Random Walk: A Novel for a New Age

Eight

There was A unit vacant at the Pine Haven, over near the southern tip of the U, and Guthrie and Jody took it for the night. Jody sprawled on his bed, eating Wendy’s french fries and sipping a cold one from the 7-Eleven. The CNN announcer was telling of an earthquake in Guatemala, a drought-induced famine in Africa, a terrorist bombing in the north of Ireland. When they cut to a correspondent for a report on acid rain, Guthrie asked him if he minded if he turned it off.

“Hell, go right ahead,” he said. “Who wants to listen to all that shit?” He yawned, scratched himself. “Get me some clothes tomorrow. Nothing like taking a good shower and putting on shorts you been wearing three days straight. Or is it four?” He yawned again. “Pick up some clothes and a sack to haul ’em in. These boots worked out better than I was afraid they might, but I’ll get me some soft shoes, too, so I can change if I want. And I got to tell you, hoss, these socks are ripe.”

“You didn’t have to tell me.”

“Already got the word, huh? Sorry about that. Sara and Thom’ll need knapsacks, too, instead of those suitcases they brought. I’d think we’ll be able to find whatever we need here in Bend.”

“I would think so.”

“Canteens for everybody, too. A little ways east of here it starts getting dry, and it might be pushing it to have two people sharing a canteen like you and I been doing. Guthrie? How you feel about all this, boss?”

“About all what?”

“Everybody invitin’ theirselves to your party.”

He thought about it. At length he said, “She’s special. Sara.”

“Yeah. Guthrie, she don’t appear blind. When she looks at you—”

“I know.”

“The boy’s all right, too. Thom. Thom with an H — he’s right particular about that H.”

“A blind woman and a boy.”

“Just what you needed, right? You figure they’ll slow us down much?”

“Well, I don’t see them picking up the pace and pushing the two of us past our normal limits.”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh?”

“Just a feeling I get. Like bein’ around that woman might push anybody past their normal limits.”

For that matter, Guthrie thought, it was hard to know what one’s normal limits were. He had begun to suspect, when he first realized he had unwittingly quit smoking, that some of the ordinary rules of life had been somehow suspended. He’d tried to tell himself that walking out of his life had lessened the stress he was under, and this in turn had reduced his need for tobacco. But it had never been stress that made him smoke; he’d smoked because he was addicted to nicotine, and the greatest stress imaginable had always been that of trying to go without a cigarette when he wanted one.

Then he’d had another hint when McLemore had just about called him a liar for saying he’d slept out without a tent or a sleeping bag. He not only had survived, but he’d done so without being especially conscious of the cold, as if his spirit had set up some sort of energy force field that protected him as effectively as any construction of down and canvas.

He and Jody had slept out their second night together, in a stand of mixed hardwoods and conifers north of La Pine. They’d had a small fire and cooked hot dogs that they’d bought in La Pine, and they’d slept in their clothes on either side of the dying fire, and neither of them had been bothered by the cold. The fire, which had burned down low by the time they went to sleep, could hardly have provided much warmth. The only explanation he could come up with was a force field.

“I know such things can happen,” he’d told Jody. “I know a couple of people who’ve done fire walks, where you walk twenty feet across a bed of burning coals in your bare feet.”

“And you don’t get burned?”

“Not a blister. The leader has you chanting and half hypnotized into some kind of altered state, and your mind creates an energy field that keeps the heat from reaching you.”

“It’s not just that you don’t feel it ’cause you’re hypnotized?”

“No, because your clothes don’t burn either, and how would you hypnotize a pair of pants?”

“You actually know people who did this?”

“Several of them. There’s one fellow who goes all over leading fire walks, he’s from California—”

“Where else?”

“—and I think he’s led something like thirty thousand people over the coals. But he has this whole ritual he has everybody go through, and we just had a force field settle over us without any effort on our part.”

“If that’s what it was.”

“If that’s what it was,” he agreed. “But I can’t think what else it might have been.”

“Well, maybe we’re just hot stuff, hoss. Ever think of that?”

