Fly by Night

by Andrea Thalasinos

  His voice was calm though he didn’t look it. She didn’t like the mixed messages.

  “I’ve always believed it’s easier to stay out of trouble than to get out of it,” she offered.

  “Heavy ice plates just west of here. Thirty-two inches thick, some of ‘em, that’s all, Amelia.” He sounded more somber than nonchalant. “Compressing northeast.”

  “How about I radio in on channel sixteen, ask to update conditions,” she suggested, not wanting to buck his authority yet not wanting to be endangered either.

  “Already checked. We’re good.”

  Something still felt off.

  “Think we should make for South Twin?” she suggested. “Get out of this until things settle?”

  Peter looked toward the west. The sky was already dark, moving directly toward them, cutting off any chance of making a run through the channel to shelter on Stockton.

  “Might have to,” Peter said. “If the wind picks up any more, might degrade the ice.”

  Amelia monitored the Coast Guard’s channel 16 on the VHF as he talked.

  “Think we’d better shoot more northeast, say for Outer,” he said and climbed back onto his snowmobile. “It’s farther but it’ll get us out of whatever’s gaining. I’ll radio once we make it that far.”

  They wove in and out of the smaller islands, dodging them like a pinball machine, at times going against the wind, at times having it at their backs, all to avoid the unprotected ice that often sports straight-line winds powerful enough to blow everything away like toys.

  Another deep rumble beneath the ice made her slow and turn to Peter. It seemed to quake throughout the channel.

  “Told ya,” he said to reassure. “Just lake thunder.”

  She noticed small cracks and then heaves along the seams, lifting up into four-inch ridges.

  “Nothing to—” Peter stopped talking midsentence. His face tensed. He looked at her.

  Amelia’s stomach lurched. “What?” she asked.

  “That sound.”

  “What sound?”

  “Like seismic ice plates. One large chunk is pushing up from underneath, pushing east. Gales from the west are causing the shift.”

  They were eight miles north of Cat Island. Peter cut his engine to listen. He then turned his ear. You could hear the winds whooshing, over the tops of the islands, invading the protected areas as they rushed the channels, blowing in strange circling patterns from every direction.

  “What does this mean?” She imagined the map of the Apostles in her mind and could only guess they were in trouble.

  He powered up his snowmobile. “Either we try to make it to Outer or risk being on open ice pack with no protection,” he called over the engine and the roar of the wind.

  Amelia wasn’t familiar with the ways of ice.

  “Whichever you think is best,” she said.

  He paused. She didn’t like the pause.

  He looked up at her, his eyes round with worry.

  “Not sure.”

  Her stomach shrank.

  “Let’s try for Outer,” he said. “If we can’t make it, we’ll call it in.”

  “Why not call it in now if you’re worried?”

  “I’m not worried.”

  He grabbed his left shoulder again to massage it and then revved his snowmobile, heading northeast toward Outer.

  They’d nearly made it a half mile when the sky dipped down to touch the surface, obscuring everything.

  Clouds were a dark navy blue. With one gust, the wind blew both their snowmobiles, making it impossible to steer.

  The bungee on Amelia’s rubber sled snapped. Gear blew from where it had been cinched, knocking off the white plastic specimen pails as they rolled, strewing out the contents of live fish wriggling and flopping on the ice.

  Peter slowed to a stop.

  “Peter,” she called to him through the howling wind. “Peter,” she yelled.

  He was slumped over the front of the snowmobile. She wondered if a piece of gear had hit him in the head, knocking him out.

  Amelia set the brake on her snowmobile, and took off running. She heard the zipping sound of wind blowing her snowmobile across the ice.

  “Peter.” She reached him. “Are you okay?” She touched his head and then propped him up, cradling him. He opened his eyes and looked up with sad, frightened eyes. “My arm’s cramped. I think I’m having…”

  “Where’s the radio?”

  “Back of…” His voice trailed off. He winced. “… my sled.”

  Amelia helped him off the snowmobile and laid him flat on the ice. She scooted the rubber sled around and dragged him onto it, covering him as best she could with a sleeping bag. His hat blew off.

  For a moment a tinkling sound like ice cubes in a tumbler began hitting the surface as she realized it was freezing rain. Amelia slipped and fell. She tried to gain a foothold but couldn’t. The wind was blowing sideways, stinging her face. She then lay flat, using her hands to pull herself toward Peter.

  She managed to grab the rubber sled and pull it toward her.

  “It’s gonna be okay, you’re gonna be okay,” she kept saying as she lay down beside him, digging through the gear, feeling for the VHF radio.

  Just as she located the radio and pulled it out to call the Coast Guard, an eighty-mile-an-hour gust knocked it out of her hand and then blew her out of the sled, both sliding on the ice, the radio sliding faster until something resembling a hockey puck slid past and both disappeared.

  There were flares in the sleds. A few had blown past her, scattering across the ice. She trapped one with her foot but then lost it as it blew off with the rest.

  “Fuck,” she yelled and tried to get back to Peter, to find more flares, but the wind was blowing her farther away.

