Richard Paul Evans: The Complete Walk Series eBook Boxed Set

by Richard Paul Evans

  “Because she can,” he said sharply. “It’s a rush for her. She gets a lot of attention and feels powerful that we all have to come running. And every time we do, it costs the taxpayers five grand.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I wish I were.”

  “Can’t you do something about it?”

  His eyebrows rose. “Like what? You tell me. Even if we knew it was her, if we didn’t respond, some ambulance chasing lawyer would sue the city. The worst part is, last week while we were playing her game, a man on the other side of town had a real heart attack. Some bystanders kept him alive for nineteen minutes, four minutes short of what it took us to get to him.”

  “You’re telling me that she killed him.”

  “We can’t say that for sure, but he sure as hell would have had a better chance of living if we’d been there.”

  I turned back and looked at the woman with disgust. “Did you know that? This game you play cost a man his life.”

  She scowled at me. “You think just because I’m poor I’m not entitled to the same care everyone else is?”

  “This has nothing to do with rich or poor,” I said angrily. “It has to do with need.”

  “It has to do with crazy,” the other paramedic said.

  “I have problems,” the woman said.

  “Clearly,” I replied. “You’re an awful person.”

  She just stared at me, her mouth gaping like a fish on land. I went back and got my groceries, then left the store.

  Drama aside, the rest of the afternoon was decent walking as Festus gave way to more rural landscape. Physically, I felt better than I had the day before, giving me hope that perhaps the worst was over. As night fell, I reached the Good News Church, a golf course, and Mary’s Market, where I stopped for hot coffee. I pitched my tent and camped in a gully on the side of the road.

  Every time I thought about that woman at Walmart, I wanted to slap her.

  CHAPTER

  Eighteen

  We cannot enslave others without enslaving a part of ourselves.

  Alan Christoffersen’s diary

  I had set up my tent on a slight incline and woke the next morning with a crick in my neck, which I tried to release by cracking it, but it didn’t help much.

  I walked back to Mary’s Market and bought some yogurt, coffee, and a giant homemade blueberry muffin. I sat on the curb outside the store and ate my breakfast, then set out for the day.

  The morning sky was clear and brilliant blue, and I walked on a smooth road of light-colored asphalt. I was on the “Great River Road” which, technically, was still U.S. 61 South.

  Two and a half hours later I reached the tiny town of Bloomsdale, and stopped at the side of the road at the not-so-cleverly named Roadside Park. I ate an early lunch of tortillas stuffed with sliced turkey, bell peppers and hot sauce, then laid my map out over a picnic table. Twelve miles ahead was Ste. Genevieve. I packed away my food and pressed ahead, eager to reach the historic town before nightfall.

  Ste. Genevieve, named for the patron saint of Paris, was founded in 1735, more than a quarter-century before America declared its independence. I passed through a neighborhood of small, nondescript houses, built close together, to the town’s historical district, which was quaint and pleasing.

  There were several bed and breakfasts in the center of town, but one in particular caught my eye:

  The Southern Hotel

  An Historic Bed & Breakfast Inn

  Innkeepers Mike and Cathy Hankins

  I rang the buzzer and a pleasant looking woman wearing an apron opened the door.

  “Good evening, may I help you?”

  “Do you have any vacancies?”

  “Yes we do,” she said, pulling the door open. “Come in and I’ll show you what we have available.”

  I stepped inside. The foyer was wood-paneled and adorned with beautiful paintings, shadow boxes, and wall hangings, which included several patchwork quilts.

  “Come into the parlor,” she said.

  I followed her through a set of saloon doors into the parlor and carefully set my pack down.

  “We just had these doors put in,” the woman said. “These front rooms were used as a saloon until prohibition time, so we thought it would be a nice nod to the history of the place.”

  The parlor had a two-person settee and several wingback chairs upholstered in red velvet. There was a bookcase full of old-time parlor games and a large fireplace with a walnut mantel.

  “What is your name?” she asked, holding up a pen.

  “Alan Christoffersen.”

  “Alan,” she repeated. “My name is Cathy. When we’re done, you can park your car on the side of the house.”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  She looked at me quizzically. “Oh? How did you get here?”

  “I walked.”

  “From where?”

  I was more tired than talkative so I just said, “St. Louis.”

  She still looked impressed. “That’s a long way. You must be tired. Let’s get you a room. We have three rooms available for tonight, and they’re all the same price. Would you like to see them before checking in?”

  “I’m sure one of them will be fine,” I said.

  She nodded. “I think you’ll be pleased.”

  I handed her my credit card and she ran it through a machine, then handed it back to me. “Let me tell you a little about the house.” She pointed to a framed picture above the fireplace mantel. “That’s the Valle family, the home’s original owners. They had seven children and fifteen slaves.”

  “Slaves?”

  “Yes, the home is more than two hundred years old,” she said. “That nonsense was still going on. The slaves slept on the top floor. Actually, in one of the rooms we have available.

  “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you the dining room.” She led me across the parlor to the dining area. “Breakfast is served at eight o’clock and nine o’clock. We’ve won awards for our food, so come prepared to eat.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” I said.

