Not Without My Father: One Woman's 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace (12 page)

It was our last night alone before my mother arrived.

I surveyed my sloped room under the eaves and limped toward the bed, but I misjudged the angle of the ceiling and banged my head. A rough knot met my fingers along my hairline. What the hell was I thinking? In two weeks, we sold thirty books. I had a grand total of one event booked. A lone newspaper interview. In the history of marketing, it was the worst campaign ever launched.

“But the bed is comfortable,” I mumbled as sank into the mattress. I covered my ears with a pillow to mask the blaring media speculation from the television downstairs, yet another sensational update on the missing Malaysian airliner. “God, I hope they find those people.”

I couldn’t remember closing my eyes.

Did I dream Dad’s pronouncement? “I think when Linda comes, I’m gonna go home. Yep. That’s what I’m gonna do.”

I sat up on the bed and cringed. The window was a black square, a dusting of stars in one corner.

I shifted sore feet to the floor and forced them to carry my weight. I walked like C3PO, the droid from Star Wars. Five daily hours of walking transformed me into a robot.

As I felt my way toward the door, Dad’s words drifted up the stairs.

“Yep. Think I’m gonna leave Linda to deal with this.”

I pushed myself through the door and crashed downstairs. “What did you say?” I planted my body in front of the television and shouted over the reverberation. Dad shrunk in his cushioned chair and wouldn’t look at me. Instead, he picked at the plaid fabric and mumbled. I stepped over his feet and sprayed sleep breath in his face. “Would you really leave me?”

I made my peace with the trek that afternoon, survived a brush with a speeding car, even thwarted an argument. Why did he always push me harder? Remind me not to be a failure? And reiterate that no matter how much broken glass I crunched with bloody feet, it would never, ever be enough to please him?

“Don’t leave me now, Dad. Doing this with you, right now, at this moment in our lives—it should’ve been my dream all along. I don’t care about this book anymore. I just want to spend time with you. With Mom, when she gets here. Don’t take this experience away from me. From us. Please.”

“But I almost got you killed today, Andra.” His hefty fingers prodded the remote. “I don’t think I’m helping you any.”

I touched the back of his splotched hand. “You got me a sandwich earlier, right? ‘Best one on the Trace,’ somebody said. And don’t forget the pie. And all the books you’re selling. How many is it now?”

“Most ever in one day, just today. Think I sold close to ten.” He sat taller.

“There. See? I need you, Dad. And, more than that, I want to do this with you. Even when it’s hard.”

“But you’re so much tougher than me, Andra.” He shifted and tried to look around me. “I don’t know how you do this, day after day after day.”

“How do we do life day after day after day, Dad?”

“One step at a time, I reckon.”

“That’s right. And that’s how we’ll finish this trip: one glorious step at a time……….or, we’ll kill each other.”

Dad laughed with me. “Yeah. Probably kill each other. I guess we’ll see.”

“So you’ll stay?”

“Let Linda get here. I’ll decide in the morning. I got to get some sleep.” He clicked the remote and shuffled to the stairs. At the bannister, he stopped. “Think they’ll find those people? On that plane?”

“I hope so, Dad.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

WALK ON BY

Dionne Warwick

I wanted to go home because I was afraid.

There.

I said it.

I was afraid of what Linda’s coming would do to my time with Andra. How I’d be outside their shorthand. Ringmaster for their arguments.

For almost ten years, I told Linda, “Andra’s an adult, and you need to let her live her life. It’s her knitting, the choices she makes.”

But Linda, that woman is the stubbornest human being I ever laid eyes on. I don’t even recall when it started, but she kept at Andra. Questioning her. Telling her what to do, and her a grown woman with a life of her own. Being betwixt them two was like standing in the worst part of a hurricane.

Something shifted, though. About the time Linda read Andra’s book.

I found her in Andra’s old bedroom. Crying and clutching that story.

“Is it that bad?” I asked her. ’Cause I ain’t read the thing. I don’t need to read a book to sell it.

She never answered me, but she got up off that bed, and she started calling her sisters, and before I knew it they all read Andra’s book. They spent hours on the phone talking about I-don’t-know-what-all, while I turned down my hearing aids and concentrated on the ballgame.

And she and Andra wasn’t arguing so much anymore. Lots of stuff gets past me, but I saw a change. They wasn’t so strained and mad all the time.

