“I'm saying . . . Are you sure you walk a full eight hours?”
“Walk with me. We will see.”
“I'm not sure I can walk eight hours.”
“Well, then.”
“Are you sure you don't take breaks . . .”
She lost it then, right on the sidewalk in front of Freddie's Milk Store on the corner of Kipling and Sixth. She pulled up suddenly and planted both hands on her hips. “Okay, look, mister. You're the man of God here! Your job is to lead me
to
him, not away from him. Now, forgive me if I'm wrong, but you're starting to sound as though you're not sure anymore. I'm walking, aren't I? And I've been walking for over a weekâeight hours a day, three miles an hour. You don't like it, you can go ahead and put your blinders back on. Just make sure you look straight ahead when you see me coming.”
He dropped his jaw at the outburst. Heat flared up his neck and burned behind his ears. It was at times like this that he should be prepared with a logical response. Problem was, this was not about the logical. This was about impossibilities, and he was staring one right in the face. Which made it a possibility. But in reality, he already knew that. His outer self was just throwing a fit, that's all.
“Helen . . .”
“Now, I also had some trouble with this at first, so I'm willing to cut you some slack. But when I give you simple facts, like
I walk eight hours a day,
I don't need you analyzing me like I'm loony tunes.”
“I'm sorry, Helen. Really, I am. And for what it's worth, I believe you. It's just not every day this kind of thing happens.” He immediately wondered if he did believe her. You don't just believe some old lady who claims to have found kryptonite and discovered that Superman was right all alongâit does work! On the other hand, this was not just some old lady.
She studied him for a full five seconds without another word. Then she
humphed
and marched on deliberately.
Bill walked beside her in silence for a full minute, unnerved. A hundred questions coursed through his mind, but he thought it better to let things settle. Unless he had missed something here, Helen was claiming that God had empowered her with some kind of supernatural strength that allowed her to walk like a twenty-year-old. A strong twenty-year-old at that. And she was not just claiming it, she was showing him. She had insisted he come and see for himself. Well, he was seeing all right.
She strode by him, step for step, thrusting each foot out proudly like Moses strutting across the desert with cane in hand.
He glanced at her face and saw that her lips were moving. She was praying. Prayer walking. Like those mission teams that went overseas just to walk around a country and pray. Break the spiritual strongholds. Only in Helen's case, it was Kent who would presumably benefit.
This was happening. This was
really
happening! Never mind that he had never in his life even heard of, much less
seen,
such a thing, this was happening right before his eyes. Like a hundred Bible stories, but alive and well and here today.
Bill suddenly stopped on the sidewalk, aware that his mouth hung dumbly open. He closed it and swallowed.
Helen walked on, possibly not even aware he'd stopped. Her strides showed not a hint of weakness. It was as if her legs did their business beneath her without her full knowledge of why or how they operated. They just did. Her concern was praying for Kent, not understanding the physics of impossibilities. She was a walking miracle. Literally.
Doubt suddenly felt like a silly sentiment. How could you doubt what you saw?
Bill took after her again, his heart now surging with excitement. Goodness, how many men had seen something like
this?
And why was it so hard to accept? Why so far out? He was a pastor, for Pete's sake. She was right. It was his job to illuminate the truth, not doubt it.
He imagined his pews full of smiling church members.
And today, brothers and sisters, we want to remember sister Helen, who is marching around Jericho.
His bones seemed to tingle. He skipped once to match stride with Helen, and she looked at him with a raised brow.
“You just pray while you're walking?” he asked, and then he immediately held out his hands in a defensive gesture. “I'm not doubting. I'm just asking.”
She smiled and chuckled once. “Yes, I pray. I walk, and I pray.”
“For Kent?”
“For this crazy duel over Kent's soul. I don't know all the whys and hows yet. I just know that Kent is running from God, and I'm walking behind him, breathing down his neck with my prayers. It's symbolic, I think. But sometimes I'm not even sure about that. Walk by faith, not by sight. Walk in the Spirit. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall walk and not grow weary. It wasn't literal back then, but now it is. At least it is with me.”
