They Almost Always Come Home

by Cynthia Ruchti

  For him? Yes. Warts and all. Especially the warts.

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  Another handful of berries finds my mouth rather than the collection bag.

  “Your appetite’s back?” Jen asks.

  “About time,” Frank adds.

  I’m hungry. I never saw that as a gift.

  “Ladies,” Frank says, adjusting his hat, “we best be going.” Jen and I are upright immediately, our eyes scanning the perimeter of our berry patch for signs of black bear fur or beady, greedy eyes.

  “Don’t look there,” he says. “Look up.”

  Up? Through the lacy-armed cedars and anorexic pine boughs?

  “Dark clouds and aching joints. A sure sign of rain. This isn’t the best spot for us to hunker down. Not much open space to set up a shelter of any kind.”

  We’re following him to the canoes like baby ducks behind an all-wise mother. Jen slides quickly into the back of our canoe again. I’m more skilled at lookout than I am at steering, so I don’t object. With one leg backward in our pointy-toed canoe, I push off from shore with the other, dragging my Nike in the lake water. My hiking boots are still drying, along with my pant leg. The hem of my khakis is soaked. From the looks of the changing sky, it won’t be the only thing that would soon be wet.

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  By the time we find a spot suitable for sitting out a thunder- storm, the surface of the water is pimpled with droplets. We grab the necessities, haul them to high ground, then invert the canoes over the rest of our packs and equipment.

  Rain drips down the back of my neck and the valley of my

  spine while we work to follow Frank’s orders. He thinks we can get by with just the lean-to tarp rather than go to all the effort of setting up the tents. But the rain rode in on waves of a fickle wind—first one direction, then the opposite. An angled, one-sided lean-to is no protection at all.

  I don’t recommend pitching a tent in the rain. It’s no small

  feat when what the tent pegs have to work with is a dusting of soil no deeper than the powdered sugar on a donut—damp powdered sugar. Damp on its way to muddy.

  We work as a team, motivated by a strong drive to hide

  from the now pelting rain. Midway through putting up the first tent, we agree that one is enough. We’ll huddle together until the storm passes.

  The illustrators for L.L. Bean or Eddie Bauer might get a

  chuckle out of our shelter, but we’re out of the elements, listen- ing to the rain rather than soaking in it.

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  We strip off what we can and still retain some modesty in the presence of one another. Our wet outer clothes land in a pile near the tent door, while we congregate in the middle of the tight space.

  Frank takes off his boots. I wish he hadn’t. Jen scrunches her nose. She agrees.

  He reaches as if to remove his wet, well-used socks. Jen and I both sigh with relief when he merely scratches his foot. “Hope the rain lets up enough for us to move farther before nightfall, or at least get that second tent raised,” he says. “We smell like a pack of sour wolves.”

  We do? And how does he know what sour wolves smell like?

  Before I have time to ask him for more details about the wildlife population in this area of the Quetico, he’s pulling his boots back on and digging through the pile for his wet flannel shirt.

  “Where are you going, Frank?”

  “Nature calls,” he says as he unzips the tent and unlatches his belt simultaneously.

  ********

  He’s been gone too long for our tastes. No one back home would believe us if we told them we lost two men in the wilderness.

  Jen and I keep our voices low. Why?

  “Do you think we should go look for him?” Jen ventures. “Frank? He can take care of himself.” That’s what I want to lean on.

  “What if he had a heart attack or something? At his age—” “He’s in better physical shape than either one of us.” “Yes, but—”

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  “Jenika, will you quit imagining the worst? He’s fine. He

  has to be fine.” I don’t like being the boss of the Take Courage patrol.

  How long do we sit in a damp lump, waiting for that wel-

  come sound of footfalls on rock or the zip of the tent opening? The wind slaps the nylon sides of our shelter like dish towels on a clothesline in a hurricane. The staccato of the rain keeps up its annoying rhythm.

