Almost Complete Short Fiction, page 46
“Here he is,” he said as I came in. “Your pilot, ladies and gentlemen. Captain Moss.”
They were staring like a tree full of owls; a couple of them had their mouths open. Behind me I heard Miles make a muffled snorting sound.
I gave Levitt a dirty look—that “captain” business always gets on my nerves, which of course is why he does it—and said, “Just call me Jack. If you’re all ready to go?”
One of the men, a pale pinch-faced character in a red baseball cap, burst into a big braying laugh. “Oh, shit,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s a good one.”
He turned toward the desk. “But really,” he said to Levitt, “when’s the pilot going to be here?”
The woman standing beside him hit him on the shoulder with the back of her hand. “For God’s sake, Roland,” she said.
I said, “Sir,” in my flattest voice, and when he looked back at me, “I assure you it’s not a joke. I’m a fully qualified pilot—Mr. Levitt can show you a copy of my license if you’d like—and I’ll be flying you to Ten Wolf Lake today. Unless of course you want to cancel?”
The other man was waving both hands like somebody leading a band. “No, no,” he said. “That’s, ah, it’s—”
He sort of shook himself and took a couple of steps toward me. “Bob Harrison,” he said, and stuck out his hand. “Delighted to meet you, Captain Moss. Ah, Jack.”
I shook his hand and he said, “Don’t mind Roland. He was just taken by surprise. As I’m afraid we all were.”
“Yeah,” Roland said. “Nobody told us the pilot would be a Bigfoo—”
The woman whacked him again, harder this time, and he said, “Uh, sorry, sorry. No offense. Just slipped out, you know?”
Bob Harrison said, “I’m afraid Roland’s right, all the same. We had no idea you would be, um, a Hominid American.”
He gave me a quick nervous smile. He was a short stocky guy with black hair and a ragged little mustache. He looked to be a few years older than the others.
“Not that that’s a problem,” he added quickly. “On the contrary, it’s a real privilege. An honor,” he said, starting to sound a little desperate.
He looked around. “Why don’t I introduce everyone?” He put his arm around the skinny blond woman who stood beside him. “My wife Kate.”
Kate gave me a shy smile. “Hi.”
“And,” gesturing toward the loudmouth and the woman who had been hitting him, “the Bradshaws, Roland and Edith.”
I stood looking at them, not saying anything, for a count of four—never hurts to make them sweat a little—and then I said, “Pleased to meet you all. Shall we get going?”
I herded them out the door and got them moving in the direction of the dock, with Miles leading the way. Going across the parking area, the woman named Edith dropped back to walk beside me. “Hello,” she said.
She didn’t offer her hand, which was nice, and unusual for a human; I know they do it to be friendly but we really don’t like it. I mean, we live among them now and mostly we get along but having to touch them. . . .
This one kept her hands in the pockets of her down jacket as she said, “I want to apologize for my husband. He’s not really a bigot. Just an asshole with a big mouth.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I looked down at her with a bit more interest. She was short and built small, with dark hair cut short in back and shiny, alert-looking brown eyes. I think a human male would have considered her pretty, but what do I know?
She said, “You have to remember, none of us has ever even met a Hominid American before. I don’t believe there are any in Philadelphia.”
“Probably not. We’re not much on cities.”
“Still,” she said, “he knew better than to say—what he said.”
I stopped and looked down at my feet. “Size fourteen,” I said. “That’s pretty big, I guess. By your standards.”
She laughed. “Yes, but that’s no excuse for saying so.”
We started walking again, catching up with the others. I said, “Well, it’s not the worst thing we’ve been called. But it’s true we don’t much care for it.”
“What do you call yourselves, then?”
I told her. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I don’t think I could pronounce that.”
“No. Your throat muscles can’t make some of our sounds. But,” I said, “you don’t have to bother with that fancy Hominid American business either. When we’re speaking English we mostly say homin or just hom.”
