Breaking the Ice

by Kim Baldwin

  “Ellie’s still in bed, and Grizz is in the kitchen,” Bryson volunteered, getting to her feet with her coffee cup in hand. “I was about to pour myself another. Want one?”

  “Read my mind.”

  She returned with two mugs and set one before Skeeter. “Any word on your prop?”

  “Two, three weeks at least.” He sucked on his cigarette and drummed his fingers noisily on the tabletop. “I’ll go damn stir crazy if it’s any longer.”

  She bit back a laugh. Bush pilots all got a bit antsy if they were grounded too long, but Skeeter was worse than most. Though he’d had a lot more mishaps than she’d had—including more than a dozen forced landings and three wrecks—they never affected his passion for flying. “What was it this time?”

  “Nothing worth writing home about. Just the usual.” Their frequent landings on gravel bars during the warmer months always kicked up stones into the propeller, and after some months the dents started to affect the plane’s performance. With winter coming on, everything had to be in top working order. “Hear about Red Murdock?” he added, a glum expression darkening his features.

  “No. What’s up?”

  “Had to ditch south of Barrow last night. Got a message out he was icing up. Nothing since. He was flying a guy and his sled dog to a vet in Fairbanks.”

  It could have been her just as easily, but she had learned not to dwell on the what ifs a long time ago. “When it clears enough to start looking for him, I’m in.”

  “Told the troopers that already. I’ll ride along, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure thing.” A second set of trained eyes was always welcome when you had to scour thousands of acres of wilderness, and that was especially true if they went looking for Murdock. He’d arrived in Alaska three years earlier in the same plane he’d used for crop-dusting in Iowa, a white de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver. With the new snowfall, he’d be almost impossible to spot from the air unless he built a fire or some other visible distress signal.

  Bryson had chosen a red plane partially because of the frequent need to ditch, and Skeeter’s was orange and gold. Anything to help your chances of survival.

  Skeeter stubbed out his cigarette and almost immediately lit another. “Say, you seen Lars this morning?”

  “Not yet. Why?”

  “Got the damndest e-mail on the site this morning.” Skeeter was one of the few locals who was well versed in computers, so he maintained the Web site for Arctic Independent Outfitters, a consortium of freelance bush pilots and wilderness guides based in Bettles. Bryson and Skeeter were two of four bush pilots listed on the site, and Lars was one of six guides.

  “Weirdest thing. Just one line: ‘Does Lars Rasmussen have a wife named Maggie?’” The long ash from his cigarette fell onto the table, but he ignored it. “Signed it ‘Karla.’ No last name, no phone number, nothing.”

  “Kind of strange.”

  He glanced around to make sure they were still alone. “Think Lars is having an affair?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Lars?” The mere idea made her laugh. Not that women wouldn’t take to Lars. He was tall and blond, with chiseled features and a body honed by hard work chopping wood and hiking miles upon miles with clients. Only the crow’s feet around his eyes gave away that he was forty-two, not thirty-two. He was sweet and considerate, too, which was rare among Alaskan men. “Not a chance. He’s devoted to Maggie.”

  “Well, you know ’em best.”

  “You answer the e-mail?”

  “Yeah.” Skeeter squirmed in his seat, as though he expected her to disapprove. “Wrote back that he did. But then I got to thinking about it and wondering if I maybe should’ve run it by Lars first.”

  “Don’t see how it could do any harm.” But something was definitely off about the odd inquiry. What could possibly have been the motivation behind it? “Lars’ll know.”

  Lars came through the doorway that led to the rooms upstairs and headed toward them, stifling a yawn. “What’ll I know?”

  Bryson got up to bring another mug and the coffeepot back to the table.

  “Remember a client named Karla?” Skeeter asked as he slid over in the booth to make room.

  “Karla?” Lars scratched at the pale stubble of beard on his cheek. “Can’t recall. There might been one in that big bunch of women went kayaking. Why?”

