Random Walk: A Novel for a New Age

Fifteen

That night Jody sat down next to Guthrie. “Well, now we’re about to abandon a wheelchair,” he said. “It was bad enough leaving an aluminum walker by the side of the road, but this’ll get us a littering summons for sure.”

“They’re talking about bringing it along tomorrow, in case Al’s legs give out.”

“His legs aren’t about to give out. We’re like broken bones, hoss. Once we mend we’re strongest in the broken places. You take Mame, she can walk anybody into the ground. Another day or two and old Al’s gonna be leggin’ it out to Green Bay, askin’ the Packers can he try out for kicking field goals. Speaking of Green Bay, where we headed?”

Guthrie dug out the map, unfolded it. “I was thinking about that myself,” he said. “I was thinking originally we’d go clear to Miles City and then either stay on 12 going east into North Dakota or come down 59 and pick up 212 down into a little bit of Wyoming and then into South Dakota. See where we just slice off the northeast corner of Wyoming?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But if we do that we’ve got this whole stretch from Forsyth to Miles City where Route 12 becomes part of the Interstate. Now it looks as though there are stretches of road alongside it, so we wouldn’t have to go all that way right on 1-94, but maybe we’re better off cutting south right after Forsyth on 447 and picking up 212 at either Lame Deer or Ashland. We’re a long ways from the mountains, so it doesn’t matter how rough the road is. The only thing against it is it means committing to 212 and the southern route, and I was thinking I wouldn’t be deciding that until Miles City.” He shrugged. “That what you wanted to know?”

“Well, not really, hoss.”

“Oh?”

“Thing is, I was thinking in long-range terms. Oh, hell, I’ll just come out and ask it. Are we on our way to Washington?”

“Washington? Oh, you mean D.C.”

“Of course I mean D.C. If we’re bound for Washington State you got a pretty unusual sense of direction.”

“Washington, D.C.,” Guthrie said. “Why would we be going there?”

“Well, some of the folks were talking, and they seemed to take it for granted that was where we’re going. To make some sort of protest.”

“A protest? You mean like a peace march?”

“I guess.”

“Jesus,” Guthrie said.

“Because I didn’t think that’s what this was, but—”

“Christ, I certainly hope not. You mean assholes making speeches? Guitars, ‘We Shall Overcome,’ all of that stuff?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t get involved in all of that political crap,” Guthrie said. “Man, I got up one morning and decided to go for a walk. That’s all I intended to do. I didn’t expect half the population of the Great Northwest would decide to tag along after me, but I’m not complaining, I sort of like the company. But if this is a peace march, somebody else is going to have to lead it, because I’m gonna go catch a train home.”

“Back to Roseburg, huh?”

“Bet your ass.”

“So we’re not going into North Dakota to protest the missile installations?”

“What!”

“Well, I didn’t think so.”

“Who was it said—”

“I don’t remember. But somebody was saying how there are these missile silos in North Dakota, in between the wheat fields or some such thing, and we could march around them and chant and send out energy and fuse their fucking nose cones or something. And the troops guarding the silos would desert their posts and march with us.”

“Especially if we pelt them with flowers. Jesus Christ.”

“So I thought I’d check with you.”

“Yeah. Right.” He thought for a moment. “You can tell people we’re not going to Washington, D.C. or state. And we’re not going to North Dakota, either, so that’ll make it easy to decide about going to Miles City. We’ll cut south at Forsyth to 212. If people are even talking about missiles in North Dakota, we won’t go there.”

What did you do when you were confused? You went and talked with Sara.

“I never even thought about going to Washington or trying to tell the government what to do,” he told her. “The minute Jody said that, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. That’s not just my kind of thing, and it feels dead wrong for this group. For Christ’s sake, we’ve got every kind of person there is, and from every kind of political perspective. Some of our people, if they were going to present a demand to Washington, it would be that they start the Vietnam War all over again and use nukes this time around. It seems to me that people haven’t been getting politicized since joining up with us. If anything, they let go of whatever politics they had.”

“It usually seems to work that way,” she agreed.

“I think it’s all right not knowing the destination,” he went on. “I don’t mind that. It feels fine. We haven’t yet come to a fork in the road with no idea where to go next. I always get the route a few days ahead of time, and I have the feeling it may not matter too much where we’re going. If we keep going generally east sooner or later we’ll get to the ocean, and then we’ll either stop or turn around or walk on water. The way things have been going lately, it wouldn’t surprise me if we could.”

“You’re getting hard to surprise, Guthrie.”

“Hard to surprise but easy to baffle. I’m glad Jody told me what people were saying. I don’t think it’s a problem, nothing like that, but it got me thinking. Sara, I wish I knew what this was all about.”

“Ah.”

“I mean it. I’ll tell myself it’s not about anything, I just went out for a walk and look what it led to, but what is it leading to? Not the destination, it doesn’t matter if it’s Boston or Miami or Newport News, or if we stop in our tracks somewhere in the middle of Arkansas. But what’s the purpose? Are we a sort of traveling medicine show, clearing up people’s sinuses and fusing their broken bones? I’m not making light of that. If that’s what this is about, that’s fine. Every day there are more miracles, more healings, and it’s exciting to be part of it.”

