Past Lies

by Bobby Hutchinson

  Tom’s gaze was intense. “How old was your girl?”

  “Three. Her name was Annie.”

  “I didn’t know you lost a kid. Sorry for your loss. Ivy tell you her brother died? Years ago now. My boy was older than Ivy, five when he passed.”

  “Ivy told me about Jacob. That’s how I understand why Frances needs to go away.”

  “She fell apart afterwards.” Tom seemed to be having more and more trouble getting air into his lungs. “Then I did this stupid thing….”

  Tom stopped speaking and Alex waited. They had plenty of time.

  “I had an affair with a woman I grew up with. Thought nobody would know, bloody fool me. As if there’s any secrets in Valdez. Frances found out, and that finished her off. Depression, they call it now. The old doctor in Valdez called it a nervous breakdown.”

  “Ivy told me.”

  Tom’s eyebrows shot up.

  “About the depression, not the affair.” At this moment, he felt deeply sorry for Tom. Just as he understood how Frances had reacted, so, too, he could easily understand Tom’s actions. Grief was an unpredictable thing; it made slaves of its victims.

  “Seems like you two hit it off, you and Frances.” There was more than a trace of resentment and bitterness in Tom’s voice.

  “We did. But when she told me Ivy was in love with me, I panicked. See, after Annie, after my marriage collapsed, I got it in my head that I wouldn’t let myself care about anyone again. That way, nothing could hurt that bad.”

  Tom thought about it and finally nodded. “Guess I was luckier than you. I already had Ivy. How could I stop caring about her?” He was chilled again, shivering and visibly exhausted. Alex shouldn’t have kept him talking for so long.

  “You’d better get some sleep, Tom. Give those aspirin a chance to work.”

  “In a minute. Look here, I need to say some things. Don’t know if I’m going to make it out of here, and I have to get this off my chest.”

  The quiet words were alarming, because on some level Alex had suspected that Tom was giving up. There was no question he was very ill.

  “Of course you’re going to make it, Ivy will be searching for you any minute now. Then we’ll get you to hospital.”

  “I want you to tell Ivy this for me. Say that she’s to do whatever her heart says to do. If you two get married, she has my blessing. All I want is for her to be happy.”

  He coughed again, and his body shook with the effort. It took longer to get his breath again, and he slid down farther on the bunk.

  “Frances knows I love her. Tell her I said good luck with her plans, her new job. I was an asshole, but I always loved her.”

  “I’ll tell them both what you said. Get some sleep now.” Alex tucked the sleeping bag and the aluminum sheet tighter around Tom. When the other man’s eyes closed and his rapid, uneven breathing slowed, Alex stirred a spoonful of instant coffee into a mug of hot water and sat in the chair, trying to figure out what he could do.

  Tom was in bad shape. The weather might make it impossible to fly, so it could be several more days or even a week before Ivy was able to look for her father. With no sign of the floatplane, she’d likely pass right over the cabin. Of course he’d go outside and try to flag her down if he heard the copter, but after the way he’d left, she might not be at all eager to see him. There was no way to let her know that Tom was inside.

  Alex wasn’t about to let Tom die if he could help it, but he couldn’t leave the other man and go for help. Tom wasn’t well enough to even keep the fire going. And Alex shuddered at the thought of backtracking over the trail. But by sitting here day after day, their food supplies would dwindle fast. There were fish in the lake and probably moose and caribou out in the bush, but Alex was no hunter. Fisherman, either. It would be pure blind luck if he ever landed something edible.

  There was always the possibility that someone might come to use the cabin, but this early in the year, that was a very faint hope. He couldn’t trust to chance, there wasn’t time. Tom needed medical attention, and he needed it soon. Alex had to come up with some foolproof way to attract attention.

  If Ivy’s father died, she’d never forgive him. She’d always believe there was something he could have done. And he’d believe it, too.

  Alex got up and shoved more wood in the stove. It was the leaping flames that gave him the idea.

  He had to start a fire big enough to attract attention from a long ways off.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Kiss the little guy for me. And for you, lots more than kisses. I love you, Linda.

