Joey said, “We’ll get the door.” He and Rick pushed the doors wide while Clara stood by, gun at the ready. Light flooded in and Luis stepped forward. I said, “Hang on a second,” and put on my harness and grabbed my shotgun.
“Okay.”
There was a small group of bison, perhaps four bulls and six cows, grazing at the end of the runway. A flock of cattle egrets, white against the blue sky, arose from the grass, startled by the movement of the doors.
“Why is it so cold?”
It wasn’t that cold—about sixty-five—but compared to the tame side it was chilly. “That’s the way it is, here,” I said. “We think this is a mini-ice age.”
“Here?”
“Here. Where do you think you are, Luis? Look at the end of the runway.”
He’d glanced at the bison when we came out, but they were at least a hundred yards away. He hadn’t registered them as anything but cattle.
“Those are buffalo.” He said it almost accusingly, as if we’d put them there on purpose.
“Bison, actually.”
The cattle egrets started to settle, but Rick and Joey started walking toward the bison. Luis flinched as Rick touched off his air horn and the flock of egrets exploded up again. The bison closed together in a defensive formation, bulls in front of the cows. Joey touched off his air horn, a long blast of sound, then Rick echoed him. The bison moved off the runway and out of sight behind the hill.
I turned around and looked up at Marie, in the tower. “How’s the weather?” I shouted.
“Barometer’s dropping, wind’s out of the east,” she called back.
“See anything?”
She scanned the horizon with binoculars. There were some high, scattered clouds above.
“Nothing, really.”
Luis watched this exchange, then said, “Where are we? How did we get here?”
“Don’t you remember? The wardrobe with the coats?”
He looked confused.
“Sorry. The tunnel. The tunnel in the back of the barn, remember?”
He nodded, slowly.
“Good. Let’s go flying—want to show you some more.”
We took the Maule up, after preflight. The propeller vibration seemed normal, but I was concerned. I pointed out the Brazos River and the Little Brazos and the Navasota River. “That’s where Easterwood is.” I pointed at an empty stretch of grass and shrub. “On the other side, that is.”
It slowly sank in. “Where are the people?”
“There aren’t any on this side. None that we know of. Try the radio. Try all the frequencies.
You’ll find Marie on 121.6 and you’ll find our ATIS on 124 and you’ll find our AM beacon at 216.”
He clicked through the comm frequencies, then the ADF; finally, he started clicking through the VOR frequencies. He found our stuff, but nothing else. “You sure this radio works?”
I nodded. “In the hangar you can pick up stuff that leaks through the tunnel—Easterwood tower. But you can’t get it up here.”
I found a larger herd of buffalo, some antelope that bounded along the ground, and then, in a meadow near the Brazos, two mammoths tearing at the grass with their tusks scraping the ground. I circled slowly, five hundred feet above ground level, and let him get a good look. All the time I talked, telling him about Uncle Max and how I’d discovered the tunnel in the back of the barn.
The sky to the north darkened and Marie reported that the wind had shifted to the north and was increasing. I landed and we put the plane away, closing the doors on the hangar as the norther hit.
Large drops of water pelted the hangar doors and Marie dropped down through the roof from the tower and closed the trapdoor. Her hair was tangled and water spotted her jacket.
“Wind’s gusting to fifty,” she said. “Hope the tower doesn’t go.”
The six of us walked back through the tunnel and out of the barn. The sun beat down like a hammer and the humid, hot air stuck in the throat. The weather was nothing like the other side.
“So, Luis, are you satisfied that we’re not running drugs out of Mexico?”
He pulled his jacket off. “Drugs would explain a lot. Like everything I just saw—you put LSD in my iced tea?”
I stared at him, then realized he was kidding. We entered the house and hung our coats.
“How did you do it? The tunnel, that is?”
