Falls Like Lightning

by Shawn Grady

  She wiped her eyes. She needed to stay focused.

  If she stuck to a northeasterly route, there was a chance she’d come across her jumper crew. The wind kicked up, swaying branches in erratic patterns. The sky overhead darkened and rumbled. Elle wove between manzanita bushes and skirted along the narrow shore of the lake. The farther she could get while she still had energy reserves, the better.

  ———

  A piece of shale broke off in her hand. She tossed it to the side and found a better handhold, pulling herself up to the ridge crest. The strong breeze cooled her skin through the portions of her clothes that were still damp from the day before. The terrain stretched out beyond with its rocky crags and undisturbed evergreen stands.

  Strange seeing the familiar landscape again, but on foot this time.

  She had flown over so many square miles of the Desolation Wilderness during the three long weeks searching for her father. Taxing her child-care resources, Elle took only the minimum breaks required by the FAA for sleep, and then she was back in the cockpit the minute she was eligible to fly. Exactly twenty-one days, and the last was the worst.

  Turbulent, to say the least. The ground and sky married in mixed grays. The scattered wildlife she’d seen so often during prior flights—deer, antelope, coyotes, black bears—were nowhere to be seen. As though they knew a storm was coming. The berries and nuts they’d squirreled away to that point would have to suffice.

  Snow was coming.

  The National Weather Service had forecasted significant amounts of snow over the next week, as much as four feet overnight. Tower had advised against the flight. The Forest Service almost forbade her from further use of the aircraft. But Weathers stood in the gap, using all his weight to give her a green light for one last mission.

  One last chance to find her dad.

  During the first few days after his plane went missing, she’d flown directly over what she believed were his charted flight-route options. When those efforts produced nothing, she expanded her search of the Desolation Wilderness and spiraled out in an expanding orbit. Again, when the search came up empty, she elected to begin a comprehensive search method, thoroughly covering every topographic square on her map, beginning with her best guesstimates and crossing them off, one by one.

  She remembered sitting in the cockpit that last day, the aircraft still on the tarmac. Rain flicked across the windshields. Wind shook the hull. She held the Desolation map in front of her. One hundred and sixty square miles, and she’d only comprehensively covered seventy of them. The first week she had tons of help. Everything from public agencies to private aviators and friends of her dad. But as the fourteenth day came around without any sign of her father’s aircraft, the passion to search waned, much like the media coverage surrounding his disappearance. Elle soon found herself as the lone pilot left.

  “It’s just a recovery effort now, Elle.”

  “You can’t keep up this pace. This isn’t a rescue mission anymore.”

  “It’s time to accept that he’s gone.”

  As she sat in the plane, preparing to take off, she’d traced her hand along the map. Creases and indentations scattered across it from the persistent checking and marking. She followed with her fingertips the red line marking her father’s last known flight path from the South Lake Tahoe airport. The line halted a portion of the way into the Desolation, the time of his last report to the tower.

  What happened, Dad?

  The weather had been clear the day he flew. Crisp, autumnal. The forest floor colored with the yellows, reds, and oranges of changing aspens and oaks that traced the mountain streams winding their way through the wilderness.

  No lightning. No rain or snow. Winds were calm.

  Had to be mechanical failure.

  Dad was as diligent as any pilot she’d ever met when it came to preflight checks and preventative maintenance. He knew that Cessna in and out. Still, an old plane was an old plane. A sudden, unexpected mechanical failure could have put him in a tight spot really fast.

  Elle used to chide him. “Vintage is great for old cars, Dad. Not for things that leave the ground.”

  That final day on the runway, she circled her finger on the map around the end of the red line. What options would an engine failure leave him?

  Lord, show me.

  She studied the topo lines and the elevation markings. The terrain lifted from the paper in her mind. She imagined herself in the cockpit of his Cessna, seeing the lay of the land from a horizontal viewpoint and at a lower altitude than she could safely fly over it. She descended into a canyon and a small clearing opened to her ten o’clock. The narrowest notch the forest could possibly allow a pilot to limp in an aircraft and still walk away.

