Broken Angels

by Неизвестный

  Shit.

  Kris stared at the panel thinking hard. What did Jen do? But Jen did so much; her hands were all over the cabin, flipping switches and pulling levers, none of it made sense.

  Checklist.

  She had a checklist. The cops had to have one; they ate and shat Standard Operating Procedure. She looked frantically around the cabin. On the lower right of the panel was a glove compartment. Maps, gum, and an empty cigarette package. She slid the seat back and looked underneath it. Life preserver.

  Where was that list?

  She found it in a door pocket. It was big, with big metal rings holding the plastic pages together. Ignition. Ignition. Kris paged through it. She was running out of time. Last page. Damn. She started over from the beginning. Slow down. There it was. Page Two. Turn key to Left and Right, check indicator lights. Turn to “Both.” Kris turned the key. Push “Start” button. Kris scanned the panel carefully looking at each button. She found it; it was neatly labeled. She pushed it. The engine coughed and the prop jolted around until all cylinders were firing and it spun into a blur. Next on the list was throttle and operating temperature. Kris had it. She pulled the throttle, the engine roared, the prop vanished.

  The plane didn’t move.

  She pulled the throttle all the way out. The engine howled, the plane shook, but still didn’t move.

  She pushed the throttle back in and flipped frantically through the checklist. There was nothing in it about moving the plane. It figured you knew how to fly. Kris tossed it on the floor. Jen, help me. Kris wracked her brain. How did she get us to move? She put her hand on the wheel and pulled out the throttle. That was all. The throttle was half out; Kris stared at it. The prop was screaming and they were dead. Next to the throttle was another lever. “Feather.” What the hell was that?

  Kris pulled it out; the plane shuddered and broke out of the snow. It began to move forward, picking up speed.

  “Yes!” Kris yelled.

  The plane skimmed across the snow; too fast. Kris pushed the throttle in until plane bounced along at a fast walk. Easy until she got the hang of it.

  Won’t the pigs be pissed.

  Oh, shit. They’ll die. They had nothing with them to survive the night unless they carried matches. If she killed a cop, even God would be after her. It was worse than killing a white man. She could leave them food and some lighters. No sleeping bag; that stayed with her.

  She stopped the plane, letting the engine idle, the prop visible as it spun, and reached over the back of her seat to pull food out of her pack. But her eyes caught a red bag stuffed in the back of the plane. It was rubber and the same color that Barrett had pulled out when he stayed behind at Ben’s. She climbed over the seat and crawled into the back of the fuselage. It was labeled “Emergency Survival Gear.” Below was a list of the things inside. Kris scanned it. Food, bivy sacks, fire starters, everything they needed. She dragged it forward, clicked open the door and hauled it over the folded back of the seat, letting it drop onto the plane’s ski.

  She looked back. Far up stream, the cops burst out of the woods and raced toward her. They were still several hundred yards away and Kris watched them without concern. One dropped to his knee, unslung his rifle, and leveled it. Kris didn’t move. Even with a scope, he was too far away and his heart and lungs were pumping too hard. Any shot would be wild. He aimed. There must have been a shot, because he worked the bolt, but she’d heard nothing, the noise of the plane drowned out any sound. She let him take another, then calmly ducked under the wing and climbed back into the plane.

  It started up smoothly and raced down the river, toward the next bend. As it approached, Kris turned the wheel to stay in the middle of the stream. The plane didn’t respond. She turned it harder, then cranked it all the way over. The plane shot straight for the bank and Kris slapped in the throttle to stop before running into it.

  She twisted the handle back and forth. The one on the right side turned in sync. Jen had turned this handle every time they had made a turn. Kris remembered the steep bank out of the Fairbanks airport; Jen’d cranked the handle way over. She opened the door and looked down at the ski while she turned the handle. It didn’t move. She looked closer; it didn’t look like it could turn. Fat lot of good it would do in the air if the wheels turned. Kris leapt into the snow sinking to her knees and looked out from under the wing. The cops were racing toward her, the one with the rifle far behind, but the one in front kicking up snow and coming fast.