And that’s why I was afraid, on the eve of my wife’s coming to Mississippi. I had time with Andra, all by myself. I didn’t want to share it, to go back to farting around for the right words to say. I just wanted it to be me, and Andra, and selling them books.

For a little while longer.

Was that too much to ask?

I CAN TELL THAT WE ARE GONNA BE FRIENDS

The White Stripes

My second rest day dawned with Dad banging on my bedroom door at 8am. “We got to go see that Doc Jones. South of Tupelo.”

I settled into Michael. He made the long trek to bring my mother from South Carolina to Mississippi. I tried to ignore Dad and let Michael rub my shoulder. “Maybe if we don’t answer, he’ll go away,” Michael whispered.

“Hey. Hey, Andra!”

I sat up and sighed. “Do you really think he’s gonna let us ignore him?”

The door knob rattled. “Hey! You awake? We got to go see Doc Jones today!”

For ten seconds, I held onto the rest day of my dreams: Snuggling with Michael until check-out; walking outside to find the car loaded and ready; hearing Michael say he didn’t have to leave; driving straight to Bridges Hall Manor, our next stop; soaking in the tub while everyone else unloaded the car; and eating dinner in bed before passing out on my husband’s chest.

Wood popped when Dad leaned his weight into the door, the insistent sound of reality. “We got to go, Andra. Doc Jones is expecting us. I done told him we was coming!”

Michael brushed a wisp of hair from my cheek and held me. “We’ll be out in five minutes, Roy.”

“Huh? I done told Doc—”

“He said five minutes, Dad!”

I clung to Michael to keep my pleas inside. I didn’t think I could walk fifteen miles a day and spend three weeks with my parents. I was the world’s biggest idiot, and I wanted to beg Michael to stay and referee.

Instead, I squeezed my husband and smiled. “I hope Doc Jones has someplace for me to elevate my feet.”

Michael loaded the car while I looked around our bedroom one last time, tried to memorize being with him. For the next three weeks, he would work to pay for my crazy book-launch adventure. No more visits until the end of the Trace.

Twenty-one days. Two hundred and forty-eight miles.

Without my husband, it might as well have been infinity.

When I limped downstairs, I found Mom standing in the cabin’s main room, her spring outfit accentuated with flawless hair and layers of matching jewelry. She strutted over and offered a bejeweled arm. “Do you need help getting to the car? I did extra workouts, you know. At the gym while Roy’s been gone. I’m sure I can help you if you can’t walk.”

“Mom, I have to walk. I’m just stiff at the beginning.” I ignored her outstretched arm and forced my legs to move. “I’ll ride with Michael as far as Starkville.”

“We got to get going! Doc Jones is—”

Michael helped me into his car and shut the door on Dad’s rant. When he slipped next to me, he took my hand. “Whenever he gets like this, just remember what it feels like right now. Here. Holding my hand.”

I didn’t let go of Michael’s hand until he left me. Red taillights swam like he receded underwater. I waved until I couldn’t see him. Dad bumped my back and jolted me from my husband’s side.

“Doc’s a-waiting. We got to go.”

As Mom drove through farmland south of Tupelo, I massaged my calves and longed for the Trace. Sunlight through leaves. The tangy scent of pine sap. Shadows on black water.

I listened to Dad delight Doc Jones with his own Trace stories, but I missed making my own. Five hours of walking was magical, if one saw enchantment in the ordinary. In spite of sore legs and frozen ankles, I was ready to spend five daily hours practicing the life I wanted to live.

In the meantime, Mom and I watched Dad laugh with his old friend, almost three hours without complaint. When I tottered to the car, Dad shook Doc’s hand, and I wondered whether they would ever visit again.

I realized I gave Dad the gift of seeing people who mattered one more time.

We bumped toward Houston, Mississippi, Dad’s voice interrupting my thoughts. “This next place. It have stairs?”

“Maybe Mom can carry you up the stairs, Dad. She offered to carry me to the car this morning.”

Mom flicked her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Do you know that since I started going to the gym, I’ve lifted over a million pounds?”

“See, Dad? She can totally carry you upstairs.”