  From letters written by Roy Nolan,

  April, 1972

  “WHERE’S TOM?” Bert signed when Ivy came into the office on Friday afternoon.

  Ivy shrugged her shoulders and raised her hands, palms up. The weather had cleared overnight and she’d just gotten back from dropping fishermen and their guide at a remote creek. They were due to be picked up in two days, and they wanted Tom to come and get them with the Beaver. Ivy knew they viewed him as a colorful Alaskan character, someone they could describe at dinner parties. She and the copter weren’t nearly as interesting, and also the float was a lot cheaper to charter.

  “He told Kisha he was staying at one of the camps along the Katalla until the storm blew over. He’s probably fishing. We tried to raise him on the radio, but there’s no answer. Kisha’s trying to get hold of the fishing camp, but nobody’s answering there, either.”

  “He should be here now,” Bert insisted.

  Amen to that.

  “How long he’s gone?”

  Ivy added it up. “Three days now. Maybe four.” Longer than she’d realized. A twinge of anxiety came and went. He’d been away that long before. If the fish were biting, he’d probably lost track of time.

  Bert frowned. “He promised I would solo this morning. He wouldn’t forget—important day for us. We should go looking, maybe engine trouble.”

  “He’d have radioed if he was having problems.” But Ivy remembered the day the radio had conked out on the copter. Could that have happened to the Beaver? Her uneasiness was now becoming real concern. She’d been too angry and distracted to focus on the fact that there’d been no contact with Tom. Usually he’d have radioed in at least once, to give his location and check on schedules.

  “What was his last contract, Kisha?”

  “He was doing the milk run.” The girl riffled through the stack of papers and handed one to Ivy. Sure enough, it was his regular fishing camp route. The last contact he’d made was the day after he’d dropped Ivy at the lodge, which was Tuesday morning.

  “Maybe he decided to visit some old crony. Uncle Theo might know.” She used the radio phone, relieved when Sage picked up.

  “Hey, are you coming up?” her cousin said. “We need a good long visit soon.”

  Ivy had deliberately avoided going to the lodge the past couple days. She’d found it uncomfortable being around Mavis, and she wasn’t ready to confide in Sage. Not yet. First she needed to get used to everything herself. Frances was the only one Ivy could talk to easily these days, and they’d been spending time together, a development that still amazed her. Probably amazed Frances, too.

  Ivy apologized to Sage. “Not today. Tom’s away, I’m super busy here. Sage, could you ask Theo if Dad told him exactly where he was going the other day? We’re a little concerned here because he hasn’t been in touch.”

  Sage immediately understood. Her voice sharp, she didn’t ask any more questions. “I’ll find Theo and call you right back.”

  Seven minutes later the phone rang.

  Without preamble, Sage said, “Your dad was taking his usual route up the Katalla river. And he told Theo he was thinking of tracking Alex down at one of the public cabins up in the Chugach, but he didn’t say exactly when.” Sage gave Ivy the exact location of the cabin.

  Ivy wondered if she’d heard right. Why would Tom go looking for Alex?

  “What’s going on, Ivy? Is there
anything we can do?”

  Ivy kept her tone light. “Dad’s been out of touch for a couple of days, you know how he does that sometimes. I wasn’t too worried, but Bert thinks he should have come back to Valdez this morning. I’m going to buzz up to that cabin in the Chugach, see if I can spot the Beaver.”

  “Let us know as soon as you locate him.”

  Ivy promised. She hung up and told Bert where she was going.

  “I can come?” His concern showed on his face. “Please.”

  She’d thought she wanted to be alone, but now she realized she’d be glad to have Bert along. “Absolutely. Two sets of eyes are better than one.”

  They were airborne within minutes.

  AT THE CABIN, the morning was half gone before Alex admitted that he wasn’t going to be able to light the series of bonfires he’d planned along the lakeshore. The wood he’d laboriously gathered from the forest was soaked with the recent rain, and he didn’t have an unlimited supply of matches. There was no gasoline or starter that would make wet wood burn more easily. Hard as he tried, the stacks of wood he lit fizzled and went out.

