Only Flesh and Bones (29 page)

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Authors: Sarah Andrews

BOOK: Only Flesh and Bones
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Nothing. I heard no reply.
Giving the dashboard around the radio a good Peggy-sized slam with the heel of my hand, I flicked the power switch off and on and tried again. Nothing. Peggy had warned me about this, right? She had told me this so I wouldn’t panic if the radio cut out on me. So I wouldn’t do something stupid, like forget that flying the damned airplane was my first priority. Fine.
I shrugged off gathering fatigue and jiggled the dial, then reset the radio on 122.8, the frequency for Big Piney, and
left it on standby. And reminded myself that I would be over South Pass before I could hear them.
An hour later, I skimmed over South Pass, hove northwestward toward Bondurant, and tried Salt Lake Center again. No answer, only static. I switched to the radio for Big Piney and got nothing at all.
Well, this is not uncommon,
I assured myself, but a worry began to bloom in the back of my mind: had that man not been content to wait for me on the ground? What if he had picked the lock on this plane and sabotaged the radios? I had no way of knowing, had I? Perhaps he had taken the precaution of putting a tracking device on one of them, something that transmitted whatever I was saying directly to Saratoga, and it had fouled the wires. After all, I had not so much as checked the fuel tanks in my hurry to take off, let alone do my pilot’s walk-around or check underneath the dash for fresh wiring.
I spun the dial and reset it for Big Piney.
Static.
“Do your job,” I said aloud. “Remember what Peggy told you about times like this? Aviate first, then navigate, then communicate. See? Talking to people while you fly is your third priority, not your first.”
But I was talking to myself. Not a good sign. I forced myself to concentrate, to reason through my fears. If that man had decided to do something to this plane, he would simply have wired a bomb to it, or more simply drained the fuel out of the tanks. What was I thinking of, thinking he would waste energy rewiring my radios? I was simply letting my imagination get away from me, that was all … .
“I’m okay; I’m fine,” I said aloud. But then the plane suddenly shook with a new level of turbulence, and I felt my buttocks tighten just as if they belonged to someone else.
Some cowgirl I am, trying to hold on to the saddle with my butt. And what the fuck are you doing, rushing off in search of Chandler?
I realized that I didn’t have a good answer.
I tried to distract myself with the spectacular view I was
getting of the Wind River Range. This was a long, straight range, an upraised block of stone glazed with snow and ice standing proud of the surrounding lowlands like the ridgepole of a house. The snow sat thicker in pockets carved by the mountain glaciers that had moved like serpents down toward the lowlands, pushing great piles of rubble before them. I could see those piles now—terminal moraines, geologists called them. I could see more of them now, great U-shaped valleys laid out one next to the other with neat heaps of rubble kicked up at their feet, much as if a colossal mountain lion had dragged her claws along the ramparts. The glacial valleys were long and wide and beautiful, and filled with high mountain lakes dammed by the moraines.
With the next heavy buffeting, I rechecked my position. I was not making good time, there were no two ways about it. As I noted that, I remembered, belatedly, to switch to the second wing tank. What had I been thinking of? No wonder the plane had begun to feel a little heavy on the left aileron and rudder: the right wing tank was almost empty, increasing its lift. I had been compensating right along, slowly taking up the slack.
The buffeting increased. I took a slow turn to the right to check the horizon. The once-clear skies, which had begun to look hazy over South Pass, were now dark with clouds. I reset my course and tried to relax, reminding myself to breathe deeply and go with the turbulence. For an instant, I wished the little plane had an autopilot, so I could rest my arms and legs, but then I remembered that an autopilot would not manage turbulence this strong. I began to curse my bladder, which had long since filled with the coffee I had drunk in Douglas and begun to scream for relief.
I looked to the west. The sky was darkening.
A half hour of hard turbulence and myriad course corrections later, I was nearing Bondurant, Jackson’s Little Hole, the high meadow surrounded by mountains on four sides and hills on the fourth where the mountains squeezed together around Hoback Canyon, and I saw something that turned my heart cold.
A tongue of dark rain-filled cloud had crested the mountains to the west and filled the canyon to its bottom.
My hands rigid on the control wheel, I banked quickly to the left to head back toward Big Piney, only to find that the storm had swung even faster around the south end of the Wyoming Range and consumed ground and sky to the south. I was trapped.
I clutched the chart to the control wheel, refolding the paper twice to make it fit, as the plane now bounced harder and harder in a wide, slow circle. I reduced the throttle, bringing my airspeed down so the plane wouldn’t rip apart in the turbulence. I noted Wenz Field over by Pinedale.
Maybe that’s still clear,
I thought. Turning, I looked out over the hills to southeast and across the mesas to the Wind River Range. I counted lake-filled glacial valleys, north to south. Wenz would be at the foot of the fourth or fifth.
I saw only two.
I looked north. Mountains—high, impassable mountains as far as I could see. I was in a valley no more than four or five miles across at its widest place, an infinite space for turning in an automobile, but little comfort to the aviator, who must maintain an airspeed of at least fifty-five knots to maneuver without falling out of the sky. I kept turning, circling over the meadow.
With every turn, the storm swept closer, moving faster how. I felt the chill of coming moisture seep into the tiny cockpit of the plane. I twisted on more heat, a frail creature huddling toward the fire.
Resetting the radio once more just in case a jostling would make it work, I called the larger of the two airports. “Big Piney, this is Piper two two six two foxtrot. I am over Bondurant for Jackson Hole.”
I released the microphone, waited, but got no response.
Pressing the key again, I said, “Big Piney, I am circling and getting low on fuel. Hoback is way below minimums and I sure can’t see you. If anybody’s out there, I sure could use some suggestions about now.”
Nothing.
