For thirty-one days—from March 3 to April 3, 1926—twenty-seven-year-old Mae Bellamy walked 400 miles carrying her five-year-old son Thomas on her back, walking from dawn to dusk through rain and mud and cold, sleeping in ditches and barns and under bridges at night, begging food from strangers, talking to Thomas the entire way—telling him stories, singing him songs, telling him they were almost there even when they weren't even close—because Thomas had a growth in his throat that was slowly choking him to death and the nearest hospital was 400 miles away and no doctor within 200 miles could remove it and Mae had been told by every doctor she could find that Thomas would die within two months if the growth wasn't removed and Mae had decided that Thomas was not going to die, not while Mae was breathing, not while Mae could still walk, and the only way to save Thomas was to get him to a hospital 400 miles away and Mae was going to carry him there if she had to.
Mae had taken Thomas to three doctors in January 1926—doctors in small towns within fifty miles of Mae's home in rural Arkansas—and all three had examined Thomas and all three had said the same thing: the growth in Thomas's throat was too large and too close to his airway to remove safely with the equipment available in their small-town clinics, and Thomas needed surgery at a hospital with proper surgical facilities, and the nearest such hospital was in Memphis, Tennessee, 400 miles away. Mae had no money for train fare. Mae had no automobile. Mae had no way to get to Memphis except to walk, and Mae had no one to help her—Mae's husband had died two years earlier, Mae had no family nearby, Mae had no neighbors who could help—and the doctors had told Mae they were sorry but there was nothing more they could do.
Mae left her home on March 3, 1926
Continued story in comments