  Why the hell hadn’t he ever been a Boy Scout?

  In between attempts, Alex kept the stove hot in the cabin, checking often on Tom, who’d lapsed again into a fevered half-delirious state. He slapped fret fully at the cup of hot tea Alex tried to get him to drink, spilling it on the mattress. He wouldn’t swallow more aspirin, and he mumbled incoherently, calling out for Frances. He needed medical attention, and he needed it soon.

  Outside it was starting to rain again. If only there was enough dry wood to get a big fire going, maybe someone would notice it. Alex looked around the clearing. There was the cabin, he could set that on fire, but if help didn’t arrive, then he and Tom would be without shelter.

  Bad idea, Ladrovik.

  His gaze swept past the outhouse, and then he zeroed in on it. It was far enough from the cabin that it wouldn’t pose a threat. The logs it was constructed from were relatively dry. It should burn, if he could just get it going. And although it was convenient, it wasn’t absolutely necessary to their survival.

  With his hatchet, Alex chopped firewood into kindling. Carefully, he laid the makings for a fire on the wooden floor just inside the outhouse, adding bigger and bigger pieces of dry firewood. When the flames began to lick at the walls, he left the door open so oxygen would feed them. He wiped the sweat away from his face. His hand came away black with soot.

  “Please,” he whispered as the flames grew. “Ivy, beloved, please come and find us soon.”

  “FIRE.” Bert mouthed the word and pointed, but Ivy had already spotted it. Something was burning at the camp, something big. As they drew nearer, she realized it wasn’t the cabin.

  “No Beaver,” Bert signed, and Ivy nodded. She’d had a sick feeling in her belly ever since they took off, and now she felt worse. She made a pass over the cabin, looking for a suitable landing spot and, when she did, she saw Alex. He came bursting out of the cabin and began running up and down the lakeshore, urgently waving his coat at her. Something was obviously wrong. She scanned the area, but there was no sign of Tom or the Beaver.

  Landing here wasn’t going to be easy because of the slope dropping down to the lake. She circled, looking for a suitable spot, finally deciding on a meadow a quarter mile from the cabin.

  Her heart in her throat, Ivy set the copter down. She and Bert were running toward the cabin when Alex burst out of the woods.

  When he got close enough he pulled Ivy into his arms. He was panting hard and looked wild and unkempt. There was soot on his hands and face, and his thick dark beard scratched her cheek. He smelled of wood smoke and sweat, and she could feel his heart pounding.

  She let him hold her for a moment before she pulled away.

  “What’s going on, Alex?”

  “Thank God you came, Ivy,” he said when he got his breath. “I knew you would. Tom’s back at the cabin,” he said, signing so Bert would understand. “He hit a deadhead when he was landing the Beaver. The plane’s at the bottom of the lake.” He paused to catch his breath again. “He’s really sick. He hit his head getting out of the plane, gashed it pretty deep. He’s delirious—I think he may have pneumonia, but I don’t know.” The words tumbled out. “He’s coughing really bad, having trouble breathing. He needs medical attention fast.”

  “Let’s go.” Ivy took off at a trot, the men following her.

  Tom was coherent when they reached the cabin, but he wasn’t strong enough to sit up. Ivy knelt beside the bunk.

  “Hey, Captain, how’s it going?” She was profoundly shocked at how weak and sick he was, how old he looked. When he tried to say something, she shushed him.

  “Conserve your energy, we’ll have lots of time to talk later,” she said, choking back tears. “Right now, we’re going to get you to the hospital.” It was confirmation to her of how sick he was that Tom didn’t even try to argue.

  Tom was wearing only a pair of Alex’s track pants, and together they got him into a shirt. By the time they were done, Bert had cut two sturdy poles to make a stretcher, and he and Alex lashed them together with pieces of rope cut from Alex’s backpack. They secured the woolen blanket over the frame, and it took all three of them to bundle Tom into Alex’s sleeping bag. When that was done, they wrapped the aluminum blanket around him and lifted him onto the makeshift stretcher.