Hot stuff indeed. Guthrie, a heavy smoker leading a sedentary life, had managed twenty miles a day across the Cascades without any ill effects, and each day’s ordeal seemed to be leaving him stronger than the day before. Jody, younger and stronger but clearly overweight and out of shape, had matched his pace without straining; at least as remarkable, he’d hiked seventy miles in the same pair of socks without raising a blister. (A stench, perhaps, but not a blister.)

Could a boy and a blind woman keep up with them?

The question, he decided, was academic. In the first place, their pace was however slow or fast they decided to go; it wasn’t as though they had a train to catch. And, whether Sara and Thom could keep up or not, the four of them were going to stay together. From the moment she’d clasped his hand he’d known that much.

In the morning they ate a light breakfast and did their shopping. By eleven o’clock they were out of Bend, heading east on US 20. The first town on the map was Millican, some twenty-six miles south and east of Bend. Guthrie thought that might be further than Sara and Thom could be expected to go their first day, especially since they were getting a late start. And they were out of the national forest now, and he wasn’t sure of the etiquette involved in pitching camp on private land. He’d heard it wasn’t too good an idea to wander far from the roadside. There was always the chance you’d stumble on somebody’s marijuana plantation. The growers, whether or not they owned the land where their harvest was maturing, were capable of a murderous response to intruders.

But they’d sleep somewhere, he was sure of that. Meanwhile it was another perfect day, the sun in view much of the time, with clouds scudding across its face just enough to keep the heat down.

Would whatever was protecting them keep them from being badly sunburned? Could a force field keep out ultraviolet rays? That was another question he couldn’t answer, and it was tough to play a game when you had no clear understanding of the rules.

Without conscious agreement, they took turns walking with Sara. She would walk on the left, her right hand in her companion’s. There was no hesitation in her step, and her partner did not have to warn her of approaching cars. She seemed to be well enough aware of her immediate environment even without seeing it.

Walking with Jody, she said, “I hope I’m not slowing you down.”

“You’re doing fine, ma’am.”

“You can call me Sara, Jody.”

“Hell, I know that, but it’s rare enough I get the impulse to act respectful. At first I thought I had to tell you about every piece of gravel on the ground in front of you, but you know just where to put your foot, don’t you?”

“Do you look down all the time when you walk, Jody?”

“No, ’course not, but I’ll drop my eyes now an’ then so I don’t step off a curb or into a ditch. It’s sort of like you get the same message without dropping your eyes.”

“I think that may be what happens.” She smiled. “This is all new to me, you know. I still had some sight until yesterday afternoon.”

They stepped onto the shoulder at the approach of a truck not unlike the Datsun he’d left at the Circle K. Jody gave a wave and the old boy at the wheel raised his index finger in acknowledgment.

“Hope my brother got the truck all right,” he said. “You haven’t got the kind of second sight to check on a blue Datsun pickup parked a few miles north of Beaver Marsh, have you? I just locked her up and walked away from her.”

“That was very brave of you, Jody.”

“You think so, ma’am? I don’t know as I’d put it in the same class with getting in the ring with a bull.”

“A bullfighter knows what to expect. You were walking into the pure unknown.”

“The road to Bend’s a far cry from the dark side of the moon. I could about drive it in my sleep. I see your point all the same, not knowing what I was getting myself into. Thing is, I knew what I was getting out of, and it didn’t take a whole lot of courage to walk away from that.”

“Perhaps not.”

“What did I have? Working for my brother, plus whatever pickup jobs came along, hauling trash to the dump for somebody or putting up somebody’s storm windows in the fall and taking ’em down in the spring. Living alone in a trailer that don’t look a whole lot like a model home. I’m married.”

“Yes.”

“She walked out on me. Went home to her mother.”

“Yes.”

“Easy to tell things to a person who can’t look you in the eye. I slapped her around some, Carlene. I don’t know as it’s what you’d call wife-beating, but I did slap her some. You knew that, didn’t you, ma’am?”

“Not exactly.”

“What’s that mean? ‘Not exactly.’ You can see things about people, can’t you, ma’am?”

“Certain things. I can see” — she searched for the words — “I can see the picture of a person’s life.”

“You mean like a movie?”

“No,” she said. “More like a huge oil painting, so large and with so much detail that you can’t take it all in at once, but you’re seeing it all at once.”

