Torchlight

by Lisa T. Bergren

  “Not ready to hew your own lumber?” Jed teased. “Gettin’ soft there, city boy.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m not soft, just smarter. I’d rather spend my month building and hunting and hiking and canoeing, rather than harvesting wood. We’ll maintain the integrity of the cabin with a few native elements,” he said, looking at Bryn again to see if she was in on the idea, “and buy us some relaxation time by getting Eli to fly in the rest.”

  “You can do that?” Bryn asked of Eli, forcing his eyes to hers. “Fly in a load of lumber?”

  “Sure. I’ll strap it to the Beaver’s belly, compensate for the weight, and bring it right to your door.”

  “Can I go with him?” Bryn asked suddenly, casting the question toward Eli as much as to her father. “To mail my letters, pick up some supplies I forgot?”

  “Bryn, we just got here—”

  “Please, Dad. I’ll just be gone a day. And you said yourself this would be a good project.”

  Peter cast anxious, narrowing eyes from Bryn to Eli to Jedidiah. “He’s a good pilot, your son?” he asked of Jed.

  “You know as well as I do that bush pilots are the best of the best. And he was trained by a couple of old-timers.”

  Peter sighed. “All right.” He looked to Bryn and shook his finger at her. “But you ever tell your mother of this and there’ll be you-know-what to pay.”

  “My lips are sealed,” Bryn agreed.

  “It’s not you, my man,” Peter said to Eli. “My wife was very explicit about her desire to keep Bryn out of small planes as much as possible.”

  “I understand,” Eli said. “Tomorrow then, Bryn. At eight?”

  “I’ll be ready,” she said, and Eli wondered at the glint in her eye. Had she changed so much in five years?

  CHAPTER TWO

  At least you’re talkin’ to me this year,” Eli said, unable to hold it in any longer.

  From his side view, he could see her lips moving and he motioned to his headset, reminding her that over the noise of the de Havilland’s engine, little could be heard without the headset. Her face turned red at having forgotten his instructions, and she pulled the microphone down and said, “I could say the same thing.”

  His eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he had to concentrate on the plane as he ran through a quick flow check and eased the throttle forward, heading toward the north end of the lake. There was a slight chop to the water, perfect for taking off and landing. He turned the plane into the wind. The Beaver shot along the length of Summit, picking up speed, swaying a little, and then they were aloft, clearing the riverbed below by a couple hundred feet.

  Eli chanced a look at Bryn and she was smiling, clearly enjoying the ride. He picked up his radio mike and pressed the button. “Talkeetna radio, this is Beaver-four-two-six-Alpha-Bravo. We’re leaving Summit Lake and headin’ home. ETA is 0930 hours.”

  “Roger that, Beaver-four-two-six-Alpha-Bravo.” With Denali just twenty miles away, he knew they would encounter their fair share of air traffic, it being the height of tourist season.

  Once they settled into the flight, circumventing the towering Mount Foraker and heading toward Gevanni Pass to the southwest, he spoke into the headset microphone again, talking to Bryn. “What did you mean by saying you could say the same thing?”

  She faced him briefly, her look incredulous. “You were the one who wouldn’t say more than two words to me five years ago.”

  “Oh no. You were the one who blew me off.” They looked at each other for a long moment, and their smiles grew. Eli shook his head. “Guess we both assumed too much, huh?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “And I guess I was in love with Chelsea that summer.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s a good excuse. And we were kids.”

  It was funny, hearing her say that. Eli still felt like little more than a kid, just on the brink of adulthood. He sometimes looked at himself from the outside, shaking hands and talking like an adult, and yet he felt as if he were playing a role, pretending to be grown up. Getting his pilot’s license, establishing a line of credit, and purchasing this old plane were all new territory for him. But there was something about Bryn that told him she was born old. Something exotic and knowing.

  Like catnip to a tomcat, his father had said. How had he known?

