They Almost Always Come Home

by Cynthia Ruchti

  Frank made a trip to the undergrowth in the middle of the night? That man needs to see a urologist when we get back.

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  I flip onto my right side, hoping that’s the magic position to

  encourage sleep. My hip bones act as if they have no padding whatsoever. The seam on my blue jeans digs impressions into my cellulite. I feel the impressions now. I’ll see them when I make my own latrine trips. Getting used to sleeping fully clothed will not happen while we’re here. If I could get over that mental hurdle, I might be able to fall sleep. Or not.

  Frank’s right. Every day of paddling and searching is a big

  day. I need my rest.

  Some people go to bed clutching a stuffed animal or silky

  piece of fabric for comfort. My hand is tightened around the mini flashlight. I click it on now just to make sure Jen is breathing and we’re alone. We are. When I click off the light, the darkness rushes back in like spilled ink and smothers the oxygen.

  The stranded FedEx employee in the movie Cast Away spent

  his flashlight batteries the same way, clicking the light on and off for a split second of reassurance. Soon after the batteries died, he slipped dangerously close to insanity.

  The faint, filtered light from the moon ought to be enough

  of a nightlight. But it isn’t.

  I bury my head under the sleeping bag “comforter,” pull

  Greg’s journal out of my pocket, and click on the light. Reading offers a good excuse to leave the light on.

  I finger the pages I’ve already read and slowly flip through

  to new territory—uncharted pages. He writes about his friend Denny’s pyromaniac attitude toward campfires, flirting with setting his pant leg, their tent, and the surrounding forest on fire. Greg expounds for half a page on the merits of using a fly rod with a Dahlberg Diver—a lure or fly or something, I assume—for smallmouth bass.

  Then this. This entry.

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  Saw a commercial for paper towels the other day, one of those dumb lumberjack commercials. The man in a red-and-black flannel shirt, jeans, and suspenders leaned on a tree, looked into the cam- era, and said, “A real man knows if you can navigate nature, you can navigate a woman’s heart.”

  I might have believed him a few years ago. I’ve never lost my way up here. Not for long. But the maze of rivers that wind and twist through Libby’s heart should be marked on the maps “unnavigable.” Or is it just my pathetic lack of wisdom?

  No, Greg! No.

  Shouldn’t love count for something?

  Yes. It does.

  God, I don’t care if I go home without a trophy fish again. I don’t even care if I go home without arms or legs! Just please give me a clue! Send me home with a clue about how to reach her, how to reconnect, how to help us heal.

  And please forgive me. I’ve failed her when she needed me most. Is that what Greg’s been laboring under all this time? I thought he was quiet and unresponsive because he didn’t feel our grief as deeply as he should.

  Our grief.

  Until now, I’ve always called it mine.

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  Frank and I are the first ones up again. I’m pushing bacon around a skillet with a fork to keep it from sticking. Frank is filtering water. The air’s thick with the smell of bacon, coffee, sun-warmed pine needles, and cedar. The Bath & Body Works research and development team should consider a new fragrance line. I can see the display in my mind’s eye. It looks a lot like our camp, only tidier.

  For some reason, Frank thinks powdered Tang is a fitting

  substitute for orange juice. I don’t argue when he stirs a batch, though. It camouflages the floating things in the water.

  Pancakes again. The complete pancake mix makes up fast

  and easy. I make the batter thinner than Frank’s version and succeed in producing enough skillet-sized cakes for the three of us. I turn off the camp stove and leave the pancakes stacked in the hot skillet. No sign of Jen yet. I’ll have to wake her. We have no microwave to warm the food later.

  Not wanting to startle her, I choose not to holler through

  the tent wall. Bending to the base of the tent door, I reach to pull the zipper slowly, politely.

  Jen’s not asleep. She’s sitting cross-legged on her sleeping

  bag, reading.

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  “Sorry to disturb you. Breakfast is ready. We’d better eat while it’s hot.”