  Cathy led me to the staircase and we walked all the way to the top floor. At the top of the stairs I noticed another steep stairway leading up to a hatch door in the ceiling.

  “Is that the attic?”

  “No, that’s the belvedere,” she replied. “It’s a rooftop structure designed to give you a view. It comes from an Italian word meaning good view—at least that’s what Mike told me. You’re welcome to go up, but it’s hotter than heck. This time of year we just call it the sauna.”

  “I’d like to see it,” I said.

  Cathy frowned a little. “I was afraid you would.”

  I followed her up the creaking stairs to the trap door, which she pushed open, and light and heat flooded down on us. She was right about the “sauna.” I followed her through the hatch and climbed up into a small room, which was hot and humid enough that it was difficult to breathe. The octagon-shaped structure had windows on all eight sides giving an unobstructed, 360-degree view of the city.

  Cathy turned to me. She was panting a little and perspiration beaded on her face and neck. “During the Civil War, the Union Army occupied the building. This was their lookout. As you can see, they could keep an eye on the entire town from up here.”

  The heat prohibited us from spending much time up there, and my underarms and back were damp with sweat when I climbed back down to the cooler floor below. Cathy led me into a room near the stairway.

  “This is the Quilt Room,” she said. “It’s one of the rooms where the slaves were kept.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It was pretty standard to keep slaves in the attic at the time. They slept up here during the winter when heat would rise from the fireplaces, and they stayed downstairs in the cellar during the hot summers. But there’s other evidence.” She pointed across the room to a ball-and-claw-foot tub. “If you look under the tub, you can see the metal ring that slaves were chai
ned to at night to keep them from escaping.”

  I walked over to the tub and leaned over it. “Over here?”

  “You can see it better from the floor. You’ll have to get down on all fours.”

  I got down on my knees and looked underneath. Six inches from the wall was a large, rusted metal ring secured to the floor. “They chained people to this?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  The idea of it sickened me. I didn’t want to stay in the room.

  “As I said before, the original owners had fifteen slaves. Two of their slaves were assigned just to chopping wood and keeping all the fireplaces going. There was also a tale that they owned a very large slave who was fathered out to other slaveholders in the area. Some said the slave was buried in the home’s cellar after he died. A few years back, Mike let an archeologist dig in there for his bones, but he didn’t find anything.”

  We walked through two other rooms. I chose the third, the “Buttons and Bows” room, which featured a shadow-box button collection from 1720, a working fireplace, two tubs, and a black and white wedding photograph accompanied by the bride’s actual veil. The room was wallpapered with golden fleur-de-lis over a rose-colored background. The bed was unlike any I’d seen before: polished rosewood with four posts and a canopy extending over just half the bed.

  “This kind of bed’s called a half tester,” she said. “It was made in 1775. They’re hard to find.” Cathy pointed to the two bathtubs, standing side by side in the corner of the room. “Those are made of cast iron and porcelain, the combination really keeps the heat in. Whenever we have couples staying in this room, we hear that the woman gets the longer tub and the man gets stuck with the shorter one.” She smiled at me. “But you’re lucky—you won’t have that problem.”

  I let the comment roll off of me. I followed her back downstairs, retrieved my pack, then said goodnight and went back up to the room. I filled up both of the tubs, one for soaking my dirty socks and underwear and the other for me. After a long, relaxing bath I rinsed out my laundry and hung it over the radiator, which wasn’t on but was still the best surface I could find for laying out my things. I climbed into bed and went to sleep.

  The next morning I slept until seven-thirty. My headache was back, a dull ache near my incision. I collected my washing, which, fortunately, was dry, dressed and packed, then, taking my backpack with me, went downstairs for breakfast. There were two couples in the room, but neither of them acknowledged my entrance.

  Cathy greeted me as I entered the dining room. “How did you sleep, Alan?”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “You can sit wherever you like,” she said.

  I chose a small, round table away from the other guests. Across the room from me, a tall, walnut-cased grandfather clock chimed the hour.

  “I think you’ll enjoy this morning’s breakfast,” Cathy said. “It’s our guests’ favorite: crustless quiche with sausage, and our special cream cheese blackberry muffins.”

  “It sounds delicious,” I said.

  She smiled. “Trust me, it is.”

  A few minutes later she returned with my plate, then left me alone to eat. I ate slowly, not in a particular hurry to get back on the road. In spite of a good night’s rest, I still felt tired. A half hour later, Cathy emerged from the kitchen.

  “How is everything?” she asked.

  “As good as you said it would be.”

  She smiled. “Well, I didn’t mean to boast.”

  “You should,” I said. “How’s business?”

  “Pretty good. We’re not going to be buying the St. Louis Cardinals anytime soon, but we enjoy what we’re doing.”

  “That’s better than owning the Cardinals,” I said.

  “I’ll have to take your word for that.”

  “My wife would really like it here,” I said.

  “Then you’ll just have to bring her next time,” she said. “Excuse me. I need to check on the oven.” She walked back to the kitchen, but returned a few minutes later with a basket of hot muffins.

