Chapter Eight #2
to the action. I can see the dashboard and all the knobs and dials and levers and very clearly out the front of the plane.
There’s a loop-the-loop in my stomach, and I search my bag for another ginger candy.
Brick hops in with a single, graceful motion and twists his body back to face us. “Seat belts on. Grab the headset next to
your seat. That’s how you’ll hear me. There’s a button to push if you need to talk to me. It’s going to be loud up there,
I’m afraid to say. Now, a few quick safety procedures—” He stops for a moment, clearly reading my face. “You’re in good hands.
Planes in Alaska are like yellow cabs in New York City, minus the traffic. If we didn’t fly, we’d be spending half our lives
trying to get from one place to another. Not every destination has a road to it. So, you’ll be in ’em a bit this week.”
In ’em a bit? Lily failed to mention that in her sales pitch.
“Um, Brick, is there no alternate route?” I ask. “For those of us who aren’t great, um, flyers?”
“Oh, there is. The road to McCarthy. But it’s through all that.” He points to the wilderness ahead of us. “Muddy, prone to washouts, narrow, and half of it dirt. It’ll take three hours, minimum, in perfect conditions. We’d surely miss dinner. Try to sit back and relax.”
“She’s fine, Brick.” I hear Lily through the headphones. “My sister likes to complain first and ask questions later.”
I don’t have a retort in me. I’m already doing my deep-breathing exercises.
Brick speeds through safety instructions. I try desperately to memorize them, although I’m missing every other word through
the staticky headset. We roll through the parking lot, picking up speed and heading closer to the river. I squeeze my eyes
shut and gouge marks in Lily’s arm with my fingernails. Suddenly, my stomach lurches up into my diaphragm, and I realize we
are in the air.
I hear Brick’s voice again. “It’s a gorgeous day, guys. Enjoy the views. I’ll be pointing out a few highlights. Keep your
eyes open for moose. This is the perfect—and safest—vantage point to spot them, from above.”
I don’t want to open my eyes, but I can’t help myself. We are following the river, bending and twisting like a snake below
us, the sun reflecting off the water turning it to glass. I scan the grass and trees for any sign of life. Which turns out
to be a mistake, as my stomach starts its roiling once again.
I’m trying to figure out how to tell Lily this isn’t going to work for me.
That I’m going to have to head back, once we land I’ll get a ride on that McCarthy road, no matter how long and harrowing they say it is, it can’t be worse than this, and that I’m going to have to go home, that this was a great idea, to set out into the unknown to lose ourselves and possibly discover a part of us we didn’t know existed, but it was better as a figurative idea.
I can’t spend a week or more in tin can airplanes, feeling like I’m turning inside out.
Lily will understand. She’ll be fine on her own.
She’s taken off the rings and is flirting with the men and already having a great time pretending she’s someone else.
She can carry on without me. I’ll go back to Anchorage somehow and find a flight home.
I’ll see all her photos and hear all her stories and I’ll be there for her, in New Jersey, when the really hard part of resuscitating or pulling the plug on her marriage begins.
That’s when she’ll really need me, anyway.
Not on some crazy adventure that will have my head in a toilet at every turn.
“On your right, you’ll see the Kennicott ghost town, built around the copper mine that made people millionaires, until it
didn’t. Mine dried up, folks went bankrupt, town got abandoned. And haunted, they say.”
Turning my head is a bad idea, but how can I resist a ghost town?
The ghost town is as cool as promised. Old wooden buildings perched on a steep hillside, rust-red and rickety. But I soon
pay the price for my bit of sightseeing, and I feel sweat pool above my lip and across the back of my neck, and I try to take
long, slow breaths through my nose.
“Up ahead are the Wrangell Mountains, that’s Mount Wrangell, our active volcano. It’s too late in the day, but in the winter
and on cool summer mornings you can see the steam rising from it,” says our tour guide.
They are stunning, like a painting, snow covered, blue and white, some of their jagged peaks indistinguishable from the clouds
and the sky. I risk a glance over at my sister. Her jaw is unhinged in awe. I dare not do the same, lest Mount Wrangell not
be the only volcano that is active today.
Keeping my mouth shut doesn’t save me. My insides have made their decision.
It’s a race to the finish—can I find the sick bag Lily handed me in time?
I frantically plow through my bag and grab it just in time.
With the engine roar drowning me out, and Lily and Xavier pressing their noses against the windows and away from me, I hear Brick over the headset saying, “And here is where the Root and Kennicott glaciers merge . . .” as I lose my lunch.