  “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “My Bible.”

  “Oh.”

  God, forgive me. How can I expect Your help if I neglect the book in which You store so much of it?

  I wait while she finishes whatever passage she’s reading. Maybe I’ll gain something by osmosis. “Find anything worth sharing?”

  She shoots me a look that says, “You’re kidding, right?” When she opens her mouth, honey flows out. “I needed a reminder that finding Greg isn’t up to us.” “We’re all he has at the moment,” I counter.

  “You know that’s not true,” Jen says, her voice that of a lov- ing parent in comfort mode.

  What I know is that I’m choosing a path that may lead to something I don’t want to hear. But I’m drawn to the hope of healing in God’s words like the bugs are drawn to our lantern at night.

  “What did you read?”

  “Joshua.” She crawls off her sleeping bag, smoothes it, and works at rolling it tighter than sushi. “God told Joshua, ‘Remember that I commanded you to be strong and brave. Don’t be afraid, because the LORD your God will be with you everywhere you go.’ ”

  “Even here.” I’m in awe that I actually believe it. “Yes. Even here. Especially here.”

  “I wonder—”

  “What?”

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  I stop rolling my own sleeping bag, not caring that when I

  let up on the tension of rolling, the down in its baffles swells and plumps.

  “I wonder if Greg hears that promise ringing in his ears.”

  “I’d guess yes,” Jen says. “If he’s—”

  “Yeah . . . if.”

  As we have so many times since the day I realized Greg

  wasn’t coming home, Jen and I shift gears, choosing not to dwell on the ugly side of truth, the unnerving side of imagi- nation. It’s not denial. When we close the pantry door on the mental pictures of pools of blood or wolf-ravaged leftovers, we know they’re still there as surely as we remember the peanut butter, rice noodles, and three cans of tomato soup in the pan- try at home.

  This isn’t denial. It’s survival.

  So we finish rolling our sleeping bags, eat breakfast as if we

  care, and dismantle the camp with an energy we don’t feel.

  Peanut butter, rice noodles, and tomato soup in the

  pantry.

  ********

  I watch Frank tuck Greg’s splintered paddle securely along-

  side the packs in his canoe.

  “What do you think it means, Frank?” Our canoes are still

  close enough in the bay of the island for us to talk.

  My stroke is much smoother than it was yesterday or the

  day before. Our first several hours on the water, the pattern I traced with my paddle looked like that of a first grader trying to master calligraphy when she hasn’t yet learned cursive.

  Frank draws his paddle through the water—once on the

  right, twice on the left—before he answers.

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  “Greg’s paddle? Wish we’d found some other evidence near that spot.”

  We’d fanned out and combed the area as if searching for lice nits in a kindergartner’s hair. Nothing. Not a footprint or fabric swatch or what we most feared—a broken
canoe. I paddle forward but keep my eyes trained on Frank. “I wish we’d found—” I can’t choke out the end of that sentence. Frank fills the gap. “I think finding Greg’s paddle means there’s hope.”

  I turn to catch Jen’s expression. She doesn’t speak, but her eyebrows disappear into the fringe of bangs that haven’t seen a curling wand in three days. Is that a sign of agreement or doubt?

  “Hope?” I shove the word across the water with my paddle. “How do you figure that?” Please, Lord. Please make his explana- tion sound logical.

  Frank’s sigh ends with the shudder of a loon song’s final notes. “At least now we know not to look in Mexico. Or France. Or the Ukraine. Narrows our search.”

  From behind me comes laughter that echoes across the water. I wonder if Greg can detect its sound waves where he is. Will we joke about it later? Will we use this moment as one of the story points when telling our grandchildren about the trip, this rescue operation?

  Frank is married to the laminated maps he carries. It’s a good thing. It’s not like a person could go by landmarks around here. “Turn left at the pine tree. Then look for a cluster of three small islands and hang a right.”