  Alex and Bert carried him to the copter. Ivy brought up the rear with Alex’s backpack. She’d spent a few moments wondering if he’d stay behind, doggedly pursuing his father’s odyssey. She finally said to him, as casually as she could manage, “Are you coming with us, Alex?”

  He looked squarely at her, his eyes weary and bloodshot behind his glasses. “Damned right I’m coming. I’ve done everything I came here to do. And if I never spend another night in this bush it’ll be too soon. Even a helicopter ride is better than that.”

  “This one’s going to be fast and furious. You want a bucket in case you get sick?”

  “I’m over being afraid.”

  There wasn’t time to ask him what had happened. They settled Tom as best they could in the back of the copter. Bert sat beside him, supporting him. Alex climbed in beside Ivy. Before she began her preflight check, she radioed Kisha and asked her to call the Valdez hospital, giving them an ETA for arrival at the helipad at Up And Away and asking for an ambulance to meet them.

  And then Ivy put everything out of her mind except flying.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I saw them, Linda. The Northern Lights. It was about midnight. One of the other guys in the hostel woke me up. I swear I heard them, like a swishing sound. It’s something I’ll never forget if I live to be a hundred.

  From letters written by Roy Nolan,

  April, 1972

  AT THE HELIPAD in Valdez, medics were waiting with a stretcher. They suggested that Alex go along in the ambulance to tell the doctors what had happened and to give them some idea of Tom’s symptoms during the past several days, so Ivy and Bert followed in her truck.

  Alex met them when they walked through the automatic doors. He took Ivy’s hand and threaded his fingers through hers.

  “They took him in there—” Alex indicated the emergency area “—but nobody’s said anything yet about how he is.”

  The three of them waited anxiously until finally a young and pretty E.R. doctor came out and reported on Tom’s condition. After she’d established who they all were, she said, “I’m Doctor Carrie Rothel,” offering her hand to Ivy. “We’ve done some X-rays on your dad. He has pneumonia and he’s dehydrated and very weak. Does he have an allergy to penicillin?”

  “Not that I know of,” Ivy said.

  “Good. He’s had a severe blow to the skull. But there’s no sign of fracture, and the wound has already begun to heal. Do you know if he lost consciousness afterwards?”

  “I don’t know,” Ivy said. “He was in a floatplane that was upside down and sinking under water. If he
’d been knocked unconscious for very long he would have drowned.” Until this moment, she hadn’t had time to think clearly about what had happened to Tom. The full import came to her now. “He’s lucky to be alive,” she whispered, trembling. What if he’d died? They’d parted on such terrible terms. She’d never have forgiven herself.

  Alex put his arm came around her shoulders in a reassuring hug. Then he signed to Bert what the doctor had said.

  “We’ve started an IV drip to get fluids into him, and we’ll get him on penicillin for the pneumonia,” the doctor said. “We’ll be taking him up to Intensive Care shortly, the nurses are just cleaning him up a little first. As soon as they’re done you can see him. In the meantime the admissions desk will have forms for you to fill out,” she added.

  “I have to phone my mother,” Ivy said. And she should also have Kisha call the lodge on the radio phone.

  “There’s a pay phone just down the hall.” The doctor pointed it out.

  Alex walked with her.

  Ivy dialed, and when her mother answered she shoved money in the slot with shaking fingers, and then quickly explained what had happened.

  “I’ll be there right away,” Frances said. Ivy heard her quavering intake of breath. “Tell Tom I’m on my way.”

  “Drive carefully, Mom.” But Frances had hung up before Ivy finished speaking. Next, she dialed Up And Away, repeating what she’d told her mother. Kisha promised to call the lodge immediately.

  Alex was just a few feet away, waiting for her. He took her hand and led her to the waiting room. There were only two other people there besides Bert, plump, middle-aged women who looked enough alike to be twins. Alex had chosen seats as far away from them as possible, and Ivy, panicking, realized he wanted to have a private discussion with her. She really didn’t want to hear what he had to say. She was on emotional overload, and she wasn’t sure she could handle one more thing.