by Kris Radish
Mary knew Chris would call, and she picked up the phone before the first ring had sounded.
“Well?” Chris asked. “Are you home now?”
“Don't be an ass,” Mary said, half laughing. “Where are you?”
“We are at Lenny Sorensen's house. It's that old farm we always talked about—past where the road turns really quickly. Nice woman. Sandy is crazy about her. Lenny is a hog farmer and her husband, not surprisingly, is a prick.”
Mary laughed as loud and as clear as Chris has ever heard her laugh, and then she took charge. Also something new.
“I called everybody, all the husbands I could find anyway, and it was kind of a hoot,” she said. “Lots of stammering so I just cut them off and told them they would simply have to understand.”
Chris could clearly imagine her sitting in her kitchen, dishes on the counter, and her left foot rubbing the back of the thirteen-year-old black Labrador that refused to die.
“What did Boyce say?”
“Same ole same ole.”
“What's that, Mary, what does Boyce say?”
“He says he loves me and he's glad I'm home, and I think he's hoping we'll have wild sex tonight because he took a shower.”
“Well, honey, get off the phone.”
“No, wait,” Mary asked urgently. “Is everyone okay?”
“We are wonderful, just wonderful, except Susan threw up.”
“Listen,” Mary said quietly. “I'm going to follow you now and then, you know, I'll stick some food out there, whatever you need. Are you going to keep going?”
Chris told her yes, and that the food and water aren't necessary but she can do whatever she wants to do.
“Listen,” Mary continued. “I have this idea that I'll just sort of keep tabs on you and maybe try to keep the husbands at bay, but I don't think they are going to say anything to cops or reporters either.”
Chris knew her husband Alex wouldn't say anything. He'd be thinking, “Well, at least I have somewhat of a vague idea where Chris is today.”
“Mary, we'll be fine, what about you?”
“I'm thinking about things. Thinking about my wonderful women friends out there and me not out there. That's fine, I know that, but I still feel bad.”
“I think Boyce has a pretty good idea how to make you feel better.”
“Should I go screw his brains out?”
“You sound like Sandy now.”
“That was bound to happen sooner or later,” Mary told her. “You are all a terrible influence on me. Hey Chris, be careful. I think people are starting to go kinda ape about what you're all doing.”
Mary added that the radio was running a story about them and that her kids saw something on television. Chris, knowing all about these things, decided not to relay the information about media coverage to the others because her friends already had more than enough to keep their minds occupied.
Later, Chris roamed through the house and discovered everyone fast asleep except Sandy and Lenny, so engrossed in a conversation on Lenny's Grand Canyon bed that they didn't see her peek into the bedroom. She ended up on the couch in the living room.
She could hear them whispering in the dark, occasionally shifting their weight, and she wondered what it had been like for Lenny to live all these months alone in this house—waiting for the courage to change her life.
Chris smiled as she shifted her own weight, wondering in which century Lenny's couch was built, and then rubbed her aching calf muscles and her whole legs down to her ankles, which were slightly swollen. “I'm going to start working out when this is over. I feel like crap.”
Sleep was just a short step away and Chris fell into it, still smiling, thinking to herself that out of all of her life's adventures, this walk might take the blue ribbon. She thought of Mary and Boyce, panting by now like dogs, and then of Alex waiting once again and always for her to come home. “I am home, Alex,” she wanted to tell him. “I'm just down the road.”
In the morning, everyone woke up before daylight. Lenny had already fed the pigs and scraped the poop out of the three largest pens when she turned to see the women moving back and forth in the kitchen like silhouettes. She wondered how she would get along for the rest of the day, the rest of her life, without them.
“People,” Lenny told herself. “I need to get away from these damn animals and live with people, lots of people. People who can't stand the smell of bacon.” Then she laughed out loud, and the sound of her own cackle made her laugh even louder.
The women dressed and stretched and reconnected, with considerable complaining and exaggerated limping. Susan managed to keep down toast and cereal and to conclude that she could walk to Siberia.
By seven A.M., before the reporters had even had their first cup of rotten coffee, the women were ready to leave. Their pockets were stuffed with aspirins and a few quarters for phone calls and pieces of fruit that Lenny made them take “just in case.”
“I can't believe you aren't worried about anything,” Lenny told them, with her shoulder pushed against the front door as she watched them lace their shoes and pull up their clean socks. “If I didn't need the money from the pigs, I'd just go with you right now.”
“We know,” Gail responded, touching Lenny on the arm. “I believe we'll see you again.”
Sandy left last, waiting until her friends were down the road a ways before she made her move. Before she could change her mind, she grabbed Lenny by the waist, pulled her close, wrapped her arms around her back through the center of Lenny's long, dark hair and kissed her.
Lenny was not startled by the softness of Sandy's lips, or the way she eased into her arms and moved her head sideways, by the movement of her own arms around Sandy's shoulders that came to rest in a perfect, solid line across her smooth neck.