  All the shorelines look alike. All the pines are siblings, apparently. A series of three small islands is sure to be fol- lowed by another clump just like it.

  Now that we’re out of the cove and into more open water, Frank’s canoe takes a strong lead. It doesn’t matter that we don’t

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  know where we’re going. He does. If Jen and I stay focused on keeping up with his seasoned strokes, we’ll be okay.

  A few years ago, when I was more sensitive to these things,

  I would have turned that observation into a lesson for the women in my Bible study.

  “We don’t have to know where we’re going,” I would have

  told them, “if the guy in the lead—the Lord—not only has the map, but wrote the map.”

  And one of the women—maybe even Jen—would have said,

  “Oh, that’s good! You always come up with the best illustra- tions. Thanks for helping me understand that concept better.”

  It’s the kind of thing a person like me would want to tell

  her daughter. Or her husband. But I can’t share it with either of them.

  The cold front is back. Or its cousin. The sun is shining,

  but it has the warming effect of a lightbulb in a refrigerator. What would we do if the wind were blowing? God must know we need calm waters today if we are to make any headway through this tangled labyrinth of lakes and rivers.

  “Crystal clear water” is the expression I’ve heard Greg use.

  It fits. No matter how deep I dip my paddle, I can see to the end of it. I’ve been focused on conquering the wilderness since we got here, but even I can’t deny the beauty. It soaks into a person. The majesty. Light and shadow. Textures as rough as, well, tree bark and as glassy as the pool-of-mercury water at night. A morning mist with the color and fire of opals. Seventy shades of green in the verdant trees and underbrush lining the shore.

  “I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow,” I recite, “that’s

  plumb-full of hush to the brim.”

  “What’s that?” Jen asks.

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  “A line from a poem Greg used to quote. Not exactly Shakespeare. Certainly not Robert Browning or Emily Dickinson.”

  “It fits, though. Plumb-full of hush. If it weren’t for the noise we’re making, would there be any other sound than the lap of waves or bird song or soft rustle of pine needles?”

  I draw in a deep breath and refill my lungs with the closest thing to pure air this planet offers.

  Jen and I settle into a comfortable rhythm. We’re roughly the same height, so our stroke lengths match. Periodically, one of us will call out “switch” and we’ll change from paddling on the right to paddling on the left or vice versa. Our arms move all the time while we’re on the water, but switching sides tem- porarily redirects the muscle strain.

  Frank should be slower on the water than the two of us, con- sidering we have two paddlers. But even with his salvage-yard canoe—the one he wouldn’t trust to us—he slices through the water as if riding a razor.

  Splat! A spray of cold slaps across my back with the shock of the first rude burst from a shower head. “Hey!” “Sorry,” Jen says. “Unintentional, I assure you.”

  When I turn from scowling at her to face forward again, something snaps mid-spine. I freeze, afraid to breathe, afraid to move.

  “What’s up?” The concern in Jen’s voice reveals she’s aware I’m not refusing to paddle in protest.

  The snap and lightning bolt of pain that traveled farther in a split second than we’d managed in two days fades like a struggling flame on wet wood. Gone. I inch my arms down to my sides. Smooth motions, girl. No sudden movements. “What is it? What happened?” Jen waits for an answer. “Nothing. I think I’m okay.”

  “Your back?”

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  “Just a little pop. It’s all right now.”

  “You sure? We can get Frank to let us take a break, if you

  want.”

  My feet are crammed into the nose of the canoe—it’s prob-

  ably called the stern section or the bow or something similarly nautical—as if I’m wearing one giant pointy-toed shoe. I repo- sition them and my entire body, hoping to choose something back-friendly.

  “Let’s keep going. I’m over it, whatever it was.”

  Did Greg think about what might happen to him on a solo

  trip if his back went out like it did at the company picnic years ago? What would he have done if he couldn’t paddle himself out of here? Is that the explanation? Is that all it is? His back went out? Did he put us through all this trauma because of a simple herniated disc?

