A Step Of Faith Part 29

The storm has pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sed 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 (p.r.o.nounced 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 186080 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 gra.s.s 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 embarra.s.sment 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.