The Road to Grace (The Walk) (12 page)

My father, like me, was a sucker for tourist traps and probably would have stopped at the same places I had, the Petrified Gardens, Wall Drug, 1880 Town, all of them. As different as I had always thought I was from my father, I was discovering that there was still a lot of him in me.

Molly returned a moment later with a pitcher of water, a tall glass filled with ice, and a small plastic basket with
a mini-loaf of bread and two foil-wrapped squares of butter. “There you go,” she said pleasantly. “Your meal will be right up.”

I looked back out the window at the family. The man was still bent over the map. The woman was now at his side, her hand resting on his back.

Something about this little drama both fascinated and conflicted me. The scene was so simple and real, maybe hopeful, yet it made me feel incomplete. Why did it make me feel so uncomfortable? As I pondered this I realized that what I was witnessing had been taken from me not just once, but twice. First, when my mother died. Second, when McKale did. I was missing my past and future simultaneously.

Would I ever have what this family had? Would I ever remarry? Would I ever have children? I honestly couldn’t imagine it. Yet…

My thoughts were interrupted by Molly returning with my dinner. I asked her if she knew of a place nearby where I could stay.

“There’s a KOA about a quarter mile up the road,” she said, pointing out the window. “A lot of my customers stay there. They have cabins for rent.”

“Are the cabins nice?”

“I wouldn’t know. But I haven’t heard anyone complain.”

“Would they complain if they didn’t like it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Some people complain if the ice in their cola is too cold.”

I grinned. “You’re right.”

I finished eating, got a piece of apple pie to go, then headed out toward the KOA. The campground had several vacancies and the man who ran the place reminded me that there were no sheets in the rentals.

“There’s a mattress but no sheets,” he said. “There’s a sink and toilet, but if you want to shower you come to this building right here.”

“Perfect,” I said. Maybe not perfect, but for forty-five dollars a night, with an air conditioner, porch swing, and television, I could do a lot worse. I rolled my sleeping bag out on the bed, turned on the television to the David Letterman show, then lay down and promptly fell asleep.

The next day I did nothing but walk. It seemed like the same scenery kept repeating itself, like the background of a
Flintstones
cartoon. I only passed one house the whole day, until evening when I reached the town of Murdo. I ate at the Prairie Pizza and spent the night at the American Inn.

The next morning I woke with a headache, though it passed fairly quickly. I packed up then ate a breakfast of sausage and biscuits with white gravy at the diner at the World Famous Pioneer Auto Show.

While I was eating, I noticed that the time on the restaurant’s clock was an hour different than my watch. I asked my waitress about the time, and she informed me that the time zone changes at their city from Mountain to Central. I had officially passed through my second time zone since leaving Seattle. I adjusted my watch, then walked back out to 90.

I noticed one peculiar thing. I passed a lot of roadkill that day. I don’t know why there were more dead animals here than any other stretch I’d walked, but there were. I saw rabbit, deer, badgers, skunk, raccoon, and a few mammals past the point of recognition. McKale used to freak out at the sight of roadkill. She remedied this with outright denial, proclaiming that the deceased animals weren’t really that dead, they were just really tired.

Of course I teased her about this. “Look,” I would say. “That raccoon is sleeping.”

She would nod. “That is one tired raccoon.”

“I’d say. He’s sleeping so soundly, his head fell off.”

I came across the occasional cat or dog, which made me sad every time, knowing that somewhere someone was probably looking for the animal. I thought of the story
The Little Prince
. The only difference between the cats and
dogs and the rest of the roadkill was that the wild creatures hadn’t been tamed. I suppose that if I were to die out here, I’d be no different. No one would know me. Strangers would think it tragic or horrible; they might scream or call 911, but they wouldn’t cry. They had no reason to.

A few people would miss me, but I could count them on one hand: my father; Nicole; Kailamai; and Falene, my assistant who had stuck by me when my business failed. So few. Was this a failed life?

I walked twenty-three miles that day, and counted thirty-six dead animals. I spent the night camped on the side of the road near a pond.

The next day was about the same. I walked twenty uneventful miles, stopping in the town of Kennebec. I ate dinner at Hot Rod’s Steakhouse and tried to stay at a place called Gerry’s Motel, but I couldn’t find anyone to help me. There was a large ice cream bucket on the motel check-in counter with a handwritten note penned in feminine script taped to it:

Tips for Barb

She really deserves it

She gets up early

I waited in the lobby for nearly ten minutes, but neither early-rising Barb, nor anyone else, came out, so I left and stayed at a hotel a block away.

The next day of walking was equally dull. No, more so, illustrated by the fact that the day’s highlight was when
the shoulders of the road turned from brown dirt to red gravel. At the end of the day, I took exit 260 to Oacoma, a real town with a car dealership and, more important, Al’s Oasis.

Al’s Oasis was sort of a Wall Drug knockoff, a strip mall with an Old West façade and a grocery store, restaurant, and inn. I ate a roast beef dinner at Al’s Restaurant and stayed at the inn for seventy-nine dollars. My room had a view of the Missouri River.

