The Road to Grace (The Walk) (26 page)

Mark Twain’s cave was a remarkable thing—a labyrinth of shelved limestone that tangled and twisted in the belly of the hill for more than six miles.

“One could get more lost in here than on the New Jersey Turnpike,” our guide announced. How he had come up with that exact comparison I wasn’t sure. I decided that he’d probably been lost in New Jersey at some time.

For the next hour we wound our way through a few dozen of the cave’s more than 260 passages. Inside, the cave was chilly, as it maintained a year-round temperature of 52 degrees, and many in our group complained that they hadn’t brought their sweaters.

Among the many things we saw was the signature of Jesse James, who hid out in the cave after the robbery of a train in a nearby town.

Our guide led us to Grand Avenue, the largest room in the cave, where Tom and Becky were lost in darkness after a bat doused Becky’s candle. This story was, of course, a
natural segue into the climax of the tour (of all cave tours, for that matter) when our guide turned out the lights with the exhortation, “Put your hand up to your face and see if you can see it.”

We couldn’t, of course. “Dark as sin,” McKale would have said. Actually she never would have come in the cave; she was crazily claustrophobic. Amusingly, someone said “ouch” after hitting himself in the nose.

Our guide turned the lights back on then said, “Let me share with you an interesting fact. The human eye needs light to survive. If you got lost in this cave, you would be permanently blind in six to eight weeks.”

“Imagine that,” the woman next to me said. “That would be horrible.”

“If you got lost in this cave, you’d be dead long before you went blind,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of that.” Peculiarly, the woman smiled, as if this were a comforting thought.

Our guide continued. “At one time this cave was owned by a Hannibal doctor named Joseph Nash McDowell, who bought the cave to do ‘scientific’ experiments with mummification. When his daughter died, he brought her in and embalmed her. He did his experiments in that crevice about fifty yards back.”

“Wait,” I said. “He did experiments with his daughter’s corpse?”

“Yes, sir,” the guide said.

I shook my head. Just when you think people couldn’t get any more bizarre, a Joseph Nash McDowell turns up.

At the completion of the tour I retrieved my pack, then started back to historic Hannibal. That wasn’t my original plan. I had stopped at the cave on my way to highway 79, a scenic route that followed the Mississippi River
south along the Missouri–Illinois border. But as I verified my route with a clerk at the cave’s gift shop, I learned that the river had recently washed out the road and the highway was closed. I reasoned that I could always walk around construction crews, but the clerk wasn’t sure that was possible. Considering that a closed route might mean backtracking for days, I decided not to take the chance.

My only other option was to take U.S. Route 61 southeast to St. Louis. It would be a considerably busier route but I really had no other choice.

Over the next three days, I passed through New London, Frankford, Bowling Green, Eolia, and Troy. I woke in Troy feeling dizzy and nauseous again, but forced it aside, vowing to rest properly once I reached St. Louis.

I had had a headache all day, and about six miles from the 70 junction into St. Louis, my vertigo returned with a vengeance. Oddly, my first thought was that there was an earthquake, as the spinning was much worse than before. I staggered then fell, landing partially on my pack, which cushioned my fall. I rolled to my stomach and began violently vomiting, struggling to hold myself upright as my head throbbed with pain.
What was happening to me?

“McKale,” I groaned. It’s the last thing I remember before passing out.

I woke in the hospital. I couldn’t believe that I was in a hospital again—it was the third time since I’d left Seattle. I hadn’t been in a hospital that many times in my entire life. The room was dim and I could hear the beeping and whirring of machines. I looked over at my arm. It was bruised and there was an IV taped to it.

“It’s about time you woke,” a voice said. I looked over to see a young, African-American nurse standing to the side of the room reading a machine.

“Where am I?”

“You are at the St. Louis University Hospital.”

“How did I get here?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I wasn’t here when you arrived. Do you remember anything?”

“I was just walking, when I suddenly got dizzy and everything started to spin. I must have blacked out.” I looked at her. “What’s wrong with me?”

“I’ll leave that to the doctor to talk to you about,” she said. “In the meantime, there’s someone here to see you.”

I couldn’t imagine who it could be. “I don’t know anyone around here.”

“Well, she knows you. She’s been in the waiting room for three hours. I’ll send her in.” She walked out of the room.

