The Night I Drove Three Hours for My Kids

Howard and Ruthie

I got the whole story in pieces over the next half hour, from Ruthie and from the kids, while Howard sat at the picnic table with his flashlight pointed politely at the ground.

Howard and Ruthie are from outside Owatonna. He was a rural mail carrier for thirty-one years, and she taught second grade. They are volunteer campground hosts, which means they get to park their camper at the host site for the summer, and in exchange they clean fire rings, sell firewood, answer questions and keep an eye on things.

“Mostly people want to know where the bathrooms are,” Howard told me. “And whether the eagles are out.”

They had met my kids that very morning. Darrell had bought a bundle of firewood off Howard, and Ellie had asked if she could pet Biscuit, who is a fat old beagle with a gray muzzle. Ruthie let her brush the dog for half an hour while Darrell and Josh went down to the river.

So when Ellie came walking down the road at 9:30 that night, in the dark, Ruthie knew her right away.

“She had her flip-flops on and her brother’s dead phone in her hand,” Ruthie told me, “and she said, very polite, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, do you have a charger for this kind?’ And I said, honey, where’s your uncle? And she said, ‘He went home.'”

Ruthie’s voice went a little thin on that last part. She cleared her throat and kept going.

Howard went up the hill in the golf cart and found Josh sitting on the picnic table with the lantern on and a stick in his hand, like he was going to fight off a bear with it. The fire was out. The cooler was gone. There was a half sleeve of saltines in the tent and two juice boxes.

“Your boy stood up and shook my hand,” Howard said. “Told me his name and said his uncle would probably be back soon. Said it like he was trying to talk himself into it.”

They brought both kids down to the host site. Ruthie plugged Josh’s phone into her charger, but it was the old kind of plug and the new kind of phone, and it wouldn’t take. That was when Josh said, “I know my mom’s number,” and rattled it off.

Howard fired up the camp stove and cooked hot dogs, four of them, then two more because Josh was still hungry. Ruthie heated a can of baked beans. Ellie ate a hot dog with so much ketchup on it that some of it is probably still on her chin.

Then a funny thing happened. After they ate, Josh asked if they could go back up to their own site to wait.

“I asked him why, honey,” Ruthie said, “since it’s a lot warmer in the camper. And he said, ‘Because if Uncle Darrell comes back, he won’t know where we are, and he’ll be scared.'”

I had to sit down on the bench when she told me that.

My son had been abandoned on a bluff by a grown man, and his worry was that the grown man would be scared.

So Howard and Ruthie brought them back up the hill. Ruthie brought the gray wool blanket off her own bed. Howard brought the flashlights and a camp chair. And the two of them, both past seventy, sat at site 14 with my children from about ten o’clock until I got there at one.

“We’re not in a hurry to be anywhere,” Howard said, when I tried to thank him. “Sun comes up whether we sleep or not.”

Ruthie told me she had sung to Ellie. Old songs, church camp songs, the one about the wise man who built his house upon the rock, with the hand motions. Ellie knew it from Vacation Bible School and did the motions with her, half asleep under the blanket.

Howard had pointed out the lights of a towboat pushing barges up the river, way down below. He told Josh that a tow like that could be pushing fifteen barges, and that one barge holds as much grain as about seventy semis. Josh asked him so many questions that Howard ran out of answers and admitted he’d have to look the rest up.

“He’s a sharp one,” Howard told me. “You’ve got a good boy.”

“I know it,” I said, and my voice cracked right down the middle.

I asked Ruthie why she hadn’t called the sheriff. I wasn’t upset about it. I just wanted to know.

“I would have,” she said simply. “If I hadn’t reached you by midnight, I’d have called. But your boy knew your number, and you picked up, and they were fed and they were with us. I taught school for thirty-four years. Sometimes the kindest thing is just to keep the children warm and get them to their mother.”

She paused. “Howard will have to tell the park manager in the morning. That’s the rule. He’ll tell it straight.”

“Tell it straight,” I said. “I’d want him to.”