Peter Heller - The Dog Stars

Then I’d buzz the runway at ten feet and see Jasper rooted on his haunches following me with his eyes, and even at that speed I knew he was worried, and grieving that I might leave him like everything else had done, so I stopped.

The wind sock midfield swings northward, puffing without urgency, so we turn south onto the taxiway, and I jam the throttle and we take off. One thing about everybody dying is that you don’t have to use the designated runway.

Nothing is designated anymore. If it weren’t for Bangley I’d forget my name.

I figure we’ll fly the big circle then stop for a Coke. Scout the meadows below Nederland, below the peaks of the Divide, fly the spiral inward, check the roads and the two trails while there’s good light, make sure Bangley is clear of visitors at least a day in the three directions, then land at the soda fountain and bring back a couple cases. Only eight minutes out to the northeast toward Greeley. A peace offering. Of bloated cans and plastic bottles. There’s a stack of Dr. Pepper I can see with the headlamp in back of the semi, maybe now’s the time to spring it on him like Christmas. Bangley seems like a Dr. Pepper man. One of Sprite for the families, land there one time, it’s been a few weeks. As we bank left, north, the lowering sun spills through the glass like something molten.

Look straight down, the tract development north of the airport patterns itself in the head to toe lollipops of feeder and cul de sac, and if I squint, to blur the ones burned, I can imagine a normal late spring evening.

Continue the climbing bank west and level out at eight hundred feet and begin my scan.

Nothing. Nothing the whole way. Roads empty. Blessedly. Usually are. Had there been wanderers it would have fucked up everything, delayed our hunt. Then I would have swooped, cut the engine, played the tape. I have four songs on the CD rigged to the amp and the speakers: they are titled

Turn Back North or Die

Turn Back South or Die

Turn Back East or Die

Turn Back West or Die

The words are easy to remember: just the title over and over. Followed by the exhortative: We know you are here. You will become dog food like many before you.

Bangley made me add that.

Fuck no, I said. That’s unnecessary and disgusting.

Bangley just stared at me, his grin half formed.

It’s true ain’t it? Ain’t it Hig?

Hit me like a punch.

Add it, he said. This isn’t some debutante ball.

Mostly it works. Enough unknowns, enough survived that visitors can’t be sure there isn’t some phalanx of Mongols at the airport waiting to tear them apart. Which I guess we are. A phalanx of two. No, three. And they must think: These guys have an air force, a loudspeaker, a recording, what else have they got? We have Bangley, I think. You have no idea what that means. You better fucking turn back.

If they need more convincing I’ve gotten pretty good at shooting Bangley’s Uzi machine pistol out my window on a left bank. I try not to hit anybody but sometimes I do.

I have been shot at fourteen times. Three went through the fuselage. Most people don’t know how to shoot at airplanes. They never lead us enough.

Nobody now. Highway 7 is clear, 287, the interstate. Our trail west. Sun is pouring down Boulder Canyon brushing the tops of the Flatirons. Used to be our favorite day hike, the trail along the base of the slabs, when the when. To the north Mount Evans flushes with blood snow. Misjudged the time, no time to scout the hills if I am going on a beverage run. In truth I don’t need to scout them anyway. I do it because it’s beautiful to fly low over the foothills but we know where the deer are. If we are going to cut elk sign it will be on the ground. I bank east and beeline straight for the power plant on the St. Vrain SW of Greeley. It’s a jackknifed double trailer semi half off the county road, half into a long farm driveway. I can see it five miles out. The dirty red and white sides catch the sun like a billboard. Hijacked for the potable water, I guess, the bottled water inside and all the pop. First time I saw the truck it probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to land, but for the five bodies strewn around it. And one doubled out the driver’s window. Tableaux of gunplay made me throttle back and circle.

I am not as quick as I once was, I am sure. Sometimes it is fog and shaggy horses. But the bodies spoke from the ground and the truck blazoned. Think, Hig. A gun battle around a Coke truck.

Which led to our monthly treat.

That first time, the farm pond east of the semi was slicked black in a crescent along the north bank, and wrinkled over the rest so I circled and landed on the yellow dotted line to the north, into the wind. I climbed down and turned for Jasper who waited bunched and excited on my seat, and I carried him to the ground. I dragged the men off into the grassy ditch by their boots so Jasper could—Discovered early on that it is easier that way than by the arms.

The doors of the rear trailer were padlocked, a simple brass U lock. I walked to the farmhouse and across a muddy yard and found the bolt cutters in the tractor shed.

Didn’t occur to me til some months later that I could fly Bangley out there and he could drive the truck right to the airport. By then I enjoyed bringing back a few cases at a time. By then I figured to make it last the years of our lives. Little enough in our lives to celebrate.

Didn’t occur to me either until much later that by then, by then if it were years, the cans might be utterly ruined by freeze and thaw. No matter. It was a good system now.

That first time I loaded three cases into the Beast and closed and latched the doors. I had the key turned in the mags to start the plane when I climbed out again and tied the strip of a man’s red shirt to a mile marker for a wind indicator. Mile 4. I remember.

Riddled with three .22 bullet holes in a three inch group. Pretty good. Probably the farm boy practicing for prairie dogs.

Today it is again from the north. The wind. Shifted one eighty in less than an hour which is typical this time of year. This time of year I have seen the wind socks at either end of the runway at Erie facing in opposite directions, which makes for an interesting landing.

A line of telephone poles runs along the east edge of the road. Doesn’t matter, they were set back far enough. The small reflector poles and mile markers easily pass under the wings. My first instructor told me that in an emergency landing a paved road was almost always wide enough if you landed dead center, almost always enough setback on any kind of pole or sign. What got dicey was a nice wide looking dirt road. The signpost you don’t see could be the one that grabs a wing and cartwheels you.

Still, I bank left for a final approach into the wind, very high, and float down on full flaps, down the middle of the left lane sighting a spot on the road just short of a tall cottonwood, then at the horizon ahead, the road rising to meet me, floating downward, and then I smoothly pull the yoke, back back back to my chest and flare and settle one light bump while the stall horn blares. Still, after all these years, the thrill of a good landing. Have done it many times before from this direction and know I don’t even need to lean on the brakes, just hold the nose up and let the plane roll out to the driveway and the truck.

One tap of the brakes, Jasper sitting his seat on his haunches on the thick quilt in copilot position, jerked forward just a little, resetting his front feet. Pull the red mixture knob and cut the engine. A prolonged sputter, the whirring prop becoming visible, slowing then silence.