  Not the wheels, not the wings, what was it that turned this thing? She walked quickly around the plane looking for something that turned it. She stared at the tail. That was it; it turned like a boat. It made sense to her as soon as she saw the rudder. But it was flat even with the tail and she’d left the wheel turned hard over. There had to be another button she had to push.

  Kris set her shoulder against the rudder and shoved. It moved easily. Which way? The stream turned left; she shoved it hard right, you push an outboard the opposite way you want to go. She let it go and the rudder came back to center. Shit. She had to jam something between the rudder and the fin to keep it angled.

  The survival gear. She high-stepped through the deep snow and tore open the red rubber bag, pulling things out of it. She found a package of barley sugar. Taking it back to the rudder, pulled it right and stuffed the sugar in the crack to keep it in position.

  She raced back into the plane. She pulled out the throttle; the plane jumped forward, gathered speed, and curved to the right.

  Damn!

  The trees and bushes on the bank of the stream were a plane length away.

  Kris mashed the throttle lever in and dashed back to the rudder. She pushed it left as far as it would go and restuffed the sugar in the crack. Hopping in her foot holes, she raced back to the door. Before ducking under the wing, she looked upstream. The nearest cop was only a hundred yards away and blowing hard. His face was blood red and his snowshoes were kicking up clods of snow.

  She wasn’t going to make it.

  Kris climbed into the seat and as she swung her feet under the dash they hit something that hadn’t been there before. She ignored it and pulled out the throttle. The plane sped toward the bank before the rudder caught the wind and it skittered to the left, the inside ski catching the snow on its edge instead of under its tip. Kris accelerated into the turn; the right wing crashed through the leafless bushes on the bank and cracked the trunk of a spruce sapling. When the plane was aimed down the next stretch of the river, Kris stopped it and opened the door to leap out. Again when she twisted in her seat, her foot stubbed on something on the floor. This time, she looked under the panel. Pedals. At once, she remembered Jen working her feet as they turned. Kris rammed her foot against the one closest to her and pulled the throttle. The plane surged forward and at the same instant there was a crash at the rear of the plane; the tail sank, dragging into the snow. She ignored it and pressed her feet onto the pedals and wiggled them. The plane fishtailed. Sluggishly.

  She accelerated. Scraping and thumping sounds came from the tail, reverberating inside the cabin. Then came a rhythmic banging.

  It was the cop. He was hanging onto the tail of the plane. The banging stopped; then there was a sharp whoosh at her ear and a hole materialized in the windshield. Frigid air lanced her face.

  He was shooting at her. Through the fuselage.

  Kris sat on the edge of her seat to get a better grip on the pedals and pulled the throttle out. The plane accelerated and began to bounce hard over the snow. She felt the tail lift. How fast before this thing took off? She pumped the pedals; the tail swayed back and forth; too slow to shake him off, but enough to screw with his aim.

  The trees raced by. The stream began to narrow; the banks closed in. The wind coming through the bullet hole knifed into her eyes, blinding her with tears. She put a hand up to deflect it. The plane hit a rock, bounced, was airborne, then hit the ground hard, slamming Kris into the steering handle, when she straightened, she pulled it
back toward her.

  The plane staggered into the air.

  Terrified, she hammered the throttle lever into the control panel. The plane fell, hitting hard, bounced, and hit again. The weight on the tail vanished and the plane was at once responsive to the pedals. Kris pulled the throttle out again and accelerated fast, aiming for the next turn. If the cop was still alive, she didn’t want to take any more bullets. She whipped around the bend, cut the speed enough to stay on the ground and raced for the next curve ahead.

  When she was around the turn, she slowed; her hands shaking; her head aching with cold like it’d been dunked into ice water. She let the plane take care of itself and reached behind the seat for her pack, rooting around in it for her bandanna. She twisted it into a cylinder and, leaning over the high dash, stuffed it through the bullet hole. Next she looked for the cabin heater, but when she found it, it was already on. Nothing works when it was this cold.

  The outside end of the bandanna flattened back against the glass and fluttered madly in the wind. Were the bruises on her neck gone? She hadn’t looked in a mirror since Annie’s, hadn’t taken a shower since Juneau, and had been living in the same clothes for the last five days, with a few more days likely. By the time she got back to town she’d look as chewed up as when she was sleeping on the streets.

