CHAPTER
Thirty-six
Why did the man cross America? To see what was on the other side of himself.
Alan Christoffersen’s diary
I woke early the next morning, packed up, then went over to Dustin’s house and knocked on the door. His truck was still there, so I assumed he was too. After my third time knocking, I decided that he was probably still asleep or hungover from the moonshine he’d ingested the night before. I tore a page from my journal and left him a note thanking him for his hospitality, then set off for the day.
Physically, I felt much better than I had the day before, which made me believe my difficulty walking had been, at least in part, psychosomatic. It was an easy, brisk walk down the dirt road back to the highway, then only eleven miles south to the town of Folkston. I could have easily walked farther, but I didn’t. My planned route into Florida went from Waycross to Folkston over the Florida border to Callahan, then southeast into Jacksonville. I wanted the crossing of my last state border to be more than an afternoon side note.
Four miles before Folkston, I passed a billboard that read:
Florida Lotto Tickets,
9 miles ahead.
Gas n’ Go Boulogne
Florida. If you had asked me as I left Seattle if I would make it here, I would have shrugged. But I had. I was on my last lap, so to speak.
Like Waycross, Folkston also calls itself the “Gateway to the Okefenokee.” I ate a buffet dinner at the Okefenokee Restaurant, with pork chops and popcorn shrimp, then found a room at a bed and breakfast called the Inn at Folkston, a quaint, restored 1920s heart-pine bungalow. McKale would have loved it.
The only room they had available was the English Garden Room—which is also their bridal suite—themed after an English country inn, with a large sitting area and a gas fireplace. The room was beautiful and reportedly inhabited by a ghost, but the only thing that haunted me that night was my thoughts.
Long into the night I lay there thinking. The next day I would cross into Florida. I was nearing the end of my walk. Then what? Where was I going next? What would I do with the rest of my life? In response, what kept playing through my mind was the last thing McKale said to me as she lay dying: “Live.”
At that time, when I had no desire to go on, I had only considered that she had meant not taking my life. Now I realized that she had meant more than that. To truly live is more than taking the next breath—it’s to hope and dream and love. That’s what she really meant. She, who was my hope and dream and love, was telling me to go on without her.
Here, on the final stretch of my walk, I realized that what I wanted most was love. After all I had been through, I couldn’t bear the idea of reaching Key West only to walk across the border without a single person to share it with. And that was true of the rest of my life. Why hadn’t I understood this sooner?
Perhaps it was, like my father had said, as simple as a matter of faith. Faith that life could be worth living again after my love’s death. Faith in life itself. Faith in love itself. I hadn’t been willing to risk loving again, because I wasn’t willing to risk losing again. I had feared the future so much that I was killing it.
I was not so different from Dustin, the man in the swamp. Fearing the future, he had isolated himself with fences and barbwire and guns, just as I had done emotionally. And the result was the same—we had both run love out of our lives.
Somewhere in the internal dialogue of that night, I confronted the truth about myself and, in so doing, found the courage to obey McKale’s final request. I was ready to take a chance. I was ready to live again.
CHAPTER
Thirty-seven
A good read should introduce new drama in each chapter. But that’s just in books. What may be enjoyable in literature is not so in real life.
Alan Christoffersen’s diary
The weather the next morning was as balmy as one expects of Florida. The weather in my heart was equally serene. I knew what I wanted. I wanted love in my life. I wanted Falene.
When I had read her letter on the plane, I was not just surprised by her feelings but by my own. I cared more deeply for her than I had ever allowed myself to admit. Now, in this new day, I was ready to face those feelings. I was going to see this through. I wasn’t going to Key West without her. I was going to find Falene if I had to park a month in Jacksonville to do it, or visit every modeling agency in New York. As I thought about this, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a very long time. I felt alive.
Breakfasts at B&Bs are always good and the Inn at Folkston was no exception. I ate breakfast outside on the wood-planked patio. I had a stack of blueberry pancakes, honeydew melon, baked ham and “Chicken George’s” fresh eggs.
The clear, warm air smelled of the sweet fragrance of tea olive and honeysuckle.
After breakfast I went back to my room to check my cell phone. It had been a while since I’d turned it on and I wondered if Carroll had called.
I discovered that my phone was dead. I found the charger and plugged it into the wall. After about thirty seconds the phone turned on and immediately vibrated. I looked at its screen. I had eight missed calls and two voicemail messages. All of the calls were from the same two numbers. I didn’t recognize either, but both had Pasadena area codes.
I played the first message.
“Alan, this is Carroll. Sorry it took so long but I found your friend. Her phone number is area code 212, 555–5374. Good luck.”
My heart pounded. This was my miracle, wasn’t it? An answer to my night’s epiphany?
I played the message again and wrote down Falene’s phone number on a piece of note paper next to the room’s telephone. I nervously held the paper in one hand, my phone in the other, until I started laughing at myself. After all the time I’d known Falene, I was flat out terrified to call her. Where would I begin? What if she’d changed her mind about me? I felt as awkward as a teenager calling for a first date.
