The Road to Grace

by Richard Paul Evans

  “Thanks,” I said. “Good to know.”

  I ate dinner across the street at a small, shoebox-shaped diner, Hannibal fried chicken with biscuits and sawmill gravy, then returned to the hotel to soak in the hot tub. I read a little of my Jesse James book, then retired early.

  Being in Hannibal lifted my spirits, and, perhaps for the first time since I left Seattle, I felt more like a tourist than a man on a pilgrimage. The next morning I went for a walk around the town, stopping for breakfast and coffee at the Java Jive on Main Street. My waitress was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. I guessed her to be in her early to mid twenties, but she was dressed in retro clothing: a formfitting striped dress with a red beret and sash and high-heeled shoes. She reminded me of one of those girls that B-52 bomber squads painted on the noses of their flying coffins.

  The pastry and coffee were good and I leisurely drank my coffee, the tourist traffic outside as meandering as the river the town parallels. It was a pleasure to watch others walk for a change.

  I hadn’t planned on spending the day in Hannibal, but an hour into the morning I knew I would. After finishing my second coffee I walked north to see Twain’s home.

  The Mark Twain historic complex was well preserved with cobblestone streets closed off to automobile traffic. Among the buildings still standing are Twain’s boyhood home, complete with the white fence Tom Sawyer hoodwinked the neighbor boys into painting, and the reconstructed home of Tom Blankenship—the boy Huckleberry Finn was based on. Twain wrote of his friend Tom:

  His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy, and was envied by all the rest of us. We liked him; we enjoyed his society. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents, the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than of any other boy’s.

  There was also Twain’s father’s justice of the peace office and the home of Laura Hawkins, the neighbor girl on whom Twain had based the character Becky Thatcher. In this, the author and I shared common ground—both of our lives were forever changed by the girl next door.

  After touring the homes, I walked south along the bank of the Mississippi until I came to the loading plank of the Mark Twain riverboat. I paid fifteen dollars for a one-hour cruise and boarded the craft.

  The boat didn’t cover much ground, or water, just paddling up the river a spell then back down, but the ride was as pleasant and smooth as a southern drawl.

  Steve, the riverboat captain, was a jovial host and as we pulled away from the dock, he sang out over the boat’s PA system an obligatory “Maaaark Twaaaaaaain,” reassuring us that the water was two fathoms deep, which to the riverboat pilot meant safe water. Safe water. It is still a comforting reassurance to us today.

  I climbed up to the boat’s wheelhouse and asked Captain Steve something I’d always wondered: why were the top of the boat’s smokestacks fluted?

  “Mostly tradition,” he replied. “But back in Twain’s day the flutes helped keep the embers from the boat’s furnace from falling on the passengers’ heads.”

  Satisfied with the answer I went back to the ship’s bow and drank a Coke.

  On our return to shore, the captain blew the boat’s powerful steam whistle thrice before sidling up to the dock. I thanked Captain Steve and disembarked, then walked to Main Street, ate lunch at Ole Planters Restaurant, then wandered back to my hotel, perusing store windows on the way.

  Two blocks from my hotel I passed an office with a sign in the window that read:

  Haunted Hannibal Ghost Tours

  I went inside to check it out. No one was inside, but there was a sign-up list for the evening’s tour. I added my name to the list.

  Just about everything in Hannibal is haunted, and everyone in town had a ghost story they were eager to share. The first ghost story I heard was shared that morning by my waitress over breakfast. The renter in an apartment next to the Java Jive kept complaining about the creepy organ music that woke him every night at 3 A.M. He refused to believe that the coffeehouse management was not to blame even though the coffeehouse didn’t own an organ and closed at midnight.

  Even the public library had stories of a fastidious apparition who, after closing hours, threw books on the floor that had been incorrectly reshelved.

  After a nap at the hotel, I woke feeling a little dizzy again, but it soon passed. I ate dinner at the same diner I had the night before, then walked two blocks to the shop where I’d signed up for the ghost tour.