She didn’t ask any more questions, but all the way to the dock I could feel her taking quick little looks at me. I could guess why; she was probably thinking I wasn’t really all that big. At six feet three and a bit over three hundred pounds, I’m fairly typical for an adult male homin, and you can see humans that big or bigger on any decent pro football team.
And even though we’ve been out of the woods, as you might say, for a good many years now, most humans are still under the influence of those old stories, which made us out to be gigantic. They forget that the original reports mostly came from relatively short people—such as Miles’s ancestors—and that footprints in snow or mud always erode out bigger than the feet that made them. And then too the fur probably makes us look bigger.
As for that overpowering stench we were supposed to have, Mama always said the humans were just smelling what they’d done when they saw us.
Out at the end of the dock I stood and waited while Miles helped the clients down the ladder and into the plane. I noticed Edith clutched at him pretty solidly, even though she didn’t look the nervous type. Well, my nose had been picking up frustrated-female pheromones ever since I got near her. Maybe Roland’s mouth was the only big thing he had.
When they were all on board I climbed down onto the float and cast off the mooring lines for Miles to haul in. I hoisted myself up into the cockpit and shut the door. Bob Harrison had taken the seat beside me, and I hadn’t heard any argument about it; it was plain to see he was the leader of this little pack. “Well,” he said, “off we go, eh?”
I buckled myself in and began the startup routine: select center tank, prop pitch lever all the way back, carb heat to cold, generator switch on.
“Where’d you learn to fly?” Bob Harrison asked. “In the armed forces?”
Mixture to three-quarters rich. “Federal minority job training program,” I said. “We don’t do military service.” Open throttle about a quarter.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “I heard that somewhere. You’re nonviolent, then?”
I choked back a hoot; this one had obviously never been in a barroom full of horn construction workers on Saturday night. “No,” I said, “just the uniform requirements. Same reason there are almost no hominid cops.” I took my right foot off the rudder pedal and wiggled my toes at him. “We don’t wear shoes.”
Or even clothes if we can help it, I started to add but didn’t. One reason I hate to fly human passengers is that I have to keep those damn company coveralls on the whole time. I was already starting to itch all over.
He said, “I see. So then—”
“Look,” I said, “please don’t be offended, but I need to concentrate just now, all right?”
I flipped the main battery switch and the instrument panel came alive. I reached down and turned on the boost pump and waited till the fuel pressure needle swung past five psi. The engine hadn’t had time to cool down completely after the morning’s flight but I gave the primer a couple of strokes anyway. Left and right magneto switches on.
I thumbed the starter switch up and held it while the old Pratt & Whitney turned over, groaning with reluctance at first. The prop blades whipped by in front of the battered red cowling, faster and faster, and then there was a cough and a rumble as the engine caught and I let go of the starter switch and eased the throttle back a little. As soon as the oil pressure gauge registered 50 psi I shoved the prop pitch lever all the way forward and switched off the boost pump.
“Everybody buckled up?” I said, and heard a series of hasty clicks behind and beside me because, of course, they hadn’t.
With a landplane this would have been the time to check the magnetos and a couple of other things, but obviously a floatplane doesn’t have brakes so any time you run the engine up you’re going to go somewhere, and right now there wasn’t enough water in front of the Beaver for anything like that. So I pushed the mixture lever to full rich and gave her a little gas and jockeyed her away from the dock and got her turned around into the wind, using the little rudders on the floats, and then I ran the P&W up to 1750 and did the mag check. The drop was shop-manual perfect, which was no surprise at all in an engine Manny had worked on. I cycled the prop pitch through full range and had a quick look over the instruments. Nothing was waving its arms at me. I said, “Here we go, then.”