  Did we sabotage Greg’s chances of survival by waiting as

  long as we did to act? Are we now pressing a similar fate on the only man who knows how to get us where we’re headed and back home again?

  If Greg weren’t missing, these morbid thoughts wouldn’t

  enter our minds. We’re raw right now when it comes to rescue operations. Jen’s closed eyes and moving lips suggest it’s not just me. It’s us. She’s praying.

  Her faith registers more sanguine than my choleric relation-

  ship with the Lord. Even when a cloud passes overhead—a cloud, a crisis, cancer—she bounces back quickly. She mouths “amen” and takes a granola bar from her pocket. I do the same. Not from hunger, but from wanting to follow in her footsteps.

  It’s amazing how misshapen a granola bar can get when

  tucked into the breast pocket of a denim shirt. Frank insists we carry granola bars in an accessible place for quick energy on the water, or if we’re delayed finding a place to stop for lunch.

  A place to stop for lunch. Applebee’s or Perkins today? Or

  Olive Garden? Let’s do Wendy’s. I’m hungry for their Southwest Taco Salad.

  I nibble on the end of the granola bar I’ve exposed. It could

  be a while before our next hot meal. We’ll give Frank five more minutes, then we’ll hunt him down.

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  A loud crack somewhere just beyond the tent sends a jolt through my nervous system. Jen beats me in the high jump, though.

  “What on earth?”

  “You gonna hide in there forever?” Frank’s voice pours heal- ing oil on my nerves.

  We scramble to the tent door, tripping over one another in our haste.

  “Frank? Where were you?” Whose voice asked those ques- tions? Jen’s or mine? Does it matter? We’re thinking the same homicidal thoughts.

  “Exploring,” he says, his back to us.

  “You can’t be serious!” That voice is mine for sure. It hurts my throat when I growl out the sentence.

  “What? You think I’ve got that Old Timer’s disease?” Frank turns to face his trembling little ducklings. His shirt is bulging as if he’s near full-term.

  Alzheimer’s, Frank. But no.

  “Had a little run-in with a fallen log.” He cradles his preg- nant belly with one arm and hand and points toward his left shin and torn pant leg with the other.

  “Frank, you’re bleeding!” Jen rushes toward him and kneels to take a peek at what he’s done to himself.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks. I pushed the bone back in.” “Frank!” I join Jen, not sure I want to see what fascinates her.

  He backs away from the two of us. “I’m kidding. Lighten up, women. It’s just a scratch.”

  Jen’s tsk shows her exasperation. “This is more than a little scratch, Frank. It needs attention. Do we have a first-aid kit?” “It’s in my pack,” I volunteer. On my way to the spot on shore where we inverted the canoes, it dawns on me that the rain had stopped. When did that happen?

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  I flip the canoe upright and move it out of the way so I

  can dig in the pack. Buckles and zippers. Flaps and pockets. Where did I see that thing?

  Jen has Frank’s pant leg torn open the rest of the way to the

  knee by the time I reach them with the kit. The blood soaked into his s
ock ribbing seems significant to me. Jen blots at the wound with a piece of cloth. It looks like the T-shirt she wore under her outer layer a few minutes ago.

  “Frank, sit down,” I urge. “Give Jen a better look at your

  leg.”

  “Can’t do that very well at the moment,” he says, massaging

  his overgrown belly.

  “What is that? What have you got in there?” I unbutton his

  flannel shirt, chuckling at the oddity our trio makes at the moment. A pregnant old man. A young woman kneeling in front of his hairy, naked, bloody leg. And me . . . helpless, as usual.

  He bats my hands away. “Careful, there,” he says. “Dry kin-

  dling is worth its weight in government bonds on a day like today.”

  Kindling? He stuffed his shirt with kindling?

  Sure enough. At my promise to handle with care, he opens

  his shirt and unloads his bundle of joy into my waiting arms. Crisp-dry pine needles, small cedar bows, and bits of bark.

