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

drunk womanizer who treated my sweet mother like garbage. She stuck with him, though, no matter what. Where I come from, families stayed together.
    Sometime in her teens, I told Andra how I failed my parents. How I tried to love my father, in spite of his flaws. How I wished I could see my mother one more time, just to tell her I loved her.
    Teenage girls. I’ll never understand ’em. She always shooed me away, even those times I was crying, because I saw my life slipping through the inches she grew, the choices she made, the person she was becoming. She couldn’t understand I just wanted her to avoid the mistakes I made. Kids never get that. They hear lectures and roll their eyes.
    But Andra was a strong girl, just like my mother. Mom stood up to a lifetime of misery. Raised five children who mostly turned out right. Nobody ever doted on me like she did. Even when I towered over her, I was her baby, her pride, her miracle.
    As I watched my daughter struggle to breathe, all I saw was my mother, near the end of her life. I wanted to be both decent husband and loyal son, but when the chamber around my mother’s heart filled up with fluid, I admit it. I abandoned my wife. Left her in the kitchen of our rented place outside Nashville and raced across Tennessee.
    I had to see my mother. Tell her I loved her one more time.
    When I got there, she was drowning in that hospital bed. I fought with them doctors, told ’em to give her something—anything—to help her breathe, even as the hospital intercom paged me. A call from my wife, telling me she was leaving me and going home to her mother in Kentucky.
    I stood in that sterile hallway, where I could almost see Death creeping in corners, and I wondered.
    Who had to die?
    If I left and went to my wife, would I miss the minute my mother was awake, when I could tell her how much I loved her?
    If I stayed until the fluid squeezed my mother’s lungs shut—and that could be weeks, according to them doctors—would I still have a wife?
    I found my father, told him to sober up and sit a vigil by my mother’s bedside. He owed her that, and for once, he didn’t disagree. I stopped at the nurse’s station and gave them folks a party-line phone number.
    I crawled in my car.
    And I drove all night.
    To Eastern Kentucky.
    My wife and I conceived our daughter in a downstairs bedroom. With the door open and her mother just across the hall.
    I didn’t know that, though.
    When I got the call.
    My strong, struggling daughter was barely more than an idea when I hot-footed it back to Tennessee.
    My mother rasped her last breath.
    But I didn’t make it.

REDNECKS WHITE SOCKS AND BLUE RIBBON BEER
    Johnny Russell
    “Golly Molly, Andra! You almost hit that deer!”
    “I saw it, Dad. I saw it!”
    High beams couldn’t slice through Mississippi murk. I struggled to navigate a narrow road void of glowing stripe or overhead light. Astronomy abandoned me.
    “You sure this is the right way?”
    “Yes, Dad!”
    “How do you know?”
    I streaked to a halt at a stop sign. My iPhone fought two bars of service to map our destination. Gibbes Store. Learned, Mississippi. “The Google Girl says it’s just a couple more miles, Dad. This way.”
    Eyeballs glowed in dense forest. I imagined I drove through an episode of Scooby-Doo. The gang ran their psychedelic van through corridors spangled with creepy eyes. They always broke down. I punched the gas and hoped the Mercury was more dependable than a cartoon vehicle.
    “I don’t know why we had to drive to the backend of nowhere to eat.”
    “Best steaks around, Dad.” As we rolled into town, I mumbled, “Dear God, I hope they’re edible.” But was it a town? A few ramshackle buildings and no street light meant anything in the Deep South. Fantasy led me to one conclusion: We drove through a wrinkle in Time and found a living ghost town. My eyes swept the landscape. “There.” I steered the car toward a wrecked building.
    “That’s the place?