Frozen Sun

by Stan Jones

  Was Decker out of his head or not? If he was, Active would have to chase down the witnesses to the crash, if any. Or maybe even wait until the NTSB completed its investigation. And how thorough would that be? A single-fatality crash in the middle of nowhere? He decided he had no choice but to hear Decker out. He sank into the chair again. “And that’s what happened yesterday in Isignaq?”

  “It was Ebrulik, March a year ago, temperature in the twenties,” Decker said.

  Decker was obviously raving now. Active was about to give up and start hunting down eyewitnesses when he realized Decker was talking about the first time he had tried a single-engine takeoff in the twin-engine Aztec.

  “The left one wouldn’t start, no way, no how,” Decker continued with the same distant look in his eyes. “I called our office here in Chukchi to get them to send another plane and they put our mechanic on the line. You know Henry Draper?”

  “Just barely,” Active said, happy to be back in Decker’s reality again. He tried to maintain the link. “I think I met him once in your office. So, the left one wouldn’t start yesterday in Isignaq?”

  “Goddamn disgusting Draper,” Decker said. “Never washes his overalls or his hair either, that I can see. Those mechanics, they hate us because we get to fly the airplanes and stay clean instead of working on them and looking like a mud wrestler all the time. Bloody knuckles.”

  “Bloody knuckles?”

  “That’s how you can tell a mechanic. Bloody knuckles from having to work on airplanes all the time. That’s why they hate us.”

  “Did you call Draper yesterday from Isignaq?” Active asked. Maybe the mechanic could corroborate some of what Decker was saying.

  “He says, he says, ‘Fly it home on the good one.’”

  “Draper told you to bring it in from Isignaq on one engine?”

  “I’m on the phone in the village school at Ebrulik and the line is bad and I think I heard him wrong and I say, ‘What? Take off on one engine?’ And he says ‘Yep’ and he tells me he’s looking at the manuals there in the office and he says, ‘Write this down.’ And he says he’s figured out that with the weather as cold as it is, and the thirty-two hundred feet of runway they got there in Ebrulik, I can probably make it. He tells me if I can get her up to fifty-eight knots before I use up twenty-two hundred feet of runway, I’ll make it off. Otherwise, I shut down and I’ve got a thousand feet to stop.”

  “And you did it?”

  “So I say, ‘Nah, you guys get another plane up here.’ And he says, ‘Nah, you can do it. You’re Cowboy Decker, right?” And even though I know he’s working me, I go out and I do it.”

  Active thought of asking why, of asking how the stakes could possibly justify the risk. But he decided not to bother. He had learned long ago that Bush pilots lived by a code of performance incomprehensible to normal men.

  Decker put his fingertips to the bandage on his forehead, winced slightly, and continued the story. “So I go out and I pace off twenty-two hundred feet of the runway and I stick two spruce boughs in the snow to mark the spot. Then I crank up the good one and roll down the strip and, by God … well, that goddamn Draper knows the Aztec, I’ll give him that. I’ve got sixty knots when I pass the spruce boughs and by the end of the runway she’s dancing on her toes and she pulls off easy as you please. Goddamn Draper, fuck him.”

  “So what did he say when you called him from Isignaq yesterday”?

  “So I land at Ebrulik yesterday and let the surveyor off and I don’t even shut the left one down. He just climbs down and I’m out of there. But at Isignaq, Aggie’s not at the airport, so I catch a ride into the village with this kid in a pickup and I find her and the kid takes us back out to the airport and we climb in. And, Goddammit, the left one won’t start.”

  Active perked up a little. “This kid in the pickup. You know his name?”

  Decker shifted back into the hospital room for a moment, looked at Active. “Sure, Isaac Boxer. His dad runs the store in Isignaq. Isaac saw me when I circled the village and came out to see if I needed any avgas.”

  Active made a note of the name. “So the left one wouldn’t start and that’s when you called Draper?”

