The Woman He Dared To Fly

That morning a dozen bankers and co-op investors from Springfield had driven down for a live demonstration, the kind that would either fund Bell Ridge through the winter or shut its doors and put forty people in Piney Fork out of work by Thanksgiving. I know that because Berdine told me. Berdine ran the front office, answered every phone, and had buried a husband of her own eleven years ago, which was maybe why she was the only person at Bell Ridge who ever looked me in the eye instead of past me.

“They need this to go perfect today,” Berdine had whispered to me that morning, refilling the coffee urn with hands that shook a little from nerves that weren’t even hers to carry. “If it doesn’t, Alford says corporate pulls the whole program.”

Alford was thirty-four years old and ran Bell Ridge day to day while his family’s money ran it from a distance. He had a haircut that cost more than my truck payment and a way of looking at the hangar staff like we were part of the concrete. I had learned, in eight months, exactly how far his patience stretched, which was to the edge of whatever camera might be pointed at him and not one inch further.