I force a smile. “Hi. I’m looking for Agnes.”
“She’s in the back.” She gestures to a doorway behind her. “I’m Sharon, by the way.”
“Right. Agnes mentioned you the other day. I’m Wren’s daughter, Calla.” I shake my head at myself as I approach. “Which we just covered.”
She laughs and nods to the doorway. “Go on through.”
It’s not until I round the desk that I notice the basketball under Sharon’s shirt. My eyes widen involuntarily.
“All baby, right?” She pats her swollen belly. “And a lot of it.”
“When are you due?” Because she looks ready to burst.
“Eight more weeks, and I am so ready to be done.”
“I’ll bet.” She can’t be older than me. She might be even younger. I struggle not to grimace at the thought of being in her shoes. Maybe a baby will sound more appealing to me in a few years.
Like, ten years.
“Well . . . good luck.” I wander through the doorway and into a much smaller room decorated in the same outdated fashion, half of the space filled with filing cabinets of varying sizes and shades of metal gray, the other half by three large desks. Maps plaster the walls all around, and off to the far left is a small office with a door that wears a gold plaque with the name “Wren Fletcher.” It’s empty.
A portly white-haired man sits at a desk in the corner, stabbing at the keys of a clunky calculator with the eraser end of his pencil. The printer churns and a strip of white paper spits out at a steady stream. It’s a scene right out of one of those cheesy old movies that Simon insisted I watch, sans the thick haze of cigarette smoke and rotary phone.
Agnes looks up from her monitor, a pair of glasses that are much too narrow for her round face perched on the end of her nose. “Hey, Calla. Looking for your dad?” She’s not at all fazed that I’ve shown up here, but she never seems fazed by anything.
“No, actually I wanted to talk to you for a minute. Can you take a quick break?”
“I was just thinking I needed a coffee refresh.” Agnes stands and collects a green mug from beside her desk, and then the red one beside Calculator Man. “Another one, James?”
“Uh-huh.” He doesn’t even look up.
She hesitates. “Calla’s here.”
His hand pauses mid-poke, his bushy eyebrow lifting as he regards me. “Good God, you’re Susan’s spitting image,” he mutters, before glaring at the sheet in front of him. “Dammit, where was I?”
“James is ‘in the zone,’ as Mabel would say.” Agnes nods toward the door. “We try not to interrupt him. He gets grouchy.” She pokes her head around the corner. “Sharon? Keep an ear out for dispatch, will ya? Wren should be calling in soon.”
“Can do!” says the chirpy receptionist.
“Wren went up to St. Mary’s to check on some repairs to the station building.” Agnes leads me through a different door and into what I’m guessing is the staff room—a long corridor with a small kitchenette on one side, a rectangular table in the middle, and an eclectic collection of three worn couches in a U-shape on the far end, the pillows misshapen from years of being burdened by weight. A coffee table in front of them is stacked with tattered magazines and poorly folded newspapers.
It feels like it’s several degrees colder in here. I hug myself, trying to warm up. “So, that guy back there remembers my mother?” James, I think she said.
“And you.” Agnes retrieves the half-full pot of coffee from the maker and fills both mugs. “James has been coming in here every week to update Wild’s books for forty-eight years now. Can you believe that?”
Wow. “And he doesn’t use a computer?”
“Nope. Just that big calculator and his ledger books.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Agnes shakes her head, amusement in her eyes.
“Is that the way things are in Alaska?”
“That’s the way things are in Alaska Wild.” She turns the tap on and begins washing a dirty mug left by the sink. The paper taped to the wall above that reads, “You use it, you wash it” was clearly ignored. “It’s the same reason your dad still books flights on scrap pieces of paper that I have to fish out of his pockets, and why we only take reservations in person and over the phone.” She chuckles. “In case you haven’t noticed, Wild is behind a few decades.”
“I couldn’t even find a website,” I admit. “Not one that had anything on it, anyway.”