  “Nah, the airport in Isignaq is on that bluff above the river two-three miles from the village and I don’t want to bother Isaac for another ride. So I decide to have a look at the left one myself and I open the cowling.” Decker’s eyes took on the thousand-yard stare again. “Damn, that engine is hot and so is the weather, too damn hot for the Arctic, eighty, eighty-five maybe. Gotta be this global warming you hear about. And great big hungry spring-time mosquitoes buzzing around, one gets in my mouth and I cough it out. Then this mangy old husky comes up and lifts his leg on the Aztec’s nose wheel, and there’s a couple of goddamn little Eskimo kids hanging around, and one of them says, “Is it bwo-kin?” and then they run off giggling like they do. And I’m trying to get one of the spark plugs out for a looksee when it lets go all of a sudden and I slam my hand into the cooling fins of the number four cylinder and there you are, goddamnit, my knuckles are bleeding!”

  Decker showed Active his right hand. It had a fresh scab across the two middle knuckles.

  “So that’s when I start thinking about Ebrulik March a year ago, and how if I can get the Aztec off the ground with the good one, it’ll be cool up there over the river, vents open, air blowing through the cockpit, no mosquitoes, no kids, no huskies, just the Aztec and me and Aggie Iktillik cruising down to Chukchi. So I button her up and I tell Aggie, ‘We’ll fly back on one engine.’ She says, ‘Can you do that?’ and I say, ‘Sure, that’s why we have two engines. One’s a spare.’”

  “So you never called Henry Draper?”

  Decker returned to reality for a moment and shook his head. “Nope, I just went down to the end of the runway and walked back a thousand feet and tied my handkerchief to a little spruce tree.”

  He got the stare again. “Course, it was sixty degrees hotter in Isignaq yesterday than it was in Ebrulik March a year ago, and heat means you need more runway to get off. But I had more runway than I did in Ebrulik—about eight hundred feet more—so I figured I was good. And of course there was a thousand feet to stop if I didn’t have the fifty-eight knots when I got to my handkerchief on the spruce tree.”

  Decker paused and touched the bandage above his eyes again. “Call the nurse, will you, Nathan? I need something for my head.”

  Active tugged the controller out from under the pillow again, found the call button and pressed it. When he pushed the device back under the pillow, Decker’s eyes were closed in what looked like sleep. Active thought it over. Decker was making sense, mostly, though it wasn’t completely clear whether he was talking about Ebrulik a year ago March, or Isignaq yesterday. But it did seem likely he had attempted a takeoff on one engine, and maybe this Isaac Boxer could confirm it. And that would be the end of Trooper interest in the matter. Active decided to make his escape.

  “So there we were,” Decker said just as Active reached the door. Active sighed and returned to his chair.

  “We’re at the end of the runway, ready to roll,” Decker said. “The prop on the left one is sticking up above the wing like a broken arm, the right one is humming away, Aggie’s in the right seat, some kind of knitting on her lap, you know how these older Eskimo ladies always have some work with them? And I’m looking down four thousand feet of gravel runway, heat monkeys dancing over it, and you know what’s there at the far end of the strip? The Isignaq cemetery. You know what Bush pilots say about that, Nathan?”

  Active merely raised his eyebrows inquiringly, at last bowing to the futility of trying to deflect the lamentation of a man mourning his own competence.

  “We say the villages always put the cemetery at the end of the runway so if you auger in they don’t have to dig a grave. They just leave you in the hole you made. Funny, huh?”

  “Cowboy, look - -”

  “So I throw the cobs to her and off we go. Twenty knots, thir
ty, forty, fifty. The little spruce with my handkerchief is just coming into sight, I’ve got fifty-three knots, fifty-five, I can see I’m not going to get the fifty-eight so I’m just about to chop the power and stand on the brakes when we hit this little heave in the runway and the Aztec lurches a couple feet in the air and when she comes down her wheels don’t quite touch again and I can feel the controls come alive in my hands.”

  The door creaked open and a nurse came in, a white woman in a white uniform, gray hair, serious face. She thumbed up Decker’s eyelids and looked at his pupils. “That head’s bothering you a little, huh?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” the pilot said, his tone suggesting he was ashamed to be asking for pain relief. More of the Bush pilot code, Active supposed.

