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~
Thirty-two
~

At least I knew the way to McCafferty Logging in Eugene, Oregon. I rented a Jeep Cherokee at the Portland Airport and drove the hundred miles south to Eugene. I wrestled my cell phone out of my carry-on bag and flipped to Don McCafferty’s number. He picked up instantly.

“Yes.”

“Don, it’s Harper. I should have given you a heads-up, but I’m on my way to Eugene. I couldn’t stay in Los Angeles.”

There was nothing, only silence on Don’s end of the line for a moment. Then he spoke in a voice that was anesthetized, frozen, not the strong man who doled out accident reports without flinching, but the voice of someone who’d been awake all night.

“There’s nothing more you can do here. I told you. There’s nothing more you can do.”

“I think there is. Is there any new information?”

“No, nothing new. I don’t know what you think you being here will change. Storms in the area have impeded any rescue efforts. The coast guard won’t go out until the weather clears. We won’t hear anything new until then.”

“I don’t have any peace about this, Don. I want to go to Tarajuro and find out what happened. See if there were witnesses who might have seen Luke’s plane go down. I have to have answers.”

I heard an audible groan on the other end of the line.

“Harper, honey, you’re taking this too far. It’s one thing to come join us here in Eugene, but don’t go all the way to the bottom of the world trying to bring Luke back. Where are you now?”

“I’m about thirty minutes from your office. Obviously, I don’t have a plan worked out yet, but I
have
to go. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.”

When I pulled into the parking lot at McCafferty Logging, Don McCafferty stood waiting for me at the front door. I parked the rental car next to the Jeep Luke and I had taken that night we spent together in Eugene. Just seeing it in the cold with its doors locked and its lights off made me ache. I moved past it up the walkway, keeping myself busy with activity and motion. Don greeted me with an embrace.

“I’m sorry if I was rude to you earlier, Harper. Please come in.” He held open the glass door for me.

“I just want to know what happened.”

“I know.”

A receptionist sat behind her workstation in the modest lobby, dabbing her nose with a tissue, her eyes bloodshot, looking as shell-shocked as everybody we encountered on our way into the building.

Don took me into the conference room. There was a framed poster-sized advertisement for McCafferty Logging hanging on the wall showing an aerial photo of a large company Cessna just like Luke’s flying over the Oregon wilderness.

A conference table long enough to seat a dozen people ran nearly the full length of the simply furnished room. At the far end was the only modern addition, a cart holding a TV and DVD player. I saw on a shelf in the cabinet the ham radio and microphone Don had been using to talk to Luke.

The conference table was littered with maps of the Tarajuro area south of the equator, west of Kiribati. Newly sharpened yellow No. 2 pencils rolled across the table when Don rearranged the maps.

“I’d been trying to chart Luke’s course using his time of departure, air speed, the flight plan he’d given me,” he said. He shuffled through the charts, bringing to the surface the most detailed map of the area. Using a navigational ruler, Don drew a straight line in pencil from Tarajuro through the Phoenix Islands directly to Honolulu. He’d circled a spot on the map where he’d charted Luke’s probable last minutes of flight.

“I just want to show you how inherently difficult a search mission is in this area of the world. This is where I estimated Luke went down. But here”—Don moved the tip of his pencil inches across the map—“you can see there’s nothing but ocean out there.” He looked at me, reading my expression. “The area is breathtaking in its size. You could look for clues down there, Harper, and be just five miles off, and never find what you’re looking for.”

“You mentioned one of the islands picking up Luke’s last message. Which island?”

Don pulled a different map from the pile and marked a star next to the island.

“Here. Botuvita. If he was near the island, he may have already been past Kiribati and on his way to Hawaii. Luke was most likely following a shipping current, so there’s no telling at what point he entered the sea, and how far the current carried the wreckage before it finally went under.”

“Did he say anything else in his message?”

“Look, I know this is hard, but I’m trying to save you the heartache of going all the way down there for nothing.”

Don got up from the conference table and led me to the communications center. A spiral notepad lay next to the radio’s microphone, a narrow red stripe running along the side of it that I assumed was the Talk button. Don lifted the notepad and flipped through its pages.

“Looks like there are five or six pages of notes from our conversations. I tried to write down anything that seemed important.”

He handed me the notepad.

“Don, I’m going to Tarajuro. I’m going to find Luke, or at least find out what happened to him if I have to search the entire Pacific inch by inch, island by island … but I need your help,” I pleaded.

“I can’t go with you.”

“I know. I just need you to tell me … if you were going to look for him, where would you start?”

Don pulled the top chart toward us on the conference table and tapped the “X” spot with his thick index finger.

“Botuvita.”