“That is our website.” Agnes chuckles and then rolls her eyes. “You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to convince Wren we should have one. He argued that we didn’t need to pay someone thousands of dollars because everyone in Alaska already knows us. Anyway, I finally got him to agree and we hired this designer guy from Toledo. He took our money, set up the website address, and then never did anything else. I chased him for a few months, until my emails started bouncing back.” She shrugs. “We haven’t gotten around to finding someone new yet.”
“You don’t need to pay someone. You could do it yourself.”
She snorts. “I finally figured out how to build a simple staff schedule on Excel. I know what my limits are.”
“What about that girl out front. Sharon?”
“Sharon’s good with dealing with customers. That’s her strength. Same with Maxine. She’s not here today, but you’ll meet her another day.”
“Well . . . what about Jonah, then?”
“Jonah?” She chuckles. “That guy refuses to answer his phone half the time. No . . . Jonah’s good at flying planes and telling everyone what to do, and fixing our problems. He wants nothing to do with computers.”
“Don’t planes use computers?” I mutter wryly. That explains the wristwatch, though. “Well, maybe I could do it for you guys while I’m here,” I offer, without thinking. “I mean, I don’t know anything about planes or charter companies, but I’m sure I could figure it out.” Most of what I do for the Calla & Dee site has been self-taught.
“Ah, it’s not that important. We’ll get to it, eventually. You’re only here for a week. You should spend it getting to know your dad.”
I guess.
If he’s around long enough.
Agnes rings out the dish sponge and sets it out to dry. “Did Mabel come by this morning?”
“No. Why?”
“Oh, just wondering. I told her to give you space, but she doesn’t listen too well sometimes. There’s not a lot new and exciting around Bangor.” She smiles. “You are something new and exciting. And she can be overwhelming sometimes.”
Mention of Mabel reminds me why I came to Alaska Wild this morning in the first place. I hesitate to bring it up and risk making our conversation awkward. “I’m sorry about last night.”
She waves it away, much like my father did. “We can see how that confusion might have happened and how it would have been shocking for you.”
I watch Agnes’s profile for a moment as she quietly wipes spilled sugar and coffee from the countertop. Is she truly this understanding? “My dad told me about Mabel’s father. Derek, right?”
“Right.” A wistful smile lifts her cheeks. “I still remember the first day he showed up here from Oregon. He was the loud, goofy new pilot and I fell for him right away. We got married a year later.” She wanders over to sit opposite me at the table, her coffee cup gripped in her small hands. “When we got the call that he hadn’t shown up, I just knew. It took them two days to find his plane because of the fog. I was sitting on that couch over there when they told us that they’d found it.” She nods toward the baby-blue one and a ball of emotion swells in my throat.
“That’s . . . horrible.”
Pain flashes through her eyes and then, just as quickly, it’s gone again. “It was. But I always knew it was a possibility. It is with any of these guys, the conditions they fly in. We’ve lost a good few friends over the
years. I can’t tell you how many times Jonah has stressed me out. Anyway . . . I was thankful that I had Mabel on the way. She’s a piece of him that I got to keep.”
“Does she ask about him a lot?” As much as I used to ask my mom about my father when I was young?
“Not a lot. Sometimes.” Agnes leans back in her chair, her eyes roving the tile ceiling. “She reminds me of Derek so much. She’s a ball of energy just like he was. She even has that raspy voice of his.”
“It’s funny how that can happen, isn’t it?”
I feel Agnes’s dark gaze land on me as I draw a finger over the wood-grain swirls in the tabletop, with hands that my mother swears are identical to my father’s.
“It was Derek’s death that made Wren decide to come visit you in Toronto. Derek had been pushing him to go and then, after he died, Wren felt he owed it to him.”
Didn’t he feel that he owed it to me?
I push that bitter thought aside. “Because he blamed himself for Derek dying. He told me.”
