The women smile, and they know in their hearts that Alice is thanking them for walking with her, for stopping at the pond, and for moving somewhere, anywhere except where they have all been. Some of them see Alice running for school board president or burning all of her clothes and starting over the minute she gets back home. Chris sees her on a world cruise exploring some jungle with her son Richard and making certain that Chester has enough to eat back at the hotel room.
Alice doesn't see herself anywhere yet. She is taking everything just one step at a time and that's fine with her as long as she continues to move, continues to walk away from what is behind her now and what she thinks should have been behind her a long time ago.
“Oh girls,” she half whispers because she is crying softly. “I'm just having the greatest time.”
“Alice . . .” Sandy reaches from the log so she can touch Alice on the cheek. “You know we love you so much.”
“Oh, you don't have to tell me, Sandy. I know you girls love me, you're the best.”
There are now about one million other things everyone wants to say, but there is also all the time in the world to say it now, so there is a shuffle of shoes swishing through the grass. Gail pulls Susan up to her feet and asks if anyone is starving to death.
At the top of the hill, the highway is quiet because all the cars and reporters have dashed way to the end of the road looking for them, terrified that the women have slipped away and they will lose their story of the month. A laugh passes from one walker to the next when Chris tells them they need to pick highways with lots of taverns on them so the reporters have something to do when they stop at the next pond.
In seconds the women reclaim the highway, feeling comfortable and joyous once again.
Before they have walked a quarter mile, they spot a green Coleman picnic jug with a note taped to it that has been placed neatly alongside a highway sign. Janice immediately recognizes Mary's handwriting. The women gather round the jug of juice as if they have just found the first Easter basket of the season.
I bet you are down by the pond with Janice,
reads Mary's note.
I can't stop long because I don't want those goddamn reporters to see me. Carry this jug just around the bend and go down the hill. I've left you some lunch. Your husbands are drinking beer together at Alex's house—I think he's trying to keep them calm. Hey, I'm not there but I'm with ya. Love, Mary (The Good Girl)
Lunch is chicken and potato salad and carrot sticks that they can tell Mary has peeled and cut with precision. At the bottom of the bag are two bottles of wine, the same kind they had been drinking at Susan's house the day they left. Also a note urging them not to do anything else brash when they finish drinking the wine.
“Like what else could we do?” asks J.J., who is sitting with her head lifted toward the sun and her arms wrapped around her legs.
“Any ideas?”
“Ravage and pillage.”
“Been there, done that.”
“Nothing.”
“Ditto.”
“Walk to the nearest airport and really escape?”
“Not what it's cracked up to be.”
“Guess we keep walking then,” Chris proclaims, rising after the last of the food has disappeared. “But I have a funny feeling there isn't enough wine in this basket.”
“That's fine,” Alice says, stretching out her legs just like a runner before she rises. “We'll just all have to go to the bathroom again if we drink too much. Come on girls, we have miles to go before we sleep.”
The women leave Mary's lunch bag on the hill and because no one has a pen or pencil, J.J. simply picks eight dandelions, and sets the yellow weeds all in a row next to the bag. She touches the flowers one by one, kisses her fingers, and then turns to join her friends who are already back on the highway with their arms pumping and their heads moving up and down as if they are all listening to the same song.
Associated Press, April 29, 2002
Wilkins County, Wisconsin
NUMBER OF WALKERS INCREASES—
SUPPORT GROWING
If the seven women who have been walking through the rolling Wisconsin hills here were looking for solitude, they may be in trouble.
The women walkers, an assortment of local women wearing everything from T-shirts and jeans to baseball hats and scarves, have attracted enough local, state, regional, and national attention to scare off the local birds.
While the county sheriff here is keeping everyone away from the walkers, it's becoming more and more obvious that the group has hit a national raw nerve.
Reports are circulating that women in at least seven other states have begun similar walks in rural areas not unlike this remote county.
Janet Secumb, regional director of the Wisconsin Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), said she thinks women across the country are energized just thinking about supporting the walkers. She said women are being called to action to walk for their own reasons and to show some solidarity for women everywhere.
“We're all too busy and caught up in following our schedules,” said Secumb, who threw her cell phone in her car trunk while she was talking to one reporter. “Taking off, just leaving, hey, doesn't that sound good to everyone?”
Secumb said she has also been notified by the national NOW office that phone calls asking about new memberships have doubled since news of the walkers started making national headlines. She said women are perhaps thinking about what they gave up to have it all.
“We all have our own ideas about why they are doing this and why we would all like to do it ourselves,” stated Secumb. “Pick a reason—personal sorrow, world peace, the need for quiet, reconciliation, the hand of another female—it's a very attractive proposition.”
At last count about forty-five people, mostly women, were trailing behind the walkers, who continue to follow their own agenda.
—30—
The Women Walker Effect: Claudia
Claudia Bandoulin was pissed. She sure as hell didn't mind being assigned to follow the story about the Wonder Women who were on a goddamned walk out in the middle of nowhere, but she couldn't believe they had assigned Bob Gilbert as her cameraman.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Claudia shouted at her editor two seconds after she slammed his door hard enough to stress-crack the frame.
The editor winced, squeezed his eyelids shut and prayed aloud that Claudia wouldn't smack his desk. How could such a beautiful woman, the most sought-after broadcast journalist in Chicago, be so . . .
“Now Claudia,” he began timidly, for this was not Claudia's first assault on his office. “You know Bob's the best guy we have available.”
“He's a pig, Burt. You know this is a women's story. For chrissake, Bob may try and hump any one of them.”
