Free They Almost Always Come Home by Cynthia Ruchti Page A

behind the wheel. He was one of the reasons someone invented cruise control, which wouldn’t be a problem if the cruise control worked on the Blazer.
    We don’t need to worry about his speed behind the wheel as we approach the border crossing, though. We crawl in a line of forty or more vehicles waiting to pass through the Canadian customs checkpoint in the heart of International Falls.
    I should have brought a book to read. Jen occupies herself by talking sign language to the little boy who signs back from the rear window of his family’s RV in line ahead of us. Did I know she knew sign language? Oh, that’s right. Her niece is deaf.
    We’re forty-five-minute veterans of the crawling line now. Frank slips the Blazer into “park” and turns off the ignition. What is he doing? He undoes his seatbelt latch and opens the door. Right here on the highway!
    When I hear him fiddling with the gas cap, I understand. He’s using the spare gas can to pour a little American gas into
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    the tank so we can make it as far as a Canadian gas station. Before the vehicles behind us have a chance to grow impatient, he’s back in the driver’s seat, catching us up the five feet the line has moved since he turned off the engine.
    Ontario is less than a block away now. The customs office
    looks like an enormous, glorified toll booth. In just a few min- utes it will be our turn.
    “Let me do the talking, girls,” Frank says, as if we’re smug-
    gling contraband or something. We’re not, are we?
    Jen reaches over the back seat toward me. “Hand me your
    passport.”
    I dig though my purse for the document I’ve needed only
    once in my forty-five years, when a short-term missions trip to Belize with the boys’ youth group two years ago convinced me I was allergic to orphanages.
    I remember Greg’s incredulity when the U.S.-Canada bor-
    der crossing rules changed and a driver’s license was no longer adequate proof of identity or citizenship. How had I kept my wits about me to remind the others to include their passports in our warp-speed packing?
    While the customs officer scans the interior of our vehicle
    and looks over our documents, I scan the interior of my purse. I’m about to embark on a leg of this journey for which I won’t need my purse or anything in it. I remove a lip gloss and slip it into the breast pocket of my denim shirt. From my wallet, I grab pictures of Zack and Alex. They join the lip gloss. I dig into the depths of my bag again.
    My fingers brush against a long, thin, paper-wrapped card-
    board tube at the bottom of my purse. Oh, no! I didn’t even think about—
    While Frank answers the border patrol’s questions about
    explosive materials and firearms, I clutch the neck rest on Jen’s passenger seat and pull myself toward her ear.
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    “Jen!”
    “What?”
    “Tampons!”
    “Not to worry. I packed extra. Stuffed them in the foot of my sleeping bag, just in case.”
    “Thank the Lord.”
    “At least,” she adds, “I think that’s the bag I’ll be using.” We both eye the man in the driver’s seat. It could be an interesting first night in the wilderness.
    ********
    “Lib?” Jen’s whisper slides out of the side of her mouth. We’re both in the backseat now. Somehow that’s where we landed after the stop for gas.
    “What?” I counter with my own sideswipe.
    “You sighed just now. Something new? It almost looked as if you held your breath until we cleared customs.”
    I angle my body farther toward the back of the vehicle, hop- ing my words will dissipate in the air and not reach Frank’s ears. His thick fingers tap the steering wheel to the rhythm of something twangy burping its way out of the radio speak- ers. The danger of his hearing us over that noise is parchment thin.
    I begin, “Frank’s got it in his head that rules and regula- tions are more challenge than guide.”
    “I’ve noticed.”
    “You have?”
    “When he’s