A Step of Faith

  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 vi
sitor 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.