The Nameless Luna novel · Chapter 8 of 32

Chapter 8: October Fourteenth

I held the mail sack against my chest.

"Yellow and blue," I said.

"Bright yellow. Blue trim on the tail." He squinted up at the ridge. "A Beaver, like his. I thought it was him at first."

"What day?"

"Fourteenth of October. I keep a calendar for my traps."

He went back up to his cabin without saying goodbye.

Old trappers don't.

I stood on the gravel bar with the river going past.

Yellow and blue.

There were other yellow planes in Alaska.

There was only one outfit that painted them yellow with blue tails and flew them this far north.

I'd painted the trim on that tail myself, the summer I was twenty.

I climbed into the Otter and sat there without starting her.

I made myself go back.

Last October. The middle of the month.

It had been the worst stretch of the year.

Moose hunters, freight, the Gathering the week before.

I'd flown fourteen hours a day and slept in the office twice.

And one charter I'd never had before.

Elden Crewe, out of Fairbanks, in Seven-Kilo.

My father had booked it himself. He'd said, be nice to him, he's family soon.

Elden had sat in the right seat with a tablet on his knee.

He'd said he was surveying a mine road for the High seat.

I'd flown up the valley low and slow while he took pictures.

Then, past the last cabin, he'd leaned over and turned the radio dial himself.

"Coldfoot base frequency," he'd said. "Pack business. You don't mind switching off the intercom?"

I hadn't minded.

Clients made private calls all the time.

I'd switched it off, and his voice had gone away inside his headset.

I'd circled the head of the pass.

Once. Twice. Three times.

He'd talked the whole time, with his face turned toward his own window, smiling a little.

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