“I don’t know, Mr. Tyler—”
“I understand that old habits die hard, but third grade was a long time ago and—”
“It’s not that at all. It’s that Natalie seems to suddenly think I’m Mr. Harada. When did I become that?”
Josh Tyler rubbed his chin, but Tim suspected that he was trying to hide a smile.
“And when did you retire?” the words had finally registered along with the surprise. Part of the order of the universe was the progression of the K-6 teachers at Larch Creek, one per year.
“Last year. It frees me up to travel with Lisa when she goes to conventions or a movie set. In between, I take up the occasional tourist. Remember that old plane that I was always fixing up?”
“Are you kidding me?” The old Stearman B-75 had made Mr. Tyler beyond cool as a teacher. When he was finally able to fly it, the whole town had come out to watch the first flight.
“She’s all pretty now. I painted her bright red—”
“Just like in that movie, The Kid.” Tim felt like he was about twelve with excitement.
“Exactly,” Mr. Tyler looked terribly pleased.
They were about to order when Carl’s ham radio crackled to life behind the bar. Everyone in the restaurant shushed to listen. Natalie even looked up from her book.
“Carl, you there?” Despite the poor reception, Tim didn’t need her call sign to recognize Macy’s voice.
Carl picked up the mic, “Go ahead, Macy.”
“Is Dad around?” He was already out of his chair and headed to the bar. Tim followed him over.
“Here, honey? What’s up?”
“I had a part failure after dropping off that hunting party. I landed safely, but I can’t jury-rig a fix. Can you fetch a part for me at Fairbanks and drop it down to me?”
“Sure,” he scribbled down notes of what she needed and where she had landed. It was an awkward spot a half dozen miles west of Larch Creek. It was out in one of the numerous dead zones of Alaska where there were neither roads nor villages.
When he finished, he turned to Tim, “Want to go for a ride?”
“Heck, yeah.”
Mr. Tyler laughed, “Macy said that you never swear, not even when…” He trailed off leaving no doubt of the topic of his conversation with his daughter.
“During sex?” Natalie asked from close beside his elbow.
Tim did his best not to groan; this wasn’t happening. Please, this wasn’t happening.
Carl handed them a bag with a couple of sandwiches as they headed for the door, “I’ll make fresh for the ladies.” He nodded to the quilters.
They had to pass dangerously close to the big table to reach the front door.
A whole series of well meant and wholly embarrassing titters followed him out the door.
# # #
“She’s beautiful, Mr. Tyler.” And she was. The Stearman biplane wasn’t just red, it was lipstick red and shined to a such a gloss that Tim could easily see himself in the finish. Though she was only twenty-five feet long, thirty across the wings, and ten high, she looked like a street fighter or a boxer, tough and ready. Her tail rested on the ground which made her big nine-cylinder radial engine look ready to punch a hole skyward even sitting still. The seven-foot wooden prop had been burnished until it shone.
“Thanks, and if you don’t call me Josh, you don’t get to fly in her.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Josh, sir.”
“Sass,” he sounded disgusted but the smile was genuine. “You have been sleeping with my daughter.”
Not sleeping so much…Tim kept that thought to himself.
The slap on his back told him that he hadn’t succeeded at even doing that. Wait! He’d never mentioned that they were—
“No secrets in a small town, Tim. Besides, I’ve never seen her smile so much.”
Tim bit his tongue hard to keep still. There was no way to win today.
They rolled it out of the southern hangar. Macy’s helo had been parked in the northern one. There were a number of other planes tucked into either hangar, most in varying states of decay or restoration, but only a couple were flight-worthy. If any of the others were finally fixed up, Larch Creek would have to add a third hangar along the highway.
It was only a matter of minutes before they were aloft and soaring upward toward Liga Pass. The valley lay open below. Heinrich’s barley fields made smooth-looking surfaces of a uniform summer-green that rippled in long waves. Maxine’s land was a kaleidoscope of bright chard, dark beet, pale lettuce, onion, carrot, and a dozen other crops at a few acres each. Heinrich supplied the best makings for barley beer and Maxine kept an entire valley of canners supplied with everything they’d need for the long winter.
“They still fight?” Tim asked over the intercom.
“Cats and dogs,” Josh told. “Have been ever since Heinrich was forced to sell her half his land.”
“Forced?”
“Long story. There’s a reason Carol is the way she is. With those two as parents, how could she not be.”
“Uh, yeah. I suppose.” Tim hadn’t known that Carol was their daughter, which made Natalie their granddaughter. It was hard to imagine. Of course, it was far harder to imagine Heinrich and Maxine had ever been married. How had he missed this whole saga? By being young, self-absorbed, and preoccupied with sports and girls.
Descending over the back side of the pass, Josh did a side roll, wing over wing, a long, lazy move that had Tim hanging on for dear life. Which had made him let go of Carl’s lunch bag. As Tim watched it tumble out and fall toward the trees below, he hoped that whatever wolf or bear found it liked horseradish on his roast beef sandwiches.
