The Walk (20 page)

“Well, not all of us have the benefit of seeing the other side,” I said somewhat defensively.

“No, but there’s evidence of the other side everywhere. Just ask anyone who works with death—like geriatric doctors and hospice workers. Any of them will tell you what happens when someone dies. How often it is that someone dying looks up and greets a visitor from that other side. It’s the rule, not the exception. But no one ever talks about that. They don’t even
talk about death, as if not talking about it will make it go away. How can you understand life if you don’t understand death?” She looked down at my plate. “Now you haven’t been eating. Everything’s cold. Let me go warm that up for you.”

She lifted my plate and carried it back to the kitchen. Ironically, what she had said about the Life-huggers was the same thought I’d had about the inhabitants of the little towns I’d walked through, wondering if they knew that there’s a whole world out there. But the truth was, I was no different than them. I was a Life-hugger.

Mrs. Hammersmith came back a few minutes later, carrying my plate with an oven mitt. “Be careful. The plate’s a little hot.” She set the plate in front of me.

“Thank you.” I lifted a fork. “And thank you for sharing your story.”

“You just keep one thing in mind, Alan. Death is the beginning. This is Winter. Spring is what comes next.” She sighed. “I’d better get back to work. Owning a B&B
is like having a large family. Someone always needs something.”

With that she walked out. I finished eating my breakfast, then went back upstairs. I took out my map and looked it over, then collected my things and walked back downstairs. Mrs. Hammersmith was clearing my table.

“You’re off?” she said.

“Back to the road. Could you tell me how many miles we are from Spokane?”

“We’re a little ways. About 36 miles, give or take a few.” She smiled. “I hope you enjoyed your stay.”

“Very much so.” I walked to the door. “Thanks again for everything. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

“You’re welcome,” she said warmly. “Oh, just a minute.” She ran back to the kitchen, then returned, carrying a muffin wrapped in a napkin. “One for the road. Come back and visit us again.”

“I might just do that.” I walked out grateful for my stay.

As I walked out of Davenport, I wondered if I could really make it to Spokane by nightfall. The farthest I had walked in a single day was 31 miles, and I was pretty exhausted at that. Still, I felt good and I was eager to reach my first destination. I decided just to see what the day had in store.

Without food supplies, I was carrying less in my pack, and I made good time. I stopped for lunch at Dean’s Drive-in. They, too, had world-famous shakes, though they limited their claim to their huckleberry shakes. I entered Spokane County at two in the afternoon, and three hours later, I reached the west end of Fairchild Air Force Base. The base was situated on an enormous piece of land and was a city unto itself. I wondered why they didn’t just burn crop circles on their own property.

At eight o’clock I stopped at the Hong Kong Restaurant and Bar for dinner in the town of Airway Heights. I still hadn’t completely made up my mind whether or not to press on to Spokane, but I was still feeling good, so after eating a meal of kung pao shrimp and potstickers, I just kept walking.

I felt optimistic about my odds of making it to Spokane until about eleven o’clock, when my body hit some invisible physical wall, perhaps the same one marathon runners talk about. Suddenly I was just too exhausted to go any farther.

I forced myself on until I saw a hotel in the distance. I practically limped into the Hilton Garden Inn next to the Rusty Moose Restaurant. Surprisingly, the hotel had no vacancies. The man behind the counter casually suggested that I just drive on a few more miles to Spokane.

I thought about resting my legs in the hotel’s warm lobby but decided against it, afraid that if I stopped to rest, my legs might cramp up—another casual decision I would live to regret. I thanked the clerk and walked back out to the highway, promising myself that I would take the next day off. It was a promise I would keep, though not for any reason I had considered.

The temperature had dropped below fifty, and my legs were heavy, as if they had weights attached. I had walked more than 35 miles, and I was practically asleep on my feet.

It was past midnight when the headlamps of a car flashed behind me. As the car neared, I could hear it slowing down. I thought they might be stopping to ask directions, or, God willing, to offer me a ride, so I turned
back.

The car was an older model, a pimped four-door Impala, yellow with a black racing stripe. I could hear its music before it reached me, the heavy pounding base of rap. The car pulled up to my side and slowed to my gait. An ugly kid with pocked skin leaned out the window.

“Hey, what’s up?”

I noticed the car was full of kids. “Nothing,” I said. “Just walking.”

“Whatcha got there?”

“Nothing.” I kept walking, hoping the guys would lose interest. Another car drove by. The kid said something to the driver, and the car’s tires squealed as it fishtailed off the road in front of me. The doors flew open, and five youths climbed out. Unfortunately, the kid in the window was the smallest of the group. One of the guys was a monster,
at least six inches taller than me. His arms were folded at his chest, and he had tattoos and scars up both arms.

The gang surrounded me.

“What you got on your back?” ugly kid said.

“Nothing you’d want.”

“Give it to me.”

“You don’t want to do this,” I said.

He scowled. “You don’t tell me what I want, man.”

