They Almost Always Come Home (16 page)

“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 warmth 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?

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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B
y 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.

16

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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?