  She blinked, her vision returning to the map in front of her.

  Why hadn’t she seen it before? She’d flown over the area numerous times, but this tiny clearing, surrounded by craggy cliffs, insignificant enough to be easily missed from high in the air, now became clear when perceived from an imagined lower altitude—the altitude at which a pilot with engine trouble may have been forced to fly. She tapped the spot and nodded. It was her best, last shot.

  Thunder rumbled. Elle rolled up the map and switched on the plane’s batteries. Lights and indicators glowed. She fired up the engines with a striking whine that fluttered into a chopping roar. She strapped her headset on and clicked the transmit button.

  “Tower, Jumper 41 requesting taxi to runway one for takeoff.”

  The rain turned slushy as she left the ground in South Lake. Static littered radio transmissions, the ridgetop repeaters already feeling the beginnings of the blizzard.

  Elle relied on instruments and her knowledge of the heights and shapes of surrounding peaks, adjusting course according to the magnetic compass on the dash to keep on track with her father’s route. She skimmed the Twin Otter beneath the cloud cover, threading through canyons and chancing the lower altitude to come upon the point she’d seen in her head. The fog and rain fell thick, but the terrain emerged steadily, a granite-lined corridor, just as she’d pictured it. Somewhere at her ten o’clock, behind a blanket of swirling gray, there should be the small clearing.

  She angled toward it. Thunder broke, this time close and violent. Pattering rain morphed into a hailstone barrage. Ice pelted the hull like gravel. Elle dropped altitude with no improvement, canyon sides and treetops now dangerously close. The lead-colored horizon blurred the line between ground and air, moisture seeming to rise from below as much as fall from above. Hot moisture blurred her eyes.

  Dad.

  Lightning flashed. Thunder rattled the plane. The location of the clearing grew further enshrouded. The storm pressed in, but she held her course. Moisture rolled down her cheeks. If she didn’t pull out soon, she’d be flying blind.

  She set her jaw with stiff-lipped resolve, angling the yoke hard and swinging the Twin Otter around. She dove lower, weaving between jutting granite and towering sequoias. Tears flowed from her eyes. Sobs interspersed with mechanical movements from throttle to yoke. Visibility approached zero.

  This was good-bye.

  She pulled back on the yoke and climbed into the cloud cover.

  The Desolation swallowed him. Winter had come.

  ———

  A rainbow stretched in a circle between her lashes. Elle blinked twice, reverting her focus to the day at hand. The smell of burning wood dominated the air, the sky filled with smoke-formed thunderheads. She trudged upslope, small dust clouds rising beside her, eager to reach the peak of the hill she was on to attain a new vantage on her progress. Perhaps she would see the crew.

  She hadn’t given up on finding her father after the last search flight that fall. She’d waited for the spring snowmelt, and when the creeks and rivers swelled, and the last bulk of the snow disappeared, she flew over the location she’d sought that last day of the search.

  The clearing was there, just as she suspected. It was big enough to land a plane in
an emergency, just as she’d imagined. And it was also completely and serenely untouched and undisturbed, without any sign of a crash or touchdown.

  She resigned herself to her friends’ admonitions. She needed to move on. Regardless of the fact that no wreckage was found, she needed to “bury” him, to push aside the razor-edged fragments of his Cessna from her mind.

  Elle flew back into South Lake that day knowing she needed to close the book on the search. There weren’t any tears that time. Only a stoic and stubborn acceptance that some things in life just weren’t fair.

  Her lungs burned with the present effort of her hill climb. She propped both hands on her knees. Sweat dripped from her nose, coloring the dirt. Almost to the crest. She straightened, hiked to the hilltop, and a grand view opened before her—a verdant, sequoia-filled canyon bordered by granite and a smoky ceiling.