At 2 a.m. I awoke aboard a half-empty red-eye from Portland to Honolulu. The cabin lights were dimmed for sleeping passengers, and a nearly full moon cast a strip of light on the Pacific below. I was an actress traveling to the bottom of the world, playing a new role—detective.

I felt strangely calm, like the feeling you get when you surrender yourself to the inevitable. Images of Amelia Earhart and her ill-fated flight through the Howland Islands beleaguered me. If no one had found her in more than a half century, how in the world was I going to find Luke? Don had given me Luke’s last known whereabouts, the charts, and notes from their ham radio conversations. Everything I thought I knew was based on mere assumptions, and I had no concrete idea of how to conduct a search operation.

I was depending on prayer, the same thing that had kept me afloat in the tempestuous storms of my isolation in Chicago, of Helen Payne and Tabby Walker. I prayed that God would intervene in my search, or that He was actually the One calling me to search for Luke in the first place. His missionary pilot had gone down at sea. Maybe He had called me for a rescue. It sounded ludicrous to my own ears, but I had to go, as ill-equipped as I knew I was. I had to travel to Botuvita.

A flight attendant knelt down in the aisle of the half-empty flight and spoke to me in a soft voice.

“We’ll be in the air for another two hours. Is there anything I can bring you?”

I felt my stomach rumble. Not eating had given me a headache.

“I missed dinner,” I told her. “I hate to ask, but is there any food on the plane?”

“We’re scheduled to serve a light breakfast in the morning. Let me see what I can turn up.”

The flight attendant moved to the forward galley as I glanced around the plane. Almost everyone seemed to be sleeping except a man in a white business dress shirt typing at a laptop in the focused overhead beam.

The flight attendant—I noticed her name tag read Jill—returned with a toasted bagel and two packets of cream cheese. “I also just brewed a pot of coffee for the pilot crew if you’re interested.”

“Yes, coffee would be wonderful. Thank you.”

A moment later, Jill returned with a white Styrofoam cup of hot coffee, which I took and set on my open tray table.

“Are you traveling to Honolulu for business or for a vacation?”

“Neither. I’m trying to find someone, a pilot whose plane went down near the Phoenix Islands. Honolulu is just a stopover for me.”

Jill frowned. “Is he in the military?”

“No, he was flying supplies to missionaries in the South islands.”

“Is the coast guard looking for him?”

“Yes, but it’s a lot of sea to cover,” I told her. “I just couldn’t stay in LA.”

Jill’s face looked compassionate, but hopeless for my predicament. I thought she’d say something not rosy, but generally positive. Instead, she just reached across the silent aisleway to squeeze my hand.

“What kind of plane was he flying?”

“A single-engine Cessna,” I said, the words underscoring just how without hope my quest was.

Jill nodded again, at a loss for anything to say, the silence between us filled with the hum of our own airplane at thirty-eight thousand feet.

“How are you getting from Honolulu to the lower islands?” she asked.

I drew in a deep breath. “I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’m probably going to contract a charter in Honolulu. I’m just assuming these things can be done.”

“They can. My brother-in-law is a pilot on Oahu. As long as you’re looking, you might want to give him a call. He’s honest, a little different, but he has a fast plane.”

“A little different?” I asked.

Jill’s face looked like she was trying to come up with a way to explain her brother-in-law.

“Australian,” she finally said. “They have their own sensibilities. He’s fine, it’s just that he can be a little rough around the edges.”

She took a napkin out of her apron pocket, clicked the end of a ballpoint pen, and began to write on the napkin. I pushed on my own overhead light and saw the name she had written: Joel Hawthorne. She wrote his telephone number beneath it.

“Give him a call,” Jill said, putting away her pen. “Good luck.”

I deboarded the plane in Honolulu. Crowds of vacationers only multiplied the difficulties of finding Luke. Searching for him had seemed oddly easier in the quiet of the commercial jet miles above the island.

I hadn’t slept on the plane; it was something I’d never learned to do. On a bench by a row of rental cars and hotel advertisements, I sat with my one rolling carry-on bag and took out my cell phone. The charge was strong and so was the signal. No message from Luke, but I’d come to accept that wasn’t going to happen. I dialed the number for Joel Hawthorne on the napkin and listened to the phone ring. No answer. I began praying again. It was a moment of weakness. I was fighting doubt, and all my prayers seemed to fall flat before me. I shut my eyes seeking a moment of rest and oblivion from my physical fatigue and grief.

I remembered waiting at O’Hare in Chicago when I’d prayed that my plane would be on time. Arriving late in New York was once the biggest crisis I could imagine.

