Planefoot
a short story
I wasn’t a bad kid. But my parents sent me to the Alaskan wilderness anyway.
The course was supposed to “build character.” Or something. But as I trudged through the tall, spindly conifers of a forest somewhere east of the George Parks Highway in the middle of Alaska, I didn’t feel like my character was being built. I just felt exhausted and ready to go back home to beds, couches, fast food, and the internet.
This was our twenty-ninth day in the wilderness. When my grades had started to slip last year, Mom had gotten worried and Dad had said they “had to do something.” They’d ended up registering me for a month-long outdoor leadership course that one of their friends from church had sworn had fixed their son’s behavioral problems.
I didn’t have “behavioral problems.” I just didn’t give a shit about school. Or about anything else, really.
But here I was, on the third day of a final, four-day section where students traveled in small groups without our instructors. By the second day on our own, we’d run out of food and had nothing left to eat but the tiny blueberries we picked off the tundra below our feet as we walked.
So it was going pretty well.
But now we were out of the mountains and getting close to the highway. I’d learned to read a topographic map well enough to be sure of that. I could almost taste the cheeseburger I was going to order as soon as we got back to civilization. Extra ketchup, extra pickles.
Up ahead, I noticed something out of place in the woods. Something pale and mechanical.
“What’s that?” I asked Will. He’d spotted a grizzly bear taking down a moose on our first week, so I figured he had pretty good eyesight.
Will squinted at it. “Looks like a small plane?”
The four of us continued toward it. The thing was more or less on our route out of here, and it would provide a welcome distraction from the tedium of hunger and endless walking with a heavy pack.
As we approached the shape, I could make out more clearly what it was: a small bush plane, its fuselage sitting flat in the forest, yellow and white paint still in good condition, landing gear and both wings torn off. Though the wreckage looked relatively recent, the forest had already started to reclaim it. Plants had grown up around the the plane, but its fuselage was mostly intact. The top part of the cockpit had been ripped away with the wings, so that it sat open to the elements.
I walked up to the plane and peered down into the cockpit.
“Stay away from it!” Aubrey wailed. Aubrey was afraid of everything.
I rolled my eyes. “What’s it gonna do, explode?” I jeered.
Will came up behind me and looked into the cockpit too. “There’s something in there,” he said.
I stood on my tiptoes and looked. He was right. There was a small pile of what looked like old clothes on the floor.
I reached one arm in.
Aubrey screeched in protest. Patrick laughed and mocked her squeamishness. Will shifted uncomfortably as I fished around in the cockpit before pulling my arm back out.
In my hand was an old tennis shoe that must once have been white. Its laces were still done up.
“Oh my god!” shrieked Aubrey. “Is there a foot in there?”
She had a good point, I thought. I pulled up the tongue of the shoe and looked inside. On first glance it was empty, but toward the toe end there was a shadowy darkness that didn’t seem to want to be illuminated, no matter how I held the shoe up to the endless Alaskan summer sun.
“I don’t see anything,” I said, disappointed.
“Put it back and let’s go,” complained Patrick, swatting away a mosquito. We were less than a day’s walk from the highway, where tomorrow morning a bus would be waiting to take us back to Anchorage. With food.
“Yeah, okay,” I said, still peering into the shoe. I couldn’t see a foot or even any bones, but somehow it felt like there was something in there.
I held the shoe out over the cockpit, ready to drop it in, but then I hesitated. This was a pretty fucking cool find. A souvenir from a crashed plane in the wilderness of Alaska.
I pulled my arm back and shoved the shoe into the big side pocket of my backpack, cramming it in next to my Nalgene. Then I stepped away from the wreck and followed Patrick, Aubrey, and Will west toward the highway.
The next day, we were back on the bus by noon, sandwiches and cookies in our hands. Our heavy backpacks lay sprawled out on the seats beside us. As I chewed my turkey and cheese sandwich, I looked out the window at the enormous mountains we’d spent the last month navigating through. Good riddance, I thought. Time to go back to real life.
I finished my sandwich and reached for my Nalgene, my eyes still fixed on the changing landscape outside. My hand found the shoe instead.