Poor Burt wanted to crawl inside of his overflowing desk drawer. In all the years he had been working at the Chicago-based CBS affiliate, he had never met anyone like Claudia, and he still had no idea how to handle her outbursts. Audiences loved Claudia, with her “young Diane Sawyer” look that was just sexy enough to make every man, woman and young adolescent drool with passion and envy. Worse for Burt, she was just good enough to make all the stations who didn't have her under contract wish they did. He couldn't say she wasn't tough, or lacked any creativity or didn't bag good stories. When a group of union guys got out of hand at a local protest, she beat the living hell out of two of them who tried to jump her while she was on-air. After that episode, Burt would have gladly given up half his inflated salary to keep her at the station for the rest of her life.
“Look,” Burt finally said, opening up his hands as if he were about to catch a basketball. “Just get down there, and as soon as someone gets back from another assignment, I'll have them switch places with Bob.”
“Shit, Burt, give me Jenny for this one. It might be a way for the walkers to open up to us if they are flaming feminists. An all-woman broadcast crew. They will love it.”
“Claudia, this story is getting bigger by the minute and that's why I want you on it and Bob. Jenny is working on the story about last week's train crash. Come on, a bunch of housewives packing it in to hit the road. We could make some hay with this, baby. I've already called New York, and they want to see the piece tonight for possible national coverage.”
Claudia looked out of the big window behind him that revealed the entire newsroom. At least fifty times during the past three years, she had wanted to throw Burt and everything in his office right through it. “Burt, if he even looks sideways at me, ‘accidentally' brushes my breasts with his arms, or tries to interfere with these women or my story, I'm going to kill the son-of-a-bitch.”
Actually, Burt would have loved that great story for the early edition. He rose up out of his chair, looked into Claudia's beautiful brown eyes and said, “Okay. Do what you have to do, babe.”
Bob the Swine Man was waiting at her desk, his hands in his pockets. Rocking back and forth on his heels, his eyes as big as his wide-angle lens, he greeted her. “Hey, baby, how much of my time do you need?”
“Don't call me baby,” Claudia shot back. “In fact, don't call me anything. Go wait in the fucking car. I'll be down in fifteen minutes. Clear out the backseat because that's where I'm sitting.”
Mr. Bob now rocked in silence, his eyes starting on Claudia's face, then roaming down her body. Eventually, with a smirk, he propelled himself forward and disappeared around the corner whistling. “Shit,” Claudia muttered as she grabbed her briefcase and hollered over to the producer for video news clips on the walkers. “What do you have, Paula?”
A small woman all but leapt over three desks to get to her. “I think you'll like this one,” Paula said, nudging close to her. “A few stations are already out there in Wisconsin, but from what I've seen, they're covering the story in a pretty bland way. Just the usual ‘The women are headed west' kind of thing.”
“Do you have any background on the women?”
“Not much, but someone said Chris Boyer might be with the group.”
“You're kidding!”
“No, though external sources are rare as hen's teeth on this one. There's like a local conspiracy to protect these women. Kinda cool in a way.”
Claudia ignored Paula's unprofessional admiration. “My God, Chris Boyer was one of my heroines. She's the reason I got into this business to begin with. No one else was ever like her. Amazing.”
“Here,” Paula said, sticking papers into a file and pushing it into Claudia's briefcase. “Just read this on the way down there and call me if you need anything else. I bet you'll have some ideas by the time Bob is wiping the drool off the steering wheel.”
“Hey, thanks Paula, can you get me the office shotgun so I can kill Bob on the way?”
“Don't be too hard on him,” laughed Paula. “He's just in love with you like the rest of us.”
Claudia grabbed the suitcase she always kept packed just in case she had to jet off to an impeachment hearing, impending war or a breaking news story about loose women. Then she logged out on the assignment board, and finally, without acknowledging Bob's existence, settled into the backseat of the cheap Chevrolet for their ride to Wilkins County, Wisconsin.
Claudia had seen several of the wire stories on the women walkers and she had to admit that from the get-go, she thought this was a terrific story. She could personally name about five thousand women who would be perfectly happy to pick up and take off with not so much as a change of underwear. Once, just a year ago, Claudia had actually called in sick seven days in a row from a small hotel near Salt Lake City because of the breathtaking view of the Wasatch Mountain Range. She had just finished contract negotiations, knew for the first time how much she was actually worth, and she was certain no one would say a word about her brief retreat.
She thought about the women pounding down this country highway. She knew that Chris Boyer had all but disappeared from the news scene several years ago, into the occasional guest editor's contribution. Now she recalled that Chris lived near where the women were walking. When Claudia was a broadcast journalism student at Marquette University, Chris Boyer had been constantly used as an example of the career journalist willing to give up everything to get the story. There were pictures of her hanging all over the campus newspaper office, and Claudia had won the Chris Boyer Award for Investigative Journalism. Ironically, Claudia didn't have to reach far to understand why Chris would want to chuck the life of constant deadlines, complete loss of privacy, and unbelievable competitiveness that had Claudia constantly wondering if the world of journalism was worth it.
“Christ,” she told herself, “I haven't had a normal relationship in three years, the one man who might have lasted couldn't handle knowing everyone in Illinois was lusting after me, and the only way is up or out. No wonder Boyer got the hell out.”
Up in the front seat, Swine Man fondled the radio as he tried to figure out how he was going to get Claudia to calm down long enough so he could say more than five words to her. “Claudia,” he finally said, but she cut him short. “What?” She didn't even look at him. “Never mind,” he said, fixing the radio on a brain-mashing death dirge by Metallica.