  She knew this place.

  Never from the ground, but she knew it.

  Along the side of the canyon, at the place that would be at the ten o’clock of an airplane flying in from the opposite side, there branched like a tributary a small clearing nestled in the woods and enclosed by rocky walls.

  Dad.

  Something rent inside her, like a curtain separating hurt from hope. She shuffled down the hillside, soon leaping over stones and past bushes.

  What was she doing? She’d put this behind her.

  She shoved past trees. A branch scratched her neck. She pushed on, hurtling stones, clambering over boulders and weaving through the forest. Her route led her downhill, aiding the speed of her progress. Her jogging lagged into a stride and her stride into a hands-on-hips pacing. She fell to her knees in the mud by a stream. Her chest heaved for oxygen. She washed her neck wound and splashed the liquid across her burning cheeks, watching the water fall.

  She lifted her head, cool drops tracing down her face. Beyond the opposite bank, sunlight reflected off a jagged piece of fin-sized white metal protruding from the dirt.

  Elle rose. She stepped through the creek without taking her eyes off the object. Scores charred its top edge. Painted numbers lay across its face, veiled by the soil. Her hands trembled. She knelt and pulled on it. Fissures etched in the dirt around it. She shook the metal and yanked it from the ground. Dust fell from its sides. She brought it to her lap, wiped away the debris and froze when her hand swiped clear the marking—N288.

  CHAPTER

  34

  Tears streamed down Elle’s face.

  He never made the clearing.

  She clutched the vertical fin to her chest and squeezed shut her eyelids, shoulders heaving.

  The metal felt cold and grimy. A chill traveled up her arm to her core. She quieted, jaw quivering, and rose. She climbed a craggy route to a vantage point. Along one end of the clearing, sheltered beneath a rock outcropping, she spotted what appeared to be the rest of the tail section.

  She drew a deep breath.

  The smoky sky muted the light, turning clouds different shades of graphite. Stones tumbled off her feet. She wove her way toward shaded the location of the plane.

  It’s why she never saw it. It lay hidden. Sheltered. Entombed.

  What remained of the hull became visible. Scorched, dirt and moss covered. The nose of the plane lay mashed against the cliff wall. The wings were missing, likely sheered off in the landing. She navigated the uneven ground leading to it, came beside the hull and reached out her hand. It, too, felt cold. Her eyes trailed over the wreckage, over the plane she’d spent countless hours searching for. The plane that held her father.

  Her stomach turned. She doubled over and retched upon the ground.

  She coughed and spat and ran the back of her hand across her lips. Her eyes turned toward the front of the plane. Toward what remained of the cockpit. Her stomach flip-flopped.

  Elle balanced herself with her free hand on the aircraft and worked her way to the cockpit. The windows were blackened and warped. The mangled door hung outward on the one remaining hinge. She leaned inside, making out melted gauges and vaguely recognizable levers.

  No evidence of a pilot. No clothing. No body. Just heaps of ash and char.

  Elle straightened. She didn’t need to be here anymore.

  She didn’t know what she had hoped to find. Perhaps just something personal. She looked at the fractured tailpiece in her hand. Something more than just a piece of steel with her father’s aircraft markings on it.

  She turned to leave, but a glint caught her eye. Amid all the dull black char in the cockpit one tiny object vied for attention. The light caught it again. Elle bent close and reached out for it. Her fingers found a curved piece of metal. The ash fell away, revealing a ring. A platinum wedding band.

  The one her father had always worn—even long after her mother had died.

  With a quick rub of her thumb she wiped clean the inside of the loop, bringing into view the engraved numbers inside of it.

  Their wedding anniversary.

  Elle clutched it in her palm. She leaned back into the cockpit and gently swept aside the piles of ash on the floor. She soon saw what she both hoped and feared she would find.

  Her father’s remains.

