The Pilot Whose Name Was on the Maps

I didn’t take it. I didn’t know how.

“That’s not your debt, Vern.”

“No,” he said. “It’s his. But we’re the ones who owe the invoices, and we haven’t paid them yet. We’re going to pay the service what’s left after this. That’s ours to decide.”

I could hear a pickup on the section road. You hear everything out there, on a still afternoon. I knew the sound of that truck. It was Don’s.

“He called,” Vern said. “This morning, after Nick told him you were here. Said he’d be out to collect my check for the season.”

I took the envelope. My hand was shaking a little and I did not try to hide it.

Inside was Vern’s check to Laurie Olheiser for the full amount, folded in yellow legal paper. On the paper were eleven names in eleven hands, each with acres and dollars beside it. Vern had covered it and the others were paying him back.

Don’s pickup came through the shelterbelt and stopped at the edge of the strip. He got out slow. He saw the men at the shop, and Nick by the trailer, and the binder, and then the envelope in my hand.

He walked out to us anyway. I’ll give him that. He did not stay in the truck.

“Vern,” he said.

“Don.”

“Laurie.” He did not look at me. “I came out for your check, Vern. End of season.”

Vern took the binder out from under his arm and held it out, open to his north quarter, the header at the top in plain black print.

“Who flew this, Don?”

Don looked at the page for a long time. I watched his mouth. I think he was trying to find a way through it, the way he’d find a way through a field with wires on three sides. There wasn’t one.

“She did,” he said.

“And this one.” Vern turned the tab. “And this one.”

“She flew all of it,” Don said. “You know she did. You’ve got it right there.”

“I know it now,” Vern said. “I didn’t know it in June when I told you how good you’d done. You let me say it. You let all of us say it.”

The meadowlark had quit. Even the wind seemed to wait.

Don looked over at the men by the shop, men he’d sprayed for since before some of them could drive. Then he looked back at Vern. His face had gone gray under the sunburn.

“I’ve got a buyer,” he said, quiet. “Over by Crookston. He’s buying the customers, Vern. He’s buying the name. If you all knew I couldn’t fly anymore…”

“Then we’d have known,” Vern said. “And we’d have kept hiring your outfit, because your outfit was her. You didn’t have to pay her like a summer kid and put her flying on your invoice.”

Don didn’t say anything.

“Here’s how it’s going to be,” Vern said. He never raised his voice in all the years I knew him. “We’ll pay your invoices, less what we paid her.”