Two If by Sea by Jacquelyn Mitchard Page A

the natural disaster. Valuable horses usually were transported overseas on specially fitted-out cargo planes, or even on freighters, with experienced handlers paid for the purpose—not in makeshift stalls ordered from veterinary catalogues in Sydney. Frank knew better than to watch Glory Bee loaded: the sight would have wrung out his guts. Crates and kennels were fine for dogs and cats, and perhaps even smaller exotic creatures, but not for livestock.
    Patrick had a tagged, approved syringe of light sedative in his backpack. There were several loaded rifles on board, and Frank assumed one was down in the hold, for such situations and other situations he didn’t like to think about. Had anyone ever shot a hole in the wall of an airplane? He could tell, just from their posture and their shoes, that at least four of the passengers were police, which made him feel alternately comforted and queasy.
    â€œGuys, excuse me,” he said to the resting pilots, who had just tucked into a full-fledged meal. “I have a request. I need to see if my horse is okay.” The pilots were demolishing steaks so uniform in shape that they looked to have been stamped out of a kind of colloid. “I know you probably don’t usually let people do this. She’s a champion, and she’s valuable. She could die unless we sedate her.” Frank saw the shrug in both guys’ eyes. “You don’t usually have lightning strike the aircraft either.”
    â€œYou brought your horse?” one of the pilots asked. He was an American.
    â€œI train horses. We’re going back home to Wisconsin. Now, sure, horses normally travel on specially fitted planes—” Frank stopped. The pilot clearly could not care less. So far, no one single part of this was a lie, although lies were now Frank’s medium. He swam in lies, and drank them.
    â€œI grew up in Wisconsin,” said the other pilot, and Frank knew he was in. “Whereabouts are you from?”
    â€œOutside Madison, near Spring Green. My grandfather started the farm. He’s still there. Ninety-six years old.”
    â€œI’m from Rhinelander. Up north. I’ll show you,” the Wisconsin pilot said, then noticed the child. “I can’t take responsibility for the kid going in the hold. Francie will watch him.”
    â€œHe won’t leave my side,” Frank said. “His mother died on Christmas Day. And my groom has to come, too.” Frank nodded to Patrick, who was at his side in a breath.
    Later, Frank hoped to Christ it wouldn’t become a legend, what happened down there. If he prayed, he would have prayed that no one would take it on himself to talk to a TV station about the human-interest angle of the time lightning struck Flight 500.
    In the same way people assume that hospitals are clean and schools are safe, Frank had assumed, despite having watched cargo handlers throw luggage into the guts of airplanes with the same care and skill as garbage collectors, that the holds of planes were at least somewhat orderly. He could not have pictured how much of a formless, planless mess the cargo hold of a plane really was. With this system, no one’s baggage should ever arrive or get matched to the people who hopefully checked it. Nothing should ever remain unbroken. Suitcases and trunks and boxes were strewn across the floor, in no order, not on shelves or set between stanchions or grids, simply tossed in piles on the floor of a bare, dark, metal cavity. The pilot turned on a dim light. It was not a track light, but a single pair of bulbs, like something in a cellar. Frank could see more then . . . of the same. Among that welter of boxes and duffels were kennels and crates that held animals, but not in any sequestered place. Some kennels sat all wonky on top of the suitcases; some had slipped off and lay on their sides or even on the grated fronts that were supposed to allow animals to see. To get to any one