized at the time what a blessing it would be to drive from coast to coast with my daughter.

Driving more than three thousand miles across America was a remarkable adventure. In Yellowstone we were trapped in a herd of buffalo. In Missouri we were forced to take shelter from a tornado. We stopped in the hometowns of people who have changed the world. We walked through fields of potatoes, corn, and cotton, hiked through canyons and swamps, and even held alligators. We climbed lighthouses and walked through cemeteries at night. We took notes in hospitals and met scores of people who shared with us their life stories. One of our most interesting interviews was with Israel, a hitchhiker we picked up outside Hannibal, Missouri, who shared his experience of fourteen years on the road and taught us the difference between tramps, hobos, and mountain men.

But all journeys must come to an end. After five years of writing and researching The Walk, the emotions that crossed my heart when I reached the Key West sign were a powerful mix of accomplishment, finality, and nostalgia. I was grateful that I had made the choices that led me to the end of this road—literally as well as figuratively.

It’s difficult for me to completely fathom how much this series has meant to many of my readers. Ultimately, The Walk is about hope, and on multiple occasions I’ve heard how the series has interrupted someone’s plan to commit suicide. I’ve seen tough old men, war veterans, cry as they told me how the series had given them hope to carry on after losing their sweethearts.

And we’ve had dozens of people call from their deathbeds wanting to know how the series ends before they die.

To all those reading this series, whatever city or country you’re in, thank you for joining me on this sojourn and search for meaning and hope in a vast, mysterious world. I hope you have enjoyed the read. But even more, I hope it has brought some illumination to help you on your journey along the difficult and unsure paths of life that each of us must walk.

Sincerely,

Richard Paul Evans

About the Author

© DEBRA MACFARLANE

Richard Paul Evans is the #1 bestselling author of The Christmas Box and Michael Vey. Each of his more than twenty novels has been a New York Times bestseller. There are more than seventeen million copies of his books in print worldwide, translated into more than twenty-four languages. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Mothers Book Award, the Romantic Times Best Women’s Novel of the Year Award, the German Audience Gold Award for Romance, three Religion Communicators Council Wilbur Awards, the Washington Times Humanitarian of the Century Award, and the Volunteers of America National Empathy Award. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife, Keri, and their five children.

You can learn more about Richard on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RPEfans, or visit his website, at www.richardpaulevans.com.

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ALSO BY RICHARD PAUL EVANS

The Walk Series:

The Walk

Miles to Go

The Road to Grace

A Step of Faith

A Winter Dream

Lost December

Promise Me

The Christmas List

Grace

The Gift

Finding Noel

The Sunflower

A Perfect Day

The Last Promise

The Christmas Box Miracle

The Carousel

The Looking Glass

The Locket

The Letter

Timepiece

The Christmas Box

For Children and Young Adults

The Dance

The Christmas Candle

The Spyglass

The Tower

The Light of Christmas

Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25

Michael Vey 2: Rise of the Elgen

Michael Vey 3: Battle of the Ampere

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Richard Paul Evans

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition May 2014

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CONTENTS

Map

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Epilogue

Reading Group Guide

The Four Doors Excerpt

About Richard Paul Evans

Contents

Acknowledgments

Map of Florida

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Epilogue

A Letter from the Author

About Richard Paul Evans