  Skeeter relayed the contents of the e-mail and his reply. “Thought it might be a former client, since she sent the note to the Web site.”

  Lars shrugged. “Could be. Just can’t remember. We’ve had a lot of trips with women the last few months. Odd, though, her mentioning Maggie. Maybe it’s somebody she knows, trying to track her down.”

  “I’ll give you a holler if I hear back from her.” Skeeter downed the last of his coffee, then shrugged into his parka. “Better get back. See if there’s any news about Red.”

  Bryson and Lars watched him go, following his dark form as it disappeared into the whiteout beyond the glass.

  “Red Murdock?” Lars’s tone was as solemn as if they were at a funeral. He didn’t say more, because he didn’t need to. The mention of a pilot’s name during a storm usually meant only one thing.

  “He’s a good flyer,” Bryson replied. “And here long enough to know what to carry.” Winter and summer, experienced bush pilots always carried survival gear: tent, sleeping bags, fuel, stove, food, and other emergency equipment. She’d had to rely on hers more times than she could count and had also, like many of her peers, learned how to make most simple repairs to her plane.

  Lars leaned across the table and put his hand over hers. “I know you gotta be thinking about your pop.”

  Five years, and still the mention of his name brought tears to her eyes. “He died the way he lived. Least he didn’t suffer.” Some bush pilots survived their crashes only to die of starvation or exposure. Her father’s plane had slammed into the side of a rocky cliff, the apparent victim of a williwaw—those violent arctic whirlwinds that arise out of nowhere and howl unseen through mountain passes toward the coast.

  “You’ll be heading out then, when it clears.” Lars turned his attention back to the window while Bryson regained her composure, and she was grateful for his sensitivity.

  “’Course. It’ll be crowded up there. Always is.” Her father was well known and well liked, and when his plane went missing, dozens of small planes from all over the state joined the search. It had still taken two weeks to locate the wreckage.

  Lars patted her hand and then withdrew his. “Haven’t forgotten those steaks you promised. So get back here fast, huh? Maggie’s not getting any smaller.”

  “You both worry too much.” Bryson rose and reached for her coat. She got antsy when a pilot went missing, so to pass the time, she’d head over and man the radio with Skeeter. Spread the word.

  If her time came, and the odds were good that it would, she knew the others would do the same for her.

  *

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Karla tried her best to block out the noise from a tarring company that was fixing potholes in the parking lot of her apartment complex, but finally the din came too near for her to ignore. She held on to the dream as long as possible. She was nine again, busy peeking in the many closets of the old brick two-story in suburban Hapeville where she grew up.

  The familiar routine never lost its magic. When she was a child, her parents never placed the present she wanted most for Christmas under the tree, but concealed it somewhere in the house or basement. She would rise before dawn to search for it, always in vain.

  After breakfast, she’d open all her other gifts, knowing the true object of her desire wasn’t there, and her parents would pretend for a while they couldn’t find or couldn’t afford that one precious thing. A pogo stick. A pair of hamsters. A guitar. Finally they yielded and gave her a clue where to find it, and she would go hunting, amazed at how cleverly they had hidden it.

  They’d come through every single time except the year she was ni
ne. The year she asked them to make Emily real, to give her a sister.

  Her parents tried to prepare her, telling her in the weeks before Christmas that they couldn’t deliver this present. What else did she want? But by that time, she’d gotten her heart’s desire so reliably, the outcome was so predictable, that she was bitterly disappointed to find a brand-new bicycle under the tree instead of a sister.

  Karla tried to cling to that netherworld halfway between sleep and awareness, though she knew she was dreaming. She wasn’t really nine again, but the images were so vivid she was somehow certain that this time she would find the sister she longed for, hiding in one of the closets. She wouldn’t resemble the Emily of her imaginings, but that didn’t matter. Because this time she would be real.

  Cursing the workers outside her apartment for chasing away her fantasy, she reluctantly pulled herself out of bed. Stella had stayed until after midnight, and Karla had remained at her computer for another three hours, sending e-mail after e-mail into cyberspace, until she finally couldn’t fight off sleep any longer.

