Walking on Water: A Novel (23 page)

The next two days I logged nearly forty-three miles, passing through the upscale city of Boca Raton, announced by its luxury car dealerships, plastic surgery offices, and funeral homes.

I had always thought that the name Boca Raton meant “rat’s mouth” in Spanish, an odd name for such a wealthy area, but I was wrong on several counts. In Spanish
ratón
means “mouse,” not “rat”—but the name of the city doesn’t mean that either. In nautical terms,
boca
refers to an inlet. And
ratones
in old Spanish maritime dictionaries refers to rugged or stony ground. So the name basically means “rocky inlet.”

Wealthy city or not, I lived economically that night. I booked a room at a Comfort Inn just a few blocks from the ocean and ate dinner at the Subway sandwich shop next door.

The next morning I ate the hotel’s complimentary breakfast, then I donned my pack and walked east over the bridge to US 1.

I was able to walk on sidewalks for most of the day until I reached Fort Lauderdale, made famous by the hordes of college students that overran the town every spring break. As I reached the city I wasn’t feeling all that tired, so I decided to push on to the next city: Hollywood.

Hollywood is a resort town, beautifully landscaped and aesthetically pleasing. Even the town’s water tower, above Hallandale Beach, was painted to look like a giant beach ball.

I walked along Hallandale Beach Boulevard, then followed Ocean Drive north until I came to the luxurious Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa. I decided to live a little, so I booked a room, which was available only because of a last-minute cancellation.

After dinner I changed into my swimsuit and went down to the pool area to soak in the hot tub. The sun had set, and the air was moist with the ocean’s cool, dark breath.

In the midst of the luxurious setting I was more troubled than I had been for months. Oddly, I wasn’t sure why. At first I blamed my anxiety on the usual suspects: McKale’s and my father’s deaths, and Falene’s rejection. But as I peeled back the layers of my discontent, I realized there was something different at the core of my pain. Fear. Fear of completing my journey. My walk was winding down, like a spinning top losing power. My wobble had begun. What was I going to do when my walk was finally over?

It’s been said that every new beginning is some other
beginning’s end. Perhaps my transition would be more tolerable if I had any real idea of what would come next.

You would think, after all this time on the road with nothing to think about but my next step or the next town, that I would have thought of where I was going. But I hadn’t.

I had always thought of my walk as an escape from the past, but now I could see that it was also an escape from my future—a future that I wasn’t any more prepared for now than I had been when I first set foot outside my house in Seattle.

Would I ever be ready? Could one really ever be ready for the unknown? If the road has taught me one thing for certain, it is this—one never knows who or what the next mile will bring.

I dried myself off, then went back to my room and lay in bed. The next day likely wouldn’t be any better. I disliked walking through big cities, and I was headed straight into downtown Miami.

Not surprisingly, the next morning I was in no hurry to leave the hotel. I easily rationalized that I had pushed myself the day before so I deserved a lighter day. Besides, the room was paid for until noon. I ordered room service, then, after breakfast, went to the pool area and relaxed in the hot tub. I decided to ignore the questions that had troubled me the night before. I still had plenty of miles to torture myself.

It was a little after eleven when I left the hotel. Donning my pack, I walked west on Hallandale Beach Boulevard, west over a coral pink bridge, then headed south again on US 1.

At the first stoplight there was a group of men standing around the intersection collecting money. They wore pink T-shirts that read
HOMELESS VOICE
. I must have looked homeless, because they didn’t ask me for a donation. They didn’t offer me any help, either.

After several hours, I stopped for a late lunch at the Dogma Grill—which was basically a fancy hot dog stand. I had a Reuben dog, with melted Swiss cheese and sauerkraut, and an El Macho dog, with spicy salsa, brown mustard, melted cheddar, and diced tomatoes and jalapeños.

When I looked around the place I noticed that as a white man I was a minority, which I’d gotten more used to
in the South. Since walking through this part of the country, I’d had some thoughts on America’s racial makeup.

In
Travels with Charley
John Steinbeck wrote:

Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners . . . California Chinese, Boston Irish, Wisconsin German, yes, and Alabama Negroes, have more in common than they have apart . . . The American identity is an exact and provable thing.

I don’t know if this is still the case in America. I may be wrong, but it seems that there may be some unraveling of the American tapestry. I see people getting so caught up in celebrating diversity that they are neglecting their commonality. I don’t see this as a good thing. The Chinese culture has survived for more than five thousand years in part because the Chinese have embraced the same language and culture.

I hope I am wrong about this, and that the flame is still on beneath the great American melting pot. Americans need each other, and a house divided, no matter the color of its occupants, is still divided. And divided we all fall.

I finished my meal, then headed back out to the street. Like those of most American metropolises, Miami’s outskirts were scattered with the homeless, and I walked past people sleeping on benches and underneath overpasses.

Around four p.m. I entered the heart of the city. It was close to rush hour, and the traffic was thick. The roads looked more like parking lots than thoroughfares, and, for once, I had an advantage over the car-bound.

