Not Without My Father: One Woman's 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace

by Watkins, Andra

  “Really, Dad. You don’t need to follow me around all day.” I glanced at the shot: His thumbprint, with me and most of the milepost blurred in the background. I sighed and stuffed the phone in my pocket. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Well, that lady yesterday said you was in danger. The one that stopped. Remember her? Worked for the state or something. On her way to Vicksburg. There’s some mean people around here. That’s what she said.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Tell you what. I’ll pull into them rest areas and sell books to the people that stop. When I see you coming, I’ll go on to the next one.”

  “Whatever. Do whatever makes you happy, Dad. I’m gonna get started.”

  Frozen joints eased into the rhythm of walking. Puss stuck my toes together. At milepost 91, I stopped to snap a photo underneath a spring sky. Cornflower blue hovered above grassy farmland, cut by a line of highway. When I closed my eyes, I smelled the sweet aura of fresh-cut hay.

  In the field to my right, a cat slinked through spikes of grass. I shielded my eyes with one hand and studied its proportions. “Huh. That’s an awfully big house cat.”

  It eased behind a clump of brush. Like a submarine scope, its head scanned the horizon. When it caught me in its cross hairs, it stopped.

  I realized what it was when we locked eyes, when I knew I was prey to a Mississippi bobcat.

  I couldn’t remember what to do when confronted by a predator. Break eye contact? Wave my arms to make myself bigger? Shout? I sneaked a look at my phone. Plenty of signal. I waffled between calling Dad and catching up with him.

  After a minute-long staring match with the bobcat, I broke contact and sussed out the terrain. “If I just keep to the road and walk at my normal pace—don’t run, Andra—I can make those trees. They’re just a few hundred feet from here.”

  But once I peeled shaking hands from milepost 91, I flailed in a morass of flawed logic. Open spaces on the Trace were like swimming an ocean. The harder I pushed, the farther the horizon drifted. I kicked my step to a jog. Once, I looked back.

  And remembered the story about Meriwether Lewis being chased into the Missouri River by a grizzly. His rifle was empty when the bear came after him, and he was alone. He dove into the water and awaited the bear’s inevitable attack. Something else caught the grizzly bear’s eye, and it fled along the bank, leaving Lewis uneaten.

  Did Lewis feel like I did? I longed to run, to climb a tree, to beam myself somewhere else, but my tattered feet were cemented in place. Terror paralyzed me.

  The bobcat started a slow creep toward me. Relaxed. Like it tracked easy prey. I jerked my gaze to the road ahead. A football field. Maybe two to go. Without looking back, I sprinted through the highway’s heart. I prayed for a car, any car, and braced myself for claws tearing into flesh, for fangs at my throat, for—

  A squeal knifed the air.

  I forgot the pain in my feet, the stiffness in my heels, the agony in my hips. Never a runner, I didn’t stop until milepost 92. Dad’s car materialized where I waited, doubled over and heaving. He inched off the highway and rocked himself from the driver’s seat. “Sold two books back there. I’m a good salesman, ain’t I?”

  I swallowed bile, a grenade through my insides. I lurched forward, hands on knees.

  “Ain’t I, huh? A good salesman?”

  Cough-cough-cough. “Yes, Dad!”

  “Well, okay. Traffic’s pretty bad up ahead. I’m gonna pull up there to that curve and wait. Gotta make sure you’re okay.”

  While Dad gyrated through the driver’s door, I lurched along the shoulder. Why was Dad always so oblivious? To him, Life was the next stranger, laughing at his stories. Another piece of junk. Why couldn’t he see how much I needed him to shine his fading light on me?

  For the next mile, I banished Dad and focused on my surroundings. Cars and trucks barreled around Jackson, forcing me to uneven grass. I couldn’t walk on the road.

  “At least, that bobcat won’t follow me into this.” I talked above the growl of a truck. It hugged the white line two feet from me, its speed around fifty. Vibrations rattled my ribcage and reverberated between my teeth.

  At milepost 93, I whipped out my phone and snapped another picture. “Fireball Whiskey. A big bottle this time.”