  A long, gray passenger van was idling in front of the office and a small congregation on the sidewalk. I walked inside the office. A tall, pleasant-looking woman with long, dishwater blond hair stood next to the counter holding a clipboard.

  “I’m here for the ghost tour,” I said.

  “Then you’ve come to the right place,” she said, wagging a pen in front of me. “You must be Mr. Christoffersen.”

  “That’s me,” I said.

  She marked the list on her clipboard. “I’m Doreen. You’re alone, right?”

  I felt it accutely. “Right.”

  “Just go ahead and find a seat in the van out front.”

  I walked back outside. The small group I’d passed on the way in was now seated inside the van. The van’s door was wide open.

  There were five of us in the group: a young, fresh-faced couple who, from their glassy-eyed expressions, I guessed to be honeymooners, occupied half the front bench, and two women in their mid fifties sat in the middle row.

  The driver was a thin, thirtyish man with a face shadowed with stubble. Even though it was already getting dark he wore Ray-Ban aviators, and he looked a little like Richard Petty, the former NASCAR champion. His head was bowed as he was evidently playing a game on his cell phone.

  “Good evening,” I said as I climbed into the vehicle. Only the ladies greeted me back. The driver was fixated on his phone and the couple was still fixated on each other, oblivious to all other life on the planet. I squeezed through to the backseat of the van.

  A few minutes later, Doreen poked her head in through the front passenger window. “We’re waiting for one more.”

  The driver grunted and scratched his face, but still didn’t look up. About two minutes later Doreen returned. She was standing next to an elderly gentleman who wore a flat cap and gray sweater and carried a black, metal-tipped cane.

  “There you are, Mr. Lewis,” Doreen said. “I’ll take your cane. Watch your step.”

  Mr. Lewis was probably in his mid to late eighties, gray and bent with age. He struggled to climb up into the front row, sitting next to the honeymooners. Doreen helped him fasten his seat belt, then slid the side door shut and climbed into the front passenger seat. When she was settled, she turned around and smiled at us.

  “Welcome, everyone, to haunted Hannibal. I have been guiding this tour for nearly twelve years now, and let me tell you, in those years I’ve seen some amazing things. Rest assured, your experiences on this tour are your own. We don’t judge the validity of your encounters, we just accept and let things happen. Most of all, you’re going to have a good time.

  “Our first stop tonight is rife with paranormal activity: the Old Baptist Cemetery.” She turned to the driver. “Let’s go.”

  The driver put down his phone, then looked over his shoulder and pulled out into the quiet, vacant street.

  The cemetery was about five minutes from our pickup point and the last of the day’s light was gone when the van stopped. Doreen and the driver helped Mr. Lewis out of the van, then the rest of us followed.

  I was the last one out and the small group had already formed a half circle in front of Doreen. Most of the cemetery was draped beneath a canopy of aged oak trees, which left us standing in a darker shade of night.

  Doreen handed each of us copper rods that swiveled in wooden handles, like divining rods, the kind water witches
use to find water.

  “This little device will help you find spectral energy,” she said. “As you walk through the cemetery, hold the rods in front of you like this.” She demonstrated, holding the rods in front of her with both hands like she was holding a pair of guns. “If they start crossing, you might have found someone who wants to communicate with you. Sometimes the lines will just open up. I’ve even seen them spin. Go ahead and ask the spirits questions. The ghosts up here are used to us, so they know what to do. But do be careful, it’s dark, so watch where you’re stepping. We don’t want anyone tripping over anything. Now off you go. Have fun!”

  At Doreen’s dismissal, everyone wandered off with their spirit wands, headed toward different sections of the cemetery. I stood there feeling stupid, holding the pointers in front of me.