  Eli Pierce was like a cougar cub in a cage, Bryn decided, covertly looking at him. One minute playfully showing off his floatplane, and the next minute holding back for some reason, as if he were pacing. The combination was charming, she decided. Intriguing. And his declaration that he thought she had blown him off five years ago had her at once confused and relieved. Confused that they had gotten so off track and relieved that he didn’t believe her to be beneath him, unworthy of his attention as an Outsider, a cheechako, as the Alaskans referred to those from the Lower 48. Her fears had been for nothing.

  Because as much as she didn’t quite understand Alaska and its draw for her father, she knew she wanted to belong. She wanted at least to find acceptance here. She had always needed approval from others, she realized, regardless of their roles in her life, regardless of how much she didn’t want to need it, chafed against the need.

  Bryn stared out the window at the miles of rolling forest passing by below them, mostly lime green birch and black, pointy spruce, if she remembered the names right. She admitted to herself that it was curious, her simultaneous need for acceptance and her solitary life. Was there something deep inside her that kept her from reaching out, joining the circle? Something that would incapacitate her for the rest of her life? She hoped it was just a phase, just this time of reaching for her goal of becoming one of the best physicians in the country. Once that was attained, surely she would make room in her life for deep friendships, soul connections.

  She didn’t want to become her mother, distant and angry, constantly blaming her childhood for her miserable adulthood. Nor did she care to become her father, wandering and searching for something intangible, something that would lead him to happiness. Bryn chanced another look at Eli. He and Jedidiah had a way about them, a peaceful aura that calmed those around them. Maybe that was what drew Peter Bailey to Jedidiah. Her dad wanted a part of Jed’s secret, that sureness about his life. Could it be the place? Alaska? Summit Lake? Surely such certainty about himself had to come from more than a sojourn to the great outdoors. But what?

  “Penny … your thoughts,” Eli’s tinny voice came through her headset, broken up.

  “It would take many pennies for me to share,” she said. “How long until we reach Talkeetna?”

  “Twenty, twenty-five minutes,” he said, glancing out as if able to pinpoint exactly where they were. There were few landmarks other than winding, silver ribbons of rivers among the miles of trees. Did he know this wild, seamless country so well that he could identify each tree? Perhaps it was such familiarity that made him seem so at ease. She wondered. As they got closer to town, they saw more dwellings—summer cabins and year-round homes. “Up ahead,” he said, suddenly. He dipped the nose of the plane and then pulled off some throttle to lose some altitude. “See? In … pond, two o’clock.”

  She smiled as a bull moose raised his head—the living mantel for a huge rack of antlers—with slimy bottom sludge hanging from either side of his huge snout. He shuffled out of the water, disgruntled by their passing, and the de Havilland sailed by. “How many of those do you see from up here in a summer?”

  “Train bait?” he asked with a grin. “A hundred or so.”

  “Train bait?” she chanced, feeling every bit the cheechako.

  “Trains kill about forty every year in this area alone. They’re slow, they’re big, and they like the open track. Easier going than the forest.”

  The rest of the trip was spent in relative silence, with only air traffic control coming through their headsets.

  “Talkeetna,” Eli said with a toss of his chin. In five minutes they were landing on a narrow stretch of the Susitna River and, in another five, were tied up. “Want to come w
ith me to the lumberyard?” Eli asked her. “I’ll have to get my dad’s truck to haul the wood. He leaves it parked at the church. I’ll be gone for about two hours.”

  “No thanks. I think I’ll poke around town and mail my letters, pick up a few things. Meet you back here at, say”—she pulled up a sleeve to look at her watch—“three o’clock?”

  “That’ll be fine,” he said, staring into her eyes a moment longer than necessary as if he could see through her, ascertain why she was reluctant to spend time with him. She wasn’t even sure herself, except that he seemed dangerous, too risky a diversion from her carefully laid plans. She looked away, busied herself with gathering her belongings, and pulled her backpack up on one shoulder. “See you then, Eli,” she said.

  “See you then, Bryn,” he returned, nodding at her once. She turned away first.

  As soon as she was talking to her mother on the phone, Bryn wondered why she had called. Maybe it was the vague longing in her heart, the pervading sense of displacement, missing home, wanting that security Eli seemed to have—

  “Bryn? Are you there?” Her mother’s voice jolted her back to the present.

