by Kris Radish
No one is stunned by this confession or by the tears or by Susan's unborn baby. Among themselves they have seen and heard and felt so much and now they are tired, so damned tired. It is the tiredness that somehow gives them strength.
“Of course,” Chris adds, not as an afterthought but as part of her confession. “I've never been much of a friend myself, it was always too frightening for me. So I didn't quite know how to do it until I met all of you.”
There is nothing else to say then as the women bend to touch Chris as a silent way of thanking her. Susan moves out of her arms and without realizing it at first, all eight of the women—wearing glasses and stretch pants, old tennis shoes, loafers, mostly jeans and socks that are too thin at the heel and toe, find they are sitting in a perfect circle.
Everyone is anxious, ready, pensive about what will come next. They feel it coming but for minutes they can't move, and then Alice—of all people—starts them out. Alice who has a hole in her heart the size of Miami is the one to bring them up and out of their woman circle one at a time, reaching first for one hand and then the next, then pulling with such a fierceness it's a wonder her back doesn't go out. Even in this extraordinary moment she is still Alice—kind, gentle and firm all the way.
“We'll go,” she said. “I think we'll all go. Enough with all of this suffering and sacrifice and waiting for something to change. Just enough is what I say.”
Alice pauses to shift her thoughts back toward the direction they usually travel. It's a worn path of practical things like coats and warm soup and keeping your head covered in the wind, but even Alice feels a change in that wind. She shudders with pure excitement as she adds what she hopes will be the last perfect thing she ever utters. “It won't be cold even if we stay out at night because I've been watching the weather, and it's not supposed to get below fifty at night. Let's try and do the best we can for clothing with whatever Susan has around here.”
No one has exactly said what is going to happen next or what they are about to do, and that is the wild beauty of all the sudden movements, of the giggling, of the not-at-all-frightened looks the women exchange.
There is a quick raid of socks and only one shoe exchange because Susan is so small that no one but Susan can wear any of her shoes, although Sandy puts on a pair of John's hiking boots. She can't bring herself to leave them on for more than a few seconds because the thought of anything that is his makes her want to vomit. “We should throw these right out the window,” she says, flinging the boots down the basement steps. They bounce into the side of the dryer and leave a two-inch dent.
Alice makes everyone take a coat or a sweater. When they are ready, they huddle by the door waiting for the right moment to push it open and walk out into the night.
“What an unlikely marvelous mix of womanhood,” Susan shouts as she kicks open her own front door with her size-four feet, forgetting about the baby and John and her throbbing hand. She screams, “Let's walk!”
In the darkest part of the night, just after midnight, the women crush the dewy grass without hesitation, heading north down a highway that is as black as hell, but as inviting as anything they have ever seen.
Associated Press, April 26, 2002
—For immediate release.
Wilkins County, Wisconsin
WOMEN WALKERS SHAKE UP LOCALS
Police report that a group of eight women are walking through this remote county on a “pilgrimage” and refuse to talk to authorities or to relatives who have tried to stop them.
“It's the craziest thing I have ever seen,” said Sheriff Barnes Holden. “They are out there just walking and they won't talk to anyone.”
Holden said he received numerous calls from people who have passed the women in the middle of the night and wonder if there is something wrong.
“Apparently they are on some kind of pilgrimage, and they won't talk to anyone but each other until they are finished,” said Holden. “I tried to stop them but there's no law against walking down the side of the road if you want to.”
He said he met early this morning with a husband of one of the women, who said he thinks a study group the women have been attending may have gotten out of hand.
“The husband told me these women have been meeting for several years every Thursday night. He thinks they just got carried away and started walking and praying,” said Holden.
Jeanette Sponder, 68, who lives near Granton, where the women have been meeting, said county residents who have heard about the women walkers have been leaving food and water for them along the highway.
“Obviously this is something important to them,” said Sponder, who said she knows all of the women. “If they are smart, they'll keep walking and get the heck out of this county.”
Paul Ridby, of Granton, said his wife, Janice, is one of the walkers and he has no idea what is going on.
“I thought these meetings were just some excuse for the women to get together and eat and gossip,” he said. “I suppose they will just stop when they get tired, but I hope it's soon because I'm kind of lost here.”
The women are now heading south on Wittenberg Road and refuse to talk with anyone.
—30—
The Elegant Gathering: Walking Women
Suddenly, the women popped into Walter Schmidt's headlights a good two miles east of the Timberline Bar and Grill out on Highway K, where he had spent the past four hours drinking tap beer, eating pickled eggs, and playing Michigan rummy with his pals, Poker and Hal. “What the hell,” shouted Walter as he slammed his truck to a halt and shook his head to make certain he was not hallucinating.
Walter had the window open for a number of reasons. First of all, it was late spring and one of those clear, soft, warm nights that brings all the scents, sounds, and sights of a season alive inside of a person. Second, he was as drunk as a skunk, and being eighty-two years old, he needed all the extra air he could inhale to get himself and his '87 Chevy shortbed back to the safety of his dilapidated garage.