I saw Marie about to answer him, and quickly said, “I don’t think you should know. I think, as our lawyer, you should be in a position to say, ‘I don’t know how they do it.’” I changed the subject, before the others could ask me what on earth I was talking about. “I own the ranch free and clear. The taxes are paid up and there are no liens against it. There don’t seem to be any humans on the other side—hell, it doesn’t even seem to be the same planet, much less the same country. The doorway is on my land. What’s our legal position? Who owns the other side, Luis?”
He stared at me and his mouth dropped. Finally, he said, “Well—you do. Right up to the point that the feds find out about it.”
He stared for another long beat, then said, “So don’t let them find out.”
On the wildside, a high pressure zone and lower temperatures followed the norther through, leaving us with clear, untroubled skies. We resumed operations the next day, two flights a day to the Royce City airstrip.
The first trip up, Joey and I climbed a solitary pine next to the new strip and topped off its thin upper trunk, then mounted an AM radio beacon with a south-facing solar panel to charge its batteries. It broadcast Morse “R” for Royce. At the south end of the runway we mounted a wind sock.
Every trip after that, the Maule carried fifteen five-gallon plastic containers of aviation gas strapped securely into a cargo space made larger by the removal of the rear seats. We could’ve carried more, but landing on a rough field with 450 pounds of highly flammable cargo right behind your seat was nervous-making enough without approaching the weight limits.
At the end of the week we had 525 gallons of avgas stored under a tarp in the shade of the pines. We took three days and replaced the double rear door with a sliding one, suitable for opening in flight. We were ready for the next step.
The next base, Comanche, was 150 miles north west of Wildside Base, roughly 150 miles from the Royce City base. This time we actually did it as planned. Since I got to jump last time, I was pilot this trip with Rick as copilot. Clara and Marie went in first, by chute, and leveled a spot or two, cut down a small tree, and dragged a log away. The Maule came in smoothly, with no mishaps from birds.
I was still glad we were now carrying an entire spare prop assembly.
We took a week and a half to stockpile fuel at Comanche since we lost three days to fog and rain. We used the opportunity to have more avgas and plastic jerry cans delivered.
I also took a bunch of wildlife video, making Rick trudge through wet grass mud so that he could watch my back. In the rain I was able to get relatively close to bison, antelope, and even a group of red wolves. There were some weird ground birds as well, which turned out to be Atwater’s prairie chicken, an endangered species on our side.
Now that Luis was in on the secret, he came over on the weekend and flew a fuel run as my copilot. This pissed off Joey, since it was his rotation and Luis didn’t have his IFR ticket yet.
I took Joey aside. “Look, Luis is our buffer against the feds. If—no, make that when they come looking for us, he’s got to keep them off us. Don’t you think it’s important to keep him happy?”
He didn’t like it, but he took it. When we got back that evening, he was drinking beer on the porch. I counted cans. “Rick help you with that six-pack?”
He ignored me and popped the top of another beer. There were five empties lined up neatly on the edge of the porch.
“Where is Rick?” Rick was running the tower when we landed the plane. As soon as he’d finished helping us fuel the Maule and roll it into the hangar, he’d gone back to the tame side.
Luis and I’d dawdled over closing the doors, watching a large flock of white cranes fly overhead, then followed about twenty minutes later.
“He drove Marie and Clara back to their place.” The sentence, when it came, was angry.
“Without you?” I asked, genuinely surprised. The four of them did nearly everything together.
“Yeah. Without me. So?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. You and Marie have the first flight tomorrow—don’t drink much more.”
“Give it a rest, Chuckie,” he said.
I shrugged and walked Luis to his car.
“Is he going to be all right?” Luis asked.
“Of course,” I said.
“Right. Thanks for the flying time—it’s different.”
“You’re welcome.”
After he left, I walked back to the barn and used the phone there to call Clara and Marie’s apartment.
“What’s with Joey?” I asked when Clara answered the phone.
“He started drinking after you left. Marie and I finished mowing the tame strip and found him on the porch. She asked him to stop with three beers. He said nobody tells him when to stop drinking, not even her. It went downhill from there.”