  I made a game of photographing things along the side of the road. Five hours of monotony captured in pictures. At the end of each day, I scrolled through them and remembered. The ethereal quality of light. Brushes of bird wings. The primordial stench of swamp water.

  But by Jackson, my photographs developed a troubling theme. Beer bottles, crushed beer cans, empty mini bottles and Costco-sized liquor containers accounted for a third of the garbage I encountered. In one mile, I found fifteen remnants of booze.

  Which meant one in every three drivers could be driving under the influence, inches from me.

  I kicked the plastic bottle and diverted my thoughts to the need for a pit stop. Traffic was too heavy for me to pee near the road, a proficiency I honed during my week-long walk from Natchez. I could drop trow and have my pants up, usually without seeing a car. From my virgin pee-on-the-ground foray at Elizabeth Female Academy, I progressed to a streetwalking whore who could do it anywhere.

  Just past milepost 93, I hiked into an empty pull-off.

  Osburn Stand.

  Stands were once hubs of the Trace. Pioneers could find a meal and a bed to break up the long walk home. Only two stands remain on the Natchez Trace, crude testaments to the creature comforts of a vanished era. At the Meriwether Lewis site, the stand where he died was consumed by fire long ago. A solitary stone step marks the spot he entered and never left.

  Osburn Stand consisted of a trash can. A brown information sign. A treeless parking lot. Still, history whispered in the wind. If I closed my eyes, I imagined a cluster of clapboard lodgings. A horse’s whinny. Clinking glass and raucous laughter.

  I dropped my backpack and carried my dwindling toilet paper behind the sign. The stench of urine hit me as soon as I walked around it. “I wonder whether budget cuts are causing this problem. If there were enough rangers, people wouldn’t be able to pee here.”

  Public restrooms on the Natchez Trace Parkway were spaced for drivers, not walkers. Dad carried rolls of toilet paper in the back seat, ready to deploy wherever and whenever the urge hit him. I skittered next to trees and lurked behind signs, never knowing when a park ranger might drive by and cite me for public indecency.

  At least, I always dropped my stained toilet paper in the trash.

  Nine mileposts later, another wave of nausea flattened me. I gripped milepost 102 with both hands to steady myself. Eighteen wheelers were forbidden on the Trace, but lacking patrols allowed truckers an illegal shortcut between Jackson-area interstates. Wildness and danger were ingrained in the history of the Natchez Trace, but squeezed funding added peril the pioneers never imagined.

  When a camper veered off the pavement, it pushed me down an embankment. I landed in a mound of fire ants. Engine oil and exhaust fumes clogged my lungs as I raked ants from my arms before they bit me. “I’m going to throw up,” I muttered. “Please God, don’t let me throw up.”

  Dad steered the car into the shoulder and waved me over. I hobbled to the passenger side.

  “Some guy tried to buy this Mercury back at that store.”

  I dry-heaved and fell into the seat beside him. When I grabbed a white napkin and swabbed my face, it came away black.

  Still, Dad kept talking. To him, stories were always right.

  Even when they weren’t.

  “A preacher. Said these Mercury Marquis were the best cars ever made. Offered me cash for it, but I told him Linda’d kill me if I sold her car.” Dad poked my arm with one finger, a tick he used to be sure people were paying attention.

  I was too obliterated to smack him. I sparred with words instead.

  Just like he wanted.

  “Mom’s gonna buy a red convertible as soon as you’re dead, Dad. I don’t know w
hy you think she’s the one who loves this car so much.” I scrubbed more grit off my face and swallowed Gatorade. “This traffic is really getting to me.” I spat a mouthful of Gatorade, mouthwash for the fumes.

  Dad finally looked at me. “Maybe you ought to quit for today, Andra. Them cars is too thick to cut with a sharp knife.”

  The landscape blurred. Taillights and pavement. Noise and heat. Dad acknowledged me, without a story to mask his concern. And I was unstrung. When I didn’t know what to say, obliviousness worked for me, too.

  I gripped the top of the car and dragged myself to stand. “Three more miles, Dad. I can do three more miles!”

  Dad leaned across the front seat. Open-faced. No barriers. “People’ll understand if you quit, Andra.”

  “No.”

  “You can cut a day short.”