“Been working on my aerobatic rating,” Josh told him over the radio that connected them. “I wasn’t supposed to do that yet without an instructor aboard and don’t worry, you aren’t getting a loop. Come back next year and I’ll give you a heck of a ride.”
“Remind me not to do that.” Tim was in the forward open cockpit. Josh had provided him with all the right gear even including a leather helmet, goggles, and a white scarf. “Bet this is a big hit with the tourists.”
“They do love it. Macy and I try to schedule the mountain flybys at the same time so that we can take photos of each other. Those sell really well.”
They were down at Fairbanks Airfield in under fifteen minutes from take-off. What would be an hour’s car drive over the winding pass and down the highway to Fairbanks zipped by quickly at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.
Josh had called ahead and someone ran a part out to them on the flight line. By request, it was already rolled up in bubble wrap in a bright red plastic baggie. They could fly over, drop it out from a hundred feet up, and she’d have the part in minutes.
Tim was relegated with the job of dropping the part. He tucked it tight between his knees just in case Josh had another roll waiting for him.
Macy had gone down on the other side of Larch Creek from Fairbanks, so it took just as long to double back and reach her. Tim didn’t mind, the shining blue sky and solid roar of the massive engine made it easier not to talk. Or even think. He simply sat back and enjoyed the ride, though the sandwich would have been good right about now.
Was that what he and Macy were doing? Simply enjoying the ride while it lasted? He couldn’t think of when he’d had such fun being with a woman, probably never. The problem was that he didn’t want it to end. Maybe his idea of just cruising for two days and then facing reality together on the last day wasn’t as good as it had sounded a few hours ago.
Tonight maybe. They’d get out, be with other people a little. Maybe he’d take her to dinner. A nice dinner.
“Hey Josh. Is Aviators still the best steakhouse in town?”
“Thinking of taking my little girl out for some courting?”
Tim wished it was that
simple. “I think it’s time we had a talk.”
Josh’s reply was a low whistle of sympathy and he replied in a serious tone. “I find I’m rather torn. I’m thrilled you two feel that way about each other. And I’m afraid that’s going to be a talk with some tough questions for both of you. Yes, Aviators is still the best. It’s a good choice, get out of town so you can both think.”
Tim stared back out at the landscape. They were in rough forest now. The north flanks of the Alaska Range tore up the land here into hard country. Sharp hills and ridges, deep river and glacier-cut valleys. The forests that climbed over them had a surprising number of brown and dead trees.
“Sawflys,” Josh told him. “Bad problem with the warming climate. They’re damaging and killing huge numbers of trees. Gets any warmer and we’ll have the spruce beetle moving inland. It has already started killing trees along the coast.”
What Tim saw when he looked down was tinder. A lot of tinder. If this area lit off it wasn’t going to be some comfortable burn that could be allowed to run its course to clear the forest floor of deadfall and renew the soils. It was going to be a bad fire that would slash a hundred thousand acres out of the landscape faster than you could blink.
“There she is,” Josh called out.
Josh didn’t know to call out “ten o’clock low.” Tim had to twist around to see where he was looking. Figures, Tim was looking over the wrong side of the plane.
He stared down as they roared by. It was the first time he felt any fear for Macy. Her helicopter was parked at the bottom of a deep valley. Her skids were in a stream and trees were crowded close to either side. He couldn’t imagine how she’d land there when everything was operational, never mind when there was something broken.
So much at risk due to a part he could hold between his knees?
He was having trouble breathing. Real trouble. Bad enough that it could almost be a pile of shattered helicopter below, not merely a broken one.
# # #
Macy waved as the red biplane roared over and then rocked its wings side to side as it flew into sight over the valley wall.
She grabbed her radio, “Hi Daddy.”
“Hey, Baby. We’ll get you on the next pass.”
We? Oh. No need to ask. Of course Tim would be up there. Having a long talk with her father about…Macy sighed. She didn’t want to do a thing that might harm the few precious days they had left, but she was enough of a realist to know that the time for them to talk was sooner, not later. She hated being a realist.
The need to talk, now acknowledged, made her rather ticked off that he was up there and she was down here. If the time was soon, now was as good a soon as any.
The heavy roar started in the south end of the valley. She could hear the engine, feel its deep bass notes, before it came into sight around a curl in the little valley where she’d landed. He was so low that it nearly made her heart stop, but he was the one up there, so he must have a good, clear view.
She could see the front passenger lean out to the side, a bright red package clutched in both hands. With near perfect timing, he let it go.
Of course it was near perfect. Smokejumpers probably knew more than anyone about delivering items from the air.
It splashed into the stream not a hundred feet south of her LongRanger and washed right down to her. She didn’t even have to step into the ice-cold flow, just balanced on two rocks and plucked it out of the water.
“Hole in one!” she radioed up. She unwrapped it quickly. Exactly the throttle linkage she needed. “You done good. I already started ripping out the old parts, so I should have this fixed up in about an hour. See you for dinner, sweetheart.”
There was a several beat delay.
Then it was her father’s laughter that came back over the airwaves. “You got him with that one, Macy. He’s speechless. So I’ll—”
“No I’m not. Surprised is all. Just be careful, Mace. I love you.”
