Beyond the Mirror

“Well, it sounds as if it might be worth a try,” Tom frowned at the thought. “I’ll give them a call and see if they’re willing to help before I do anything else. I know the streets in town aren’t too bad, because one of the local cops just drove over here in an SUV, but the roads out your way are what I’m worried about.”

“Well, as far as the road is concerned, I could go across the way and get the snowplow started, then head toward town. We’ll meet somewhere along the road. If I don’t meet you along the way, don’t forget that Dave’s place is just opposite the entrance to the airstrip when you get out here. We’ve got him resting fairly comfortably for now, so don’t take any stupid risks. Okay?”

“Actually, I’m thinking of calling the RCMP, since they’re still supposed to be helping folks outside of town,” Tom was already getting to his feet. “No matter what happens, I’ll get there as soon as I can, and Harry, I don’t want you to take any silly risks yourself. Hold off on that snowplow for now, at least until I see what else I can do.”

With that, Tom disconnected from Harry, then called Russ and Liz, who jumped at the chance to help and would be waiting in the motel lobby for him to arrive. Next, he phoned the local RCMP detachment and told them who he was, what he was going to do, and why he was involved, then hung up, not waiting to listen to any comments or protests. After that, he dressed warmly, tossed his snow shovel into the box of his truck in passing, climbed into the cab, and drove down to the motel to pick up Russ and Liz.

In less than fifteen minutes, they were on the way out of town and hitting the first of the unplowed roads. Tom found that using the snow plow attachment on the truck was relatively simple since it was hydraulically operated and had a lever on the dash he could use to drop it into working position. He just had to be going fast enough to break through the drifts, then he was able to use the truck’s momentum to shift the snow. He didn’t even have to worry about the blade dragging on the ground since it rode on skids, so it never dropped all the way to road level. The only problem he had was that since the plow threw snow off to one side, when the leading edge of the plow bit into the drift, it had a tendency to pull the front end of the truck in that direction. It took two or three drifts before Tom learned to compensate for that pull, then it was relatively clear sailing. As a result, it was only about half an hour after they hit the first unplowed snow drift before they were pulling into Dave’s driveway, but by then, there was an RCMP cruiser and an ambulance following Tom’s pickup.

It was lucky that the plow on his truck had worked that well, because Harry had been unable to get the airstrip’s plow started. He and Tom were standing in the driveway discussing what might have been wrong with it when Sergeant MacDonald approached.

“You don’t do things exactly by the book, do you?” Officer MacDonald commented with a slightly amused look on his face.

“Not when a friend’s life is at stake, and certainly not when a few miles of drifted snow is all that’s standing between that friend and a hospital bed,” Tom snapped. “At a time like that, I’m going to grab anything in my way and shake hell out of it.”

“Well, you certainly shook up our dispatcher,” MacDonald said quietly. “She called the ambulance service and ordered them out, then called me and told me to come take care of the guy she calls ‘my pet hero’ and warned me about what was going on.”

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Tom said shortly, then sighed. “I suppose this is going to add to the damn rumours flying around town about me, isn’t it?”

“You can count on it,” MacDonald answered just as shortly, but he was grinning.

The local EMTs were carrying Dave out of the house then, so Tom led a parade of vehicles back to town. Once he hit the town’s plowed roads, he pulled over and let the others go past, then he turned and looked over at Russ and Liz.

“Sorry about disturbing your Sunday afternoon,” he smiled. “It turns out I had more help than I counted on. Now I should probably go to the hospital and make sure Dave is alright, but there won’t be much I can do for him, so I don’t plan on staying there for long. Do you want me to run you back to the motel now, or would you prefer to hang around with me for a while?”

“Actually, it was kind of fun,” Russ grinned. “And we sure weren’t doing anything important, so anything is better than staring at the walls of the motel room. I guess we’ve probably been a bit of a pain in the butt for you and Harry, and I’m sorry about that. It’s just that we want to be involved if there is anything we can do, but you just showed us that we will be.”

