Not Without My Father: One Woman's 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace (2 page)

As I winced through a sink bath, I studied my face in the mirror. The beginnings of forehead wrinkles and crows feet. A hint of Dad’s bulldog jowl. I stuck my tongue out at my green-eyed self. “Welcome to Hell, you idiot.”

HIT THE ROAD JACK

Ray Charles

Dad moseyed through the faded grandeur of the Plantation Suite at Hope Farm, a bed and breakfast in Natchez, Mississippi. Our first stop on my 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway saga. Dad planted himself between two canopied beds. “That the TV?” It was the size of an iPad, perched on a desk. He fumbled with his suspenders and rocked back and forth on the Persian rug, eyeing chairs he knew wouldn’t hold his weight. “How’m I gonna watch that?”

I left him cradling his sleep apnea machine and followed my friend Alice into Mississippi dusk. “What am I doing here?” I whispered.

“You’re gonna be the first person to walk the Natchez Trace as the pioneers did.” Alice slammed the trunk of Dad’s tan Mercury Grand Marquis and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. My dearest friend was the ballast that would protect me from the onslaught of my father’s outsized personality.

Alice had been part of my life for more than a decade. In my early thirties, my friends were all married, including Alice. I was the only pathetic single person I knew. While everyone talked about the possibility of babies, percolating babies and actual, birthed-and-breathing babies, I chewed my lip and wondered if I’d ever meet a functional man and contemplate babies.

Or maybe I wasn’t functional.

I sat alone in my house, ate alone at my table, showered alone in my bathroom, and slept alone in my bed; yet, I didn’t want to be alone.

I endured lunches and dinners, drinks and parties, listening to everyone compare notes on the next phase of life, a milestone I couldn’t achieve. They wove their stories on blue-lined notebook paper, while I clung to holes in the margin. I came away from these interactions, my insides shrunken and my life an afterthought. I thought nobody cared about me.

Except Alice.

Even though she was pregnant herself, she tried to steer group conversations to non-gestational topics. “What books are you reading?” She asked. Or, “Tell me about your last trip.” One time, she interrupted someone mid-ultrasound photo essay. “We’ve been talking about pregnancy for almost an hour. Can we spend the last few minutes of lunch on something else?”

If friends are a reflection of who we want to be, I wanted to be more like Alice.

While I wove from thing to thing to thing in a vain effort to find myself, she became partner in an architecture firm and mothered a daughter I considered a niece. She was primary caregiver to her disabled brother and supreme supporter of her husband. I cultivated a friendship with her, because I wanted to be her. I never understood how she did everything, but I thought if I got to know her better, some of her juju would dribble onto me.

A decade on, she was a seminal figure in my life.

Alice and I decided Dad as wingman would be the equivalent of what writers call an unreliable narrator. He might intend to drop me off and pick me up each day, but given the wealth of strangers between miles one and fifteen, he couldn’t be depended upon to be there for me.

Alice agreed to babysit my father and schlep me around for the first week of my Natchez Trace walk. The rest would be just Dad and me.

I didn’t want to think about that.

Not yet.

I shoved the looming time with my father over my shoulder in a moonlit parking lot. If I thought about what was coming, I’d quit before I took one step.

Alice heaved grocery bags up narrow stairs. “I think that’s everything you’ll need for a long walk.”

“Maybe.” I held the screen door and followed her into our suite. A jumble of athletic gear awaited me. Compression tights. Hiking shoes. Energy bars. CamelBak water bladder. Gadgets and creams designed for the extreme athlete.

An athlete? Who was I kidding? In high school, I couldn’t run a mile, score a goal or hit a ball. Why did I think I could walk more than a half-marathon every day for a month at forty-four?

I spread a map across the quilted bedspread. A long rectangle stretched from one side of the bed to the other.

The Natchez Trace.

Almost 450 miles of highway ringed by farms and swampland, its sides were eroded canyons in some places. Ghostly buffalo herds competed with the earliest Native American spirits, Spanish conquistadors, French missionaries and warring armies along a paved federal parkway. I imagined their voices, and I honored them in my novel. Ten thousand years of history.

The Trace was a tunnel through Time.

From March 1 to April 3, 2014, I planned to walk the highway as our ancestors did. Fifteen miles a day. One rest day a week. For thirty-four days.

