While I was eating, I noticed that the time on the restaurant’s clock was an hour different than my watch. I asked my waitress about the time, and she informed me that the time zone changes at their city from Mountain to Central. I had officially passed through my second time zone since leaving Seattle. I adjusted my watch, then walked back out to 90.

I noticed one peculiar thing. I passed a lot of roadkill that day. I don’t know why there were more dead animals here than any other stretch I’d walked, but there were. I saw rabbit, deer, badgers, skunk, raccoon, and a few mammals past the point of recognition. McKale used to freak out at the sight of roadkill. She remedied this with outright denial, proclaiming that the deceased animals weren’t really that dead, they were just really tired.

Of course I teased her about this. “Look,” I would say. “That raccoon is sleeping.”

She would nod. “That is one tired raccoon.”

“I’d say. He’s sleeping so soundly, his head fell off.”

I came across the occasional cat or dog, which made me sad every time, knowing that somewhere someone was probably looking for the animal. I thought of the story The Little Prince. The only difference between the cats and dogs and the rest of the roadkill was that the wild creatures hadn’t been tamed. I suppose that if I were to die out here, I’d be no different. No one would know me. Strangers would think it tragic or horrible; they might scream or call 911, but they wouldn’t cry. They had no reason to.

A few people would miss me, but I could count them on one hand: my father; Nicole; Kailamai; and Falene, my assistant who had stuck by me when my business failed. So few. Was this a failed life?

I walked twenty-three miles that day, and counted thirty-six dead animals. I spent the night camped on the side of the road near a pond.

The next day was about the same. I walked twenty uneventful miles, stopping in the town of Kennebec. I ate dinner at Hot Rod’s Steakhouse and tried to stay at a place called Gerry’s Motel, but I couldn’t find anyone to help me. There was a large ice cream bucket on the motel check-in counter with a handwritten note penned in feminine script taped to it:

Tips for Barb

She really deserves it

She gets up early

I waited in the lobby for nearly ten minutes, but neither early-rising Barb, nor anyone else, came out, so I left and stayed at a hotel a block away.