  After a long, hot shower and a large mug of coffee, she booted up her computer and held her breath as she accessed her e-mail account.

  She began to sort through the sixty-seven responses to her barrage of blanket inquiries. Most were as terse as her e-mail had been. No, I’m sorry. Or, Afraid I’m not the Lars Rasmussen you’re looking for. Don’t know any Maggie.

  She opened the forty-ninth e-mail expecting more of the same. But there it was. She blinked hard to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. Yes. Lars has a wife named Maggie.

  Her heart pounded as she gripped the edge of the table and read the words over and over. It had seemed like such a long shot that she was dizzy with relief. I found you, Maggie. Now what?

  She’d looked at so many Web sites the day before she couldn’t immediately remember anything about the one that had finally hit pay dirt, so she went back and scoured it.

  This Lars Rasmussen was a wilderness guide in Bettles, Alaska.

  She typed the location into Google maps and got her first indication of just how far away her sister was. Just shy of forty-five hundred miles. Europe was closer.

  For the next hour, she read everything she could find online about Bettles. “Began as a trading post during the 1898 gold rush. Smallest incorporated city in Alaska. Classified as an isolated village center.” The only school had been closed due to low enrollment. Not surprising, she thought, since the 2000 census gave the population as a mere forty-three people. Apparently her sister could not have chosen a more remote place to live. No roads led to it, except in the dead of winter, when lakes and rivers, marshland, and spongy tundra were frozen over and a solid pathway could be plowed over them to connect the village to the paved Dalton Highway.

  “Ranks second on a national list of cities with the largest annual temperature variation, with summer highs in the eighties and nineties, and long periods of minus forty degrees in winter. The lowest temperature ever recorded was minus eighty-two.”

  Born and raised in the South, Karla despised the cold. Give her a sunny beach and temperatures above eighty, and she was content. On those rare occasions when Georgia got a dusting of snow or an ice storm, she saw no beauty in it, only a headache for getting to work. “Average annual total snowfall: 82.4 inches.” In other words, she lived in Siberia. They couldn’t be more different.

  Why would anyone choose such a place? She kept reading. Okay, so it was apparently a great area for seeing the northern lights. And a lot of people went there to visit the Brooks Range and the massive national parks it contained. She was definitely not into camping out. Doing so in Georgia meant black flies, fire ants, copperheads, and water moccasins. And she liked her creature comforts, not sleeping on rocks. But some people enjoyed that sort of thing for vacations. A week or two maybe, but to live there?

  The photographs she called up of the area gave her some insight. Majestic peaks stretching forever. Mountain valleys so crowded with wildflowers they looked like paintings. Herds of migrating caribou, thousands upon thousands of animals. Awesome curtains of red, green, blue, and yellow stretching across the night sky.

  People who had traveled there extolled it with superlatives. Unparalleled beauty. Unforgettable views. Unbelievable scenery. Breathtaking. Magnificent. The trip of a lifetime.

  The ringing of her phone jarred her back to her civilized apartment.

  “Any luck yet?” Stella inquired.

  “Yeah. She lives in Bettles, Alaska. A little village in the middle of nowhere. And I mean really in the middle of nowhere. Above the Arctic Circle.”

  “No shit. Long way away. Who can possibly want to live at the North Pole?”

  “Who knows? Someone with thicker blood than mine, that’s for sure. Shows how different we are.”

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “No. Not yet. I just got an answer to my e-mail that the Lars there has a wife named Maggie. He’s a guide for a wilderness outfitter.”

  “So what’s next?” Stella asked. “What are you going to do?”

  What should I do? Karla turned in her chair and stared at the boxes of her mother’s things. There was only one thing to do. Her mother had set her on an irrevocable path of discovery. Cold or no cold, half a world away or not. A phone call would never be nearly enough.

