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by Henry, Sue


  24

  CHELLE TAXIED HER CESSNA INTO ITS SPACE ON Lake Hood and got out, ignoring her brother, Ed, who had flown back in the passenger seat, saying nothing. When he was also out on the bank, she tied the plane down and began to move the camping equipment from the back of it to her Subaru station wagon, still waiting where she had parked it the day before.

  Just a day? she thought. It seemed she had been gone a week, a month, as if everything should be different; as if she stopped at the grocery store, there would be new magazines on the rack that she hadn’t read yet, or maybe the bills she thought she had just paid were due again. It was a strange and unsettling sensation.

  “Chelly?” Ed said, as she closed up and locked the plane. Picking up the few things she would leave in the shed, she crossed to it and worked the combination on the lock, opened the door and deposited them inside, along with the waders she took off and replaced with her street shoes.

  “Chelly?” he entreated, again.

  She whirled to face him, anger distorting her face.

  “Stop it, Ed. Don’t whine. You’re not a child, and neither am I. It’s time you stopped acting like one and grew up.”

  “But, Chelle…hey. It wasn’t my fault. I told you.”

  “Whose fault was it then, Ed. I don’t believe they just picked you and forced you out there. There’s more to it than that. But you always blame someone else. You’re never at fault and I’m sick of it. Take some responsibility for yourself, won’t you?”

  “But, I…”

  “What did that Greeson mean when he said you should remember what he told you and that it didn’t change anything that he was caught? I want to know. What did he mean?”

  Ed looked down and kicked at a clump of grass, obviously trying to think of a fast answer that might satisfy.

  “Don’t bother making something up,” she told him harshly. “Just tell the truth for once. What won’t change? And why did you steal my plane?”

  “Borrow, Chelle. I only borrowed it. Never stole it, not once.”

  “Steal, Ed. The word is not borrow. It’s steal. What do you mean not once? Oh”—her eyes widened as she realized—“this wasn’t the first time, was it. You’ve taken it before. That’s why I kept finding the radio turned to the wrong frequency. It was you, not me. Why? Spit it out. The truth, damn it.”

  Surprisingly, he did.

  “Tom helped me—loaned me money…a lot. I owe him. I’m sorry, Chelle. Really sorry. It’ll never happen again, I promise. Honest.”

  For a long moment she was absolutely still and silent with the shock of it, the total betrayal and lack of loyalty. When she finally spoke there was almost no expression to her voice. It was cold and distant, but there was no question that she meant every word she said.

  “You’re right. It won’t. You could have lost my plane—my living—for me. Did you ever think of that? Ever care? All you cared about was your own problem.”

  “I brought it back. Nothing ever got hurt.” Angrily he still tried to defend himself.

  “But if it had, you would still have maintained that it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Well…it really wasn’t.”

  “Whose then?”

  “Ah…if you’d ever let me fly it, I wouldn’t have had to borrow it. Right?”

  She stared at him, in wordless astonishment. Then, slowly, she began to laugh. There was little humor in the sound, but she laughed until she had to sit down on the step of the shed, and was suddenly silent.

  “So,” he asked, hopefully. “It’s okay, then?”

  For another long moment she looked up at him.

  “No, little brother, it’s not okay. But I’m through with talking about it. Here’s how it’s going to be, just so you’re very clear and understand. From now on you take care of yourself. Don’t come to me for money. There won’t be any. Don’t ask for favors. You’ve never earned them. You go your way and I go mine.”

  “But, Chelle. I promise…”

  “Your promises mean nothing, Ed. I’m through with you getting everything your way. I think it’s my turn for a change. This time I’m not bailing you out. Norm was right. I don’t help you by making things okay.”

  “Norm was a…” He started to interrupt.

  “No. Don’t say it, not ever again. Just go. I won’t listen to anything about Norm. You never even knew him. I’ll let you know when and if I want to see you. Right now, just go away.”

