Out on a Limb

by Rachelle Mccalla

  “Got anything?” Elise asked him.

  “Nothing I can see clearly. If you could get a little closer—”

  “I’m trying to get away!”

  “Good luck with that. He’s coming around again.”

  They were above the Loess Hills by this point, and Elise kept the plane low above a tree-topped ridge. They were in a dangerous position with nowhere to go, but Cutch understood Elise’s strategy. The bigger plane was faster and more powerful than their little crop duster. But between Elise’s flying skill and the small size of the yellow bird they flew in, she far outranked the bulky blue jay in maneuverability. And the Loess Hills gave her something to maneuver through.

  “Hold on to your breakfast,” Elise warned him. “This could get a little dippy.”

  “Uh, Elise,” Cutch began slowly, gripping the sides of his seat as he stared down the approaching plane. “I know you need to concentrate, but I think you should know that they’ve got a gun.”

  No sooner had he spoken than the sickening sound of crunching aluminum shuddered through the small craft.

  “Where are we hit?” Elise asked, zigzagging the little yellow plane through the hills.

  “Can’t be anything too important,” Cutch assessed, given the way Elise was able to steer the plane so agilely. The other plane was flying well above them, and Cutch craned to see through the narrow windows. He caught enough of a glimpse of the underbelly of the plane flying above them to see clearly what the pinkish smudges were that he’d noticed earlier.

  Red mud.

  Not a particularly common soil type in southwest Iowa, though he knew he’d seen it once or twice during his assessment inspections. But where? It was difficult to think when he was being shot at.

  Thunk! Thunk! A couple more bullets sank through their aluminum.

  “I’m losing integrity on my right wing.” Elise sounded angry as she brought the plane up. “I can’t risk flying through these hills when I don’t know how my plane is going to respond.” She got back on her radio. “Big Bird, this is Sky Belle. I don’t know how much longer I can stay aloft. They’re shooting—” Thunk! “I’m going to try to land her.” Thunk! Thunk! Elise flinched visibly as more bullets tore through the fragile plane. She rattled off their coordinates to her uncle.

  “There’s a good flat stretch of road up here by the corn maze if you can make it that far,” Cutch observed, trying to be helpful.

  “I don’t want to lure them to a place where there are innocent people,” Elise protested.

  “There’s no sign of anyone at the maze,” Cutch countered. “I don’t think they open until later.” In spite of all they’d experienced that morning, it still wasn’t even nine o’clock.

  “Okay then.” Elise sounded relieved as she steered them back toward the flat lands of the river valley that began just a few hilltops away. The plane began to chug. “If we can make it that far.” She didn’t want to slam into a steep hillside. With a few final sputters and burps, the engine gave out, and Elise glided the wounded plane toward the road. It didn’t look like they were going to make it.

  “Try to get past the hills,” Cutch encouraged her.

  “I can’t,” she said, pulling up on the controls with little response. “I’ve dropped below critical speed. The plane’s not moving fast enough for me to control it.” Her voice dipped to a whisper. “Lord God, I could really use some lift right now.”

  The bully plane, so much faster in spite of its greater bulk, flew past them, shaking the air around them and sucking them along in its wake.

  “Thank you,” Elise whispered as the plane lifted higher in the wake of the larger plane—just high enough to keep from slamming into the side of the hill. “Now’s my shot.” She tensed as the wheels bumped the gravel on the cusp of the last rise before the Loess Hills gave way to the relatively level farm ground where Mitchum’s corn maze was located.

  The plane sped along the empty road, quickly exhausting its momentum as the larger plane above them came swooping back their way. Cutch opened his door.

  “What are you doing?” Elise shrieked.

  “Getting out. We stay in here and we’re sitting ducks.”

  “Where are you going to go?”

  “The corn maze.”

  Elise didn’t protest as Cutch grabbed her hand and pulled her out the door of the still slowly moving plane. They hit the ground running, and Cutch threw his arm up in front of his face as he crashed headlong into the thick corn at the side of the maze just as the plane above them swooped past, guns firing, kicking up gravel at their heels.

