“You drink?” he asked.
“On occasion,” I said.
“I’ve got a still out back, makes some of the best rotgut in these parts. Pour you a swig?”
“Sure,” I said. I had always wondered what moonshine tasted like.
He poured the two cups halfway. He took a short drink, then looked at me, waiting for me to follow. Ignoring the smell, I took a drink. It was like swallowing rubbing alcohol and burned my throat. I gagged, then coughed loudly, which made Dustin laugh.
“Got a little kick to it,” he said.
“Shotguns have less kick,” I said. “Are you sure that’s not turpentine?”
My question pleased him. “Oh it’s moonshine all right,” he said. “Made from corn mash. Distilled it myself. Not for the faint of heart.”
“I guess I’m fainter of heart than I realized.” I tried a little more, but it wasn’t for me. With a condescending look he reached across the table and took my cup and downed it. He didn’t cough, but his face turned red.
“It’s an acquired taste,” I said.
“Not for the faint of heart,” he said again. A minute later he asked, “Why are you walkin’? You’re not runnin’ from the law, are you?”
“With all the guns you have around here, do you think I’d tell you if I was?”
He laughed. “Not if you’re smart.”
“No, I didn’t do anything criminal. I started walking because my wife died.”
His countenance immediately changed. “I’m sorry. How’d you lose her?”
“She was in a horse-riding accident. She broke her back.”
He shook his head empathetically, then breathed out slowly. “I lost my wife too,” he said.
“Is that her over there?” I said, pointing to the pictures on the console.
He nodded. “That’s Janean.” He looked down at his drink, then lifted it and took another swig. “You know what Janean means? It means ‘God is gracious.’ ” His eyes moistened and I could tell that the moonshine was taking effect. “He was gracious with her, at least. She was everythin’ a man could want.”
“How did you lose her?”
“Wasn’t a horse,” he said. “A horse’s ass, maybe.” He sighed. “I dunno.”
“You’re divorced?”
“Not that I know of. I mean, who’s going to serve me papers out here? They’d never be found again. Not that it matters. She’s been gone for two and a half years.”
“What happened?”
He took another drink before answering. “She didn’t want the life out here. It’s ironic, you know. I built this place to protect her from the world and keep her safe, and I lost her because of it. She said she was sick of living holed up like a badger. She said she was sick of livin’ paranoid and if the world was goin’ to end then she wanted to end with it, not go out fightin’ it. She poisoned the kids against me.” His demeanor turned angry. “I built this place for their good. When the world goes to hell, they’ll be back.” He nodded as if assuring himself. “They’ll be back. They’ll see I was right.”
“What if it doesn’t go to hell?” I asked.
“It will. It’s just a matter of time before the whole house of cards comes fallin’ down. This country’s been movin’ in the wrong direction a long time. It’s just a matter of time.”
“And if you’re right, then what?”
“I’ll be ready. It will take an entire army to get me out of here. I can blow the bridges on the way in. I’ve got an arsenal Bin Laden would’ve envied. I’ve got AK-47s, M-16s, shotguns, knives, machetes, dynamite, even a thousand gallons of gasoline under the house. You know what I’ve got? This will blow your mind. I’ve got a flame-thrower.”
“Where’d you get a flame-thrower?”
“I made it myself from a book I found on the Web. Shoots a fifty-foot flame. I’ve also got MREs, and a five-thousand-gallon water tank filled by my own well.”
“How do you think it will go down?” I asked. “. . . In the end.”
“I don’t know. I’ve thought through a couple dozen scenarios. You’ve got your world government, you’ve got terrorist groups with nuclear and chemical weapons, or, worse yet, EMPs. Do you know what EMPs are?”
“Electromagnetic pulse,” I said.
“Do you realize how easily someone could take us out with an EMP? One EMP blast could fry all of the computers and wires within a thousand miles. Shut down entire cities, all commerce, all refrigeration, all transportation, all communication, all hospital machinery. Hundreds of thousands of people would die the first week.
“Then you’ve got your pandemics. Do you know how many people were killed by the Black Death? Half of Europe. And that was back when the world was isolated. Today a pandemic would kill more than three billion people. I know it sounds like movie stuff, but a couple years ago there was a super virus discovered in Israel. If it had gotten out of quarantine, they estimate it would have been worse than the Black Death. We’re that kid with his finger in the dike, you know. It’s just a matter of time before it goes.”
I poured myself a little of the moonshine and this time forced it down without gagging.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“You probably don’t want to know,” I said.
“Try me,” he said in a low voice.