I didn’t log as many miles as usual, but I’d gotten a late start, and city walking was always slow. I spent the night at the outskirts of the city at Hotel Urbano—a funky little sixty-five-room hotel in a residential area. I had promised Nicole that I would let her know when I reached Miami, so just before going to bed I called her.

“Hi, handsome,” she said. “Where are you?”

“Miami,” I said.

“So what day will you cross the finish line?”

“I’m about eight days out.”

“Today is the fifth, so you’ll reach Key West on the thirteenth. That means we’ll have to fly out the afternoon of the eleventh, spend the night in Miami, then drive down the next day. That will put us in Key West the evening before.”

“That sounds good,” I said. “It will be good to see you.”

“I can’t wait to see you,” she said. “Can you believe you’re almost there?”

“No. I can’t. It feels surreal.”

“It’s going to be fantastic,” she said. “Should I alert the Key West newspaper?”

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“All right. Just your two favorite girls.”

“Travel safe,” I said.

“You do the same,” she replied. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

We hung up. If it wasn’t for Nicole, there would be no one. What if I had walked all that way and no one noticed? I suppose it would be like writing a book, then burning it before anyone read it.

The hotel offered breakfast in the lobby, and I poured myself a cup of coffee, then prepared two packages of instant oatmeal that I topped with brown sugar and sliced bananas. As I was finishing my breakfast a man, thirtyish with a narrow face and a light beard, approached me. “Have you found God?” he asked.

I looked at him for a moment, then replied, “I didn’t know He was lost.”

The man stared at me stoically. “I’m from the Miami Church of Christ Risen, the only true church on the earth.”

“The
only
true church?” I repeated.

He read my skepticism and replied, “Obviously there can be only one truth. I’ve heard fools say that churches are like spokes on a wheel, all leading to the same place, but anyone with half a brain knows that can’t be right. Truth isn’t duplicitous. You don’t tell a mathematician that there’s more than one answer to a math problem—either you get it right or you don’t, and the level of a person’s sincerity or commitment doesn’t change the truth an iota.” He leaned toward me. “Has the truth saved you?”

“That depends on what you mean by
truth
,” I said.

“If you are not living the doctrine of truth, you cannot be saved.”

“You mean the ‘truth’ your church teaches.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And only those in your church are saved?”

“That is correct.”

“Then I guess not. How many are in the Miami Church of Christ Risen?”

“We are growing rapidly,” he said, his voice becoming animated. “We have nearly five hundred.”

“That many,” I said, couching my sarcasm. “So the other seven billion plus inhabitants on this earth . . .”

“Lost.”

“Lost,” I repeated. “What exactly does that mean?”

“To be lost is to exist eternally in a state of spiritual limbo, lost to God, damned in eternal progression.”

“So everyone in the world is lost but you and your five hundred souls.”

He nodded.

“Doesn’t that seem a little . . . wrong?”

“God is never wrong. God’s ways are not man’s ways. We don’t make the rules. God does. And He does as He, in His infinite wisdom, deems righteous.”

I looked at him for a moment, then said, “Actually, I think that you, or whoever runs your church, made up the rules to exalt yourself and damn others. If there is a God, I don’t think that would please Him.”

He shook his head sadly. “You are lost.”

“Well, at least we have that settled,” I said. He was looking at me with such an expression of self-righteousness that I wanted to punch him. “Tell me, who is this God you worship?”

“Our God has many names. Elohim, Chemosh—the God of Moab, Yahweh, the only True God.”

“And your God is just?”

“Of course.”

“And you think it’s just that billions of people who were raised differently than you or in other places of the world are not saved?”

“They are the sons and daughters of perdition,” he replied. “Unless they repent and come unto Christ, through our church, they cannot be saved.”

It was hard for me to believe that he could so easily throw all of humanity under the bus in the name of God. “Your little five hundred represent a grain of sand in the vast beach of human existence. If that is all your god is
able
to save, he is not very powerful. And if it’s all he’s
willing
to save, then he is certainly not very loving. Frankly, I think you worship a pathetic god.”

The man looked at me in horror. “That’s blasphemous. I fear for your soul.”

“Don’t bother,” I replied. “Your god doesn’t scare me. I’ll stick with a god who is great enough to love all his creation.”

I finished my coffee, picked up my pack, and started out of the hotel, leaving the man and his god behind.

US 1 again became the South Dixie Highway as I reached the town of Coconut Grove. The most unique thing about the town was that the traffic lights were horizontal instead of vertical, something I hadn’t seen anywhere else on my walk.

That night, as I ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant, I looked over my map. At my current pace I would reach Key West in just seven days. Walking through the Florida Keys would be unlike any walking I had done elsewhere in the country.

The Florida Keys consist of more than seventeen hundred islands, though only forty-three of them are connected by bridges. I would cross forty-two bridges on my way to Key West, including the longest bridge of my walk, the Seven Mile Bridge.