to bounce and rock and her stomach pushed into her throat and she grabbed Bart by the shoulder of his parka and cried, “Sweet Jesus!”
“It’s okay, Carrie,” he said. “Not to worry, Whitey’s done this thousands of times.”
The plane rocked and twisted for a few moments more before touching down and skiing to a halt at the end of a snow-covered runway where Whitey switched off the engine. “Just in time, McFee,” he said. “Another fifteen minutes and we’d been zero-zero.”
“Zero-zero?” Carrie asked.
“Not enough visibility to land,” Bart said.
She pulled off her headset and tapped Bart on the shoulder. “But it’s not even four o’clock yet. You said the days were short, but how short?”
“When the damn darkness sets in, the sun kind of glows from behind the mountains for a few hours, and that’s about it.” He patted the sleeve of her bulky down parka. “Don’t worry. That only goes on for a few months. You’ll love it. You’ll see. Where else can you watch the moon rise while you’re eating breakfast?”
Carrie stared at Bart, and while she couldn’t believe his response, she also couldn’t believe the beauty of his chiseled profile, his straight nose and strong-looking jaw. Gorgeous, gentle Bart, she thought, and muttered, “Where else?”
THAT NIGHT, Carrie lay with Bart under layers of thick, brightly striped Hudson Bay blankets in blackness the likes of which she’d never experienced. Before sleep began to overtake her, she listened to the wind roll down the snow-packed runway and past their little cabin. Mixed with the wind’s screaming, she could hear the lectures Hannah had given her before she left La Jolla, starting with the familiar “when are you ever going to learn?” speech that this time began, “You damn near got raped a few weeks ago and now you’re running off to Alaska with a guy you’ve only been dating for two weeks? Get real, Carrie. Get a grip!”
“But he’s not a stranger anymore, and maybe he never was,” Carrie had insisted. “I feel like I’ve known him all my life. And he’s so gentle and patient. And he cares about what I think and how I feel. And he’s an adventurer. And he’s—”
“Gorgeous,” Hannah interrupted. “But aren’t they all?” She paused and asked again, for what seemed to Carrie like the hundredth time, “But Alaska, Carrie? Alaska?”
Carrie argued that the timing was perfect, that she needed a change and Hannah answered that she’d said the same thing the week before. “And the week before that and the week before that.”
“But this time it’s different, Hannah. I promise. Something tells me Bart’s the man I’ve been waiting for and it’s not just because he’s so gorgeous. He understands me; knows who I am. I feel trapped here. I need a change. I really do. I’m twenty-nine, my biological clock’s ticking, and nothing new ever happens in my life. Nothing. Ever. Please, don’t hate me for this but I’ve got to get out of the rut I’m in and get away from this place for a while.”
“Okay, okay,” Hannah said, “but running off to Alaska, is that really the best solution to your problems?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Carrie answered, hoping she was right. “So, good-bye root canals and lecherous dentists and Saturdays at the mall, and good-bye singles scene.” She patted Hannah’s hand confidently and smiled. “It’s okay. If it doesn’t work out, I can always come home.”
With that Hannah’s tone softened slightly, but she continued to ask questions as if she had a checklist for Carrie that she was determined to complete. “But have you ever wondered why there are tons of single men up there and so few single women? Why Bart had to run an ad to find someone who’d take him up on his crackpot idea?”
“Don’t worry—”
Hannah pointed her finger at her. “Because not many women are as restless as you are; that’s why. Just listen to this again and listen carefully.” Hannah read aloud from the Personals section of the San Diego Union Tribune: ‘Be free again.’ She stopped. “Free, my ass, Carrie. Since when is being locked in a log cabin all winter free? And you think you’re trapped here?” She shook her head. ‘White male, 36, college educated, seeks female companion to live back to basics lifestyle in Alaska bush country. Commune with nature. Breathe clean air. Discard financial worries, urban pressures and southern California traffic. Live off the grid. [email protected]...’ Hannah paused. “What a crock of shit!”
“I don’t think so,” Carrie said.
“Are you kidding? Do you know what they say about the guys in Alaska?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “The odds are good, but the goods are odd. The goods are odd, Carrie, and that goes for your gorgeous adventurer.”
“Hannah, for once in my life I know what I’m doing,” Carrie argued. “Besides, things will never change unless I make them change.”
But now, lying in the darkness, the wind shaking the walls of the small cabin, Carrie could see Hannah making her points, each time touching a finger on her left hand with the index finger of her right.
“First, he’s already been divorced. Second, he’s ten years older than you. Third, he’s unemployed.”
“Wrong,” Carrie said. “Double wrong. He’s only seven years older and, besides, everyone’s unemployed in the wilderness. Unemployed is what they do.”
Hannah closed her eyes and shook her head. “Fourth—and the real topper I might add—he’s built a log cabin a million miles from nowhere and you’re going to keep him company for an entire winter?”
“But, Hannah, we’ll read and snow shoe and listen to the wolves and gaze at the stars. Bart says up there the stars look so close you feel you can reach up and touch them.”
“That’s all you’ll do? All winter? I don’t think you get what ‘living off the grid’ means.” She started with her pinkie finger again. “It means there’s no running water—no hot showers—and no flush toilet.”
And another finger. “And no electricity. That’s living off the grid.”
Hannah paused. “Carrie, there’s not even a phone, for God’s sake. That could pose a real problem for you and what will you do if one of you gets sick, or Bart gets eaten by a bear or something?”
Carrie told her that was all part of the adventure, of “living on the edge,” as Bart had put it, but now she felt her heart beating rapidly and found it hard to breathe and asked herself why she hadn’t listened to Hannah; why she hadn’t stayed home.
Once again she wondered why Bart had wanted her to go with him. It certainly wasn’t for her survival skills. Was it because she was the only woman desperate enough to say she would? She reached for him to wake him, to tell him that she’d changed her mind, that she’d made a terrible—typical, Carrie Ritter—mistake. She hesitated, her hand hovering above Bart’s shoulder, and then lowered it and placed it over her heavily beating heart. She took a deep breath to quiet herself. She owed it to herself to do this. To get out of her rut, to prove that she could do things on her own, that she was more than people think and better, too. That she can get it right.
She listened to Bart’s steady breathing mix with the sound of the wind rushing down the runway, the wind-sounds making her feel as if she was in the middle of some godforsaken