  She sat and watched until he was out of sight, walking east down the road. Two blocks away was the Cockpit Lounge and she thought he would probably go there and con someone for a ride home, if he didn’t spend the evening in a bottle.

  She simply sat until he was gone and did not make the effort to start her car and drive home. There was something else she had to do.

  When she was sure he wasn’t coming back, she leaned forward and reached back under the edge of the shed, to the left of the door, where there was a narrow space, just large enough to admit her hand to the wrist.

  Confidently, she took hold of a thin metal box, held by a magnet fastened beneath the shed floor, and pulled it loose. Lifting it out, she opened the lid and removed the envelope that she had known would be there waiting for her.

  “So,” Ernie Tobias had said. “Write me a letter.”

  And she had known.

  As suddenly as she had realized what numbers would open the metal box she had found in Norm’s closet, she had known the only place he would have left her a letter that no one else could find. It was where they had left notes for each other before they married, and after, when they were both flying charters and needed a way of communicating without going back to the house. Norm had thought of it and attached the box to the underside of her shed. They had checked it on a regular basis, but, after he disappeared, she had not looked once, knowing there would be—could be—nothing.

  But there had been. The most important letter of all. Dumb, she thought. Dumb of her not to have remembered, figured it out.

  She tore the envelope—a manila one like the other, the one he had given to Jeff—open and took out the contents. There was a letter. Unfolding it, she read the salutation: “Dear Chelly-love.” It was for her. Thank God. And there were two small, rubber-banded notebooks: one plain, and one with the name Karen Randolph at the top. These, she ignored for the moment in favor of the pages he had written…for her:

  Dear Chelly-love,

  If you are reading this then you will have figured out and found where I am going to hide it. Sorry about not leaving directions, but I have to make sure that only you will be able to find it—and someone might come looking—so you can do what will need to be done with it and be safe. It is very important that this not be found by the wrong people.

  Bunker will probably have already given you the money that was left after I took out the insurance policy you may also have found, I think, with the key in the box in my closet. He will have told you what I told him, and not coming back is what I regret most of all, but it is possible, considering that the things and people I am about to tell you about are pretty unfriendly. I apologize for not telling you before, but it isn’t all mine to tell and up to now I have promised silence. But the most important thing to me is that, for now, you are safely without knowledge and not involved. Now that you have this, know that it is dangerous. Get these notes to the right people as fast as possible, now. Don’t go looking for me or anything else. Someone may be watching you and waiting to see what you do, as I think they may have been watching me.

  It all started last spring, when I flew an early tourist out for a couple of days of camping and photography. Remember that time in May when I got weathered in with Harry Ward at Beluga Lake and we wound up spending two days before I could get us back? It snowed, sleeted, rained, and was generally too miserable to fly. Old Harry was a retired construction sort in his late sixties, from Florida, who had always wanted to come to Alaska, and did, and got stuck with me in a very wet camp, with little to se
e. I hacked out a decent space in one of those infernal alder thickets, we put up his tent, used the emergency stuff I carry in the plane, and stayed as warm and dry as we could, ate his steaks, my pork and beans, drank his bourbon, and swapped lies.

  I liked old Harry a lot, partly because he didn’t seem to really mind at all, never complained a bit. It was the wilderness experience he wanted, whatever that turned out to be, so we got along just fine. He had a wicked sense of humor and a hundred good stories. I think he sort of felt that getting stuck like that with me kind of took the tourist quality out of it.

  The third morning, when it cleared up, he was like a little kid at the sight of all those impressive glaciers and mountains filling the whole western landscape. So I shooed him off down the lake a bit to get some of Capps and Triumvirate and the Alaska Range on film while I packed up our gear and loaded the bird. We had tied up and camped near that little stream next to the hook on the east bank—where you and I set down that afternoon over a year ago, remember? The lake was its usual muddy self, so I had been getting clean water from that creek to boil, and when I went for some to wash out a couple of frying pans, I found a red plastic jug that had floated down from somewhere upstream.