“That’s hard to imagine.”

“I know.”

He thought about it. “Well,” he said, “somewhere in that picture, whether you can see it or not, there’s me giving Carlene a crack in the mouth. I’m not real proud of that.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I never did it that I hadn’t had a few beers, but I don’t guess that’s any excuse. My father drank beer and whiskey every day of his life and he never laid a hand on my mother.”

“He ever lay a hand on you, Jody?”

“Ha! Wasn’t usually a hand. The strap, more than likely. But I don’t know as I ever got it that I didn’t deserve it.”

“Did Carlene deserve it?”

“A woman never deserves to have a man hit her.”

“Does a child deserve to get hit with a strap?”

“Well, see, I was a pretty bad kid. I did things I shouldn’t oughta have done.”

“Oh?”

He felt something shift deep within his center. “I didn’t deserve it,” he said, his voice like a bell. “He thought he had to hit me but he was wrong. I didn’t need to get hit with no strap.”

“Can you forgive him, Jody?”

“Oh, shit. Oh, oh, shit.”

“Can you forgive yourself for hitting Carlene?”

He hiked his T-shirt out of the waistband of his jeans, used the bottom of it to wipe tears from his eyes. He said, “You know something? She wanted me to hit her. I never knew that until this minute. That’s how we picked each other. She picked me to slap her around and I picked her to have someone to slap. How come I never knew that before?”

“Can you forgive her, Jody? And can you forgive yourself?”

“Look at me, I’m crying. I’m ashamed of myself, carrying on like this.”

“Never be ashamed to cry, Jody.” She put her arms around him. “Can you forgive yourself and everybody else? Can you forgive your father for hitting you and Carlene for wanting to be hit? Can you forgive your mother? Can you forgive the obstetrician for not letting you be born the way you wanted? Can you forgive everybody who ever tried to push you around?”

“Do I have to, ma’am?”

“What do you think?”

“Tell me.”

“No, you tell me, Jody.”

His head was on her shoulder, his big chest heaving with sobs. “Oh, God,” he said. “I forgive… I forgive everybody. Oh, Jesus. Oh, dear Jesus.”

“It’s all right, Jody,” she said. “You’re all right now. Everything’s all right.”

Later he said, “I don’t know what-all happened back there.”

“You let go of some stuff.”

“Is that what I did? I must of been carryin’ it a fair spell.”

“All your life, Jody. How do you feel now?”

“Like a house with the doors and windows open. I don’t know. I guess I feel good.”

“You can trust the feeling.”

“I guess. Ma’am, did you say you were a psychologist?”

“A sort of a psychologist. I had a master’s in social work, I did counseling.”

“What you did just now, is this the sort of thing you used to do?”

“I didn’t do anything just now, Jody. You did it all.”

“Well, I sure never did it before, ma’am, and here I spend an hour holding your hand and damn if I don’t fall apart. Did you used to have this happen in your work?”

She waited a moment before replying. Then she said, “I used to try to have this happen in my work. But it hardly ever did.”

He nodded. He said, “This whole thing that’s happening. The four of us walking. It’s special, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s special.”

Shortly after sunset Guthrie suggested they look for a place to bed down for the night. He wasn’t sure of the distance, but he estimated that they were at least two hours west of Millican, with no guarantee that there would be motel rooms available there. “Besides,” he said, “it’ll be dark before we get there, and I know Sara doesn’t like to walk in the dark.”

“You’re right,” she agreed. “I’m afraid of the dark.”

They found the perfect spot a quarter of a mile down the road in the middle of a small grove of trees. Someone had camped there before, or at least picnicked; there was the residue of a fire in the center of a clearing, with a small supply of firewood and tinder stacked alongside. Guthrie got a fire started and they sat around it and ate the food they’d bought at a store a few miles back. They sang songs, and then Thom suggested that somebody tell a ghost story. Guthrie told one about a dead boy who came back to life, improvising towards the end because he couldn’t remember the original ending. Thom wanted more, but nobody knew any more.

