They Almost Always Come Home

by Cynthia Ruchti

  “Anything?” Jen will ask.

  “Got a nibble,” I’ll answer.

  “Play it cool, Libby,” Frank will add. “Set the hook good before you start to reel him in. And keep that rod tip up.” “This is the life, huh?” Jen will add.

  “Ideal day,” I’ll say, “except for the fact that my husband is missing and may be dying and we’re wasting our time filling our frying pan!”

  The garage feels crowded. Too many people. Too many thoughts. With Frank looking over my shoulder and continu- ing his rationale for the need for rods and reels and tackle boxes, I pull open the storage door behind which Greg keeps his fishing poles. What could possibly be left in here? Won’t he have taken most of it with him?

  My stomach flips end to end. Shouldn’t there be blank places, at least a couple of them, where his fishing poles nor- mally rest? But they’re all here. Every rod holder embraces its mate.

  “Curious,” Frank says from behind me.

  “He probably bought a couple of new rods and just didn’t tell me.”

  Jen asks, “Do you think he would do that?”

  “Doesn’t explain this,” Frank says, dragging a sewing machine-sized tackle box out from the floor of the storage

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  unit. The scraping sound of plastic on concrete sets my nerve endings on edge.

  “Would he have taken a smaller tackle box in his canoe?”

  Jen offers, stuffing sleeping bags into a garbage bag-lined pack. “That big one’s probably too heavy for a solo trip, right?”

  “Maybe.” Frank seems absorbed in something along the far

  wall of the garage. “Both of his telescoping fishing nets are still here. What was my boy thinking?”

  As we gather our own needs from the more than ample

  supply of fishing tackle left to us, some emotion between anger and fear returns and churns within me.

  You didn’t intend on fishing at all, did you, Greg? You lied to me.

  To your father. To the boys. Coward! Why couldn’t you tell me to my face that you were leaving me?

  I’ll have to forgive him for that. He could accuse me of plot-

  ting my departure with the same level of cowardice.

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  When Frank said, “We’ll get an early start in the morning,” I didn’t know he considered anything after midnight morning. The garage door is open. As I stare into the comfortless night, a rogue breeze tickles a handful of leaves in the driveway. They skate out of the shadows into the garage to escape its teasing. I don’t dare look too far past the Blazer parked just outside the doorway. If a crowd of onlookers is forming, I don’t want to know. This process is private. Personal.

  Silence accompanies us as we pack Frank’s Blazer. We should talk about the trip. Plan. Strategize. All the words are locked in some internal dungeon of pain. Greg, what have you done?

  We have a long trip ahead of us with little elbow room for our bodies or our minds. We secured everything we could under the overturned canoes now lashed to the top of the canoe carrier on the Blazer roof. Fishing nets, life vests, canoe paddles, and a few other items are tucked up, strapped in, and ready to go. The final tie-down of the canoes must wait until we close the back end of the vehicle for the last time, which won’t happen until we’ve shoehorned in the rest of our equipment.

  6

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  My fellow travelers leave companions behind. Pauline and

  Brent will hold down the fort while their mates are gone. Frank and Jen will be missed. Other than a message on the boys’ voice mail services, I have no contacts to make.

  Brent’s a gem. I know he must worry about letting Jen take

  off like this. She’s as inexperienced as I am in these things. But he trusts her.

  What he actually said was that he trusts the Lord in her.

  Brent promised to pick up my mail and field any can’t-wait

  phone calls. I am free to leave home and no one will notice. Or care. Not this time.

  Before that thought’s reverberation dies, the phone rings.

  Pastor heard from the church secretary, who heard from one of our neighbors, that lights are on at our house. At this hour. I wonder if Mrs. Hensley mentioned the canoes.

  Assured there is no emergency other than the one he already

  knows about, Pastor asks how I’m holding up and tells me the elder board is planning another prayer vigil. Can I help it if I’m distracted? Every minute spent celebrating the wonder of “the family of God” is another minute Greg is in trouble.

  “Did I call at a bad time? It’s three in the morning. Of course

  it’s a bad time.”

  “What? No. Well, yes. We’re . . . um, Greg’s dad and Jen

  and I are . . . we’re packing to head north. We hope to retrace Greg’s trip.”

  No immediate answer. He’s probably searching his brain for

  a way to tell me God loves the mentally ill. “Libby?”

  “Yes?” I feign innocence, though I know his next words are

  bound to be an exhortation of biblical proportions.

  “If that’s what you believe the Lord is calling you to do, then

  you can be confident He’ll go ahead of you.”

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  Those words would comfort me if I’d thought to ask Him first.

  ********

  It’s almost time to take our final bathroom breaks prior to buckling ourselves into the Blazer when Pastor jogs up the driveway and into the garage. How did he get here so fast? “Looks like you’re all set,” he says, eyeing the overloaded gypsy wagon for the outdoorsman. And women. “It’ll have to do,” Frank says.

  Pastor and Frank have met several times on multiple Easter Sundays and Christmases.

  “You be careful up there,” Pastor says, his eyes sweeping the lot of us. “And keep in touch as able. Do you have cell phones with you?”