  “I’m going to buy a plane ticket.”

  Chapter Four

  October 25, 5:50 p.m.

  Over Mount McKinley, Alaska

  Karla stared down in wonder at the nation’s highest peak, the mountain that natives called Denali, the Great One, shining reddish-gold in the alpenglow of the setting sun.

  Those superlatives she’d read about Alaska were no exaggeration. She’d kept her face glued to the window ever since they took off from Seattle. The landscape was surreal in its immense, endless beauty. Stark and forbidding, devoid of any sign of human habitation. But somehow it was serene and peaceful. A world untouched and unscathed by war, pollution, and urban crowding.

  When the view outside the plane grew black, she thought about her sister and the still unresolved questions about what she should say to Maggie when they met.

  In the three days it had taken Karla to make arrangements to leave, she’d thought of little else. She had battled with herself over whether to contact the Rasmussens first, to prepare them for her arrival. It would certainly be polite and prudent to do so, and under any other circumstances she certainly would have.

  But the fear that Maggie might tell her not to come overrode her usual sense of decorum. Because she was arriving unexpectedly, Maggie might reject her totally or welcome her warmly and invite her to stay for a while.

  So she’d paid her bills in advance, arranged for Stella to water her plants, talked to her supervisor at the hospital, and gone shopping. She’d had to go to REI, a specialty store, to find clothes warm enough for her adventure. This time of year, the temperature in Bettles could drop well below freezing at night, so for the trip up, she chose silk long underwear beneath jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, fleece pullover, and a new down-filled jacket. The lined Sierra hiking boots were too warm for the plane, so she had tucked them beneath the seat in front of her. In the overhead bin were her new ski gloves and fleece-lined bomber’s cap, which looked ridiculous on her but was the warmest thing in the store. Her new outfits had cost more than a week’s salary.

  The pilot announced they were beginning their descent into Fairbanks and apologized for the delay. Earlier weather problems had backed up flights in a chain reaction, so she’d already missed her connection to Bettles.

  If she couldn’t find another one this evening, she’d have to overnight in Fairbanks, which she dreaded. It had been hard enough to wait three days to leave. With her mother and Abby both so abruptly gone from her life, she had only her sister left to cling to. And though normally not the superstitious type, Karla couldn’t shake a growing unease that pushed her to get to Bettles as fast as possible. Bad things
came in threes, and the fear that something might happen to Maggie before they had a chance to meet nagged her. She was being irrational but couldn’t dispel the prevailing sense of urgency about this trip. As soon as they landed, she’d find another way to close the final miles.

  There just had to be another flight out tonight.

  *

  October 25, 7 p.m.

  Fairbanks, Alaska

  Bryson had to make four trips between the van and Cub to load all the bags and boxes from her massive shopping expedition. The van belonged to Grizz and was permanently parked at the small hanger that Arctic Independent Outfitters leased at the airport. Fortunately most of the items on her list were small, so everything fit into the back of the plane with her survival gear. Even the passenger seat was packed with goods, and the added weight made her glad she had a long runway both in Fairbanks and Bettles.

  She had spent hours accumulating the wide diversity of objects and hated to disappoint any of her friends or have them spend a dollar more than necessary. She hit Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Sam’s Club, as well as Fred Meyer for food and one small specialty store, Cold Spot Feeds, for dogsled supplies.

  When everything was ready, she locked the van and headed into the terminal to file her flight plan and check out the latest weather conditions, anxious to get home before another storm blew in. She was ready to kill for a good night’s sleep. She’d been in the air except for brief refueling stops for nineteen of the previous twenty-four hours, searching for Red Murdock’s plane. As soon as she got word he’d been found—his plane a mess, but he and his passenger unharmed—she’d diverted immediately to Fairbanks.

  The weather forecast checked out fine, with some low-level turbulence reported just north of the airport, but no sleet or snow yet. Earlier storms, however, had backed up commercial flights so much it would be forty minutes before she could get clearance for takeoff.