“We’re gonna mess you up,” someone said behind me.

My eyes darted back and forth between them. I changed my mind. “You can have my pack,” I said.

“We’ll take that after we’re done,” a new voice said.

“We were lookin’ to roll some bums,” ugly kid said. “And here you are.”

“This isn’t cool,” I said. “Why don’t you just get back in your car . . .”

Ugly kid said to the monster, “He talkin’ again. You should shut him up.”

The circle closed in.

I took off my pack. “Hey, come on, why are you . . .”

I never finished. The first hit landed on the back of my head. It wasn’t a fist. Something wood, like a club. I saw a flash of light but somehow kept on my feet. As I grabbed my head, two of them came at me, ugly kid and one other.

I swung wildly at ugly kid and caught him hard enough to knock him down. One of his friends laughed at him, and I heard him shout out an obscenity as he climbed back to his feet. He came back at me.

The next few minutes seemed to pass in slow motion, like a nightmare when you want to run, but you can’t
move. I was knocked to the ground, then was hit and kicked from all sides. I had my arms up, trying to protect my face, while the monster kept stomping on my head with boots that felt like they weighed a hundred pounds.

Suddenly the attack stopped. I rolled over to my side, coughing up fluid. There was blood dripping down my face. Ugly kid held a knife.

“You wanna die, loser?”

I looked at him standing above me, my vision blurred from the assault. There was my chance. This thug could finish what I wasn’t willing or able to do. Life or death. Somehow I felt it was really my choice.

“No,” I said, “I don’t.”

“Ain’t your choice,” he said.

Just then a boot landed squarely in my face, knocking me out.

I would describe what I experienced next as an out-of-body experience except there was too much pain. Excruciating pain.

Someone was kneeling next to me. Around me I heard voices, different voices than my assailants. Older. Cleaner. They swirled around me, speaking about me, over me, none of them to me—as if I weren’t there. I suppose, on some level that was true.

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even grunt to acknowledge that I heard them. My eyes were closed or mostly closed, and I could not really see people, just blurs of moving colors against the occasional flash of passing cars and a streetlight glaring above me, though it might have been the moon. The lights still hurt my eyes. There were also flashing lights of red and blue.

I began to differentiate the voices. I heard an angry, older voice shout, “Stay on the ground!” I assumed the command wasn’t for me.

Then someone pressed against me and pain filled my entire body. A dark blur said something I didn’t understand. Then there were two lighter blurs, and the dark figure disappeared. The pressure on my side increased. I could feel something wet run down my stomach.

Someone pulled my shirt up. The fabric stuck to my
side, and I could feel something pull away from my skin, like a bandage.

My left side below my ribcage throbbed with pain. The right side of my head pounded. My hair was wet.
Why was my hair wet?

Someone grabbed my wrist; a finger prodded for my pulse. A cuff was placed around my arm.

I heard the crisp static crackle of a radio.

The dialogue was closer, clearer. “Pulse is steady. Blood pressure is low, sixty over twenty. He’s lost a lot of blood. Call ahead to Sacred Heart.”

“Better call his next of kin. Any ID?”

“You checked all his pockets?”

I felt a hand move down my right leg. Then my left.

“Here’s something.”

I was lifted from the ground, and I felt a plastic mask being fitted over my nose and mouth. Just then a phrase came to mind from my former life. My ad-guy life.
Fade to black.

I wrote in the beginning of this book that there are things that happened to me that you might not believe. This is one of the times I was writing about. So feel free to skip over this part. Or not. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

To this day, I can’t say for sure what happened at that moment. So I’ll just put it down as I perceived it and let you draw your own conclusions—which I’m sure you’ll do anyway. It’s a rare human who spends more time looking for truth than protecting their already-held beliefs.

Somewhere in the murky, gray twilight between consciousness and sleep, McKale came to me. Call it a dream or delirium, if that makes you feel safe, but she was there. I saw her. I heard her. I felt her.

The Bard wrote, “
There are more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of in your philosophy . . .”
That’s especially true today, in our age of unbelief. Frankly, it doesn’t matter to me if you don’t believe that this really happened, just so long as you believe that I do.

Somehow McKale was kneeling next to me. Not on the ground. We weren’t on ground. I don’t know where we were. Someplace soft and white. She looked impossi
bly beautiful; her skin was fresh and translucent, as if it glowed from its own light. Perfect. She smiled at me with joyful radiance. And when she spoke, her voice was sweet, like the ring of crystal. “Hello, my love.”

“McKale.” I tried to sit up but was unable to move. “Did they kill me?” I felt hopeful asking this.

“No.”

I stared at her. “Are you real?”

She smiled. “Of course.”

“Is this a dream?”

She didn’t answer.

“Where have you been?”

“Near. Very near. Death is like being in the next room.”

“Will we be together again?”

She smiled, and I knew the answer before she spoke. But it didn’t come from her. It was as if I somehow remembered it.

“Of course. But not now. You’re not finished. There are still people who need you. And people you need.”