darlene

Hey, wait a minute. I didn't tell y'all about Darlene.

Darlene comes before the previous post; before Koinonia, before the cop and all the rides. Darlene gave us the first ride after we left Aunt Alice. But more importantly--Darlene was the only person we have met on this walk who guessed the riddle on the first try.

Two people walking down the road, with backpacks and sticks, just walking. Who are they, what are they doing? Crazy kids, suspicious hippies, runaways? A broke young couple trying to make it to where they've been promised a job? Hikers who for some reason prefer the American road to the Appalachian Trail? Darlene pulled over and offered us a ride, one evening; we told her where we were going--to the next church that we ran across, so we could sleep outside it--and she invited us home. We had just gotten in the car, and barely started eating the corn dogs she'd bought at the fair, when she began to talk about how she'd been wondering lately what it was like for Jesus and his disciples to be walking all over the place, trusting God to take care of them, and what it would be like to try that today. She said she saw us with our packs and our sticks and that's what she thought of; and she saw something between us, a kind of glow, something like that.

She brought us home but her husband was sick, and so as not to bother him she brought us over to her mother's--and a good thing too! I'd have hated to miss a chance to meet this "country mama," as Jackie called herself. She fed us sandwiches in her cozy trailer with a deer's head on the wall & teased Darlene, who teased back, with wit that made me feel right at home. We talked a long while, talking about Jesus, and also hearing stories like how a man saved one of Jackie's babies with a home remedy: the child had had diarrhea for a week and nothing she'd done for it had helped, but this man poured a spoonful of whiskey, burned off the alcohol, and gave it to the baby; then repeated the treatment twice at intervals--and it worked! She tried it again, years later, and it worked again. So write that one down, folks; as Snoopy says, "Some of those old wives were pretty sharp."

(Actually don't write it down, OK, because I'm not sure I remember all the details right!)

We shared some of our Aldi chocolate with Darlene (Jackie couldn't partake; diabetes) and said goodnight for a sweet night's sleep in the double bed in Jackie's living room. It took me awhile to go to sleep; somehow it was a night to lie awake and think of really good sentences to go in the next chapter of my novel... maybe I was inspired. But I did sleep and slept well, and in the morning we rose early to get a ride with Darlene as she went to work. She dropped us off and we said goodbye, and who knows when we'll see each other again.

But we will. That's for sure.

Oh, and by the way, Darlene... we don't seem to have your email address. If you read this, would you mind letting us know?