  Jen jumps in to explain that there is no cellular service where we’re headed. She might want to dive into an expla- nation of the wonders of satellite phones, but we have a full day’s drive and an unknown future ahead of us. So I pull away from the communication curb faster than she can and tell him, “Thanks for coming to see us off, Pastor. That means a lot. We hope to be back before the week is out.”

  “I came to pray God’s blessings on your trip.”

  So he does. Then he presses two hundred dollars from the church’s benevolent fund into my hand to help cover the cost of the trip. Before he can say bon voyage or vaya con Dios— either of which would sound a little strange coming from a tall Swede—I thank him and open the passenger door.

  “Well,” he says, “we won’t stop praying for you three and Greg. Can’t wait to hear the miracle stories.” Yeah. Me, either.

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  ********

  I watch the familiar fade from my field of vision. Riding

  shotgun isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when the road leads away from the comfort of home and toward an unknown that prom- ises nothing but the likelihood of an unhappy ending.

  The first miles of our trip seem innocuous enough. If it

  weren’t for the twin-peaked canoe “awning” visible through the windshield and my father-in-law behind the wheel, this could be a trip to the antique mall—if it weren’t for the awning, my father-in-law, and the tightness in my chest.

  Dawn was tardy but eventually showed up. The corn looks

  good. Both sweet and field. Subtle difference in tassel color. Even those of us who don’t farm can appreciate the sight of healthy cornstalks along the highway followed by close- cropped hayfields followed by pastures of healthy-looking Holsteins.

  Greg always sees these scenes through the spectrum of a

  grocery store: cases of creamed corn, gallons of milk, a cooler full of meat, ingots of cheese.

  I see them as
artwork. Green on green. Shadows and light.

  The delicate symmetry in the height of the cornstalks and the pattern of enormous round hay bales waiting for hungry heifers.

  What have he and I ever observed through the same eyes?

  Our children.

  I turn in my seat to see if Jen has anything to talk about. I

  need a diversion stronger than corn. She’s napping. Good idea. Would if I could.

  “You okay?” Frank asks from the cockpit of this adventure

  ride.

  I face forward again and search the view through the wind-

  shield for an answer to his question. “Fine.”

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  “How is that possible?” He tosses me a smile full of empathy.

  “Frank, thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Making this trip. Allowing us to come.”

  His hands grip the steering wheel at eleven o’clock and six o’clock. Now ten and two. Now five and seven. “Did I have a choice?”

  “Sure you did. You could have told us what we already know—that we’re crazy.”

  “And if I hadn’t given in to you two, what would have hap- pened next?”

  The turkey farm to my right draws my attention but offers no words for me. I’m on my own. “We probably would have pestered you until your eardrums bled.”

  “Figured as much. Get a steady diet of that at home.” He’s never before admitted anything of a personal nature. What am I supposed to do with the confession? “Well, thanks anyway.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m no saint, though.” I know. Me, either.

  He continues, “I don’t mind telling you I have my doubts you two can stick this out more than a couple of days at the pace we’ll have to keep. No offense.”

  I want to respond with a reminder of how many years it’s been since he took a trip like this, how rusty he might be, how much older he is, how it’s dangerous to underestimate the power of a woman scorned or grieving. But I have more confidence that he’s right than that I am. “You know we’ll try our hardest, Frank.”

  “I know. You always have. On almost everything.”

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  Almost? I don’t need to ask what he means. The whole world

  knows I could have tried harder to keep Greg from wanting to leave me.

  Frank reaches to turn on the radio, another move for which

  I’m grateful. Until the music starts.

  Elvis. He’s so lonely, he could die.

  “Could we change the channel?”

  Frank flinches. “I guess. None of that ‘Rock of Ages’ stuff.

  Okay?”

  Punching the “seek” button four times lands us on an

  oldies-but-not-as-old-as-Elvis station. Safe for now.

  I lean my head against the side window. Closing my eyes

  against the blast of air conditioning, I disappear into the sound of yesterday’s troubles seeming so far away. Not true.

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  We’ve been on the road for nine hours, and we’re still more than a hundred miles from our first Canadian destination— the ranger station where we’ll check in. We could have been well on our way toward a vacation on a white-sand beach in Florida by this time.

  Instead, we’re bumping along narrow highways with a great variety of roadkill littering the shoulders. Bloated porcupines, whole families of raccoons, mangled white-tailed deer pulver- ized by passing semis, a rare coyote—or was that a wolf once upon a time?—and something big and brown with a long, flat tail. I thought it was a beaver, but Jen thinks she saw tire tracks on the tail, which means the tail may not have started out flat.

  I let down my grief-guard long enough to appreciate the wildflowers along the road. Despite their weedy heritage, the periwinkle-blue chicory blossoms are an elegant adornment against a sun-scorched, windblown late-summer landscape. The newspapers are full of complaints about the purple loose- strife that’s reproducing like rabbits without consciences, but I find its color a relief from endless miles of green and brown

  7

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  and tan in the ditches. Indian paintbrush, black-eyed Susans, and Queen Anne’s lace complete the long, narrow bouquets.