  Two more gentle curves and the Sixtymile merged into the snow-covered John.

  Damn, she’d missed Ezekiel’s cabin.

  The John was broad, the bordering mountains farther away and they disappeared completely in the distance in front of her. The river had impassable pressure ridges worming through the ice and often Kris had to zig zag the plane across the river, looking for ways through the folds of ice. After a while, the river began to swing through big looping curves, and Kris lost all sense of direction.

  The light was still gray, but the darkness of night wasn’t far away, and Kris was searching for the switch to turn on the plane’s headlights when the left ski dropped violently and the plane swerved around. She slammed the right pedal to counter the swerve and pulled the throttle out to get the left ski back on top of the snow.

  The plane screamed forward, crashed into something that didn’t give, and flipped.

  __________

  Where was Kris? Ben twisted his spoon in his soup, the bowl cold in his hands.

  Had he run her off, like he’d run off Evie?

  Ben remembered the day he’d set the dogs free. He fed them the last of the food and when they finished, he unclipped them one by one, starting with Doonerak, the lead dog, from the chains in front of their doghouses. The first ones freed didn’t wait for the others, but shot into the dark morning, racing back down the trail they’d struggled to break a few days before. The ones still shackled, howled and leaped against the chains, berserk with frenzy, their forelegs pawing at the air, their breath steaming in the blackness like the breath of demons. When the last one was set free, she howled in pursuit, trying to overtake the others. In seconds they were gone, galloping without stop the three hundred miles down the Alatna, up the Koyukuk, and down the haul road back to Ezekiel.

  That morning, when the last dog had gone and the arctic silence closed in around him, he’d been protected by his anger; the silence wouldn’t start to tear at him for another month—when he realized what he’d done.

  Are you back in L.A., Kris?

  How many nights had he fed himself this stuff? He looked at the green soup setting up like concrete in the cooling bowl. All those nights on the trail, sustained by hot bowls of split peas, the steam frosting his eyebrows and lashes.

  Why hadn’t Lambale told her? The question seared him. Had he been scared? Had Alvilde silenced him? With Evie gone, no one else knew; Lambale had nothing to drive him but his own soul.

  Ben put the bowl of congealing soup on the wood stove behind him and sank his head into his hands.

  Forgiveness must be easier bought than asked for. Evie hadn’t even let him buy it.

  It hadn’t been his regular bar, the one he’d walked into seven years ago late in the spring, leaving behind the soft light of the late evening and the sweet air, flavored, even in the city, with cottonwood pollen. He was standing inside the bar, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom, when the room was filled by a laugh, which bubbled, rich and smoky, out of an unseen throat. Peering into the back, Ben saw her, leaning a hip on a table in the dim light, finger under the chin of one of the men sitting around her. She said something too low for Ben to hear; the men circling the table laughed, but the one whose chin was lifted by her finger swatted at it. She flicked it out of reach, rocked her head back, black hair swinging away from her cheeks; her throat, white in the dark, lifted and opened, releasing laughter that rustled like the wind in a grove of aspens.

  It wasn’t that long ago, that late evening, but he had stood taller then and wove easily between the packed tables and chairs, to an empty one in the shadows back by hers.

  She saw him coming, saw his hairless head and called, “Hey, old man. What happened to the pelt?”

  The others at the table turned to look at him.

  “Skinned it out a couple seasons back,” Ben said. He pulled out a chair and nursed beers that evening, watching her laughter slowly dissolve in whiskey. She lasted longer than he, and he turned before exiting into the night and looked again at her sitting at the back table, her throat hidden now in the shadows of her chin.

  The night he first took her to the room he rented when he came into town, she was weeping. He helped her up the stairs and down the hall with the buckling wall panels to the last door. He laid her on the bed, removed her shoes, and, returning from the bathroom with a dampened towel, wiped her face and hands. She wasn’t very drunk, not as drunk as some evenings he’d seen her, but something had been said at the table that had ended her laughter, and Ben, who sat with them sometimes, saw her slink into herself. Without asking, he’d touched her arm, lifting her from the chair, and they’d walked into the soft light of midnight, the sun skimming below the northern horizon.

