She stood abruptly. “I’m very tired. If we’re staying here, I’d like to go to bed.”
“Of course.” Lawson picked up his bag. “There’s firewood in the corner. You can come get me if you need anything.”
Cora held his gaze. “Thank you. I’m sure I’ll be fine. Good night, Mr. Lawson.”
“Good night.” Lawson left the cabin, shutting the door, and heard her slide the bolt home. Then he crossed the short distance to the warehouse, his shoulders hunched against the rain.
Once he was inside, he hung his coat from the rafters to dry. There was a stove in the corner, but instead of lighting a fire, he rolled out his sleeping bag and climbed in, listening to the wind whistling overhead.
Lawson closed his eyes. He had not expected to fall asleep at once, but he did.
A few hours later, he sat up in the darkness. It took him a moment to remember what had pulled him out of sleep. He had been dreaming of the foxes. They had stood in a ring around the warehouse, their golden eyes shining in the darkness, and when he had gone out to meet them, he had seen a woman in their midst, her body white, her red hair tumbling down her back.
She had beckoned him. He had followed, his desire stirring, and his steps had carried him to a trap house on the shore. A voice in his head had screamed at him to stop, but he had continued on, walking up the ramp toward the black hole of the door. He had entered, the smell of blood strong in his nose, and it was only when the floor fell out from under his feet that he knew—
Lawson shook his head, coming fully conscious, and only then did he realize what had awakened him. He had heard a noise from outside. A second later, it came again, faintly audible over the wind rattling the building. It was the sound of wood splintering and breaking.
He climbed out of his bag, stuffed his feet into his boots, and yanked his coat from the rack. Stumbling out of the warehouse, he ran down the slope of the beach to the water. The wind had risen to a full gale, and the rain was pouring down hard, but when his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw that two of his lines had come loose, and the plane was standing on its nose in the water.
Lawson sprinted forward. Before he had covered ten paces, there was a crack, and the plane was borne up by the wind. It did a loop and a snap roll, as if controlled by unseen hands, and then it plummeted and crashed with a shudder into the gravel bar at the end of the island.
II.
Every year, between June 21 and July 10, a “phantom city” appears in the sky, over a glacier in Alaska…. Features of it had been recognized as buildings in the city of Bristol, England, so that the “mirage” was supposed to be a mirage of Bristol…. It is said that, except for slight changes, from year to year, the scene was always the same.
Cora found him early the next morning. Lawson had managed to get the plane partway up the slope of the beach, and he was laying out his equipment on the shore when she approached, wrapped up in her coat and scarf. “Sam didn’t come back last night. Have you—”
She broke off as soon as she saw the extent of the damage. “Can it still fly?”
Lawson straightened up. He was aching all over, and this wasn’t a conversation that he particularly wanted to be having. “Not like this. A chunk came off the tip of the propeller. One of the wing struts is buckled, the ribs are broken, and there’s a big crack in the windshield. We’re stuck. For now.”
Cora appeared to consider this, the wind carrying strands of hair away from her face. “Have you radioed for help?”
Lawson didn’t bother saying that he had spent the last few hours trying not to lose the plane altogether. Instead, he gestured at the radio that he had started to unpack. “Give me a hand.”
Cora listened to his instructions, her lips pressed tightly together. Lawson had already cut a pole from timber on the beach, and he told her how to unwind and string up the antenna. As Cora held the pole upright, he fiddled with the receiver unit. It was a used Lear set that he had bought last year, after the Civil Aviation Authority had mandated that two-way radios be installed on all planes. Until then, he had relied, like most bush pilots, on his telegraph keys, and he still had doubts about the new system, which had proven distinctly unreliable.
The receiver was silent. Not even static. He gestured for Cora to move the pole to another spot on the beach as he switched to the transmitter unit. Checking the dials, he saw nothing. He fiddled with it for a few minutes, then stood up. Either there was a faulty component, which would mean taking it all apart and testing each piece, or the entire set was out of commission. In either case, it meant that they weren’t likely to get any help from that direction.
Cora set down the pole. “Someone will look for us if we don’t come back, right?”
“Normally, sure.” Lawson rose. “If a plane doesn’t turn up on time, they’ll wait one day, maybe two, before starting a search. But not here. You heard what I told your husband. It’s illegal to land in a national park. I didn’t put our destination on the flight plan. As far as anybody else knows, we went on a scenic circle tour over the glaciers. No one will be looking for us on Willoughby Island.”
Lawson fished out his cigarettes, which he had kept safe in an inside pocket. He saw that he had seven left. When she refused his offer of one, he lit it for himself and shook out the match. “We have two options. Either we wait and hope that somebody stumbles across us by accident, which doesn’t seem too likely. Or we fly out of here on our own wings.”
Cora studied the wreck of the Stinson on the shore. “You can fix it yourself?”
“Sure,” Lawson said. “I’ve seen worse. But I don’t know how long it will take. It sure won’t be today. We’ve got enough food to last for a while. So you might even say we’re lucky.”
Her face hardened into a look of resolve. “I’m going after Sam. Are you coming?”
“You go ahead. I’ve got to stay with the plane.” Lawson stooped to pick up a five-gallon can. “Take this to the cabin. Our emergency rations. Rice, hardtack, bullion cubes, milk powder. There are matches and flares, too. When you go out, bring some matches. If you need help, light a fire on the beach. Use spruce boughs. They should give you plenty of smoke. I’ll come for you.”
“Thanks.” Cora took the can into her arms and headed for the cabin, picking her way up the sand. Lawson looked after her, waving away the mosquitos, until she was out of sight. Then he glanced up at the sky again. The gulls were back, and the air was calm, but he knew how quickly that could change.
He turned to the plane, trying to get his thoughts in order. Most of the repairs were fairly routine, but the propeller presented a trickier problem. Six inches had broken off one of the laminated wood blades. If he tried to take off with an unbalanced propeller, the forces could rip the engine right out of the plane, and if he couldn’t get it working again, nothing else would matter.
Keeping that fact tucked in the back of his mind, Lawson set to work. He drilled holes on either side of the break in the windshield and laced them together with wire, patching up the makeshift suture with tape. Earlier that morning, he had found an old gas can in the warehouse. After flattening it out, he nailed it to the top of the wing spar, then folded it over the leading edge and fastened it to the bottom. The result was a kind of truss that he hoped would keep the wing together long enough for him to cover the fifty miles to Juneau.
Lawson took a step back to assess the battered Stinson, which had consumed so much of his life for the last decade. He had come to Alaska at twenty, a restless kid drawn to the blank page of the north, and had learned to fly planes on his own time while working at a reindeer slaughtering plant. Finally, he had gone into business for himself, buying a wrecked plane for a dollar and raising the money to fix it up from local store owners and dentists, all of whom believed that Juneau was bound to benefit from its position on the map.