Chuckling, I turned and looked at the strange object. It was ugly, really. Just an old, dirty, worn-out generic tennis shoe. Maybe, I thought with growing chagrin, no one would believe me if I told them where I’d found it. They’d probably think I’d dug it out of the trash somewhere, this weird almost-foot from a crashed plane.
Foot from a plane. Plane foot.
I smiled to myself as I bestowed a name on my dirty little souvenir: Planefoot.
Then I unwrapped another sandwich.
Back home, my parents were trying too hard. As soon as they spotted me at the airport, their faces were too eager, too hopeful, wondering if the wilderness had turned me into some better, more compliant version of me. The me they’d always wanted.
When I got up to my room, I shoved my giant expedition backpack and all the expensive outdoor gear my parents had bought for my trip into the back of my closet and tried to forget about Alaska. But Planefoot didn’t get locked up in the closet with everything else. Planefoot got pride of place on my top bookshelf, right between my tee-ball trophy from first grade and my autographed photo of Till Lindemann.
I spent the first two days at home in my room, scrolling the internet and eating and enjoying having privacy for the first time in a month.
When I came down for dinner the second day, Mom looked at me with that expression of hers that says I think there might be something wrong with you. I stared back, saying nothing, daring her to speak her thoughts out loud.
“How was your experience this summer?” she asked me awkwardly. They’d been waiting for me to talk about it, but I wasn’t interested in talking about the summer from hell. I raised one eyebrow and kept my lips sealed shut.
Dad walked in and put in his two cents. “Honey, when are you going to tell us about your adventures in Alaska?”
My “adventures.” Like when I fell off a beaver dam into stagnant water, embarrassing myself in front of eleven other students? Or like when I almost dropped my ice axe off the side of a mountain and got lectured about “responsibility”? Or the time I almost got hypothermia and had to be bundled up in sleeping bags by three teenagers with no medical training?
“They were great,” I said in a monotone. Dad looked pleased. He stood there as if waiting for me to provide details.
Instead, I sat down at the table, crossed my arms, and asked Mom what was for dinner.
That night, I had a strange dream. I was looking down from a great height, and below me were dark green treetops and an opaque, brown-gray river, the color of muddy snow. The river snaked and twisted, branching off and reconnecting with itself across flat beaches of polished dark gray rocks.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Then I noticed something about my shelf.
Till Lindemann had been knocked over, his frame lying face-down on the shelf. And Planefoot was pointing sideways.
I’d put it up there pointing forward.
Maybe there’d been an earthquake overnight and I’d just slept through it. I looked around the room for more signs of damage, but there were none.
I put Till Lindemann back where he belonged and turned Planefoot so its toe pointed forward again, then headed to the bathroom.
School seemed less boring this year. Sure, it was just the first week, but I felt more focused somehow. I even did some of my homework and spent a little less time online.
My parents seemed pleased with my academic progress. One evening over dinner, Dad suggested I register for the SAT and think about applying to colleges for next year. I thought that was taking things a bit far, but I agreed to let him sign me up for the November test. Then I went upstairs and did my biology homework.
I kept having the dreams. I’d close my eyes at night, and then the next thing I knew I’d be soaring over tundra and subarctic forests, skimming over mountain lakes, flying along the icy paths of glaciers.
And every morning, Planefoot had turned itself sideways.
I finally decided to rehome Till Lindemann, placing him on my dresser instead. And after a few weeks, I gave in and let Planefoot stay sideways, its toe pointing toward my window.
The morning after I’d rearranged the shelf, I found Planefoot at the far end of it, still pointing toward my bedroom window.
I gave the old shoe a good, hard stare, then moved it back to the middle of the shelf. From downstairs, my mother’s voice called up to me, letting me know she’d made pancakes.
I headed toward the door but stopped as I reached for the knob. I turned around and looked back at Planefoot’s shelf.
Planefoot was back at the end of the shelf, exactly where it had been when I’d woken up.
I decided to let Planefoot make its own decisions. After all, that shoe had been through a lot. Over the next two weeks, Planefoot made its way down from the shelf, onto the floor, across the room, and up onto the window sill. Finally, it sat there at the window, grubby toe pointed toward the glass, like a dog begging to go outside.
