Alice's Arc

Chapter 8 of 20

Thursday morning Alice sat at the kitchen table with the ranger's card in front of her. He had given her a radio frequency and a number to call. Neither worked at her house. The radio only reached the ridge. The phone rang in the front hall, and she slept in the back room. If a call came at two in the morning, she would miss it. A missed call meant a hiker waited longer in the dark. She had said yes to the ranger. She needed a way to hear him. She took her walking stick down from its hook by the door and set it on the table. The ball on top was cold glass. She thumbed the switch. The light came up soft and white, the same as always. She had used it as a lamp for years. She had never asked it to do anything else. She unscrewed the base. Inside were two wires, a small battery, and space she had never noticed. Enough space for a receiver. She walked to the hall and unplugged the phone. She carried it back to the table and opened its shell with a butter knife. Biscuit watched from the rug. His ears stayed up. He did not sit down hard. That was permission to keep going. She worked until noon. She pulled the ringer coil from the phone and wired it to the light circuit in the stick. She set the ringer to trip the light instead of a bell. When the phone rang, the ball on the stick would flash. She could sleep with the stick beside her bed. A flash on the wall would wake her faster than a bell down the hall. She tested it. She walked to the hall, lifted the receiver, and dialed her own line from her father's cell. The phone in the hall stayed silent. On the table, the ball on the stick blinked white, three quick pulses, then steady. Biscuit lifted his head and looked at the light. He did not flinch. He did not sit. He put his head back down. A small bird landed on the sill outside the kitchen window. Red head, blue wings, white breast. It watched the light pulse through the glass and did not fly off. Alice had seen the same bird on the trail two nights ago. She did not know what it meant. She wrote it on the back of her hand under the Wednesday note. Bird again. That night the stick flashed at eleven-forty. Alice was awake before the second pulse. She lifted the phone in the hall. The ranger's voice was tight. A hiker was overdue on the ridge, last seen at the lodge road. Alice said she was coming. She hung up, pulled on her boots, and clipped Biscuit's lead. The light on her stick steadied to white. The rescue had started on time.