Crash

by Joseph Monninger

  He scrambled down to the pine bed and shot back up to the opening. He blew the whistle. Whoever was on heaven watch had evidently fallen asleep.

  “Bear!” he yelled. “Coming down the shoreline. Over there!”

  He blew the whistle again. This time, the heaven watcher blew one, too.

  Web nearly laughed when he saw everyone stumble out of the pine hut. Buford started to bellow and howl. They all divided their attention among the shoreline, the heaven watcher, and the plane.

  “What was it?” Seldon yelled. “What did you see?”

  “A bear. Up that way,” Web replied.

  “Are you sure?”

  “He was coming right toward camp,” Web said. “Following the lake right to it.”

  Now who had the better sleeping arrangement? he thought.

  He watched a small party go off up the shoreline, a flashlight swinging every which way. He could see just enough to spot the crossbow. That meant it was jerk-head Paul and jerk-face Titus leading the charge. The cool kids. It was weird to think of Paul as a “cool kid,” because he had been such a geek, such a wannabe zombie-hunter, and a tiny glimmer of Web missed the Paul he used to joke around with. Still, it made him sick to see them marching off as if they truly intended to face down a bear with a crossbow. They’d run right to the plane if the bear actually charged them.

  “He moved off,” Web said in a voice that carried across the water. “You can go back to sleep. It’s okay.”

  “I’m not doing heaven watch if there are bears out,” Jill said, her voice loud and angry.

  She had been on duty. And she had been asleep, Web knew.

  The flashlight squad came back. Then he lost what they were saying in the confusion of voices. The light kept flashing back to the shoreline, then up to the plane.

  “There was one,” Titus called to him. “We found the tracks.”

  “I told you there was a bear,” Web said, shading his eyes from the flashlight beam. “You think I’m making that up?”

  “It’s good that you saw him,” Walter Eliot said. “Good to alert us.”

  “I do what I can, boss,” he said, which was a line out of a movie, but he couldn’t recall which one. Sometimes, he knew, he spoke too many lines from movies. His mother had always told him that.

  The group stood around talking for a while. Web almost said good night and headed back to bed when E yelled up to him, asking if he minded if the person on nighttime heaven watch posted him- or herself up in the plane.

  “I told you we should be up here,” he said, his voice betraying his annoyance with them all. “Sure you can. Knock yourselves out.”

  Then he ducked down into the belly of the plane and crawled back to his sleeping spot. He was almost completely conked out when he heard someone wade through the water, then climb up the ladder, and finally settle on the rim of the plane door. Heaven watch.

  In the first light of morning, Paul slipped the horseshoe pack over his shoulder and neck, then adjusted it a little so that it would be more comfortable. It was heavy. Titus had demonstrated how to convert their airplane blankets into packs. You rolled them diagonally, like a crescent-shaped dinner roll, with whatever you wanted to carry inside. Then you knotted them and threw them over your neck. Simple and efficient, but heavy, too. It was not as balanced as a backpack. In the first two seconds he wore it, it began to dig into his neck.

  “Ready,” Paul said.

  He didn’t feel particularly ready. What had seemed like an adventure last night now seemed like the craziest idea anyone ever had. It was one thing to contemplate hiking into the wilderness and quite another thing to strap a pack over your back and strike out.

  But he wasn’t going to back down. Not now.

  Web brought the calendar pole and held it over his knee while he scored the first day into the pole. This was a second measuring legend, Paul saw. The larger one — the one that counted all their days — took up most of the space. The second stripe, where the exploration party’s journey was notched, was much narrower. Web had scraped in the name they had given to the exploration group at the bottom of the calendar log. They called themselves Team Four, a play on the Junior Action News Team name. Last night, Paul remembered, it had seemed like a hilarious name. It didn’t seem nearly as funny this morning as he stood with a horseshoe pack hanging around his neck.

  “Here,” Jill said, stepping forward to hand Titus the fish she had dried and wrapped in a handkerchief. “It won’t taste very good, but you’ll probably need it.”

  “Thanks,” Titus said.

  He slipped the handkerchief in his pack.

  It was drizzling a little. The sun had trouble pushing through the clouds.

  “We should get going,” E said, her pack smoother and neater than his own, Paul saw. “If we’re going, let’s go.”

  “One week, promise me,” Seldon said. “Then you’ll turn back no matter what.”

  “One week,” Titus said. “Remember, though, it will take a week to get back, too. Two weeks total.”

  “A fortnight,” Web said, looking up for a moment from the calendar log.

  “And if someone comes in the meantime, you tell them we left to the southwest, following the outlet,” Titus said. “Once they know our direction, they can find us in no time.”

  “And keep up the heaven watch,” Walter said.

  Walter did not look good. Paul thought his father looked sick. His dad had been in the bushes several times this morning. He had problems with his stomach. That wasn’t good, Paul knew from his own experience. They had all experienced it.

  “Are you okay, Mr. Eliot?” Jill asked. “You look shaky.”

  “I won’t lie. I’m not great right now. I’ve got a little belly rumble going on.”