  Mr. Lewis was still next to me. He was moving slowly, his cane in one hand, both of the rods in the other. I thought that at his age, traipsing around cemeteries at night might be a bit too ambitious.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Certainly,” he said curtly, his voice low and gravelly.

  “Have you done this before?”

  “Countless times.”

  “Oh,” I said, a little surprised. “Have you ever encountered anything?”

  “Not what I’m looking for.” He turned and looked at me, his eyes as dark as the cemetery. “I’m looking for my wife.”

  His response jarred me. I had never considered looking for McKale in this way. Nor did I want to. Everything about it seemed wrong.

  “You’ve been looking for her for a while?”

  “Yes,” he said. Then he hobbled away, mumbling something as he crossed the grounds.

  I walked off alone toward the cemetery’s northeast corner, holding the rods in front of me. About ten minutes later, Doreen joined me. “How’s it going?” she asked.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Good,” she said brightly.

  Nothing had happened, except the rods had moved a little, something that was almost impossible to prevent, even if you were trying.

  “Tell me,” I said. “What do you know about Mr. Lewis?”

  “Mr. Lewis is a retired insurance salesman from Tulsa, Oklahoma. His wife died a while back and since then he’s spent most of his time traveling the country to séances and ghost tours, looking for proof that she still exists.”

  “Has he had any luck?” I asked.

  “Apparently not. A lot of people have claimed to find her, but none have passed his test.”

  “What’s his test?”

  “He had a pet name he called her. If they can’t tell him what it is, he knows it’s not her.”

  “When you say a while, how long are we talking about? A few years?”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Try forty.”

  “Forty years,” I said. “He’s been traveling the country for forty years looking for his wife?”

  She nodded. “He’s spent his life and fortune trying to find her. At least that’s what he told me when he signed up for the tour.”

  “Doesn’t he have any family?”

  “He has four adult children. Sounds like he’s estranged from them. I guess he was pretty broken up about losing her.” Doreen read the look of disapproval on my face, then said, “I know, I wouldn’t do it. But you can’t judge someone until you’ve walked in their moccasins, can you? So have you found anyone tonight?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “Well let’s get busy,” she said.

  For the next half hour Doreen followed me around the cemetery looking for traces of paranormal activity. My lines crossed several times—actually, several dozen times—and, at Doreen’s encouragement, I found myself in a one-sided conversation with a grave marker named Mary Stewart. My divining rods had rotated backward and Doreen was certain that Mary’s spirit was hugging me.

  I’ll admit to one peculiar phenomenon. I kept feeling the sensation of walking through spiderwebs, even when I was out in the open.

  An hour later as we reboarded the van, the two women were chatting excitedly, one claiming she’d found a spirit who knew her recently deceased grandmother. The honeymooners were still just staring at each other, clearly desperate to get back to the hotel.

  Mr. Lewis was the last to return, only doing so at Doreen’s insistence. As he struggled into the van he looked sad or angry, I couldn’t really tell which, as his face was sufficiently hard that it was difficult to read any emotion except unhappiness. Watching him had a powerful effect on me.

  The van took a circuitous route back to Doreen’s office, passing by a series of buildings that were supposedly haunted, including the Old Catholic Church, which was up for sale. Doreen told us that one of her clients claimed to have placed a recorder in the church and, within minutes, recorded the sound of an invisible choir.

  A few blocks past the Old Church, Doreen pointed out a Victorian home. “Up ahead here, to your left, is LaBinnah Bistro. I recommend that you eat there if you get the chance. Can anyone figure out where the restaurant got its name?”

  We all looked out at the building, even the honeymooners.

  “It’s French,” one of the women said.

  “Or Cajun,” said the other.

  “No, that’s not it,” Doreen said.

  “It was the chef’s wife’s name,” the male honeymooner said, the first word he’d spoken to anyone but his wife.

  “No,” Doreen said.

  “I know,” I said.

  Doreen looked at me. “You think you do?”

  “LaBinnah is Hannibal spelled backwards.”