“But?”

“But I have a feeling there’s more, and I’m starting to think I ought to know what it is.”

“Have you looked within for the answer?”

“I had to look within to find the question. If there’s any answers hiding in the same cupboard, I can’t find them.”

She took his hand. For several moments neither of them spoke. Then she said, “I’ve been having some of the same thoughts. That it’s time I knew.”

“And?”

“Do we still have Al’s wheelchair with us?”

“Yes. He’s still not sure he won’t need it.”

“Good. He won’t need it. I will.”

“What for? You’re not, uh, weakening physically, are you, Sara?”

“No, eyesight was the only sacrifice I’ve had to make. But I’ll ride in the wheelchair tomorrow. Someone will have to push me.”

“Why?”

She brushed her fingertips across her forehead. “I guess you could say I’ll be going on a vision quest. I’d go sit on top of a mountain for a few days but we’ve left the mountains far behind, and if I sat anywhere the rest of you would leave me as far behind as we’ve left the mountains.”

“Don’t be silly. We’d wait for you.”

“I don’t think there’s any need. We’ve got the wheelchair. I’ll sit in it. People can take turns pushing it. I’ll be in a sort of a trance, so it would be better if no one tried to talk to me. And don’t worry about food. I won’t need any food.”

“What about water?”

“I won’t need that either.”

“How long is this going to take?”

“I’m not sure. Two, three days.”

“And when it’s done we’ll know what’s happening?”

“Well, we’ll know something,” she said.

“At the very least, we’ll know that a wheelchair’s the wrong vehicle for a vision quest.”

They set out the next morning with Sara in the chair. She was positioned at her request about midway between the front and rear of the procession, with a substantial gap immediately in front of and behind her. While she had said that she would probably be unable to hear anything, Guthrie decided there shouldn’t be any conversation carried on too close to her, on the chance that it might distract her.

He took the first turn pushing the chair. He had gone perhaps fifty yards when there was a tug at his sleeve.

He turned. It was Neila, wide-eyed and silent. She was holding a crystal on a gold chain, and when he stepped aside she placed it around Sara’s neck and fastened the clasp. She flashed a quick half smile, then hurried on ahead.

Sara took hold of the blue stone with both hands, then let go of it and settled her hands again in her lap. Guthrie resumed pushing the chair, and it rolled easily over the blacktop pavement. The air was warm but not too warm, with a cloud just blocking the sun and the sky a vivid blue. He walked along, pushing the chair, enjoying the sense of Sara’s presence.

And then he felt that she was gone. She still sat in the chair, but she had left him.

After an hour or so, her son Thom took over and Guthrie picked up his own pace and joined some of the others further ahead. Someone else spelled Thom after another hour, and so it went, with someone always ready to take over the solitary task of pushing Sara’s chair.

At first she was the subject of a good many conversations, the focal point of much of the group’s attention. But when nothing happened, when she continued to sit motionless in the chair as the miles rolled away, when not even the person who pushed her had any real sense of her presence, people stopped talking about her and paid less attention to her. When they made camp the first night there was some discussion as to whether she should be left in the chair overnight. Guthrie decided against moving her. Since she could not be described as awake, there was no reason to assume she would need to sleep. They stationed her chair where she was unlikely to be disturbed, and in the morning she was as they had left her, with no visible change in position or attitude.

She was breathing. Her respiration was very shallow, and at one point Guthrie borrowed a pocket mirror from Georgia Burdine to make sure that she was breathing at all. She produced just enough breath to fog the mirror. Afterward, he wondered what he would have done if the mirror hadn’t fogged. She had to be sustaining life if she was breathing, but the reverse didn’t necessarily follow; for all he knew, she could enter into a state of suspended animation in which breathing was as unnecessary as eating and drinking seemed to be. So, he decided, he probably would have done nothing if she were not breathing — but it was reassuring to know that she was.

Toward the end of the third day, with Douglas pushing the chair, her body trembled profoundly. Then she sighed. While Douglas was trying to decide whether it was appropriate for him to say anything, she spoke his name.

“Yes, it’s me, Sara,” he said. “But how did you know?”

“I looked down and saw you. On my way back.” Her voice was very faint. “Did you push me all the way, Douglas?”

“Oh, gosh, no. I took over for Bud about forty minutes ago. Just about everybody’s had a turn.”

“How long was I gone?”

“Gone?”

“How long have I been in the chair?”

“This is the third day.”

“That long,” she said. “Or that short. There was no time where I went.”

“Where did you go?”

“Far away,” she said. Her voice still sounded slightly disembodied. “I’m thirsty,” she said. “Could I have a sip of water? Thank you. Where are we? Are we still in Montana?”

“Oh, very much so. We’ll be in Montana for a good long while yet.”

“That’s nice,” she said placidly. “I think I had better rest. Thank you, Douglas.”