  “Get down!” Cutch cried as soon as they’d made it several rows deep into the field.

  He didn’t have to ask twice. Elise threw herself to the ground and pressed her cheek to the dirt. Cutch flung himself down in the next row and reached between the stalks to cover her head with his arm. “They shouldn’t be able to see us.”

  “True,” Elise acknowledged, “but that won’t stop them from shooting the field up. Our odds still aren’t very good.”

  Though he didn’t like her prognosis, Cutch had to admit Elise had a point. He could hear the plane coming closer and knew it was entirely possible they could be shot at any moment.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” he shouted over the noise of the close-flying plane.

  “But where can we go?” The thwacking sound of bullets hitting corn a few rows over nearly obscured her words. The plane flew past them, leaving them as-yet unscathed.

  Elise’s question was a good one. If they tried to make a run for it through the corn, they’d be clearly visible from the sky. As long as the plane continued to fly overhead, they had to lay low and pray for the best.

  The sound of the plane’s engine died away.

  “Where are they?” he asked Elise, certain their pursuers wouldn’t give up and leave that easily.

  “Shh,” she responded, shaking her head at him and staring up through the broad green leaves.

  Cutch fell silent. The corn field was quiet. He could no longer hear the plane.

  “They’re on the ground,” Elise whispered.

  As she spoke, muffled voices carried through the field. “They ran in over here somewhere. Come on. It shouldn’t take us long to find them.”

  Hauling Elise to her feet, Cutch pulled her along beside him as he dashed through the field. “We’ve got to get out of here. Help me find the path,” he whispered as he crashed through the eight-foot-tall corn, the rough leaves scratching against his arms and face.

  “They’ll hear us,” Elise whispered back as she hurried after him, resisting as he pulled on her hand.

  “We don’t have any choice,” he muttered under his breath. “If we can find the path of the maze, we can move quickly and quietly.”

  “Then we need to go this way,” Elise tugged him toward their left.

  Convinced she was right, Cutch kept up with her. “That long stretch should be right up here. Then we’ll have an easy go of it.” He paused a moment, catching his breath, and made eye contact with Elise. They could hear indistinct shouting that sounded eerily similar to the voices that had pursued them through the woods the day before. There was Donnie’s lisp and Darrel’s ominous laughter.

  One harsh voice rose above the others. “They should be right up here!”

  Cutch watched Elise’s eyes widen as it became apparent their pursuers were right on their tails. Pulling her along, Cutch tore off down the long, straight stretch. “We’ve just got to stay ahead of them,” he whispered.

  “And their bullets,” Elise whispered back. “Corn doesn’t make a very good shield.”

  “But it does make good cover,” Cutch noted as he darted down a side path.

  Elise froze and hissed at him. “Not that way. The walls aren’t thick enough—they can see straight between the paths there!”

  “I know,” he winked at her, and he pulled off the bright red windbreaker he’d thrown on for their flight through the cool Iowa sky. H
e hung the jacket on a couple of sturdy-looking ears of corn and spread out the sleeves to increase its visibility. Then he darted back to Elise, grabbed her hand and headed off in the opposite direction.

  They put a couple more turns between them and their pursuers before they heard the gunmen exclaim loudly. Cutch pulled Elise down to the ground beside him as the men began shooting. Though he knew they were a good distance ahead of them, a hundred rows of corn wouldn’t stop a bullet. Cutch didn’t want to think how many holes they’d likely put in the lightweight jacket. “That should distract them for a minute,” he observed quietly.

  “It’s a good strategy,” Elise admitted as the shooting ended, replaced by angry shouts. “And I think I can find another spot where it might work.” She rolled to her feet and took off down a long spur.

  Cutch raced after her until they came around a bend, and Elise pulled off her own jacket, dressing the corn before hastily taking off the other way. They ran quickly, trying to keep ahead of both the gunmen and any possible bullet trajectories that might result from their shooting.