  “Did you notice,” Jen asks between bites of granola bar, “that

  the farther north we venture, the wimpier the pine trees get?”

  I’m driving. Jen’s navigating. Frank’s supposed to be sleep-

  ing in the backseat in preparation for his next stint behind the wheel. But he mumbles, “It’ll get worse. Where we’re headed, the topsoil, if you can call it that, is as thin as my wife slices cheese. Solid rock underneath. Nothing can put down tradi- tional roots. That’s one of the reasons you won’t find many oaks and other taproot trees this far north. The thin topsoil changes the ecostructure.”

  Ecostructure? When did he start using words like that?

  “Tree roots,” he says with a yawn, “like cedars and pines,

  spread out rather than reach downward. Makes them . . . unstable . . . in high . . . winds.”

  Jen and I glance at each other and smile. He’s snoring before

  he finishes the word “winds.”

  The burger we grabbed at a drive-through hours ago sits

  like wet plaster in my stomach. As we bounce over yet another bump the highway department neglected to announce, I note that the wet plaster is tumbling in a cement mixer. I should be starting this trip much stronger than I am. Physically too.

  Jen’s experimenting with the satellite phone Frank rented

  from Northern Rent-All for more money than we’ll inherit when he passes. She has to roll down the window and point its antennae halfway to the Twin Cities to get it to work, but she manages to make a test call. Her beloved. How sweet. She reports our progress, lets him know she’s fine, and says she misses him and their girls already. Tell me about it. Then she asks Brent to call Pastor and make sure he put our trip on the prayer chain.

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  Something wrinkles inside my chest. Is that what I want? For this misadventure to be broadcast all over the church? Less than a day into this crisis, church friends were showing up at my door with casseroles, Bundt cakes, and Jell-O salads with fruit cocktail and marshmallows. Pastel-colored marsh- mallows. If God had wanted marshmallows to come in pastel colors, He would have—

  Never mind.

  It’s not that I don’t appreciate the gestures. But as I packed more food into my fridge, it became more evident that I was the only one at home to eat it. I suppose I’ll have to write thank-you notes when I get home. If I’m not knee-deep in funeral preparations or searching for a cheap but determined “marriage eraser” lawyer. People with Bibles on their coffee tables don’t use the “D” word.

  In the confines of the Blazer, it’s impossible not to overhear Jen on the phone. She reassures Brent that we all understand how much he wishes he could have joined us. I would have gladly let him take my place. He would serve this team well with his experience and strength and the fact that he can care deeply without falling apart like I do.

  His work wouldn’t allow his accompanying us. Plus we would need the space in that second canoe to . . . to bring Greg home.

  “That’s a little weird to get used to,” Jen says after finishing her test-run with the SAT phone.

  “What is?”

  “The time delay. We both can’t speak at the same time or the voices cancel each other out. I suppose it would work bet- ter if we did that thing they do in the movies.”

  I check my rearview mirror and pull into the left lane to pass yet another logging truck. The canoes strapped to the top

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  of Frank’s Blazer whistle and sing with the increased speed. That could get annoying.

  “What thing?”

  “Next time
I use the phone,” Jen persists, “I’ll finish my

  sentence, then I’ll say ‘over.’ That’ll let Brent know it’s okay to talk.”

  “How much battery life does it have?” I’d love for us to have

  to use it our first day out to tell the boys and Greg’s stepmom and Pastor and the prayer chain that we found Greg, safe and sound, and are coming home. That’s what I want, right?

  A week. We have a week to find our answers before life and

  its appointments force us to return home. If Greg is out there somewhere in the wilderness, how could he last that long? If he’s on his way to a new life in Aruba with a woman who—unlike me—could afford a plastic surgeon for her imperfections, why are we doing this?

  ********

  We pull into the gas station/convenience store/Subway

  restaurant combo in International Falls for a much-needed bathroom break. We’re running on fumes in the gas tank, but Frank insists we need to wait to fill up until we cross into Canada. He wants to maximize our ability to stretch our gas supply for the Canadian side of our trip, noting the infrequency of gas stations there compared to the U.S. side.

  Frank danced in his seat when we crossed from Wisconsin

  into Minnesota at Duluth and discovered a significant drop in gas prices between the two states. I half expected him to call Pauline on the SAT phone and talk her into moving to Minnesota.

  Frank nods toward the restaurant half of the convenience

  store as he checks the straps holding down the canoes. “Better take advantage of the opportunity for some hot food.”

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  “Hot food? Does that mean I can’t have a cold smoked tur- key sub with provolone and cucumber?” Jenika teases. “Mark my words,” he says. We wait for what those mark- worthy words will be. Nothing.

  “I just want a Diet Pepsi,” I tell Jenika as I lean against the side of the Blazer to stretch my back muscles. “Ask for extra ice,” Frank says.

  “Why?”

  “A week from now, you’ll think ice is a gift from heaven.” So he’s assuming this will take all week. That’s not a good sign.

  ********

  It’s always a little nerve-racking with Frank behind the wheel. He was one of the reasons someone invented cruise control, which wouldn’t be a problem if the cruise control worked on the Blazer.