As I thought over what I would say, I looked back down at my phone. There was still the other message. I pushed play.
“Alan, this is Nicole. Please call as soon as you get this. It’s an emergency.”
Her voice was strained. Why was she calling from Pasadena? I dialed the number. It rang just twice before Nicole answered. “Alan?”
“Nicole? What’s wrong?”
“You need to come home,” she said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your father’s had a heart attack.”
For a moment I was speechless. “Is he still alive?”
“He’s in intensive care.”
“Is he going to make it?”
There was a long pause. Then she said, “You just need to come home.”
EPILOGUE
Again, my world is in commotion. The only thing that hasn’t changed in my life is the uncertainty of it all.
Alan Christoffersen’s diary
I took a cab to the Jacksonville airport, just thirty-six miles from Folkston. Just. By foot that’s two days of travel—by car it’s less than an hour. By plane I’ll have traveled as far as I’ve walked this last year before evening.
My flight to Los Angeles left Jacksonville at 5 P.M., with an hour layover in Atlanta. I never called Falene. There was already too much on my emotional plate.
I called Nicole from my layover to see if there were any changes in my father’s condition, but she didn’t answer. This intensified my fear. Did I regret not staying home with my father as he’d wanted me to? Of course I did. But I pushed the thought from my mind. Regret is a useless emotion: it’s like brushing your teeth after you find a cavity.
As I write this, I am about twenty minutes from touchdown in Los Angeles. What am I going to find? My heart is a battleground of hope and fear, each, in turn, seizing control. I’m afraid of the news that will shortly come. I’m afraid that I may already be orphaned.
Honestly, I do not have faith that I will see my father again. But I have hope. I hope that my father
is still alive and that he’ll be okay. I hope that I can see him again and tell him everything that’s in my heart. But most of all, if it is his time, I hope for the chance to be there for him as he always was for me. I don’t know if God will grant me this. But I hope.
For now Key West must wait. For the third time since I began, my walk has been delayed. In the beginning, I had considered these stops on my journey as interruptions—but I’m coming to understand that perhaps these detours are my journey. No matter how much I, or the rest of humanity wishes otherwise, life is not lived in smooth, downhill expressways, but in the obscure, perilous trails and rocky back roads of life where we stumble and feel our way through the fog of the unknown. Life is not a sprint. It was never meant to be. It is just one step of faith after another.
To be continued.
Coming May 2014, Book 5 of The Walk series.
Coming May 2014, book 5 of The Walk series
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INTRODUCTION
Alan Christofferson is a broken man. Following the sudden death of his wife and the betrayal of his former business partner, the once-successful advertising executive leaves everything behind to embark upon an incredible cross-country journey—on foot. Carrying only his backpack, Alan is determined to walk every step from Seattle to Key West. A Step of Faith is the fourth book in Evans’s bestselling series and picks up directly after the shocking events of The Road to Grace. As he walks, Alan meets a number of people whose own stories help him come to terms with his grief and anger. But a life-changing event threatens to bring an end to his journey, and Alan must decide what is truly most important to him.
TOPICS & QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Alan writes in his diary, “Maybe, if we just accepted our deaths, we might finally start to live.” How is this sentiment echoed throughout the novel? Consider some of the people Alan meets, like Dustin, who is preparing for doomsday, and Paige, who works in hospice care. How are various characters living their lives based on their acceptance or nonacceptance of death?
2. Of his mother’s death when he was eight Alan says, “Some might say that she jinxed herself, but I don’t think so. My mother wasn’t a pessimist. I think she knew.” He later reflects on a conversation he had with McKale and her request to Alan to remarry should anything happen to her. Do you think McKale may also have somehow sensed that she was going to die? Have you experienced people in your life having similar premonitions?
3. When Falene shares the news about Kyle, Alan realizes that he is actually sorry to hear it. Falene says she believes he deserved his fate. How is Alan able to feel compassion for Kyle? Do you think he is right to feel this way? Or do you agree with Falene?
4. Why is Alan blind to Falene’s feelings for him until he reads her letter? Falene writes that “the depth of love is revealed in its departure.” What does she mean by this? Do you think Alan’s feelings about Falene would have changed without her letter and move to New York? What else influenced his feelings toward her during his journey?
5. Before Alan’s surgery, Nicole and Alan’s father are very nervous. “The truth was, I was the least worried of all of us,” Alan says. Why is Alan able to remain so calm? Do you think he just has a feeling that he will be fine, or that he has become more at peace with the idea of his own death?
6. Why is Alan’s father so against Alan returning to his walk? Given what you learn by the end of the novel, do you think his father’s reasons were more complicated than you previously believed? How has their relationship changed over the course of the series?
