A Step of Faith: A Novel

by Richard Paul Evans

  “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.

  My pace was slowed by the storm, and by the time I reached the town of Fruitland, I was cold and drenched. I stopped at a gas mart called Casey’s for supplies, then walked to the nearby Jer’s Restaurant for lunch.

  A broad, surly-looking woman glanced up from the counter. “You’re all wet,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure if she was annoyed that I was dripping on her floor or if she just had a penchant for stating the obvious. “I’ve heard that before,” I said.

  She just glared at me.

  After a moment I said, “It’s raining.”

  “It’s going to get worse,” she said. “We’ve got a severe weather warning. Maybe even tornadoes.”

  “Tornadoes?”

  She nodded.

  Outside of The Wizard of Oz and the Weather Channel, I had never seen a tornado. It was one experience I didn’t care if I missed. “Is there anyplace in town to stay?”

  “Closest hotel is a couple miles ahead in Jackson.”

  I took off my hat and scratched my head. “A couple of miles, huh?”

  “You want something to eat?” she asked sternly.

  “Yes.”

  “Pick a table,” she said.

  I looked around. The restaurant was empty except for a truck driver in a corner booth who was nursing a cola and playing a video game on his cell phone.

  I sat down at a booth on the opposite side of the diner, then lay my pack on the chair next to me and put my hat on top of it. When Miss Congeniality returned, I ordered fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy.

  In spite of the woman’s warning of worsening weather, I ate slowly, hoping the rain might ease up a little. As predicted, it got worse. I ordered a piece of peach pie to buy me more time in the shelter, then, finally accepting my inevitable drenching, paid my bill, put on my hat and walked out into the storm, hoping for better hospitality from the next town. Or the tornado.

  Although Jackson was just two miles from Fruitland, in weather conditions like these,
it seemed much farther. At one point my hat blew off and I chased it for several minutes.

  As I neared the town, the rain came down harder. The sky had turned black, lit with what seemed an increasing frequency of lightning strikes—sometimes even simultaneous with the thunder. It occurred to me that even though I hadn’t seen a funnel cloud, this was what tornado weather looked like on the Weather Channel.

  As I crossed the Jackson city line, the rain suddenly turned to hail, bouncing off me and the street like water on a hot griddle. Some of the hail was nearly golf-ball-sized and it hurt. Lifting my pack over my head, I made a fifty-yard dash for cover beneath a highway overpass.

  When I reached the shelter of the bridge, my heart was pounding heavily from my sprint, and I was as wet as if I had fallen into a lake. Both sides of the overpass were opaque with white sheets of hail. I lay my pack on the ground, then sat down on the curb next to the highway to rest. That’s when I heard the sirens.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty

  Is it possible for those on the other side to intervene on our behalf? Millions of dollars have been spent on this very hope.

  Alan Christoffersen’s diary

  Tornadoes are rare in both Los Angeles and Seattle—there has never, in the recorded history of either city, been a death caused by one—so, not surprisingly, I had never heard a tornado siren before.

  Outside of the bridge there was no shelter in sight. I grabbed my pack and had started to climb up a weeded incline so I could hide under the bottom of the bridge when a navy-blue Nissan Sentra braked below me and honked its horn. The car’s passenger window rolled down and I heard a young woman shout, “Get in.”

  I slid down the embankment, threw my pack in the car’s back seat, then opened the front door. The driver was maybe five years younger than me, pretty, with full lips and long, bright red hair, windblown around her face. She had an exotic look, almost feline.

  She smiled at me, and her hazel green eyes were bright and kind. I pulled the door shut behind me as she reached forward and turned off the radio, leaving only the sound of my heavy breathing and the wind battering her car.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m drenched.”

  She smiled at me. “And I’m Paige.”

  I reached over, taking her hand. “My name is Alan.”

  “Put your seatbelt on, Alan,” she said. “We better get out of here.”

  As I fastened my belt, she checked her mirror, then pulled out onto the road. As soon as we came out from under the bridge, the sound of the storm exploded. The hail beat against her car like a snare drum.

  “That’s going to be an insurance claim,” she shouted over the noise. She turned to me. “You’re crazy being out in this storm. What are you, an extreme hiker? Didn’t you hear the sirens?”

  “I didn’t have a lot of options,” I said. “I thought the overpass would be safe.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “You’d probably be safer low to the ground. The higher up you are the more exposed you are to flying debris.”

  There was a loud thunderclap and she jumped a little.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “There’s a hotel just up ahead. We can stay there until this blows over.”

  The hail lessened, but not the rain, and the car’s wipers whipped violently—though mostly ineffectually—against the downpour. A quarter-mile ahead of us we finally saw the hotel: Drury Inn & Suites. The front of the building was crowded with cars and we parked as close to the entrance as we could.

  Paige grabbed a small travel bag from the back seat. “Ready?”

  “Let’s go.”