  “I’m here, Mom. We’re doing fine. I’m just in Talkeetna for some groceries and then heading back to Summit. Is there … is there anything you want me to pass along to Dad?”

  A long silence followed. “No. No, honey. Tell him I said hello. I’m going sailing with the Bancrofts tonight. It’s always awkward to do that sort of thing without your husband. I tell you, I just don’t understand why he has to go off to the end of the world every other year.”

  “Maybe you should come up and see—”

  “Oh no. I have no need to go someplace that has no running water or a decent toilet or a telephone.”

  “We heat water on the stove for a bath every day. It’s kind of fun actually,” Bryn said.

  “I’d rather have hot water at my disposal without lugging it anywhere. And listen to you! You sound as if you’re actually enjoying it this year.”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it enjoyment, but—”

  “Are the Pierces still there? Have you seen Jedidiah’s son?”

  “Yes. He was sweet. We’re getting along better than last time.” She carefully held back the information that he had flown her to Talkeetna—her mother would never let Peter hear the end of it if she knew a twenty-one-year-old, just-licensed pilot had been in charge of her safety. There was no way to express in a way her mother would understand that Eli had a way about him that just made a girl trust …

  “… that’s good,” her mother was saying. “Remember last time how crushed you were when that boy wouldn’t say boo to you?”

  “I was fifteen, Mom. I guess we had a misunderstanding. He was dating someone.”

  “Fifteen. My, it seems that was just yesterday. And now you’re twenty. I miss you, honey. Want to come home? We could tell your father the truth—that you prefer being here in California to Alaska in the summers. He’d … understand.”

  He wouldn’t. Her mother knew it as well as Bryn. “I don’t think so, Mom,” Bryn said gently. “I think … this will be good for me. Good for me and Dad.”

  “I … see,” her mother said, a bit icily. Bryn had chosen. And it was the wrong choice, as if electing to stay was an admission of loyalty to her father over her mother.

  “I gotta go, Mom. We’ll send you a report in the mail in a couple of weeks. We’re fine. Don’t worry about us, okay?”

  “A mother always worries,” Nell said with barely disguised irritation. “Take care of yourself.”

  “I will. You too.” Bryn hung up the phone then, unable to rouse the words I love you from her lips with any semblance of honesty. She felt jumbled, confused, after her talk with her mom, as she always seemed to feel when they spoke. Maybe this summer I can figure out exactly how I feel, Bryn thought. Maybe that’s why I need to be here. To get my thoughts straight. To figure out where I belong. How I belong. There was certainly time and quiet on the lake.

  And Eli. He clearly knew who he was. “Comfortable in his own skin,” as her Grampa Bruce would say. Maybe … No. She could never talk about such personal things with someone like Eli. He might laugh, or worse, feel sorry for her. Poor, mixed-up Bryn Bailey. Nobody at school thought of Bryn as mixed up. Everyone said she was so purposeful, focused. And she liked it that way.

  She turned away from the phone, an open half stall against the side of Nagley’s Mercantile, and left to mail her letters. She passed five college-age kids, probably river guides, who were laughing and playing around as they walked.

  Suddenly she wished she were with Eli. Smiling and half flirting. Out flying or maybe hiking … Thinking about anything but her mother and her father and the widening abyss between them all.

  What would it take to reach Bryn? Eli wondered, driving back to Talkeetna from Willow with Peter Bailey’s wood and nails. When he entered town, he waved at the postmistress, walking with her toddler, then at Sheriff Ross. The tourists were out in force, and with Bryn not in sight, he turned down a dirt road to circumvent the crowd, heading back toward the river and his floatplane.

  It took him twenty minutes to get the lumber properly secured under the belly of the plane. If Bryn didn’t show up with too many purchases, they’d be perfectly balanced for the flight back to Summit. He rose, panting from the exertion of tightening the cinches, and wiped his hands on a cloth. He looked about for Bryn and spotted her approaching, only two sacks in hand—one a plain brown grocery bag and the other bearing the logo of a local T-shirt shop. It reminded him that she was only just passing through. Staying long enough to eat a few meals, but briefly enough that she needed a T-shirt as a memento. Hang on to your heart, Pierce, he told himself. Pull back on the throttle.

