A Minor
Detail
“Just
fine,” Aaron replied. “It was smooth flying all the way out there and all the
way back. David was real happy to get
there. But, it seems kind of lonely to
me, spending an entire summer all by yourself. I guess it’s just a matter of
different strokes for different folks.”
“Yeah,
and he sure took a lot of gear. I think
our boy will be doing a lot of fishing and hunting.” Jeff surmised. “I could enjoy that too, if I had a partner
to do it with.”
“Well,
I need to get going again. There is a
couple waiting outside to go to Fairbanks,” Aaron told him. “They plan to take one of those scenic tours
offered by the Far North Tour Bus Company.
You know about them?”
“Oh,
sure. They’ve got a hell of a
racket. Fill up a bus full of tourists
and spend a day making what amounts to a month’s wages. Maybe
I’ll start a company and give them some competition.”
“Yeah,
when you decide to do that, you give me a call, okay?” Aaron said.
“I’ll see you again tomorrow.
Take care.”
“Yeah,
you too. Safe flying.”
David
Tidwell wasn’t sure he had cut enough fire wood for the winter. As he chopped
more he knew it would never be enough; or probably not. It was going to be a long winter. He was shaken by his earlier
realization. Depressed was too good a
word. He was borderline panicked. When he thought about his predicament, he was
terrified. Surely, he had not really made that mistake. Surely, he had not completely forgotten.
The
temperatures could get as low as 25 degrees below zero. Alaska was a beautiful
place in the summertime. It was
beautiful in the winter as well, as long as you were prepared for it. David was not sure he was prepared. He had several buckets of fish he had caught
from the nearby lake. He had some meat
from the coyote he shot last week. It
would be easy to keep it frozen. But how was he going to provide food enough
for the length of an Alaskan winter? A
matter of seven to eight months?”
After cutting firewood for several
hours, he cleaned all the fish he had caught over the last several days. Right
now, he had no ice. Soon, he would be
encased in it. It was late July and
already the nights were getting cold.
The days were still a little warm.
It was 62 degrees this morning when he got up. It had been 40 degrees when he awoke in the
middle of the night to go outside and pee.
Soon, it would be colder. Much colder. David cursed himself and shook
his head in disbelief. He had never been one to pay attention to details. He always over looked them in favor of the
big picture. His big picture this time
was to spend a summer alone in the Alaskan wilderness, fishing, hunting and
foraging, all alone. He wanted the
solitude, the aloneness. He had never
been any good at making friends or acquiring a girlfriend. It took him months
of knowing someone before he felt comfortable with them. He could never think
of anything to say to prolong the conversation.
He thought that maybe he was supposed to be a loner. He was supposed to live all by himself. Now was his chance to try that out for an
entire summer.
When he first arrived at his
campsite and roughly made cabin he was ecstatic. He had brought all the gear that he could
think of for surviving an Alaskan summer.
He had knives, he had fishing gear, including a net for large volume
catching. He had guns and ammunition. He
had several changes of clothes and soap to wash them with. He had a bow and several arrows. David even had an axe to chop his firewood
and a set of buckets to temporarily store the fish he would catch. He had all
the toiletries he thought he would need.
He had matches and a propane powered mini-barbecue grill. He had hiking
boots and a compass for when he wanted to explore the surrounding hills.
Now, he wasn’t sure any of this was
going to be enough. It was supposed to
last him all summer. David grabbed his hunting rifle and headed out to the
surrounding wilderness, a new determination coursing through his veins. He
didn’t want to think about it.
Several hours later, still empty
handed, David returned to the cabin and his predicament was once again dominant
in this thoughts. He couldn’t stop
thinking about it. He had really enjoyed
the flight out here. He had enjoyed the
first couple of weeks before he realized his mistake. He had enjoyed telling
his sister of his plans and how spiritually fulfilling this was going to be. David’s parents had both died in a car wreck
several years ago and now all he had left was his younger sister, Nancy. She absolutely loved him and was always good
to talk to. Whenever David was feeling
down, he could count on her to cheer him up again. Oh what he wouldn’t give to talk to her
again.
David finally reached the conclusion
that he had indeed forgotten to arrange a flight back at the end of the
summer. The man who flew him out here
had just assumed that he had done that because David had not mentioned it to
him. So he didn’t say anything. He
dropped David off and innocently flew back to Fairbanks, with not a thought of
what David was going to do at the end of the summer.
Now, when the cold weather began,
David was going to run out of firewood.
He was going to run out of meat to eat. He was going to find it
impossible to stay warm in sub-zero temperatures. He would not be able to hunt
for the amount of snow that an Alaskan
winter dumped on every inch of the state. He would get cold, hungry and tired
of trying to catch fish through holes in the ice over the lake.
How could he have forgotten that
detail? How could he have been so
stupid? No one in the world knew that he
had no way to get back to civilization, no way to survive the frozen forest
land of Alaska in the depths of winter.
He resolved himself to just give it the best try he could. He would survive as long as he could. He would leave a diary for whoever might find
his cabin someday.
Nancy Tidwell phoned the Alaska Trails Airplane company in
Fairbanks. “”Hello, I need some
information about a customer of yours that you had in late May of this year.”
“Ok,” Mary Helstrom, the secretary
replied. “How can I help you?”
“You all transported a David Tidwell
to a remote cabin in the mountains northeast of Fairbanks. Do you have a record of him?”
“Let me look at my computer for a
minute and we’ll see. Yes, here it is.
David Tidwell, June 23rd. Now
what did you need to know?” Mary questioned. .
“”Do you have a pick up time
scheduled for him?” Nancy pondered. Is
there an order for when you are supposed to go back and get him?”
“No, I don’t see that on my
computer. There is no other flight
scheduled for him.
Are you saying he’s stuck out there with no way home?”
“That’s exactly what I’m
saying. He’s out there all alone and
winter is approaching. Someone has to go
get him. “
“Well, we can certainly do that,”
Mary replied. “When did you want to go?”
“Tomorrow,” Nancy answered. “First thing tomorrow morning if possible.”
“That’s not a problem,” Mary said
confidently. “Be here at 8:00 sharp and
we’ll go find him tomorrow morning.”
Richard Patterson
Richard
Patterson is a freelance writer living in east Texas. He writes poetry, short
stories, and essays. His main motivation for writing is that he thinks there
are multiple realities that we all can access happening all around us all the
time. Writing helps him to open up some of those realities, especially with his
short stories. His stories have been published by several online
magazines, namely Down in the Dirt and Academy of the Heart.