I felt sorry for the little guy.
I had another dream, but this one felt different. More real. For the first time, I heard sounds instead of just seeing landscapes. My head ached with the roar of an engine and the incessant thwacking of a plane’s propeller against the air. Below was a lake so smooth and calm it reflected the sky like a mirror, with pale green tundra and bare rocky outcrops surrounding it.
A tapping on the window woke me up.
I looked over at Planefoot. It wasn’t moving. I’d never seen Planefoot move. But something about the way it sat there seemed so desperate, so sad.
I picked up Planefoot and carried it downstairs and out into the backyard. Standing out on the grass, I held Planefoot up so it could see the stars. The leather and rubber in my hands almost seemed to exhale a sigh of relief, seemed to relax under the calm night sky.
Suddenly I felt extremely silly, standing in the backyard at midnight holding up an old shoe like it was a newborn Simba. I quickly brought my arms back down, looked around to make sure no one had witnessed me acting so strangely, then hurried back upstairs to my room.
I set Planefoot back on the window sill and almost told it goodnight before I caught myself.
It was just a shoe.
The next day I had a feeling Planefoot wanted to go out. I looked at it, sitting forlornly by the window, its tongue almost curling toward the outside world. I took pity on it and put it into my school backpack.
All day at school, I kept trying to sneak moments of alone time so I could take Planefoot out and let it have a look around. But the campus was too crowded, too full of other humans.
After school, I decided not to get on the bus but to walk home instead. I took the long route, through Old Town Park with its big duck pond, over Muddy Creek with its rushing water. I lingered at each place that felt beautiful and natural, taking Planefoot out and letting it see the sights. I think it liked the park best.
When I finally walked up the path to the front door of my house, the sun was low in the sky, and Mom’s eyebrows were low over her eyes as she stood on the small front porch, hands on angry hips. I smiled sheepishly at her and tried to think of an excuse that didn’t sound as crazy as trying to explain that I had been taking a shoe for a walk.
“Just where have you been, young lady?” she asked me. I hated it when she called me “young lady.”
“I missed the bus and had to walk home,” I half-lied.
Mom crossed her arms in front of her chest. “It’s after six o’clock,” she said, her voice an accusation. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
To be honest, I hadn’t thought about my phone at all while I’d been out with Planefoot.
“I, uh…” My mind reached for an explanation. “It was on silent.”
Mom continued to glare but stepped aside to let me into the house.
The next day was a Saturday. I woke up from a vivid, detailed dream of flying over mountains of ice, snow, and jagged rock. On the window sill, Planefoot sat as eager as a coiled spring, waiting for me to take it on its next adventure.
I dumped the books out of my school backpack and gently set Planefoot inside. Then I picked up the bag and ran downstairs to the kitchen.
After searching the refrigerator and the cabinets for supplies, I loaded up my backpack with water, trail mix, granola bars, fruit, and a small jar of peanut butter just in case. Dad wandered into the kitchen, yawning. “Bye, Dad!” I shouted as I zoomed out of the house.
It was a perfect fall morning. The sky was crisply blue, and gentle gusts blew red and orange leaves across empty streets like little sheets of fire. As soon as I was safely out of sight of my house, I took Planefoot out of my backpack and cradled it under one arm.
Our first stop was Old Town Park. Planefoot loved the gentle shushing of the swaying trees as the wind moved through their branches. I sat down on the grassy bank at the edge of the pond and set Planefoot down beside me. We watched the ducks swim in circles, preening their glossy feathers, and listened to the soft sighing of the wind.
Planefoot wanted more.
I picked it up and hiked further out of town, out toward Hermit Man Road. The area was wooded and mostly undeveloped, and I could feel Planefoot’s excitement as we pushed uphill through the dense undergrowth.
We came out at the top of a low, round hill. I held Planefoot up so it could see the view. It seemed to almost purr, cat-like, in my hands.
Planefoot wanted still more.
“Look,” I said, bringing the shoe in front of my face and addressing the toe end, “I’ve shown you pretty much everything worth seeing around here.”
