Angel Flight

by R. D. Kardon

  “Trip go okay? Except for the flat tire?”

  He didn’t look like he wanted a long answer.

  “Yes.”

  “You know how big a financial hit I took on Lemaster? Having to hire a rent-a-pilot? And the mechanic I paid who sat around all day waiting to fix an airplane that wasn’t there? Crap on a cracker!” Woody had both elbows on the desk and his hands clasped together.

  She nodded in her most sympathetic fashion. “I know. But at least we completed it. No one could have predicted . . .”

  He interrupted her. “Where’s the syllabus?”

  “Which one? Mine for Chief Pilot or Bruce’s? You have Bruce’s.” She pointed in the general direction of the large pile of papers on his desk.

  “Chief Pilot. I need to run it by the feds to make sure my new guy meets the specs.”

  It was an odd choice of words. Tris was his “new guy.” She shrugged it off. “I’ve been here at the airport, or on a trip for the last few days. Give me a little time.” Irritation crept into her voice and she couldn’t cover it.

  “How about Friday? That’ll give you three days. Then you’re due back for a trip.”

  She was still nodding as the phone at Phyll’s desk began to ring. Woody got up and walked to the door so quickly Tris barely got her feet out of the way. Something was on his mind.

  Tris followed him out. She had enough to worry about. He’d tell her eventually.

  Eight

  The empty waiting area at Westin Charter was rarely so quiet. Phyll was gone for the day; Woody had answered the ringing phone at the reception desk and listened intently as he scrawled notes. Tris wasn’t sure if he was done with her, so she dropped into one of the empty chairs.

  Her mind went straight to Bruce. No getting around it, he was—off. He never snapped, never copped an attitude, never, ever talked back to her, no matter how difficult the day. Even at Lemaster, he hadn’t acted out. She let it go. Bruce had earned his share of mulligans, and Tris would gladly credit him with the one he’d used up today.

  Woody finished his conversation and called to her. “Tris, listen, I have something to tell—well, to ask you.” He hesitated, scratched the back of his neck and pursed his lips as she walked over. “We just got a call from Tetrix. They have some info on our angel flight passenger. A whole dossier, so I’m told.”

  No surprise there. Tetrix always overdid it on paperwork. “And?”

  Woody nodded. “Phyll’s out tomorrow. I’d like to see what they have, and I’m sure you’re curious. Can you swing by Tetrix and pick it up? Now?” He exhaled.

  Tris hadn’t been back to the Tetrix hangar since she resigned from her co-pilot position almost two years ago. Every now and then, she’d hear the voices of the pilots she used to fly with on the radio. Deter, Zorn, Basson. Even Dicky Lord. She recognized them all, and each word they spoke brought a quick pang of fear mixed with regret. The reaction passed more quickly now, thanks to the work she’d done with Dr. C.

  Her recovery was about to be tested again.

  “Fine. Who do I see about it?”

  Woody looked down at a pink phone slip. “Brian Zorn.”

  “My old boss,” she said evenly.

  At her initial job interview, she’d told Woody everything. How proud Zorn had been about adding a female pilot to the Tetrix flight department; how he dumped her training on Ed Deter, a retired military pilot who hated female aviators and consistently undermined her. Tetrix captain Larry Ross befriended her, but his own internal demons overpowered any interest he had in helping Tris succeed, and eventually ended in catastrophe.

  “I know what you think of them,” Woody said quietly, both his expression and voice compassionate. “But, hey, it’s business. I told Zorn that you were leading the charge on this flight, that you were my guy.”

  Tris had to smile. My guy. “No problem.”

  He clapped her on the shoulder with a wink.

  She was warmed by the memory of Woody’s words the day she was hired: Tetrix didn’t know what they had. I do.

  Nine

  She’d have been more comfortable if she drove, but Tris chose to walk to the Tetrix hangar in the biting cold. She zipped up her parka and borrowed a warm ski cap from Woody. A captain’s hat was more ornamental than functional, and it was twenty degrees out. Still, she carried the hat to wear when she was inside. No way she was going back to Tetrix in anything other than full captain’s regalia.

