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.”
I mopped my sweat-stained seat with a spare shirt. The gods of the Natchez Trace were legendary for extremes. They didn’t spare me. My first days, I walked through pellets of sleet. Temperatures approached ninety degrees on my next-to-last fifteen mile day. Warmth helped with stiff joints and sore muscles. I stooped to take a picture at milepost 400 and almost levitated. When my parents found me at milepost 410, my only care was the joy that buzzed through my core. In spite of obstacles and crippling pain, I was almost to Nashville.
Creekview Farm, our last stop, was an outfitted house. After weeks of sharing bedrooms and cramming our stuff into small suites, we spread out in our own spaces, prepared dinner in a pristine kitchen and rocked on a screened porch. I walked across the threshold and found a home.
While I experienced rapture, Dad dawdled at the foot of the stairs. He banged his fist against solid oak. “I can’t believe I got more stairs. Can’t I take this room down here?” He shuffled into the ground floor master bedroom.
“No. Kristen and Cooper have that room tonight, and somebody else reserved it tomorrow.”
Cooper was my two-year-old guideson. His parents asked me to play the role of guidemother before he was born. A guidemother harbored no religious component. Instead, Kristen wanted me to teach her child to embrace experiences, to be curious, to make choices that would enrich his life.
He was born in the Hudson River Valley, and he sent his mother into labor on my wedding anniversary. Given the circuitous flight patterns between my home and his, I almost never saw him. Online, he transformed from newborn troll to cherub.
His parents asked me to make him curious about the world. I wanted them to know they chose the best person to fill their son with wonder.
Maybe Kristen believed I was capable of being Cooper’s guidemother because I always cheered her dreams. We met when we were cast in the same play. Kristen was years younger, but we forged a friendship that survived her New York relocation. Even though I knew the long odds of winning theatrical parts, I told her not to give up, to go after what she wanted.
And, in the cast of a psychedelic Richard Foreman show, she met a man. And she married him. Her choice had nothing to do with me, but when she first told me about him, I exclaimed, “Forget everyone else. This is the man you should be with.” He worshipped her, nourished her tender spirit and fought for her.
Because of our connection, Kristen wanted Cooper to walk a portion of the Natchez Trace with me. As soon as she messaged me with their schedule, I whiplashed between elation and panic. A curious toddler weaving alongside a federal highway? Without a guard rail or any protection from oncoming vehicles? I imagined tabloid stories and winced:
- Guidemother Jailed In Child Endangerment Case. Should She Be Stoned? -
While I waited for Kristen and Cooper, I relived my journey. Twelve different bedrooms in a month. Twelve sets of strangers befriended. Twelve kinds of hospitality. Even twelve brands of toilet paper.
Twelve times twelve times twelve times…….the math leaked into every part of me. I collapsed on the quilted bed, spent by the arithmetic of change. I couldn’t imagine what I’d done to Dad. He flipped through TV channels, alternating static and random shows. “Thanks for sticking it out on this adventure, Dad,” I whispered. “For helping me understand me. And you. And Meriwether Lewis.”
Dad’s voice careened up the stairs. “Andra! I done sold that Mr. Fly a book earlier today, and you got to go sign it.”
“Dad—” I charged to the landing, my stained overshirt in one hand.
“Now, don’t you go getting undressed. I’m taking you back down there right now, and you’re gonna sign his book.”
“But Dad, I’m exhausted, and—”
He held up a hand. “I don’t wanna hear it. You’re looking at exhausted.” He tapped his own chest. “Right here. Now come on.”
I marched downstairs like I was thirteen. Outside, I flung myself into the passenger seat. “I don’t understand why we have to do this now.”
“Because. I promised him we would. Now just be quiet, Andra. You got to buck up.” He steered the car through the narrow gate. “You won’t get to be a famous author by disappointing people. By being too lazy to sign their books. You got to make time for people, even when you don’t feel like it. When you’re famous, and you’re gonna be famous, I don’t want no one saying your old daddy didn’t teach you how to treat people.”
“I’m not going to be famous, Dad. And besides, people don’t care about autographs anymore.”
“It’s not about that. You got to treat people like they matter. Like they’re the only thing in your world. You do that, and you’ll sell books, because people’ll remember how you treat ’em. Just like they can’t forget me.”
“Dad, I—”
But he shifted to something else. “Have I told you that story about when I was a Bible salesman and came on that farmer in south Georgia?”
I patted his arm. “Why don’t you tell it again, Dad?”
PERSONAL JESUS
Depeche Mode
I was good at selling books, ’cause I didn’t take no for an answer. Them Southwestern folks in Nashville taught us that. For three summers in college, I used their training to sell Bibles and other books door-to-door.
At my best, I never beat the lead guy. A stutterer, he was. He knocked on a door, and when the person said they wouldn’t buy a Bible, he said, “M-m-m-m-m-mind if I r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-ead it to y-y-y-y-y-y-you?”
Most people bought something to get rid of him. I learned a lot from his technique.
Take the time I was in South Georgia.
It was a hundred and ten degrees in the shade, and I was driving around the countryside, trying to find a customer. I pulled up next to this farmer with a bunch of mules, and I got out and walked into his dusty field.
He wasn’t happy to see me. Before I could even ask him to buy the Good Book, he let loose with a stream of profanity. Cussed me up one side and down the other, and told me where I could stick my Bible.
I tried to get a word in edgewise, but he wasn’t having none of it. Kept cussing
me ’til I was in my car.
Well, let me tell you, I was down on my quota for the week, and I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I saw one final house set off the road, and I pulled up in there, thinking I might find somebody home.
A gray-headed woman answered the door, surrounded by I-don’t-know-how-many kids. Husband wasn’t there, she said, but she listened while I gave her my sales speech and showed her my best family Bible. When I was done, she smiled. “Wait right here.”
She came back with fifty dollars, my sales requirement for the whole week. “I’ll take whatever this’ll buy.”
People say it takes a miracle to sell books. That may be true. But I know my daughter’s got miracles on her side, ’cause I done seen a few.
LOVE WALKS IN
Van Halen
“Don’t pinch him, Dad. Why do you always pinch?”
Cooper squirmed away from Dad and ran toward the bedroom, his distended diaper smacking chubby legs.
“Why don’t we get that nasty diaper off you, Coop.” Everything squished when he plopped on the hardwood floor, and I exercised a guidemother’s prerogative. “Okay. Your mother can do it.”
I left him picking his diaper’s foul edges and found Mom in the kitchen, scrubbing the counter. Dad slept in front of the television. Volume vibrated my eyeballs.
Cooper steamrolled between us in a fresh outfit spangled with trains. High octane rocket fuel and layers of skin. I ran my fingers through finespun blonde hair as he funnel-clouded toward Dad. Energy magnified the chasm between Life’s beginning and end. I hugged Mom. “I don’t want to lose you and Dad. I mean, I know that’s silly, because it’s inevitable, and I get that, but—”
Not Without My Father: One Woman's 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace Page 16