Free Midnight come again by Dana Stabenow Page B

doors had faded almost to invisibility. A large lake nibbled at the back edge of the property, on which there seemed to be a float plane landing or taking off every five minutes. Baird Air was directly below the approach. A seedy operation in a seedy location. Wonderful. Like most pilots, Jim was uneasy when anyone's hand but his was on the stick. He tried not to flinch each time a plane roared overhead. Adding to his unease were seven propellers of various sizes mounted on the exterior wall of the hangar, all with textbook groundloop curls to their tips. He counted to be sure. Seven times someone had dinged a plane. He hoped it wasn't the same someone. He hoped if it was that that someone wasn't still flying, in particular any of the planes taking off out back.

    Inside the office everything, chairs, desk, file cabinet, coffee pot and radio; everything was patched with duct tape. Some of it was held together with duct tape, like the cushion around the back of the visitor's chair. A Budweiser clock ticked loudly on the wall, next to a map of the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta framed nattily in silver duct tape. There were a lot of lines drawn on it in grease pencil from Bering to outlying villages. A bundle of rolled-up maps had been tossed carelessly behind the desk, all of whose corners had been reinforced with duct tape.

    He turned and tripped over the coffee table sitting between the couch and the desk. It was cheap veneer with three of the four corners chipped down to the pressed wood. The fourth corner was caked with mud, as if someone propped his feet there early and often. There was a corresponding hollow in the seat of the black Naugahyde couch, which appeared to be held together with, someone's original idea, electrician's tape. At least the colors matched.
    On the desk was a notepad, blank, and one Bic pen with the top chewed off. A desk calendar had been ripped all the way down to April twenty-seventh. A copy of Aviation Week lay folded back to an article on a float-plane accident in Southeast, the last words of the pilot reported as, "Oh, s***." An overflowing ashtray made from a one pound coffee can and what looked like river silt sat on a pile of paperwork.

    On top of the pile was a check for--he blinked, and looked again. He moved the ashtray to be sure. Twelve thousand dollars. Dated June fifteenth. Two weeks before.
    "Who the hell are you?" Jim looked up to see a man in the doorway, scowling at him from behind a squat stogie which glowed red and emitted regular puffs of smoke like a miniature steam engine. He was short and fat, with thin white hair that had arranged itself in a kind of tonsure effect. Pendulous pink cheeks quivered when he talked, and enormous saddlebag hips moved independently of the rest of him when he walked.

    His bib overalls were gray, stained beyond all hope of washing clean and cut off to just above a pair of pink, pudgy knees. Shiny black rubber boots came up to mid-calf. He appeared to be wearing nothing else.
    "Well?" He reached inside his overalls to scratch at something, or maybe to go for a gun.
    Unhurriedly, Jim set the coffee can down. "I'm Jim Churchill. Your new hire. Job Service said you were expecting me."

    The man looked Jim over, grunted, shifted the stogie from his left cheek to his right and a wad of chewing tobacco from his right cheek to his left. He spat out a stream which landed three inches from Jim's right toe. Jim noticed the generally brown character of the rest of the office floor, and deduced that this man didn't hold with spitoons. "Well, you're big enough to handle the freight, I guess. You know how to run a radio?"

    "Cause you don't, you can just hightail your butt on outta here. I've had it up to my eyebrows with the yoyos them dopes in Anchorage send me; most of you couldn't find your ass with two hands and a flashlight. Not to mention which you're all lazy." He glared. "Not to mention which every last one of you's fresh outta jail."
    Jim met the man's