Not Without My Father: One Woman's 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace (8 page)

Just past milepost 93, I hiked into an empty pull-off.

Osburn Stand
.

Stands were once hubs of the Trace. Pioneers could find a meal and a bed to break up the long walk home. Only two stands remain on the Natchez Trace, crude testaments to the creature comforts of a vanished era. At the Meriwether Lewis site, the stand where he died was consumed by fire long ago. A solitary stone step marks the spot he entered and never left.

Osburn Stand consisted of a trash can. A brown information sign. A treeless parking lot. Still, history whispered in the wind. If I closed my eyes, I imagined a cluster of clapboard lodgings. A horse’s whinny. Clinking glass and raucous laughter.

I dropped my backpack and carried my dwindling toilet paper behind the sign. The stench of urine hit me as soon as I walked around it. “I wonder whether budget cuts are causing this problem. If there were enough rangers, people wouldn’t be able to pee here.”

Public restrooms on the Natchez Trace Parkway were spaced for drivers, not walkers. Dad carried rolls of toilet paper in the back seat, ready to deploy wherever and whenever the urge hit him. I skittered next to trees and lurked behind signs, never knowing when a park ranger might drive by and cite me for public indecency.

At least, I always dropped my stained toilet paper in the trash.

Nine mileposts later, another wave of nausea flattened me. I gripped milepost 102 with both hands to steady myself. Eighteen wheelers were forbidden on the Trace, but lacking patrols allowed truckers an illegal shortcut between Jackson-area interstates. Wildness and danger were ingrained in the history of the Natchez Trace, but squeezed funding added peril the pioneers never imagined.

When a camper veered off the pavement, it pushed me down an embankment. I landed in a mound of fire ants. Engine oil and exhaust fumes clogged my lungs as I raked ants from my arms before they bit me. “I’m going to throw up,” I muttered. “Please God, don’t let me throw up.”

Dad steered the car into the shoulder and waved me over. I hobbled to the passenger side.

“Some guy tried to buy this Mercury back at that store.”

I dry-heaved and fell into the seat beside him. When I grabbed a white napkin and swabbed my face, it came away black.

Still, Dad kept talking. To him, stories were always right.

Even when they weren’t.

“A preacher. Said these Mercury Marquis were the best cars ever made. Offered me cash for it, but I told him Linda’d kill me if I sold her car.” Dad poked my arm with one finger, a tick he used to be sure people were paying attention.

I was too obliterated to smack him. I sparred with words instead.

Just like he wanted.

“Mom’s gonna buy a red convertible as soon as you’re dead, Dad. I don’t know why you think she’s the one who loves this car so much.” I scrubbed more grit off my face and swallowed Gatorade. “This traffic is really getting to me.” I spat a mouthful of Gatorade, mouthwash for the fumes.

Dad finally looked at me. “Maybe you ought to quit for today, Andra. Them cars is too thick to cut with a sharp knife.”

The landscape blurred. Taillights and pavement. Noise and heat. Dad acknowledged me, without a story to mask his concern. And I was unstrung. When I didn’t know what to say, obliviousness worked for me, too.

I gripped the top of the car and dragged myself to stand. “Three more miles, Dad. I can do three more miles!”

Dad leaned across the front seat. Open-faced. No barriers. “People’ll understand if you quit, Andra.”

“No.”

“You can cut a day short.”

“No.” I hurled the empty Gatorade bottle past his head and gritted my teeth through stretches. Whatever he said, I wasn’t going to let a fifteen mile stretch of highway beat me.

“Why’re you doing this to yourself? Nobody really expects you to finish this.”

“I expect me to finish, Dad.”

“Why?”

I did squats and pretended to consider his question.

Because I thought I’d sell more books?

What a joke.

Whenever I logged onto the internet, I avoided reader reviews and sales statistics, because I didn’t want the lack of both to frustrate me. I didn’t want to read what readers said. If sales were still under triple digits, as I suspected, I would quit.

Ignorance was a feather bed in hell. Did Meriwether Lewis feel the same, when he stood at the cusp of the Bitterroot Mountains? He knew his expedition would fail to find a water route to the Pacific. Yet, he led his team onward.

He proceeded on because he didn’t have a choice.

I did.