The next morning I crossed over the river, passing the South Dakota Hall of Fame, which I had read about in a tourist brochure in my hotel room. South Dakotan inductees to the hall included TV news personalities Mary Hart and Tom Brokaw, Bob Barker (
The Price Is Right
), Al Neuharth (founder of
USA Today
), and Crazy Horse, though not in that order.

I walked twenty-four miles and spent the night in the town of Kimball, where I ate a basket of popcorn shrimp at the Frosty King and stayed at Dakota Winds Motel for fifty-four dollars.

The next morning, on my way back to the freeway, I passed a sign for a tractor museum. I was tempted, but I resisted the site’s magnetic pull and got on the freeway instead.

That evening I slept behind a grove of pine trees planted near the side of the road, which looked like a Christmas tree lot on the edge of a cornfield. I could have pushed myself to the next city, but I just didn’t feel like it. I wish I had.

When I woke the next morning everything was spinning. I felt as if I’d just gotten off the teacup ride in Disneyland. I lay in my sleeping bag, holding my head for nearly twenty minutes, hoping that whatever was making me dizzy and nauseous would pass. When my vertigo had eased a little, I packed my sleeping bag and started walking, skipping breakfast out of necessity.

I walked three miles to the town of Plankinton. By then I was feeling almost normal again, so I stopped for breakfast at a convenience store called the Coffee Cup Fuel Stop. A mile later I passed a sign for the Corn Palace.

Ears to You …

Visit the Corn Palace. Mitchell, South Dakota

Mitchell was the largest city I’d encountered since Rapid City. I figured that I could reach Mitchell by late afternoon and find a decent hotel to crash in.

During the next few hours, walking grew increasingly difficult, and three miles from the city the dizziness had returned worse than before. Everything began spinning so violently that I was staggering like a drunken man. Then I threw up. I stumbled a few more yards then threw up twice more. I fell onto my knees, holding my head in agony.

I slid my pack off and rolled over to my side. Walking was no longer an option. I didn’t know what to do. I hoped that a highway patrolman or a passing motorist might stop to check on me, but no one did. Cars sped past, either not seeing me, or, possibly, not wanting to deal with me. How do you not react to a body lying on the side of the road?

I lay there for several hours, throwing up six more times, until I was dry heaving, the taste of stomach acid sharp and bitter in my mouth. As darkness fell, I was in a quandary. I didn’t know whether I should roll farther off the shoulder to avoid getting run over, or stay where I was, hoping some Good Samaritan would stop to help—a prospect that seemed less likely with each passing car.

I had begun to panic, wondering how I would spend the night, when I heard a car pull up behind me. I heard a door open, followed by heavy footsteps. My mind, already spinning, flashed back to when I was attacked and nearly killed outside Spokane. Only this time I was even more vulnerable.

I looked up to see an elderly, gray-haired man dressed in nice but outdated clothing.

“Are you okay?” he asked in a thick accent that sounded to me like Russian.

“I’m very dizzy.”

He crouched down next to me. “Have you been drinking?”

I noticed his Star of David pendant. “No. Everything just started spinning.”

“Do you have family or friends I could call?”

“No, I’m from Seattle,” I said. “Could you take me to a hospital or a clinic?”

“Yes. There is a hospital in Mitchell. I will drive you there.”

“I would appreciate that.”

“This is your pack?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“I will put it in my car.”

The man put my pack in his backseat then returned and
helped me to his car, an older-model Chrysler. I moved slowly, holding my head. He opened the door and eased me in.

“Do not hit your head,” he said. When I was seated, he shut the door and walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in.

“I’ll try not to throw up in your car,” I said.

He laughed a little. “I would appreciate that.”

“No promises,” I said.

He started the car. “Are you familiar with the town of Mitchell?”

“No, sir.”

“There is the Avera Queen of Peace Hospital on Foster Street. We can be there in fifteen minutes.”

I was leaning forward, my hands cupped over my eyes. “Thank you.” After a minute I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Leszek.”

“Lasik?”

He laughed. “Leszek. It is Polish. What is your name?”

“Alan.”

“Alan,” he said. “It is nice to meet you, Alan.”

The ride seemed agonizingly longer than fifteen minutes, as everything in my world was still spinning. Mercifully, the man didn’t ask any more questions. He didn’t say anything at all until he pulled up to the emergency room entrance. “We are here,” he said. “I will help you go inside.” He shut off his car and climbed out, then opened my door. He held my arm as I walked with him. When we were inside the building I said, “I forgot my pack.”

“It will be safe in my car,” he said.

I couldn’t believe I was back in a hospital. The smell of the waiting room made me feel more nauseous, and as we
approached the registration desk I bent over and threw up on the carpet. Around me, voices seemed disembodied, tinny as a car radio. A woman asked, “What’s going on?”

“I do not know,” Leszek said. “I found him along the road. He is very dizzy.”