  “I don’t think you should go,” Jill said. “If you’re not one hundred percent, you shouldn’t risk it.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  But Paul knew his father. He knew he would not be okay, not this morning, not on the trip. It was crazy to start the journey with a sick person. The fact that his father was not exactly cut out for this type of trip only made it all the more obvious.

  “Dad,” Paul said, “you can’t go. Not feeling like you do. You’ll slow us down.”

  “I’m not letting you go by yourself. How would I ever explain that to your mother if something happened to you? Or to myself?”

  “Something already has happened to us, Dad,” Paul said, deliberately making his voice soft. “And we’re trying to do the best we can. All of us. I promise I won’t take any unnecessary risks. I’ll be as safe as I can be. But we have to do this, and you need to stay here.”

  Before his dad could say anything, Seldon stepped forward and took the horseshoe pack Walter had prepared. Seldon slung it over his shoulder and looked around the group.

  “I’ll go with you,” he said simply. “Just a small change of plans.”

  No one argued. No one tried to talk him out of it. Paul was glad his dad would stay at Camp Lollipop. His dad had no business out on the trail.

  Web held up the calendar log for everyone to see. He had marked the first day beside the name TEAM FOUR. He’d done a good job with it.

  “Okay, then,” Titus said. “Let’s go.”

  He held the crossbow across his chest. They had debated about the advisability of carrying the crossbow. Yes, it provided some security against bears, but it was also heavy and cumbersome to carry. The idea was that they might be able to hunt game with it. Titus said they could come across moose, or maybe even caribou. Paul wasn’t so sure it was worth it.

  Paul felt his dad’s approach more than saw it. The next thing he knew, his dad had him in his arms and both of them were rocking back and forth. Paul felt all the emotion of the moment numbing his throat and making it hard to breathe. His father kept squeezing and rocking, rocking and squeezing.

  “I love you,” his dad said finally when Paul managed to slip out of his arms.

  “Love you,
too, Dad.”

  Then a surprising thing happened. Jill came forward and hugged him. She hugged him tight. It made Paul feel strange.

  “Bye,” he said.

  “Stay safe and travel well,” she said.

  He felt the lump go back into his throat.

  “And watch out for zombies,” Web said. “Get to high ground, remember.”

  Paul smiled. Then everyone turned to watch Seldon say good-bye to Buford. The dog couldn’t go. Buford refused to be consoled and instead kept pushing against Seldon’s legs as if that would prevent them from being separated. Seldon had tears in his eyes.

  “Hold on to him, would you?” he asked Jill.

  They hooked him to a leash. They hadn’t been using it at all since the crash, but now they did.

  “Don’t let him slip his collar,” Seldon said to Jill. “He’ll try to follow me.”

  “I’ll take good care of him.”

  Seldon kissed the top of Buford’s head, then turned and headed down the shoreline. After a moment’s hesitation, Paul followed.

  Camp Lollipop felt empty without E, Seldon, Paul, and Titus, Jill discovered. That left only Mr. Eliot, Web, and Buford for her to hang with. In all her calculations about going or staying, that part of the equation had never quite occurred to her. She had always thought about Team Four going off to some unknown destination, and the calculation centered about whether it was better to risk the party or to stay and hunker down the best they could. What she hadn’t thought about, what none of them had thought about, was the plain weirdness of being left with Web and a sick Mr. Eliot.

  If she had thought it through, she realized now from her station at the heaven watcher’s stump, she would have gone with them.

  But she hadn’t. Part of that was because someone had to stay behind. If a plane or a helicopter had any chance of seeing them, then it would see the downed plane, the signal fire, the mirror flash. It wouldn’t see Team Four. Team Four had disappeared in no time, their shapes wavering first in the misty morning sunshine, then trickling away like fire going down a fuse. Then nothing. They might have fallen into the center of the earth for all she knew.

  She reached down and petted Buford. He burped almost at the exact instant, and she smelled fish heads and guts. It turned her stomach.

  “You’re disgusting,” she said to Buford.

  But she kept petting him. He leaned against her leg. She was still petting him when Web came back from the men’s latrine.

  “Where’s Walter?” he asked.

  She shrugged. She tried to talk to Web as little as possible.

  “He should tell you if he goes off somewhere,” Web said.

  “I thought you didn’t like Titus’s rules.”

  It was Web’s turn to shrug.

  “You want to hear something weird?” he asked.

  She shrugged. That’s what people did when they didn’t like each other, she realized. They shrugged a lot.

  “I think a wolf pack came by camp,” Web said. “I saw some tracks back by the bushes.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, I’m not. At first I thought it was Buford. You know, maybe he had left tracks back there. But there were too many tracks for one dog to make.”

  “You’re telling me wolves are watching us at night?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe coyotes. Something canine, though. I can’t figure what else would be in a pack like that.”

  “Are you making this up, Web?”

  She studied his face. It would be like him to make up something to terrify her, but his expression didn’t give anything away. She supposed it was possible for wolves to stalk them, or at least be curious about them. You couldn’t count out something like that.

  Before she could say anything, Buford burped again.

  “That is rank!” Web said, taking a step away and waving his hand in front of his nose. “That’s so bad.”

  “We need wood,” Jill said. “For tonight. Wolves or no wolves, we still need wood.”