So Sara told the story of how she’d met her husband, not liking him at first and not thinking he was really interested in her anyway. Jody told about his trip to Seattle right after high school graduation, and how he’d got the tattoo; he carefully left out the whorehouse visit that had been a highlight of the trip, but did mention how the three of them, staggering drunk across Pioneer Square, had come upon a pair of lovers on a blanket on the grass, and that one of their party — “And it wasn’t me, I swear to God it wasn’t me” — had unzipped his pants and baptized the passionate pair with urine.

And Thom told about the summer he’d spent a year ago at northern Michigan, and how one of the campers in the next cabin had drowned on a canoe trip. Thom hadn’t gone on the trip, his cabin had another activity scheduled, and that morning he’d said, to the boy who would later drown, “Have a good time on the river, asshole.” “So then he drowned,” he said, “and the last word I said to him was asshole.”

If it was cold that night, no one felt it. In the morning they straightened up the campsite and gathered wood and kindling to replace what they had burned. They were on the road early, and had pancakes and sausage for breakfast in Millican.

After breakfast, Guthrie walked with Sara. Thom and Jody were just a few paces ahead of them at first, but gradually the gap widened.

Guthrie said, “I’m glad we slept out last night.”

“We found a perfect spot.”

“I’d be glad even if we hadn’t. It did something for us as a group.”

“Bonded us.”

“I suppose that’s the word. Evidently we’re supposed to go through this together, whatever it is. So it’d probably be better if we got close with one another.”

“I agree,” she said. “And we don’t have much time.”

“What do you mean? You just got here, lady. You can’t be planning to leave us already.”

“No, hardly that. But it won’t be just the four of us for too much longer.”

“Oh?”

“You sound apprehensive, Guthrie.”

“Well, I didn’t plan on a mob scene.”

“What did you plan on?”

“I didn’t plan, period. I decided to go for a walk.”

“You didn’t just head on down to the corner store for a Coke and the evening paper.”

“No, I knew what I was doing. At least I knew I was walking away from my life and into—”

“Into what?”

“Into something different. I still don’t know what I’m walking into, so I certainly didn’t know then. You know how the idea came to me? I was waiting for a lady to finish having an abortion. It wasn’t my kid.” He frowned. “I don’t know why it’s important to include that last bit of data.”

“It’ll come to you.”

“Gee, I’d never guess you were a psychologist in real life, Sara.”

“Touché.”

“One thing I did know was that I didn’t want company. I was going to do this by myself. I never seriously considered asking anybody to keep me company. It was something to do all by myself.”

“And then Jody showed up.”

“And by then I was ready for company. I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea when he invited himself along, but I figured we could try it out for a day or two and see how it worked. And it worked fine, we hit it off great and his company turned out to be just what I needed.”

“And then Thom and I turned up.”

“And then you two turned up, and who could argue with that? A beautiful blind lady with gray flannel eyes and the power to cloud men’s minds so she cannot see them.”

“That was The Shadow, and I think you got it wrong.”

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. It was pretty obvious that the two of you were sent. I mean, when people are waiting for you on the outskirts of the metropolis of Bend, they must have a hotline to the center of the universe. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think there was even a bright star over the Pine Haven Motel.”

“There was a whole sky full of them.”

“I’ll bet. No, it never even occurred to me to wonder whether I wanted the two of you along. You were supposed to be there, no question.” He shrugged. “But I’m not sure I want this to turn into a major group effort.”

“I’m not so sure you have any choice.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She released his hand for a moment, smoothed her forehead with her fingertips. “Thom and I weren’t sent here all the way from what Jody would call Fort Fucking Wayne in order to play four-handed group therapy. And you didn’t walk over the mountains for that, either. A whole lot of people are going to be joining us.”

“What am I, the Pied Piper?”

“Something like that. Not for rats and not for children. A sort of Pied Piper for pilgrims.”

“Pilgrims are supposed to be heading somewhere.”

“But do they necessarily know where?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not. How many people, Sara?”

“I don’t know.”

“A dozen? A hundred? A thousand?”

“I don’t know. A lot of people, Guthrie. I don’t know how many.”

“An army. What are we going to do, hold hands across the country? You remember that circus, with all the press coverage and TV cameras, and when they were all done they raised something like a buck ninety-eight for the homeless of the world?”

“I remember.”

