"I have an empty reposition flight heading back to Boeing Field at four, Arthur," Ross said, resting his hand on the stone balustrade. "Wayne Keller called dispatch an hour ago. The regional director in Boise signed an administrative settlement before noon. The company is withdrawing its condemnation petition against the orchard approach, and they’re paying the estate fifty-two thousand dollars for an eighty-foot ground lease along the ditch road. You’ll have enough to replace the main pump and buy two seasons of fertilizer without touching the land bank."
"I don't need company money to replace Julian's pump, Dave," I told him, looking out toward the river where the gray water cut through the canyon walls toward the lower dams.
"Take it anyway," Ross replied, an iron smile returning to his gray eyes. "Julian earned it thirty-two years ago, and you earned it at gate fourteen yesterday afternoon. Besides, if you don't take their money, they’ll spend it on more Yakima lawyers who don't know the difference between a legal right-of-way and forty acres of prime red delicious."
He reached out his right hand, hard and calloused from decades of control yokes and throttle quadrants, and took mine in a grip that had nothing to do with corporate airlines.
"Take care of the trees, Arthur," the captain said.
"Clear skies, Dave," I answered.
I watched him walk down the stone steps toward the curb where Calder’s squad car was waiting to drive him back across the bridge to the terminal. He walked with the steady, measured stride of a man who had delivered every soul on his manifest to the place they were bound to go, without leaving an old man’s grief stranded on the concourse tiles.
By five that evening, the valley was entirely quiet.
I drove Julian’s rusted three-quarter-ton pickup out past the packing plant, turned south along the river bench, and pulled up to the cattle guard at the mouth of the orchard lane. The snow had dusted the top wires of the four-strand fence, making the cedar posts look like a line of gray soldiers standing guard over the gravel ditch bank.
I left the engine idling with the heater blowing warm air against the cracked vinyl bench seat, climbed out into the cold, and walked along the boundary row until I reached the corner marker our grandfather had driven into the river gravel in nineteen-thirty-six. It was an eighteen-inch length of railroad iron, rusted to the color of dry blood, with the Vance initials stamped into the top flat with a cold chisel.
Beside it, Julian’s red survey flags were still tied to the willow stakes he had set three weeks before his heart gave out in the pruning shed.
I took Julian’s spare pocketknife from my coat pocket, cut the frayed orange plastic ribbons from the stakes, and let the wind carry them out across the ditch toward the empty asphalt of the auxiliary runway clear-zone.
The regional jets would still make their turns above the canyon on their final approach to runway four. Their landing lights would cut through the autumn fog, their jet wash would rattle the dry leaves in the upper branches of our orchard, and their pilots would look down at the dark rectangles of our trees as they brought seventy people safely out of the mountains.
But the wheels would touch down on airport asphalt, not on Julian’s ditch bank. The deed was filed in the oak cabinet in the county basement, Clara Finch’s signature was verified under the auditor’s seal, and the water would flow through the lateral gates when the snow melted off the high ridges in May.
I walked back to the truck, climbed into the cab, and laid Julian’s leather-bound flight kit on the passenger seat where he had set his lunch pail every morning for forty years. I put the truck in four-wheel low, turned the front wheels down the middle lane between the dark trees, and drove toward the house to light the pilot on the furnace.
FINAL THANK-YOU NOTE
Thank you for making room for these pages today.