  With each step, she imagined how she’d take off her coat, straighten her uniform jacket and slide the middle button into its hole. She rehearsed what she’d say when she stood opposite Zorn. “Yes, I’m pilot-in-command on this angel flight,” and “Yes, Westin is doing very well. We’re expanding. In fact, Brian, I’ll be flying the angel flight as Chief Pilot.” Maybe even, “I’m fully in charge of this important assignment.”

  Her eyes teared in the cold and she wiped them furiously, lest anyone at Tetrix think she’d cried on her way over. At the keypad to the parking lot gate, instead of pressing the red button for assistance, she entered the code she remembered from her time as a Tetrix employee. 5-0-2-6. The gate slid open.

  The wind picked up suddenly. Cold air twisted around her, attacking every inch of exposed skin and snaking up her sleeves. She ducked her face down behind the collar of her parka, but it didn’t help.

  Tris looked around the parking lot to see who she might run into. None of the cars looked familiar, but that didn’t mean she’d avoid seeing one of the pilots she used to fly with. Those guys got new cars every year, it seemed.

  A woman whose voice she didn’t recognize buzzed her in. The first thing Tris noticed was that the entrance lights were off. When she opened the door, it was nearly dark inside. Tris could see her breath.

  Tris greeted the woman at reception, who was also wearing a parka, along with a scarf and a knitted hat with earflaps and a pom pom.

  “Hi. Are you from Westin?”

  “Yes. Tris Miles.” Tris held out her hand. A large red mitten grabbed it.

  “Okay. Here it is.” The red mitten gestured to a folder on the desk with a post-it note that read “Westin Charter.”

  Tris looked around. The entire area was dark. “Where’s Brian?”

  “He’s gone. Everyone’s gone. Our heating system went out. It’s ice cold in here.”

  Tris chuckled. “Thanks. Tell him I said hi.”

  “I don’t understand this medical brief at all.” Woody pushed his chair away from his desk. It banged into the credenza behind him, causing the three airplane models arrayed on it to wobble.

  “Me, either,” Tris replied. “But I’m not sure we need to. Our passenger has ALS. And she’s what—oh, man. Forty-two years old.” She stopped to catch her breath. “Says here that she’s ‘ambulatory,’ so I guess she can walk. She doesn’t need oxygen or special services. Unless any of that changes, basically she’s just another passenger.”

  The thick file that Brian Zorn had left for her was comprehensive. It included pages of medical information, copies of newspaper clippings, and some photographs.

  Woody tapped the manila file folder. “Zorn said the guy—a high-ranking exec for them—was crying when he brought this paperwork to the hangar. His wife only has this one chance for treatment. There’s no cure. How fucking sad is that?” He gestured to the photo on his desk of his wife Giselle. “You know, if it weren’t for her, I’d be lost.”

  Woody said this so often, Tris was ready with her standard reply. “And wearing plaid pants every day.”

  Woody grabbed his briefcase. “Okay. You’ve got this, Tris. I’m outta here.”

  Tris followed him back out to the waiting area. She watched him bundle up and head out, as she flipped through the file.

  She read a fact sheet about the town they were landing in. Iqaluit was the capital of the Nunavut territory of Canada. The word itself meant “many fish.” Major local industries included hunting and fishing, and the inhabitants’ primary method of transpor
tation in the winter was snowmobile.

  Tris found a flyer from the local airport where the Royal would originate the angel flight. The list of services included fuel, weather reporting, and catering, “With Appropriate Advanced Notice.” She’d better have Phyll call them well ahead of the trip.

  The physician’s report for patient “Edgemon, Dr. Christine Marie” was stapled to the left inside cover. It included basic facts about their passenger’s diagnosis, written with a plethora of medical jargon that could not disguise the grim trajectory of the disease. It would be fatal, but before it was, it would rob Christine of all physical abilities. Walking. Speaking. Swallowing?

  Tris scanned a few of the other documents. Christine had been a practicing psychologist in Exeter. She and her husband Erik had moved to Iqaluit for his career as Regional Director of Project Management with Tetrix, and lived in a town called Happy Valley, according to a clipping from the Nunatsiaq News. Dr. Edgemon had put out her shingle as a grief counselor and volunteered with the local Inuit who had little if any access to mental health professionals.