“Oh,” I said. “What’s Marie doing now?”
“She’s scrubbing the kitchen floor.”
“Well, that’s not too bad.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Clara. “She just cleaned it yesterday.”
“Oh.”
“That all you ever say, Charlie? ‘Oh’?”
“Well, uh, oh. Talk to you later.”
Joey brought his beer in and turned on the TV. I wondered why he had to drink so much. I wanted him to stop. “I’m going into town to see what’s playing at the dollar house. You want to go?”
He just shook his head.
I felt obliged to carry through, relieved, in fact, to be away from him. I grabbed my keys, then paused at the front door, my hand on the knob. I heard him open another beer can. I considered reminding him about Federal Aviation Regulations but knew he wouldn’t listen. I settled for slamming the door.
When I got back, three hours later, he was slumped over on the couch, asleep, and a pyramid of empty beer cans on the end table reflected blue light from the TV.
I turned the set off, threw away the cans, and covered Joey with a blanket.
I got up at seven the next morning. Joey wasn’t on the couch anymore and the blanket was lying on the stairs. He must’ve woken in the night and gone to his room. His door was shut, but Rick’s wasn’t. Rick’s bed was empty and, though a mess, didn’t seem to have been slept in recently.
This was confirmed when he drove up fifteen minutes later with Clara and Marie. “What’s for breakfast, Charlie?”
They looked at me expectantly and I said, “Omelets, I guess. It’s the only thing I know how to make.”
I cooked while Rick did yesterday’s dishes. The girls were dubious at first, but finished the omelets after tasting. “Never had apricot preserves in an omelet before,” Clara said.
That week we were running fuel direct to Scurry, three hundred miles from Wildside Base, striking out for Colorado. This was well within the range of the Maule but meant running only one trip a day, so we usually didn’t start until nine or so. Still, the day was getting on. “Who wants to wake Sleeping Beauty,” I said.
Marie grimaced, then said, “I’ll do it.”
She came back in five minutes. “He looks terrible.“
“Is he coming?”
“Yeah, he’s in the shower. What’s happening with the weather?” She kept glancing at the ceiling and rocking on her heels.
I’d gone over to the wildside to check the weather before they got there. “It’s okay. Partly cloudy. High clouds—maybe seven thousand.”
Marie nodded, then turned abruptly. “I’m going to go start preflight.” She walked out, followed by Clara.
Joey came down ten minutes later, walking slowly down the staircase and holding on to the rail.
Rick and I watched him from the foot of the stairs. “You want breakfast?” I asked.
He shook his head slowly and tightened his mouth into a thin line. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he staggered and I put out a hand to steady him. His breath hit me like a hammer, rich in exhaled alcohol.
“Christ, Joey. You’re in no shape to fly.”
“Bullshit,” he said.
“Rick, you’re up. Take this flight.”
“Hey!” said Joey. “You’re doing it again. First Luis, now Rick!”
“You’re still drunk, Joey. I told you to take it easy last night. I put ten empty beer cans away. Are you trying to kill yourself?”
“None of your business,” said Joey.
I turned away. “Rick, go on.”
Joey tried to grab Rick’s arm as Rick left, but he missed and sat down hard on the bottom step.
“Jesus, Joey, you know what the FAA says.”
“The FAA isn’t even on the wildside,” he said weakly.
“So? The regs are like that to keep things safe. You want to kill yourself and take one of us with you? Marie?”
He put his head down in his hands and said, “Fuck you.”
I left him and went over to the wildside. Marie was standing guard while Clara and Rick loaded the plane with plastic jerry cans. After the load had been secured and triple-checked, Marie and Rick climbed in and started up.
Clara came up into the tower with me and watched them take off. “Joey’s really being an asshole, isn’t he?”
I licked my lips. “Yeah, I guess so.” I stared after the Maule until it vanished, a shrinking dot blocked by the horizon. “Why does she stay with him?”