  Two guys passed her and turned around to stare. She moved forward, oblivious to the strangers’ admiration, focused only on him or the de Havilland. He couldn’t tell which. There were some cute girls in town, but no one as amazing as Bryn Bailey. He knew it; those guys knew it. Bryn could be a model with her perfect features and long, shiny hair and curves right where a man appreciated them. A shiver ran down his neck to the middle of his back and out to his elbows and knees. What would it be like to take a woman like Bryn in his arms and kiss her? To feel her cling to him and press her lips hard against his? Hang on to your heart, Pierce.

  She drew near and smiled shyly at him, her head slightly ducked. It made him want to hold her, to reassure her nameless, subtle fears. To kiss them away … Hang on to your heart, Pierce. The warning was clear, a holy urging from deep within, but he didn’t want to hear it.

  “Hi, there, pilot,” she said, finally at his side. “I see you got the wood. All set?”

  “All set. You can climb on in.”

  She paused on the float, one foot inside the doorway. “I was wondering, would you take me out hiking sometime this week? If you’re not busy, I—”

  “Sure. I’d love to.” So much for pulling back. “I have a flying job over the next couple of days. How about after that?”

  “Well, I gotta check my social schedule.” She pretended to mentally mull over an intense calendar, finger to lip, eyes aloft. “Let’s see, other than a promise to my dad for a daily canoe ride, I don’t think I’m busy. So, Sunday?”

  “Make it Monday. My dad and I hit church every Sunday morning, and that pretty much wipes out the day. Hey, you could come with—”

  “That’s all right,” she said, climbing into the plane. “Monday will be fine.”

  “Okay.” He climbed in behind her and buckled himself in, then grabbed the headset and put it on. He glanced at her, but she was staring outward, already quiet and thoughtful again. Hang on to your heart, Pierce. And this time the warning was as clear and alarming as a stall horn in the cockpit.

  On Sunday evening Eli canoed over to the Bailey place to talk over the next day’s plans with Bryn. She was out on the front stoop with her dad, holding a pole in place while Peter pounde
d in a long nail. With her hair up in a loose knot, soft tendrils falling to her neckline, and a body that in profile would make any man swallow hard, Bryn was as desirable as a mystery to a detective. And when she looked at him with those dark eyes that seemed to convey every whisper his heart longed to hear …

  Eli wanted to know her—what motivated, moved, mortified, molded her. He forced his focus back to their project, suddenly conscious of Bryn’s protective father and that he probably appeared to be gawking. Am gawking. The framework on the porch was almost complete, and appeared to be level and solid.

  “Lookin’ good,” Eli called from the water, his eyes slipping back to Bryn. The woodwork isn’t bad either.

  “Thanks!” Peter greeted him. “Guess I haven’t forgotten too much in the twenty-odd years since we built these places.”

  Bryn grinned at her father and then at Eli as he made his way ashore. “I think he was just waiting for my year to take this on,” she said half accusingly.

  “Hey, girl, it was your idea.”

  “So it was. But somehow I think it was yours all along.”

  Her father slipped his hammer into a belt loop and crossed his arms. “Now how do you figure that?” Eli picked up a rising note of tension and shifted, uneasy.

  “I don’t know … You’ve always been able to get me to do exactly what you wanted.”

  “Not me. Your mother maybe.”

  “Both of you,” she said, picking a splinter from her hand. Eli noticed her nails were closely cropped, with small white half-moons on each nail bed. Perfect. Just like the rest of her.

  “Hey, Bryn,” he interrupted, not caring to be caught in the middle of a family disagreement. “I just popped over to talk about tomorrow. Want to head out early?”

  “Sure,” she said, still staring at her father. “We thought we’d go hiking, Dad. Okay with you if I abandon camp for a while?”