  Thumbing through the photos, Tris saw what had to be their wedding picture. The groom wore a white tux and tails. Christine wore a wine-colored midi-length dress that looked like it was silk or satin. Probably a second marriage.

  Her husband beamed at her through kernels of rice caught in mid-air. Christine had her head turned, an oddly alarmed expression on her face. She seemed to be looking for something—or someone—she’d hoped wasn’t there.

  In one of the newspaper articles, an interviewer asked her how she felt about leaving Exeter, the big city, for the desolate landscape of Nunavut. “It was a unique opportunity to make a new start for ourselves. We’d just gotten married, and wanted to shed the past, to leave our previous lives behind for something that we could build from the ground up. Together,” Christine had answered.

  And that remote location at the tip of North America was what they chose? What did they need to break away from that required so much distance?

  Another photo portrayed Christine and her husband Erik at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Iqaluit. The two stood on a dirt patch surrounded by snow and ice. Tris couldn’t make out any roads or buildings. Several people in the background were hunched over, grabbing the sides of their hats. Her husband embraced her with both arms, his head resting on her shoulder. The camera caught Christine’s blond hair in flight around her head, which was turned. She looked off, wide-eyed and anxious.

  What’s she so afraid of?

  Tris rubbed her eyes. No sense creating melodramas from wedding pictures and grainy newspaper photographs. She straightened the papers inside, closed the folder and put it in her angel flight pile.

  Time for the day to be over.

  Ten

  The shopping list made no sense. As Heather’s pregnancy advanced, her handwriting got worse. Bruce felt around in the glove compartment of the Bronco for his reading glasses. He’d only started wearing them recently, when he couldn’t fake it anymore.

  Vanity and ego kept him from carrying them in the airplane, even though he couldn’t always read the notes on his navigation charts without squinting. When Tris wasn’t looking, he’d pull his mini-magnifying glass out of his shirt pocket to make sure he wasn’t missing anything important.

  At his most recent aviation physical, he’d put drops in his eyes and made sure to pull the corners back with his fingertips. Someone had told him that it would help his vision test at the required 20/20. So far, so good.

  He scanned the list and saw “wakers.” What were wakers? Bruce turned the list to the side slightly. Oh, crackers!

  Heather couldn’t do the anniversary party shopping, so it was up to him. The list included finger foods, hors d’oeuvres, pigs-in-blankets: things that were easy to assemble or that Heather could heat in the oven and serve. Too bad. He was hoping she’d make one of her famous from-scratch quiches. Lately, she could barely stand up long enough to take a shower without having to rest, so he guessed that cooking for the party was out of the question.

  Inside the store, Bruce walked diligently from aisle to aisle, filling his arms. He hugged two blocks of Cracker Barrel sharp cheddar, a large box of Ritz crackers, and a dozen eggs as he reached the frozen foods aisle.

  Bruce spied the brand of mini quesadillas he liked and scooted toward the freezer to grab them. In front of the glass door, he stopped to secure his selections, and managed to free one hand without dropping any items.

  A chubby young store employee wearing an apron with the name Roy embroidered on it approached him. “Excuse me, sir? Do you need a cart for those items?”

  Bruce was confused. “What? Why?”

  “Well,” the store employee continued, “it looks like you’re about to drop those items, sir. Perhaps a cart would make things easier for you.” Roy turned toward a row of empty shopping carts a few feet away.

  Bruce’s cheeks flushed. He wanted to slap the pushy kid across the face. But then he’d drop his groceries.

  “If I wanted a cart, don’t you think I could, you know, walk five feet over there and get one? I don’t need a cart. Now beat it,” he said.

  Just as Roy’s mouth dropped open, he was joined by another male store employee, much older.

  “Hello, sir. Is there something wrong? Something I can help you with?” the second man asked. His shirt had the word “Manager” stitched on it, but no name tag. Other shoppers had slowed their march through the aisles and were milling about. A woman stared at Bruce; her bag of broccoli florets suspended in mid-air.