So, why was I still walking?

I swayed northeast and waved Dad around me. He blocked a line of impatient cars. Drivers honked and yelled for him to observe the speed limit. Vehicles whiplashed me from every direction, their bumpers and taillights and side mirrors inches from me. If I raised the wrong arm six inches, a speeding car would’ve made it a bloody stump.

I leaned over ten lanes of traffic on Interstate 55, my ears throbbing with engine surround-sound in my very own live-action IMAX movie, and I whispered, “I will not complain about the quiet. I will not whine when I’m alone. I will not wish away the silence or the sinkholes in my life. Not after today.”

I ripped myself from the concrete barrier and marched forward. Blood seeped through my sneakers, evidence of another popped blister. I ground my teeth and kept my eyes on the sliver of brown metal ahead.

Milepost 104.

Dad slipped the car onto grass. “I think I sold that ranger a book back there. She said she’d order it online.”

“That’s great, Dad.” I trudged past the car, determined to reach the end.

“Less than a mile. I have less than a mile to go.” I chanted through cracked lips. Whenever I licked them, I tasted grease and dirt. “I can do it. I can do it. I can do it.”

Old Trace
. The sign wagged over the road, marking a deep gouge parallel to the highway. I stopped and closed my eyes, trying to imagine a black-and-white place. When the world was buffalo and forest. Limitless sky. Unencumbered breeze. I took a cleansing breath, and when I raised my lids, I found the parkway silent. No cars. No motorcycles. No RV’s.

I was alone. For a few seconds, I wallowed in a cocoon of peace.

I wandered to a hilltop and glimpsed one taillight. “Dad!” I forgot about my pledge to enjoy moments alone and forced my tortured limbs to run. “He’s at milepost 105. That’s the end. Right there. Oh my God, I’m almost done with this day.” I hobbled over the last few steps, yanked the car door wide and threw myself into the passenger seat. My backpack smacked my head into the dashboard. I dragged it off and flung it behind me. Stale engine noise still buzzed inside my head. “Why aren’t we moving, Dad?” My voice was a husky, broken version of someone I used to know.

When Dad cleared his throat, he got my attention. His fingers squeezed the steering wheel, but his eyes were on me. “You amaze me, Andra. I never knew you was this tough.” He started the car. “Yep. I never knew you was this tough.”

I covered my face with one hand to feign rest, to keep my father from seeing tears, drawn from the dry well of his sincere praise.

I DROVE ALL NIGHT

Cindi Lauper

People beat themselves up over all kinds of things as they get older, until they realize there ain’t no point.

I never thought I was a very good daddy, but look at the example I had: A drunk womanizer who treated my sweet mother like garbage. She stuck with him, though, no matter what. Where I come from, families stayed together.

Sometime in her teens, I told Andra how I failed my parents. How I tried to love my father, in spite of his flaws. How I wished I could see my mother one more time, just to tell her I loved her.

Teenage girls. I’ll never understand ’em. She always shooed me away, even those times I was crying, because I saw my life slipping through the inches she grew, the choices she made, the person she was becoming. She couldn’t understand I just wanted her to avoid the mistakes I made. Kids never get that. They hear lectures and roll their eyes.

But Andra was a strong girl, just like my mother. Mom stood up to a lifetime of misery. Raised five children who mostly turned out right. Nobody ever doted on me like she did. Even when I towered over her, I was her baby, her pride, her miracle.

As I watched my daughter struggle to breathe, all I saw was my mother, near the end of her life. I wanted to be both decent husband and loyal son, but when the chamber around my mother’s heart filled up with fluid, I admit it. I abandoned my wife. Left her in the kitchen of our rented place outside Nashville and raced across Tennessee.

I had to see my mother. Tell her I loved her one more time.

When I got there, she was drowning in that hospital bed. I fought with them doctors, told ’em to give her something—anything—to help her breathe, even as the hospital intercom paged me. A call from my wife, telling me she was leaving me and going home to her mother in Kentucky.

I stood in that sterile hallway, where I could almost see Death creeping in corners, and I wondered.

Who had to die?

If I left and went to my wife, would I miss the minute my mother was awake, when I could tell her how much I loved her?

If I stayed until the fluid squeezed my mother’s lungs shut—and that could be weeks, according to them doctors—would I still have a wife?