Agnes makes a disapproving sound. “No matter what way you slice it, Wren has a way of twisting the accident to take the blame. Either Derek wasn’t experienced enough to find his way through those mountains, which means Wren made a bad judgment call, or there was no avoiding it, and it should have been Wren flying into that ridge. It happens enough through those passes when the weather’s dicey. Pilots mistake one river for the next and they don’t turn when they’re supposed to, or turn too early. Either way, Derek should still be here. According to Wren, anyway. No one else ever saw it that way but him.” She hesitates, studying me. “He never told me that he canceled his trip to go see you until it was too late. If I’d known what he was planning, I would have insisted that he go. I feel partially responsible for what happened between you two. I’m sorry for that.”
“No . . . You had nothing to do with it. That was his choice.” And perhaps his mistake, but perhaps not. What would have happened to our family? Would Simon have been cast aside?
Would my mother have done something that she couldn’t take back?
What would my life look like right now, had my dad come to Toronto?
I sigh heavily. “I wish he’d told me. Even if I didn’t understand it at the time, I’d like to think I would have eventually.”
“If it makes you feel any better, Wren won’t say it but I know he has a lot of regrets. You and your mother are at the center of most of them.” Agnes stands and wanders over to a block of cupboards by the utility sink. “He can be an infuriating man, I’ll admit. He says little and is slow to act on feelings. It’s not that he doesn’t care, though. Far from it. You just sometimes have to watch extra close to see how he shows it.” She stretches onto her tiptoes to reach the cupboard above the sink and begins shuffling things around, searching and rearranging boxes and tins that are already in order, doors smacking against their frames to fill the quiet.
She needs to keep busy, like my mom.
At least they have one thing in common.
Over the past two days, I’ve been able to slowly cobble together a sense of Agnes’s relationship with my father, and yet one thing remains uncertain. “So . . . have you and my dad ever . . . I mean, was there a time when you two were more than friends?”
She occupies herself with a clipboard and pencil that hangs on the wall, marking something off—inventory, maybe? “There was a time when I hoped we could be more than what we are.”
“But not anymore?”
She doesn’t answer immediately, as if giving her words careful thought. In the end, all she says is, “Not anymore.”
A knock on the door sounds then and we both turn to see Sharon filling the doorway, her pregnant belly all the more pronounced now that I can see her long, thin legs.
Agnes’s eyes twinkle as they take her in. “How’re you hangin’ in there?”
Sharon’s hand settles on the underside of her bump as she waddles toward the fridge. “I’m peeing every twenty minutes, I’m forgetting everything, and this heartburn . . . ugh. And Max is irritating the hell out of me.”
“Max is the father. He does our regular run up to Nome,” Agnes explains to me, watching Sharon as she stands in front of the open fridge, a confused look on her face as she searches the shelves. “He’s just excited.”
“And I’m excited for this little guy to get out,” Sharon says with certainty. “Agnes, have you found anyone to replace me and Max yet?”
“Jonah’s interviewing a new pilot next week. Nothing yet for front desk. It’ll be me, Maxine, and Mabel for the next little while, I guess. Unless I can convince Calla here to stay longer.” She chuckles. “What do you think? Take over for Sharon when they move back to the Lower Forty-eight? You’d get to spend more time with your dad . . .” She dangles that out there as if it’s bait.
Did my dad tell her about the bank’s restructuring? That I’m unemployed and technically could stay longer?
I wonder why Sharon and Max are leaving, anyway. Do they not like Alaska?
“That’s why I came in here. God, this baby brain!” Sharon groans. “Wren radioed in. He’ll be landing in ten.”
“Good. Finally.” Agnes beckons me with a wave of her hand. “Come on, Calla. Let’s watch your dad fly in.”
I hug my body against the chill that’s moved in over the past hour, the damp air and murky clouds hinting of the approaching rain. At least the mosquitoes have taken to ground with the cool breeze.
“Look! There he is!” Agnes points up at the sky, to the small speck quickly taking shape as it nears. She smiles. “I never get bored of watching these guys fly home.”