This was not the first time Walter had driven home from the Timberline Bar and Grill with his head hanging out the window. When his wife, Gracie, died fifteen years ago, Walter had started going on a regular basis—regular meaning every night of the week, every week of the year.
During those long drives home, Walter had swerved to hit countless deer, run over at least eight good-sized raccoons and ground squirrels, crashed his truck into every ditch on both sides of the road, and crushed about a billion moths, flies, and night bugs on his front grille. More than once, he simply pulled over, threw his jacket over his shoulders and slept until the morning-shift dairy herder stopped to wake him before the cops drove by.
In all those years, Walter had never once seen a line of women walking slowly up the side of the road. Flabbergasted, he still wasn't certain he was sober enough to actually know if he wasn't making the whole damn thing up.
He watched as the women halted for a moment to look into the cab. Walter was immediately struck by the peaceful looks on their faces. He ran his eyes up and down the line, and searched their eyes for something, anything, that might give him a clue as to why they were walking on this remote country road in the middle of the night. All he saw were soft smiling eyes.
He didn't know what to say, which was a miracle in itself. Walter spent his nights at the bar because he was afraid of silence. He was afraid of the empty rooms in his one hundred-year-old farmhouse, afraid of the empty bed, of the long fields that rolled out from each side of his house. The few hours each day that Walter did manage to stay inside were filled with his constant whistling, the endless drone of the television, and his gnarly fingers tapping on chairs, counters and tables. He missed Gracie so much that the sight of all the women walking, apparently happy, was overwhelming. He began to cry.
One of the women walked over to his truck and asked him the question he knew he should have asked them.
“Sir, are you okay?”
Walter reached across the steering wheel wi
th his trembling hand and touched the arm she had placed across the edge of his window. She had dark eyes and lines that stretched out from the edges of her mouth and didn't disappear until they turned the corner at her jawline. It was all he could do to keep himself inside the truck. He wanted to get out and stand in the road and have this woman put her arms around him. He wanted to cry and cry on her shoulder, and then have her drive him home and sit by the bed while he slept off his stupor. He wanted to wake up and hear her singing in the kitchen, just like Gracie had sung every morning as she fried bacon and scrambled the hell out of his ritual three eggs.
When Joanne saw that he was crying, she reached up and wiped the tears from his eyes. Walter closed his eyes when her fingers touched him. Joanne's touch left a warm path down the side of his face, and he put his hand right where hers had been and looked into her eyes.
“What are you all doing out here?” he asked. “Where are you going?”
“We are just walking,” she said simply, as if this was something they did every day. “Just walking.”
Walter didn't think her remark strange. He could see they were walking, but he wondered where in the hell they were going.
“Do you need anything?” he asked.
“You could say a prayer for us,” she told him, stepping away from the truck.
Walter didn't want her to leave, so he quickly formulated another question. “Do you want to stay at my place tonight?” he asked. “I've got plenty of rooms and the house is empty, except for me.”
“That's kind, but we can't stop. Not just yet. We have to keep going.”
“All right then,” he said, nodding, wishing he were young enough to snatch this one away and transform her into Gracie. “You be careful and stay off to the side, especially toward morning when the milk trucks spin by here.”
Joanne was back in line by then and Walter watched them all move away. He lurched his truck forward and drove down the highway, watching them in his rearview mirror get smaller and smaller until they disappeared from view and the highway was empty except for him and the endless night.
Four miles down the road, he turned in to his long driveway and thought about stopping and waiting for them to come by so he could see them again. Then he thought about rushing in to make coffee and getting out some bread for sandwiches. Instead he pulled ahead, parked the truck in the garage, and walked into his empty house.
Walter had left the television set on, he always left the television set on. He had blown out three expensive sets since Gracie died because these new sets weren't made to be left on twenty-four hours a day. On entering the house, without even thinking about it, Walter went into his cluttered living room and turned off the television set. Then he went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, splashed some water on his face, and proceeded to the bedroom.
After he opened the window facing the highway, Walter took off his pants and socks and shirt and shoes and crawled into bed. Then he turned to face the window and waited to see if he could hear their footsteps on the highway.
He fell asleep in about five seconds so he never heard the footsteps. But in those brief moments before he began dreaming he did hear something rustling in the tree below the window and then a plane flew over. He heard the house crack and sway when a single gust of wind blew out of the woods.
Wilkins County News, January 6, 1948
OBITUARY
The three-day-old baby daughter of Alice and Chester Jessup was taken back to Jesus on Jan. 5. Annie Marie Jessup was born January 2, at County General Hospital. Baby Annie died in the arms of her mother. The little girl was born with a hole in her heart and doctors were unable to save her.
Survivors include her parents, of rural Granton; one brother, Richard, two years old; grandparents Bruno and Lucille Jessup and Frances and Frank Hildenbrand, all of Wilkins County. Numerous aunts, uncles and cousins also survive.
