They Almost Always Come Home (26 page)

The lone exception was his camera case. It stayed close at

hand, like a faithful golden retriever waiting for instructions.

Greg pushed off into navigable water, but laid his paddle

across his lap before venturing farther.

Lord,
he began, dropping his chin to his chest as if the

weight of his thoughts was too heavy for his neck muscles,
I
need to meet You here. Audible voice would be nice. Handwriting on
the cliff faces. Bolt from heaven. Anything.

With an exhale and an “amen” echo, Greg gripped his

paddle and slid it into the waiting water. Yesterday’s page of the flip calendar on his desk claimed, “Faith is expecting an answer from God when you can’t even define the problem.” He didn’t recall memorizing that entry, but there it was, imprinted on his mind.

Like a photograph.

He dug deep into the water, propelling his canoe forward.

His muscles stretched and yawned, then expressed their gratitude for the opportunity to get back in the game. His shop-class paddle’s sleek handle belied the rough ridge on the

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blade beneath the water’s surface. How many strokes, how many water miles would this imperfect paddle measure if pad- dles came equipped with odometers? How many adventures? How many fish had he cleaned on the blade over the years? A tandem canoe converted to solo use lacks grace. Greg’s path through the water wouldn’t win him any style awards, but as the northwoods breeze evaporated the perspiration on his face, he moved farther into unfamiliar territory, leaving a small, untidy wake.

Unfamiliar territory. The thought returned. Was that wise? Would it have been smarter to choose a familiar trip route? Probably. Smarter. Safer. And routine.

“Fie on routine!” he said, leaning into his next stroke. As he pulled the paddle through the water, he envisioned pushing all remnants of normal life behind him. Time clocks. Lunch boxes. Mindless meetings. Memos. Negotiations. Paper- work.

In his wilderness world, he’d push no papers. Except for the maps. And his trip journal. No alarm clocks. No busi- ness suits. No pasted-on smiles for the church family that still thought he and Libby had bounced back better than ever after their loss.

Maybe that’s where they slipped off the rails. Was keeping their pain private a mistake? What could the church have done for them? Pray more?

Directly ahead lay a turtleback island no larger than a Volkswagen Beetle, a single pine tree—long dead—its only inhabitant. The tree leaned awkwardly toward the water, as if it lacked the strength to stand upright.

Greg stopped paddling and removed his camera from its case. The interruption in nature’s symmetry caught his photog- rapher attention. The other trees in the background stretched

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vertically, held tall by invisible strings connecting them to heaven. This one sagged.

He lined up the shot, grateful for a good interplay of light

and shadows and the relative calm of the water.

He slid the camera back into its case, zipped it shut, and

fought off the sensation that he didn’t deserve to make a living doing something from which he derived joy. Fantasies were for teenage boys and the unmarried.

Responsibility kept many a prospective dragon-slayer’s

sword sheathed. It might well keep Greg’s camera locked within the dark coffin of its case.

********

Like an addict drawn to the feel of the cigarette in his hands

as well as the nicotine hit, Greg turned again and again to his camera. Scenes begged him to capture them. The otter with obsessive-compulsive disorder, cleaning his catch-of-the-day at the water’s edge. Black trees against the sunset sky. The shimmering dawn. A twisted branch. A jay feather lodged between two rocks.

For ten sweet days he focused the lens of his life on what-

ever beauty he could capture. He ate and slept at will. Paddled when necessary. Floated when he could. Explored. Lingered. Napped without working around anyone else’s schedule.

Low water levels turned creeks into mud holes and stretched

access points farther out into the lakes he traversed. He faced the portages with a viewfinder, stopping often to take pictures of scenes he would have walked past if fishing were his goal, if conquering distance mattered.

As his smooth strokes pulled his canoe around a point of

land, a marshy shallow bay came into view. A brown mass near the shore caught his attention. In slow motion, Greg laid his

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paddle across his lap and unzipped the camera case. Was it—? Yes. A cow moose. She raised her regal yet decidedly bulbous head from drinking at the water’s edge. Her ears twitched. Greg floated closer, hesitant to make sudden moves or noises that might frighten her away.

The cow bent to take one more quick drink, an overflow of water pouring off her chin when she jerked her head back up and turned in Greg’s direction.

Greg pulled off his best imitation of driftwood as his canoe drew closer. As slow as a turtle on Valium, he raised his cam- era to line up the shot. Thumbing the telephoto toggle brought Greg’s perception of her so close he could tell she wasn’t wear- ing false eyelashes. They were real.

As he framed the picture and poised his finger over the but- ton to capture the shot, the moose pounded through the water toward Greg’s canoe.

“What in the name of—?”

The low water level kept her from having to swim to pursue him. The lumbering animal charged through the weeds and water.

Half a ton of angry hurtled toward him. What could he do but paddle backwards? He knew she held every advantage over him—size, speed, power. But a person does not sit and let a moose bully him into paralysis.

Greg’s heart mimicked a machine gun in his chest. With every panicked stroke, he willed his trusty canoe to sprout wings, or a motor.

But just as suddenly as she’d waged war against him, the moose pulled back. Greg continued to retreat, but she gave up the pursuit.

“Can a moose contract rabies?” Greg wondered as he slowed his departure. “That thing’s crazy. Fascinating, but crazy.”

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With the cow a safe distance away from him now, Greg

plied his paddle on the other side of his canoe to turn it so he could move forward out into the main body of water. He’d get a photo of a moose another day. As he turned, he heard another splash-dance coming from the other side of the bay. A moose calf.

He watched as the calf loped through the shallow water

toward his mother. No wonder she was upset with Greg. His canoe had drifted between her and her calf, unintentionally, but the results were the same.
First rule of nature: never come
between a mother and her baby.

