The Walk

by Richard Paul Evans

  I looked down for a while. “I know you’re right. But I don’t know if I can live without her. A part of me died with her.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, rubbing my shin. After a moment she said, “You know, she’s not really gone. She’s still a part of you. What part of you is your choice. She can be a spring of gratitude and joy, or she can be a fountain of bitterness and pain. It is entirely up to you.”

  The thought had never occurred to me that I was making McKale into something bad.

  “You have to decide to look through the pain.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Leah taught me that the greatest secret of life is that we find exactly what we’re looking for. In spite of what happens to us, ultimately we decide whether our lives are good or bad, ugly or beautiful.”

  I thought this over.

  “Leah told me this story. Some newspaper did an experiment. I don’t remember what city it was in, but they had a man with a violin go down into the subway and play music. It was rush hour, and thousands of people passed him while he played.

  “A few people threw him money, but other than that, no one paid any attention. When he finished he just walked away.

  “What no one knew was that the musician was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest violinists in the world. He had just played a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall at $100 a ticket. The piece he was playing was one of the most complex and beautiful pieces ever written, and he was playing it on a $2 million Stradivarius.” She smiled at me. “I love that story,” she said. “Because it sums up Leah’s life. She would have stopped to listen.

  “The night before I left for college Leah said to me, ‘Ally, some people in this world have stopped looking for beauty, then wonder why their lives are so ugly. Don’t be like them. The ability to appreciate beauty is of God. Especially in one another. Look for beauty in everyone you meet, and you’ll find it. Everyone carries divinity within them. And everyone we meet has something to impart.’”

  I thought of Will, the homeless man at the Jack in the Box.

  “Do you still see much of Leah?” I asked.

  “No. She passed away during my junior year in college.” Ally’s eyes welled up with tears. “She died of cancer. But I was fortunate to be with her before she passed.”

  She put her head down for a moment. She wiped her eyes, then looked up at me. “The night before she died I sat next to her in bed. She reached up and ran her hand across my cheek, then said to me, ‘When you were brought into detention all the court could see was a troubled young lady. But I knew you were special the moment I laid eyes on you. I was right, wasn’t I? Never forget, Ally, God puts people in our lives for a reason. Only through helping others can we save ourselves.’”

  I nodded slowly. “That’s why you asked if I was okay.”

  “I had this feeling that you were one of those people I was supposed to meet.”

  “I’m glad you did,” I said.

  She affectionately squeezed my foot. “I better let you get to bed.”

  My head was still swimming with her words. I didn’t want her to go. “Do you work tomorrow?” I asked.

  “No. It’s my day off, and I promised a friend I’d help her paint her living room.”

  I stood, took her hand, and lifted her up. We walked to the door. For a moment, we just looked at each other. “Thank you,” I said. “For the foot rub, the food, the food for thought . . .”

  “I hope it helped.” She leaned in and hugged me. When we parted, she said, “Will you let me know when you make it to Key West?”

  “Yes. How will I find you?”

  “I’m on Facebook. Allyson Lynette Walker.”

  “Your last name is Walker?”

  She smiled. “Yes. It should be yours.”

  I laughed. “I promise. I’ll send you some sand.”

  “I’d like that.” She stepped outside.

  “Ally,” I said.

  She turned back.

  “Thank you.”

  She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Have a good walk.” Then she turned and walked away.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-eight

  We truly do not know what’s in a book until it is opened.

  Alan Christoffersen’s diary

  The next morning I just lay in bed thinking. For the first time in days, I wasn’t overcome by grief. Something inside me felt different. Profoundly different. I suppose I felt hope. Or maybe I felt some part of McKale again—the real McKale and not the despairing phantom I’d made of her.

  I got up, showered, then walked around the bungalow, gathering up things. My clothes were dry, except for two pairs of my thickest socks, which I rolled up and packed along with everything else.

  I locked up the bungalow and walked over to the diner, hoping Ally might somehow be there. She wasn’t. Her replacement wore a name tag that said, PEGGY SUE. I didn’t ask her her real name.

  I returned the key to the bungalow, then ordered a stack of banana pancakes with a 59er Scramble—a scrambled egg with ham, onion, tomato, and green pepper, topped with cheddar cheese and sour cream.

  By eight-thirty, I was walking again. The road was still mostly downhill and followed the Wenatchee River, which was moving in the same direction I was walking and not much faster.

  I walked all day and only stopped for a few minutes for lunch—a banana, an apple, and a couple of muffins I had bought at the diner. It was all the food I had. Peggy-Sue, the waitress, had told me there was a grocery store at Leavenworth, where I planned to stock up on supplies.

  Leavenworth was exactly the way Ally had described it. The town looked as if it had been plucked from the Alps and dropped in the center of Chelan County.

  The main street was lined with old-world, European street poles with decorative holiday snowflakes hanging from them. There were at least a dozen hotels and inns. I chose the one that looked the least expensive: Der

  Ritterhof Motor Inn.