  Why would that make me angry? It would be a blessed

  relief, wouldn’t it?

  Lord, I hope I like myself better before we find him.

  A prayer with more than two words in it. What do you

  know?

  Frank motions toward the shoreline to the right about fifty

  yards from us. I see nothing of significance there except a small sandy beach. We follow, nosing our canoe with a whoosh of sound onto the sand. He’s already out of his canoe, heading into the underbrush for another of his bathroom breaks. He really should get his prostate checked. It’s not something you want to tell your father-in-law, though.

  Jen and I take turns heading in a different direction of under-

  brush. We know better than to pass up a wayside moment. One of the least appealing aspects of the wilderness. Fresh air bathrooms. Frank says there’s talk of making it mandatory to haul out all used toilet paper. Haul it out of the wilderness. Can you imagine? The bears don’t have to haul out their waste.

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  We’ve seen plenty of it. And moose droppings. Interesting- looking nuggets the size of those small chocolate Easter eggs. I bury the evidence of my presence in this wilderness with leaves and pine needles. Picking my way over tree roots and around moss pillows, always on the alert for sure footing, I see a tiny indigo gem flash its dusty face at me from low on the ground. Low-bush blueberries.

  I nudge a berry until it rolls off its stem into my hand, then pop it into my mouth before I stop to think that my ignorance of this area might have made that simple act a death knell. There’s no such thing as poisonous blueberries, right? “Frank. Jen. Come here.”

  “We need to get a move on, Lib,” Frank calls with a huff. “What is it?”

  “Wild blueberries. I think. Check it out.”

  In minutes, they’ve joined me. I hold out a handful of the tiny berries with bluish-purple tufts at their crown. Jen uses her pointer finger to roll them around. They lose a little of the dull blush in the warmt
h of my hand.

  “Looks like wild blueberries to me,” she says. “What’s your opinion, Frank?”

  We don’t have to ask if they’re okay to eat. Frank pops them like M&Ms from the candy dish on his wife’s antique sideboard.

  “Can we spare the time to harvest a few?” I ask, bent to the task already.

  “Up here, a person knows better than to ignore free food. And nothing tastes quite as good as something that didn’t make a layover in a grocery store.”

  That sounds odd coming from him, since he worked as a grocer until he retired. I wonder if Greg feels the same way. Would he have stumbled onto a patch of wild blueberries up

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  here and found joy in the fact that they didn’t need a middle- man like him?

  “You girls pick if you want,” Frank says. “I’ll stand guard.”

  Stand guard?

  “We’re not the only ones who like blueberries in our pan-

  cakes,” Frank explains without invitation. “These little bits of heaven make mighty fine bear dessert, if you know what I mean.”

  Strangely confident with a close-to-elderly man as our

  watchman, I suggest to Jen that we consolidate our individual rolls of toilet paper into one plastic zip bag so we can collect blueberries in the other.

  “What I wouldn’t give to grow a crop like this at home.”

  Jen’s hands make quick work of stripping mature berries with- out disturbing the white infants and pale adolescents clinging to the bushes. “Isn’t God good?”

  Where did that come from? Oh. Creation and all. Abundance.

  Tiny berries of provision in the middle of nowhere.

  “Not that we need them,” Jen continues. “But that makes

  them more of a treat, right?” She looks up at me from her berry-picking crouch.

  She wants me to draw my own conclusion, doesn’t she?

  Something about God lavishing things on us that we don’t deserve. Something about His intimate care of us and that He’s interested in the tiniest details of our lives. Something I’ve too- long forgotten.

  Does Frank see it that way? Sometimes I think Greg

  mourns his father’s lack of faith more than he mourns the loss of our daughter. I can’t put those thoughts in the past tense— mourned. I have to believe Greg still has the capacity to feel. Do I?