Walking on Water: A Novel (26 page)

She glanced back and forth between us, then stood. “Sure. Good night, Alan.”

“Good night,” I said.

“See you in Key West.” She walked back to the car and got inside.

I turned to Nicole. “You wanted to talk?”

She looked at me with a concerned expression. “Are you okay?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I’ve just been worried about you. I don’t know what you thought would happen when you finally reached Key West . . . After all this way, I just don’t want you to . . .”

“Get my hopes too high?” I said.

“Maybe,” she said. “You don’t need to know all the answers right now. You know that, right?”

I thought about her question, then said, “Yes, I think so.”

“I wouldn’t be alive right now if you hadn’t decided to walk,” she said. “In the end, if all that comes from your walk is saving Kailamai and me, I hope that won’t be too disappointing. For us, it means everything.” She took my hand. “I’m sure that McKale is very proud of you. And so am I.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “Whatever happens tomorrow, remember that. And don’t lose hope. Things have a way of working out.” She smiled. “Good night, Alan.”

“Good night.”

“Call when you’re an hour out. We’ll be waiting for you at the
WELCOME TO KEY WEST
sign.”

She turned and walked to the car. I watched the taillights disappear. Then I sat down next to the dying fire thinking about what she had just said and wondering if I really believed it.

I woke late the next morning with the sun turning the inside of my tent a brilliant gold.
This is it,
I thought.
Let’s finish this.
I rooted through my pack for breakfast but managed to find only a crushed box of frosted strawberry Pop-Tarts, which I ate with a bottle of water.

Call it nerves, but I still wasn’t ready to go. There was no one else at the campsite, so I took off my clothes and waded out into the ocean. I sank to my chest in the crystal blue waters, riding the smooth rocking of the waves. My body had changed. I was lean and strong, a far cry from the shape I’d been in during my advertising days.

I had seen America as few ever would. I had walked thirty-five hundred miles through forests, swamps, and mountains, small towns with silly names and big towns with lonely people, apple, orange, and pecan orchards, corn and cotton fields. They say that before you die your life flashes before you, and in some ways that’s what I felt like then.

It was nearly noon when I rinsed myself off, dressed, and packed my tent. I strapped on my pack and started off for the last time.

The next twelve miles passed quickly. The traffic grew heavier. There wasn’t much to see along the way, or
perhaps the scenery was just obscured by the density of my thoughts. It was nearly three o’clock when I spotted the sign.

At the entrance to Key West there is a grass island about the size of a small parade float separating the incoming and outgoing traffic. In the middle of the island is a large, colorful sign that reads:

WELCOME
to

KEY WEST

PARADISE USA

The Rotary Club of Key West

About the same time I saw the sign I heard Kailamai screaming and saw her waving frantically. A few cars, caught up or confused by her excitement, honked their horns. Kailamai and Nicole were standing on the right shoulder of the road beneath a line of trees.

When I reached the sign I was filled with emotion. The women ran up to me. I shrugged off my pack and embraced them. Nicole began crying. “You did it! You made it to Key West!”

I took a deep breath and let the moment sink in.

“Let’s party!” Kailamai said.

“I’m not done yet,” I said.

She looked at me quizzically. “What?”

“My goal was to walk as far from Seattle as I could. I’m not there yet. I need to walk to the southernmost tip.”

“That bites,” Kailamai said.

“May we walk with you?” Nicole asked.

“I’d like that,” I said. “But I need to get some lunch. Have you eaten?”

“Just an hour ago,” Nicole said. “But that’s okay, we’ll watch you eat.”

We were standing right next to a restaurant, the Tavern N’ Town, but they weren’t open for lunch, so I put my pack in the trunk of Nicole’s car and we walked around the back of the Marriott hotel to the poolside bar—the Blue Bar. I ordered drinks and a fruit plate for the women and a bowl of conch chowder and a prime rib panini with coleslaw for me.

“How was your hotel?” I asked Kailamai.

“Good,” she said. “How was your tent?”

“You know, room service was lacking. But I think I might miss it.”

Suddenly she started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Check out that sign.”

Mounted next to me on the wall was a picture of a chicken standing in the middle of a highway. Written in the sky above the chicken were the words

I dream of a day when a chicken can cross the road without having its motives questioned.

