Bristol Bay Summer

by Annie Boochever

  “Patrick, are you okay?” No answer.

  In front of her Zoey could see the bottom of the passenger door. She knew that above it, just out of sight, was the handle. Could she reach it and get out? She tried stretching out her right arm, but something was in the way. She twisted her head a little further over her right shoulder and looked behind her toward the pilot seat, but her view was entirely blocked by a fish tote and a slimy mass of salmon.

  “Patrick, can you hear me? Say something!”

  Nothing.

  Zoey had an idea. She stretched her right foot back toward Patrick’s side of the plane. When she felt it hit the fish tote, she pushed hard, trying to shove it out of the way. It didn’t budge.

  “Come on, Patrick, answer me.” She kicked at the tote again, mostly in frustration. She managed to roll onto her stomach. Now she could put both feet against the fish tote and brace her right arm against the door, to give her more leverage.

  “Wake up! Wake up!” Her screaming exploded through the silence, as she pushed with all the strength she had.

  The tote slipped a few inches toward the back of the plane.

  “Yes!” Zoey screamed. From the pilot seat she heard Patrick moan.

  “Patrick! You’re awake!” Yes, there was hope. “Patrick, I’m stuck and I can’t get these stupid fish out of the way. I need your help!” Another groan.

  “Patrick?”

  The smell Zoey couldn’t recognize got stronger and filled the cabin. It was sharp and made her stomach churn.

  Gasoline!

  33

  Mayday! Mayday!

  HELP! PLEASE SOMEONE HELP US!” Zoey was trying hard to stay calm, but she could feel panic right under the surface. She had to get them out of this plane, and quick.

  If she could move the tote a little farther, there might be room for her to slide backward toward Patrick and she might be able to free her back and shoulders from whatever was pinning them down.

  Push HARD, Zoey! Yes!

  The tote moved a little farther. She was panting as if she had run a mile in her gym class.

  Everything from her waist up ached, and her head throbbed against the metal floor. A cold, wet salmon slipped down next to her head. She wiped something sticky off her face with her free hand. Fish blood? No, hers! Zoey’s fingers felt a gash near her temple. What if she couldn’t get out? What if she bled to death? The blood kind of tickled as it oozed down her forehead, but it didn’t hurt. Why didn’t it hurt?

  She couldn’t worry about it now. The gasoline smell was stinging her nose and throat. She had to get herself and Patrick out of there.

  She gave a deep grunt and pushed hard against the door with her one free arm using strength she never knew she had. Slowly her arm extended and her body moved backward, two inches, four inches. Two more. Finally, she could pull her shoulders and head up and out from under the instrument panel.

  As she inched back farther over the seat, her feet sank into the sea of dead fish, but her head and shoulders rose up. She was free! She pushed again with her arms and was able to twist herself around so she was facing the rear of the plane.

  It was a mass of shining sockeye, with blue totes cocked at crazy angles. Where the tail of the airplane had been, a hole the size of their tent door gaped open, surrounded by jagged aluminum.

  Patrick groaned again and Zoey turned her head back toward him. She couldn’t see his face because the fish totes had slid forward against his seat back and jammed him flat up against the instrument panel with the control yoke still wedged in his chest. His face was turned away from her and wedged into the far corner of the cockpit.

  Zoey realized that if Patrick hadn’t pushed her down off her seat, she would have been crushed by the avalanche of salmon that burst forward during the crash. Patrick had no way to save himself, though. He took the brunt of the load straight into his back.

  Patrick wasn’t moving and Zoey knew it was up to her to get them out of there. She searched frantically for an escape. The passenger door on her side was blocked by her seat back and more fish. The handle was buried in fish, but if she could get closer she might be able to push her hand down and find it.

  She touched Patrick’s arm, hoping to wake him. It hung at a strange angle. Broken, probably. He looked helpless, like a salmon in the net.

  “Patrick, wake up! You gotta wake up!” Tears erupted and mixed with the blood from her face. She wiped her cheek. “Please, I’m scared. I need you!”