On the eve of my start, I perused a daunting list of things to do: Stock up on snacks for my daily food kit; buy enough bottled water; organize supplies for easy access as we moved; fall asleep early to be rested. I flitted between piles of stuff, wondering how I would winnow it into one compact pack. I read Cheryl Strayed’s
Wild
, about her trek up the Pacific Crest Trail. I didn’t want to carry unnecessary things.

Food, a water-filled CamelBak, Gatorade, a first-aid kit, extra socks, flashlight, toilet paper, waterproof pants, a spare battery pack for my iPhone, cards announcing my novel, notes from readers, a Parkway map, a voodoo doll and mace. Items of necessity. Charms for good luck. One weapon. Two if the voodoo doll counted.

Everything I needed.

I flattened a roll of toilet paper and shoved it into a ziplock bag. “Dad, can you help me go through this list? Check off things as I call them out? Dad?”

Even though Dad wore hearing aids, I had to shout if I wanted him to hear me. He said they didn’t pick up children and women with higher voices, but I caught him turning them off around me. I barreled into the other room and found Dad standing in front of a precarious bureau, his sleep apnea machine balanced on a ledge. An electrical cord dangled from one hand. “Dad! Help me here?”

“I cain’t find a place to plug this thing up.” His filmy eyes scanned walls papered with yellowed clippings of Dwight Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater. “This all seems like yesterday……”

I groped along the walls and felt an outlet behind the bed. “You can plug it right here.” I picked up the end of the cord and scooted under the bed. When I stuck the prongs in the socket, I held my breath. “No telling whether the wiring in this place is up to code, right Dad?” Silence. “Oh well, maybe he can’t hear me under here.” Layers of history peeled back with me as I heaved myself to stand. Coughing, I knocked dust from my knees in the empty room. “Dad?”

I opened the bathroom door, expecting to find Dad spraying everything but the toilet, but it was vacant. Foiled, I darted into the other room. “Where’s Dad?”

Alice reclined on one of two mountainous canopy beds, blonde hair splayed on the pillow. Her eyes drooped behind glasses perched on her heart-shaped face, and her voice ran thick like syrup. “He went over to talk to Miss Ethel.”

“Again? Jesus God, it’s after nine o’clock.”

She punched her pillow and settled onto her side. “I guess she’s the only stranger he can find to talk to at this time of night, Andra.”

Miss Ethel was the doyenne of Hope Farm, a spunky wisp of a woman in her seventies. When I checked in earlier that afternoon, she met me at the front door and blinked through thick glasses. “Surely you’re not gonna walk all the way to Nashville, Ondra?”

I winced and bit my lip when she butchered my name, but I didn’t correct her. People usually didn’t get it, even when I smiled and said, “It’s AN-dra.”

Miss Ethel fingered her double string of pearls, her wrinkled face unreadable. “Well. Bless your heart. My Yankee husband’ll be sorry he died before he could meet the likes of you.” She swooshed one silk-clad arm. “Allow me to escort you to your room.” I followed the impressions her black pumps made in the carpet.

Hours later, I looked at the clock on my phone and slipped my feet into some sneakers. “I have a sick feeling I’m seeing what my father was like when he was courting women.”

Information no child, little or grown, wants to know.

KING OF THE ROAD

Roger Miller

I wandered along the sloping veranda to the front house. Miss Ethel’s house. Crickets chirped a symphony in the garden. Through a portal of wavy glass, I spied on my father. His balloon stomach strained the integrity of a wooden side chair in Miss Ethel’s den. If I shifted to the left, I glimpsed her helmet of light brown hair bobbing over the back of the sofa. I could identify his stories by the hand gestures he used.

Acres of Biscuits bled into Hot Shot to become the ridiculous Butterbean Song.

“Dad!” I pushed through the door, chords of laughter still lingering in the chilly air. “I got your machine working, and—”

“Andra!” Miss Ethel’s Mississippi drawl stretched my name to three syllables. “I’m sorry I got your name wrong. Roy here was just telling me you were named after Andra Willis. Is that right?”

Dad cackled. “Yeah. Andra Willis. That singer on the Lawrence Welk Show.”

Miss Ethel slapped one knee. “Why in the world would you name your daughter after a woman on the Lawrence Welk Show, Roy?”