“Marie? Love, I guess. She and Joey have problems, but boy do they love each other. I wish Rick and I had half the passion.” Her voice became quiet at the end of that sentence and when I looked at her she blushed. “I’ll go get the tractor. It’s my turn to mow the strip.”
Before she left, though, the front gate alarm went off, a long buzz that indicated a car passing in front of the beam.
“Who could that be?” I said. My dad was flying that week and Luis, though he now had the combination to the front gate, knew to call before coming out.
“I’ll check,” said Clara.
She came back with the tractor through the tunnel, from the barn, and parked it outside the hangar. She used her radio to call up to me. “It was Joey. He took Rick’s car. And now I don’t have anybody to ride shotgun while I mow the strip.”
I switched on the voice-activated recorder and went down to ride shotgun while she mowed. I also kept my handheld radio tuned to our traffic frequency and an earplug in my ear, but its range wasn’t anywhere near that of the base station in the tower. As we drove up and down the strip I cursed Joey’s name under my breath. I hoped nothing happened to Rick and Marie, especially while I couldn’t hear them.
When I checked the recorder afterward, there’d been nothing received. Marie checked in on their return leg a half hour later with no problems.
She was not happy when I told her about Joey. Rick was furious. “I didn’t give him permission to drive my car!”
“Where were the keys?”
“Uh, on the kitchen table. That’s where they were after breakfast.”
They landed an hour later.
“Any word?” Marie asked after they’d finished servicing the plane and putting it in the hangar.
I shook my head.
“I’ll make some phone calls,” she said.
We adjourned to the ranch house. Marie tried Joey’s parents, keeping her voice untroubled. He wasn’t there. She tried some of Joey’s friends from the wrestling team—most of them weren’t home, either at work or gone away for the summer. The few that were home hadn’t seen him. She asked everyone she did reach to have Joey call if they saw him.
“What now?” asked Clara.
I started to say, “I don’t—”
Marie
said, “We go look for him, of course.”
“We do?” Clara said.
Marie turned a hurt look on Clara. “Wouldn’t you? What if it were Rick out there?”
“Depends,” Clara said. “Rick’s an adult. If he chose to leave, I’d respect that choice and wait for him to call or return.”
“Are you saying Joey’s not an adult?” Marie looked close to tears.
“Do you think he’s acting like one?” Clara replied.
Marie looked down at the floor.
“It’s my car,” said Rick. “I want to find it before he wrecks it. I’m not sure the insurance covers the car when I’m not driving.”
Clara put her arm around Marie’s shoulders. “It’ll be okay. Honest. I’ll use my motorcycle to look if Charlie will drop me at the apartment so I can get it.”
I shook my head and took my keys out of my pocket. “Somebody should stay here in case he comes back or calls.” I handed the keys to Rick. “Take my truck—I’ll wait here and man the phone.”
“Thanks, Charlie,” Marie said. They left.
While I was working in the tower or helping Clara mow the lawn, I’d kept my imagination under control, but now, alone in the empty house, I was sure that Joey was out there telling everyone he knew about this tunnel into another world.
I turned on the TV, switching to the news, and was shocked to see a news story on passenger pigeons.
“Spokesmen for the San Diego Zoo, the National Zoo, The Nature Conservancy, and the Sierra Club announced today that they are in possession of four male and sixteen female passenger pigeons. This bird, which was believed to be extinct since the last-known specimen, Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914, was slaughtered by the millions during the latter half of the nineteenth century.”
The screen switched from the news anchor to a group of four men standing in a cluster before microphones. A man adjusted his glasses as he read from a statement. “The birds are definitely passenger pigeons. Genetic material obtained from preserved passenger pigeons at the Smithsonian Institution contains over 99.999 percent of the same gene sequences. Interestingly enough, the differences between our individual live specimens indicate that they are not closely related, but are from a wide and diverse gene pool of this species.” He paused and looked up at the cameras. “The four male birds were donated anonymously. The sixteen females were sold to us by the same party, also anonymously.