  She held the ring in a fist to her mouth. Her chest convulsed. She fought the sobs, heavy and labored.

  After all her searching, all the tireless flying and searching . . .

  She had to crash to find him.

  ———

  The diffuse sunlight painted half of the canyon a greenish gold.

  Elle heaved another rock onto the makeshift grave. Unwilling to let his skeleton remain on the floor of that cockpit, she had grimaced through the work of handling her father’s remains. She’d gathered every bone she could find, cradled them, and set them together, not in order or aligned, but in a pile, as though his essence somehow inhabited the fragments when they were congregated.

  The knowledge of closure carried her. The ability to act empowered her, giving her the strength to do what needed to be done.

  With the final rock in place, she set the broken tail fin between two stones at the head. She took several steps back and wiped her soil-stained brow.

  She pulled her necklace out from her shirt. Her father’s ring now dangled beside the silver cross on it. Farther down the canyon, a whippoorwill let out its cry. A fitting dirge. Elle nodded and stared at the grave.

  She bent to the ground and pinched soil between her fingers.

  “Lord, bless him and keep him. Thank you for letting me find him. For letting me live.” She tossed the dirt over the rock pile. “Dust to dust.” She brushed her hands, and let out a breath.

  A gun hammer cocked.

  Elle spun around, heart racing. She stared into the wrinkled gray eyes of a whiskered old man, a double-barrel shotgun leveled her way. A set of blood-stained denim overalls hung from his bony shoulders. His ribs strained with each breath. He hacked a wheezy cough and bared an incomplete set of lower teeth.

  “Evening, honey. Fancy finding you here.”

  CHAPTER

  35

  Silas overlooked Crystal Lake from the ridgeline. A low smoky ceiling filtered the daylight. Bo stood beside him, the scent of soot strong in the air.

  The wind flashed ripples at the water’s surface, refracting wheat and amber hues.

  No sign of the plane.

  No sign of Elle.

  He didn’t know what he expected to see. His energies and emotions and entire drive from the moment he watched her plane disappear had been focused on finding her. He needed something. Anything.

  Bo drew a deep, pensive breath. Perspiration dotted his temples. He pointed off in the distance. “You can’t see it with this smoke, but past that ridge there’s a draw where the gold bunker is.”

  “Think they’ve made it there yet?”

  “It’s only a matter of time.” He drew a pained breath. “Look.” He nodded to a tall splintered evergreen halfway down the hill.

  Silas sighted it and descended the slope, weav
ing through thickets and digging his heels into deep duff. He dug his fingers into the bark of a tree trunk and let the cloud of dust around him settle. He glanced up at the broken tree above.

  Bo approached, breathing heavily, and licked his lips. “We don’t know if she caused that.”

  Silas scanned the forest floor.

  “Maybe she set her down beyond here.”

  Silas shook his head. “No. This was her best chance. Her only chance.”

  “If that’s true, then Jumper 41 had to’ve—”

  “Sank.” Even as he said the word, Silas wished he hadn’t. But it wasn’t a secret. It was the obvious deduction. “I’ve got to get closer.”

  “Why?”

  “To see.”

  “See . . . what, Silas?”

  “If she survived the landing. If she did, then maybe she made it to shore. If she made it to shore, then there should be some kind of evidence. Footprints. A fire pit. I don’t know. Something.”

  Bo pressed his bottom lip up, eyes solemn. “All right.”

  “I saw a slab of granite about midslope over the lake.”

  “I seen it.”

  “Should give a decent view of the shoreline.”

  They wound farther down through manzanita and juniper bushes. Silas used protruding roots as handrails, burying his boots into the mountain to form step shapes for Bo right behind him. They reached the granite ledge. It protruded from the hillside like a vintage Chrysler hood ornament.

  Silas dropped Bo’s pack where the dirt met the stone. He walked to the edge. It hung out over the water, the lake still far below, expanding out in parabolic perspective.