Not Without My Father: One Woman's 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace (20 page)

I leaned my forehead into wood and stopped breathing. Since Jackson, Mississippi, no rangers crossed my path. Over 300 miles. A deadlocked Congress left me to fend for myself. I couldn’t summon a ranger or hope for one to rescue me.

It wasn’t the first time I wished for more funding for the forgotten Natchez Trace and its people.

Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. Engine noise rattled the Trace, but it crescendoed and faded. I crept to the forest’s edge and scanned the roadway.

The blue car was gone.

I staggered through a ravine and stopped at the road. Before I could check my signal, the phone vibrated in my hand.

We’re on our way. Where have you been?

My fingers tapped the screen in answer to Mom’s text.

I’ve been right here. All the time.

If they could hide Dad’s deteriorating condition, I could shield them from worry.

It wasn’t exactly a lie.

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

Lou Reed

As I hot-footed it toward the Meriwether Lewis site, my phone chimed again. Visitors. Two people were careening down the Trace to meet me.

When I invited readers to join me on my Natchez Trace walk, I didn’t think anyone would. Who would take time off to hike a neglected highway? With unpredictable weather and poisonous snakes and biting bugs? I buried an invitation in a blog post and forgot it.

Until I heard from Lisa Kramer, a writer and reader in Massachusetts. I found her online when she wrote about an Eastern European trip to study movement with gypsies. The more I read, the more I recognized myself. Theater. Writing. Supportive husbands. A yearning to travel. Even though our correspondence was online, I considered Lisa a dear friend.

But I never expected to open my email and read her message: “I’d really like to come walk with you.”

Was she crazy? Maybe she’d show up, and we’d loathe each other on sight. What if she was bitten by a snake? Could she sue me? Convinced she was being nice, I turned my attention to my empty screen and typed, “You should. You totally should.”

Once I hit Send, I forgot about Lisa.

The next morning, my inbox blinked with another email. From Lisa.

“I’ve been looking at flights. It’s pretty expensive to fly from Boston to Nashville.”

Was she serious?

I did a quick Google search and found several discounted options. “You can afford it if you pick these dates.” My psyche was drunk on the notion that one stranger wanted to take part. “Invite yourself to stay with Tori. She’s in Nashville. At least you’ve met her. I’m staying with her at the end of my walk, and I don’t even know her.”

Tori Nelson was another person I met online. I started following her because she invited readers to plan her Very Bloggy Wedding. She solicited votes on dresses and makeup options. Even her bridal hairdo. For months, I expressed my opinions, marveling that I sort of knew someone whose balls were gigantic enough to cede her wedding to strangers. How could I not love all six feet of her on sight?

I couldn’t believe it when Tori and Lisa pulled up next to me on the Natchez Trace. Whoops, shouts and music vibrated through trees. Like life-long friends, I hugged Lisa through an open window, not caring how I smelled. “I can’t believe you’re here!” I shouted as I Chinese-fire-drilled around the car to smother Tori with BO.

Lisa pushed a screwdriver curl from her face. “We made it happen!”

They planned to walk the last four miles of my day. A rendezvous at the Meriwether Lewis site. A picnic they prepared. When they motored up the highway, I wasn’t alone anymore. They threw a wall of pink confetti, enough to repel any predator. I was dazzled by girl power glitter.

Until I thought about the road ahead.

For my whole trek, I carried specific images of my time at the Meriwether Lewis site. Walking alone along the abandoned road. I knew where to pick up the Old Trace, and I planned to follow his footsteps into the clearing where he died. I would walk across the ruins of Grinder’s Stand and cover the distance to Merry’s monument in silence, my Lewis and Clark nickel cupped in my right hand. Alone, I would kiss the nickel and whisper a blessing, before placing it on Merry’s grave.

Maybe he would even whisper, “Thank you.”

I looked at the pink noise maker in my hand and feared Lisa and Tori would think my plodding production insane. I put aside the logistics of Merry’s grave and dialed my mother. “Mom! Hi! How’s Dad?”

She sighed. “He’s talking to Donna again. You know him.”

I heard myself say, “Well, I think you’d better come back this way. A guy just stopped and tried to get me into his car.”