~
Thirty-three
~

Joel Hawthorne was a man on the go. As I was hanging up on his business line, the answering machine kicked on, and I listened to the outgoing message. It was a short and to-the-point little ditty, voiced in the pilot’s thick Australian accent. When the beep came, I spoke.

“Hi, Mr. Hawthorne. I met your sister-in-law, Jill, on my flight in from Portland last night. I’m looking to hire a charter plane to take me to the Kiribati Islands. Please call me if you’re available and interested.”

I left my cell phone number and switched off the call. I stood up from the bench and turned to face a plethora of choices for sleeping, eating, driving, or flying the adventure of the Hawaiian Islands. There were signs and airport shuttles for rental cars, helicopter tours, volcano hikes, and scuba diving. On a lighted sign of attractions, hotels, and limo drivers, was a small four-by-five-foot ad for a local island tours company. The sign read:

See Hawaii from the Air!

Hawthorne Aviation

The number Jill had written down on the airline snack napkin was listed on the ad, but there was also an address along with a walking diagram to Hawthorne Aviation and a simple but helpful “you are here” dot where I stood.

The walking course to Hawthorne Aviation was basic enough. I memorized the map, and pulling my one canvas carry-on, proceeded to look for a shuttle to the Avis Rental car counter. The directions said that Hawthorne Aviation was just a tenth of a mile west of Avis Rental.

When the Avis Rental car shuttle dropped me off at their front door, I could see Hawthorne Aviation’s building next door. The structure was little more than a shack, not larger than five hundred square feet.

The day was already hot and tropical. I could feel perspiration dampening my neck and wondered how long it would be before I saw the inside of a shower again.

I stepped into the tiny building, thankful to discover the AC had chilled the room to a near subzero temperature. It was a seedy dive of a place, with plastic ferns poking out from wicker planters. A red, white, and blue banner hanging from the front counter announced the business’s grand opening, though layers of dust suggested that opening may have taken place while I was still in college.

I approached the glass counter, admiring a collection of bar coasters, baseball cards, and local souvenirs displayed. Pinup posters showing off exotic locales decorated three of the interior walls, making Hawthorne Aviation feel like a travel agent’s shop. I looked for a bell on the counter to ring.

An attractive woman wearing a red and white flowered Hawaiian shirt and white Gap jeans stepped out from the back. She was young, soft spoken, and relaxed in a way that suggested she lived a carefree island lifestyle. I decided to tone down my overpowering sense of urgency. I wanted to already be in the air flying to the Luke’s island, not to come across as a stressed-out lunatic.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m looking for Joel Hawthorne. Is he here? I left a message earlier.”

“Are you interested in booking a Hawaiian air tour?” she asked. I saw her reach for a printed form on top of the counter, but couldn’t bear the thought of filling out my name, address, and the dozens of other questions in little blocks on the sheet. This wasn’t the time for that.

“Something like that. I met Mr. Hawthorne’s sister-in-law, Jill, on a plane from Portland last night. She said I may be able to charter a plane to the Kiribati Islands, and suggested I contact him.”

“She told you I could take you to Kiribati?” an Australian man’s voice asked behind me. I turned to see a tall man, six feet four or more, standing in a doorway beside the counter. He was clean shaven except for a full moustache that rounded out his upper lip. He looked more professional than I’d expected, given the decor of his office, and resembled a doctor working in a field hospital more than a pilot for a tiny aviation company.

“If you’re wanting to fly all the way to Kiribati, it’ll cost you at least twelve hundred dollars to take you, and probably another grand to fly you back. Course, if fuel is excessively pricey or hard to come by, you can expect those ticket prices to climb.”

“How soon can we leave?” I said, in no mood to barter prices.

Hawthorne looked at his girl Friday like my coming in had interrupted a private conversation about their needing a sucker or they’d both be out of business. His eyes turned back to me.

“I can have a plane ready in two hours.”

I rode the Avis Rental car shuttle back to the airport, then hailed a taxi driven by a large Hawaiian man and asked him to take me to the nearest hotel. I was already exhausted and wanted desperately to take a shower, perhaps even steal an hour of sleep before leaving for Kiribati. The driver dropped me off at the Oahu, not two minutes from the airport. There I rented a room for an unconscionable price, three hundred dollars, the most I’d ever paid for a shower and a nap, but it suited my purposes, and I put it on my American Express.

In room 304, I luxuriated under the water of a long, hot shower before falling into a comfortable king-size bed. I’d brought my travel alarm and set it to ring in an hour and placed it on the nightstand. I also made sure to charge my cell phone, not knowing if I’d have an opportunity again on the trip.

I thought about calling home to talk with Avril or Sydney, but I didn’t want to hear it all again, how I was jeopardizing my career, throwing away a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They already thought I’d lost my mind and feared for my safety.

