Pedestrian 46: Beautiful Day
An excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Repeater.
I’m currently working on my first novel, tentatively titled Repeater. I never meant to write a novel. The project began as a collection of photographs taken over the last five years of walking. Then I started adding vignettes, and those vignettes grew. Before long, I was writing a book of short stories. But eventually, I grew tired of documenting my walks strictly through nonfiction. Over time, the project transformed into something else entirely: a fictionalized account of a man’s walk from Brooklyn to Philadelphia (along with everything else drifting through his head).
Writing a novel takes a lot of energy and doesn’t leave much space for newsletters. So I figured—why not share a chapter draft here? I read this one aloud at a reading last night, after all. The excerpt below is from Chapter 8. In it, a man named M is walking from Metuchen to New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he stops to rest and meets a man named Chris outside his apartment. M listens as Chris shares a story from his past.
I met Chris in real life, but his story is part invention—loosely based on something my girlfriend’s cousin told us while we were visiting her family in Hawaii over Christmas.
Thanks for reading.
Beautiful Day
The walk from Metuchen, through Edison, and on to New Brunswick was about five miles. The route followed a stretch of the old Lincoln Highway, splitting each town in two. When first charted, it was stitched together from foot paths, many long used by Native Americans. It was eventually absorbed into the U.S. Highway System, repurposed to shuttle cars between strip malls, warehouses, and business complexes—many stamped with the Amazon logo. Beyond the trees screening the parking lots, M could see bright blue semi trailers grinning back at him.
Just ahead, tucked between a vacant Pizza Hut and a dim sum restaurant, was a row of motel apartments. A man sat outside in a wicker rocking chair. M waved as he passed.
"Ya want some water?" the man yelled.
"What?"
"Water, ya want some water?"
The man in the wicker chair wore a black paisley bandana pulled low over his brow. Silver sports sunglasses covered his eyes, giving him the look of a fighter pilot. A nasal cannula snaked from the respirator beneath his chair and looped up into his nose. In his left hand, he held a glass of red wine, half full.
"Name's Chris," he said, handing M a water bottle from a cooler. "What's up?"
"I'm walking to Philadelphia."
The respirator hissed.
"What's up with you?"
"Just got out of the hospital. I was there for a month. Covid kicked my ass. I still can't breathe." He sipped from his wine glass. "I was a diesel mechanic. Can't work now. Call it an early retirement."
M couldn't tell if it was a joke.
"So you're walkin' to Philly, huh?"
M opened his mouth, but Chris went on.
"You know, I took a walk once."
"Where to?"
Chris coughed.
"Spent twelve months turning wrenches in Afghanistan. Wasn't infantry or nothin'. Just worked on base. That's where I started working as a mechanic. Never left the wire, but I heard rockets. I was just a kid. My first time really leaving Jersey. The first time I'd ever seen the stars, really. Out there on base you could see the entire Milky Way."
M took a sip from the water bottle, picturing the desert sky. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the stars like that.
"And somehow in the shit, I found love," Chris continued. "Through her church, Beth found me. She sent me a letter from Wichita Falls, Texas. They sent hundreds of letters trying to boost morale and thank us for fighting for freedom. Something like that. Well, I'd been defending our freedom for two months and was bored out of my mind. Her letter began, 'Dear Serviceman.' So I wrote her back. We kept it cordial. She talked about the weather, the goings around town, her family, but soon things got personal."
Chris paused to gather himself. His voice dropped just slightly when he spoke again.
"We started emailing a few times a week. Back and forth. I'd go to the rec tent after my shift—just a row of old desktops lined up under fluorescent lights. If the connection held, I'd check my email, hoping she wrote back. I asked for her picture, she obliged. When I saw those blue eyes, I knew I was in love. I printed it out and kept it in my locker."
Chris leaned closer to M. He almost couldn't hear him over the respirator.
"She was just eighteen, but I knew I was gonna marry her."
He hung for a second, then continued.
"About four months in, they flew me home on leave. I begged her to meet me in the city for a few days, but she couldn't afford the plane ticket working part-time as a cashier at Tom Thumb. I wasn't getting rich or nothing, but the pay stacked up. Combat zone, no rent to cover. I told her I would pay her ticket. Believe it or not, she said she would come.
"I drove my dad's truck all the way from Edison to pick her up at LaGuardia. I got us a hotel in Midtown. I hadn't been that nervous since flying over for deployment.
"She told me when she'd get in. I waited for her."
"And?" asked M.
"And guess what? She never showed up."
A crow landed on the motorcycle parked in the lot. Chris watched as it flew away.
