Free Plan B for the Middle Class by Ron Carlson

Burns—over the intercom—about his work with the Forest Service. They flew up the river in the sunshine, Batton pointing out the moose and caribou. He explained that for the caribou counts he usually took one of the secretaries and that Julie didn’t like that. “Did you ever have a spat with your wife, Mr. Burns?”
    â€œA spat?”
    â€œYou know, where she’s jealous over something you’re doing, although you’re totally innocent.”
    â€œI guess, sometimes,” Burns said, his voice distant on the intercom, sounding small, like what it was: a lie. Helen had never fought with him, never complained. She had been a sweet, happy, confident woman who had—even in their extremity—never fought with him.
    â€œYeah, well, Julie …” Batton said. “That’s why she left last night and went home early with you.” Batton pointed ahead, where a small herd of caribou moved across the frozen river. “What am I going to do, land out there and screw Denise?”
    A haze had come up, like bright smoke, and the plane rippled across the changing sky. Burns was concentrating, trying to see the country as Alec might have seen it.
    â€œWe take a lunch and stop for lunch,” Glen Batton went on. “But that’s lunch. People eat lunch. Right?”
    The rest of the flight was different from what Burns could have foreseen. He couldn’t get Glen to put down in Kolvik. They came upon the small toss of cabins which was Kolvik and Burns’s heart lifted, but then it all changed quickly. There was no strip near the small village, of course, and Glen explained that it wasn’t safe to land in the snow so soon after the recent storms. He made one pass by the clearing near where Alec’s cabin had been and laid down a pair of tracks with the skis, but then circling he explained to Burns—through the noisy intercom—that it was too soft, too dangerous. Shoulder to shoulder with Glen Batton in the front seat of the smallest plane he’d ever been in, Burns asked again if they couldn’t possibly try to land.
    â€œNo can do, Mr. Burns,” Batton said, his voice tiny through the receiver, sounding miles away. “Too deep, too soft. No one else has been out either. That’s where he lived”—Batton dipped the passenger wing steeply and pointed—“below that hill.” There was no sign of anything in the perfect snow. They made one more broad circle over the area, seeing several moose in the valley where Alec supposedly had trapped, and then they headed west toward home. Burns felt the little plane rattle in the new headwind, the door flexing against his knee more than it had for the flight out, and he felt a disappointment that replaced hunger in his gut. He’d been so close. He could have jumped from the plane and landed in the drift. From the air, the place where his son lived had looked like all the other terrain they’d seen: snowy hills grown with small pine. Alaska gave up its stories hard. He’d learned nothing.
    They had flown quite low on the way out, but now Glen was taking the plane up to three and then four thousand feet. The sun was obscured in the west in a thick roseate mist. Burns was silent, mad at first, feeling cheated, and then resolved simply on what he now knew: he would ask Blazo.
    â€œYou spoke to the sheriff,” Batton said.
    â€œI did.” Even Burns’s own voice sounded remote on the intercom. “He was a help.”
    â€œAnd now you’ve been to Kolvik.”
    â€œNot quite, Glen. I’ve flown over it.”
    Batton ignored him, resetting some instruments, finally saying, “Did you ever see Russia?”
    â€œI never have.”
    Batton leveled the plane at five thousand feet and turned it slightly, squinting through the windshield. “You know, it’s funny your being here. I wouldn’t have walked across the street for my old man and