Flaps down to takeoff position. Quick silent prayer to the ancestors, then throttle to the wall. The old Beaver blared and bellowed and charged forward across the lake, the trees along the shoreline blurring as she picked up speed. I felt the little surge as the floats broke surface tension and began to plane. At 35 knots I hit the switch to retract the water rudders; there was enough pressure on the control surfaces now to hold her straight with the pedals. I watched the airspeed indicator and when it hit 65 I gave the stick a bit of back pressure to break her loose and then the wings took the weight and the Beaver quit being an overpowered motorboat and began to do what she was meant to do.
In the back seat Roland said, “Buddy, I apologize again. You are, no shit, a pilot and a hell of a slick one too.”
I should have made some reply, I guess, but I was busy setting the flaps to climb and adjusting the trim for a climb rate of 500 feet per minute. I wouldn’t have known what to say anyway. I’m just no good at talking with the higher products of evolution.
The day stayed clear and sunny so everybody had a fine view of the scenery on the way up to Ten Wolf Lake. It was the last week in May and everything was nice and green, though there were still some patches of snow up under the trees. They’d picked a pretty good time for their camping trip or whatever they were up to; another month and the weather would be warmer, but then the blackfly season would have started too.
About halfway there Bob Harrison said suddenly, “Ten Wolf Lake. Do you know how it got the name?”
I shook my head. “I’m sure there’s a story, but I’ve never heard it. But then I’m not originally from this part of Alaska.”
“Are there wolves around there, then?” Kate asked. She sounded a little nervous.
“Oh, sure.” The Alaskan bush and she wants to know if there are wolves? What did she expect, hamsters? “Quite a few,” I said. “You might see some while you’re there. Don’t worry, though, they don’t go in for attacking people. They’re really pretty shy.”
Her husband said, “What do you people call the place? I mean, what’s its Sasquatch name?”
I shrugged. “Beats me. I don’t speak a word of Sasquatch.”
He was looking confused again. I said, “Sasquatches live way down south of here, in the Cascades. Not in Alaska.” Actually there probably are a few, the way everybody gets around nowadays—we get a good many Siberian Kaptars coming over looking for work, and I even know where there’s an Australian Yowie tending bar in Sitka—but I’ve never met any.
Kate said, “So you’re—?”
“Arulataq. That’s the main tribe around these parts. With a good many Toonijuq, though they’re mostly over in Canada.”
“I’ll be damned,” Bob said. “And you can’t understand each other’s languages?”
I looked at him. “How’s your Arabic?”
He thought that over. “All right,” he said, “point taken.”
“I speak Arulataq,” I said, “and English and a little Russian, and a few odds and ends of Inuit and Tlingit. That’s it.”
In fact that wasn’t quite true. My ex-wife was Windigo, and I picked up quite a bit of that before she got pissed off at me and went back to Quebec. Especially toward the end there, when I learned a good many new words, of a kind I hadn’t even known she knew. But it wasn’t something I wanted to talk about.
Ten Wolf Lake was surrounded by wooded mountains that broke the wind, so the water was flat and calm as I brought the Beaver in. It looked the same as the last time I’d been there; the cabin was still standing—something you can’t always count on, with parties of hunters and fishermen getting drunk and setting fires—and the roof appeared to be reasonably intact. There was no dock but there was a spot in close to shore where the water was deep enough for the Beaver, and a little while later the clients were standing on the bank under the trees, surrounded by their piled-up possessions. At least they hadn’t brought as much junk as most city campers.
Bob Harrison said, “I don’t know if Mr. Levitt told you, but there’s another couple coming to join us. They should be arriving in a few days.”
The others were looking around them, at the cabin and the lake and the woods. The scent of excitement was very strong, along with a little bit of what might be fear. There was something else, too, something I couldn’t identify, but it’s always hard to be sure with humans.
I said, “You want me to come back and check on you, say in a week? Bring you any supplies?”
“No need.” He pulled out a cell phone and held it up. “We’ll just call if we need anything.”