  The odor of gasoline was overwhelming now. She had to get out, but how? She pulled her legs in toward her through the fish until they were underneath her. Then she pushed against the floor and launched herself out over the mess of fish. Before she could slide down into them, she used her arms to “swim” over the wet, slippery, salmon bodies.

  She almost had it. A little farther and she stretched her hand down through the slimy fish and felt along the door. There was the latch! She grabbed it. With a click, the door sprang outward and a river of fish cascaded to the ground. Zoey was carried along by the waterfall of salmon and landed on the soft tundra.

  She stood and looked around at where they had crashed. Tundra, with nothing but low shrubs as far as she could see. Where were they? She wasn’t sure how long she had dozed before the crash, but they must be at least halfway to Dillingham.

  Another whiff of gasoline reminded her she had no time to lose.

  She walked around the plane and stood outside the door to Patrick’s seat. If she could get it open, maybe she could get Patrick awake enough to climb out of the plane. She reached up and found the latch with her hand. It turned, but the door didn’t move. It must be jammed. She banged on the window in frustration.

  “Patrick, I can’t get it open. You have to help me! There’s gas leaking.”

  She twisted the handle again, but this time she leaned back and pulled with her full body weight, POP! The door exploded open and Zoey crashed back onto the ground. Several salmon plopped beside her.

  She looked up. Patrick hadn’t moved. His shoulder harness was holding him in his seat. With the plane door open now, Zoey could see thick trails of blood oozing from Patrick’s head. Her stomach wrenched, but the wound would have to wait.

  Zoey realized she wouldn’t be able to get her hand on the harness buckle from outside the plane, because Patrick was wedged so tightly up against the controls. So she climbed in through her door and reached across Patrick. Farther and farther she stretched. There! She pulled the top of the clasp and it released.

  His seat belt was unhooked, but Patrick still didn’t move. Zoey jumped back down to the ground and went to his door again, plunging her arm in among the fish piled around his feet. She found first one pant leg, then the other.

  “Okay, Patrick, I hope this doesn’t hurt you any worse, but I have to get you out of this plane before it catches fire or blows up or something.”

  She grabbed the hem of his pants firmly in each hand and braced her foot on the nearby wing support. Then she pushed, hard with her leg, pulled with her arms, and lunged her whole body backwards. Patrick budged, but stayed in his seat.

  Zoey pictured all the salmon she had hauled out of the water this summer, the muscles she had grown over the past weeks. She was not the same girl who had kept saying “no” to the whole idea of Bristol Bay. She was a full-blown teenager and a pretty tough one at that. She could do this. She twisted her strong hands deep into the loose hem material and concentrated intensely. Again she tried the grunt, just like an animal. It worked before. Raaaaaaaargh!

  Two seconds later she was lying in a puddle of salmon with Patrick sprawled across her. Her chest hurt and her head hurt, and the blood on Patrick made her want to throw up. The gasoline smelled even stronger now, but at least they were out of the plane.

  Zoey grabbed handfuls of tundra. She pulled and kicked and finally squirmed out from under Patrick. Still he did not move. Taking hold of his pants again, she dragged him, a foot or two at a time, away from the plane. After
twenty yards, she was so tired she could hardly make her hands grip the material. One more pull. There. She let go and fell to the ground. This would have to be far enough.

  What next? She didn’t know anything about first aid. And she had no idea where the first aid kit was, buried somewhere under a ton of salmon inside that gas-soaked airplane. Then she saw Patrick’s eyelids flutter. His eyes were still closed, but he turned his head toward her.

  “Pocket … radio,” he whispered.

  “Patrick! Oh, Patrick.” She squeezed his hand. “Are you all right?”

  “Don’t use radio … in plane,” he said, each word an extreme effort. “Electrical spark … fire. Use … emergency radio.”

  Zoey remembered! He had shown them where he kept the emergency radio that first time they all flew to Dillingham. It was behind his seat. She raced back to the plane and dug in the pocket on the back of the pilot’s seat for the handheld radio. Found it! She was about to climb down when she noticed the top of her backpack poking through the tide of fish.