  You know how I feel about people who leave their trash in that kind of place, so you can understand that at first I was pissed off. But it was kind of odd. The jug had just enough engine oil in the bottom so it seemed a funny thing for someone to throw out. I poked on upstream a bit and began to find other things: a plastic foam cooler cover broken into several pieces, pages from an account book of some kind, a water bottle—you know—small stuff that would float. Well, I wrestled my way up and came to a place where the spring thaw coming down that creek had washed out someone’s cache.

  I just stood there like a dummy for a minute because there was so much of it. Seemed like they had left just about a whole camp’s worth of gear, airplane fuel, engine oil, tools, tents, sleeping bags, and some sealed dry supplies, like flour, beans, and rice. I was amazed the bears hadn’t got at it, even sealed. Whoever left it had packed it all in camouflage tarps, stacked some of it under some brush, and tied the rest up as high as they could in a couple of the tallest trees, but the stream had changed course just enough to underwash one of them until it fell over from the weight of that stuff.

  Well, my first thought was to be neighborly and clean up the area, salvage as much as I could for whoever would obviously be coming back for the gear sometime fairly soon now that warm weather was back. So I rescued the tarp that was still tied to the fallen tree and started filling it with everything I could find and pick up. Halfway through the job, I came across eight boxes of shells that would have fit my Remington 350, and figured it was a hunting stash. But, it seemed like a lot of heavy ammo, and after thinking about it a while, I got real curious. So I skinned up the other tree and cut loose that second sling of gear.

  Besides more supplies, there were a couple of big hunting rifles in it, carefully greased and wrapped to survive the winter, and they weren’t there for potting squirrels. But the thing that really caught my attention was a camouflage jacket that had been packed in with the rest. In one pocket was a note to somebody called Darryl, telling him to “hold off till Thursday and keep an eye on the sky,” that there was “a fed nosing around” according to “our source.” There wasn’t a date and it was signed with just the initial T. Whoever Darryl is, he must have forgotten it was there when he left the jacket.

  After thinking a little, I put everything back the best I could, wishing I hadn’t hauled all the stuff out of the creek and made it obvious somebody had stumbled onto that cache. They wouldn’t know who, though, so I went back to where Harry was whistling for me by then, and we got out of there. I didn’t tell him anything about the stuff I’d found—but I took that note from the jacket pocket with me.

  For about two weeks I thought about it off and on, and wondered if I should do something. When I flew over, I kind of kept an eye on that area.

  Then one afternoon, on my way back from a Lake Clark run, I was over that same bench between Beluga and Mount Susitna when I caught some peripheral motion below me and looked down to see a plane doing some pretty fancy loops and circles close to the ground. I went around once to see, but it was pretty clear what was going on—the pilot was hazing a bear—or maybe a moose. I was too high to see the animal, but there’s no other activity I know that makes a pilot fly that way. It made me furious, but there wasn’t a thing I could do about it from there. It was a Cessna, like ours, but I was too high to get an identification number off it.

  The next day I went to Fish and Wildlife, gave them the note and told them where and when I had found it, what I had seen the day before—the whole thing. They had me pinpoint the location of the cache on the map, thanked me kindly, warned me to keep it to myself, and I left and pretty much forgot about it.

  You know that all through June and July we flew our normal summer gaggle of tourists here and there, and were so busy I hardly gave it a passing thought. I don’t think you noticed that I was going ahead and flying the hunter types I usually give to you. I thought I might learn something else if I kept my eyes and ears open, but nothing came of it.

  The federal agent showed up in August. You were gone down to Homer with a load of halibut fishermen when she found me at the lake cleaning out the plane. I was tired, hungry, and in need of a shower after an overnighter to Prince William Sound, so I took her back to the house and aimed her at a gin and tonic while I sluiced off the two-day crud. Then I threw some meat on the grill and we talked—a lot.

