The Boxcar Blues (29 page)

One clear, frigid morning they were warming
up the engine of a DeHavilland, preparing to depart Bettles, when
the engine died and a puff of smoke belched out the exhaust.

“
Damn it!” Curly shouted.
“We blew a jug.”

Catwalk turned off the switches and pondered
the problem. If it was a cylinder problem they might have to
replace the entire engine. Then they’d be stranded here while that
took place, but they didn’t have an easier solution. “Let’s go see
when they can pull the engine.”

An hour later, he was waiting over a cup of
coffee when Curly brought the bad news. “The mechanic said we threw
a valve and damaged the piston. He has to have the parts flown up
from Fairbanks.”

“
How long?”

“
Three days.”

“
Get the
cards.”

“
Not so fast, partner. I’m
going over to that general store to see if there’s any women that
work there.”

To Curly’s dismay, there were no women in
the entire town. The two pilots ended up playing gin rummy for
three days.

Two weeks later they were flying a Stinson
L-5, carrying a Caterpillar track to a construction site just north
of the Arctic Circle. Trying to stay under a building storm,
Catwalk was flying through a river valley, searching for the site
in the fading visibility.

“
Over there at one
o’clock.” Curly shouted. “I see a bunch of construction
equipment.”

“
Is there a level place to
land?”

“
I think so. Circle around
that derrick and I think you can set it down just beyond
it.”

“
Is it ice or
snow?”

“
I can’t tell; it’s
probably permafrost. You’ll have to set her down quick because we
won’t have much braking.”

Barely twenty feet off the ground, Catwalk
flew a pivot around the drilling derrick. He began to flare for
touchdown just as a gust of wind picked up the right wing. He
corrected, then touched down, harder than he wanted to.

CRUNCH!! THUD!!

Curly turned around and to his amazement saw
a hole where the hard landing had caused the thousand pound
Caterpillar track to break through the floor of the airplane.

“
Jesus Christ, Cat. Do you
believe that?”

“
I knew the thing was
heavy, but I never thought it’d bust through the floor.”

Curly started laughing, and said, “Well, at
least we don’t have to unload it.”

Catwalk was in no mood for laughter.
Thinking of their return trip, he said, “True, but we’ve got to fly
back with a hole in the floor. It’s going to be a very cold
trip.”

Bundled against the cold, they flew back to
Tanana, with the bitter Arctic wind swirling through the cockpit.
Huddled around a pot bellied stove, while mechanics affected a
makeshift patch for the plane, they talked about the warmer climate
of the southwest.

One of their scariest moments came on a
flight to Kotzebue in a single engine Fokker on skis. Caught in a
whiteout, they were searching for a place to land on the polar ice
pack. Catwalk said, “It looks flat past the next pressure ridge.
Set it down there.”

Curly landed and they’d just staked the
plane down when they heard a loud crack. “Fuckin’ ice is breaking
up, Cat!”

“
I know.” Catwalk looked
around them. The ice had broken up and they were sitting on a piece
of ice not much bigger than the plane.

Curly yelled, “How the hell are we gonna
takeoff now?”

“
We have to wait for the
ice to pack, and hope we end up with a couple hundred feet of flat
ice.”

“
Great! How long before
the ice packs up?”

“
Who knows? We might be
floating around out here for days.”

“
You know, Cat, I sure
like flying with you, but at times like this there would be a
definite advantage to having a female co-pilot.”

“
There would be a definite
advantage to having a boat!”

They waited for an entire day, not know
where they were floating. Catwalk thought the ice would eventually
‘pack up’. The only problem was, when it did the ice often formed
pressure ridges and they might not have a smooth surface on which
to depart.

On the next morning, with only one day of
food and water left, the ice started to pack up. Catwalk said,
“Start the engine. I’ll untie the plane.”

Curly didn’t share his partner’s confidence.
“We’re gonna end up in the drink for sure.”

Catwalk ignored Curly’s comment and watched
the movement of the ice. The ice chunk on which they were sitting
slowly drifted toward two other larger chunks. Once they joined,
they should have enough room to depart, but they’d have to move at
just the right time.

Curly said nothing as they sat in the
cockpit with the engine idling, watching the ice float through the
Arctic Ocean in a slow ballet. When the chunks joined he gunned the
throttle, hoping that they didn’t separate or raise any pressure
ridges until he was airborne.

“
Cat, if you’ve ever made
a short field takeoff, now is the time.”

The plane sped down the ice and approached
the first joint where the ice pieces met. Cat saw a foot of water
between the ice pieces, but his skis flew over it and he looked at
his airspeed—fifteen knots shy of his liftoff speed. Then he saw
the piece of ice they were on now was shorter than he thought. He
was running out of ice—fast.