  “Where’d you find this in a rainstorm, Frank?”

  “Hold still, Frank!” Jen’s and my comments hit him in an

  unintentionally coordinated effort.

  “I tripped over a stupid log that had no business being

  there. Landed face first at the base of a big old cedar. I sup- pose I should thank the Lord the downed branches I landed in didn’t poke my eyes out.”

  Thank the Lord, Frank? Bravo.

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  His shirt now empty of its contents, Frank leans toward the ottoman-sized boulder to his left. Jen follows as he sits and elevates his leg to give her easier access to his wound. “The kindling, Frank?” I’m nothing if not persistent. “Under the young branches. Never would have discovered it if I hadn’t fallen.”

  You’d think he’d found a new route to China.

  “I bent myself over the branches and stuffed my shirt as full as I could.”

  “Can you hold this, Libby?” Jen extends a roll of adhesive tape toward me. My arms bulge with the kindling. I hesitate to drop it on the damp ground, so I sidle closer to her and offer a pinkie finger. She slips the roll onto my finger, smiles, and returns to her paramedic tasks.

  “I still don’t understand what took you so long, Frank.” Now that the fear is gone, my interrogation softens to the level of normal conversation.

  “I guess, maybe, I might have lost consciousness for a min- ute or two.”

  What?

  “Frank!” Jen grabs the tape from me and slaps it over the gauze now cradling Frank’s leg wound. She turns her attention to his head.

  “Frank, you have a goose egg the size of . . . of . . .” “Of a goose egg?” he offers.

  “What did you do?”

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” he adds without missing a beat. “Picked up some of these beauties too.” He digs into his shirt pocket and fishes out a handful of things that look like arthritic fingers. Dead ones. Long dead.

  Can a concussion make someone fall in love with wood- land refuse?

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  His eyes search ours for the appreciation he must expect to

  find. “You know what these are, don’t you?” We city girls shake our heads no.

  “Pieces of cedar root. Full of resin. Better than lighter fluid

  for starting a fire.”

  Okay, then. He still has a few marbles left. That’s a relief.

  I survey the mess we’ve made. A listing tent. A wounded sol-

  dier. A concern-weary makeshift paramedic with mud where her knees used to be. And me, my arms full of kindling I’m protecting as if it holds the potential to save our lives.

  I think I know the answer, but ask anyway, “Are we staying

  here for the night, Frank?”

  “Probably best,” he says. His speech seems slurred. That

  can’t be, can it?

  “I’m feeling . . . a little . . . lightheaded,” he says and topples

  off the boulder backwards into another nest of cedar boughs.

  ********

  The cloth label sewn into the nylon of the tent flap says

  it’s a four-person tent. If they sleep standing up, I suppose. Or crouch. None of us can stand up in here.

  Jen and I somehow maneuvered Frank’s limp body into

  the tent, where he now rests comfortably, if we can believe the words of a guy with a knot on both the front and back of his head. I retrieve the sleeping bags from our packs near the water’s edge. Sooner or later, Jen and I will need to haul it here to the campsite. Right now, Frank’s health is our main concern.

  I stuff dry clothes into one of my sweatshirts and make

  him a pillow for his neck. Jen swivels from checking for blood seepage through the dressing on his leg to watching his pupils and taking his pulse. How does she know this stuff?

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  I ask her. She reminds me her mom was a nurse. Good enough for me.

  Frank falls asleep, evidenced by his rumbling, deeply com- forting snores. Is it an old wives’ tale or are you not supposed to let a concussion victim fall asleep? As if we could stop him. Would it do me any good to look at the maps in his pocket? We can’t find our way out of here without Frank’s help. And even if we could, it would mean giving up our search for Greg. The thought slices through my heart with dagger-like effi- ciency, severing blood vessels and fleshy pockets of hope. We need a hero. I need my husband.