I found my father, told him to sober up and sit a vigil by my mother’s bedside. He owed her that, and for once, he didn’t disagree. I stopped at the nurse’s station and gave them folks a party-line phone number.

I crawled in my car.

And I drove all night.

To Eastern Kentucky.

My wife and I conceived our daughter in a downstairs bedroom. With the door open and her mother just across the hall.

I didn’t know that, though.

When I got the call.

My strong, struggling daughter was barely more than an idea when I hot-footed it back to Tennessee.

My mother rasped her last breath.

But I didn’t make it.

REDNECKS WHITE SOCKS AND BLUE RIBBON BEER

Johnny Russell

“Golly Molly, Andra! You almost hit that deer!”

“I saw it, Dad. I saw it!”

High beams couldn’t slice through Mississippi murk. I struggled to navigate a narrow road void of glowing stripe or overhead light. Astronomy abandoned me.

“You sure this is the right way?”

“Yes, Dad!”

“How do you know?”

I streaked to a halt at a stop sign. My iPhone fought two bars of service to map our destination. Gibbes Store. Learned, Mississippi. “The Google Girl says it’s just a couple more miles, Dad. This way.”

Eyeballs glowed in dense forest. I imagined I drove through an episode of Scooby-Doo. The gang ran their psychedelic van through corridors spangled with creepy eyes. They always broke down. I punched the gas and hoped the Mercury was more dependable than a cartoon vehicle.

“I don’t know why we had to drive to the backend of nowhere to eat.”

“Best steaks around, Dad.” As we rolled into town, I mumbled, “Dear God, I hope they’re edible.” But was it a town? A few ramshackle buildings and no street light meant anything in the Deep South. Fantasy led me to one conclusion: We drove through a wrinkle in Time and found a living ghost town. My eyes swept the landscape. “There.” I steered the car toward a wrecked building.

“That’s the place? Looks like a dump to me.”

I pulled in front and dropped him. “Oh, come on, Dad. You’ve lived in the South all your life. You ought to know better than anyone that dumps are the best places.”

He grunted his way outside. “I’ll check it out, Andra, but I ain’t expecting much.”

“Don’t eat everything before I get in there!” I shouted into the crashing door.

Stardust highlighted an arm of the Milky Way as I climbed squeaky steps. Country music seeped through swinging front doors. When I opened one, I laughed at the tarnished brass
I shoot ammunition. Do you?
push plate. Shelves sagged around the periphery of a deep room, while plastic tables lined the middle.

Dad took up residence adjacent to a couple sipping red wine. “She put us right here. This ’un.”

Before I assumed a seated position, I stared at Dad’s broad back. “Hi. I’m Roy Watkins. From South Carolina,” he crowed to the married couple who were probably enjoying a romantic date night, but Roy needed to meet strangers and share stories. I was determined to preempt him. “Dad! What are you having to eat?”

Dad’s hands hovered over their food. “This is my daughter. Andra. She’s walking the whole Natchez Trace, because she wrote this book. I got a card here, see? Book about Meriwether Lewis.”

“Walking the Trace?” The woman smiled at me. “Nobody does that.”

“Well, she is,” Dad announced before I could respond. “She’s walked all the way from Natchez. Got through Jackson today.”

The lady dabbed her lips with a paper napkin. “All to launch a book? I hope the book’s good enough to warrant the abuse.”

“Don’t know. Hadn’t read it. Did I tell you it’s about Meriwether Lewis?”

“Dad—”

“We got some paperbacks in the car.”

“Dad—”

“If you buy one, she can sign it for you.”

I yanked his sleeve and wedged myself between them, almost upending their wine. “I’m so sorry.” I grabbed the bottle’s neck before it crashed. “Dad gets carried away sometimes. Old age.”

“I ain’t too old to sell books. Used to spend my summers selling Bibles in—”

“Dad, the server’s ready to take our order.” I crumpled in my chair.

The woman moved closer and adjusted the angle of her chair. An unobstructed view of the Roy Show. I expected her to settle in for the next act, but instead she hoisted her purse into her lap and rummaged through it.

Maybe she was looking for a concealed weapon to shoot the vociferous old man who was ruining her date.