“Is that what this is about? Is it some kind of fucking telethon? Who’s gonna be waiting at the next stop sign, Jerry Lewis?”

“Guthrie?”

“What?”

“Guthrie, why not just take it as it comes?”

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

There was a motel in Brothers, but it was still early when they reached it and they didn’t feel like breaking for the night. They kept going.

Late in the afternoon Sara heard an engine running off to the left and asked what it was. She was walking with Thom, and he told her it was a man on a tractor.

She called to the others. They closed the gap, and she suggested they ask the man on the tractor if they could spend the night on his land.

Jody went over to talk to the farmer. He was a man about fifty, tall and stout, with big jug-handle ears and a bulldog jaw. He wore overalls and a striped blue and white cap that looked like mattress ticking, and he had a little trouble grasping what they wanted. Were they going to put up tents? Would they be building a fire? And where were they headed, anyway? The only city of any size was Burns, and that was eighty-some miles down the road.

Once he got it all straight, he had no objection to helping them out. They could sleep in his barn, he said, as long as he had their word that they’d go out of the barn and stand well away from it if they wanted to smoke.

“It ain’t enough to be careful,” he said. “People are always saying they’ll smoke in the barn but be careful about it, and next thing you know the barn’s burned down, because the only way to be careful about smoking in a barn is not to do it.”

Jody explained that none of their party smoked. The farmer was glad to hear it, but not entirely convinced.

The barn was a massive structure with a hayloft and half a dozen box stalls and milking stanchions for twenty cows. The farmer — his name was Oscar Powers — explained that he kept a small dairy herd, in addition to fattening beef cattle. He also had some acreage in sugar beets and alfalfa.

He showed them where they could sleep and told them to break up a couple bales of hay for their bedding. He was back fifteen minutes later with his arms full of blankets. “My wife said you’d need these,” he said. They thanked him, and ten minutes later he was back again. “My wife said you’re probably hungry, and we’ve got plenty. She said for you to come on up to the house soon as you’re settled, so’s you can wash up before we sit down.”

They ate beef and roasted potatoes and three different vegetables from the kitchen garden. There was a pitcher of fresh milk on the table and big graniteware mugs of coffee served with the meal and replenished throughout. Lindy Powers was a little dumpling of a woman, a soap opera fan and a member of a quilters’ club. She called her husband Ockie and never allowed his plate to be empty.

Two Powers sons were with them at the table; a third boy, older, lived with his wife in Corvallis. “He went to school there,” Powers explained, “and now he has an office job working with computers. I can’t hold it against any boy who doesn’t want to farm these days. I wouldn’t have any other life for myself, but I have to say I wouldn’t wish it on a dog.”

There was pie for dessert, topped with thick cream. Afterward they had hot showers before trooping back to the barn, and in the morning Mrs. Powers sent her youngest boy to the barn with a basket of hot breads and a pot of coffee. The same boy returned as they were getting ready to leave, his father at his side.

“John here has it in mind that he’d like to walk a ways with you,” he said. “If you’ve no objection.”

The boy was nineteen, tall and loose-limbed, with dark home-barbered hair and a tentative expression. He had hardly said a word at dinner.

“I don’t mind him going,” Oscar Powers said. “He’s a help to me but his brother and I can manage. And there’s nothing here for him. Half a year at State was all the college he wanted, and he’s not crazy enough to be a farmer. His mother’s putting clothes in a sack for him, if you don’t mind him going with you.”

Guthrie said, “You want to come with us, John?” The boy nodded, smiling, and Guthrie told him he’d be welcome.

Powers said, “He’s been talking about enlisting in the service. I can’t say I understand what you folks are up to, but I’d sooner trust him to you than to the generals.”

A few miles down the road they stopped at a gas station to top up their canteens and buy snack-packs of cheese and crackers. The attendant, a cheerful young man with freckles and a missing incisor, knew John and asked him what he was up to. When he learned the group was walking east to the Idaho line he thought that was the greatest thing he’d ever heard.

“I never done anything like that,” he said. “I never done anything, really.”

“Come on along,” Jody suggested.

“Aw, now,” he said. “Somebody’s got to run this place. Everybody can’t just do what they want.”

“Why’s that?”