  She asked what he was going to do to her. Ben, uncertain of her meaning, sat on the floor and leaned against the bed frame, his back to her. He said he’d never seen her sad before. Evie turned on her side, pillowing her head with her palms pressed prayer-like under her cheek and looked at him and told him that she was always sad, that her laughter hid it for a while, but it never left her. And that night someone at the table, a friend who’d known her since the days when she hadn’t had to laugh so hard, had, thoughtlessly, pushed her back into memories she tried to bury.

  She slid her head closer to the edge of the bed and studied him. He watched her from the corner of his eye, not comfortable enough yet to look fully at her. Strands of black hair that shimmered with blue slipped off her cheek and fell over the edge of the bed, hanging an inch above the floor. Ben lifted a finger to touch them.

  “I had a girl once,” she told him. Smart and tough. Even when she was young, she was as headstrong and fierce as a wolverine on a kill. She told him of the time they’d played tag in Foodland, racing down the aisles, the girl screaming with laughter, knocking things off the shelves when she spun around the corners; and the times they snuck into the movies, pushing against the folks streaming out the exit doors and hiding behind the seats until people showed up for the next show. And the snow angels they rushed to make in fresh-fallen snow before the city’s dirt turned it gray.

  The next spring, when he’d come out of the bush, earlier than usual, though the sun was high and warm and the mud thick as the frost came out of the ground, he found her in a cramped room that smelled not of whiskey, but of bleach and fresh laundry. She was sitting in a low chair and when she looked up at him, her eyes innocent and resolute, he saw a baby in her arms.

  “It’s going to be different this time,” she murmured and had handed him his child.

  Ben stood, leaning heavily on his cane, and, lifting the bowl off the wood stove, carried it back to the kitchen. He scraped the un
eaten soup back into the pot and stuck the pot in the refrigerator.

  Where was Kris? Had he run her off when he yelled at her?

  Had she found Corvus?

  Evie, I miss you.

  __________

  Kris was hurled into the steering wheel and then bounced hard against the cabin ceiling as the plane flipped over. The engine grunted, quit. Metal groaned. Kris lay on her back, stunned, her breath knocked out of her, blood trickling from her nose.

  The cold revived her. It muscled in through the windows and the cabin’s thin metal skin as if they weren’t there. She gasped, the air knocked out of her lungs, pain searing her side. She groaned, swore, and, turning over, pushed herself up. The overhead lights and radio jacks jabbed into her butt. She wiggled off them and sagged against an upside-down door, battered and confused.

  It was almost dark; some green and orange lights, still lit on the instrument panel, were bright enough to cast shadows around the cabin. In the gloom, it looked like the front windshield was buried in snow, but she could see out the side windows. The door opened easily when she twisted the handle and pushed it open. She crawled out onto the wing and, with both hands grasping the landing strut, hauled herself unsteadily to her feet. The plane’s skis stuck into the air like the legs of a dead rat. The prop was a tangled mess. The tail stuck into the air, the tip of the rudder a foot off the snow. Leading away from the propeller back up the John, was a dark blue scar ripped into the snow. The ski had broken through into an overflow and the plane flipped when the ski strut hit solid ice.

  She crawled back into the cabin and gathered up her things. When she had the pack cinched up, she backed out onto the wing dragging it and snowshoes behind her. She stood on the wing, the pack leaning against her thigh, looking at the river wind away from her, not wanting to buckle on the snowshoes and start hiking again. The plane hadn’t bought her twenty miles.

  She carried her gear to the wing tip. With the tail of a snowshoe, she probed for water beneath the snow. It came up dry. She sat on the pack and began buckling on the snowshoes; then hesitated. In the distance, she heard the bee-like whine of snow machines. The sound was coming toward her from up river. She looked through the dusk, tracking the noise, finally spotting their lights when they broke through the trees on the far bank, a mile or so from the river. There were two, moving too fast to be breaking trail; they skirted the side of a low hill and then cut across treeless flats.