Funeral services will be held January 7 at 10 a.m. at St. Mary's Catholic Church, 359 Sawville Road, Granton. There will be no visitation and the burial will be private. Friends who can help are asked to donate money to the parents.
—30—
The Elegant Gathering: Alice
With each footstep, I think of my baby. She would be a grown woman now, and as we pull up out of the spot here where the cars like to spin around and the gravel hits my ankles, that makes me think of her. She would be like me—with thin legs and hips that never moved back after those babies—and hair that was gray long before the age of thirty. But I hope she would never have experienced this burden of sorrow and this missing inside of her that has eaten a hole right through my heart. Fifty years grown she would be, and there has not been a minute that has passed all these years when I have not thought of her.
My name is Alice Marie Jessup, and I am walking for my baby. The baby who died in my arms when I was only a child myself. The burden of this loss I have kept nestled inside of me year after year without telling anyone about it, without letting on to Chester that he might just as well have shot me in the head the night she died because without that baby girl my life has been a life of sorrow. Only when I met these women and I could sense that they had sorrows and burdens to share did I tell them about Annie, my beautiful Annie. Only when I told them week after week and year after year until finally this walk, did I feel my heart lift and know that my baby was truly in the arms of Jesus.
I can remember every single thing about the day my baby died, and about the night she was conceived and about the hell my heart has entered into.
Chester for sure did not want this baby girl, and that is what hardened my heart against him since I knew Annie came into me straight from heaven. Chester worried about food and money and if the plant would lay him off, which it did over and over again. We had just had our son the year before when I was only nineteen, not caring about food and clothes, only about the touch of those little hands on my face.
When Annie came into me, it was as if a light went on behind my eyes and I saw her face and I knew that she was my beautiful baby girl. But Chester stomped and raged and said he knew a doctor down in the city. I swear to God I could have killed him right then when he suggested such a sick and terrible thing. I have held back that anger until this walking time, I have held back my anger and hate and my sorrow and every mean thought that came and went all these long, hard, horrible years.
For Chester did this to me the night he came home from the Lakewoods Bar smelling like smoke and bourbon and pushing me first against the side of the hard wall and then on the cold floor without consideration of what that felt like. He was drunk, and in a million years could never remember the single act that took away my heart.
We were poor with the war ending and no jobs and the economy zigzagging up and down, and neither of us had more than a country high school diploma. Chester with his bad leg from his uncle's combine was the boy who never went to war and stayed home to wonder what his life could have been like if he had.
Oh, I loved Chester then. He had sad eyes and a way that was soft and made me want to hold him to my breast and tell him that there are many ways to be a man. When we married, it was no different than for anyone else, I suppose. A simple street dress for me, a borrowed suit for him, and nothing after that but the groping in the Manchester Hotel for one night before we started this long life that has brought me to this road.
Richard came along so fast, it was as if he moved from my loins before I could sit down. He was a fine boy, serious though, and I remember that one time when he put his hand on my belly to feel his sister growing inside. A smile crossed his face that was as bright as the sky and he said, “Baby, Mommie, baby.”
Things were so much simpler then. I wanted babies, that's all, just babies. When my girlfriends Gloria and Pat went to secretarial school, I never thought once about doing that. I wanted a house filled with diapers and toys on the steps and a clothesline that stretched across the yard and was never empty. Now people might say that was bad, but in my heart, all alon
g there was never room for anything else but all the babies I never had. All those little fingers that never touched my eyes to see if they would blink.
My mother tried so hard to let me know that it was okay to grieve the loss of a beautiful daughter. Three times this had happened to her. Three dead babies had slipped from her insides into a blanket, and then they were burned out on the woodpile by my daddy, who stood in the smoke and cried. There was no hospital then, only Grandma Jansky, who would come and try to pull the dead babies from a womb that was as hard as a rock.
I never knew something was wrong. That is what I think of as we walk past the spring corn that is just shooting up. All I felt was Annie's heart beating so close to mine and this wonderful feeling of having a baby inside of me. The days passed, and we always managed to eat and we had shoes and Chester went back to work for a time and I would say, “See, now, we are all fine, Chester, just fine.”
I had my Richard then, too. His weight on my hips as I hauled him back and forth from the garden to the house and out to the line was never a burden for me, even though he was such a big boy. He loved to pretend to be a bucking pony, have me bounce him on my hip, then he'd gallop away and back, for another bounce under the pines by the edge of the house.
I remember the sky toward the end of that winter. We didn't have much snow that year, and when it finally came down as if a dam had burst, Richard and I went out right away to try to catch the snowflakes. Once when the temperature dipped below zero for days, we went out anyway. Richard pulled on a long sheet that was frozen solid on the line and part of it cracked off in his hand. I always kept that side of the sheet where I slept after that and when my legs would get cold because of that missing piece, I could remember the sky and Richard's startled face when he came to me with the sheet, white and solid in his hand.