When Sandy jumped off the step, rushing to catch up with the women, the sun was poking through the tall evergreen trees at the edge of Lenny's yard. She ran fast and hard and didn't turn when she heard Lenny holler, “Be careful, Sandy. See you.”
Associated Press, April 28, 2002
—Features Syndicate
Wilkins County, Wisconsin
WOMEN WALKERS CREATING MIRACLES
In a section of the county where miracles have always been associated with successful crop rotation, a wet spring, and a bumper crop of corn and wheat, there is a new kind of miracle unfolding.
Seven women who are expected to begin their third day of what local residents are calling “The Pilgrimage” have set this otherwise sedate county on its ear.
When the women left a study class sometime after ten P.M. three nights ago and began walking down a rural highway, only a handful of people, mostly the women's husbands, took immediate notice. Two days later the entire county, state, and nation are buzzing with stories about them.
“This spontaneous pilgrimage seems like one of those miracle kind of things that happens in places like Yugoslavia,” said Barton Kind, manager of the Clintonville grocery store. “Nobody around here has ever seen anything like this before.”
What people are seeing is a group of women who walk slowly, occasionally speak to each other, but not to anyone outside their group and appear to be in incredibly good spirits—walking. They are simply walking.
“Look at them,” said Selby Cannon, a housewife from Abonddale. “They're just walking along, happy as heck, and nobody can stop them. I tell you, what woman in her right mind would not join them for two cents?”
Rev. James McQuade, pastor of St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Granton, said the women could have had some kind of religious experience that prompted them to simply get up and begin walking.
“Such simultaneous fervor has happened before with people who are very spiritual, but I don't know all of these women well enough to know if they are spiritual and have strong feelings about their faith,” he said. McQuade said the word “miracle” meant many things to many people, and added that he could never speak for the women or suggest why they w
ere walking.
“Every morning that I get up and my bad leg doesn't hurt, well, to me that's a miracle,” said McQuade. “We will never know why they are doing this until we get the chance to ask them, and perhaps it is best to leave them alone, to let them find whatever peace they may be looking for.”
That's advice Wilkins County Sheriff Barnes Holden seems to be taking to heart. Barnes has assigned a full-time deputy to follow the women and keep everyone else at least 150 yards away.
“This is just a quiet county, and I figure if these women want to do this, we should just let them and no one should be allowed to bother them,” said Holden.
Holden did admit that he made the decision to assign a deputy following a rather lengthy discussion with his wife, Selena.
“You have to listen to women,” said Holden. “That's something I've always done.”
In every store, gas station, or bus stop in this entire county, the “Women Walkers” seem to be the sole topic of conversation.
Newspaper stories from the one locally published newspaper usually talk about high school graduations, a truck rollover, or the rising Fox River.
The women walkers are now the biggest news in a section of the state where life is quiet and predictable.
The husbands of the walkers are also keeping quiet. The men have all decided not to speak to members of the media.
“We just don't want to say anything at all,” said Tim Johnson, whose wife, Joanne, is one of the walkers. “Joanne knows I'll be right here when she is finished walking.”
When that will be—no one knows for certain. The women spent last night at a remote hog farm and are expected to begin walking again before noon.
In the meantime, business as usual will never be the same.
An entrepreneur has started selling T-shirts that say, “Walk With Me Baby.” The T-shirts depict the seven women holding hands and walking on a two-lane highway, with their heads turned up toward the heavens.
—30—
The Women Walker Effect: Rudy
Deputy Rick “Rudy” Rudulski was the kind of guy who was always waiting for a murder that didn't happen, a sink that never clogged, a taxi that never showed up. Rudy's dreams, meager as they might be, never quite materialized.
When Sheriff Holden told him he was being assigned to follow the walkers, he said, “No shit?” loud enough so the other police officers in the room would hear him. Then he slammed his black duty book against the side of his leg to look like he was pissed off.
But Rudy wasn't pissed off. He was so happy he could have flown right out the door and into his squad car. He knew there were reporters hanging around, and that something big might happen out there in the middle of nowhere with those goofy broads pounding the asphalt.
“This is it,” he told himself as he cranked the rearview mirror toward himself to check his teeth and the top of his brown wavy hair. “I can tell this is it.”
The only reason Rudy was even a cop was because he was standing in line to pay a parking ticket when he was handed an application to the state police academy.
With a decent but undistinguished work history, no dependents, no criminal record (or even the hint of one) and his Polish build that bordered on hulky, Rudy was a shoo-in for one of the two open positions.
Much faster than he had expected, Rudy graduated from the police academy and then found himself driving around the county in a slick uniform. With a gun on his hip, and not a clue as to how in the world he had come to be at the wheel of a squad car that had the biggest engine he had ever seen in his life and perpetual radio chatter about citizen business throughout the state, Rudy was privy to confidential information about everyone from the mayor to the mailman.