  Finally they came to a three-way turn, and Elise bent double, grabbing her knees and panting. “I already had a workout this morning,” she whispered, shaking her head.

  Cutch was about to reply when the sound of gunfire echoed through the field. A sharp stinging sensation hit his upper arm followed by a warm trickle down toward his elbow. He lunged at Elise. “Hurry!”

  She took off beside him but asked, “Do you think they’re that close?”

  “Close enough,” Cutch observed, feeling the spot on his bicep where the bullet had grazed him. “They just nicked my arm.”

  Elise knew she shouldn’t stop running, but the sound of firing guns had stopped again, so she slowed down enough to look at Cutch’s arm while she stumbled forward. “Nicked?” She protested. “Cutch, that looks bad. You’re bleeding all over the place.”

  “Great. All we need is a trail of blood for them to follow.” He grimaced, causing Elise to suspect he was in more pain than he wanted to admit.

  Wishing she hadn’t already taken off her jacket, Elise tried to think of something they could use to stop the bleeding. “We need a tourniquet.”

  “Let’s just get to the end of the maze. Maybe then we can find a better place to hide. This corn doesn’t make a very good shield.”

  “There’s that playground where the maze ends. It has a tunnel made of tractor tires. They might not be bulletproof, but they’ll give us a lot more protection than this corn.” She doubted the old tractor tires would stop the gunmen for long. Hopefully, their pursuers would get stuck in the complex maze.

  They dashed through the cornfield as quickly as they could with Cutch holding his arm and Elise trying to force her burning muscles to keep running. She was so glad they knew the formula the Mitchums had used to carve out the trail that led through the maze. Given that advantage, they were able to navigate almost flawlessly through the rest of the complicated maze. From the sound of it, their pursuers weren’t having such an easy time.

  In her exhaustion, Elise kept stumbling on the old corn roots that jutted up throughout the path. Even Cutch tripped up a few times as he ran awkwardly with one blood-covered hand gripping his arm. Finally Elise spotted the treetops of the windbreak that rimmed the north edge of the field, and a moment later the path opened wide before them.

  Cutch ducked toward the entrance of the tractor tire tunnel.

  “Wait.” Elise stopped him. “That’s the first place they’ll look. Let’s stay on the outside where we’ll at least have a shot of getting away if they find us.” She was exhausted from running, and much as she’d have liked to head off down the road to where her pursuers would never find her, there was no way her burning legs could carry her much farther.

  They hurried around to the far side of the tunnel and ducked behind it with their backs to the tires. They were still exposed on one side, but outside of the tunnel they at least had enough light that Elise could try to inspect Cutch’s injury.

  “Can I take a look at that?”

  Cutch shook his head. “The bleeding’s starting to slow down. If I pull my hand away, it will only start up again.”

  “Okay,” Elise agreed, feeling futile that she wasn’t able to help him. She hunkered down next to him and listened. From the sound of it, their pursuers were still a long ways off in the maze and seemed to be quite frustrated. The occasional blast of a shotgun made Elise jump.

  “How long do you think we’ve got?” she asked in a whisper, drawing her face close to Cutch’s ear so he could hear her even though she kept her voice low.

  “I don’t know, but I want to tell you something.”

  Cutch turned to face her, the tip of his nose all-but-brushing her cheek as he bent close to whisper. “I know I’m guilty of keeping secrets from you, Elise, but I don’t want to allow anything to come between us anymore. Maybe McCutcheons and McAlisters can never be friends, but I want to at least try before I give up. You mean too much to me. I can’t just walk away.”

  Elise’s throat went dry. Love your enemies. The words from the Bible echoed through her mind again. She swallowed hard. McAlisters and McCutcheons had always been opposed to one another, like darkness opposed light and good opposed evil. Except neither of them was evil. And neither of them was truly good, either. They were both guilty of perpetuating the feud.

  Her certainty faltered. She knew better than to trust a McCutcheon, but maybe Cutch wasn’t out to trick her this time. His clear blue eyes begged for understanding.

