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

“What’s the big attraction in Pass Christian?”

“Well, I got an aunt down there. I was thinking I might go say hello to her.”

“When’s the last time you saw this aunt?”

He scratched his head. “I’m not too clear on that,” he said. “There’s a pretty good possibility I never did see her, but she might have been visiting us when I was born. She’s a great-aunt, actually. My grandma’s younger sister.”

“So she’s probably along in years.”

“Either that or she’s dead, which is a possibility. I’d have to say we’re not too close to that side of the family.”

“But you thought you might want to go down and check on her.”

“Sure, why not? If she’s alive I could pass the time of day with her, and if she’s not I could go put flowers on her grave, something respectful like that.”

“Either way, you’d be heading south at Pipestone.”

“That’s the idea. Cut down through Missouri and Arkansas and Mississippi. Might be nice, seeing that part of the country.”

“Why do you want to leave the group, Jody?”

“I won’t exactly be doing that, hoss. I’ll be taking part of the group with me.”

“Oh?”

“Guthrie, we’re gettin’ too damn big! Remember when there wasn’t but four of us, and you didn’t like the idea of the group getting any bigger than that? Now we’re getting new people faster’n I can count ’em, and that’s a good thing, but the logistics of it are gettin’ tricky. You can’t send two hundred people into a restaurant. You can’t even shop for ’em at a food store without emptying the shelves.

“And, at the same time that we’re growing too fast, we’re growing too slow. We’re not getting to enough people. If we were two groups we’d be passing through two parts of the country at once and we’d be growing twice as fast.”

“And in a week or two we’d have the same problems of growth,” Guthrie said. “Because we’d have two groups of two hundred people each.”

“That’s if we only had two groups, hoss.” He pointed to the map. “There’s a lot of roads out of Pipestone. Martha and I’ll be taking some people south on 75. You’ll be staying with 30. Dingo and Gary were thinking about cutting northeast on 23 and taking that right on through St. Cloud and across northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and then on across Canada.” He shook his head. “Be damned cold in a few months, but cold doesn’t seem to hurt us a whole lot. Let’s see now. Les and Georgia and Sue Anne said they might head south a ways with me, but they’ll cut west down through Nebraska and then on into the southwestern desert. New Mexico, Arizona. Bud and Ellie want to go through Texas and into Mexico. That’ll probably mean splitting up little Richard and his new girlfriend, unless Amanita tags along with them. And I think it was Douglas and Beverly who wanted to swing wide around Chicago and then skirt the Great Lakes and wind up in New England. I don’t guess they’ll get there in time for the fall foliage. More likely they’ll make it there about the same time the snow does, but he used to be a survivalist, so his training’ll come in handy there. You all right, Guthrie?”

“I don’t know. I guess the whole group is splitting up.”

“It’s dividing into a lot of little groups. It’s not like everybody’s packing up and going home.”

“No, I understand that.” He heaved a sigh. “You want to know something? I feel threatened.”

“Yeah, I can see where you would.”

“Where was I when everybody was planning all of this?”

“There wasn’t a whole lot of planning that went on, Guthrie. The same kind of idea seemed to come on a bunch of people at the same time, mostly the ones who’ve been walking since early on. The idea was just sort of there. Maybe the day before yesterday I thought to myself, I wonder how old Aunt Mae is. Now years go by and I don’t think of the woman, and I wasn’t kidding when I said I don’t know for sure if she’s alive or dead. But the thought came and I shrugged it off and it came again, and I thought I ought to go down to wherever it is, Pass fucking Christian, and say hello to her. And meanwhile Dingo’s having these thoughts about Canada and he hasn’t even got an aunt there, and Douglas is telling Bev how the real roots of America are all in New England and he really wants to go there. It just came to everybody. You know how that happens.”

“It sounds like what we’re supposed to do.”

“Well, it seems that way to me, Guthrie. It really does. But I’ll tell you something. If you say you don’t like it, I for one’ll say the hell with it. The others can do what they want, but I’ll forget about Aunt Mae and Pass Christian and we’ll go to Charlotte or Charleston or Charlie’s Left Nut, wherever you say. I mean, shit, hoss, you’re the man got me out of Klamath Falls, so you just say the word.”

“You had a tattoo then.”

“You had a whole carton of Camels and couldn’t think what to do with them.”

He looked at the map, and now he seemed to see a web of lines radiating out of Pipestone, branching out again and again as they spread across the country. A wave of mixed emotions washed over him, and his first impulse was to shed them like a duck’s back, but he had learned better. He let himself feel what he was feeling.

“It’s funny,” he said. “I know you’re all right about this. For all the reasons you said. And just because it feels right. We’re growing too fast and too slow, both at once, and this solves both problems.”

“It sure looks like it does.”

“But my ego hates this. It fucking hates it. I always said we were just people walking together, we didn’t have a leader, but I never believed that all the way. I kept being the one who decided where we would go next, I was Fearless Leader all down the line. Now I’m going to be just one of the leaders and I’m going to be leading just one of the groups.” He shook his head. “I guess I was more attached to being a big shot than I thought.”

“Once again, welcome to the human race.”

“That’s about the size of it.” He folded the map. “It’s not just ego,” he said. “I’m going to miss everybody.”

“We’re all feeling that. If there was another way that worked—”

“There isn’t. What does Sara say?”

“That she knew this would happen but she didn’t know when.”

“And how does she feel about it?”

“The same as you. The same as everybody else.”

“Who’s she going with?”

“Now that’s funny,” Jody said. “I didn’t even ask her.”

He was afraid to find out. When they started out toward Madison he managed to be at the front of the group, and he held that post because it served two purposes — it let him tell himself he was indeed the leader, fearless or otherwise, and it kept him from having to look at all the people he was leading and wondering which ones would be leaving him in Pipestone.

Maybe he should just stay in Pipestone. He could sneak into the place where the red stone itself was preserved from rockhounds and set aside for the ceremonial use of the Indians, and he could break off a hunk of it and spend a couple of months carving it to make a pipe bowl. Then he could fit it with a wooden stem and wrap himself up in a blanket and smoke all day. For ceremonial purposes only, of course. Just to put himself in touch with the spirits.

He stayed at the lead until they had swung east again on 34. Then he waited to one side while they went on past him, scanning the ranks for Sara. She was walking along hand in hand with her son Thom; watching them, Guthrie wondered if anyone who didn’t know would suspect that the woman was blind.