  Then everything stopped.

  “Peter,” she called, using her fingernails to claw toward the sled, wriggling like an earthworm, using the fabric of her clothes for traction to reach to him.

  Just before the storm picked up again, she reached him and crawled onto the rubber sled.

  His face was gray. His eyes were open and looking up into the rain.

  “Tell. Cherise.” His voice was weak. “Kids.”

  “No, you’re gonna tell them,” she insisted, trying to find a pulse on his neck. Then his eyes stopped seeing. He didn’t blink as the freezing rain commenced. She turned him over, covered him, and began sobbing. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

  Then she stopped. She looked around. Everything in her knew she was about to die. A strange coherence settled as all extraneous emotion evaporated except for thoughts of how to steady and not get blown away.

  Gale-force winds picked up again, screaming so loud it hurt her ears. She reached for Peter’s snowmobile and grabbed on to part of the engine. She held on as it slid across the ice with no resistance until it smashed against a pressure ridge. The abruptness almost threw her but she gripped tighter. The ice shifted, she felt another crack. It groaned as it widened like continents being pushed by terrestrial urges. Half the machine dipped sideways into the crevasse. Amelia could feel it crunching as the ice plates moved.

  Everything in her was telling her to let go, let the wind take her but she was so terrified until suddenly she didn’t care. Nothing mattered. She closed her eyes and let go like it was nothing, sliding and spinning with nothing to stop her, like the ocean undertow. She shielded her face, covered her eyes.

  Then the wind stopped. She looked around, amazed she was alive.

  Then the sound of marbles hitting ice came from every direction. She curled up into a ball, being blown sideways, all their provisions scattered and blowing across the ice, pelting her like demonic toys to punish her. A thermos flew and hit her in the back, the augers slid past like they were weightless, Peter’s log books blew by and bashed her cheek. Everything was out of context on the ice and in the air, sliding without direction, without meaning as debris kept scattering about in the dictates of the wind.


  Then it died again.

  So still she could hear the ringing of her own ears.

  But she didn’t trust it. In the quiet a deep, low-frequency rumble echoed through the depths, spreading for miles.

  “Dad?” she called, looking around.

  As the wind let up on one of the pressure ridges she noticed a blinking red light, an incoming call. It was the satellite phone.

  “Oh thank you.” She tried to get up, bashed her knee, and slid, clawing her way to grab it. Just within reach, the wind blew, sending her sliding farther away until she no longer saw the light.

  “Fuck,” she yelled. The wind stopped. She moved in earthworm posture toward the phone. She reached to grab it. Her fingers were so frozen she hit the redial with her nose.

  “Hello, we need help,” she yelled over the wind into the phone before anyone answered. “Please.”

  “Amelia?”

  “Oh, Bryce. Oh, God, Peter’s had a heart attack, the wind is gale force, and the ice is breaking up. Call the Coast Guard, Bryce.”

  “Copy,” Bryce said. “I’ll stay on the phone—”

  But as soon as he said it a gust blew the transmitter out of her hands, tumbling along, smashing it into pieces against the rocklike pressure ridges.

  She screamed and tucked into a ball as the wind blew her, crashing headfirst into a ridge of ice and was immediately knocked out.

  * * *

  Wind like an eggbeater woke her. She covered her head with one of her hands. What now?

  “Ma’am?”

  How could the wind be talking? She wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t be its friend.

  “Amelia.”

  Too late. It knows her name.

  “Amelia Drakos?”

  She turned to look. Her head throbbed. Everything spun.

  A Coast Guard swimmer in a red uniform was suspended from the air. He lowered toward her.

  She reached for his arms.

  “Peter … he had…”

  “We know.”

  She tried to stand but her foot slipped and turned underneath her.

  “Don’t try,” the young man said. “It’s glare ice.”

  She nodded.

  “I’m going to slip this harness around you,” he instructed. “Under your shoulders and then tighten it. I’ve got you. Try to relax as we’re lifted. You’re safe. You’re okay.”

  The whirling sound began to change as her body lifted, leaning against the diver.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Just lean against me.”

  “I’m gonna throw up.”

  “That’s okay,” he said as the two of them spun up like the double helix of DNA, up toward the safety of the door.

  * * *

  The ambulance waited at the marina as the helicopter set down in the empty parking lot.

  The Coast Guard transferred Amelia onto a gurney as paramedics took over, rushing her toward the ambulance. Bryce leaned over.

  “Ammy.”

  She started to cry at his voice and grasped his hand. She tried to speak, to tell him about Peter, but couldn’t. Bryce climbed up into the ambulance, following her in.

  “How is she?” TJ asked, standing outside beside the door.

  “Banged up but stable,” the paramedic said. “They’ll check her out more when we get to Ashland General.”

  “Can I ride along?” TJ asked.

  The paramedic turned to TJ. “Are you family?”

  Bryce reached to give TJ a hand up.

  “Yep,” TJ said, as Bryce hoisted him up. “She’s my sister.”