Nicole and I laughed as well.

“I have one,” Kailamai said. “Why did Alan cross the country?”

I looked at her and smiled. “To get to the other side.”

The real answer would take me years to completely understand.

While we ate, Kailamai did most of the talking, filling us in on her classes, her teachers, and every detail she could remember about Matt, the boy she was dating—he was a Libra, spoke German, and came from Butte, Montana, which she decided must be some kind of a sign, as that was where I had first connected Kailamai and Nicole.

Kailamai rambled on like a radio talk-show host, and the truth is I heard only half of what she was saying. My mind was elsewhere. I could tell that Nicole understood where I was at. She just silently watched me, occasionally interjecting with Kailamai when I didn’t respond to something.

After an hour I paid the bill, then stood. “Let’s go,” I said. We walked to the front of the hotel. “I need to get my pack.”

“Why don’t you just leave it in the car?” Nicole asked.

“It came with me this far, I think it should finish the ride.”

We walked back to the parking lot. Nicole popped the Mustang’s trunk, and I lifted out my pack.

“How far is it?” Kailamai asked.

“Maybe four miles,” I said.

“Four miles,” she said. “That far?”

“I’ve sleepwalked farther than that,” I said.

“Now you’re just showing off,” she replied.

We walked west across the Marriott’s parking lot, then out along the northern split of Highway 1. To our right was the gulf and the lapping water on the shore. In many places the water was thick with mangrove trees.

There are a lot of cyclists in Key West. Most of the bikes looked like antiques, recycled, rebuilt, and resurrected over and over again. I’m sure Hemingway’s bicycle is still in rotation out there somewhere.

The cyclists weren’t especially attentive to us in spite of the many signs warning cyclists to yield to pedestrians.

We walked past seven hotels the first mile, two of which were closed for renovations.

“Check these out,” Kailamai said. She lifted a pair of men’s shorts off the sidewalk. “Someone lost their shorts.”

“Don’t touch them,” Nicole said.

“It’s Key West,” I said, which seemed explanation enough.

In the second mile we passed two white herons standing on the bank. They were beautiful birds, and for a moment we all just looked at them. Then Nicole said, “The white heron symbolizes peace.” She turned to me. “It’s a good sign.”

The herons weren’t the only birds we saw. There were wild roosters and chickens everywhere.

“What’s with all the chickens?” Nicole asked.

“They’re protected,” Kailamai said. “There’s a five-hundred-dollar fine for harassing them.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“I read it,” she said.

“Where did they come from?” Nicole asked.

“Cuba,” Kailamai said. “They’re Cuban chickens.”

“I’m sure they’re all US citizens by now,” I said.

Near the Parrot Key Hotel & Resort, road construction forced us to cross to the other side of the street. We walked past a Pizza Hut building that had been turned into a medical clinic, then we turned off onto Roosevelt, then Truman, which led us into a residential area.

A rusted Toyota pickup truck drove past us, then
stopped about twenty yards ahead of us where a red and gold sofa was sitting near the curb. A thin, balding man got out and opened his tailgate, then walked over to the sofa. Then he just stood there for a moment looking at it. As we approached I could see a handwritten sign that read

FREE. TAKE ME.

Mustering his strength, the man lifted one end of the sofa and began dragging it to his truck.

“Would you like some help?” I asked.

He looked at me with relief. “Yes, thank you.”

Kailamai lifted the front of the sofa with the man while Nicole and I lifted the other end. They set their end on the tailgate, then the man hopped up into the truck’s bed and began pulling while Nicole and I pushed our end forward. The sofa was longer than the truck’s bed and hung out a few feet.

“It’s too long,” Kailamai said.

“It’s all good,” the man replied. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said.

We continued walking. We turned south at White Street and walked past the National Weather Service building. I stopped to read the plaque they had posted out front, a memorial to the sixty people who drowned in the 1846 “Havana” Hurricane.

I walked another half block, then saw it. There was ocean, straight ahead of me.

We continued on toward the water, and a block later we crossed the street to a long, sidewalk-skirted sandy beach. We had reached Higgs Beach along the south bank, but we still weren’t at the southernmost end of the island, which, I knew from the myriad of pictures I’d seen of Key West, was prominently marked with a buoy.