  Her name is Karen Randolph. She’s an F and W special agent from Wisconsin who’s here undercover for a sting operation aimed at catching a bunch of jerks they have a line on, who’re making sure their hunters get what they pay for any way and anywhere that works. The big part of all this is happening other places in the state, in the Brooks Range, for instance, but they are convinced something pretty sordid is going on out there near Beluga Lake. Back then she was just looking for a local pilot on tap to fly her a few places she needed to get acquainted with before the deal went down. The big charter boys are too well known and she wanted someone who didn’t fly off the Hood docks where visibility and recognition would be a risk. But she asked a lot of questions about the things I had told the local office. Dale Stoffel’s name came up more than once, to let you know how serious it is. They are convinced his bunch is running the game.

  So, the short of it is that I agreed to do the flying for her and we’ve gone out a couple of times—once to the place where I found the cache, but everything was gone by then. The deal is set to go down in a couple of days. She has arranged a hunting trip with these guys that they think was set up through a contact of theirs back East. I don’t know much about it and don’t want to. She’s asked me to fly her out to a lake this side of Beluga and leave her in their camp. She’s ordered up at least one brown bear as close to record size as possible, and they assure her it’s no problem. While this is happening, she will try to collect enough evidence to convict them. I will go back after her in five days.

  Now comes the part I don’t like at all. If you are reading this letter you know something went wrong. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I’ve had an uneasy feeling for the last few days. Somebody broke into my shed at the lake, but nothing was taken. Several times I’ve seen a green pickup drive by out there, and once I think I saw it near the house. Karen hasn’t picked up anything questionable and thinks I’m imagining things—that everything’s okay. She’s probably right, but if she’s not, you know it now.

  Once I drop her off out there on the plateau I’ll have no way of knowing if she is blown, as she calls it. They could make her just disappear and, unfortunately, me too, when I go back. But I’m to circle and identify her before I land, and we’ve worked out some signals. Whatever, hopefully it will all be over soon and I can tell you all about it.

  I’m sorry, Chelle. I’m thinking now that I should have told yo
u, I guess. When it’s all done I will—or, I will have in this letter. Don’t worry about the money. It’s okay. As you probably know by now, I’ve set up an insurance policy so you’ll have everything you need and then some.

  I can hear you saying, “Why, Norm? Why did you do it?” I can’t exactly answer that. I’m not the hero type. I guess maybe I just got mad when I ran up against it personally. But somebody has to do it, don’t they? Even when it’s risky? I’m worried, but kind of excited and proud to be in on it at the same time. Can you understand? This sort of thing has got to be stopped. But then you already know that I think all the trophy hunting should be stopped, even the legal kind. It doesn’t make sense anymore. There’s too many of us and getting to be too few of them—the animals—and especially the bears. Hardly anyone’s paying attention—wolves get all the press—but the grizzlies are extinct, or about to be, everywhere but here and Canada. They are my favorite animal, monarchs of the wild, the largest carnivores on earth today, descended in a straight line from the cave bears that were around with the dinosaurs. I’ve enjoyed watching too many of them just living their lives, hurting no one, to be able to condone the random unnecessary killing of them for something to hang on the wall. Subsistence is another thing. People have every right to eat. I’ve done enough hunting myself in the past, but for food, and I’m even beginning to question that’s the answer either. No one really needs to eat bears. But enough—you’ve heard this before.

  What I want to say—just in case—is that whatever happens I want you to know I love you much more than you believe I do, and that the last thing I want to do is leave you. I know you still think that someday I will. but I won’t, Chelly-love, not if I have even an ounce of choice in the matter. I want to stick around for a long, long time yet, until we’re both brushing our teeth out of a glass. I want a rocking chair and slippers with you, and finishing each other’s sentences, and walking arm in arm the way people do who have walked together for years and years. But there are some things that just must be done. If I said no to this one, somehow I would think less of myself, and maybe you would too. So this has nothing and everything to do with you and me. The only thing I regret right now is not letting you in on it. I never would again.

 

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