When Rudy caught himself dozing during his weekly runs across the county, he would quickly tell himself that he would either be promoted or that he was only doing it for the money until something better came along.
One of the many things Rudy didn't know was that his long-time girlfriend Michelle was about to dump him. His lack of interest in a permanent relationship and his inability to do something “wonderful, magical and brilliant” for her had made her almost physically ill over the seven years of their courtship. Michelle was an attractive, bright third-grade teacher who had passed up more than one dating opportunity to give her twenty-eight-year-old beau with a badge another chance.
In fact, this morning as Rudy drove out of the county garage and into the bright spring sunlight, Michelle had already packed up every single thing he had ever given her and placed them in two large cardboard boxes. She was going to dump them on his front step, along with a short but sweet note that told him to “get a life and eat shit.”
Michelle also changed her phone number and had already made plans to go to the Dungas Bay Inn for happy hour with her friend Jane, who was so happy Michelle was ditching Rudy that she planned to buy the drinks all night long.
Clueless, Rudy stepped on the gas as he pulled out of the garage so he could hear the tires squeal against the edge of the concrete right where the road started. He did that every morning, and every morning the barber across the street flipped him the bird because he was certain someday Rudy was going to come right through his front window.
Rudy's interactions with women left much to be desired. If he had been prone to do something as simple as think about this fact, he would have remembered his mother wiping his face in public when he was a teenager, telling him to stand up straight in front of his buddies and how she always spoke to his father in a tone of voice that sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. He had lost touch with his sister Joyce after his parents moved to Arizona, and he had never dated much before hooking up with Michelle, which was fairly surprising because he often made more than a few women on the street pause and wonder what he might look like out of his uniform. Introspection was one of those things he never quite got around to. What he needed, but didn't know he needed, was a rather large glimpse into the heart of a woman.
As he moved out of the city and toward the stretch of highway some sixteen miles from Granton where he would find the women walkers, Rudy wondered briefly if he'd better start thinking about what his day might be like out there, but he could barely imagine anything. Rudy's lack of emotional involvement with the opposite sex gave him a huge disadvantage on this big assignment.
Rudy came from a nice family. His mother and father loved him, did everything they could to make certain he knew right from wrong and followed the rules, and provided at least basic direction to his life. Rudy was simply satisfied to stay in his hometown, never set a goal and never thought to look around the corner. Nothing inspired him, so goal setting wasn't his forte. He wasn't a bad person, just the kind of son who made his mother wear out one rosary after another praying fervently, “Pretty soon now, Rudy will . . .” and right there at the end of the sentence, she could fill in just about anything she wanted to.
Many people could, and in fact do, spend their entire lives living just like Rudy and never think twice about it. Except that way in the back of Rudy's mind, there was a question that needed answering. He couldn't answer it, however, because as yet he didn't know what the question was. He knew he wasn't happy. He always felt like he was in a state of suspended animation, like he was supposed to be somewhere else doing something else, but he had no clue what any of that could be.
Rudy stopped at the Super America for an extra-large cup of black coffee, two chocolate-covered donuts, and a copy of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He flirted with Diane the clerk; told Sam Witgby his rear tire was low; decided to walk around his car to inspect his own tires; then got back into the car, spilled coffee on the passenger seat and rubbed in the stain with the edge of his watch.
“Here we go,” he said to absolutely nobody as he pulled out onto the highway and turned left onto Wittenberg Road.
For the first couple of miles, all Rudy heard was the wind in the back windows, his own breath—steady and even—and one static hum that bleep
ed from the police radio. The sun was just stretching awake, and Rudy could tell that half of the country was still trying to accept the arrival of morning. He liked these first few minutes of a shift when anything seemed possible, when he had no idea what would happen, when he held the notion, even if misplaced, that this would be the day when something big would happen to him.
Those first thoughts could carry Rudy through the most boring day in the history of the world. He was actually one hell of an optimist, but he never bothered to assess himself that way or to wander into deep and uncharted philosophical waters. If a door fell on top of his head, Rudy would say, “A door fell on my head,” and not, “Why did that door fall on my head right here in the middle of the desert when there is not a doorway in sight?”
He let life steer him from one point to the next without ever thinking about what he really wanted to do with his gift of moments. He bought his pickup truck because it was the first vehicle he saw after he was told the engine in the car his dad had given him could no longer be fixed. His apartment was next door to his brother-in-law's office, in a fairly rundown and dirty part of town, but Rudy never considered moving. Today as he drove to his assignment, he had no insights into this group of women or their potential to change his life forever.
Just after he passed Grunkees Corner, Rudy began to notice those water bottles that athletes carry lying along the edge of the highway. Sheriff Holden had told him that some people were leaving water and food for the women, and not to disturb anything of that nature because when they were finished, he would send someone to collect it all and take it to the homeless shelter in Harrisburg.