“Where are you?”

“Milepost 383.”

“Don’t move. We’ll be there in ten minutes.” Mom rang off before I could reassure her. My feminist protection squad was spreading its net along the Trace. Nobody would go after a woman with a cardboard party horn.

Eight minutes later, Mom and Dad rumbled through grass next to me. “You need to cut this day short,” Dad talked from an open window. “You shouldn’t be out here with some maniac. When I worked at that funeral home, I saw what people could do.”

“I’m sure he’s long gone by now, Dad.”

“Still, it would make us feel better if we kept an eye on you…….just until you get to the Meriwether Lewis site and those girls join you.” Mom raised the window and accelerated to the next bend before I could argue. When I got close, she pulled further ahead.

A half-mile from the entrance to the Meriwether Lewis site, they steered their car to the left and disappeared. I pumped a fist and celebrated. “Finally. I can find the trail Lewis took.”

But when I crossed the highway to photograph the Meriwether Lewis sign, my dreams of walking to Lewis’s grave shattered. The Mercury Grand Marquis blocked the entrance. Mom hopped out and opened the back door. “We’ll drive you. This road’s busy, plus we drove around the park. They’re doing some forest work.”

“Mom—”

“She thinks she saw a blue car,” Dad interjected. “Plus, them girls is in there.”

I slipped off my backpack and surrendered. “I’m sure they’d love to know you call them girls, Dad.”

“Well? Ain’t you? Girls? I mean, Linda here’s a girl, and you’re a—”

“Okay, Dad.”

“And that Charlayne Hunter, she was a girl. First African-American woman at the University of Georgia. You’re tough as she was. Different kind of tough, walking all this way.”

I swiped my eyes and settled into the back seat. Dad complimented me three times on my tri-state hike. I couldn’t process his praise.

Yet.

FAST CAR

Tracy Chapman

When I was at UGA, I lived in a funeral home attic. Worked there, too, for room and board. While everybody else went on dates and got drunk, I drove the hearse out country roads in the middle of the night. Scraping body parts off the highway. Even got to embalm people from time to time.

And everything.

One night, we was up at the funeral home and in came a call. Late. Two African-Americans had been admitted to the University of Georgia. Forced desegregation, they called it. We walked between classes wondering what was gonna happen when the lights went out. Well, we didn’t have to wonder long.

That night, there was a big basketball game. Georgia playing Georgia Tech was always tense. All hell broke loose when Georgia Tech won in overtime. People was smashing bottles and throwing bricks and generally causing a ruckus.

But some of them thought they could vent their spleens about race. People joined the mob, and it spread all over campus. Broken windows. Fires.

We got the call because most small-town funeral homes used their hearses as ambulances in those days. Just in case somebody became a customer.

By the time we got there, they’d called in the police. Tear gas was so thick you couldn’t cut it. We got the body board outta the back and picked our way past Dean Tate. I’ll never forget his bald head and booming voice as he yanked IDs and expelled person after person. Don’t know why he thought expelling ’em was gonna make ’em stop. A Georgia institution, that man was.

Anyway, we got inside the girls’ dorm and found the room where that Charlayne Hunter was holed up. When we elbowed in there, she was passed out on the bed, her face covered in wet towels. I don’t even think she knew we was moving her, but we strapped her on the body board and took her to the hearse without getting beaned with a brick or cut open by glass.

I really thought that’d be my last night. I was afraid to go in there, but I was even more scared of how I’d live with myself if I didn’t. If something happened to that girl, I’d have never forgiven myself.

I saw her on campus after that, but I never told her I was one of the guys who got her out. Didn’t think she’d want to relive that night or know anybody saw her thataway. But I still wished I could see her, tell her how much I admire what she done. She probably lived every day wondering when her being there was gonna start another riot, not knowing if she’d survive ’til graduation. Those college years had to be a lonely walk.

I was glad I could be there to help her take a few steps in the right direction. She’s gone on to have a pretty amazing life.

And that never surprised me. When I moved them towels that night and saw the look on her face, I knew she’d beat anything.

My daughter’s got that look, too.

