Another Empty Kitchen

Another Empty Kitchen

When she heard Ol’ Buck went down east of Prideaux Haven, Frances poured out the ceremonial splash of whiskey in his honor and set to filling his spot in the annual Kistler Cup seaplane race. 

With few days to prepare, Frances focused on staying clear and getting rest. No drinking. Six solid hours off zzzs each night. Between shifts at the gas dock, she pictured sitting at the controls of her de Havilland Beaver, running through takeoff and landing. 

Race day came quick and Frances felt favored. Like all her idols were watching out for her up there: Aerhart, the Wright Brothers, her grandfather who’d met his fate over the Pacific in a blaze of patriotism. 

Frances ignored the reel of catastrophe in her mind. Occupational hazard, she reasoned. The images of wrecked fuselage and Buck’s body being flung across a few football fields worth of British Columbian bush were uncontrollable.

Folks from town showed up to watch the pilots take off. Frances focused on the frenzy of the crowd—whatever helped tune out the taunts from her competitors. 

“Diversity entrant,” muttered Otter Jackson, seasoned pilot and reigning champion. 

Otter’s sycophants chuckled and fellow pilots grinned, hands in jeans pockets, aviators hiding their fear. During safety checks, they stood with puffed-up chests, talking and pretending not to see Frances. 

A silent moment was held for Ol’ Buck. Frances made him a promise to win. The thing about boys’ clubs, he had once told her over fresh-caught lingcod and moonshine stilled in a remote Canadian cove, is that they beg to be infiltrated. You just need the right move.

The Kistler Cup ran on staggered takeoffs and time trials. A random draw determined the order and Frances pulled the nerve-wracking first slot.

“Ladies first,” Otter snickered as she boarded her plane.

First, indeed, she thought.

Takeoff was textbook. Frances melded forces with her Beaver like any pilot worthy of their wings ought to. The rumble of the engine and the whir of the props became the rhythm of her body and soul. Speeding across the water, surf spraying, the old plane gained momentum and Frances guided her aloft. The moment she and the Beaver broke free from the water’s surface, a glorious weightlessness arose within her and she knew she would win. For Buck, for her heroes, and goddammit, for herself.

As Frances reached cruising altitude, a familiar voice came on the radio. 

“Come in, Beaver.” 

Otter must have pulled second slot. 

“Beaver Three-Eight-Niner, don’t ignore me.” 

Frances lowered the volume of her headphones to just above regulation.

“Beaver, here,” she said.

Otter’s laugh crackled over the airwaves. “I got a question for you.”

“I might have an answer,” Frances said as she soared across the border into Canadian airspace, the sun reflected on the water, currents rushing below. 

“If you’re up here, who’s home feeding the kids?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Frances deadpanned. 

“Bold words for a first timer,” Otter said. 

“Sure you don’t mean for a girl?” Frances quipped.

Otter’s laughter gave way to a throaty cough. “Now you’re getting it.”

Frances flew unbothered. Tracked a pod of orca whales through the Strait of Georgia and spotted sea lions bathing on a jaggy sea stack. 

“Say,” Otter broke the brief radio silence. “We’re the frontrunners here. Let’s take a little detour. See what you and your Beaver are made of.”

Ol’ Buck’s voice was in her head then. Telling her to show Otter she could best him. 

“What do you have in mind?” said Frances.

“Drag,” Otter said. “Black Lake.”

A lump formed in Frances’s throat. The route there would take her over Ol’ Buck’s crash site. White-knuckling the yoke and gritting her teeth, she held back a sob. Dug deep like he would’ve wanted her to. 

“What about the cup?”

“Forget the cup, Beaver.” Otter laughed, but his voice was touched with anger. “Show me you got the balls.”

In those moments before Frances decided, she ran through a dozen possible outcomes. Cruising above the sea in her prized craft, sun glinting off the propeller and warming her in the cockpit, Frances agreed to Otter’s challenge and altered her course for Black Lake.

Cormorants swooped along the Beaver’s starboard side and as the pontoons touched down, Frances reveled in the rocking of the plane on the waves. Minutes later, Otter landed behind. She waited for him on the west side of the lake. Thick forest surrounded, blocking the sun and casting the entire lake in an eerie shadow.

Otter pulled up alongside her. He seemed smaller sitting there in the cockpit with his oversized headset and tacky aviators. “You know what to do?”

“Take off faster than you.”

“Good girl,” he said.

“You know Ol’ Buck’s the only one ever beat me.”

“I am well aware.” 

Ol’ Buck had bragged about the feat over beers one night in Lund, mere months before his death. Frances felt her grief rise up at the thought and resolved to use it as fuel for this flight.  

“We go on three,” Otter said. “First one aloft wins.”

“Copy that.” Frances felt Ol’ Buck there in the seat next to her. Felt his spirit and had a new vision of him cheering her on and flipping Otter off. 

On Otter’s three, Frances gunned it. The Beaver rumbled, speeding across the lake’s surface. She kept her focus ahead and let Otter fade out of view. Let the world dissolve until all she knew were the waves beneath her and the sky above. The plane accelerating, her heart thumping, an overwhelming elation filled the cockpit. 

The lake’s edge was coming up fast. Her piloting years flashed before her then, merging with that new vision of her friend. Frances willed the Beaver’s nose to lift and felt the flying machine break free. She soared over the surrounding forest, pontoons clearing the treetops. 

Otter was nowhere in sight. Frances flew around the lake, searching for him. A panic churned within her. Images of his plane in fiery shambles ran through her mind, but she let them go. She flew higher. Flew like she were the Beaver herself, something inside guiding her away from the lake and back to the race.

Frances reached Refuge Cove in a daze. Touched down and taxied to the dock where spectators greeted her with ticker tape and moonshine. The kind Ol’ Buck used to drink. And when Otter landed minutes later, his head bowed, Frances savored the fresh-caught flavor of victory.