A Step Of Faith Part 33

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 munic.i.p.alities 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."