I stared at the door, wondering who could possibly be here to see me. Falene suddenly appeared in the doorway.

“Hi,” she said sweetly.

“Falene. What are you doing here?”

She walked to the side of my bed. “The police called me. I was the last number you dialed on your cell phone.”

“… You came all this way?”

“Of course I did. You needed me.” I noticed that her
eyes were red, as if she’d been crying. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“What is it, Falene?”

The tears fell faster. She furtively wiped her eyes then looked away from me.

“Falene …”

She reached over and took my hand. Her hand felt soft and warm. “Your father will be here soon,” she said. “Can he tell you?”

“Is it bad?”

She just stared at me, tears rolling down her cheeks.

I looked down for a moment, then I said, “When McKale was hurt, you called me. When Kyle stole my business, you called me. You’ve always told me the truth, no matter how hard. I’d rather hear it from you.”

She wiped her eyes. “Oh, Alan,” she said.

“Please. What’s wrong with me?”

She looked into my eyes, her eyes welling up in tears. “They found a brain tumor.”

Who am I? Or perhaps a better question is, what am I? A refugee? A fugitive? A saunterer? Henry David Thoreau, in his essay on walking, wrote that the word
sauntering
was derived from “people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages under pretense of going
à la Sainte Terre
,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “‘There goes a Sainte-Terrer,’ a Saunterer—a Holy-Lander.” Maybe this is the truest definition of who I am—a Pilgrim. My walk is my pilgrimage. And, like all worthwhile pilgrimages, mine too is a journey from
wretchedness
to
grace
. Grace. I have learned much on my walk, but most recently, I have learned of grace.

As a boy, I heard my mother sing “Amazing Grace.” She said grace over meals and praised all graciousness. My father, on the other hand, rarely spoke the word, relegating it to Sunday vernacular, with little use in an accountant’s calculated life. But he showed grace through his actions, by caring for me the best he could even when his own heart was broken.

For most of my life I have thought of grace as a hope of a bright tomorrow in spite of the darkness of today—and this is true. In this way we are all like Pamela, walking a road to grace—hoping for mercy. What we fail to realize is that grace is more than our destination, it is the journey itself, manifested in each breath and with each step we take. Grace surrounds us, whirls about us like the wind, falls on us like rain. Grace sustains us on our journeys, no matter how perilous they may be and, make no mistake, they are all perilous. We need not hope for grace, we merely need to open our eyes to its abundance. Grace is all around us, not just in the hopeful future but in the miracle of now.

And, if we travel well, we will become as grace and
learn the lesson meant from the journey, not to dismiss error, but to eagerly forgive the err-er, to generously share the balm of mercy and love for, before the eyes of Heaven, we all walk as fools. And the more we exercise our portion of grace, the better we receive it. The abundance of this grace is only limited by ourselves, as we cannot receive that which we are not willing to accept—be it for ourselves or others.

It’s been written that,
He who does not forgive is guilty of the greater sin
. That verse had always confounded me. I had considered it unjust at best and cruel at worst. But these words were not meant as condemnation—rather as illumination of an eternal truth: that to not extend forgiveness is to burn the bridge that we ourselves must cross.

I have found grace in my walk. I saw it in the joy of Pamela’s freedom, in the hope in Analise’s eyes, and in the forgiving heart of Leszek. I found it in Washington in the wisdom of Ally and the friendship of Nicole, and walking through Idaho in the gratitude of Kailamai. And even now, in my moment of uncertainty and fear, I see it in the presence of Falene. Grace is all around me. It always has been. How could I have been so blind?

I am still in the hospital. My father arrived a few hours after I woke. Tests have been done, and, no doubt, there will be myriad more to come. We do not yet know if my tumor is malignant or benign, and whether or not it has spread. I know only enough to fear. I fear death, as any sane man does, but I’m a creative man so my fears are greater than most.

Still, part of me—a dark or light part I’m not yet certain—hungers for death’s sleep, perhaps to wake in
the brightness and warmth of McKale’s arms. This might seem a fool’s hope—to seek love in death—but, truthfully, I do not know where McKale is
but
death.

I don’t know. Not since I set out from Seattle has my journey been more uncertain. I don’t know if or when I will be walking again. I do not know whether or not I will reach Key West. But this much I know—whether I accept the journey or not, the road will come. The road always comes. The only question any of us can answer, is how we will choose to meet it.