I wiped my mouth, then looked up at Dustin. “I think if terrorists blow up our largest cities with nuclear weapons, we lose all power and a pandemic ravages what’s left of the world while roving gangs prey off the weak, I’d just as soon not stick around for it. What’s the worst thing that could happen to us? We die? We’re all going to die.”
“It’s not just about you,” Dustin said. “You could lose your loved ones.”
I looked at him for a moment, then said, “Like you already did?”
He just stared at me for a moment, then, grabbing the jug, got up and went into the other room.
Stupid thing to say, I thought.
When I decided he wasn’t coming back, I got up and went out to the Winnebago. I felt bad that I’d offended my host. He’d been kind to take me in. Still I locked the door and got my gun out. I didn’t know what kind of a drinker Dustin was, and with the arsenal he had at his disposal, I feared him more than anything else in the swamp.
CHAPTER
Thirty-six
Why did the man cross America? To see what was on the other side of himself.
Alan Christoffersen’s diary
I woke early the next morning, packed up, then went over to Dustin’s house and knocked on the door. His truck was still there, so I assumed he was too. After my third time knocking, I decided that he was probably still asleep or hungover from the moonshine he’d ingested the night before. I tore a page from my journal and left him a note thanking him for his hospitality, then set off for the day.
Physically, I felt much better than I had the day before, which made me believe my difficulty walking had been, at least in part, psychosomatic. It was an easy, brisk walk down the dirt road back to the highway, then only eleven miles south to the town of Folkston. I could have easily walked farther, but I didn’t. My planned route into Florida went from Waycross to Folkston over the Florida border to Callahan, then southeast into Jacksonville. I wanted the crossing of my last state border to be more than an afternoon side note.
Four miles before Folkston, I passed a billboard that read:
Florida Lotto Tickets,
9 miles ahead.
Gas n’ Go Boulogne
Florida. If you had asked me as I left Seattle if I would make it here, I would have shrugged. But I had. I was on my last lap, so to speak.
Like Waycross, Folkston also calls itself the “Gateway to the Okefenokee.” I ate a buffet dinner at the Okefenokee Restaurant, with pork chops and popcorn shrimp, then found a room at a bed and breakfast called the Inn at Folkston, a quaint, restored 1920s heart-pine bungalow. McKale would have loved it.
The only room they had available was the En
glish Garden Room—which is also their bridal suite—themed after an English country inn, with a large sitting area and a gas fireplace. The room was beautiful and reportedly inhabited by a ghost, but the only thing that haunted me that night was my thoughts.
Long into the night I lay there thinking. The next day I would cross into Florida. I was nearing the end of my walk. Then what? Where was I going next? What would I do with the rest of my life? In response, what kept playing through my mind was the last thing McKale said to me as she lay dying: “Live.”
At that time, when I had no desire to go on, I had only considered that she had meant not taking my life. Now I realized that she had meant more than that. To truly live is more than taking the next breath—it’s to hope and dream and love. That’s what she really meant. She, who was my hope and dream and love, was telling me to go on without her.
Here, on the final stretch of my walk, I realized that what I wanted most was love. After all I had been through, I couldn’t bear the idea of reaching Key West only to walk across the border without a single person to share it with. And that was true of the rest of my life. Why hadn’t I understood this sooner?
Perhaps it was, like my father had said, as simple as a matter of faith. Faith that life could be worth living again after my love’s death. Faith in life itself. Faith in love itself. I hadn’t been willing to risk loving again, because I wasn’t willing to risk losing again. I had feared the future so much that I was killing it.
I was not so different from Dustin, the man in the swamp. Fearing the future, he had isolated himself with fences and barbwire and guns, just as I had done emotionally. And the result was the same—we had both run love out of our lives.
Somewhere in the internal dialogue of that night, I confronted the truth about myself and, in so doing, found the courage to obey McKale’s final request. I was ready to take a chance. I was ready to live again.
CHAPTER
Thirty-seven
A good read should introduce new drama in each chapter. But that’s just in books. What may be enjoyable in literature is not so in real life.
Alan Christoffersen’s diary
The weather the next morning was as balmy as one expects of Florida. The weather in my heart was equally serene. I knew what I wanted. I wanted love in my life. I wanted Falene.
When I had read her letter on the plane, I was not just surprised by her feelings but by my own. I cared more deeply for her than I had ever allowed myself to admit. Now, in this new day, I was ready to face those feelings. I was going to see this through. I wasn’t going to Key West without her. I was going to find Falene if I had to park a month in Jacksonville to do it, or visit every modeling agency in New York. As I thought about this, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a very long time. I felt alive.