When they made camp that night she got up from her wheelchair and announced that she wouldn’t need it anymore. Al said he certainly didn’t have any use for it, and they decided to abandon it at roadside. “You don’t see a whole lot of abandoned wheelchairs,” Jerry told Sue Anne. “It’s not like umbrellas, with people constantly forgetting them in restaurants.”

Guthrie had come over to say a few words to her as soon as he learned she was conscious. Then he left her alone until everyone had settled in for the evening. After dinner he watched the smoke from the cookfire for a few minutes. Then he found Sara and took her by the hand. They walked off a little ways, and he studied her face and looked into her sightless gray eyes. She looked different, he thought. There was a weightlessness about her, as if she had not entirely returned to her body, and at the same time he felt an air of preoccupation, of concern with matters of great importance.

“Well,” he said. “It’s good to have you back.”

“It’s good to be back.”

“Where’d you go? Did you have a vision?”

“Did I? I don’t know if it was a vision. It seemed like rather more than that. I got what I set out for.” Her smile looked sad to him. “As for where I went, I don’t really know. I was gone from my body the whole time.”

“I could tell that. I was beginning to wonder if you were planning to come back.”

“I went to some… other place. I saw things, I was told things. I was given to understand things.”

He waited for her to say more. When she didn’t, he said, “Well, they didn’t stop the carnival just because the fortune-teller was taking a trip. We had a lot of things happen while you were out there. Douglas was pushing you when you woke up. Did you notice anything different about him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, maybe it’s not the sort of thing that shows up in a person’s aura.”

“Wait a minute,” she said. “He was walking normally, wasn’t he?”

“Uh-huh. That little limp of his went away. His hip went and healed itself.”

“I guess he was ready to let go of whatever he was holding. It doesn’t matter what it was. You don’t have to sift through the garbage on the way to the dump, you know. Just so you haul it there and get rid of it.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Have I?”

“Sara, you sound tired. Want me to let you get some sleep?”

“No, I’m fine. I am tired, but I’m not ready to sleep yet. What else did I miss? I might as well have been on the other side of the world, you know, for all the sense I had of being here. What else went on? Are there many new people?”

There were a few, and he told her about them. And there had been some breakdowns and breakthroughs, and a healing or two on the physical level, and he brought her up to date.

“And you remember Bud,” he said. “Don’t you?”

“Of course I remember Bud. Richard’s father, Ellie’s husband. How could I not remember Bud?”

“I didn’t think you’d forgotten him, Sara. What I was wondering was if you remembered what he looks like. I never know exactly how much visual sense you have of people you’ve never actually seen, not with your eyes. I know you see them with another kind of vision, but does that show the same things I see? For example, when you looked at Bud did you notice he was missing a front tooth?”

“Yes,” she said. “In fact I remember thinking that he ought to replace it. It shows whenever he smiles, and he has a beautiful smile otherwise.”

“Well, he’s replacing it. Without visiting a dentist.”

“He’s growing a new tooth?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful, Guthrie.”

“He had this soreness in his gum, so somebody took the pain away for him, and then it came back as the tooth kept cutting through the gum, and somebody took the pain away again, and then he stuck his tongue in the gap and noticed something poking on through.”

“That is just marvelous.”

“And you know Jody’s tattoo?”

“The spider? It’s one of the last things I saw with my eyes. And I saw it when I scanned him; I saw him getting it in Seattle. What about it?”

“It’s almost gone. Jody is absolutely dumbfounded. He says evidently he doesn’t need it anymore, and he’s all right about it. But who ever heard of the spontaneous remission of a tattoo?”

“That is so exciting,” she said.

“Is it? I mean, I think it’s something you could send in to Believe It or Not, but how important is it in the overall scheme of things? Jody doesn’t mind losing the tattoo, even if he is a little wistful about it, but he didn’t mind having it, either, so—”

“No, that’s not the point,” she cut in. “It’s a miracle.”

“We’ve been turning out miracles every day, Sara. What’s different about this one?”

“A new tooth, a disappearing tattoo. I know I was the one who said there’s no order of difficulty in miracles, and it’s true, but every time we produce a new type of miracle it helps make it obvious that all miracles are possible, that we have to change our vision of what’s possible and what isn’t. And it helps me to know that.”

“What did you learn out there, Sara?”

“Quite a bit.” Her hand moved to touch the crystal at her throat. “That’s why I’m the way I am right now,” she said. “It’s not tiredness, it’s that I feel overwhelmed. I found out what our job is.”

“And?”

“We’re supposed to cure cancer.”

“We’ve already done that. Didn’t you say Sue Anne had cancer and cured it?”

“Not individually. We’re supposed to cure the planet’s cancer.”

“How do we do that? Go around wiping out the disease all over the globe?”

She shook her head. “No, you still don’t understand. I’m not talking about the kind of cancer that Sue Anne had, the cancer that human beings get and die of.” She took a breath. “The planet itself has cancer,” she said. “And we’re it. And that’s what we’re supposed to cure.”