  “We can ratchet up the Demerol,” the nurse said. She pushed a button on a little console beside the bed. “But you can do it yourself, you know. Didn’t they tell you?”

  Decker shook his head, carefully.

  “Just push this button yourself and you’ll get a dose.” She put her finger beside the button and waited until Decker looked. “Except if you do it more than once every fifteen minutes, it doesn’t work. There’s a timer so you don’t get recreational with it.”

  Decker grunted and nodded, and the nurse left.

  “Look,” Active said. “You don’t have to - ”

  But Decker was back on the runway at Isignaq. “So I think to myself, ‘She’s gonna do it, just like at Ebrulik,’ and I leave the power on. But she just mushes along in ground effect, never gets flying speed, and I hear this b-r-r-r-r-p which was probably the prop clipping the headstones in the cemetery and then we’re going over the bluff and I see the gravel bar along the river down there, a couple kids tooling along on a four-wheeler, and that’s it.” Decker looked at Active and Active decided the pilot’s mind was back in the hospital room.

  “That’s it?”

  Decker nodded. “I guess I was medevaced back here but that’s all I remember until a nurse came in to check on me this morning and I asked her about Aggie.”

  Active stood up. “I’m sorry for your trouble, Cowboy.” He walked to the door. As he pulled it open, Decker cleared his throat.

  “Guess I should have called that goddamn Draper.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Jason Palmer wiped his eyes on a handkerchief and leaned his elbows on the desk in the principal’s office at Chukchi High. “You’ll have to forgive me, Nathan. I’m not always like this.”

  He wiped his eyes again and went on. “It’s just that learning that Grace has been found so soon after—you heard about Ida’s sister?”

  Active nodded. “Yes, our secretary told me about the crash when I got into the office yesterday. And then I heard the story on Kay-Chuck as I was driving over here to see you. I’m sorry for your trouble.”

  “That Cowboy. He was an accident looking for a place to happen. All of us pilots knew it. But what can you do?”

  “Maybe the FAA will ground him.”

  “Maybe. If he ever gets up the nerve to fly again. Sometimes they don’t.” Palmer sighed and tapped a yellow pad on the desk before him, the top sheet half-filled with longhand. “I was just trying to write up something to say at Aggie’s funeral.”

  “Your daughter mentioned an Aunt Agnes when I saw her in Dutch Harbor. Apparently Grace told her everything when she was a little girl.”

  Perhaps Palmer flinched slightly. Perhaps not. “How is Grace’s mother, by the way?”

  “Well, she’s still in one of her good spells,” Palmer said. “Cross your fingers, but the doctors don’t hold out much hope for the long haul. And Aggie’s death …” He shook his head again. “At least she’ll have the news about Grace to cheer her up. Grace is working down there, you said?”

  Active nodded. “In a fish-processing plant. They call it the slimeline.”

  Palmer gave a perfunctory chuckle. “How’d she look?”

  Active stared. Palmer stared back, looking puzzled. “Did she seem well?”

  “Very well, physically. You can hardly tell she was on the street, except for a little scar along here.” Active touched the place on his cheekbone. “She seems remarkably resilient. Almost indestructible, really.”

  “Is she coming home?” Palmer’s voice was normal on top, perhaps tight underneath, perhaps not.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Palmer opened his mouth as if to ask why, but closed it and picked up a pen. “What’s the company? Ida will want to call her.”

  “Elizabeth Cove Seafoods,” Active said. “And she’s staying at a place called the Triangle Bunkhouse.”

  Palmer scratched the information onto his pad.

  “You won’t make the call?”

  “I don’t think so,” Palmer said. “I think her mother would want to do it.”

  “That’s good.” Active pulled out a notebook and a ball-point. “I doubt Grace would talk to you.”

  Palmer, looking pained, doodled on his legal pad and silence grew until it packed the room like snow. From a bookshelf behind Palmer, the sound of a clock ticking; from the street outside, the buzz of a passing four-wheeler. Finally Palmer sighed and looked up at Active. “What makes you say that?”

  “Because you molested her. That’s what she says.”