When we pulled in front Bridges Hall Manor, we were laughing, familial music I never expected. Mom hauled things from the trunk while I circled the rambling Victorian and knocked on the front door. Before the echo died away, a woman who resembled Aunt Bee from the Andy Griffith Show greeted me. She took my hand, her sentences a whirlwind. “I’m Carol, and let me tell you, I’ve been waiting for you all day. I’ve got your room ready, because I know you’re about to fall out, aren’t you? And, oh! This must be your father. I’ve been reading all about you, Mr. Watkins, on Andra’s website. I’m Carol Koutroulis.”

Dad’s chuckle shook his belly. “You been reading about me?”

“Yessir! I feel like I know you already.” She waved Mom inside. “Mrs. Watkins, you just leave those things right there. I’ll take care of unloading all that. Let’s get this girl to bed.”

I started to follow Carol up the carpeted stairway, but Dad’s voice stopped us. “You got any rooms on the ground floor? I cain’t do stairs.”

“Dad—”

But Carol slipped past me and patted Dad’s arm. “Oh, Mr. Watkins. I know better than that. Why, you’ve single-handedly sold I-don’t-know-how-many of Andra’s books, haven’t you? And you’ve driven all over half of Mississippi. And I saw where you took her to get that glorious fried chicken. You’re one hearty fellow.”

“You wouldn’t believe I’m an eighty-year-old man, would you?”

Mom smiled behind her hand while Carol wove her spell. “Eighty? No. I’ll never believe it.”

When she tackled the stairs again, Dad was right behind her. “Yeah. I’m mighty spry for an old man, ain’t I?”

Mom and I watched them ascend, their conversation drifting from the second floor. I leaned on the bannister and sighed. “I think we’re in very good hands.”

WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN

The Bangles

Mom couldn’t sit still at the beginning of my third week. “I’m going to walk with you, Andra.” She tied a green scarf under her chin and handed the car keys to Dad. He let them dangle from his fingers, like he was mystified by them.

I reached an arm around stooped shoulders and whispered, “Thanks for staying, Dad.”

Seeing Mom and Dad together, I didn’t know whether his decision to stay was sound. I was a shrieking shrew for suggesting the trip. My svelte, fit mother made Dad a wobbly old man. Substantial, but teetering. Almost ready to fall.

Mom watched him angle himself into the driver’s seat. “I’m worried about your daddy, Andra.”

Since I could remember, Mom started a third of her sentences with ‘I’m worried about,’ a habit I inherited and spent much of my adult life trying to break. Worry was a crutch for the mind, the worst outlet of the imagination. It was—

“Yeah. I am, too.”

I couldn’t hide what I felt on St. Patrick’s Day. A week before my forty-fifth birthday. Dad shoulders drooped before my eyes. I worried he wouldn’t make it to Nashville. Wondered whether he’d wake up the next morning or stroke that afternoon. He gobbled sugary food and complained every time I made him move.

But I didn’t have to tell Mom. She knew.

We were watching him die.

I stretched to banish worries, to combat Mom’s harried thoughts. Even the happiest, healthiest people die a little every day.

Two hundred and ten miles of Mississippi behind me. Two hundred and thirty-four to go. I wondered why I hadn’t met swamp creatures. Or been chased by Swamp Thing. For two weeks, my world was a Mississippi swamp.

Like my relationship with Mom. The surface read peaceful, but one never knew what lurked beneath the scrim of black water. What might fall fangs-first from twisted trees.

We fell apart over curtains, fabric that unraveled over a decade.

In 2001, Mom and Dad came for their inaugural visit to my new house, and they immediately took over.

“I thought I’d make you some curtains while I was here.” Mom opened a bag and pulled out patterns and scraps of material. “I really like this dusty mauve color.”

“Mom—”

She held it next to a window. “I’ve got a whole bolt in the car.”

“Mom—”

“Let me get it, and we can see what it—”

“Mom, I don’t want mauve curtains!”

She opened the garage door. “Oh, don’t be silly, Andra. You’ll love it.”

I took the stairs two at a time. My bedroom. If I made it, I could figure out—

“What are you doing, Dad?” He was in my closet, fumbling through my color-coordinated skirt section. “None of that stuff fits you!”

He moved to my dresses. “I’m just making sure this wall is stable.”

“You’re looking for my files to find out what I paid for this house! That’s what you’re doing!”

Dad’s cackle of acknowledgement didn’t stop his snoop session. He was my father; he thought he had a right to know everything.