  “No.” I hurled the empty Gatorade bottle past his head and gritted my teeth through stretches. Whatever he said, I wasn’t going to let a fifteen mile stretch of highway beat me.

  “Why’re you doing this to yourself? Nobody really expects you to finish this.”

  “I expect me to finish, Dad.”

  “Why?”

  I did squats and pretended to consider his question.

  Because I thought I’d sell more books?

  What a joke.

  Whenever I logged onto the internet, I avoided reader reviews and sales statistics, because I didn’t want the lack of both to frustrate me. I didn’t want to read what readers said. If sales were still under triple digits, as I suspected, I would quit.

  Ignorance was a feather bed in hell. Did Meriwether Lewis feel the same, when he stood at the cusp of the Bitterroot Mountains? He knew his expedition would fail to find a water route to the Pacific. Yet, he led his team onward.

  He proceeded on because he didn’t have a choice.

  I did.

  So, why was I still walking?

  I swayed northeast and waved Dad around me. He blocked a line of impatient cars. Drivers honked and yelled for him to observe the speed limit. Vehicles whiplashed me from every direction, their bumpers and taillights and side mirrors inches from me. If I raised the wrong arm six inches, a speeding car would’ve made it a bloody stump.

  I leaned over ten lanes of traffic on Interstate 55, my ears throbbing with engine surround-sound in my very own live-action IMAX movie, and I whispered, “I will not complain about the quiet. I will not whine when I’m alone. I will not wish away the silence or the sinkholes in my life. Not after today.”

  I ripped myself from the concrete barrier and marched forward. Blood seeped through my sneakers, evidence of another popped blister. I ground my teeth and kept my eyes on the sliver of brown metal ahead.

  Milepost 104.

  Dad slipped the car onto grass. “I think I sold that ranger a book back there. She said she’d order it online.”

  “That’s great, Dad.” I trudged past the car, determined to reach the end.

  “Less than a mile. I have less than a mile to go.” I chanted through cracked lips. Whenever I licked them, I tasted grease and dirt. “I can do it. I can do it. I can do it.”

  Old Trace. The sign wagged over the road, marking a deep gouge parallel to the highway. I stopped and closed my eyes, trying to imagine a black-and-white place. When the world was buffalo and forest. Limitless sky. Unencumbered breeze. I took a cleansing breath, and when I raised my lids, I found the parkway silent. No cars. No motorcycles. No RV’s.

  I was alone. For a few seconds, I wallowed in a cocoon of peace.

  I wandered to a hilltop and glimpsed one taillight. “Dad!” I forgot about my pledge to enjoy moments alone and forced my tortured limbs to run. “He’s at milepost 105. That’s the end. Right there. Oh my God, I’m almost done with this day.” I hobbled over the last few steps, yanked the car door wide and threw myself into the passenger seat. My backpack smacked my head into the dashboard. I dragged it off and flung it behind me. Stale engine noise still buzzed inside my head. “Why aren’t we moving, Dad?” My voice was a husky, broken version of someone I used to know.

  When Dad cleared his throat, he got my attention. His fingers squeezed the steering wheel, but his eyes were on me. “You amaze me, Andra. I never knew you was this tough.” He started the car. “Yep. I never knew you was this tough.”

  I covered my face with one hand to feign rest, to keep my father from seeing tears, drawn from the dry well of his sincere praise.

  I DROVE ALL NIGHT

  Cindi Lauper

  People beat themselves up over all kinds of things as they get older, until they realize there ain’t no point.

  I never thought I was a very good daddy, but look at the example I had: A drunk womanizer who treated my sweet mother like garbage. She stuck with him, though, no matter what. Where I come from, families stayed together.

  Sometime in her teens, I told Andra how I failed my parents. How I tried to love my father, in spite of his flaws. How I wished I could see my mother one more time, just to tell her I loved her.

  Teenage girls. I’ll never understand ’em. She always shooed me away, even those times I was crying, because I saw my life slipping through the inches she grew, the choices she made, the person she was becoming. She couldn’t understand I just wanted her to avoid the mistakes I made. Kids never get that. They hear lectures and roll their eyes.

