It is 10:01 a.m. I am sitting on the steps of this bush Alaska teacher apartment, waiting for my ride to the airport. The plane, at last report, is due to land at 10:10. I have already called the local airline agent twice today. The first time it went to voice mail. The second time, I got him on the phone and asked for a ride to the airport. His words were, more or less verbatim, “Well, I’ve got to meet the plane anyway, so I might as well pick you up.” This seemed like an odd response until I learned later that the village agents for this airline don’t usually give rides to passengers.

Anyhoo, he said he would come get me. But now, at 10:03, the cook is leaning out of the door of the school, asking me if he is coming or if I need a ride. Another lady, a grandmother of one of my students, says, “Don’t worry. He’ll be here.”

What to do? I call his number again and get voice mail. This could mean one of two things: either it is bush-speak for “get off my back, you neurotic fool,” or it means “I have forgotten all about you, and therefore you are probably going to miss your flight.”

So, I call the airline in Fairbanks, and ask if the plane is still due at 10 after. The nice man consults his computer and says casually, “actually, that plane is already on the ground there.”

I blurt out a four-letter word and start throwing my bags into the back of the school truck, wondering how I can get the cook (a mature lady recovering from a ferociously broken ankle) out to the truck in time to give me a ride before the plane takes off. I am considering just dashing inside the building, grabbing the keys and driving myself. In this scenario I would leave the truck at the airport and let those left behind figure out how to get it back, which isn’t that hard when one considers the proximity of the airport and the availability of a four-wheeler that can easily seat two.

As I am struggling with all these conflicting contingencies, I turn and see the airline agent pulling up beside the house, cheerfully waving. I throw my bags out of the school truck and into the back of his vehicle, explaining to him that I have just learned that the plane is already here.

“It is?” he says. “I keep telling them to buzz the town before they land, but they won’t do it. Sometimes I’ve had passengers miss their flights because I don’t know the plane has gotten in.” Great, I’m thinking, hoping he will drive faster. We pass a four-wheeler coming back from the airport. This driver slows down and tells us the plane is waiting for us. We stop again to pick up another passenger, and round the corner to the airport. For a few anxious moments I don’t see the plane, but no, there it is.

There is nobody else around, just the pilot sitting in his plane and a big pile of freight waiting on the ground for someone to claim it. But then, the calvary arrives: three more vehicles arrive from various side roads and cluster around the plane. This guy’s not getting away until everybody gets their stuff and/or gets on board.

Sometimes, I guess, it takes a village to catch a plane.