“Russel is right, and since we’ve been accustomed to being very busy most of the time, the idea of sitting around wears on us a little. The fact that we could be useful to you in some way is quite gratifying, even if we weren’t really called on to do any work,” Liz broke into a wide smile.

“Well, I can understand that, but I think you should try to appreciate times like this when nature makes us all slow down,” Tom paused and frowned, then smiled. “If you aren’t busy, why don’t we go to the hospital so I can check on Dave first? After that, we can drive by my new building, and later we can drop over to Sandy’s house, if that’s okay with you? That way, I can give you a quick rundown of what you’ll be doing, and you can meet some of the people you’re going to be working with - well, in one way or another.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful!” Liz said with a smile while Russell nodded enthusiastically.

“The new building is empty as yet, and all you’d really see in there would be open space, so we’ll just drive past the place. Then we can drop by Sandy’s house, but it is Sunday, so don’t expect too much to happen today,” Tom sighed as he drove a few blocks to the hospital.

As he expected, all the nurses at the front desk would tell him was that Dave Farmington was now a patient. Tom wasn’t about to stick around because he knew there wasn’t anything he could do, so he was soon back at the truck.

“Just as I expected, there’s nothing I can do here, and there’s no information on his condition yet,” he said as he got back into the truck. “I’m going to have to be patient, but while I have this break, I might as well explain what I expect you two to do for me and the company. Once the weather cooperates, we’re all going to be hopping to get things done because this year is going to be hectic for everyone at White Out. This spring, you folks are going to have to help look after several contracts and perhaps some emergencies, but on top of that, everything White Out owns has to be moved down to this airstrip. Besides that, you’re going to be hauling most of the supplies, materials, and people I need to have moved to my lease in the mountains. Not only are you going to be busy, but the whole deal isn’t going to be a cakewalk. It’s going to be a lot of hard work,” Tom paused and frowned, then smiled slightly. “I need to explain a few things before we go to Sandy’s, so could you folks stand a coffee?”

After the two of them had nodded, he carried on, “You’re going to be working in a situation that is going to call for some diplomacy on your part too. In the first place, I want you to hang onto the fact that Jim Burke is going to be your ultimate boss, not me and not my sister Ann. However, at the same time, you’re going to have to understand that Sandy, Ann, and I control a majority of the finances of four companies; only we’re trying to blend them into a cohesive group. Now, in most cases, you won’t be working much with Sandy, since she’s my chief accountant, and I doubt if you’ll be involved in that end of things. However, I’m going to be trying to establish a standard policy for all my supplies and materials, which might be a touch confusing in some ways. Ann will be my local contact for purchasing and shipping, but Jim will implement the actual shipments and do the flight schedules, with Harry, Ron, and Travis as the foremen who work with the crews.”

“Just like the military,” Russ chuckled as they pulled up at a coffee shop. “We’ve already mentally placed all of the folks we’ve met in a comparative position that I think we can handle.”

“We look at you as the commanding general because you’re the guy who swings the biggest stick, or in this case, the most money,” Liz explained with a grin after they were inside and had ordered coffee and donuts. “It sounds like your sister is your subordinate, but she carries some clout too, so she’d be somewhere in line, but probably staff. Jim Burke is like a major and in command of our overall group, which includes the whole of the White Out operation. Harry would be like a master sergeant who sees that the orders are carried out in the local situation, but he may get his hands dirty as well. The two of us are just privates who do the real hands-on work and are out in the field.”

“Not a bad analogy in some ways,” Tom laughed softly. “If that works for you, I won’t argue with your mental view of the situation. As long as you remember that Jim is the guy you really have to listen to for normal operations, I’ll be quite happy. Your chopper is under Jim’s overall control, but either I or Ann will be working deliveries into his schedule, so you’ll be seeing a lot of one or the other of us. In most cases, you’ll be doing the actual ferrying of supplies to cover my needs, except for small shipments which might go by floatplane, or huge loads going in by skycrane. That sort of thing isn’t going to be my worry. You two are going to be my preference for medium to large deliveries, but really, who delivers the loads and what birds they fly will be Jim’s decision.”