  With the radio in one hand and her backpack in the other, she returned to sit beside Patrick, but she couldn’t get him to talk again. She hoped he was only resting.

  She stared at the radio. It was different from the one in the cockpit, but some of the buttons looked similar. How did she do it before? Push to talk, that was it. But which button? On the side, the one on the side.

  Zoey pushed and held down the button. “Hello? This is….”

  How was she supposed start? Then she remembered what Patrick had said just before they crashed.

  “Mayday! Mayday! This is Cessna….” She had to look at the side of the plane for the numbers. “This is Cessna N53079. We had a crash landing and we are injured. Need help…. Over.” She released the call button.

  Static. No answer.

  She tried again. “Mayday! Mayday! This is Cessna N53079. We are down somewhere between Dillingham and Halfmoon Bay. Please help us.”

  More static.

  Zoey repeated the information several more times and listened hard after each transmission, but she got no answer. She knew the radio signal would not travel very far—Patrick had told her that much—but she was pretty sure that any airplane within a few miles of them should be able to hear her.

  But what if I’m not transmitting right? She just had to hope it would work. What else could she do?

  She stared down at Patrick, still breathing shallowly in and out. Big slashes cut a jagged line on either side of his face where his head must have struck the instrument panel. The bleeding had mostly stopped.

  Zoey pressed her hands around the face that had once triggered so many negative feelings. “Patrick, it’s me, Zoey. Can you hear me?”

  Still he didn’t move. “Don’t die, Patrick. Please don’t die. I’m sorry about all the mean things I said,” she was sobbing now. “I wasn’t really mad at you.”

  Patrick’s eyes blinked open. Closed. Open again. “Zoey, don’t cry. We’ll get … out of this.” His breathing sounded hoarse and shallow.

  “Oh, Patrick, I’m so glad you’re okay. I got the radio, the little one, and I tried a call, but there was no answer.”

  “Try … again, Zoey.”

  She pushed the button again. “This is Cessna N53079. We need help. We are down, southeast of Dillingham.”

  When she lifted her thumb off the button and stopped talking, she thought she heard something in the air. A hum? The sound of an airplane?

  The radio sputtered in her hand. “This is King Air N34710 calling the downed Cessna. Do you read me?”

  “Yes, yes! I read you.” Through the clouds, not far away at all, was the nose, then the wings, and finally the entire airplane. “And I can see you!” Zoey shouted and waved. “I have an injured pilot down here. Need help…. Over!”

  “King Air here; we read you. We can see your plane, but we can’t put down there. The ground’s too wet and rough for a safe landing. We’ll radio Dillingham when we get a little closer and they’ll get a helicopter out to you. Can you hold on for about thirty minutes? Over.”

  “I guess. It’s Patrick, the pilot. He can’t breathe right. Over.”

  “Hang in there. Helicopter will be there real soon. N34710, out.”

  The plane had already disappeared into the clouds.

  The overcast sky turned to a steady rain now. Zoey pulled her hood up and sat closer to Patrick. She held his hand. She could see his chest rise and fall unsteadily. He wasn’t talking, but he was still breathing. That was good.

  She gazed out at the tundra.

  How could her summer have ended up here? Her thoughts turned to her mom and dad. If they could only have found a way to work things out, her life would be so different now. But trying to stop two people from feeling what they feel is like trying to make the salmon stop swimming. Her dad had abandoned them—she couldn’t think of any other way to say it—and she had spent most of the summer chasing after him, at least in her mind. And this man here, who tried to be her friend, who loved her mom, over and over she had pushed him away.

  And then there was Thomas. He was so different from anyone she had known before. But so was everyone else she had met in Bristol Bay. She was beginning to see what Patrick meant by the “real Alaska.” She wouldn’t make fun of that anymore.

  She heard the helicopter long before she could see it. She stood up and waved her arms. Gusts from the huge blades flattened the grass and rocked the downed airplane. Zoey kneeled again.