Macy was glad her radio was clipped to her belt or she’d have dropped it in the water.
“Uh,” Tim still had the transmit key down, so she could only listen. Unlike telephones, radios were one-way devices. “Did I really just say that? Holy shit!”
“Release the mic key, Tim, or we’ll never know what she’s going to say back,” her father told him. With a sharp click the radio frequency was available again.
What in the world was she supposed to say to that? How could he drop the L-bomb on her over an open radio frequency?
She could imagine the waiting silence in the plane circling above. And the sudden silence in French Pete’s as everyone turned to stare at Carl’s radio always on behind the bar. Half the town would know by now that she’d gone down and would be listening to make sure the part was delivered. Larch Creek was a small town and her going down alone in the wilderness would make big enough news as it was. She was definitely a front page item of next week’s Lurching Larch.
By now she had an audience that probably counted upward of a hundred people, all of whom knew her and her family. Including the people who were her family like her father flying above her right now.
How the hell was she supposed to respond under those circumstances?
“Tim?” she clicked off.
He responded with a careful, “Yes?”
“Telling me that you love me, is that what it takes to finally make you swear?”
Again an overlong pause, “Appears so.” But she could feel his careful smile as he looked down on her.
“Oh,” she did her best to sound normally cheery, “I’ve always wondered what it would take. I’ll let you know when I’m airborne. Tyler out.”
The silence from above was deafening.
Her father finally came back with, “Roger. Tyler the elder returning to base. Over and out.” She gave him points for managing not to laugh in poor Tim’s ear. He waggled his wings and was gone.
Macy had to sit down on a rock for a moment.
Tim loved her.
She’d never said those words to anyone since Stephen had died. “The words died with my brother,” she’d apologized to Billy back when she’d thought he was still marriage-worthy.
Macy hadn’t said those words to Tim, but she was surprised to realize she could have.
And she would, soon.
But before she tried, she first had to fix her helo and then get Tim somewhere half the town wasn’t listening.
Chapter 14
“Well, that was news.”
Tim stared straight ahead and ignored Josh Tyler’s teasing tone from the seat behind him. The only other woman he’d ever said that to had given birth to him. He and Sally had talked about it, but only to determine that they weren’t in love.
But for Macy, the words had slipped out on their own and—
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Josh had been turning the biplane for home causing Tim’s gaze to sweep across the rolling landscape with the turn.
“There!” he pointed west. “Turn back.”
Josh altered the bank of the plane. “I don’t see anything.”
Tim blinked a couple of times and then swung his head side to side to make sure that what he was seeing wasn’t light reflecting on a smear on his goggles. It wasn’t.
“Keep going. Get me down lower.”
“Where are we going, Tim?”
“There, see that bit of white down in the trees?” They continued in silence for several seconds. The biplane had been flying just above stall speed—the slowest it could safely go—to make the part-drop more accurate. Two miles west of where Macy had gone down, there was a little puff of white.
“Just a small cloud,” Josh insisted. “You see them all the time as if they were caught in the tree branches. Or maybe a campfire of those hunters she dropped off.”
The next puff w
asn’t white, it was gray-brown.
“Get us over it, as low as you can.” Tim had seen those signs before. When a lightning storm had passed through the night before, but started no fires. Or at least appeared not to. But some superheated tree trunk or rotting groundcover could catch a whiff of oxygen hours or even days later. Then it didn’t just bloom into fire, it often exploded.
The next puff had some black in it.
“Keep the smoke to the side. Don’t pass directly into it.”
“Roger that,” Josh sounded serious now. He swung alongside it and banked into a turn so they could look sideways out of the plane and try to spot the origin as it circled.
“Give me the BLM fire frequency.”
“You’re on.”
“Hank, this is Tim. You there?”
“Hi, lover boy. You do know that we monitor the general aviation frequency, don’t you?”
He did now. And that meant that he’d told Macy he loved her all the way out to Ladd Airfield and…oh man she was going to be ticked about that one. He decided that no comment was the best answer.
“You’ve got a burn.”
Josh read the coordinates off his GPS.
“Starting small but hot like a lightning strike,” Tim reported.
“There hasn’t been a cloud in the sky for weeks.”
Tim stared down as the biplane continued to circle. He could see the fire spreading rapidly through the undergrowth. It was already fifty feet across and growing.
On the next circle he spotted a clearing upwind to the west. A clearing big enough to land a helicopter and drop off a team of hunters. Fire origin was the Fire Marshall’s job, but there wasn’t a smokie on the planet who wouldn’t point right to the hunters.
“While we’ve been talking it has jumped from a dozen feet to an acre and—Bank left, Josh. Do it now!”
As the Stearman biplane twisted away from the fire, a burst of flame roared aloft. Not up to their height, but that wasn’t something he wanted to be flying near.
“Hank, we now have a crown fire.” It was no longer only the undergrowth that was on fire. The fire had climbed high into the thick trees where it could jump from treetop to treetop driven by the wind. “Call your team. We just flashed over into two acres.”
Wildfire at Larch Creek Page 12