“What will happen when I can no longer fly because of my pregnancy?” Liz asked.

“That isn’t my concern,” Tom said quietly. “I know there are regulations that the safety board puts out about pregnant pilots, and I’m sure White Out will have a say in that as well, so I can’t say much about that right now. Even after you’re grounded, you might be able to work in the office if you want, but that’s up to Jim and the others on the job. The only problem I might become involved with is finding someone to take your place when it would be unsafe for you to fly any longer.”

“Well, we know a couple of pilots who are out of work, but I’m not sure if they’d be what you want,” Russ said tentatively. “One is a slightly disabled but can still do almost anything a normal guy can do, and the other suffers from a mild case of PTSD.”

“Well, choosing a pilot isn’t going to be my call.” Tom stated flatly. “Heck, I even asked the guys from White Out to be involved in making the decision about you, and that involved both the chopper and you two as pilots. I wasn’t about to saddle a good crew with someone who might cause problems, so you might keep that idea in mind before you recommend anyone to Jim and Ron. I know that your recommendation is going to be taken seriously, so I’d think you might want to consider whether the person can do the job as well as get along with the people at White Out. I know you have friendships and loyalties outside of the company, but we have a reputation to maintain, and our pilots have people’s lives in their hands. We aren’t a rehabilitation facility, but at the same time, I’m not against hiring people with a disability, just as long as it doesn’t hurt our operation.”

“That’s fair,” Russ nodded. “I wouldn’t recommend anyone that I didn’t think could do the job, and I can understand your concerns about maintaining stability in the operation at White Out. It has an excellent reputation, and I wouldn’t want to damage that either, especially since I’m a new recruit.”

“While we’re talking about hiring people, are you looking for workers up at your mine?” Liz asked.

“Wow, that came out of left field,” Tom turned and looked at her closely. “I really hadn’t planned on asking anyone about finding anyone for that job. You have to understand that I don’t have a huge operation and don’t plan on expanding the mine very much because I want to continue to work it on my own for now.”

“Oh, I see,” she sighed. “Well, just to explain myself, the fellows that rescued us were injured as well, and while we were in the hospital, we got to talking to one of them a lot, so we learned about his background. His parents were gold miners, so he knows quite a bit about small mining operations. His dad was killed a few years ago in a mine accident, but his mom still lives in a tiny town near where their mine was located. The strange thing is, it’s somewhere in this part of the province. He just mustered out a few months ago and wrote us a letter that he was going to overwinter in Bear Creek, then hike in to see his mom once spring came.”

“You don’t happen to recall the name of the town his mom lives in, do you?” Tom asked quietly.

“Umm, it’s a funny name. I think it was something like Heartache Valley, or something similar to that?” she frowned.

“Was his mother’s name Hattie, and his last name Armstrong, by any chance?” Tom grinned.

“How the heck did you know that?” Liz stared at him in astonishment.

“I’ve met his mom,” Tom grinned. “The town is called Misery Flats, and it’s only about thirty or thirty-five miles from my lease. I hiked out there the first summer I was up at the mine because I ran short of supplies. Hattie Armstrong runs a bed and breakfast of sorts just up the street from the general store where I bought my supplies, so I spent a night in her house.”

“Holy crow, small world, isn’t it?” Russ broke into laughter. “You know, since Alvin said he was going to stay in Bear Creek over the winter, we should see if we could find him. I think it would be a nice surprise for him to find that he has folks he knows in town.”

“Well, you could start by asking the police, I guess, but they probably wouldn’t know anything unless he’s gotten himself into trouble. Or, since he’s an ex-serviceman, and if he’s the sort of person who would join the Legion, you could ask there,” Tom suggested. “Other than that, I don’t have any ideas.”