Suddenly I was back in the dream world. Below me, tall treetops zoomed past. I crossed a glacial river. A massive chunk of pale blue ice calved off and crashed into the water, sending huge waves rippling.
I blinked. I was staring at Planefoot’s toe again.
I repressed a shudder. “Let’s go home, Planefoot,” I said.
When I got home, it was late afternoon. Dad was standing out in the driveway next to his car, his keys in his hand and a look of absolute fury on his face.
“Where were you?” he demanded. “We were supposed to leave for your SAT prep class twenty minutes ago!”
I blinked at him. I had forgotten all about SAT prep class.
“Get in the car and let’s go!” Dad barked.
I couldn’t concentrate during the class. The instructor kept droning on and on about strategies for answering multiple-choice questions, but I could feel Planefoot suffering inside my backpack. I doodled little pictures of mountains and rivers and spruce trees in the margins of my test prep book.
After the class, Dad asked me eagerly how it had been. I could almost see the stack of college acceptance letters flashing before his eyes. “Fine,” I said flatly. My hands itched to unzip my bag and let Planefoot out. We crossed Muddy Creek, and I gazed into its churning waters, thinking about how Planefoot would love to see them.
Planefoot and I left the house early again the next day and didn’t come home until after dark. Sitting under trees or walking along trails with Planefoot, I wondered how it was that I’d never appreciated the beauty of nature before. Somehow I knew the names of trees just by touching their bark. Planefoot and I looked down into the shallow water of the duck pond at Old Town Park, and in my head I heard the names of the little fish and turtles we saw swimming there. I couldn’t explain any of it, but I liked it. I liked it a lot.
I took Planefoot to school with me again the next day. I didn’t go anywhere anymore without that old shoe. We walked to school early, the gray clouds drizzling down on us. In the afternoon we ignored the line of school buses, choosing instead to walk home, spending as much time as possible in the woods.
When we got home, Mom was folding laundry in the living room. She saw me, and her face tightened.
“Your math teacher emailed me,” she said, her voice already a lecture. “She said you haven’t turned in any homework in two weeks. She said you just stare out the window during class instead of paying attention.”
It was true. My foray into being a good student had been short-lived. Recently, Planefoot and I had been more interested in what was outside the classroom than whatever was going on within it.
I shrugged. “Sorry?” I ran up the stairs to my room before she could voice any more complaints about my performance as a student or as a daughter.
The dream that night felt like it lasted forever. Vast wildernesses passed underneath me. Herds of caribou migrated across golden tundra. A huge bull moose crashed its way from one side of a shallow, snakelike river to the other. Salmon leapt from foaming rapids as enormous grizzlies batted and swiped at them.
When I woke up, Planefoot was regarding me expectantly from its window sill. My watch read 4:43 AM.
I knew what we had to do.
Throwing open my closet, I hauled out the big expedition backpack, the outdoor clothes, the rain gear, the hiking boots—all the things I thought I’d never want or need again. Just like the instructors had taught me that summer, I inventoried my supplies, made a list of what was missing, and went downstairs in search of more provisions.
Finally, just before 6:30 AM, we were ready. I slid Planefoot gently into the top compartment of my backpack, where it would be safe and easily accessible.
We stepped out into the chilly pre-dawn twilight and began to walk.
At the Greyhound bus station, I purchased a one-way ticket to Bellingham, Washington. From there, Planefoot assured me, the Alaska Marine Highway system would take us north to Alaska.
By ten o’clock that morning, Planefoot and I were settled into our seat on the bus. Our big backpack was in the luggage area below, but I’d taken Planefoot out and placed it on my lap for the journey north.
The bus began to pull away from the station. I could feel Planefoot breathe a sigh of relief as we rolled down the highway toward the freedom of the Alaskan wilderness.
With thanks to those who provided feedback on drafts of this story: A.P. Murphy and Eve.
What a wonderful haunting! Planefoot is an eerie and exciting mentor.
There is so much to love about this Judith. Planefoot has so much character & chemistry & helping get the kid in touch with the wilderness. They joy of being outside instead of obsessed with tech. I love this one.