  Bruce wasn’t sure what was wrong. The kid had asked if he needed a cart. “I don’t need a cart. I don’t need a cart! I don’t need a cart!” he insisted. With that, Bruce dropped his items on the floor where he stood, zipped up his coat and walked out of the store.

  The temperature was below freezing, and a light snow swirled around him. Next to the grocery store was a Baskin-Robbins. Bruce hated ice cream, even as a child, but he had to get out of the cold. The door had a bell that rang when he opened it, and another ostensibly helpful store employee—this one female, also young, with terrible acne and a severe ponytail—asked him if he’d like to sample their new chocolate raspberry flavor.

  Bruce didn’t understand. Why would he want ice cream? “No, no thank you,” he said. “I . . . I’m looking for . . . an ice cream cake. Yes. I need a cake for a party tomorrow.”

  The young clerk frowned. “Well, sir, if you need a custom cake, you know, with, like, a special name on it, you have to order it a week in advance. We may have something, you know, that is pre-made that you’ll like. If you can come to, like, the end of the counter, I can show you.” She wore a full-on smile now, complete with braces.

  Bruce looked at the cakes sitting side-by-side in the display. “Happy Birthday Jim,” with a vanilla ice cream golf ball on top, was right next to “Good Luck Mandy,” which looked like chocolate with a red ice cream rose.

  Birthdays in his house were celebrated with whatever cake his mother could get on special from the store at the last minute.

  That will never happen to my son.

  A son. His son. “Another boy,” his mother lamented. Every time she mentioned her first grandchild, that’s what he heard. “I can’t win for losing, another boy. Well, it’ll save on clothes anyway. Lots of hand-me-downs.” And didn’t Bruce know it. Some of the things he’d worn as a child had belonged to his brother Ben, who was ten years older than he was. He’d be damned if any of those threadbare offerings would ever touch his child.

  Every possession Bruce had growing up was ripped, scraped, scratched or broken. He’d had his heart set on a new toy for his seventh birthday, just one.

  When the day came, Bruce ripped the shiny wrapping paper off his gift to find one of his brother Jack’s old fire engines.

  When it was time for cake, his mother proudly served an unclaimed special order she’d picked up on sale from the grocery store. “It’s a Boy!” was spelled out in a
blue icing flourish across the top.

  Another boy.

  “Why can’t I have my own cake for once?” he’d cried. He never got the answer.

  When his parents weren’t working, they were huddled together in their bedroom doing something they didn’t want their sons to see. Sometimes they came out arguing, and Jack would herd his two younger brothers quickly into the garage, where they’d hide until the screaming stopped.

  When they neglected to feed their sons, Jack would slap American cheese between two slices of Wonder bread slathered with mayo and ketchup for Bruce and his brother.

  No. No hand-me downs for his son. No cheese sandwiches. His kid was getting everything new, even if Bruce had to steal it. His son would be served the best baby food money could buy, and he’d eat it in a highchair surrounded by his parents. And he’d never be afraid, never have to hide in his own home.

  Bruce stuck his hands in his pockets, then patted down his coat, searching for his gloves. He must have dropped them in the grocery store. I can’t go back in there.

  He finally responded to the clerk, still waiting patiently for his order. “It’s my wedding anniversary this weekend. Have anything for that?” How would he carry an ice-cream cake to the car without his gloves?

  “Here’s one that’s chocolate and vanilla. Would you prefer strawberry? Or maybe, like, one of these combination brownie and ice-cream cakes?” Her hand floated over the display like Vanna White highlighting a solved puzzle.

  But he didn’t want an ice cream cake. “Sorry. No. My mistake. I’m sorry. Thank you,” he said, as he bustled out the door back into the snow.

  The Bronco was now cold inside. It would be at least five minutes before the heater started working on the old truck. The shopping list lay crumpled at his feet. He bent to pick it up. There was another grocery store on his way home. He’d try again.

  Eleven

  Finally home, Tris found Orion sleeping in one of his many beds in the living room, this one near the patio door. Light filtered through the vertical blinds, making him look like a small furry Zebra. He yawned and rolled over, inviting a belly rub. Her touch immediately activated his purr, like a small motorcycle that needed a new muffler.