  But Andra was a strong girl, just like my mother. Mom stood up to a lifetime of misery. Raised five children who mostly turned out right. Nobody ever doted on me like she did. Even when I towered over her, I was her baby, her pride, her miracle.

  As I watched my daughter struggle to breathe, all I saw was my mother, near the end of her life. I wanted to be both decent husband and loyal son, but when the chamber around my mother’s heart filled up with fluid, I admit it. I abandoned my wife. Left her in the kitchen of our rented place outside Nashville and raced across Tennessee.

  I had to see my mother. Tell her I loved her one more time.

  When I got there, she was drowning in that hospital bed. I fought with them doctors, told ’em to give her something—anything—to help her breathe, even as the hospital intercom paged me. A call from my wife, telling me she was leaving me and going home to her mother in Kentucky.

  I stood in that sterile hallway, where I could almost see Death creeping in corners, and I wondered.

  Who had to die?

  If I left and went to my wife, would I miss the minute my mother was awake, when I could tell her how much I loved her?

  If I stayed until the fluid squeezed my mother’s lungs shut—and that could be weeks, according to them doctors—would I still have a wife?

  I found my father, told him to sober up and sit a vigil by my mother’s bedside. He owed her that, and for once, he didn’t disagree. I stopped at the nurse’s station and gave them folks a party-line phone number.

  I crawled in my car.

  And I drove all night.

  To Eastern Kentucky.

  My wife and I conceived our daughter in a downstairs bedroom. With the door open and her mother just across the hall.

  I didn’t know that, though.

  When I got the call.

  My strong, struggling daughter was barely more than an idea when I hot-footed it back to Tennessee.

  My mother rasped her last breath.

  But I didn’t make it.

  REDNECKS WHITE SOCKS AND BLUE RIBBON BEER

  Johnny Russell

  “Golly Molly, Andra! You almost hit that deer!”

  “I saw it, Dad. I saw it!”

  High beams couldn’t slice through Mississippi murk. I struggled to navigate a narrow road void of glowing stripe or overhead light. Astronomy abandoned me.

  “You sure this is the right way?”

  “Yes, Dad!”

  “How do you know?”

  I streaked to a halt at a stop sign. My iPhone fought two bars of service to map our destination. Gibbes Store. Learned, Mississippi. “The Google Girl says it�
��s just a couple more miles, Dad. This way.”

  Eyeballs glowed in dense forest. I imagined I drove through an episode of Scooby-Doo. The gang ran their psychedelic van through corridors spangled with creepy eyes. They always broke down. I punched the gas and hoped the Mercury was more dependable than a cartoon vehicle.

  “I don’t know why we had to drive to the backend of nowhere to eat.”

  “Best steaks around, Dad.” As we rolled into town, I mumbled, “Dear God, I hope they’re edible.” But was it a town? A few ramshackle buildings and no street light meant anything in the Deep South. Fantasy led me to one conclusion: We drove through a wrinkle in Time and found a living ghost town. My eyes swept the landscape. “There.” I steered the car toward a wrecked building.

  “That’s the place? Looks like a dump to me.”

  I pulled in front and dropped him. “Oh, come on, Dad. You’ve lived in the South all your life. You ought to know better than anyone that dumps are the best places.”

  He grunted his way outside. “I’ll check it out, Andra, but I ain’t expecting much.”

  “Don’t eat everything before I get in there!” I shouted into the crashing door.

  Stardust highlighted an arm of the Milky Way as I climbed squeaky steps. Country music seeped through swinging front doors. When I opened one, I laughed at the tarnished brass I shoot ammunition. Do you? push plate. Shelves sagged around the periphery of a deep room, while plastic tables lined the middle.

  Dad took up residence adjacent to a couple sipping red wine. “She put us right here. This ’un.”

  Before I assumed a seated position, I stared at Dad’s broad back. “Hi. I’m Roy Watkins. From South Carolina,” he crowed to the married couple who were probably enjoying a romantic date night, but Roy needed to meet strangers and share stories. I was determined to preempt him. “Dad! What are you having to eat?”

  Dad’s hands hovered over their food. “This is my daughter. Andra. She’s walking the whole Natchez Trace, because she wrote this book. I got a card here, see? Book about Meriwether Lewis.”