  Patrick squeezed her hand. They were going to make it!

  34

  It’ll Work Out

  The rest of the day was a blur. The helicopter took them to Dillingham, where there was a small hospital. They wheeled Patrick into a back room, and Zoey slung herself into a chair in the waiting room, exhausted.

  Almost at once, a nurse took her into a room and sat her on a plastic bed next to a table filled with lots of sharp, scary-looking instruments. As soon as the nurse left, Zoey closed her eyes and let her head sink into the pillow.

  “That’s going to need a few stitches.” She opened her eyes to find a doctor sitting beside her, examining a gash on her forehead.

  “Where’s Patrick?” she asked. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been lying there. A few minutes? A few hours?

  “The pilot? Don’t you worry about him. He’s being taken care of. Time to get you fixed up, young lady.”

  Zoey tried to be brave when he gave her a shot that was supposed to numb her forehead. But he stuck the needle right into the cut, and it burned like crazy! Zoey held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut. Then nothing, no feeling at all. Just a little tug here and there.

  Ten stitches later, with a big bandage over her right eye, she sat still while the doctor felt her arms and legs, poked at her belly, checked her breathing, eyes, and heart, and then announced: “Congratulations, no broken bones. Lucky girl. You’ll be sore for a few days, though. I’ll give you some Tylenol. If you’re not feeling better by Saturday, come back in, okay?”

  Zoey wobbled into the lobby and sat down to wait for Patrick. Exhaustion set in again. Her arms and legs felt heavy and her head throbbed.

  She had been right about Patrick’s airplane all along. Just an old rattletrap. Wait until her mom heard about this. None of it should be a surprise, though. Lots of the jobs in Bristol Bay were dangerous. If you got to be old with only a couple of fingers missing, like Captain, you were doing pretty well. Plenty of others never made it that far. She thought of Thomas. What a hard place to grow up.

  She picked up an out-of-date movie magazine and flipped through the pages. Fancy dresses, shiny cars, perfect hairdos, and makeup. How strange and far away that world seemed now. Glamorous, but silly, too. What would those people do if they had to face a skiff ride in bad weather, a giant windstorm, an angry grizzly bear, or a plane crash? Zoey imagined what different movie stars would look like using the Jensen-Morley open-air latrine. She laughed out loud.

  Patrick finally ap
peared with a fat bandage around his head. A nurse was pushing him in a wheelchair.

  “Is this the girl that pulled you out of the plane?”

  “Sure is. LuAnn, meet my guardian angel, Zoey Morley.”

  No one had ever called Zoey an angel, not even her mom. Zoey stared at the wheelchair.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart, the chair is just a precaution in the hospital for anyone who’s had a concussion. He’ll be up and around soon enough. He’s pretty lucky you were there. How old are you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “My goodness. Isn’t that something? That reminds me, Terry over at the Bristol Bay Times called earlier. He wanted to know more about the crash. Especially about our young hero here. He’s going to try to get in touch with you.”

  She turned to Patrick. “As for you, flyboy, you need to stay here overnight. Your sternum is cracked and you probably dislocated your shoulder, but it popped back in by itself somewhere along the line. You need to rest for a few days, then take it easy for at least a month. The concussion’s the main thing we need to keep an eye on tonight. If you’re feeling okay in the morning, with no dizziness, then you can go. But if your headache gets worse or you have any trouble seeing, you need to get your buns back here pronto. Got it? And you should get checked again in a couple of days, even if you feel fine.”

  The nurse turned to Zoey. “Honey, you’ll need to take care of your dad for a while. Don’t let him overdo it. He’s not as indestructible as he thinks.”

  There it was again: your dad. But for the first time, Zoey didn’t feel like correcting her.

  “We have a room ready for Patrick and we’ll make up the extra bed for you,” LuAnn continued.

  “I’m pretty sore, so I guess I won’t argue,” Patrick said. “Thanks for everything, LuAnn. Zoey, before we do anything else, we better call your mom and tell her what’s going on.”