  We simultaneously jumped out of her car. I grabbed my pack from the back seat as she ran for the hotel. She held the door for me as I entered.

  Once we were both inside she asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” I said, panting. “Just wet.”

  “You’re definitely wet.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I was born wet.”

  She laughed.

  The hotel’s lobby was crowded with the storm’s refugees, probably more than a hundred people in all, surrounded by their pets and belongings and huddled together in small clans. I quickly surmised that most of the people weren’t hotel guests.

  There was a television on in the dining area off the lobby, and a group of men were sitting around it at tables, drinking coffee and, to my surprise, watching football instead of the weather.

  Paige and I worked our way through a labyrinth of people to a small corner of the room that no one had yet claimed. I took off my pack and we both sat on the floor. Paige took off her coat, then pulled her long hair back from her face.

  “How long were you out there?” she asked.

  “A few hours. I walked from the last town.”

  “No wonder you’re so wet,” she said. “Where are you from?”

  “Seattle. We don’t do tornadoes.”

  She took a brush out of her travel bag and began brushing her hair. “It’s Alan, right?”

  “Yes. And you’re Paige.”

  “Right. Where are you headed?”

  “Key West, Florida.”

  “All the way from Seattle?”

  “That’s the plan,” I said.

  “That’s amazing. The farthest I’ve ever walked at one time was ten miles for a breast cancer fundraiser.”

  A cardboard box crashed loudly against the window next to us and Paige screamed, then laughed at herself. “Sorry, I’m just skittish.”

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  “I was born in St. Louis. That’s where I live now.”

  “What brings you down here?”

  “I’m headed to Memphis to see my grandma. I was hoping to make it by tonight, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to clear up anytime soon.”

  “I was planning on walking to Cape Girardeau by evening,” I said. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “Not likely,” Paige said.

  “I wonder if the hotel has any vacancies,” I said. “I think I’ll check.”

  I got up and walked to the hotel’s front desk. The woman behind the counter was listening to the weather report on the radio, and I could hear a hysterical caller screaming over the sound of the wind that a semi had been blown over. The clerk glanced up at me as I approached. “May I help you?”

  “Do you have any rooms?”

  “We have two left,” she said. “They’re both nonsmoking, first-floor rooms with two queen beds.”

  “I’ll take one,” I said. I gave her my credit card and driver’s license.

  “How many room keys do you need?”

  I glanced over at Paige, wondering if she trusted me enough to stay with me. “Two,” I said.

  She slid two plastic cards through her encoder, then handed them to me with my credit card. “There you go. It sounds as if the worst of the storm is over, but if another tornado touches down, the safest place to be will be in the hallway outside your room.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I walked back over to Paige and lifted my pack. “I’ve got a room. It’s got two beds. You’re welcome to hang out with me in there.”

  “That would be nice. Thank you.”

  We gathered our things and walked to the room, which was only halfway down the hall off the lobby. The window’s curtain was drawn back and rain pelted the glass, coagulating in long streams of runoff.

  I threw my hat on the TV cabinet, lay my pack on the floor near the corner, then sat at the foot of the bed and took off my shoes. “How long do these things usually take to pass?”

  Paige ran her hand down the length of her bed. “You never know. It’ll probably die down in the night.” She pulled back the covers and sat down on the bed to take off her shoes.

  “You’re from St. Louis?” I asked.

  “Mostly,” she said. “I live there now.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I work for a hosp
ice company.”

  “Hospice? You help people . . .”

  “. . . Die,” she said. “I know, it sounds sad.”

  “What’s that like?”

  “The worst part is that just about the time you start caring for someone you lose them.”

  “That sounds awful.”

  “In a way it is. But it’s also really rewarding. I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life right now.”

  She lay back on the bed, her long red hair splayed out over her pillow.

  “Do you want to watch TV?” I asked.

  “Whatever you want,” she replied.

  “I was asking for you. I’m going to take a shower and get into some dry clothes.”

  “Oh. Sure,” she said.

  “Do you need to use the bathroom first?” I asked.

  “No. I’m good.”

  I took some clean clothes out of my pack, then tossed Paige the TV remote and went inside the bathroom. I stayed in the hot water until the bathroom mirror was dripping with condensation. When I came back out, Paige was watching the weather on a local station.

  “How is it?” I asked.

  “It’s looking better.” She smiled at me. “You look like you feel a lot better.”

  “Much,” I said. “Any news on the storm?”

  “It looks like the tornadoes are gone. It’s supposed to clear up by morning.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  As I sat down on the bed, she turned off the television. “Tell me about your walk,” she said.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What states have you been through?”

  “I started in Washington, walked through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, then Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and here I am. Six more states to go.”

  “You’ve walked nonstop?”

  “Mostly. I stopped twice, but not by choice. Once was in Spokane when I was mugged.”

  She blanched. “You were mugged?”

  “A gang attacked me. I was stabbed three times.”