  “Here you go, hot out of the oven.”

  I took one. “How do you like living in Ste. Genevieve?”

  “I love it here. It has so much history and charm. Ste. Genevieve is a very old town. In fact, it’s older than our country. It was settled mostly by French-Canadians, and a lot has been done to preserve the original French-colonial style. Did you see the Old Brick House?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s just around the corner. It’s a restaurant now, but it’s famous for being the first brick building west of the Mississippi.”

  “Did you grow up here?” I asked.

  “No. I actually came to stay at the Southern Hotel just a few years after Mike’s first wife Barbara passed. I brought my granddaughter for a special trip, and the second Mike opened the front door, I was smitten. It took him a little longer to come around, but when he did, he just about ran me over.”

  “Mike owned the hotel before he met you?”

  “Yes. He and Barbara were just passing through town. They were at the candle shop across the street when they noticed a big FOR SALE sign in front of the hotel. In less than a week they were the owners. It took nine months and more than forty people to restore it, but the place has been receiving guests ever since.”

  “How long have you and Mike been married?”

  She counted on her fingers. “Five years this Thanksgiving.”

  “What’s it like being married to a widower?”

  “That’s an interesting question,” she said. “I suppose it’s like any marriage.” She suddenly grinned. “Except I don’t hit him if he calls me by another woman’s name.”

  “Does he ever do that?”

  “Call me Barbara? Every now and then. Usually when he’s in a hurry. Old habits die hard.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  She thought for a moment, then said, “No, not really. In a way it’s a compliment. He loved his first wife dearly. And even though I never met her, I feel a connection to her that I can’t quite explain. I think we would have been good friends.” She shook her head. “That probably sounds strange.”

  I thought of McKale and Falene. “No,” I said. “It’s actually quite beautiful.”

  She smiled. “Thank you.”

  I finished my muffin, then said, “I guess I’ve delayed the inevitable long enough, I better get going.” I stood up from the table and lifted my pack. “Breakfast was terrific. Actually, everything was. Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it. Stop by again sometime. And next time, bring your wife.”

  “That would be nice,” I said.

  As I walked toward the door, Cathy said, “Oh, don’t forget to sign the quilt.” She pointed to a stitched quilt mounted to the wall. “We have all our guests sign it.” She handed me a marker.

  I signed my name, then walked out of the house. McKale definitely would have loved this place.

  Following Cathy’s directions, I left Ste. Genevieve on a different road from the one I came in on. Before I left the city, I passed a shop with a sign in its window advertising “KEY WEST.” I walked up to read what it had to say. Key West turned out to be the name of a local “island” band.

  The route Cathy gave me bypassed the residential areas, taking me directly back to 61 South. The longer I walked, the more I wished I had stayed another day in Ste. Genevieve. In addition to feeling crummy, I had to deal with the weather. The sky was dark and gray, and a little before noon it began raining hard enough that water ran off the brim of my hat. I was walking on a narrow shoulder of highway, and the fast traffic on slick roads not only put my life in peril, but guaranteed that I was frequently splashed by passing vehicles. The air was muggy, thick with humidity and the loud sound of bugs and birds distressed by the rain.

  Thankfully, the rain and my headache lightened some by late afternoon as I entered the town of Brewer. It was another small, rural town, and what struck me as most peculiar about the place
was that it had the biggest front lawns I’d ever seen. These folks don’t need tractor mowers, I thought, they need combines.

  Two miles later I reached Perryville, the largest town of the day with a population of more than 8,000. I walked into town wet, tired and shivering. I took a room at the first hotel I found, a Budget Inn. I took off my wet clothes, showered, then ate dinner at a nearby Hardee’s.

  The sky cleared during the night. The road still wasn’t much for walking, narrow and grated with a severe rumble strip, and I stumbled more than once. Still, it wasn’t raining and I was grateful for that. And the scenery was bucolic. I passed beautiful red barns, and long, expertly cultivated rows of crops, marked and numbered with agricultural signs from the seed vendors for commercial demonstration.

  A little over six miles into the day I reached my first town, Longtown, with a population of just 102. For such a small town it had an impressive church—Zion Lutheran—a large structure with pointed-arch windows and a tall white steeple. In addition to the church, Longtown also boasted an abnormally large number of plastic deer in its residents’ front yards, which are only slightly weirder than plastic pink flamingos.

  That afternoon I saw one other peculiar thing—a herd of cows gathered around a small bonfire. There were no humans in sight and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I was fairly certain that the cows hadn’t started the fire, so I just kept on walking.

  That evening I set up my tent in a grove of trees near a picturesque farm with three silos.

  CHAPTER

  Nineteen

  I have so often compared my life to a whirlwind that I should not be surprised to find myself facing a real one.

  Alan Christoffersen’s diary

  The next morning I woke to the sound of howling wind and rain pelting my tent. Another day in paradise, I thought. My map showed that I was still about eight miles from the nearest town, so I ate breakfast in my tent, then lay back, waiting for the rain to weaken. After an hour the weather still hadn’t relented, so I gave up and started off for the day.