“No planes.”
“How’d you get there? You didn’t drive, you sold your car to Harry. Who turned a nice profit on it, according to rumor.”
“I’m glad for him. I walked here, Kit.”
A short silence. “I could have sworn you said—”
“I did.”
“Walked from Oregon?”
“That’s right.”
“This isn’t a joke. You walked from Oregon to Soapstone, Minnesota.”
“Pipestone.”
“Iceberg, Goldberg, what’s the difference? You remember that joke?”
“Of course I remember.”
“Good joke.”
“Uh-huh. Kit, there’s sort of a reason why I called.”
“I was thinking there might be.”
“Yeah. Uh, I thought you might like to come east.”
“To Grindstone?”
“No, because I’m not staying here. There’s a city called Albert Lea due east of here and I’ll be getting there in about six days, maybe seven if we take it slow.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“There are twenty-one of us.”
“All walking.”
“That’s right.”
“And you thought—”
The operator called in, telling him to signal when through. Kit offered to reverse the charges, but he didn’t want to prolong the conversation. “Albert Lea is a city of about twenty thousand people, according to the map index. There’s an airport. If you decide you want to, you could get a couple of flights and wind up there. There’s almost sure to be a Holiday Inn. Get a room there, and I’ll check for you when I get to town.”
“In about six days.”
“Seven at the outside. It’s only about a hundred and seventy miles”
“Oh, hey, that’s nothing. And then what happens?”
“We’ll go for a walk.”
“To East Jesus, Kansas?”
“Probably to Charlottesville, Virginia.”
“My very next guess, I swear it. As a matter of fact, I was sitting next to the phone when it rang, and I said to myself, I’ll bet it’s old Guthrie, ready to invite me to walk from Staggerlee, Minnesota—’”
“Albert Lea.”
“‘—to Charlottesville, Virginia.’ But the thing is you’re serious, aren’t you? And you sound sober, that’s the funny part of it.”
He said, “Kit? Don’t try to figure it out. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Just see how it feels. If it feels right you’ll know, and you’ll handle the plane tickets and show up at the Holiday Inn. If there’s no Holiday Inn, hang around the post office or leave a note for me at the General Delivery window saying where you’re staying. If it doesn’t feel right, well, that’s cool.”
“What would I have to bring?”
“Comfortable shoes. We’ll buy anything you need. And don’t worry about money.”
“Albert Lea, Minnesota. Is it nice there? Oh, how would you know, you’re not there yet. Guthrie, if I actually go and you stand me up, I’ll kill you. I’ll find you, I’ll hunt you down, and I’ll kill you.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Just so you know what happens if you don’t. Then you can make an informed choice. Albert Lea, it sounds like a fucking good old boy. Joe Bob, Billie Clyde, Albert Lea. I’d have to be crazy to show up there.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“But if I do,” she said, “you’d fucking well better be there.”
There were no new recruits that first day out of Pipestone. It was just as well, Guthrie thought; a day or two on their own would give them a chance to bond as a group before they had to deal with new people. That night they sat around the campfire and went around the circle, taking turns sharing how they felt being separated from the others. For some of them it brought up buried feelings about earlier periods of separation, but nothing came up that anybody had trouble handling.
The next day Sara said, “You know, I saw something when we were all breathing together at Pipestone. I saw other people walking. It’s hard to tell the past and present and future apart in the kind of vision I had, but I saw people walking all over the world. I saw walkers in Russia, heading south and west from Siberia. I saw people in South America walking down out of the Andes. I think they’ve already started out. I think there are walkers in England now, and in Norway and Sweden. I had a very strong sense of people walking in South Africa, and they were black and white all in one group, and they were walking down a highway and no one was bothering them.”
“And you think it’s already started.”
“I’m almost sure it has. We’re part of something enormous, Guthrie. And I think it’s going to work.”
“What has to happen? Does everyone have to walk?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think when enough people are walking, the planetary consciousness will reach critical mass, and then everybody will just plain get it without walking. I think that’s what happens, but I don’t know for certain. And I don’t have a clue what the world will be like after everybody has what the walkers have. It’ll be whatever we make it, I suppose, and we’ll make it whatever we want it to be.”
“Whatever that is.”
“Yes.”
That afternoon a young man named Gregory abandoned a Honda scooter at the side of the road to walk with them. And the following morning a black couple named Alvin and Lily were waiting with their two daughters at an intersection less than a mile from where they’d made their camp. “This is crazy.” Alvin said, “but the last time I heard a voice loud and clear like this it told me the name of a horse, and I didn’t go and bet on him, and I been regretting that for the past seven years.”
That summed it up, Guthrie thought. You couldn’t take credit for much, because once your feet were on the path it was no great trick to keep them moving. And you couldn’t pride yourself on thinking up the idea, because something outside yourself put the thought in your mind.
But, if there was anything you could say for yourself, it might simply be that you had listened to the voice once it had spoken to you. Because that was the point where you were at choice. You could follow the lead or not. You could bet on the horse, or you could spend the next seven years regretting it.
He had been the instrument to deliver the message to Kit, but from here on it was her choice. She might be in Albert Lea. She might not.
Either way, he knew what to do. Just take it a step at a time, and remember to alternate feet.