Not Without My Father: One Woman's 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace by Andra Watkins Page B

this, too.” I dug out migraine pills and dragged my sore gaze to the turbulence overhead. “I will not quit.”
    Rain mingled with tears as I swam an inland sea. Chilled liquid seeped through my rainproof clothing and doused my resolve. No matter how much I focused on the few feet I could see, I stumbled and fell in mud and weeds.
    I rolled onto my back and pounded puddles with my fists. Beaten, I crawled toward the trees to wait out the storm. The sky above the Mississippi hills mutated. Purple to charcoal to gray. When I stood, a light mist clouded the air, and the world was still. Soggy earth sucked my hiking boots as I limped to the highway.
    Another curse of the weather. I couldn’t wear my just-purchased athletic sandals in the rain.
    At milepost 133, a robin landed on the white line ahead of me. In good weather, birds swirled around me by the hundreds. Dappled grey and cardinal red. Magic music and feather kisses. When the breeze heralded a tweeted symphony, I stopped. Held my breath. And watched Nature preen.
    When I noticed, Nature granted gifts that superseded pain.
    “What are you doing out here alone, little bird?” I followed it along the white line. “Are you hurt? Lost, maybe?”
    But it didn’t break its twiggy trajectory. It hopped a few steps and stopped. I froze when it turned and looked up at me.
    “I wish I could read your mind.”
    I kept my step light, lest the vibration frighten the robin, and we walked together for a minute. Two minutes. The robin maintained its pattern of looking back every few seconds. Checking on me. Or, that’s how I took it. Another magical gift from the Trace.
    “Nobody will believe a robin walked with me,” I breathed. At milepost 134, I fumbled with my pocket to retrieve my phone and snap enchantment. Before I touched it, the robin flew into the trees and rebuked me in a flutter of leaves.
    We were making a memory.
    Together.
    Why couldn’t I just experience it?
    My senses were dulled by migraine drugs, drowned in a deluge and congealed by wind. I dragged out my phone anyway, to check the time. “One mile to go, and Hot Shot better be waiting for me.” I blinked into another squall and kicked through the last steps of the day. When I walked up to the final milepost—135—Roy wasn’t there.
    My migraine dug out a hammer and pummeled the left side of my face. I clenched my teeth and called him. Once. Twice. Five times.
    “Okay. This is just like when you were a kid, Andra. Distract yourself with something else until he gets here.” I scanned the piney landscape. The closest pull-off was Robinson Road. Milepost 136.
    One effing mile.
    When I tried to take a few more steps to shorten the following day, my legs buckled. They were finished. Done. I crawled back to milepost 135 and pulled myself to my feet.
    “Pictures. I can take pictures to pass the time.” I snapped several photos of my foot on the milepost. My feet adjacent to the milepost. My leg wrapped around the milepost.
    Still no Dad.
    I leaned against the milepost and worked the pictures in my photo app. Angle and light and contrast, visual relationships that mimicked connection in life.
    Why did Dad and I always get the angles wrong?
    I listened for anything that sounded engine-like, but the air carried birdsong. The applause of pine needles. Before my legs stiffened, I used the milepost to stretch my back, my hamstrings, my quads, my calves. One round of reps. Five rounds. Ten.
    My voice mocked me as it pinged through trees. “Goddammit! Where is he?”
    Fifteen minutes later, Dad’s car wove into view. He rolled down his window, a chubby smile on his face, and threw open the passenger door. “I’m sorry, Andra. You know, I knocked on the door, and that woman opened it and a puff of smoke blew outta her mouth when she called me Hot Shot.”
    But I wasn’t listening. Dad was never sorry when he said he was, and I never called him on it. Sorry was just a word he knew I expected. I stalked around