The Pilot Whose Name Was on the Maps

“Next summer, this valley is going to hire the pilot whose name is on the maps. If she flies for your outfit, we hire your outfit. If she flies for herself, we hire her. You can tell the man from Crookston that.”

Another truck came fast down the road and stopped behind Don’s. Pete got out in his work clothes, straight from cultivating his own beets. Nick must have called him. I never asked.

Pete walked across the grass. He did not go to his dad. He came and stood next to me, on my side of the wingtip, close enough that his shoulder touched mine.

“Dad,” he said.

Don looked at his son standing next to me, and I saw it land harder than anything Vern had said. He’d thought family meant me keeping quiet. It turned out it meant Pete standing beside his wife.

“Pete,” Don said. “I was going to make it right. Someday.”

“Make it right now, Dad,” Pete said. “Tell them.”

I didn’t say anything. I wanted to see if he would.

Don stood a long time. Then he turned toward the shop, where the other men were standing in the shade, and he raised his voice just enough to carry across the yard.

“She flew it,” he said. “All of it, two summers. I haven’t been up since the spring before last. I’m sorry I told you otherwise.”

Then he turned back to me. He looked old. He looked every one of his sixty eight years and some years after that.

“Laurie,” he said. “That was wrong. What I paid you.”

“Yes,” I said. “It was.”

That was all either of us said about it. There was a whole summer of more in me. But he had said it out loud in front of those men, and I knew what that cost him, and I was not going to take more out of him than that.

He nodded once and walked back to his pickup and sat in it a minute, the way he’d sat in the yard the day he lost his medical. Then he drove out through the shelterbelt toward town.

Tipping the wings

Vern’s men came over one at a time to shake my hand. One who had farmed next to my dad held on longer than the others and said, “Your old man would be something proud.” I couldn’t answer him.

Vern’s wife came out with a plate of bars in wax paper and pushed it into Nick’s hands. Her name was Marcy, and she had kept that coffee thermos filled for two summers.

Nick loaded the empty mix trailer and rinsed the hoses in Vern’s yard. When he was done, he came over and stood in front of me, red in the face.

“I’d load for you,” he said. “Next year. If you’re doing your own thing.”

“I’d want you to,” I said. “If I can find a plane.”

“You’ll find one,” Pete said.

I climbed back into the seat. Pete stood on the wing root and leaned in the way he used to lean into my dad’s little plane, and put his hand on my knee.

“I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner,” he said. “It was right in front of me.”

“It was in front of everybody,” I said. “That’s how he got away with it.”