  Being in the town made me hungry for German food, and I found a suitable restaurant. I ordered a full fare: Wiener schnitzel, Leberkäse, rotkraut, and spätzle with Jäger sauce.

  I remembered the one time I took McKale to a German restaurant. She was as out of place as a diabetic in a chocolate factory. She asked me if they had anything besides over-sized, fancy hot dogs. I ended up taking her to a McDonald’s afterwards to get something to eat.

  The memory made me laugh. I realized that it was the first time that thinking about McKale didn’t make my stomach hurt. I left it up to the food to do that.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-nine

  I spent the night in Leavenworth—a mock Bavarian township in Washington. I had a big meal of German food, which, I suppose, will travel with me for the next fortnight. The Germans have a saying: “A good meal is worth hanging for.” I’m sure this food will be hanging around for some time.

  Alan Christoffersen’s diary

  I got up shortly after dawn. I showered and dressed, then walked across the street to the Bistro Espresso, where I ordered a light breakfast of coffee and a cheese Danish. I think I was still digesting the meal from the night before.

  I finished eating, then I walked down to a bank. I put my card in the ATM and pushed the button to check my balance. There was $28,797. When I left Bellevue, there had been less than a thousand dollars in the account. Falene had been busy. I love that woman, I thought.

  I went back to my room, packed up my things, then checked out. I walked three blocks to the Food Lion, where I stocked up on everything I needed (including a box of Hostess Ding Dongs), then hit the road.

  In less than an hour, I passed through Ally’s town of Peshastin. I had found myself replaying our conversation all morning. Somehow it just felt good knowing she was somewhere near.

  Two hours later, I reached the town of Cashmere. There were orchards everywhere, though the trees were barren in the winter landscape. There were big fans in the fields and silver streamers tied to all the
tree branches.

  There was a warehouse with the Tree Top apple juice logo painted on its side. I had once tried to pitch their account. I couldn’t remember why we hadn’t gotten it.

  Everywhere I looked there were signs for fruit—apples, apricots, cherries, and pears—and I passed by at least a dozen empty roadside fruit stands. The place was a ghost town in off-season.

  At the edge of town, I sat down on a patch of straw-colored grass to stretch and eat my lunch—two foil-wrapped burritos I had bought at the Food Lion’s deli.

  I marveled at how completely the landscape had changed from the days before. It was now wide open and flat: a sharp contrast to the dense forests and sloping terrain that had encompassed every step of the last week. Walking on a flat road is much easier than climbing a mountain, but all things considered, I’d take the mountains. I liked the security and tranquility of the forest.

  Just outside Wenatchee, I stopped and ate a simple dinner of French bread and peanut butter, which I spread with my Swiss Army pocket knife. The town center was far enough from the highway that I didn’t stop. I was growing more eager to make it to Spokane. That night I slept in an apple orchard under the stars.

  CHAPTER

  Thirty

  Long walk today, mostly orchards. The landscape has changed entirely. This land is flat, as if nature took a rolling pin to the earth.

  I stopped to help a woman with car troubles.

  Alan Christoffersen’s diary

  Rain started falling in the night, and around three in the morning, I got up and built my tent, something I was getting proficient at. When I woke at dawn, the drizzle had stopped, but the ground was wet, and by the time I was out of the orchard, my shoes were caked with several inches of mud. I did my best to kick and scrape it off, then resumed my walk.

  In Orondo City, the road split, and I turned east toward Waterville and Spokane. I was in the buckle of Washington’s fruit belt. More than the landscape had changed. The culture had as well. I noticed that most of the store signs were in Spanish.

  I ate a sausage and egg biscuit at a gas station near the fork between Waterville and Orondo City, and I was the only one in the building who wasn’t speaking Spanish.

  A few miles later, the landscape grew more mountainous, and for much of the walk there was a wide gorge to my right with only a narrow walkway. The highway was dark and wet, and I was sprayed by nearly every car that passed. The road climbed again—almost as steeply as it had at the pass—and I could tell that I was much stronger than when I started my walk, as my pace barely slowed.

  Two hours into the day, it began to rain again. I stopped and put on my poncho and kept walking.

  On one of the tighter mountain curves, there was a car pulled over to the side next to the safety rail. Its trunk was open, and its caution lights were flashing. Bad place to break down, I thought. As I approached, I saw that the car, a silver-gray Malibu, was lifted up on a jack, and there were two tires lying flat on the ground, the flat tire and a

  spare.

  I walked up to the driver’s window. Inside the car was a lone woman. She was about my age or a little older, in her mid-thirties. She had blond hair that fell to her shoulders. She was holding her cell phone. A pine air freshener and a crucifix hung from her rearview mirror next to a picture of a little boy.

  Her door was locked, and the window was rolled up. I rapped on her window, and it startled her. She looked up at me fearfully.

  “Do you need help?” I asked.

  She cracked her window a few inches.

  “What?”

  “Do you need any help?”