“Which suggests that the whole business about Kent is real as well, because now it's not just visions and things in the head but this walking,” Bill said. “Do you know how unusual that is?”
“I'm not so sure it's unusual at all. I just think I'm unusualâyou said so yourself. Maybe it takes a bit of unusualness for God to work the way he wants to work. And for your information, I knew it was real before this walking thing. I'm sorry to hear that you thought my visions were delusional.”
“Now come on, Helen. Did I say that?” He frowned and turned sideways so she could see his expression.
“You didn't need to.” She set her jaw and strode on.
“Can I touch them?” he asked.
She scrunched her brow. “Touch what? My legs? No, you can't touch my legs! Heavens, Bill!”
“Not
touch
touch them! Goodness!” He walked on, slightly embarrassed. “Are they warm or anything. I mean, can you feel anything different in them?”
“They buzz.”
“Buzz, huh?” He looked at them again, wondering how God altered physics to allow for something like this. They should bring some scientists out here to prove a few things. But he knew she would never allow that.
“What do you mean by
duel?
You said this was about a crazy duel over Kent's soul. That's not exactly out of the textbooks.”
“Sure it is. The books may use different words, but it all boils down to the same thing. It is war, Bill. We do not wage war against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers. We duel. And what greater prize than a man's soul?” She faced forward deliberately. “It's all there. Look it up.”
Bill chuckled and shook his head. “I will. Just for you, Helen. Someone's got to make sure you don't walk right off the planet.”
“So that's your idea of shepherding?” Her eyes twinkled above a smile.
“You asked for it. Like you said, it's my gift. And if God can transform your legs into bionic walkers, the least he can do for me is give me a little wisdom. To help you walk.”
“That's right. Just make sure the wisdom is not your own, Pastor.”
“I'll try. This is just incredible!”
“You should go back now, Bill.” Helen strode forward, down the sidewalk, right down Kipling. “I've got some praying to do. Besides, we don't want to get you stranded out here, now, do we?”
“I shouldn't walk and pray with you?”
“Has God told you to walk and pray with me?”
“No.”
“Then go be a pastor.”
“Okay. Okay, I'll do that.” Bill turned, feeling as though he should say something brilliantâsomething commemorative. But nothing came to mind, so he just turned and retraced his steps.
THEY SAY that a split personality develops over years of dissociative behavior. Like a railroad track encountering large, gnarly roots that slowly but inevitably heave it up and split it into two wandering rails. But the development of Kent's double life was not such a gradual thing. It was more like two high-speed locomotives thundering in opposite directions with a rope tied to the tail end of each. Kent's mind was stretched there in that high-tension rope.
The persona he presented at the bank returned him to the appearance of normalcy. But during the hours on his own, away from the puppets at work, he was slipping into a new skin. Becoming a new man altogether.
The dreams strung through his mind every night, whispering their tales of brilliance, like some kind of alter ego who'd done this a thousand times and now mentored the child prodigy.
What of the body, Kent? Bodies are evidence. You realize that they will discover the cause of death once they examine that body. And you do need the bodyâyou can't just sink it to the bottom of a lake like they do in idiotic movies, Kent. You're no idiot, Kent.
Kent listened to the dreams, wide eyed and fast asleep.
He ingested a steady diet of ibuprofen for the pain that had latched on to his neck. And he began to settle himself with the occasional nightcap. Only they were not so occasional after the third day. They were nightly. And they were not just nightcaps. They were shots of tequila. His taste for the juice that had nearly killed him in college came back like a soothing drug. Not enough to push him into oblivion, of course. Just enough to calm his ragged edges.
When he wasn't at work, Kent was either poring over research or thinking. A lot of thinking. Mulling the same detail over in his mind a hundred times. Thinking of every possible angle and searching for any loophole he had not considered.
The Discovery Channel had a daily show called
Forensics.
