“What about those other jerks?” queries J.J.
“Oh hell, that couple and everyone else who thinks we are perverts or nutso would just find something else to be pissed off about if it wasn't us. Come on, we all know one hundred people like that. They point their fingers and roll their eyes and shame the world while they live in a little box. That's just not our responsibility.”
Alice drifts over to Susan and puts her arm around Susan's waist. Chris shifts her weight from one foot to the other, like a runner who is stretching before a big race. “We all need to know, we should know that this isn't going to end when the walk is over,” she says. “We still have the rest of our lives, and that includes a hell of a lot of meetings and parties and maybe walks in other places once we regroup. I think this is one hell of a beginning. I have to tell you all, I haven't felt this damn good in years. This is for us, Susan, and if someone else gets something good or bad out of the whole thing, well, that's pretty damn okay too.”
“You're right, Chris,” Susan agrees. “I just need, you know, I need to take care of myself, and there's still so much to think about.”
Alice says, “That's why we are still walking, dear. I, for one, have to figure out a few more things myself, and you know what else? We never finished hearing all those stories about sex the other day.”
There's a wave of laughter that escalates into movement that carries the women back to the highway. Behind them, out of sight, the rest of the world is poised to see where they will go next.
The walkers, who have worried about everything from floor wax and soccer shoes to hormone replacement therapy and the size of their boobs, have chosen to notice at that moment the way the clouds have circled at the edge of the horizon. In this moment, they don't care about car payments, retirement, relatives, the Christmas party, college tuition for the last two kids, or the fact that their husbands no longer have any hair on the tops of their heads. The women moan as the clouds and their spirits lift. They begin to describe to each other a pitcher of frosty martinis with blue-cheese-stuffed olives like those served at Eddie Martini's in Milwaukee, the thin spicy pizza at Balistreri's in Wauwatosa, and steak the size of Xena's or Robert Redford's beautiful left thigh.
Some of them are dreaming about a big, tall man with strong hands and hips that fan out in layers of muscles just above his big cock, who can rub their aching calves and that lower part of their back that has not been pain-free since 1973. Some of them are dreaming about a woman with magic eyes, pendulous breasts and hands that dance. The martinis, the man, the Amazon, and then that steak snuggled next to baked potatoes—it all sends each woman into her own fantasy.
Gail thinks a few bottles of merlot, maybe something from Chile, would be good with the steak, and she says she loves those big Brandy Alexanders after a meal like that. “Lots of thick ice cream and an excess of brandy and then some nutmeg sprinkled on top of the drink to make your tongue curl up like a slinky cobra,” she muses.
Alice can't get off the sex thing, saying “a good screw” for the first time in her life, forming the words like a naughty teenager. The women discuss their fantasies with such fervor that miles pass them and they barely realize they are walking.
Alice listens intently, taking mental notes like this is the day before the biggest test of her life. J.J. has always had the hots for a guy she met on a train trip once a long time ago on the way to meet her sister in San Francisco. They had a drink together, flirted like crazy, and she has always regretted not going into his sleeping car and screwing his brains out as the train rolled through the tall, penis-like Wasatch mountains of Utah. Janice relates that she fell in love with one of her doctors about ten years ago. She describes him as a goofy-looking guy, yet with the kindest face she has ever seen. His shoes were always untied, his hair was a grizzly mess. But whenever he talked with her, she got the urge to slam him down right on his office floor because the desk would be just too small.
Chris, who has slept with almost as many men as Sandy, manages to shock her friends by telling them she had a mad crush on a National Public Radio correspondent who shared her room in Beirut. The correspondent was a woman, and although they did some wild necking, the entire process was always cut short, literally, by bombs dropping.
Sandy picks Olivia Newton-John as her secret, wild sex fantasy and that cracks everyone up. No, she says, she had a girlfriend for a long time, long before she had breast cancer and broke up with her husband. The woman is sexy and beautiful, “and she could sing while she took off my clothes.”
Gail claims to have a hard time picking just one fantasy lover: “Damn, it's not fair.” She finally settles upon a tall, older man with gray hair, dark eyebrows, and a voice deep and buttery that made her wet just to hear him. He is a dear friend's uncle, a happily married man who would never, ever think about touching her. “But God, what a man!” she says, and this was twenty-five years ago.
Susan has a hard time even mentioning the word
sex
these days. She's thinking about becoming a nun, except for the problematic vow of celibacy, but all right, she has someone in mind. But her fantasy is more of a conglomerate—a man with the best qualities of all the guys she would love to claim for wild sex. He has a long blond ponytail tied in a rubber band, no hair on his chest or back; he's probably a professional athlete who has made a lot of money and roams the country just looking for women to seduce. He has dark eyes, and teeth that are so white they glow in the dark. His hands are full of calluses. “When he caresses me,” she describes, “especially on the face, I want to kiss his fingers and place my own hands over all the tiny marks and nicks that have scarred his hands.” Susan can't seem to stop, and the women begin to understand why she has had a hard time getting rid of her sorry-ass lover. “When he drops his pants,” she says slowly, panting just a little, “his penis pops out erect, and it's the most beautiful goddamned penis I have ever seen in my life.”
Alice thinks Susan should stop talking, but she can't quite bring herself to suggest that. Most of the women have almost stopped walking and seem to be just shuffling along the highway, as if sucked wholly into Susan's Big Penis Amusement Park Fantasy. Susan has her eyes closed, and she has her hand on the back of Gail's shirt, and she is in that damn bedroom and Fantasy Guy is putting his hands on her breasts because he thinks that's what women like. She can barely stand to look at him because he is so beautiful. When he bends to kiss her mouth, Susan tilts her head back as if she is doing just that, and J.J. and Chris and Alice also part their lips, take a breath and wait for, wait for…they wait for this guy to run his hands down Susan's stomach and hips and legs, where he will move them apart and then inch his way from the bottom of the bed and then into her, right into her, slowly, slowly, because he is so blessedly endowed.
