“I said I think-”
There was another whine, followed this time by the unmistakable impact of metal on metal. The prop began to shudder, and the cowling and indeed the entire front of the aircraft with it. “Hang on!” she shouted, and kicked the rudder and put the Cessna into a shallow dive and a spiraling turn.
It was an unnecessary command; Liam had his hands clenched around the edge of his seat and with every muscle strained upward, keeping that plane in the sky. Oh, God yes, anything but down, please, please, I’ll never get drunk again, I’ll do all of Miranda every single time no matter how the Supreme Court rules, I’ll marry and settle down and live a nice, quiet life, just please don’t let this plane go down with me on board.
But when he risked a glance out the window, down seemed to be coming up very fast indeed, and now he cursed the light of the moon that so clearly illuminated the river beneath them. No, not into the river-it was too cold; they’d never survive long enough to make it to the shore-and then the shore was beneath them-oh, no, not the shore, they were going to crash, the plane was going to hit the ground and break into pieces and they were going to break into pieces with it, not the shore, please not the shore. Wy’s face was tight-lipped and grim, the yoke shook back and forth in her hands in time with the shaking of the propeller and the cowling and the whole front of the plane, Oh, God, he thought he was going to be sick.
The ground rushed up at them and suddenly he saw a stretch of open ground, oh, God, was it an airstrip? It was white with snow or frost but it was long and straight and there were no trees in the middle of it, no trees for the plane to run into, no trees to decapitate him or impale him or skewer him, a Campbell shish kebab. “Is it an airstrip?” he shouted.
“Shut up!” she shouted back, and the ground rushed up, filling his range of terrified vision, up, up, up, until they hit down, hard, bounced once, hit again, and then, miraculously, all three gear were on the ground and she had cut the engine and they were running out the length of the airstrip, this blessed airstrip that had appeared out of nowhere to aid and to succor them in their time of need.
The Cessna rumbled and rolled and thumped and chunked over hummocks of ice and snow and what might have been a fallen tree and finally stopped.
It was very quiet in the cabin of the little plane. Liam could hear himself inhale, exhale, inhale. His heartbeat was clearly audible, too, a rapid thudding sound, like a drumbeat, slowing now.
“Liam.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry I told you to shut up.”
“It’s okay. Everything’s okay. I’m fine. You’re fine, and I’m fine, and we’re on the ground, oh, God, how I love the ground, and everything’s fine.” He was light-headed, a little dizzy.
“Liam?”
“Really. I’m fine. I’m just-I’m fine.”
Another silence. “Wy?”
“What?”
“Why does the plane always break when I’m on board?”
She ruffled up. “It doesn’t always break. It’s only broken once before when you were on board. And it didn’t break this time; somebody broke it.”
She opened the door and climbed out. He followed.
One end of the propeller had been hit, it looked by, yes, by a bullet. The squared-off end of the prop was not quite holed but sort of splooshed, dented, cratered, if you could call something that small a crater.
Liam could. “I have to sit down,” he said, and staggered over to a tree trunk.
“Me, too,” Wy said, and followed him.
They both sat down at the same time, not bothering to clear off the trunk, and as a result the snow on the trunk wet their pants through immediately. They didn’t move, except that Liam put his head between his knees.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Liam said, his head still between his knees. “Where are we?”
“Bulge. The village across the river. Their front street.”
“Oh.” He peered around, and now that the terror had cleared from his eyes he saw the three little houses, shacks, really, clustered at one end of the airstrip. “Where is everybody?”
Wy let her head fall back and closed her eyes against the glare of the moon. “Nobody lives here during the winter.”
“Yeah? Summer cottages.”
“One room, river view.”
He turned his head, still keeping it low. “You sound almost cheerful.” She looked it, too, as near as he could make out her expression in the moonlight.
“I am,” she said, and laughed out loud and opened her eyes.
He sat up with caution. “What’s so damn funny?”
She laughed again, a joyous sound. “I didn’t know it was coming!”
“What?”
“I didn’t know anybody was going to shoot at us!”
He stared at her. “Okay,” he said. “I didn’t, either, which goes without saying, as I’d much rather shoot it out on the ground, although I’d rather never shoot it out at all. What the hell are you talking about?”
“I didn’t know anybody was going to shoot at us, and I didn’t know we’d have to make an emergency landing! I didn’t know anything about it! I didn’t hear any voices, or feel any feelings! I didn’t have any visions!”
“Wy, honey,” Liam said, “you’ve got a first-aid kit in the plane, don’t you? Is there any, well, you know, Valium in it?”
“I’m fine, Liam,” she said, and got up to do a neat dance step, of necessity shuffling a bit because of the snow, but still… “Listen,” she said, coming to sit back next to him. She seized his hands in both of hers and kissed him soundly, a loud smack that echoed off the sides of the plane and back at them, and made her laugh again.
“Wy-”
“Moses came to see me last night,” she said.
“Wy, let me get the first-aid kit. You’ve got some whiskey in it, don’t you? I think you could use a drink, and I know I could.”
He tried to stand up and she wouldn’t let him. “Wait a minute, Liam. I know I sound crazy, but listen. Moses came to see me last night, and he told me he was my grandfather.”
“Oh.” All that meant to Liam was that the little martinet was going to be his grandfather-in-law. He could only imagine how much Moses was going to be beat up on him now. There were probably one hundred additional movements in tai chi that Moses had been saving up to torture him with, and he’d have to learn them all. “Maybe I don’t want to marry you after all.”
She laughed again, a clear, full-throated sound that rang down the airstrip like a bell. “He’s a shaman.”
“I’ve noticed,” Liam said dryly.
“No, no, listen.” She shook his hands. “Listen, Liam. I’m his granddaughter, and he hears voices.”
“Wy, I don’t-”
“He told me I was going to hear them, too.”
“-think- What? What do you mean?”
“I mean just what you think I mean. He told me that hearing the voices is hereditary in our family, that sometimes it takes a while for them to kick in. He told me the reason I made us come to the fish camp last month is because I knew Gheen was coming and that Tim was in danger.”
He looked at her and remembered how determined, how in fact implacable she had been to fly into the teeth of thirty-five-knot winds, blowing snow and fog and the year’s first winter storm. She was going to go; nothing anyone could say or do short of busting up the plane with a crowbar was going to stop her. He had been angry with her, and terrified, because he knew he’d have to go with her. “Did you?”
She rounded on him. “Of course not! I told Moses last night that all I did was follow the trail of dead bodies that crazy bastard left. It was pointing right toward Old Man Creek. It didn’t take any voices to see that; it was right there on the map!”
She looked as fierce as she sounded; there was plenty of moonlight to show him that. “That’s why you were nervous about the flights,” he said.
“What flights?”
“The one to the glacier this morning and the one to Anchorage tonight. You were looking for advice from the voices if you should fly or not.”