  Palmer closed his eyes, shook his head, used the handkerchief. “I was afraid she’d say that again. We tried to get her into counseling when she first started telling those stories, but she wouldn’t cooperate. The counselor said sometimes teenage girls project their … their … fantasies on their fathers. An unresolved Electra complex that progressed into erotomania, something like that, is what the woman said, but I never put much stock in that kind of thing. Maybe it was just from Grace being a child of mixed race. Naluaqmiiyaaq, that’s what the village kids used to call her at school. Half-breed. I guess I hoped, we hoped, Grace would grow out of it somehow, but …” Palmer trailed off into silence, looking lost in the past.

  “I should tell you what your legal rights are here.”

  Palmer jerked his head up in shock, or a good imitation of it. “You mean you believe her? That crazy … that poor, lost girl?”

  “She didn’t seem crazy to me.”

  Palmer looked sharply at Active, surmise in his eyes. “She’s still beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “You have the right to remain silent,” Active began. “Do you want a lawyer?” he asked when the Miranda warning was over.

  Palmer looked sorrowful, hurt. Active tried to guess how the performance would play in front of a jury. Probably pretty well.

  “Of course I don’t want a lawyer,” Palmer said. “I’m innocent. I never … I wouldn’t … my own daughter?”

  “Daughters, actually. Grace says you were the father of the baby Jeanie was carrying when she huffed herself to death.”

  “Baby? She wasn’t - - I wasn’t - - You really think I need to defend myself against these crazy charges?”

  Active nodded. “They have to be investigated.”

  “But there’s no evidence, just the same old talk from my poor lost daughter. She was sick then and she’s sick now.” He paused in thought for a moment. “And why would I have to exploit my own daughters? If I … if my wife … well, there’s always a lady or two on the staff at school or some student’s mother who makes it clear that if there’s anything I need, she’d be happy to provide it.”

  He stopped talking, as if something had just occurred to him. “I thought the Troopers only handled village cases. Why are you asking me about this?”

  Active shrugged. “I talked it over with the city police. We’re taking this one.”

  “Well, it’s my word against Grace’s and I say it never happened. Never!” Palmer slapped his yellow pad so hard that his pen bounced onto the floor. “I’m a professional educator. Do you know what talk like this could do? Some people are always ready to believe the worst and this is the kind of thing that sticks to you once it gets out.”

&nbs
p; “Grace says it did happen. In her bedroom, the bathroom, even your classroom when you were still a teacher.”

  “I, that’s … “ Palmer was silent for a few moments. “You only believe her because I’m white. A white exploiter, that’s what you think I am. That’s just an ugly stereotype, Nathan, the same as if I was to look at you and see nothing but a dumb Eskimo or a drunken savage, like a lot of white people do. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  Active, feeling his face start to get hot, said nothing. He scribbled in his notebook, as if he were taking down everything Palmer said.

  Palmer snapped his fingers. “Look, if I was guilty of this … this outrage, why on earth would I ask you to find her? Remember how I called you over and gave you those pictures of her? Does that sound like something a guilty man would do?”

  “It sounds like a man who couldn’t think of a way out when his wife asked him to do it, and didn’t figure anybody could find Grace anyway. You certainly didn’t seem very disappointed when I said I couldn’t go look for her. And if I did find her, there was always the chance she’d keep quiet because of her mother being sick. Or maybe you’re just plain nuts. That’s what Grace thinks.”

  Palmer shuddered. “I don’t have to listen to this. You’d better get of my office now.”

  “She says she talked to her mother about it at the time.” Active stood and moved to the office door.

  “Yes, she did.” Palmer stood, and came out from behind the desk. “And her Aunt Aggie, too. I think maybe Aggie believed her but not my Ida.” He paused and a look of appalled comprehension spread over his face. “My god, you’re not thinking that Ida and Aggie … ah, just Ida, now that Aggie’s dead, that Ida could be a witness against me in court? You’re not going to go talk to Ida in her condition? You stay away from this family!”

  Active was in the hall when he heard a sound and turned to find Palmer glaring at him from the office doorway. “You leave this family alone, Nathan! That’s what we need, to be left alone! All of us!”