They all lined up and waved as I fired up the P&W again and ran the Beaver down to the far end of the lake and got her turned around. I didn’t really need that much run—unloaded, a Beaver takes off like a buggered bat—but I wanted to make sure they couldn’t see me as I peeled off those coveralls. It was a clumsy business getting them off in that little cockpit, but it was worth it. I opened the side window a little so the wind could ruffle through my fur as I took off.
It was getting pretty late in the day when I set the Beaver down again. I struggled back into the coveralls—you never knew who might be around, even out here in the boondocks—and taxied back up to the dock, where Miles was waiting. This time I saw he had Manny with him.
“So he returns,” Manny said as I came up the ladder. “Hallo, tall, dark, and unsightly.” It came out more like und oonzitely; five years in this country hadn’t been nearly enough to shake Manny’s Black Forest accent.
I said, “Mannfried, my vertically challenged bro. Stand on Miles so I can see you better.”
We laughed and Manny reached up so we could slap hands. Miles said, “You two. I swear.”
I looked down at Manny, wondering as always how someone only three feet tall could be related to me. But the scientists say it’s definite; the DNA evidence proves Kobolds are hominids, and not even a separate species.
I never knew why Manny wound up in Alaska, but I was glad he had, because he was one hell of a mechanic. He could crawl right into the tightest parts of the plane, too.
Right now, though, I was just as happy he hadn’t been around to meet bigmouth Roland. The last fool to call Manny a dwarf was now known around Fairbanks as One-Ear Willie.
I left them to finish putting the Beaver to bed for the night, and walked on up the dock and across the lot. The office was closed up and Levitt’s car was gone so he must have shut down early today. That was fine with me. I got out my keys and got into my pickup truck. A couple of minutes later I was heading down the gravel road toward town.
I’d meant to go straight home, but about halfway there I got to feeling really hungry—I hadn’t had much of a lunch, after all. Then I saw the little roadhouse off to the right of the road amid a grove of trees, and I pulled in and stopped without having to think about it.
I parked the truck and got out and stood for a minute looking the place over. The ancestors knew how many times I must have driven past it in the couple of years I’d been working for Alaskan Bush Charters, yet I’d never stopped and never really paid it any attention. It wasn’t much to look at; just a small log building and a big sign with the magic words HOT FOOD—COLD BEER. I didn’t see any other vehicles in the lot. Maybe they were closed.
But I went up and tried the front door, and it opened, so I went inside. There were maybe half a dozen tables and a small bar or counter. I went over to the bar and started to sit down on one of the high stools and then a loud raspy voice said, “Hey! Hey, ape-shape! What do you think you’re doing?”
A skinny, bald-headed man came around the end of the counter, looking seriously angry. “I guess you can’t read?” he said, pointing.
I looked up and saw a big hand-lettered sign:
NO MONEYS
NO INDIANS
DOGS WELCOME
“Go on, God damn it.” He came closer, making shooing motions with his hands. “Get out of here.”
I didn’t move; I was too surprised, really, to do or say anything.
He leaned on the counter and stared at me. “Listen here,” he said in a lower, very intense voice. “The United States Supreme Court says you’re people. Says you can vote and go to school and everything. I can’t do anything about that, the white man’s already lost control of this country anyway. But they say I got to serve a bunch of damn dirty apes in my own place of binness, and I’m not taking that kind of shit laying down.”
He reached under the counter suddenly and came up with a gun. It was a huge shiny revolver, some kind of Magnum I thought. The kind people in the back country carried to stop bears.
“And don’t even think,” he said, pointing it at me, “about starting anything. I’ll kill you before you can get within reach.”
He’d do it, too; I could smell the hate and the fear coming off him so strong I could barely breathe. I got up slowly, keeping my hands in sight, and backed toward the door. “Go on,” he yelled after me. “Run to the law if you want. I don’t give a damn.”
Out in the truck I sat for a couple of minutes, shaking from the reaction. I hadn’t run into anything like this in years; I’d forgotten what it felt like.
