They Almost Always Come Home (13 page)

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CYNTHIA RUCHTI

No one asked him to serve as camp cook. He assumed the

role as if born to it. Standing around staring at him as he works makes me feel more useless than ever. “What can I do?” “Filter some water for us.”

He shows me the filtration bag and how to load it.

“Where do I get the water?”

His expression reminds me of a toddler’s first taste of dill

pickles. “Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “There must be some around here somewhere.” His right arm sweeps a wide arc, the spatula in his hand serving as his laser pointer to the lake that surrounds us on all sides.

“We just use the water from the lake?”

“You did catch the
filtered
part, didn’t you?”

How many ways can this trip force me out of my comfort

zone?

I grab the handle of the aluminum cook pot he offers and

head down to the water’s edge. There’s a song in my heart. Not a pleasant one.
Parasites and germs and fish gunk—oh my!
Parasites and germs and fish gunk—oh my!

As I stoop to scoop a potful of lake water, I discover a sec-

ond verse.
Water bugs, sand, and pine needles—oh my!
And what are those little black things? They’re moving.

Vile insects. The list of threats against Greg’s life mounts. If

he is lost or hurt or stuck here in the wilderness somewhere, is he able to get water for drinking? Does he have a filter or those foul-tasting iodine tablets we tucked into our packs as backup?

Silly questions. By this time, parasites would be the least of

his concerns.

For a moment, I almost hope he’s not lost out here but

drinking champagne from someone’s slipper at the Ramada Inn in Toronto. Saw that in a movie once.

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They Almost Always Come Home

It’s a trick keeping the water from sloshing out of the pot as I climb back up to the campsite. The pot’s still three-quarters full, though, when I reach the top. I set it down carefully on a pad of pine needles and dance a Rocky Balboa jig to celebrate the victory.

One corner of Frank’s mouth curls up. It reminds me so much of an expression I’ve seen on Greg’s face that I have to turn my back.

Jen’s awake. I vow not to tell her that the Mary Kay lady was right—she looks more “natural” with makeup. Makeup is a luxury forbidden on this trip. No room in the packs. No sense carrying extra weight.

“And I thought
I
needed a kitchen makeover,” she says, nod- ding toward Frank, who crouches over the low rock on which the camp stove sits. Our food pack rests in the triangle formed by a cedar’s exposed roots. Last night, it hung twenty feet in the air and six feet away from the trunk of a mammoth pine, suspended like a giant ham from a thick nylon rope.

“Bears,” Frank explained as he’d maneuvered the pack higher and higher off the ground shortly after we’d finished our summer sausage sandwich supper. “Bears?”

“Precaution. Just a precaution.”

“But we’re safe on an island, right, Frank? Bears can’t swim, can they?” It was Jen’s voice, but my thought.

“Oh, they can swim if they smell summer sausage and cheese waiting on the other side.”

Great. Bears. Jen and I looked at each other as if to say, “And just how are we supposed to get any sleep now?”

But we did sleep. Exhaustion helped. And Frank’s presence in the other tent. Although, as tough as Jen is, I would have much preferred Greg in the sleeping bag next to me rather than her.

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CYNTHIA RUCHTI

Greg—the man who a month ago grated on my nerves

when he flossed.

My standards are changing. No doubt about that. The pan-

cakes are as thick as folded towels and at least as dry. The bacon is black along the edges. I don’t care. We have to use an enormous amount of syrup to wash down the pancakes, but the crisp air and the promise that the less food in our pack, the less appealing it is to wildlife spur us on to eat like lumberjacks.

“What do we do now, Frank? What’s our plan?” I choke

down the dregs in the bottom of my mug and try to sound determined, not desperate.

“You tell me,” Frank answers. He lifts the ever-present

Chicago Cubs baseball cap off his head, scratches his scalp with his other hand, then repositions the worn cap. “Me?”

“What do you think we should do, Libby? How should we

proceed?”

I look to Jen for support, but see only raised eyebrows and

yet another person waiting for me to decide.