“Linda liked the name Leslie Lynn, but I didn’t know no Leslie Lynns. I sure did like that Andra Willis, though. Every time she sang, I made sure to watch. She was real pretty. I never got tired of looking at her, and—”

“Dad! Ew! I don’t want to stand here and listen to you tell Miss Ethel about how you named me after some woman you thought was hot.”

“I still see her sometimes. On them re-runs.”

While Dad nursed his lust, Miss Ethel turned to me. “Anyway, do you really mean to walk all the way to Nashville, Andra?”

Her question pushed me into a chair along the far wall. How many months had I thought about walking the Trace? Five? Ten?

Four days a week for three months, I trained near my Charleston, South Carolina home. I trudged across the concrete bridge that spanned Charleston’s harbor and pounded my feet into the pavement of the West Ashley Greenway. During a winter storm, I zipped myself into rain gear and let the wind blow me around Charleston’s Battery.

I spent weeks planning my route, measuring the distance between locations in my novel, deciding how to make them interesting to potential readers, and coordinating the publicity that would make my story a commercial success.

Innumerable times, I wanted to quit, but my husband Michael told me I could do it. He often rode alongside me on his bicycle, cheering me onward. When people asked why he was letting me walk, he replied, “You obviously don’t know my wife.”

I prepared myself physically. I studied every detail of the terrain. I had the most supportive husband alive.

I was ready.

When morning dawned, my book would have its official birthday, and my father would celebrate with me.

Because he challenged me to make something of myself, nagging me into epic arguments. I wasn’t sure how I felt about having him along to witness my one valiant attempt, because I failed at everything else. Certified public accountant? It left no room for creativity. Managing a multi-million dollar company? I decamped with the beginnings of an ulcer. At forty-four, I was a decade into my third career as a management consultant. The 2008 crash shriveled my earnings from six figures to under $10,000 in less than twelve months. I woke up at mid-life, the peak of my income potential, with no clients and no prospects. No one was hiring, especially when the applicant was a middle-aged Southern woman.

If I excelled at anything, it was failure.

I launched my walk online to thousands of readers as a public dare to myself, to prove I could do something audacious.

Life-long doubt assailed me. What if I couldn’t finish? Or nobody read the book? If Dad and I couldn’t stop fighting, what would I do?

I couldn’t answer Miss Ethel through the obstruction in my throat. Instead, I fingered wooden arms and studied carpet patterns. In another room, a clock marked Time.

Time!

“Dad, you’ve got to let Miss Ethel go to bed. It’s late.”

Dad ignored me and revved the engine of memory. “Did I ever tell you—”

“I fixed your sleep apnea machine, and—”

Miss Ethel’s laugh bisected our routine. “Has Roy ever told you he was a mistake?”

“I’m beginning to think this whole trip was a mistake,” I mumbled but still turned to my father. Baited. “What mistake, Dad?”

“Well. After my mother had your Aunt Lillian, the doctor told her she wouldn’t be able to have no more children. She was too tore up and all. You know, inside.” The chair groaned when he shifted his weight. “That’s why there’s so much age difference. Seven years between me and my older sister. Good thing my parents still liked each other after all that time, I guess.” Loose skin jangled when he laughed. “My mother always called me her miracle baby. ‘Course, I was her only boy.”

I rested my elbows on my knees to halt the spin of the room. A new Roy story. One I hadn’t heard five billion times.

The clock chimed ten. As the music faded, I clucked, “I always knew you were a mistake, Dad.”

“Yep. Wasn’t ever supposed to be ole Roy.”

Which meant I was even more miraculous. How many people made nothing of the miracle of Life?

Life had to smile on me, because I was trying to make something of the miracle.

“Let me tell you about that time—”

“Dad, Miss Ethel needs to—”

“—I was working with my father in the back field, and—”

“Dad!” I hurried over and stood between him and Miss Ethel. He talked through me while I pried him from the chair. I forced him to say goodnight and herded him along the starlit walkway to our shared suite. A breeze rippled the bed canopy as I listened to him use the toilet with the door open and swab a brush across browned teeth. The bed protested when he climbed between the covers, and a wet chorus of breathing sounds started less than a minute later. On the last night of February 2014, I lay in the dark and tried to obliterate the noise of my sleeping father.