Breakfasts at B&Bs are always good and the Inn at Folkston was no exception. I ate breakfast outside on the wood-planked patio. I had a stack of blueberry pancakes, honeydew melon, baked ham and “Chicken George’s” fresh eggs.
The clear, warm air smelled of the sweet fragrance of tea olive and honeysuckle.
After breakfast I went back to my room to check my cell phone. It had been a while since I’d turned it on and I wondered if Carroll had called.
I discovered that my phone was dead. I found the charger and plugged it into the wall. After about thirty seconds the phone turned on and immediately vibrated. I looked at its screen. I had eight missed calls and two voicemail messages. All of the calls were from the same two numbers. I didn’t recognize either, but both had Pasadena area codes.
I played the first message.
“Alan, this is Carroll. Sorry it took so long but I found your friend. Her phone number is area code 212, 555–5374. Good luck.”
My heart pounded. This was my miracle, wasn’t it? An answer to my night’s epiphany?
I played the message again and wrote down Falene’s phone number on a piece of note paper next to the room’s telephone. I nervously held the paper in one hand, my phone in the other, until I started laughing at myself. After all the time I’d known Falene, I was flat out terrified to call her. Where would I begin? What if she’d changed her mind about me? I felt as awkward as a teenager calling for a first date.
As I thought over what I would say, I looked back down at my phone. There was still the other message. I pushed play.
“Alan, this is Nicole. Please call as soon as you get this. It’s an emergency.”
Her voice was strained. Why was she calling from Pasadena? I dialed the number. It rang just twice before Nicole answered. “Alan?”
“Nicole? What’s wrong?”
“You need to come home,” she said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your father’s had a heart attack.”
For a moment I was speechless. “Is he still alive?”
“He’s in intensive care.”
“Is he going to make it?”
There was a long pause. Then she said, “You just need to come home.”
EPILOGUE
Again, my world is in commotion. The only thing that hasn’t changed in my life is the uncertainty of it all.
Alan Christoffersen’s diary
I took a cab to the Jacksonville airport, just thirty-six miles from Folkston. Just. By foot that’s two days of travel—by car it’s less than an hour. By plane I’ll have traveled as far as I’ve walked this last year before evening.
My flight to Los Angeles left Jacksonville at 5 P.M., with an hour layover in Atlanta. I never called Falene. There was already too much on my emotional plate.
I called Nicole from my layover to see if there were any changes in my father’s condition, but she didn’t answer. This intensified my fear. Did I regret not staying home with my father as he’d wanted me to? Of course I did. But I pushed the thought from my mind. Regret is a useless emotion: it’s like brushing your teeth after you find a cavity.
As I write this, I am about twenty minutes from touchdown in Los Angeles. What am I going to find? My heart is a battleground of hope and fear, each, in turn, seizing control. I’m afraid of the news that will shortly come. I’m afraid that I may already be orphaned.
Honestly, I do not have faith that I will see my father again. But I have hope. I hope that my father is still alive and that he’ll be okay. I hope that I can see him again and tell him everything that’s in my heart. But most of all, if it is his time, I hope for the chance to be there for him as he always was for me. I don’t know if God will grant me this. But I hope.
For now Key West must wait. For the third time since I began, my walk has been delayed. In the beginning, I had considered these stops on my journey as interruptions—but I’m coming to understand that perhaps these detours are my journey. No matter how much I, or the rest of humanity wishes otherwise, life is not lived in smooth, downhill expressways, but in the obscure, perilous trails and rocky back roads of life where we stumble and feel our way through the fog of the unknown. Life is not a sprint. It was never meant to be. It is just one step of faith after another.
To be continued.
Coming May 2014, Book 5 of The Walk series.
Coming May 2014, book 5 of The Walk series
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RICHARD PAUL EVANS is the #1 bestselling author of The Christmas Box. Each of his more than twenty novels has been a New York Times bestseller. There are more than seventeen million copies of his books in print worldwide, translated into more than twenty-four languages. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Mothers Book Award, the Romantic Times Best Women’s
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ALSO BY RICHARD PAUL EVANS
The Walk Series
The Walk
Miles to Go
The Road to Grace
A Winter Dream
Lost December
Promise Me
The Christmas List
Grace
The Gift
Finding Noel
The Sunflower
A Perfect Day
The Last Promise
The Christmas Box Miracle
The Carousel
The Looking Glass
The Locket
The Letter
Timepiece
The Christmas Box
For Children and Young Adults
The Dance
The Christmas Candle
The Spyglass
The Tower
The Light of Christmas
Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25
Michael Vey 2: Rise of the Elgen
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