He shrugged and shook his head, still smiling, the tip of his tongue showing where the tooth was missing.

Two miles further a weathered shack called itself the Split Rail Restaurant. A woman in her early thirties ran the place and lived in two rooms behind the restaurant. She was tall and thin, wore her blond hair in a braid, and wore jeans and boots and a man’s shirt. She didn’t say much, just listened to their conversation as they had their coffee, but when it was time to pay they couldn’t find her. She appeared after a couple of minutes wearing a hat and carrying a canvas shoulder bag.

“I don’t have a backpack,” she said. “I figure this’ll do until I get something better. But I haven’t got a canteen either, and there’s some dry country between here and the Rockies.” John said that he hadn’t a canteen either, that he was carrying his water in a plastic bottle with a screw cap. “Now I should have thought of that myself,” she said. She got a half-liter container of Coke from the icebox, cracked the cap, spilled out its contents, filled it from the tap, capped it and tucked it into her bag. “I should have asked did anybody want some of that Coke,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

She wouldn’t take money for the coffee. She rang “No Sale” on the cash register, stuffed the bills into a pocket of her jeans, and left the change where it was. She switched off the fire under the coffee, threw a couple of other switches, and turned the sign in the window from “Open” to “Closed.” She started to lock the front door, then turned away from it. “Anyone wants to move in,” she said, “they’re welcome to it. It’s just the best place in the world if you want to put in twelve hours a day to clear a dollar an hour.” After they’d walked together for a few hundred yards, she said, “My name’s Martha Detweiller. You folks want to tell me your names?”

Within the hour a four-wheel-drive AMC Eagle pulled up on the other side of the road. The rear doors opened and a man and woman got out, both of them wearing backpacks. The man had freckles and a chunky grin, and one of his front teeth was missing.

“I thought about it,” he said, “and I couldn’t think why everybody couldn’t do what they wanted, and just ’cause somebody has to pump Mr. Ballard’s gas doesn’t mean it has to be me. I had to close up and I had to call Ballard and let him know I was taking off, and then I had to go home and explain to Ellie what was goin’ on. This here is Ellie, an’ she still don’t know what’s goin’ on, but she’s up for it whatever it is. And I’m Marion but everybody calls me Bud, and that there’s Richard and it’s too early to tell yet what everybody’s gonna call him.”

And it was then that Guthrie noticed that Ellie’s backpack was not a knapsack but a sling, and that there was a baby riding in it. Ellie was a slender woman with long brown hair and luminous skin. She looked slightly glassy-eyed, and Guthrie didn’t blame her.

He found Sara and took her by the hand. “You didn’t mention that somebody was going to show up with a baby,” he said. “I suppose you didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

“I’m as surprised as you are.”

“Oh yeah? The Prophet Disarmed. I hate to be a spoil-sport, but—”

“But is it safe to have a baby along on a trip like this?”

“That’s my question, yeah.”

“Can I see him?”

“You just about have to take a number and wait. Little Richard’s very popular right now.”

Sara extended both her index fingers and the baby gripped the tip of each and made fists about them. Pure heart energy flowed forth from the infant; the only reading she could get was serenity and love and joy. When Richard released her fingers she took Ellie’s hand and was not surprised to pick up the same vibrations, the identical sweet innocence.

“It’s safe to have a baby along,” she told Guthrie.

“Safe for us or safe for him?”

“Both.”

“How the hell are they going to feed him? Babies drink milk, don’t they?”

“What a fount of information you are, Guthrie.”

“I am smiling benignly at you, Sara. I just wanted you to know that.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“The point is they drink milk and they have it fairly frequently, don’t they?”

“Every four hours, when they’re very young.”

“And they have to get their diapers changed.”

“Very good, Guthrie.”

“Well, you can carry diapers, but what about milk? You bump a canteen of milk on your hip for a couple of hours and you wind up with cottage cheese.”

“Guthrie, don’t tell me you thought they were strictly decorative.”

“What?”

“Breasts.”

“Oh, Jesus,” he said.

“I know. What’ll they think of next?”

They spent the night in an unplowed field. There was no one around of whom to ask permission, and no one sensed they’d be at risk. Bud and Ellie had brought a zip-up sleeping sack for Richard. Everyone else slept uncovered, and even without a fire everyone was warm enough.