  43

  Two weeks later Bryce and Amelia flew to Rhode Island to discuss the offer of permanent positions with the university.

  They were sitting in the dean’s office.

  “This is one of those rare happy moments when things go right,” said Phil, the dean of the marine biology department.

  Pages from both their employment contracts lay arranged on the conference table before them. Amelia and Bryce had read and checked off each stipulation in the margins as the dean sat, smiling. A few from the Board of Regents who’d fought to fund the positions sat ready with a bottle of champagne and glasses.

  “All we need are your signatures.” Phil handed both Amelia and Bryce a pen.

  “Ladies first,” Bryce said.

  She bent over to sign but then retracted the pen. She sat, thinking.

  “Um.” She pushed out her chair. “Mind if I take a minute here, Phil?” Amelia asked.

  The dean looked surprised. “Why … sure, Amelia. Questions? Is something not clear?”

  “Um, no, not really,” she said. “It’s all perfectly clear. I just need a moment to think.” She looked at Bryce and stood up.

  “Take as long as you need,” Phil said.

  She tipped her head toward the door, for Bryce to meet her out in the hall.

  * * *

  Standing outside the office Amelia recalled the last time she’d walked down that hallway after turning in her security badges, cards, keys, thinking she’d never be there again.

  “So, eh … what’s up, Chuck?” Bryce asked, folding his arms as he leaned against the wall next to the water fountain.

  She looked at him. “Why am I not more excited about this?”

  “Why am I not more excited about this either?”

  “Six months ago I would have crawled on hands and knees all the way back from Minneapolis for an offer like this.”

  “But…” He raised his eyebrows.

  “But it makes me feel claustrophobic or like I’m moving backward.”

  “Claustrophobic,” he repeated, smiling in an amused way.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Confined, like you say when you’re wearing flip-flops in winter.”

  He sniffed, amused, and then shifted his weight onto the other leg.

  “It’s like this whole other life germinated out there right under our noses,” she said and folded her arms.

  Amelia leaned over to take a drink from the hall water fountain, wiping her chin on her hand before she spoke.

  “I think I want to take the UM-Duluth offer.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.” She turned to look at him. “What do you think?”

  “You go first.”

  “I’m thinking we could teach,” she said. “Reopen a lab for our research, make a contribution to the Fresh Water Initiative for Lake Superior,” she said. “Hire Jen and have her little kid run around like Alex used to.” She giggled.

  He nodded slightly as he listened.

  “After all, Bryce, how could I never again hear Jethro’s scratch at the door to be let in for the night?” Out of nowhere, remembering the first night choked her up.

  “How could I live here knowing the wolf hunt’s still on? Thinking of Smiley, B-34, what happened to Lacey and the others. How much work there is to be done to get wolves relisted, to fight the sway and power of special interest monies that could affect all endangered species and even those that are not. I have to help in whatever way I can.”

  “Come here.” Bryce reached and pulled her close.

  “And that Charlotte and TJ are out there and I’m not. That Whitedeer and Cherise are there too and I’m not close enough to even put a Christmas wreath on Peter’s grave.” Again she felt the sorrow of his passing.

  “That Jen and Doby are going to have their baby in Duluth and I won’t be there to see it grow up, be the godmother, the auntie who spoils it rotten and then goes home.”

  As Bryce kissed the top of her head she felt the warmth of his breath, Amelia leaned back and studied him, watching for a long while as if giving him the chance to disagree.

  “That every day I won’t see that big, bad, beautiful lake that tried to fucking kill me. And that like the ocean, it showed me the limitless of chance if you only stand still long enough for it to find you.” She closed her eyes. Dad.

  Bryce pulled her close again and leaned his head on top of hers. “Well, I for one will stand stil
l next to you.”

  “You will, will you?” She chuckled.

  “Of course, Am, for better or worse, you’re stuck with me. Either here or out there. But betcha I can stand still longer than you,” he said.

  They turned and walked arm in arm down the hall back toward the dean’s office.

  “Betcha a whitefish dinner and unlimited Spotted Cows that you can’t,” she bet.

  He frowned and offered his pinkie to bet. “That’s not even a bet, Am.”

  “You’re so arrogant—always think you can do what I can do better.”

  “Maybe it’s because I can.” There was a lilt to his voice.

  “You’re delusional,” she said and stopped.

  Amelia turned toward him.

  “Come here.” She crooked her index finger and he moved closer.

  And with that she pulled him close, giving him the finger before she stood on her toes and reached up to kiss him.

  About the Author

  Andrea Thalasinos, Ph.D., is a professor of sociology at Madison College. She is the author of An Echo Through the Snow and Traveling Light, inspiring novels that draw on her longstanding passions for dogs, nature, and native peoples. Andrea lives and writes in Madison, Wisconsin.

  Visit Andrea online at www.andreathalasinos.com. Or sign up for email updates here.

  FORGE BOOKS BY ANDREA THALASINOS

  An Echo Through the Snow

  Traveling Light

  Fly by Night

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  From the Start

  Chapter 1