Not Without My Father: One Woman's 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace (16 page)

The nickel reinforced my clarity. It was a sign of my mind’s power to shape Life.

Before I started my trek, I packed a zip-lock bag of good luck charms. I sat across from Michael at our shared desk, and I scrutinized each item. Cards from readers. A two-dollar bill. A buckeye foraged from a riverbank.

And a pristine Lewis and Clark nickel.

“What are you going to do with that?” Michael asked as I crammed everything into a plastic shroud.

“This nickel?” Sunlight sparkled on its surface. “I’m going to leave it on Lewis’s grave. You know, as a thank you. Or something. I don’t know. I’ll figure it out when I get there.”

Michael flashed a lopsided smile. “Or he will.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He resumed whatever he was doing. I couldn’t coax him to talk about my nickel again.

Until my birthday.

He cupped the roadside talisman in his palm. “Do you think he knew?”

“Knew what?” My fingers shook as I took it. On the Parkway map, we were a day’s walk from Colbert Ferry, a stand on the Tennessee River just south of the Alabama/Tennessee state line. Many historians believed Lewis first stepped on the Natchez Trace in northern Mississippi. I looked at Michael, my skeptic husband, whose only faith rested in me. “Do you think this means Lewis was here?”

Michael closed his hands around mine, enveloping the nickel between us. “He must have, Andra. After all we’ve been through with his story, I don’t doubt this is some sort of message from him.”

“But—”

“What?”

Possibilities swirled through my mind. Was the nickel his blessing of the new ending I made for him?

I unzipped a pocket and slipped the nickel inside. “This has to be a birthday present from Lewis.” I twirled metal between my fingers. “Why else would it be right here? On this day? With you to witness it?”

I studied how the earth sloped upward to trees. When I closed my eyes, I listened. For hoofbeats on root-bound dirt. For shouts of men who’d lost a horse. For the deal that sent Lewis ahead while James Neely, a Chickasaw Indian agent, stayed behind. I sniffed the air for moonshine. For evidence of the insanity so many historians claimed Lewis carried with him to Grinder’s Stand.

But all I had was a nickel.

I clutched it, and I sighed. When I started out to weave a final story of Meriwether Lewis, I never expected him to participate.

Yet, he did.

Another sign magnified my bliss.

State Line. 1/2 Mile
.

A brown sign with gold lettering, shaped like a shield. For almost four weeks, signs marked the progress of my life. I trekked through swamps, across forests, along the hills of Mississippi. More than three hundred miles of capricious weather. Sleet. Wind. Tornado scares. Pelting rain and blistering sunshine.

Michael squeezed my hand. When I looked at him, my heart swam in his blue eyes. He touched my cheek. “How do you feel?”

Emotions rendered me mute. How did I think I’d feel when I walked the length of a state? Elated? Confused? Exhausted? It all frothed inside me, competing for prominence, but elation burbled to the top. If I could walk across the length of a whole state, I knew I could do anything.

I hurried along the road, toward another sign.

Bear Creek Mound
.

A remnant of a forgotten civilization, one of many along the Trace. Almost a thousand years old.

I visited it the year before. Michael and I approached Bear Creek Mound from the other direction, a scouting trip for my novel. We drove into the empty parking lot and ambled through the field. When I wandered beside the mound, I heard a scream buried in the wind.

Another character bursting through history to claim her place in my story.

When I stared southward that day, I wondered what was there but never thought I would walk the length of that mystery. The Natchez Trace was a portal to the past. It didn’t reveal the future.

I turned to Bear Creek Mound. A little boy shrieked across the field. When he reached the grassy hill, he climbed the dirt and jumped along the sunken top. I snapped picture after picture. I didn’t hear his parents when they called him, wasn’t conscious of their departure.

I was lost in the story of a different child.

Me.

Wondering whether my father would’ve stopped to let me run free.

My life mirrored Dad’s journeys in the car. His obsession with Time. “We made good time.” Or, “We could’ve made better time.” The measure of Time was always Dad’s first announcement once we arrived at our destination. Like the journey was a NASCAR race against numbers on a clock.

Was that why I always blasted through everything? I never took time to stop, to look, to savor.

Maybe my Trace adventure altered that dynamic for Dad and me, fifteen mile increments at a time. While Dad inspected every small-town junk shop and lingered with strangers, I memorized crimps in pavement, explored geographic layers and met hundreds of birds. I looked forward to Dad’s stories about his days. Who he met. How he sold books. Even what he ate.