WALK AND DON’T LOOK BACK

Temptations

As I giggled with Lisa and Tori, I fought to maintain my public face. Through helpings of barbecue chicken wings and hummus, I kept one eye on my father.

He sat on a bench. Alone. His hearing aids were probably muted against three grown women cackling like teenagers, but his face was cracked and uneven. Void of stories. Even flat. I scrolled my eyes from him to Mom and wondered whether he was really okay. Into my fifth week with him, I knew he drew from a dwindling well of strength.

While Tori fed chicken to a stray dog, Lisa tried to engage Dad. She twirled over a granite compass. Meriwether Lewis’s profile lit up its coordinates, a directional map of his achievements. “We knew you were Andra’s father before we met you.”

“How’d you know me?” Dad rested his arms on his belly.

“You were in the park shop. Selling books.” Lisa’s theatrical gestures were sweeping. Sincere. Her limbs remembered the grace of the gypsies. “We came in, trying to convince them to carry Andra’s book.”

“Yeah. But we saw Andra’s famous book-selling Dad, and we knew we were bested.” Tori sat cross-legged on the ground and waved potato chips at the hungry dog. She stretched her long legs. Her eyes shone with the confidence of a towering woman who’d wear a beehive as her wedding hairdo. “Maybe I outta take this dog home with me. Do you think I should? I think I should.”

“You should.” I bit into a cold biscuit stuffed with bacon.

The bench creaked when Dad leaned forward. “Course I sell better’n you…….what’s your name again?”

“Lisa. Absolutely. Andra’ll never find a better salesman than you.”

Lisa stuffed a pita chip with hummus, and Tori teased the dog with another chicken bone. We were a comfortable threesome. I admired Lisa’s earnest tenacity as much as I loved Tori’s self-deprecating hilarity.

I elevated my feet on the bench and studied Dad. He always wanted to be somebody. Foiled ambition was the reason he almost left us in my teens. Everyone encounters a moment in Life when they realize they’re running out of Time.

I hoped I gave him Time. Through telling his stories, he was the character he always longed to be. With little girl notions, I still believed he could do anything.

I sat next to Mom. “Of course you’re better than them, Dad. You’re the best.”

He bellowed his first big laugh.

In my imaginings of the Meriwether Lewis site, I never heard Dad’s laughter. Or my own. I discarded my reverent plans and charged into the cemetery with two new friends. They made jokes while I found the right spot for my nickel. “Okay, let’s create this scene.” Lisa, the theater director, assigned our roles. I climbed Tori’s six-feet to her back, while Lisa crawled between her legs.

“Mom, can you take these shots?” She claimed our various devices and snapped while we made Meriwether Lewis part of our gaiety.

While Dad sold a book to a passing stranger.

The Old Trace meandered on our right, a dirt path bordered by a wooden fence and forest. Amidst our laughter, I imagined walking that path. Somber. Alone. I hugged my new friends and knew they saved me. They infused my Meriwether Lewis experience with joy.

But as we walked to the car, I looked back at Merry’s marker and stood where he died.

Rock whispered secrets. It recorded the voices of Time. But nobody revealed the hidden elements of Meriwether Lewis’s death. Merry accepted my nickel offering and gave me a greater gift.

I finally understood Lewis’s connection to my father. They both feared a wasted life, always believing they could use what they were given to do more. When my father withdrew into himself, I read his thoughts. I understood them, because they mirrored mine. I walked almost 400 miles to find my father. The Natchez Trace was the portal.

When I read Meriwether Lewis’s words, I saw my father and identified most everyone in my life. Because ambition makes anyone believe she never accomplishes enough. Dreamers always think they can do more to set passion free. My father morphed in that moment, because I could finally see him through a clear lens.

The lens of myself.

GO WALKING DOWN THERE

Chris Isaak

“I’ve stayed at this place before, Dad. It’ll be fine.” We navigated the dirt driveway of Creekview Farm near Fly, Tennessee.

“Never knew there was a place called Fly,” Dad muttered as we hung a left at a y-junction.

“Just don’t hit the peacocks, Mom.”

“Peacocks?” Dad’s quarter-sized bald spot danced as he gripped the dashboard. “I just hope the TV works.”