It surprises me to hear myself saying, “I think we should

pray.” Where did that come from? Good idea, but I haven’t had many of them in the last several days. Or years.

Frank doesn’t budge from the log he claimed as his chair.

Jen’s already on her feet with hands outstretched as if this is one of those times we need the prayer-boost that comes with holding hands while we talk to the Lord. She extends one toward Frank. I do too. But he develops a sudden cough and waves us to “go ahead without me.”

The hush of this place penetrates my skin and travels deep

into my soul. Only when the breeze picks up do the pines whisper at all. Only when a mother loon calls to her children or her wandering mate are we reminded that others share this

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They Almost Always Come Home

space with us. The silence is a character in our play, walking with us through all its scenes.

Silence is when reruns on TV Land are so lame Greg and I turn off the television. But always underneath that faux quiet pulses the hum of the furnace or the rattle of the ceiling fan or the growl of the air conditioner. Traffic still rumbles past our house and makes the loose windows shiver. As we settle into what I think of as quiet, the phone rings or the beep of the microwave announces that our bag of popcorn is done. Until now, I did not know a silence this deep. It both fright- ens and calms me. How can that be?

“Lord, what Your world must have been like before we filled it with noise!”

Jen squeezes my hand at those opening words of my prayer and whispers a soft, “Amen.”

More silence. I keep my eyes closed but can hear the fric- tion of fabric on wood. As unused as Frank is to communing with God, he’s squirming enough to rub a smooth spot in the bark of his log-chair.

I know there are more words to be said, a petition that sounds like a real prayer eager to be given voice. But my mind lands on a single thought that pushes its way up from some- where near my toes. “Oh, Lord God! We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are upon You.”

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Frank cries.

He tears across the camp and flies down the approach to the water.

“What is it?” I call after him. “What’s wrong?” Fear doesn’t need an engraved invitation to flood back into my mind. Jen and I follow him, sliding and slipping where he is surefooted.

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CYNTHIA RUCHTI

He doesn’t answer us, but in a flash bends to unlace his

hiking boots, fling off his socks, and wade into the just-shy- of-icy water.

“Biting ants!” he shouts as he dances in the lake, lifting his

pant legs higher on his white calves.

Our larger mission postponed for the moment, Jen and I

convulse with laughter. God must have known we’d need this endorphin boost to tear down camp, load our canoes, and pick up our paddles.

Frank’s scowls fail to discourage our laughter. Were the

tables turned, he’d guffaw like a vaudeville audience.

A tiny intruder can create a great deal of turmoil.

Under the microscope, the small choices in my marriage

might have seemed insignificant too.

Jen gave me a teaching tape a year ago. A CD. Did I ever

return it? Jen bugged me—Pauline style—until I stuck it in my car stereo system one day while making my annual trek to the apple orchards just over the state line in LaCrescent.

Despite my resistance to “teaching” at the time, I was

impressed by the way the speaker took the heartbreaking story of David and Bathsheba and walked us through all the points along the way where David might have made small but wiser choices that could have changed the outcome.

“In the spring of the year, when kings go off to war, David

stayed back at the palace . . .” is how the biblical account begins. And it all went downhill from there. Why did he stay home that time? Why did he need a nap? Why did he not avert his eyes when he first spied Bathsheba bathing on her roof? Why wasn’t his first reaction to call for the palace maintenance guys to build a privacy fence?

How would the story of his life have changed if he’d made

a different choice at one of those crossroads?

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They Almost Always Come Home

In the spring of the year when Lacey’s life ended, so did mine.

A small choice. Two roads diverged in the dark forest of my grief. And I? I took the one that distanced me from the one man, the one person who understood better than any other human being what it was like to lose a daughter like Lacey.

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O
ut comes the sun and dries up all the mud.
That’s the hope. But the shade on the portages weakens the sun’s power to dry anything. Frank says that if the maps are accurate we have only one portage today, though. I’m almost giddy with joy over that prospect.