Schedules were irrelevant in the face of waning Time.

“Are you ready?” Michael walked a few steps ahead of me. Toward another sign. I couldn’t see its face, but I knew what it proclaimed.

I dragged my feet through Mississippi grass, a state that fed me, housed me and embraced me for twenty-four days. Its people exuded hospitality, charm and backbones of steel. Innkeepers flamed with passion for the Natchez Trace, and they were untiring in their efforts to showcase it, even if it meant struggling in places few people stopped. I dreaded every goodbye.

“Let me take a couple more pictures.” I listened to the burble of Bear Creek. A few steps, and Mississippi would be a memory. Relationships and nuances I wanted to recall but would never remember in Life’s compression of details to highlights.

I handed my phone to Michael and surveyed the rusted stays of the brown road sign, tall enough to stand underneath.
Entering Alabama
. I hung onto metal posts and straddled two states.

And I smiled. Open-mouthed wonder at my accomplishment.

“I did it. I walked across an entire state. Me. By myself.”

Voices fanned the flames of rapture. “We always knew you could. Because we did.”

I breathed them in. To carry them through northwestern Alabama. Across the heart of Tennessee. All the way to my Nashville finish line.

When I took Michael’s hand, I didn’t look back. Finished wasn’t done. To be finished was bittersweet, like I didn’t want it to end, but it had to. To be done meant I was through with Mississippi, but that could never be. It seeped into my heart, its landscape spangled with images of my father. Laughing with strangers in roadside restaurants. Buying furniture he didn’t need. Selling books to folks who never intended to buy. My walk became an endless parade of gifts.

I found joy in claiming them.

I’M WALKIN’

Fats Domino

Alabama started its only full day with a raindrop. It splashed my eye and jarred my contact. While I worked my eyelid to push it into place, Mom cranked the Mercury Grand Marquis. “I wish I felt like walking with you today, Andra, but my ankle still hurts. I guess I’m stuck with your daddy.”

Dad poked his head through the open car window. “We’ll go find you a snack and check out that Iuka place. What kinda name for a town is that? Iuka, Mississippi?” His laughter reverberated through silence when they left me. I pondered a soaked stretch of roadway near milepost 315.

Skeletal pain sizzled through my legs and feet. My muscles were frayed rubber bands before the weak bits snapped. Determined to find the day’s gift, I turned my ravaged body northward. “Alabama, be kind to me.”

Less than forty miles of the Natchez Trace cut through the northwestern corner of Alabama, riddled with watersheds that dumped into the Tennessee River and crisscrossed rich farmland. I wiped more rain from my eyes and left the first milepost. “It’s just rain. Only my face will suffer.”

Along the ridge line, wet seeped into my waterproof jacket and pants. It cascaded down my legs and into my shoes. Sleety rain beat a steady rhythm on the road, and it carried voices in every plop and smack.

“My leather shoes fell apart by the time I walked this far, and I had to make it to Tennessee on bare feet.”

“I’d give anything for that fancy stuff you’re wearing. Skins leak, you know.”

“Do you people ever think about how good you have it? All your complaining about the state of your feet. You don’t know pain, girlie.”

Boatmen. Delirious and showy. Broken and extreme. I turned my face downwind and shouted, “I’m still here. Doing what you did. I’m a girl, and I’m proud! Walking by myself, which beats your packs of skittish men. Leave me the hell alone! You hear me?”

Clouds parted, and the wintry mix fled. My knees groaned into a valley, but I stepped lighter, convinced my will could change the weather.

In a treeless expanse of fields, a horn broke my reverie.

“Andra!” Dad waved me to his window. “Got you a snack.”

I rolled my eyes at salted peanuts. “I’ve got nuts in my backpack, Dad. More nuts in my protein bars. You just got these because you wanted them.”

“You know your daddy.” Mom talked over Dad’s protests.

“I got ’em for you.”

“You did not, Dad.”

“I did! But if you really don’t want ’em………….” He tore into the bag and dumped them into his mouth.

I pulled windblown hair from mine. “Wind’s picking up. But looks like it’s done raining. I hope that means I’ve made it through the worst of it.”

“Iuka. That was the worst of it.” Mom fiddled with her rings and scowled. “I can’t wait to go home.”

“Really, Mom? You’re not enjoying this together time?”