He’d failed that test at home too.

********

Midday Tuesday he ducked his canoe into a sheltered cove.

He’d come as far as he dared if he planned to make it home by Friday night, or Saturday at the latest. The threat of a deadline crept back into his vocabulary. If he started back on Thursday at dawn and pushed hard, he could make it home in time for a few hours’ sleep before church Sunday morning.

He hadn’t gained what he’d hoped. Insight still eluded him.

He’d lost a few things, though. Somewhere along the way he’d dropped his pocket knife. Maybe when he’d reached for his handkerchief to mop up the blood from the gluttonous mos- quito he’d swatted a pint too late.

And his paddle. Poor, sad thing. As faithful as it had been

all these years, it couldn’t bear the weight of a misplaced foot. The boulder underneath it served as a splitting wedge when Greg lost his footing and landed on it when he was heading back down the portage trail for another load. He shouldn’t have laid the paddle against the rock. Should have tucked it

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into the canoe. Splintered, it was useless. He probably should have flung it into the woods. Or burned it. His life was full of “should haves.”

As he set up his tent in the idyllic cove, Greg worked to push aside the debris of regret. He’d found no answers. The joy of catching nature in candid poses underscored the uselessness of a photo with no audience. If a tree falls in the woods—? If a snapshot’s never seen—?

Only fifteen more years until he could retire. At the earliest. Fifteen years of purchase orders and haggling on the phone and crunching numbers and sitting through business meet- ings. Maybe then he could think of his camera as a companion rather than a tourist’s accessory.

Who was he kidding? Responsibility trumps dreams every time.

If it weren’t for the fire ban, the night would be a good one for poking at embers.

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louds. The morning sky sported clots of white and gray clouds.

A false alarm, no doubt—teasers. The earth cried out for

rain, but every cloud Greg had seen the entire trip flirted but refused to give in.

He fried up the heel of the summer sausage and a package

of hash browns. Not the Tremendous Twelve special break- fast from Perkins, but it would do. He’d have to be careful on the way home. Meals might be a little skimpy. Usually at this point in his wilderness adventures, he started craving home- cooked meals and fresh vegetables. But the thought of vegeta- bles reminded him of the produce department at Greene’s and nothing with the word “home” attached to it brought comfort.

One good thing about the return trip: the food pack weighed

decidedly less than at the start.

If anything, his heart weighed more.

No one had to tell him he was dragging his feet around

camp. Starting home seemed so final. Terminal.

He toyed with the idea of taking another day to explore.

He’d face the wrath of Stenner if he didn’t show up on Monday morning for work, but if he drove straight through and got

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home late Sunday night, he could manage it, sleep or no sleep.

A strong wind could destroy the perfection of that plan, unless it was a tail wind.

If he had the time, he’d go check out that spot in the crease of his map—Lacy Falls. Probably not a spectacle, as falls go, or it would warrant larger print and a marked portage into it. But still . . .

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houldn’t we see a portage put-in point somewhere in here, Frank?”

I’m getting pretty good at finding them tucked into the

endless miles of wooded and rock-strewn shoreline. Unlike the cement boat landings that give public access to lakes in Wisconsin, here every attempt is made to hide the evidence that humans sometimes share this wildness. No sign markers. No postings announce, “Great campsite.” No arrows point the way. No “Caution: Bear Crossing” benefits.

Still, as green as I am in the ways of the wild, my overac-

tive powers of observation prove useful here. When we’re still many paddle strokes away, I often catch a glimpse of a slightly paler place on shore, a slight widening, a less formidable bor- der to the water.

But after crossing the lake that threatened us when the

waves were high, skirting around islands and peninsulas of rock and trees, and following a barely-there creek that hardly qualifies as a body of water, we see no hint of a portage or a column of smoke. No portage is marked on the map, but we hope that was a cartographer’s mistake. A simple omission. Who would need a portage here? Who would venture this

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LIBBY

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deep into nondescript lakes and channels? For whom would the promise of an ultra-fine-print Lacy Falls serve as a destina- tion worth pursuing?

I still cling to hope that the answer is my husband.

As we troll slowly along the shore, looking for a phantom portage through which we can reach what we wordlessly acknowledge is our “last place to look,” I try to stay focused on just this crisis. The other one, raging through the body of the woman sitting a few feet behind me, is further out of my control than this one.

We haven’t spoken about it since Jen and Frank pointed our canoes toward Lacy Falls. A curtain of discomfort dropped between us. She hadn’t told me. She should have told me. I should have known. It might have changed everything. Not the cancer, but the fact that she’s searching for my hus- band when she could be lying on a table, letting an army of radiation soldiers beat back the enemy.

Maybe this
is
her way of beating back the enemy. “Jen?”

“Yes?”

“I want you to know—”

“What?”

My eyes don’t leave the shore we’re scanning, but my heart jumps over the packs in our canoe and lands near my best friend’s. “I don’t understand your decision not to let me know what’s going on in your body.”

I hear her sigh, so I hurry my next comment. “But I respect you. I love you. And I’ll support you no matter what.”

Her “thank you” is almost engulfed by the sound of waves licking glacial granite.

“Let’s tie up here,” Frank calls back from ten yards in front of us. Ten yards—enough for a first down. Greg would be so amazed that the comparison that came to my mind related to

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football. My tolerance for the game rates about as high as the percentages for Hail Mary pass completions.

Lord, football season starts in a few weeks. What am I going to do

if Greg doesn’t spend it in his recliner with that ridiculously huge—
ginormous—Packers mug at his side?

“Here?” Jen asks.

The shoreline is as unforgiving as the shoreline of my

heart—nothing soft, flat, or remotely beach-like on which to land. But a hint of a beaten-down path through the shore- hugging underbrush catches my attention too.