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Authors: Cynthia Ruchti
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of a woman scorned or grieving. But I have more confidence that he’s right than that I am. “You know we’ll try our hardest, Frank.”
“I know. You always have. On almost everything.”
66
CYNTHIA RUCHTI
Almost? I don’t need to ask what he means. The whole world
knows I could have tried harder to keep Greg from wanting to leave me.
Frank reaches to turn on the radio, another move for which
I’m grateful. Until the music starts.
Elvis. He’s so lonely, he could die.
“Could we change the channel?”
Frank flinches. “I guess. None of that ‘Rock of Ages’ stuff.
Okay?”
Punching the “seek” button four times lands us on an
oldies-but-not-as-old-as-Elvis station. Safe for now.
I lean my head against the side window. Closing my eyes
against the blast of air conditioning, I disappear into the sound of yesterday’s troubles seeming so far away. Not true.
67
W e’ve been on the road for nine hours, and we’re still more than a hundred miles from our first Canadian destination— the ranger station where we’ll check in. We could have been well on our way toward a vacation on a white-sand beach in Florida by this time.
Instead, we’re bumping along narrow highways with a great variety of roadkill littering the shoulders. Bloated porcupines, whole families of raccoons, mangled white-tailed deer pulver- ized by passing semis, a rare coyote—or was that a wolf once upon a time?—and something big and brown with a long, flat tail. I thought it was a beaver, but Jen thinks she saw tire tracks on the tail, which means the tail may not have started out flat.
I let down my grief-guard long enough to appreciate the wildflowers along the road. Despite their weedy heritage, the periwinkle-blue chicory blossoms are an elegant adornment against a sun-scorched, windblown late-summer landscape. The newspapers are full of complaints about the purple loose- strife that’s reproducing like rabbits without consciences, but I find its color a relief from endless miles of green and brown
7
68
CYNTHIA RUCHTI
and tan in the ditches. Indian paintbrush, black-eyed Susans, and Queen Anne’s lace complete the long, narrow bouquets.
“Did you notice,” Jen asks between bites of granola bar, “that
the farther north we venture, the wimpier the pine trees get?”
I’m driving. Jen’s navigating. Frank’s supposed to be sleep-
ing in the backseat in preparation for his next stint behind the wheel. But he mumbles, “It’ll get worse. Where we’re headed, the topsoil, if you can call it that, is as thin as my wife slices cheese. Solid rock underneath. Nothing can put down tradi- tional roots. That’s one of the reasons you won’t find many oaks and other taproot trees this far north. The thin topsoil changes the ecostructure.”
Ecostructure? When did he start using words like that?
“Tree roots,” he says with a yawn, “like cedars and pines,
spread out rather than reach downward. Makes them . . . unstable . . . in high . . . winds.”
Jen and I glance at each other and smile. He’s snoring before
he finishes the word “winds.”
The burger we grabbed at a drive-through hours ago sits
like wet plaster in my stomach. As we bounce over yet another bump the highway department neglected to announce, I note that the wet plaster is tumbling in a cement mixer. I should be starting this trip much stronger than I am. Physically too.
Jen’s experimenting with the satellite phone Frank rented
from Northern Rent-All for more money than we’ll inherit when he passes. She has to roll down the window and point its antennae halfway to the Twin Cities to get it to work, but she manages to make a test call. Her beloved. How sweet. She reports our progress, lets him know she’s fine, and says she misses him and their girls already. Tell me about it. Then she asks Brent to call Pastor and make sure he put our trip on the prayer chain.
69
They Almost Always Come Home
Something wrinkles inside my
“I know. You always have. On almost everything.”
66
CYNTHIA RUCHTI
Almost? I don’t need to ask what he means. The whole world
knows I could have tried harder to keep Greg from wanting to leave me.
Frank reaches to turn on the radio, another move for which
I’m grateful. Until the music starts.
Elvis. He’s so lonely, he could die.
“Could we change the channel?”
Frank flinches. “I guess. None of that ‘Rock of Ages’ stuff.
Okay?”
Punching the “seek” button four times lands us on an
oldies-but-not-as-old-as-Elvis station. Safe for now.
I lean my head against the side window. Closing my eyes
against the blast of air conditioning, I disappear into the sound of yesterday’s troubles seeming so far away. Not true.
67
W e’ve been on the road for nine hours, and we’re still more than a hundred miles from our first Canadian destination— the ranger station where we’ll check in. We could have been well on our way toward a vacation on a white-sand beach in Florida by this time.
Instead, we’re bumping along narrow highways with a great variety of roadkill littering the shoulders. Bloated porcupines, whole families of raccoons, mangled white-tailed deer pulver- ized by passing semis, a rare coyote—or was that a wolf once upon a time?—and something big and brown with a long, flat tail. I thought it was a beaver, but Jen thinks she saw tire tracks on the tail, which means the tail may not have started out flat.
I let down my grief-guard long enough to appreciate the wildflowers along the road. Despite their weedy heritage, the periwinkle-blue chicory blossoms are an elegant adornment against a sun-scorched, windblown late-summer landscape. The newspapers are full of complaints about the purple loose- strife that’s reproducing like rabbits without consciences, but I find its color a relief from endless miles of green and brown
7
68
CYNTHIA RUCHTI
and tan in the ditches. Indian paintbrush, black-eyed Susans, and Queen Anne’s lace complete the long, narrow bouquets.
“Did you notice,” Jen asks between bites of granola bar, “that
the farther north we venture, the wimpier the pine trees get?”
I’m driving. Jen’s navigating. Frank’s supposed to be sleep-
ing in the backseat in preparation for his next stint behind the wheel. But he mumbles, “It’ll get worse. Where we’re headed, the topsoil, if you can call it that, is as thin as my wife slices cheese. Solid rock underneath. Nothing can put down tradi- tional roots. That’s one of the reasons you won’t find many oaks and other taproot trees this far north. The thin topsoil changes the ecostructure.”
Ecostructure? When did he start using words like that?
“Tree roots,” he says with a yawn, “like cedars and pines,
spread out rather than reach downward. Makes them . . . unstable . . . in high . . . winds.”
Jen and I glance at each other and smile. He’s snoring before
he finishes the word “winds.”
The burger we grabbed at a drive-through hours ago sits
like wet plaster in my stomach. As we bounce over yet another bump the highway department neglected to announce, I note that the wet plaster is tumbling in a cement mixer. I should be starting this trip much stronger than I am. Physically too.
Jen’s experimenting with the satellite phone Frank rented
from Northern Rent-All for more money than we’ll inherit when he passes. She has to roll down the window and point its antennae halfway to the Twin Cities to get it to work, but she manages to make a test call. Her beloved. How sweet. She reports our progress, lets him know she’s fine, and says she misses him and their girls already. Tell me about it. Then she asks Brent to call Pastor and make sure he put our trip on the prayer chain.
69
They Almost Always Come Home
Something wrinkles inside my
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