She diverted her attention beyond her window, while Dad exclaimed, “Iuka! What a name. Wonder where they got that, huh? I-oo-ka.”

“Oh, dear God. We’ll be hearing that for days.” I peeled off my waterproof jacket and threw it in the back seat. Even on cooler days, it boiled me in my own juices, a zipped-and-velcroed sauna. I flung my arms over my head and let the wind fan wet patches. “Looks like nothing but fields ahead.”

“That’s another reason we found you, Andra.” Mom’s hands still wrenched in her lap, a nervous habit I inherited from her. “A maintenance crew stopped us. There’s a pack of wild dogs about a mile ahead—four or so, they don’t know—feeding on a deer carcass. When they tried to get the remains, one dog attacked them.”

“I’m sure they’ll be gone by the time I get there.” I hoisted my backpack in place and stretched my calves while Dad spilled nuts everywhere.

Mom sighed, her frustration barometer. “Roy, you just had three scoops of ice cream. Stop eating those nuts. You’re making a mess.” She flicked her blue-grey eyes back to me. “Still, I think you should let us drive you through this part, Andra.”

I repositioned my voodoo doll on my right shoulder, hoping to beat the impatient edge from my voice. “I can’t cheat, Mom. I have to walk.”

Mom shot from the driver’s seat and bolted around the car. “Who made up these ridiculous rules?”

“I’m just trying to honor history—”

“That doesn’t mean you should risk your life, Andra. Do you know how much I worry about you? Every mile of this…..this—”

“Stupid? Is that what you want to say?”

She slid a turquoise ring up and down her finger while Dad filled his face with more nuts. Nervous ticks defined every family moment. Rawness made us elemental.

I tightened the stays on my backpack and stepped away from her. “Believe me, I know how stupid this walk is. I have to get out here and do it every day, remember?” I stopped. To swat aggravation from my voice, I bit my lip and stretched my calves again. When I found calm, I continued. “I’m not doing anything people haven’t done before me. I’ll be fine.”

“You always say that, but how do you know? I’ve gone along with this business for more than a week. I’ve watched cars almost hit you, and I’ve seen you crippled by pain. How can you possibly know those dogs won’t go after you?”

“Because,” I turned my face northward. “I have them to protect me.”

“Who?”

I ignored her and walked away. She didn’t like my voodoo doll mascot and questioned the voices I heard along the Trace. Dead pioneers. Ancient Native Americans. Soldiers and Spaniards and animals. Spirit walking, a friend called it. A notion that didn’t jibe with Mom’s devout faith, a faith I shared with her, though I made allowances for other mysteries, varied beliefs.

Because, at its heart, wasn’t all faith the same explanation for things we couldn’t see?

The closer I crept to the Meriwether Lewis site, the louder the voices grew. On sunny days, I heard them in my footsteps. They chattered in raindrops and rode the coattails of a gale.

One morning, they conjured a deer. It bounded up a hill and walked next to me. I saw its ears flick, heard its puffs of breath. Its hooves echoed on the highway, and it regarded me with one curious eye.

In the stillness, I heard voices. “We used to have these moments all the time. How do you people live without ’em?”

How did I?

Still, Mom was right to worry. When I walked onto an overpass, I didn’t leave anything to chance. I carried one weapon. On my shoulder, next to my voodoo doll.

I never fired my police-issue mace, because I was afraid I’d aim the wrong way and spray myself in the face. Or the wind would carry the noxious mixture back at me. Panic always made me grasp the wrong things.

“I guess I’d better practice. Just in case.” I yanked the canister from my shoulder and flipped its plastic top. When I pushed the red button, a stream of what looked like semen shot ten inches from its nozzle. I looked at its snout in disbelief. “That’s all I get? One pathetic squirt of protection? Somebody could have me in their trunk, halfway to who-knows-where, before this thing would help me.” I almost hurled it into space. “Police-issue mace. I don’t know why it doesn’t come with a big, fat sign that reads ‘Abduct Me’.”

When I stopped shaking, I palmed the mace in my right hand, my thumb close to the red trigger. I followed the road until it bisected another field. “Surely this is the wild dog place.” I scanned the muddy expanses on both sides. Though I wanted to run, I held steady. A rustle of trees was a possible attacker; a snort the hunger of insatiable hounds. “I wish I’d never read Edgar Allan Poe,” I whispered as I marched into the open. The road was an elevated land bridge through broken fences. Plowed earth and scrub.