I looked hungrily below at the narrow strip of highway that wound up over the rising ground and into the blackness of the clouds. Here and there, it was gray with clods of leftover ice and snow. What had I been thinking of, flying this plane instead of driving?
Wait, can I land this thing on that strip of pavement?
Pressing the control wheel forward, I began to descend. I would find the straightest stretch, I told myself, then fly up and down it a few hundred feet up, see how flat it was, gage how bad the patches of snow and ice might be. Then, if the clouds didn’t lift, or, worse yet, continued to loom closer—as they were—or my fuel got too low to make Big Piney or Wenz even if the clouds did rise, I would declare an emergency and set her down.
Emergency—why hadn’t I thought of that before?
I reset the radio to the international emergency frequency, took a breath, and announced, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is Piper two two six two foxtrot. I am a student pilot over Bondurant, and I’m losing minimums. Please come back if you hear me.”
No one answered.
Leaning forward, I looked out overhead through the windshield. The clouds were reaching over me now. No time to climb and see if I could fly over them. I descended lower.
I was four hundred feet over the ground now, six hundred feet under the safe minimum altitude I was supposed to maintain, dangerously low in this sea of unexpected downdrafts. The clouds roiled down toward me, closing, the angry air beginning to bounce me harder and harder, a spattering of drops now greasing the windshield. In an instant, the windshield was streaming with water and the highway below had turned black with rain. I thanked what thin luck I had that the moisture was coming as rain and not a sheet of ice that would quickly coat my wings and drop me like a rock. I scanned the roadway hungrily. With a sinking feeling, I realized that even if I found a section I liked for a landing, I would be hard-pressed in this amount of wet and
turbulence
to set the plane down without flipping it over its propeller or at least spinning it around to one side and breaking a wing.
But any landing I can walk away from,
I prayed silently.
Any landing I can …
Up ahead, in the mouth of the canyon, the clouds had risen.
I lengthened my carousel turns, bringing me closer to the mouth of the canyon. At three or four hundred feet above the ground, I could see a half mile in. Underneath those clouds, it was not yet raining.
Quickly recalculating my position, I checked my airspeed indicator, set the controls for eighty knots, and reckoned times and bearings I would have to travel at that speed to thread my way through the canyon. At that speed, I would fly one and a third nautical miles per minute, or four every three minutes, barely easy enough for my panicked brain to reckon in this hurry. I ran my thumb along the line that marked the river on the chart, checking to see how tight the canyon was at four or five hundred feet above the water. Tight, but it meant staying aloft longer, maybe even flying through to one of the private airstrips marked on the chart where the canyon turned a right angle before the final pitch into Jackson. “Any port in a storm,” I muttered aloud, setting my watch to beep at me in six minutes. “To hell with you stuck-up rich boys. I’ll land this sucker right across your patio if I have to.”
Calling my intentions out over the silent radio, I turned over Bondurant once more, glanced at the course that set on the compass, and headed into the muck.
I skimmed along over the river, now three hundred feet up, now four, groping to keep sight of the ground without flying too close to it, gritting my teeth with the hope that I met no cliffs where the river dropped suddenly over a waterfall. Looking more closely at the cataracts below me, I realized with relief that the I had crossed a divide just east of Bondurant; this water was flowing west, toward the Snake River. “Point to Em,” I muttered bitterly. “Now, how about a little more sky?”
I glanced at my watch, checked airspeed. Tried to relax. Flicked my eyes left and right, watching the canyon walls. And saw a wall of cloud and slashing rain, black all the way to the river.
I looked left. I looked right. Enough room to turn back, but what would I find there? Pressing the control wheel forward one more time, I turned toward the right side of the canyon to give myself room to turn around to the left, eased off the throttle, and eyed the road hungrily.
Yes, there, up there, I can put it down there, start your turn …
I eased off the throttle farther, set a notch of flaps.
A semitractor pulling a heavy load loomed out of the murk, its headlights burning against the gloom.
I slapped the throttle forward. Released the flaps. Straightened my course. Pulled back the control wheel. Cursed. And flew up into the cloud.
I could see nothing. The windscreen streamed with water, but beyond it was only darkness.
I glanced at my watch. How much time had I lost slowing down for the aborted landing? How much distance gained speeding up? How would I know when to turn, flying completely blind? I felt moisture on my cheeks and realized that I was crying.
Not now,
I told myself.
First get yourself out of this jam, and then cry.
Staring into the gray nothing, my head swam with vertigo. Pressing my cheek against the cold glass of the window beside me to keep my head clear, I rested my eyes on the artificial horizon instrument, made quick glances toward the dials that indicated altitude and rate of decent, and forced myself to make only tiny movements with the controls.
Suddenly, the clouds parted, and I saw only rock, a sheer face, the ugly shoulder of a mountain directly ahead. I banked left. The clouds closed, opened again. Closed.
You
idiot! a voice screamed.
What were you thinking of? Where did you think you were passing through to this time?
I glanced left and right, trying to spot the mouth that spoke,
and realized that I was alone, and that the voice howled from inside my head.
I flew onward, climbing, praying. I corrected my course to the northwest. Gave it ten endless minutes more, straining my senses for each small glimpse of the river down below me, saw finally a confluence with another, glanced at the chart to make certain there were no creeks that size coming into the one I was following before the canyon turned, grabbed myself by my heart, and rolled right to zero compass bearing. Held my breath, waiting for the blinding flash that would be the last thing I saw. And flew out into brilliant sunshine.
Light, blessed light danced on the waters of the Snake River as I flew up the long glacial outwash valley that led me north into Jackson Hole. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I felt alive and newborn, each sight, sound, and smell around me brilliant, sharp, and richly perfumed.

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