I just fell asleep instead, dreaming of the ocean, of islands and blue waters, white sandy coastlines, and native islanders fishing with nets. Luke was in my dream too. He was wearing cutoffs and a torn shirt, standing on a deserted island beach and waving a cell phone to me, wanting me to call him. A wall of water stood between us. I opened my phone, desperately punching in numbers, trying to find the message he’d sent. When I stared at the phone, it was under the blue water at the end of my arm. The words in his text message floated off the screen, blurred in the shimmer of salt water.

Don’t worry yourself sick. I’m not in any danger. I’ve only been missing forty-eight hours.

Three hours later we were in the air flying over open water. Mr. Hawthorne’s powerful six-passenger Cessna cruised at an altitude of twenty thousand feet. The Pacific below us was an infinite watery desert.

After discussing the plan with Hawthorne, we agree to retrace Luke’s route, going over the McCafferty Logging charts and maps that Don had given me. I read some of the journal of Luke’s trip from Don’s scribbled notepad, and learned that one of the Tarajuro missionaries, Eve Walbry, had said a prayer for Luke and me when she heard of our relationship.

We were headed toward Tarajuro, the island where Luke had worked with the missionaries for almost ten days before cutting his trip short. We’d start our search there. My strategy was to investigate Tarajuro, learn what I could, and move forward from there, stopping at every populated group of islands on Luke’s flight path, asking anyone and everyone—pilots, fisherman, sailors—if they’d seen or heard anything about a plane going down in the waters of the South Pacific.

It was late in the day, but the sun was bright, the sky remarkably clear. Now that Luke’s ocean lay a few thousand feet below us, I felt a strange sensation of closeness to him.

“How long until we land at Tarajuro, Mr. Hawthorne?”

He glanced at his instrument panel, a wall of dials and gauges.

“Before nightfall, obviously. This plane is a lot faster than the Cessna Luke was flying. We’ll be looking for the airstrip about six thirty tonight.”

At 6:28, Joel Hawthorne landed our plane at Tarajuro, a simple airfield marked off with orange barrels. The island was a tropical paradise. By the time Hawthorne shut off his engine near the refueling station, locals were making their way out to greet us, along with an Australian woman I took to be one of the missionaries.

“Welcome to Tarajuro,” she said. “You must be Harper Gray. Don McCafferty contacted us by radio to say you were coming.”

“You must be Eve Walbry,” I said, wiping sweat from my hands to shake hers. Eve was in her late forties, I guessed, wearing oval spectacles, sandy colored shorts, and a sleeveless button-up blouse.

“Yes, I’m one of the missionaries working here on the island. You’ll get to meet my husband, Daniel, once we arrive to camp.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “This is Mr. Hawthorne, my pilot. We’ve flown here from Honolulu to find out what happened to Luke. I wonder if you’d help us with any information you may have.”

“We’ve been praying ever since we heard the news. Luke was, well,
is
someone who loves serving the Lord. He’s someone God’s worked through so a hospital can be built here—and someday it will be. It’s only a clinic now, but there’s nothing else even remotely nearby.”

Hawthorne pulled our bags from storage, and I heard him toss them on the ground. The sun was setting below the trees dimming the airfield, and I fought to rid my mind of the image of Luke stranded at sea, clinging to a floating piece of debris. Eve invited us to join her and Daniel for dinner, where she promised to tell us everything she knew. Worn out, dirty, and wishing I’d brought bug spray, I helped Hawthorne move our things from the landing strip down a beaten path that led into the jungle of Tarajuro.

“Luke was in excellent spirits when he left here. Bounding with energy, happy to see us, but ready to get back to the States.”

“Did he say why he wanted to leave earlier than planned?” I asked. The four of us—Eve and Daniel Walbry, Mr. Hawthorne and I—sat around a small but proper dinner table in the Walbry’s clinic and living quarters.

“Well, to see you,” Eve said. “He was a bundle of energy. Once all the supplies had been delivered, repairs made, the equipment up and running, he was torn between keeping his original plans, and going back early. We could see he was in love, and so Daniel and I insisted.”

Hawthorne asked, “He didn’t say anything about deviating from his flight plan, did he?”

“No, not to us. He refueled late in the day, said he would make a stop on his way to Hawaii, and was off.”

“Do you have any idea where he planned to stop?”

“Not really, but I took it to mean with the late hour, he might land on one of the other islands in the area and stay the night.”

The four of us finished a dinner of fish and fruit, and I asked our hosts if it would be okay to turn in. I was exhausted, emotionally and physically. Eve led me to the small plank-wood-floor room where Luke had slept just a few nights before. I thanked her and closed the curtain.