  Doreen clapped. “You’re the first person in twelve years who’s gotten that right,” she said. “Twelve years.”

  When we’d returned to the office and disembarked from the van, Doreen asked me what I’d thought of the tour. “It was life changing,” I said.

  She beamed at my report. “I’m so pleased. Thank you for coming. And come back soon.”

  “Good night,” I said, then turned and walked back to my hotel.

  I meant what I said to Doreen, just not for the reasons she had likely assumed. The experience had had a profound impact on me. Not the paranormal aspect of the tour—which I had found mildly amusing—but rather my experience with Mr. Lewis. In this man I had seen something far more frightening than any graveyard specter or poltergeist. I had seen the bitterness of unaccepted loss. I had seen the possibility of my own future and my own ruin.

  C H A P T E R

  Twenty-five

  What’s wrong with me? Something’s broken.

  Alan Christoffersen’s diary

  A man’s experiences of life are a book. There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

  —Mark Twain

  I hated to leave Hannibal. On the way out of town, I stopped at Mark Twain’s Cave, the same cave Twain explored as a boy and referenced in five of his books—most famously in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, where Tom and Becky get mixed up with Injun Joe.

  I left my pack behind the counter at the cave’s gift shop, then entered the cave with a tall, boyish-looking guide and a small group from a Church of God Bible class visiting from Memphis, Tennessee.

  Mark Twain’s cave was a remarkable thing—a labyrinth of shelved limestone that tangled and twisted in the belly of the hill for more than six miles.

  “One could get more lost in here than on the New Jersey Turnpike,” our guide announced. How he had come up with that exact comparison I wasn’t sure. I decided that he’d probably been lost in New Jersey at some time.

  For the next hour we wound our way through a few dozen of the cave’s more than 260 passages. Inside, the cave was chilly, as it maintained a year-round temperature of 52 degrees, and many in our group complained that they hadn’t brought their sweaters.

  Among the many things we saw was the signature of Jesse James, who hid out in the cave
after the robbery of a train in a nearby town.

  Our guide led us to Grand Avenue, the largest room in the cave, where Tom and Becky were lost in darkness after a bat doused Becky’s candle. This story was, of course, a natural segue into the climax of the tour (of all cave tours, for that matter) when our guide turned out the lights with the exhortation, “Put your hand up to your face and see if you can see it.”

  We couldn’t, of course. “Dark as sin,” McKale would have said. Actually she never would have come in the cave; she was crazily claustrophobic. Amusingly, someone said “ouch” after hitting himself in the nose.

  Our guide turned the lights back on then said, “Let me share with you an interesting fact. The human eye needs light to survive. If you got lost in this cave, you would be permanently blind in six to eight weeks.”

  “Imagine that,” the woman next to me said. “That would be horrible.”

  “If you got lost in this cave, you’d be dead long before you went blind,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of that.” Peculiarly, the woman smiled, as if this were a comforting thought.

  Our guide continued. “At one time this cave was owned by a Hannibal doctor named Joseph Nash McDowell, who bought the cave to do ‘scientific’ experiments with mummification. When his daughter died, he brought her in and embalmed her. He did his experiments in that crevice about fifty yards back.”

  “Wait,” I said. “He did experiments with his daughter’s corpse?”

  “Yes, sir,” the guide said.

  I shook my head. Just when you think people couldn’t get any more bizarre, a Joseph Nash McDowell turns up.

  At the completion of the tour I retrieved my pack, then started back to historic Hannibal. That wasn’t my original plan. I had stopped at the cave on my way to highway 79, a scenic route that followed the Mississippi River south along the Missouri–Illinois border. But as I verified my route with a clerk at the cave’s gift shop, I learned that the river had recently washed out the road and the highway was closed. I reasoned that I could always walk around construction crews, but the clerk wasn’t sure that was possible. Considering that a closed route might mean backtracking for days, I decided not to take the chance.