  “What’s Walter doing, anyway?”

  She shrugged again. Camp Lollipop’s discipline had fallen to pieces after Titus’s departure three days earlier. She was the only one who brought in food. Even though Mr. Eliot still wasn’t one hundred percent, the least he and Web could do was to bring in wood every day, but they didn’t. She wondered if they had started to go feral, like pigs down in Arkansas somewhere. Domestic pigs sometimes got away, she knew, and by the third generation, they were wild, crazy things. Maybe, she thought, that was happening to Web. He certainly smelled the part!

  She started to smile, thinking about her mean little insult, when something fluttered on the edge of her hearing. It sounded like an electric fan on a hot day, maybe with a piece of paper caught between the blades, but then it grew louder. She cocked her head to one side. She saw the sound register in Web’s expression, too, and both of them, she knew, suddenly understood.

  “Do you have the mirror?” Web asked.

  She did. She did have the mirror.

  She began slowly moving the slanted light up at the sky. The sound grew louder. Walter Eliot blew his whistle from somewhere, but she didn’t look to see him. She kept her eye on the mirror, then on the horizon behind them, then back on the mirror. The sound drew closer, and Walter kept blowing his whistle, and she wanted to tell him to shut up, to be quiet, but he kept blowing and blowing and blowing, and then the plane suddenly shot into the sky above them.

  She nailed the plane with the reflected light. Over and over she hit it. And the plane had only gone halfway across the lake when it waggled its wings and began circling back, the pilot plainly visible in the cockpit.

  Jill screamed.

  So did Web.

  And then Jill broke into tears.

  Web watched the plane maneuver for a landing, its heavy pontoons like a pair of duck feet, its propeller changing sounds as it cut back on its engine.

  It was over.

  It was suddenly, remarkably, over.

  That felt impossible. It was too simple. The human mind, he thought, could not go from gritty despair to such overwhelming joy in the space of seconds. It was too much. He felt his mouth grinning as his lips trembled. His face had a collision of emotions.

  Finally, he gave in to it. He put his head in his hands and began crying, too. Big, sloppy sobs. He couldn’t help it. Then he felt Jill hugging him, and from behind her, a weakened Walter Eliot weeping and shouting and laughing. Even Buford looked up, his long, stupid face curious about the plane coming closer.

  “That’s it, that’s it, that’s it,” Walter Eliot said, as though his voice could guide the plane to a safe landing.

  But it wasn’t needed. The plane splashed down easily on the lake surface and kicked up water as it taxied closer to the shore. The pilot left a respectful distance between his plane and their own shattered one, then he swiveled a little and cut the engine, and before Web could adjust to anything, a man in a black baseball hat stood on the pontoon and waved.

  “You the folks from the television show?” the man called. “Must be, right?”

  “Yes, sir!” Walter Eliot called. “Absolutely!”

  “Well, you’ve been hiding pretty good. No one’s seen a hair of you. Is that all of you?”

  “Some others headed out to find help. Four of them.”

  “You’re off the track is why …” the man said, and Web realized he was talking about why no one had seen them, not answering Walter.

  “Do you have any food?” Web called.

  “A little. Just my lunch, really, but you’re welcome to it.”

  The man hopped down into the water. He wore rubber thigh waders. Then he pushed the plane a little closer to the shore. It was all as easy as that. The man looked rugged and small, like a feisty little terrier, Web thought.

  “Nice little wickiup,” the man said, pointing his chin toward the pine hut. “Pretty cozy in there, I bet.”

  He threw a rope onto the shore. Then
he walked the remaining distance with the rope over his shoulder. It was apparently just to keep the plane from drifting off. It wasn’t an anchor, Web realized.

  “Jerrod Thomas,” the man said, reaching out to shake Walter’s hand, then Jill’s, then Web’s own. “Most people call me Candy.”

  The man smiled. Web felt the craziness of it all. In minutes, they could hop on the plane and leave Camp Lollipop forever. It made him feel all kinds of ways. He saw that Jill and Mr. Eliot were experiencing similar emotions. It was bizarre. He couldn’t sort it out fast enough.

  “As I said,” Candy went on, “you’re a little off the track. That’s natural enough. As the crow flies isn’t always a precisely straight line.”

  “Have many people been looking?” Jill asked. “We didn’t know….”

  She still had tears dripping down her face.

  “Oh, my, yes. You’ve been a feature on the news. They made a general bulletin to any planes traveling in this zone to be on the lookout. You’ve been a major story for a while.”

  “Were you looking or just passing by?” Walter Eliot asked.

  “I was looking. The network people have three planes out at different times. It took time to cover the ground. Alaska’s a big place, and you could have gone down anywhere on the flight line.”

  Candy bent down and petted Buford.

  “This guy made it, huh?” Candy asked.

  “Looks like it now,” Walter said, his voice folding over in a goofy, strange laugh.

  “Well, now, what do you need from here? What do you want to pack up?” Candy said. “We won’t likely be out this way again until the spring.”

  “Nothing,” Web said. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  “Wait just a second. Let’s look around,” Jill said. “There might be some things.”

  “Where’d you say the other group went?” Candy asked.