Finally Susan opens her eyes and smiles, and the women breathe again. Alice says, “Geez, I was just thinking about Paul Newman because he is so beautiful, and he's had the same wife all these years, and he's, well, geez, he's so beautiful that I would love to just have him kiss me once, just once. Well, okay, maybe just a bit more, if Chester was dead or wanted to watch or something!”
As everyone laughs, a car goes by. A fellow rolls down his window, tells them his wife said it's okay if they want to sleep out in the trailer tonight on his property. His wife cleaned the trailer all out, and he has to go clear to Iowa to check on some chickens, but their property is the next place over the hill—two miles—there will be supper too.
The women are still laughing, wired enough by wild sex talk to make another two miles. They say yes, yes they will stop because they need a break. When the wind picks up, the man shifts the Buick into drive again and dips his hat out the window. Only Sandy has the gall to say, “You women are getting to me. Even that guy looks pretty damn good.”
Associated Press, May 2, 2002
Wilkins County, Wisconsin
WISCONSIN WALKERS ARE GIVING THE
WORLD A CHANCE TO PAUSE
Spring could very well turn to summer before the seven now world-famous women walkers decide to end their back roads pilgrimage—a simple journey that has inspired people from one end of the country to the other.
This beautiful farm country is only quiet these days where the women happen to be walking. The rest of the county is pretty much on fire because of the national and now international publicity the women have been receiving.
The women remain unidentified, but sources say they include one journalist, a social worker, a housewife, one grandmother, and a secretary, who seem to have no exact destination in mind, and that is one aspect of the adventure that seems to appeal to a broad range of other women.
“Half of the world is running from one spot to the next, while these gals are doing something we all dream of doing,” said Cecelia Mackums, who traveled to a police roadblock to show support for the women. “God bless 'em all and I wish I could join them.”
Mackums, like many of the women who show up each morning near the highway where walkers may pass, says she knows most of them personally but refuses to reveal any additional information.
Husbands, friends, and relatives of the women have also refused to provide further details about the walkers, saying only, “We respect what they need to do.”
While some experts think the women are protesting, perhaps against unkind circumstances in their own lives, others see the walkers as a symbol of this country's desire to slow down and put their own lives in perspective.
One woman who shows up near the walkers' roadblock each morning said she has not only quit her job because of the walkers, but she's decided to travel by bus from one end of the United States to the next.
“I don't know what took me so long,” said the woman, who refused to give her name but smiled as she spoke. “I've been wanting to do this my entire life, and when I heard about these women, I decided I was just finally going to get on with it.”
While the walkers have inspired at least this woman to change her life, they continue to march along these Wisconsin country roads seemingly oblivious to who is watching them and holding a collective breath.
“We're all having fun,” said the sheriff's deputy, Rick Rudulski, who has been assigned to assure safe passage for the walkers. “This seems like it's something really important to them and it's my job to give them the space to do what they need to do.”
—30—
The Women Walker Effect: Jane
Jane was beginning to think there was some major conspiracy going on. For five days in a row, her entire routine had been the same as always. Get up, eat a bowl of Raisin Bran, let the cat out, shower, dress, get the cat back in, drive five miles to work, punch in at the time clock and walk through her office door. Work, work, work, all day long. Answer the phone, type up the records, file the records, lunch at noon, usually some fruit or maybe a salad from the cafeteria. Work some more, home by 6:15
P.M.
, dinner, television, and then once in a while, Katherine or Michael would come over. But most of the time, she was alone.
All that was fine except for one darn thing. For the last five mornings when she got to work, her desk seemed to be just like she left it the night before. Her pen would be by the telephone, a pad next to the edge of the stack of papers, her coffee cup sitting on top of her box of Girl Scout sandwich cookies. But after she would check the fax machine in the back room and sort the messages, by the time she got back to her own office there would be a neatly clipped newspaper article sitting right in the middle of her desk.
Every article was a story about those women walkers in Wisconsin, and while Jane had to admit it was a really neat story, she couldn't figure out where the newspaper clipping had come from because there wasn't anyone else around. Gloria, the shipping clerk, was always in the back warehouse—unless she sneaked in the side door, which was possible, but unlikely. Mark and the other guys were always hunkered around the coffee and donuts that Bruce brought in every day of the week.
The first day, finding the article was a singular strange occurrence. But by the third—and then the fourth and fifth days—Jane was really spooked by the whole thing. The articles were from the
Austin Daily News
, and they were trimmed right to the edge. Jane could almost feel where someone's hands had touched the edges of the newsprint.
Each day as she discovered the articles on her desk, Jane would look around her office really fast and then tiptoe to the hallway, but she never saw the person obsessed with newsprint. She was certain no one knew about her, certain no one would really care. But who was doing this?
From the first day and the first article, Jane could feel a little nudge next to her heart when she saw the word
Wisconsin.
Oh Lord, it had been such a long time, and she thought she had done such a good job for the last twelve years of avoiding everything and anything that might remind her of the place she had come from.
On this morning, the fifth morning, Jane sat at her desk for a good fifteen minutes fingering the latest article, this one recounting the geography of the walk to date, what the women looked like, how they acted and why this strange journey was attracting so much attention.