A downtown library had seen fit to catalog fifty consecutive episodes. It was a show detailing actual cases in which the FBI slowly but methodically honed in on criminals using the very latest technology in forensics. Fingerprints, bootprints, hair samples, phone records, perfume, you name it. If a person had been in a room, the FBI experts could almost always find traces.
Almost
always. Kent watched the shows unblinking, his analytical mind tracking all of their weaknesses. And then he would reconsider the smallest details of his plan.
For example. He had already determined that he would have to execute the theft
at
the bankâinside the building. Which meant he would have to get
to
the bank. Question: How? He couldn't very well have a cab drop him off. Cabs kept records, and any break from routine might lead to a raised eyebrow. He had to keep those eyebrows down. So he should drive his car, of course, the way he always got to the bank. Yes, possibly. On the other hand, cars represented physical evidence. They left tracks. They could be seen by passersby or vagrants, like that one he'd seen in the back alley. Then again, did it matter? What would he do with the car afterward? Drive it away? No, he definitely could not drive off. Cars could be tracked. Torch it? Now, there was a thought. He could leave a five-gallon container of gasoline in the trunk, as if it were meant for the lawn mower at home, and rig a loose wire to detonate the fuel.
Boom!
That was ridiculous, of course. Even a beat cop would suspect the torching of a car. Maybe send it over a cliff with a full tank. Watch it burst into flames on the rocks. Of course, cars rarely actually exploded on impact.
Then again, why rid himself of the car at all?
The car detail consumed hours of drifting thought over the days. And it was the least of his challenges. But slowly, hour by hour, the solutions presented themselves to him. And when they did, when he had tested them in his mind and stripped them of ambiguity, Kent found something he never would have suspected at such discoveries. He found exhilaration. Bone-trembling euphoria. The kind of feeling that makes you squeeze your fists and grit your teeth to keep from exploding. He would pump the air with his right arm, the way he had done not so long before, with Gloria and Spencer giggling at his exuberance over the completion of AFPS.
Without exception, these occasions called for a shot of tequila.
Rarely did he stop long enough to consider the madness of his plan. He had grown obsessed. The whole thing, stealing such an enormous sum of money and then vanishingâstarting overâwas laced with insanity. Who had ever done such a thing? In a line of a hundred thousand children, it would not be
him
but the one whose mother had mainlined heroin throughout her pregnancy who would be most likely to one day attempt such a feat.
Or the man who had lost his wife, his son, and his fortune in the space of a month.
No, it was more, he thought. It was his savage thirst for what was due him. For a life. For revenge. But more than those things. As a simple matter of fact, there was nothing else that made sense any longer. The alternative of trudging along a new career path on his own sat like lead in his gut. In the end it was this thought that compelled him to throw back the last mouthful of tequila and discard any reservation.
Through it all, Kent maintained a plastic, white-collar grin at the bank, ignoring the knots of anxiety twisting through his gut and the anticipation bursting in his chest. Fortunately, he had never been one to sweat much. A nervous sweater in Kent's current state would walk through the days dripping on the carpet and changing identical shirts every half-hour in a futile attempt to appear relaxed and casual.
Helen, his religious whacko mother-in-law, saw fit in her eternal wisdom to leave him alone those first two weeks. Which was a small miracle in itself. Helen's God had performed his first miracle. She did call Kent once, asking if she could borrow some of Gloria's old tennis shoes. Seemed she had taken to exercise and didn't see the need to buy a brand-new pair of Reeboks for sixty bucks when Gloria's were just growing mold in the closet. Why she wanted all four pair, Kent had no clue. He just grunted agreement and told her to come by the next day. They would be on the front porch. When he returned from work, they were gone.
Happy walking, Helen. And if you don't mind, you may walk right off a cliff.
KENT FOUND his way past the confusion surrounding Lacy Cartwright on a Thursday night fifteen days after their strange meeting, almost three weeks after his decision to rob the bank.