“I think we can forget about motels from here on in,” Guthrie told Jody. “There’s eight of us now, nine counting Richard. Four rooms minimum, arid you can’t count on finding that many vacancies. And we went from four to nine in a day. God only knows how many of us there’ll be a week from now.”

“Motels cost, too. Not everybody’s got money.”

“I know. Last night was great, having supper with the Powerses and sleeping in the barn. And it’s good we did it last night, because there’s too many of us to do it again. It’s a good thing we can sleep out safely because we don’t have a whole lot of other choices.”

“You sound like it bothers you some, hoss.”

“Maybe I just have trouble adjusting to new realities. What are we going to do if it rains?”

“Grab a bar of soap and take a shower.”

“That’s another thing. How are we going to take showers if we never get motel rooms?”

“They’ve got showers at public campgrounds, and we can pay a fee and use them even if we don’t stay at the site. And there’s no law says we have to all stay in a bunch every damn minute, you know. Some of us could stay at a motel or in somebody’s barn and some more could find a place on down the road. We stay flexible, we’ll know what to do when we have to do it.”

“You’re right.”

“Besides,” Jody said, “we got good people today. John’s got something stuck in his throat, but soon as he spits it out he’ll have a lot to say. He’s got two older brothers, and he grew up thinking nothing he had to say was important. He’ll get over that. And Martha’s purely a no-bullshit type, she cuts right through the crap. She’s been madder’n hell at somebody, and when she quits sittin’ on it she may carry on enough to make the hills shake some, but you just wait an’ see what she’s like afterward.”

“Sara tell you all this stuff?”

“No.”

“Where’d you get it, then?”

“I don’t know.” Jody tugged at his beard. “Just come to me, I guess. Now Bud an’ Ellie, they’re real neat, and ol’ Richard’s just loving the whole trip. He looks out at the mountains like they belong to him.”

“I just hope they don’t slow us down too much.”

“They won’t. I noticed something. The first day somebody walks with us they’re a little slow, or their feet bother them, or whatever it is. But once they get caught up in the flow, why, the others just carry them. It’s like we pass energy back and forth, and the more it gets passed around the more there is of it. I tell you, hoss, I feel stronger the more of us there are.”

“How do you mean stronger?”

“Every way there is. Stronger in the body and stronger in my mind and spirit. Don’t you feel it?”

He thought for a moment. “I guess I do feel it,” he admitted. “I just don’t trust it.”

“Sara’d say that’s just your mind.”

“Right, don’t pay any attention to your thoughts, they’re just coming out of your mind.”

“You can trust it, Guthrie. It’s real.”

“I suppose.”

“You all right? You look a little ragged around the edges.”

“Just a headache. One of the women probably has an aspirin.”

“A headache? Stand up a minute.”

“What for?”

“Stand up,” Jody said, and got to his feet himself. He steadied himself, took several deep breaths, gave his hands a shake and held them down at his sides. Guthrie asked him what the hell he was doing.

“Letting my hands tingle,” he said. “Don’t talk, just let me do this.” He kept his hands at his sides for another twenty seconds, then placed them on either side of Guthrie’s head. He held them in that position for half a minute, let them drop, and heaved a sigh.

“There,” he said.

“What was that all about?”

“First tell me how’s your headache.”

“It’s gone. How’d you do that?”

“Beats the hell out of me, hoss. You saw what I did. I just let the power flow down into my hands, and then I sent it into the part that hurts.”

“When did you learn how to do that?”

“I don’t know. An hour ago? Martha had a cramp in her shoulder and I was massaging it and not getting anywhere, and suddenly it came to me to try getting energy in my hands and putting the energy on her. So I did, and it worked.” He shrugged. “Guess it works on headaches, too.”

“It’s amazing,” Guthrie said. “The headache’s really gone. Uh, thanks.”

“All part of the service. Just pay the nurse on the way out.” He laughed. “Don’t get too carried away, hoss. It’s not like curing cancer or casting out devils, and I didn’t heal nothing that an aspirin wouldn’t have got rid of. But I’ll tell you, it sure is a nice feeling to be able to take away a person’s pain.”