THE FUGITIVEThe Rest of the Story - family blogLast weekend was the big family reunion. Every two years we get together with my only first cousins, and we head out to the mountains for a weekend of good old fashioned family fun. We had a fabulous time doing yoga (can't you tell I'm completely relaxed) swimming, rowing in the boat, eating yummy food, playing badminton, and foosball (I accidentally hit the ball into our own goal three times, Crazily, nobody wanted me on their team for the next game.) The best part of course was being together. This reunion may sound like any other family reunion, except for a slight twist, and that twist was . . . . . the fugitive.
You see the first night as we were enjoying a delicious dinner on the deck, we noticed helicopters circling the mountains. My uncle told us there was a fugitive on the loose. While he wasn't a killer, he was a juvenile delinquent who had escaped from a wilderness program in the mountains. They had planes and dogs combing the area. We were warned to lock up our cars and the cabin. I looked back at the mountain, locked the doors and didn't think too much more about it. That is I didn't until two days later, when my mother told me some people had been by again to warn us about the fugitive. They said he was wearing a blue shirt and had brown hair, "Uh, huh." I said distractedly as I helped whip up a salad. However, not two minutes later, I looked up, and who did I see? That's right, the fugitive. There he was walking down the hall with my dad and uncle. Convinced that I was the only one who knew who he really was, I whispered to my mom, "It's the fugitive." And no sooner had I said that, then my dad came bustling into the kitchen and said, "We need to get this kid some food." I nervously whispered again, "It's the fugitive." My brother looked at me and said, "Yeah we know." Completely baffled, I watched as they led the fugitive to the table, had him sit, and started feeding him our food. Personally, I was thinking more along the lines of grabbing him, tying him up and calling the searchers. (I tend to err on the side of caution.) However, if you know my dad, you know he befriends all, and so they set him at the table with food and listened to the fugitive's story. (I shouldn't have worried so much, it's true all the guys were right by him at the table, and my seventh grade cousin gave me a glance of his pocket knife telling me not to worry, he had it covered.)
This is the story that the fugitive told:
At the camp where he was they would take away the kids' shoes each night, so they wouldn't run away. However, this fugitive still ran. In fact he had been running for 6 days, over 35 miles away from the camp, without any shoes. Crazy! He also had been running without any food but a granola bar, beef and cheese stick. He said they almost got him one time, but he climbed a huge fence and jumped. Then he hid in a little cave, so the planes wouldn't see him. He drank water from a nearby stream and took shade in the Aspen trees. At night he slept up on the ridge, and every night below him he would see all of our cabin lights on. He said, "You guys are the loudest people I know, I could hear you all the way up on the ridge." ( It's true we are a tad loud, and when you get over 20 of us playing a game of werewolf, it sounds a lot like real wolves howling at the moon.) And so after 6 days he lost his adrenaline and decided to come down and turn himself in, and what nicer people to turn himself into then the werewolf howlers. He came and knocked on the door, and asked to use the phone. My dad knowing who he was (I guess I wasn't the only one.) told him a lot of people were looking for him, that we would give him something to eat, and call someone.
Now here is where the story turns into a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, but I promise it is true. The fugitive called his dad and his dad (who had flown across the country and hired his own private investigator to find his son) came to the cabin to get him. His dad knocked at the door and when he saw his boy he held out his arms. The fugitive nervously asked his dad what was going to happen, and his dad took out a picture of his son from his shirt pocket. (I swear I'm not making this up.) Then he said, "I put this picture of you here by my heart while we were searching for you. I just want to love you right now." And the fugitive went over to his father for a hug. Now I'm sure there will be heck to pay later, but I thought it was a perfect ending to the reunion. The message: Your family is there with arms outstretched to love you, even when you aren't at your best. Now isn't that nice? Hallmark you can come get the story rights from me, because this one is a real winner.