  ********

  It’s taken most of the late afternoon to set up camp without Frank’s help. We’re grateful for the smallest favors—a flat rock on which to put the camp stove, a windless respite after the storm, air temperatures cool enough to make the bugs sluggish and less aggressive against the new flesh we offered them by invading their northwoods territory.

  I’m grateful, too, that we had a couple of days under Frank’s leadership before we were thrust out on our own. Getting our food pack hoisted into a tall-enough tree will be a trick with- out Frank’s throwing arm to toss the rope over a tree branch. I wonder if Jen participated in women’s softball in college. We could use an ex-pitcher about now.

  I dig in the food pack for our cooking utensils while Jen heads into the woods with a plastic bag of toilet paper. That reminds me of blueberries. What happened to them? It seems a shame to waste the very things that cost us precious time earlier in the day.

  I look toward our canoe parking spots, trying to imagine where I might have tucked the bag of berries among the few

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  remaining things we left at the water’s edge. The shore is less crowded than it should be. The pounding in my head matches that in the veins in my neck. Where’s the other canoe? “Jen?”

  “Give me a minute,” she says from somewhere deep in the

  trees.

  “Jen, one of the canoes is missing.”

  She must not have heard me. The fact that I choked on the

  words might explain why.

  What did I do? In my efforts to truck everything to the

  campsite, did I dislodge it from its snug resting place? Was it not as snug as I assumed?

  The thoughts accompany me to the water. I shield my eyes

  against the sun that is too close to setting. Frantic to see that familiar green canoe, I search the water, close to shore at first, then in widening circles.

  Oh, Lord! This is my fault. It’s all my fault! Everything! I’m

  probably somehow to blame for Frank’s leg and his lumpy head and—for all I know—global warming! Please bail me out again! Please help me. I have to find that canoe. Oh, God Almighty! You know where it is. Would you kindly . . . if You don’t mind . . . share that information?

  I’m running along the shore now, stumbling from my own

  stupidity as much as the unevenness of the rocks.

  How fast is the current her
e? Is there a current? Are we

  still on a lake or is this a wide section of river? If it caught the current, it could be halfway home by now, like a dog bent on reaching its own yard before nightfall. The shoreline juts in and out of the water, as jagged as the torn edge of handmade paper.

  And there it is. Our canoe. Bumping along the uneven edge,

  the length of a football field away from me. What’s beyond that far arm of land that curves toward me? Open water?

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  Hopelessness? If I follow the shore, the canoe could be long gone. We can’t survive one more disadvantage like this one. I fling off the hooded sweatshirt that’s kept me warm all afternoon and kick off my shoes. This is no Bahamian beach. My stocking-clad feet rebel against the cobbled lake floor as I wade in until the water’s deep enough for me to swim.

  My water aerobics instructor from a decade ago would be embarrassed by my form. I know I’m flailing. Panic is never smooth. I try to remember to breathe, but I can’t lose sight of that green lifeboat.

  How can water be this cold in the middle of summer? My lungs scream, “Unfair!” My legs grow numb after a few min- utes of wave-pounding. And the green slice of life retreats far- ther from me. How can that be? I’m moving, aren’t I? God, help me!

  That familiar cry.

  Lord, You promised! my mind shouts to the heavens above me. You promised to help those who cry out to You!

  My foot slams against something hard and unmoving, send- ing waves of pain up a leg I thought was numb. Is it shallow this far out into the little bay? I stumble to my feet, favoring the one that throbs. Knee-deep now. Not good. The water holds me back as I slog toward the canoe. Resistance is the last thing I need. Is this water or cold honey?

  But I’m making progress at last. Slipping. Lunging. Grabbing an edge of kelly green.

  “Libby, are you okay?” Jen’s shout is loud enough to alert the Toronto police half a province away. Why didn’t we think of that before?

  I can’t answer or breathe. But I think I know what a stroke feels like. I grab the canoe by the scruff of its neck like I would a naughty puppy and proceed to walk it home.

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  I know Jen will sympathize. She’ll make me something hot