  The sound of a plane flying overhead pulled her attention away from her discussion with Cutch. Had their pursuers given up and taken to the air again? She couldn’t imagine they’d made their way out of the field again that quickly.

  She looked up but couldn’t see the plane she heard flying low somewhere above them. Shifting away from Cutch, she started to pull herself to her feet to get a better look.

  “Stay down,” Cutch insisted. “If they decided to get back in the plane to spot us from the air, then we need to get inside the tire tunnel. We’re too exposed out here.”

  Elise clamped her hand onto his shoulder. “It’s my plane,” she whispered.

  “What? They got that crop duster to fly again? I thought the engine was shot out.”

  “No.” Elise shook her head. “It’s my Cessna. Can’t you hear it?” She poked her head up and looked around, then plopped down next to him excitedly. “I saw it! It’s my Cessna.”

  “Who’s in it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Uncle Leroy’s coming to help us.”

  Worry crossed Cutch’s face. “But he knows I’m with you. What if it’s Rodney? He could be the one behind all this.”

  “Then we could be in trouble. We need to pray.” She cupped her hands gently over where Cutch still had his hand clamped over the wound on his arm. “Lord, please keep us safe,” she began, then broke off, listening quietly for a moment and, hearing nothing but the buzz of the plane somewhere in the airspace around them, picking up the prayer where she’d left off.

  As they prayed, she felt peace wash over her. After what seemed like much too long, she heard the sound of another engine starting up, and moments later, the big blue-and-white plane flashed by across her field of vision, its red-mud-caked underside clearly visible from below. Elise shrank back against the tires behind her, but the plane was headed away from them. She let out a sigh of relief.

  Her cell phone began to chirp.

  “I almost forgot I brought this with me.” Elise pulled the slender phone from the pocket of her shorts and met Cutch’s eyes over the caller ID screen. “It’s Leroy.”

  “Answer it.”

  Cutch listened as Elise told her uncle where they were, and moments later her Cessna landed on the gravel road beside the windbreak that shielded the playground. They hurried through a gap in the trees just as Leroy McAlister climbed out of the plane.

  “Thanks for rescuing us, Uncle Leroy.” Elis
e ran to her uncle and gave him a hug.

  Cutch tried not to feel too jealous. After all, Leroy had chased the gunmen away.

  “You get a good look at that plane?” Leroy asked.

  “Yeah. And the mud on the bottom. There’s only one place in this county with soil like that.” Cutch started to explain when Elise interrupted him.

  “Cutch was shot in the arm,” she informed her uncle, and Cutch recalled that the older man was a trained EMT. “Can you take a look at it?”

  As much as Cutch wanted to pursue the men who’d been firing on them, he realized Elise was probably being smart to ask her uncle to look at his arm. He wouldn’t get far if he was badly wounded.

  “Let me get the first aid kit.” Leroy rummaged around in the plane before producing a cross-emblazoned kit. He snapped on rubber gloves and inspected the wound.

  Fortunately, Leroy’s assessment of the injury was that it was relatively mild.

  “Probably just bled so much because you were running. When the blood is really pumping through your veins, things bleed more. If you take it easy, a good butterfly bandage ought to hold it.” As he spoke, he squeezed a packet of antibiotic ointment over the spot, which, true to his evaluation, had already stopped bleeding.

  As Cutch watched Leroy carefully apply a bandage over his wound, he heard approaching sirens.

  “I wonder what those are all about,” Elise voiced the same question he’d been thinking.

  Leroy chuckled. “I guess they’re a little late, but when you radioed to tell me the trouble you were having with that plane, I called 911. Still, there should be plenty for them to draw up a report about.”

  Cutch swallowed back his protest, realizing it probably wouldn’t do him any good at this point, since the sheriff’s car was already pulling to a stop just shy of where Leroy had landed the Cessna. Sheriff Gideon Bromley stepped from the driver’s seat, his obsidian eyes pinned on Cutch. Deputy Bernie Gills stepped out of the second cruiser.