The Long Way Home

“Why?” Myrna asked, and wished she hadn’t. Sometimes it was best not to know.

“Red sky in the morning.” The pilot gestured to the violent red sky. “Sailors take warning.”

“Something else your mother says?” asked Beauvoir.

“No. My uncle.”

“But you’re a pilot, and this isn’t a boat,” said Clara.

“Same difference. Means bad weather. We’d be better off in a boat.” He looked from Myrna to Gamache. “Ballast. Good in a bateau. Not so good in the air.”

“Maybe he should stay behind.” Jean-Guy gestured toward Chartrand.

The gallery owner was staring into the gaudy sunrise, his back to them.

“No,” said Clara. “He was kind to us. If he wants to come, he can.”

“Are you kidding me?” Beauvoir hissed at Gamache. “She’s making decisions based on what’s ‘nice’?”

“It’s worked so far, hasn’t it?” Gamache watched Beauvoir’s face flush with frustration.

Myrna approached, saw his red face and, taking warning, turned around.

“You coming?” The pilot had loaded their bags and was standing by the door of the plane.

They squeezed in, the pilot directing them where to sit so that the weight was fairly evenly distributed. Even so, the plane waddled into the air, one wing dipping dangerously and almost hitting the runway. Gamache and Clara, on that side, leaned toward the middle. Like mariners, after all, heaving ho.

And then they were airborne, and on their way. The plane circled, and Gamache, his face forced against the window as Jean-Guy’s body shifted in the turn, could see what was only visible from above.

The crater. The giant, and perfect, circle where the meteor had struck hundreds of millions of years ago. The cosmic catastrophe that had wiped out all life. And then had created life.

The plane banked again and headed east. Away from there. And into the red sky.

“Have you been flying this route for a while?” Clara shouted above the drone of the engines.

She’d finally stopped praying and felt it was safe to open her mouth without shrieking.

“A few years,” he called back. “Started when I was eighteen. Family business.”

“Flying?” asked Clara, feeling slightly more confident.

“Fruit.”

“Pardon?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Myrna shouted. “Leave well enough alone and let him concentrate on flying.”

“Oui, fruit. Not much fresh fruit along the coast, and the bateau can take too long, so we fly it in. Mostly bananas.”

What followed was a monologue on how long various fruit takes to rot. By the time he stopped talking they felt fairly certain they’d all gone bad.

“How often do you get passengers?” Jean-Guy asked, desperate to change the subject.

“A lot lately, but that’s unusual. Most people who want to go to the coast take the ship. Takes longer, but it’s safer.”

No one pursued that, and Clara went back to praying. Bless, oh Lord, this food to our use …

“Did you fly Luc Vachon recently?” Jean-Guy asked.

“The owner of La Muse? Oui. Few days ago. A bit early, but his annual trip to the coast.”

“Where’d he go?” Gamache asked.

“Tabaquen. To paint. Like he does every summer. This year I took him all the way there, but most summers I drop him in Sept-Îles, to catch the boat. All the artists prefer the boat. It’s—”

“—safer, yes, we know,” said Beauvoir.

The pilot laughed. “I was going to say prettier. I think artists like pretty. Mais, franchement, it’s not really safer. There’s no safe way to get to the Lower North Shore. We have turbulence and the ship has the Graves. So it’s all a crapshoot.”

“Do not open your mouths,” hissed Myrna, catching their eyes with a searing look.

The small plane lurched in an air current. Dipping and falling, and climbing again. The pilot quickly turned his attention to flying. In the back, their eyes widened and Clara grabbed Myrna’s hand.

Jean-Guy, seeing this, envied the women, and he wondered how the Chief would take it if he held on to his.

The plane pitched again and Beauvoir grabbed, then let go of, Gamache’s hand when the plane righted itself.

Gamache looked at him, but said nothing. It was not, they both knew, the first time one had held on to the other, for dear life. And the way things were going it might not be the last.

“Peter,” Clara yelled with such force Beauvoir was tempted to look around in case the man had joined them.