7. When Alan spends the night at Pastor Tim’s church, they discuss the existence of miracles. “We live in an age of unbelief, but I promise you, miracles still abound,” Pastor Tim says. Later that night Alan reflects on their conversation and determines that he “had prayed as sincerely as a man could for McKale’s life to be spared,” to no avail. Do you think his view of miracles might have changed by the end of the novel? If so, what would have caused this shift?
8. What was the significance of the scene in which Alan helps the paramedics attend to the woman who says she is having a heart attack? How might this event have affected Alan?
9. In Missouri, Alan, a longtime ad man, makes note of the many whimsical restaurant names and slogans he sees. How else does Alan display and use his “adman” background during his journey? How else does his career experience influence the way he looks at the world?
10. When Alan first encounters “Master El,” the two have a conversation about how people interpret the Bible. Before you learned more about El and his group, did you agree with anything he was saying? Did any part of what he said to Alan during dinner ring true or seem plausible? Or was he completely wrong?
11. Why did Alan choose to accompany El to his compound despite his suspicions about him? Did this seem in character for Alan? El tells Alan that those “most susceptible to mind control are precisely those who don’t believe they are susceptible.” Why might El think this? What did you think about this section of the novel?
12. Do you think that if Alan’s feelings for Falene hadn’t developed that he may have chosen to be with Nicole despite his conflicted feelings about her? Given his revelation about wanting to share his life with someone, do you think he would choose to settle down with someone he wasn’t fully in love with rather than spend his life alone?
13. Near the end of the novel Alan begins to believe that “perhaps these detours are my journey. No matter how much I, or the rest of humanity, wishes otherwise, life is not lived in smooth, downhill expressways, but in the obscure, perilous trails and back roads of life where we stumble and feel our way through the fog of the unknown.” Discuss this passage. How does this theme resonate throughout the novel, and, if you’ve read them, the other books in the series? Can you think of a time in your life when you had a similar realization?
14. Have you been to any of the towns or sites that Alan visits throughout the novel? What did Alan’s general impression of the southern United States seem to be? Did his journey make you interested in exploring any new places for yourself?
15. If you had to use only three words to describe this book, which words would you choose?
ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB
1. While Alan isn’t a huge fan of Elvis’s music, he thoroughly enjoys his visit to Graceland. If you’re more partial to Elvis than Alan is, create a playlist of his music for your next book club. If you’ve been to Graceland, bring in your photos and souvenirs to share with the group. Or have an Elvis-themed dinner; there are a number of cookbooks containing recipes of his favorite dishes available from amazon.com and other bookstores.
2. Following in Alan’s footsteps, plan a rambling walk with your book club (pick a day with a sunny forecast). Perhaps there are some landmarks in your town you’d like to get a closer look at. Or find an out-of-the-way grassy spot that’s perfect for a picnic.
3. Share with the group a memory of a trip that you took—no matter how far away or nearby—that changed your life in some way. Were you sightseeing when a revelation hit you like a ton of bricks? Did you sample your favorite cuisine for the first time? Did you meet someone who shared valuable knowledge with you? Was it simply the most fun you’ve ever had?
4. Learn more about Richard Paul Evans, his books, and his charity, The Christmas Box International, at http://www.richardpaulevans.com/, http://www.facebook.com/RPEfans and https://www.thechristmasboxhouse.org/.
A little more than a decade ago, I was signing books in Dayton, Ohio, when one of my readers, a schoolteacher, handed me an envelope filled with money. “My students raised this for you
r charity for abused children,” she said. Then she asked, “Is there any way you could come thank them?”
I was in Dayton for another day, so I set a time to meet her students the following afternoon. I had expected to visit with the students, thank them for their contribution, and say a few words on the importance of reading and literacy. When I arrived at the venue, I was surprised to find buses waiting outside. Unbeknownst to me, my visit to a few students had been turned into a district-wide assembly. “You have an hour to talk to the youth,” the teacher said to me.
As I frantically considered what I would say to this room full of students, the idea came to me to share with them everything I wished I knew when I was their age.
That’s precisely what I did. For the next hour I spoke from the heart, and the teens sat in complete silence. About halfway through my talk, I noticed that some of the youth were crying. When I finished, the students stood to applaud, then lined up to meet me. Some of them wanted to share with me their own stories and struggles. Some of them just asked to be hugged.
That afternoon was the beginning of a journey for me, one that has taken me all around the world, sharing this message with hundreds of thousands of people from remarkably diverse groups ranging from the American Mothers, Inc., Harvard MBA graduates, and the Million Dollar Round Table (a global association of the world’s top insurance agents and financial service professionals) to recovering drug addicts and convicted felons. And just like the first time I shared these principles, in each of those subsequent presentations I have also witnessed a powerful reaction. And, after every presentation, audience members have asked for a written copy of my talk so that they too could share these principles with those they care about. This book is the result of those requests.
Richard Paul Evans: The Complete Walk Series eBook Boxed Set Page 69