I’ll admit, I do feel a small thrill, being at an airfield, surrounded by all these planes, and this surreal reality that they’re the only means for rejoining civilization. It’s definitely a different way of life from stepping onto a subway or car to get to your destination.
“Does my dad go out every day?”
“No, he usually spends his days stuck on the phone, checking in with all the pilots and watching the weather reports. But he’s been going up more over the last week. I think he’s trying to get in as much flying time as he can before he has to give it up.”
I frown. “What do you mean, give it up?”
She glances around us. “He’ll have to declare his medical condition soon, and when he does, they’ll ground him. He can’t fly when he’s going through treatment. As it is, he should have already reported it. I think that’s why he’s only doing solo trips. He doesn’t feel as guilty about breaking the rules that way, if it’s only his life up there.” Agnes pauses. “I think that’s the worst thing for him out of all this. Not being able to take off whenever he wants.”
I quietly watch the speck grow larger. “He really loves flying.”
“More than anyone I’ve ever met, and Alaska has a lot of pilots,” she agrees. “James said your grandmother was convinced that Wren screamed when he came out of the womb because he didn’t want his feet touching the ground. But if ever there was a man born to live in the sky, it’s your dad.” She smiles in thought. “You know, we could always tell when he had gotten a phone call from you. He’d fly off without telling anyone where he was going or when he’d be back. Wouldn’t answer dispatch or the other pilots.” She chuckles. “Drove us all nuts. Of course he’d always be back within the hour, but it was still reckless. Eventually, we learned that it was his way of dealing.”
“By going kamikaze?”
“By being in his favorite place, high up in the sky, getting away from everything he’d lost down on the ground.”
I can’t tell if she’s defending my father’s choice to let his family go or trying to explain it. Either way, there’s a glaring distortion to reality. He was never a victim. “He didn’t have to lose us. Alaska skies aren’t the only skies. There are plenty of bush pilot jobs all over the place. The P
acific Northwest, British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario. He lost us because he didn’t even try.”
She’s silent for a moment, her eyes narrowed on the approaching plane, as if weighing her words. “Did you know that your dad lived in Colorado for a while?”
“Uh . . . no.” But there’s a lot I don’t know about my father, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. “When was that?”
“He was twenty-one. He went to stay with his uncle—your grandmother’s brother. That’s where your grandparents were originally from. They moved up to Alaska a year before Wren was born. Anyway, Wren had never been outside of the state. He wanted to see what it was like in the Lower Forty-eight before he took over Alaska Wild for good. So he went down and got a job with a search-and-rescue team. He’d been flying up here since he was fourteen and he had more than enough experience. He had three offers within the day.
“He traveled a bit while he was there, too. California . . . Arizona . . . Oregon. Can’t remember where else. Oh, New York, for one weekend.” She chuckles. “He hated that city. Said he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. And even after a year of living down there, he felt like a visitor in a foreign country. It was so different. The people were different. The lifestyle was different. Priorities were different. And things moved too fast. He was terribly homesick.”
“So he moved back to Alaska.”
“He didn’t have much choice. Your grandfather got sick and had to go to the hospital in Anchorage. So Wren came back and took over Wild. He always knew he would, but it was a lot sooner than he expected. You know, he was only twenty-three when his dad died.”
“I didn’t realize he was that young.”
“It had to be overwhelming, though Wren’s never been the type to complain. This place was a lot for him to take on, for a lot of years. Your grandmother helped as much as she could. But still, it was a lot of responsibility. In some cases, people’s lives.” Agnes watches the approaching plane with keen eyes. “Life up here may be simple but it’s not easy, and it’s not for everyone. Water runs out; pipes freeze; engines won’t start; it’s dark for eighteen, nineteen hours a day, for months. Even longer in the far north. Up here it’s about having enough food to eat, and enough heat to stay alive through the winter. It’s about survival, and enjoying the company of the people that surround us. It’s not about whose house is the biggest, or who has the nicest clothes, or the most money. We support each other because we’re all in this together.