  “No,” she said anxiously, “my husband went to town to get help. He should be right back.”

  “Okay.”

  I’m not sure why I glanced at her left hand, but I noticed that there was no wedding ring. I considered moving on, but I was never one to leave a woman in distress, especially alone on such a dangerous stretch. I glanced back at her flat tire. “Listen, you’re not safe here. It looks like you have a spare. If it’s just a flat, I can change it.”

  She hesitated, caught between her deceit and desperation. Finally she said, “I lost the . . . things.”

  I didn’t understand. “What things?”

  “The metal things. The bolts.”

  I looked again at the wheel, then saw what she was talking about. There were no lug nuts. “What happened to them?”

  “I got them off, but . . .”

  She had taken them off.

  “. . . they rolled down the hill.”

  The side of the road sloped steeply down several hundred feet. Those babies were gone.

  “How did that happen?”

  “I’m just clumsy.”

  No lug nuts. Probably no cell phone reception. She was probably just waiting for a highway patrolman to come along, which considering where we were, could be a very long wait. “Do you mind if I put it on for you?”

  She looked at me quizzically. “There’s nothing to put it on with.”

  “We can borrow them,” I said.

  She was still vexed but relented. “I guess.”

  “Is your parking brake on?”

  “Yes.”

  “. . . and you’re in park?”

  “Yes.”

  I set down my pack. I took her tire iron and pulled a lug nut from each of the other wheels, then mounted the spare with the three nuts and tightened them. It would be enough to get her to wherever she was going. I let the car down from the jack, then put the flat tire, wrench, and jack in the trunk and slammed it down. I walked back to her window.

  “You’re good now. I took a nut from each of the other wheels. Just take it into a garage when you get home.”

  For the first time I saw her smile. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.” I lifted my pack, swinging it over one shoulder, then the other. “Have a good day.”

  “Wait, can I pay you?”

  “No. Take care.” I adjusted my hat, then walked on. The woman waited for an oncoming car to pass, then I heard the gravel spit from her tires as she pulled out onto the road. She drove slowly past me then pulled off the road fifty yards ahead where there was a small turnoff. When I reached her car, she had rolled down the window.

  “Can I at least give you a ride? There’s nothing on this road for miles. And it’s raining. You’re going to get wet.”

  “I’m used to getting wet,” I said. “Thank you, but I’m fine. Just happy to help.” I sounded as magnanimous as Superman (Just doing my job, ma’am), which, frankly, kind of bothered me. Einstein said, “I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.” I agree.

  The woman looked flustered by her inability to help me. She reached into her purse and pulled out a business card and handed it to me. “Here, if you need anything, just call. That’s my cell phone number.”

  I took the card without looking at it and slid it into my front trouser pocket. “Thanks.”

  “No, thank you. Have a good day.”

  “You too.”

  I waited for her to drive off in a shower of road water, then started walking again. I watched her car disappear around a bend. I wondered how long she’d been stranded there and what would have happened to her had I not come along.

  The rain had stopped and the sun was high when I reached the small town of Waterville. The highway ran through the middle of town, and the local coffee shop was appropriately called Highway 2 Brew. I stopped for a tall coffee, a cranberry-orange muffin, and a chocolate-dipped biscotti. I sat on the concrete pad outside the coffee shop to study my map.

  It looked like I would be walking through barren wilderness for the next few days—the kind of terrain you speed through in a car with your stereo turned up. I was eager to get through it.

  The Waterville homes lined the highway, and it was the first time since I left Bellevue that I had walked through suburb, even a small one like this.

  I thought Waterville was a peculiar name for a town that loo
ked like Death Valley compared to what I had just walked through. At first, I guessed that the name was really just a marketing ploy like, say, Greenland—which, incidentally, is about as green as an ice cube and a whole lot colder. Then I remembered what I had learned earlier about town naming and decided that a Mr. Waterville either owned the bank or everyone’s mortgages.

  I wondered what people in a small town like this did for entertainment until I saw Randy’s Ice Cream Parlor and Putt Putt Golf Course. I’m betting that the average citizen of Waterville could putt like Jack Nicklaus.

  After another twenty miles, I reached Douglas. There were no services on the road, so I walked a hundred or so yards off the highway and pitched my tent. It was cold as the sunset, just a little above freezing. I wanted to make a fire, but there was nothing to burn.

  For the first time on my journey, I took out my portable stove and fired it up. I opened the can of SpaghettiOs I had purchased in Leavenworth, tore off its wrapper, then set the can on the blue propane flame until it started to boil. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to buy utensils. I tore off a piece of French bread and used it to scoop up the spaghetti. For dessert I ate a Ding Dong. I rolled its foil wrapping into a ball and threw it at a rabbit that was watching from the outskirts of my camp. I missed.

  For the first time that week, the stars were visible. For me, it was one of those times we all have when we look up at the night sky and feel remarkably insignificant. That was a hopeful thing. Maybe God had more on His plate than ruining my life. I climbed inside my tent and went to sleep.