Squall

chapter two

At 6:00 o'clock on the morning of his thirty-first birthday, Tom Stokes dressed quietly in his winter work clothes then leaned over the bed to kiss his wife Mandy on the forehead.

Mandy opened her eyes to squint at him in the thin dawn light. She looked annoyed.

Tom said, "Did I wake you? I was trying to keep it down."

"You're a bull," Mandy said and flipped back the covers, showing a very pregnant abdomen. "Come back to bed."

"I'd love to, but I gotta get airborne. Billy Trudeau said he saw a busted window in Outpost Cabin Three." Billy was an Ojibway trapper and guide Tom sometimes hired to look after the hunters and fishermen he rented his outpost cabins to in season. "That means either looters, animals or both. Either way, I want to get it secured so I can be back in time for Steve's party."

Mandy smiled. "My birthday boys. Okay, I'm up."

As she grunted her way into a sitting position, shivering in the morning chill, Tom crept along the hallway to his son's room.

Steve, five years old today, was still sound asleep, tangled in his blankets as he always was, a restless sleeper since birth. Seeing him there, winter pale and so utterly still, Tom felt the same unnerving mix of love and dread he'd felt every morning since they brought the little guy home from the maternity ward: love of a depth he'd never imagined possible...and dread that his son's stillness meant death had crept in to claim him in the night. An irrational fear, maybe-Steve was a healthy, active kid who, apart from those few routine illnesses of early childhood, rarely even caught a cold-but it was a dread that abated only when Tom rested his hand on that tiny chest, as he did now, feeling the rhythmic passage of air that signaled precious life.

He kissed his son on the cheek, then did his best to disentangle him from his blankets without waking him. By the time he got downstairs, Mandy had a pot of coffee brewing and two slices of rye bread in the toaster for him.

As he always did, Tom took his breakfast into the business office on the main floor. He set his toast on the desk but held onto the coffee, sipping it as he checked the weather forecast on the computer, then visually through the big picture window that gave onto the lake where his two planes-a blue and white Cessna 180 and a bright red DHC-2 de Havilland Beaver-stood waiting on their skis, looking frosty and stiff in the gathering light.

The morning was cold but clear, the windsock hanging limp on its pole, no sign of the storm the computer said was raging a few hours south of them now, plowing its way north. He should be able to get his repairs done and be back in plenty of time to see Steve getting off the school bus.

The family trophy case caught Tom's eye and he idly surveyed its many awards with pride, even though most of them belonged to his wife. Mandy was a crack shot with any kind of firearm. She'd been competing at some of the highest levels since high school, and for a while, before deciding to become a pilot, had been grooming herself for the Olympics. The most exciting events she competed in were the IPSC matches, wicked, action-movie scenarios with gangster popup targets and cardboard mothers clutching babies. It was wild watching her do her thing at these events-and because of them Steve thought he had the coolest mom on the planet. Some of the trophies were pretty impressive, too: poised, gold and silver figures aiming handguns and rifles, the plaques beautifully engraved. He had a couple of things in here somewhere himself...ah, there they were: a three-inch tall gold cup with World's Best Dad inscribed on its base, and a grinning porcelain skull he won at a coin toss at the Azilda Fair. There was a vacant shelf at the top of the unit, reserved for Steve's future accomplishments; and soon enough, those of his still gestating baby brother as well.

Completing his morning ritual, Tom sat on the love seat in front of the window and finished his breakfast, gazing with pride at the logo on the Cessna 180, the plane he'd be flying this morning: Stokes Aviation.

He wondered what Mandy got him for his birthday.