hed traveled , more or less , fourteen hundred miles , much of it on foot over a period of more than five years , all that time pulling the ark and often sleeping in it , was still sleeping in it where hed been allowed to park it behind a church and hed endured extreme heat and driving rains and oft-times went without very much that was good to eat and the only question he wanted the old woman to answer was if there was going to be a woman in his life .