The parents had flown up from Akron, and they fought Bill’s finding of death by misadventure every step of the way. They reported quarrels between the hikers, a grudge held against their son by another of the hikers, whose girlfriend their son had taken, and even floated the idea that the instructor had harbored feelings of animosity and possibly homicide toward the boy because of some disagreement over grades back in McKinley High School.
Bill understood; it was difficult to accept the fact that your golden boy had tripped over his own feet and fallen headfirst into a glacier, never to be seen again. There was no sense in that kind of death. Better foul play, a murder, an event that would give them someone to blame, to punish.
Presumptive death hearings were Bill’s least favorite duty. When a fisher was lost at sea, when a climber died on Denali, when a plane was lost in the Bush, and when the bodies of the fishers and the climbers and the fliers were unrecoverable, a presumptive death hearing was held. Most of the time the procedure gave the families some closure, the insurance companies the go-ahead to pay off policies and the lawyers permission to file for probate.
Sometimes, though, the families could not or would not accept the inevitable.
Like Lyle Montgomery. The first of the month, every month, he called, looking for his daughter. He didn’t weep anymore during his phone calls. Bill couldn’t decide if it was worse now than when he had. You wanted to do your best for the families and especially the parents. You wanted to give them a way to put their missing children to rest and a chance to get on with their lives. Some accepted your help. Some did not.
They’d never found Ruby Nunapitchuk, either, lost on a hunting trip eight years before. Opal and Leonard had handled their loss better than Lyle Montgomery had his, though. Probably helped that they lived in the Bush, and knew the risks inherent in a Bush lifestyle. Probably also helped that they’d had three other children, and grandchildren shortly thereafter.
A hand grabbed her hair and pulled her out of her melancholy reverie. She saw daylight for approximately one second before it was blotted out by Moses’ grin. He kissed her, completely and thoroughly, and as always she felt the world go a little fuzzy around the edges, as if everything else went out of focus when he stepped into the frame.
He pulled back, inspected her and seemed satisfied. “You looked sad.”
“Do I now?”
“No,” he said smugly, and she had to laugh.
He took the file from her hand and tossed it behind him without noticing where it fell. “You can either work on your trip to New Orleans, or you can help us get the fish into brine. Your choice.”
Her smile was sweet. “I don’t do fish.”
“Bourbon Street it is,” he said, and kissed her again before swaggering back down into the yard. “Get a move on, you lazy little shits, before I boot your behinds up around your ears! We’ve got form to do before lunch!”
Nenevok Creek, September 3
They were on a short final into Nenevok Creek to scratch Liam’s itch when the throttle cable on the Cessna broke.
They’d had to go around at the last moment, about ten feet off the deck and fifty feet off the end of the airstrip, when a bull moose wandered out of the trees. He looked up at them, startled, and then lunged across the strip and into the brush on the opposite side, at the same time Wy grabbed for the throttle and shoved it all the way in.
Liam, sitting in the right seat and cursing steadily and colorfully, didn’t notice anything else wrong at first. It helped that he had his eyes screwed shut. He opened them when he heard her voice over the headset.
“Oh, shit.”
Of all the words in the world that someone who is deathly afraid of flying can hear in the air, “Oh, shit” are the two you least want to hear, and the two most productive of sheer terror. “What!”
“Shut up!” she yelled back. “I’m busy!”
Of all the words in the world that someone who is deathly afraid of flying can hear in the air, “Shut up, I’m busy” are the four you least want to hear, ranking right down there one notch above “Oh shit.” He didn’t shut up, although he did try to remain calm. He gulped, trying to get his heart out of his throat and back down in his chest where it belonged. “Wy, what’s wrong?”
“The throttle cable broke when I put on power to go around,” she said. She seemed very calm, lips pressed together in a prim line, face set. She was wearing sunglasses, so he couldn’t see her eyes.
It had finally happened, his worst fear: the plane had broken while they were in the air. “I love you, Wy,” he said, and bravely prepared to meet his death.
“Give it a rest, Campbell,” she said, irritated. “All I have to do is fly the plane. We’ll be fine.” She glanced at him and saw the fear writ large upon his countenance for all to see, but it was only her in the cockpit with him, and only she could get him down in one piece. He needed reassurance, but she didn’t have time to give him any.
Maybe she could talk him down.
She began to speak, keeping her voice steady, her tone casual. “I felt the cable go when I went full ahead to get altitude for the go-around. It’s stuck in the full-throttle position, all the juice, full-ahead go. We need low power to land, not full power.”
The plane’s engine seemed louder and fiercer at this moment than any Liam had heard before. The Cessna was at a hundred feet and in a shallow right turn, Nenevok Creek, the tops of the spruce and birch and a small but rugged outcropping of rock passing in rapid succession beneath the right wheel. The single wheel of the landing gear visible to him was shuddering beneath the vibrations of the RPMs, and to Liam’s fascinated eye looked as if it were ready to launch out on its own.
Over the headset Wy’s voice came, unruffled, no hint of panic, a throttle cable could have broken in flight every day of her flying career for all the emotion she put into the words. “I’m going to pull the carb heat, that will slow us down some.” Her hands moved to another control. “Now I’m going to trim the nose down, to keep from climbing. That will slow us down some more.”
It did seem like they were slowing down. It took a long time to get on the other side of that rock outcropping, which seemed more threatening the longer Liam looked at it. “I love you, Wy,” he repeated.
“Now I’m going to lean the mixture. That cuts the gas going into the engine, slows it down even more.”
What if the engine quit completely? It took everything in him not to ask the question out loud. He could no longer watch the ground rush up at them and lowered his gaze to the control panel. The first thing to meet his appalled eyes was the altimeter. Fifty feet. Thirty. The tail of the Cessna came up. Twenty.
“Okay,” Wy said serenely, “we’re looking good. Now I’m going to pull the mixture all the way out. That means that the engine will be getting all air and no fuel, and that means that-” Wy’s hands went to a knob and pulled it all the way out.
The engine died.
There was no sound but the rush of air past the plane. The prop slowed and then came to a stop, the blades straight up and down in front of the windshield.
They touched down easily, smoothly, connecting solidly on all three wheels all at the same time, as if they’d done it a thousand times before and, praise be, would live to do it a thousand times again.
The plane rolled to a stop well before the end of the strip, plenty of room to spare.
The two in it sat for a moment, silent, staring forward.
Wy moved first, removing her headset and tossing it on top of the dash. She took a deep breath and turned to smile at Liam. “That’s what we call a deadstick landing. No power. All up to lift and gravity.”