"So I spent the weekend getting loaded, piss drunk and praying she'd finally show up."
He shook his head, nearly winded.
"But she didn't."
He sat still for a beat, remembering how the rest of it unfolded.
"Two weeks after I returned to base, I got a letter. She said sorry, but her parents wouldn't let her fly across the country to meet a soldier, let alone a stranger. She said she was gonna pray for me, but I told her I didn't need anybody's prayers. I already had enough of those. That was the last I heard from her."
Chris glanced down at his glass.
"When I got back they sent me down to a base called Salerno for a few weeks. They called it Rocket City. Made Bagram feel like the Hilton. I didn't sleep the whole time. You'd hear the sirens, then feel the whole damn tent shake. I wasn't built for that. My love for her only grew. I prayed to God he'd give me the chance to see her."
"So what's all this gotta do with a walk?" asked M. He shifted his weight. The sun was high, and he had an hour left until New Brunswick.
"Hold on, I'm getting to it."
Chris drew in a breath, then launched back in.
"When I finished my deployment, I booked a flight to Dallas. I'd catch a bus there and make my way to Wichita Falls. I had her address from our letters. And if I couldn't find her, I figured I'd go find her at church.
"But when I landed in Dallas, I couldn't find my wallet. I had no luck tracking it down. Must have left it at the airport in Jersey, I thought. I only had a few bills in my backpack. Maybe twenty bucks. That wasn't nearly enough to buy a ticket. So I tried hitchhiking my way out of town. It was just a two-hour drive.
"But I had no luck. People in Texas don't like hitchhikers, I learned. I had no choice."
"So what happened?" asked M.
"Walked."
"You what?"
"That's right. I walked. Just stopped to eat and sleep. After a while, I gave up on getting a ride. Figured if I made it all the way, it'd prove something. The more I suffered, the more she'd love me.
"I slept in bus shelters, graveyards, and in an abandoned car. Walked along the highway for days. I don't think I spoke a single word for two of them. Cars flew past like I wasn't even real."
Chris paused once more, watching traffic pass. M said nothing.
"I got to town on a Sunday morning—the day before I was supposed to fly back to Jersey. I walked into her church. I didn't recognize anyone, not even myself when I looked into the bathroom mirror. I sat in the back and left for her house before the sermon."
"But when I got to her door, no one answered. I wasn't prepared to wait. After five days of walking, it hadn't even occurred to me that she might not answer. But I waited—and I waited beneath the tree in her yard."
He stared straight ahead, like he was watching it all again.
"After a few hours, I thought about finding her at work, but I was too worn out. The sun was setting. Then she stepped out the front door—looked just as beautiful as I'd imagined, 'cept she had a man beside her, and he put his arm around her."
Chris's mouth tightened.
"I said, 'Beth, it's me, Chris!' and she looked like she'd seen a ghost.
"She goes, 'I know it's you, Chris, but you need to leave.'
"'Beth, how could you do this?' I said. 'I came all this way. I waited for you.'
"She said it like she'd been rehearsing it. Like she knew I might come.
"Then her man says, 'You better get the hell off the property or there's gonna be serious consequences.' And he wasn't about to wait around for the cops."
Chris looked down, cleared his throat.
"You know what, I wasn't scared of him, but I got the hint. I unpacked my bag and threw her gifts across the lawn one by one: dog tags, melted chocolate, a scarf from Kabul. Told him to kiss my ass. It wasn't a tantrum, just my last gesture before I gave up."
Chris stared into the distance, his eyes unreadable behind the silver lenses.
"Some people think I gave it all in Afghanistan," he said. "Truth is, I never even fired my weapon. Not once. Still got discharged as a combat vet. Go figure."
"I walked halfway across Texas for Beth. Thought that had to count for something.”
He let the silence hang. The breeze stirred. Across the road, a plastic bag caught in a bush, fluttering like a flag.
"I walked to the gas station to spend the last of my money—maybe two dollars—when I saw a man wearing a Rutgers hat. Rutgers isn't far from here, you know."
He pointed down the road.
"Said he was from Edison. I told him I was a vet, and he drove me back to Dallas so I could catch my flight. That was almost twenty years ago.
"Haven't done anything like that since."
He smiled, just barely.
"Didn't know what the hell I was doing. But yeah—you could say I went on a walk."
"Weren't you scared?"
"Scared?" Chris shook his head. "Naw. Just crazy."
They sat for a while, watching the steady flow of traffic along the Lincoln Highway. M looked down at the empty water bottle in his hand.
"I haven't told anyone that story," Chris said, swirling the wine in his glass. He nodded at the sky.
"Beautiful day."