As I climb into my narrow canoe cockpit, I’m conscious

of muscle groups long dormant. I didn’t realize muscles have voices, but when I pick up my paddle and make the first of a quadrillion strokes through the water’s resistance, I distinctly hear a small, strained voice screaming, “Please don’t do this to us again! What have we ever done to you?”

I apologize to the voice . . . without sincerity. Greg deserves

far more than the sacrifice of my discomfort. He does?

Yes. Far more.

“Are you as sore as I am?” Jen asks.

“Remember how many years I have on you. And pounds.

Whatever you feel, multiply that by ten for me.”

A breeze skirts across the surface of the lake, wrinkling

its skin. We do not need a headwind today. We need to make time.

13

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They Almost Always Come Home

Jen and I slip into a familiar rhythm. Frank still outdis- tances us. I blame that on my lack of upper body strength, which he has in abundance.

Every paddle stroke stirs a whiff of me. It’s a strong smell of wood smoke, perspiration, and damp socks. The socks I swished through the lake water late yesterday were not com- pletely dry this morning. But it somehow seemed important to save my one other pair—Frank only allowed two pairs for each of us—for a time when having dry socks might save my sanity.

As the breeze stiffens, I note that my odor now wafts Jen’s way.

“Sorry you have to sit downwind of me, girl.” “Want to trade places?” she asks.

“You’d trust my ability to steer?”

“Not for a minute.”

Lord God, how did You know that Jen is the kind of friend I’d
need beside me to survive this? If I couldn’t have Greg here to sup-
port me—

Time to redirect my thoughts. “Think it will warm up enough for a swim later today? A swim masquerading as a soapless bath?”

“I miss my curling wand already.”

“Me too. And microwave popcorn.”

“And my girls.”

I can’t paddle through the new wave of pain. “Oh, Libby. I’m sorry.”

I can feel Jen’s sympathetic gaze boring through my back. “It’s okay,” I say, as I plunge my paddle deep into the crystal water. “I’d miss mine, too, if I had a daughter waiting for me at home.”

“Lib—”

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CYNTHIA RUCHTI

“I’m happy for you. They’re wonderful. You’re wonderful.

Brent’s wonderful. You deserve one another.”

“And you and Greg don’t deserve joy?”

“I had a chance.”

“Had?”

I need my energy for moving this canoe forward. “Can we

talk about something else?”

“I want to respect when you need space, or whatever you

want to call it.”

“You always have,” I say. “And I thank you for that.”

“But would you consider the possibility, please, that we

might have been drawn to this place for more reasons than finding answers about what happened to Greg?”

I have no response to that. Of course I’ve considered the

possibility. Right now, all I can manage to swallow is the lump that says my husband’s missing. Discovering what’s wrong with me lodges sideways in my throat.

“What’s that?” Jen asks, her voice more strained than a

moment ago.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“No. That.”

I twist my body and find she’s pointing toward the left shore

ahead of us. At ten o’clock.

“Frank!” she hollers across the water. “What
is
that?”

The color palette is limited here. Shades of green, brown,

gray, blue, white. A flash of red stands out against that back- drop like a single red pepper in a bin of green ones. It’s small but real.

We paddle toward it with a speed I didn’t know we had

in us.

If we’d had more time to prepare for this trip, we might

have been able to secure special permission for motors. Would the authorities allow that, in an area where motors of any kind

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They Almost Always Come Home

are banned? Probably not. Even under the circumstances. Too bad. That would have sped our trip. But if we’d been traveling faster, would a small flash of red have caught our eye?

I lean forward to gain more leverage in my strokes. I dig deep, forcing the water out of my way, propelling our canoe closer. We pull even with Frank. Are we stronger than we were a few minutes ago, or is there something to the link between adrenaline and superhuman strength?

The shoreline is rocky. No level place to pull in. The object of our attention is wedged between rocks about five feet from the water’s edge. It’s cloth. Beet red, not scarlet. What clothing item of Greg’s is beet red?