Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

When he was finished he rolled onto his side and opened his eyes. “Thanks,” he said.

“You were really out there, Guthrie.”

“Well, I’m back now.”

He walked over to where Mark was sitting. He looked within himself for the fear, the judgment, the desire to punish. All were present, but not nearly as strong as before.

I forgive you, he said silently, for making me look in the mirror.

“Mark is amazing,” Lissa told a couple of people. “He gives the best massage I ever had in my life.”

“You let him massage you?”

“I asked him to. You know, I walked with him yesterday, before we knew anything about him. And I didn’t pick up any killer vibes or anything, so I sort of got to know him before I got to know him, if you follow me. And this morning I was talking to Kimberley and I asked her if she’d picked up anything that I didn’t, because she was the one he almost killed. I mean, he went to that farmhouse with her and he was all set to kill her, except he didn’t.”

“He couldn’t,” Dingo said. “It’s like when you’re an absolute master at Tai Chi, you never have to defend yourself. Say somebody wants to attack you. You don’t do anything, you may not even notice them, but as they’re getting ready to attack you, they forget. The idea of killing you slips their mind.”

“Maybe that’s what happened, I don’t know. Anyway, she said she never picked up any hostility, but that he gave her the best neck rub ever, that his fingers knew just how to get the kinks out.” She shrugged. “So I figured what the hell. He thought I was joking, and then he said he didn’t know anything about massage, that he’d never given a massage, that he’d hardly ever even had one. But then I guess he figured what the hell, and he started on my neck and shoulders and worked on my whole upper back, and it was amazing. I didn’t even feel tight to begin with, but his fingers went where the tension was and knew just what to do. He may not know anything about massage, but his hands know, and they’re wonderful. You know the feeling I had afterward? I felt as though he took bad stuff out of my body.”

“Bad stuff?”

“Yeah. I don’t know how else to put it.”

“He probably did exactly that,” Martha Detweiller said. “He had all that killer energy. When it turns around, it gets transformed into an incredible amount of healing energy. It sounds to me as though he’s gifted.”

“Well, it certainly felt that way.”

“I’d better talk to him,” Martha said, rising. “If he’s taking negativity out of people, he’s got to learn to discharge it or it’ll build up in him. There’s the way Jody taught everybody of wiping your hands when you’re done getting rid of pain, and there are some other things I can teach him. If he’ll visualize white light around himself before and after he works on somebody, that’ll help. Or he can discharge the bad stuff by willing it to flow out of his hands and into the ground, or into moving water.”

“Poor Mark,” Lissa said after she’d left. “To think that all along he had this great gift for rubbing necks, and he wasted all those years wringing them.”

In the morning, Guthrie woke up knowing he had had further healing in his sleep. He had forgiven Mark some more, and he had begun forgiving himself. He was looking for Mark, not sure what it was that he wanted to tell him, when Jody drew him aside.

“Wanted to talk to you for a minute,” he said. “About our route.”

“We’re still not going to Washington.”

“God, do you remember that, hoss? No, I know that, now that Sara let us see how all we have to do is save the world. No, it’s something else. You know where you’re fixing to head from here?”

“Well, I know where we’re going today,” he said. He got out the map, unfolded it to the right section. “We’re right here, a couple of miles north of Madison. We’ll take 34 east from there, and then it becomes Route 30 in Minnesota, and we’ll take it right into Pipestone. There’s a national monument north of there; it’s supposed to be beautiful, where the Indians used to get the red stone for their peace pipes. I don’t know if we’ll get close enough to look at it, but we’ll pass through there.”

“And then?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Jody. I haven’t been looking too far ahead. Once we cross into Minnesota I’ll pick up a state map and see what feels right.”

“I’ve already got one,” Jody said. “Picked it up yesterday.”

“Oh?”

“I got one for the whole country, too, and one for the region.”

“I see,” he said. He took a breath, let it out. “Actually,” he said, “I never formally applied for the job of pathfinder. I just went out for a walk and people kept joining in. If I’m not doing it right, I suppose—”

“Oh, come on, hoss. That’s not what this is about.”

“It’s not?”

“Hell, no.”

“It does sound like it.”

“Well, it’s not. Here’s the U.S. map. Now I know you like to make it up as you go along, but if you had to pick a destination, where would you say you were fixing to take us?”

Guthrie considered. “I’ve thought about it,” he admitted.

“Figured you must have.”

“I don’t let myself dwell on it, but I’ve thought about it. Charlotte and Charleston kept coming to mind.”

“Charlotte’s where, North Carolina? Here it is. And here’s Charleston. Wait a minute, here’s Charleston. There’re two of them.”

“One in West Virginia and one in South Carolina. I know. That confuses the issue, doesn’t it? You know what sounds a little like both of those cities, and that I think might be a good place to go?” He pointed. “Charlottesville. Thomas Jefferson lived there, his home’s open to the public. Monticello. Might be nice taking a look at it.”

“You want to look at it, all you gotta do is take a nickel and turn it over. But I guess you’re talking about a closer look.”

“Well, it might be fun.”

“And anyway, it’ll do for a place to be walking towards.”

“That’s what it really amounts to,” Guthrie said. “It’s the walking there that seems to be important, not the arriving.”

“You bet,” Jody said. “So let’s say you’re going to go in that general direction, which’d be pretty much the same whether you’re going to Charlottesville or Charlotte or either of the Charlestons.”

“Right.”

“So what does that look like on the map? Here we are, here’s Minnesota, and you’d probably want to go on east some through Minnesota, maybe into Wisconsin, maybe coming on down into Iowa. Either way you’d most likely go through Illinois, then Indiana—”

“Or right down into Kentucky. We might be ready for some hill country by then.”

“And then east and maybe south. Uh-huh. Now, let’s look at Minnesota, all right?”

“Whatever you say.”

“Where’s Pipestone? Here’s Pipestone. Now there’s a couple of roads out of Pipestone. If you want to go east you could stay right on 30, or you could come over here and pick up 62. Or you could go north on 75, or south on 75, or there’s Route 23 here slanting off to the northeast. Or you could take 23 south, as far as that goes, and it runs into Iowa 182.”

“What are you getting at, Jody?”

“Shit, boss, I really hate this. I wish I could see a way around this, but I think Pipestone’s a perfect place for us to go separate ways.”

“Why’s that, Jody?”

“Well, you know, I was thinking I might head on down to Pass Christian.”

“Where’s that?”

“Mississippi, right on the Gulf. Lemme find it. There it is, right in there between Biloxi and New Orleans. Right there on the Gulf of Mexico.”