Curly yelled, “Son of a bitch, Cat! We ain’t
got enough ice.”

The edge of the ice passed under his skis.
He felt them sink and touch the water, but before they sunk into
the freezing ocean, the wings took the load and he slowly gained
altitude.

They both held their breath until Curly
said, “That was too fuckin’ close, partner.”

Catwalk turned to him with a wide grin.
“We’re high and dry, buddy. Never a doubt.”

Thirty minutes later, they landed in
Kotzebue. As they were unloading the mail and supplies, one of the
locals asked Catwalk, “Have a good flight up?”

He thought, well, we made it off the ice
without ending up in the frigid ocean. He said, “Yep. It was a
great flight.”

On a rare day off together Catwalk and Curly
had gone fishing on the Chilitna River.

Curly said, “Did you see the paper this
morning? Germany invaded Poland and Hitler ain’t showing any signs
of slowing his conquest of Europe.”

“
I read that. The Soviets
and Japanese are fighting in Manchuria too. The war is growing on
several fronts.”

“
We’re going to end up in
this thing before it’s all over.”

Catwalk said, “You will, but I don’t know if
I’ll see service. There’s been talk about integrating the military,
it hasn’t gone beyond talk. FDR called up the black reserve medical
officers and chaplains, but that’s the only thing he’s done.”

“
They’re starting a
civilian pilot training program, so someone knows they’re going to
need pilots. With all your flying time, I can’t see them not taking
you.”

“
It’s not a question of
flying time, Curly. It’s all about color.”

“
I know, but that’s
ridiculous. Maybe we don’t want to serve in the military if they’re
that stupid.”

The next morning Catwalk was reading the
paper over breakfast when Hank walked into the restaurant and said,
“You and Curly won’t be taking that load of mining machinery over
to King Salmon.”

“
Why not?”

“
Guy just landed and said
there’s one hell of a storm, with wind up to eighty knots coming
this way. You guys can sit it out.”

“
It must be bad if you’re
grounding us.”

“
The guy said it was the
worst he’d ever seen. Find your friend and go tie down the planes.
Double the ropes and drain the fuel tanks so they won’t sink if
they break loose.”

Catwalk found Curly at the drug store
flirting with a girl who worked the soda fountain. Curly saw him
and said, “Hey, Cat. This is Joanne. I’m going to take her up for a
plane ride as soon as we get back from King Salmon.”

“
We’re not going to King
Salmon, Romeo. There’s a big blow coming from that way and we’ve
got to tie the planes down and drain the tanks.”

They’d just got the planes tied down as the
wind picked up to about forty knots. They drove over to the wharf
to see if the fishing boats were coming in. The boats, which
normally rode out the rough weather, returned to the safety of the
docks in droves. When the rain started coming in sheets, they
sought shelter in a waterfront bar and listened to the seamen
talking.

“
Them rollers was forty
feet if they was a foot. Roughest seas I’ve ever seen.”

“
I had waves breaking over
the wheelhouse. Damn near tore off my rigging.”

Ten minutes later a man
walked in, soaking wet and saying, “Big Jim and the
Oracle
went down off
Montague Island. We picked up two survivors, but ain’t no one going
to survive in these seas.”

Catwalk ate a sandwich as he listened to the
men talking about fighting the rough seas. He was thankful he and
Curly hadn’t departed and told him they’d better check on the
planes soon. If the storm wrecked the planes, they were out of a
job.

They were paying the waitress when a man
came in and shouted, “Are there any pilots in here?”

Someone pointed at them and the guy sat down
at their table. He didn’t waste time, “Can you guys fly in this
stuff?”

Curly laughed and said, “Would you want to
fly in this weather?”

Dead serious, the man said, “It ain’t for
me. I just came in from Kodiak. There’s two kids got bit by a rabid
fox. They don’t have any rabies serum on the island. Those kids
will die if someone doesn’t get some serum to them fast.”

Catwalk looked at Curly and instinctively
knew what he was thinking—they had to make the trip. He asked the
guy, “Where on the island are the kids?”

“
In the town of Kodiak.
They was took to the clinic there, but they’re out of
serum.”

Several men holding beer bottles had
gathered around the table. One of them said what all of them were
thinking, “You guys can’t fly in this stuff. That would be
suicide.”

Another said, “This is the worst storm in
twenty years. You’ll never make it.”

A third man piped up, “Trip like that would
be plain stupid.”

Catwalk told the guy, “We’ll see how it
looks out there.” He and Curly left and walked toward the planes.
Curly said, “The Vega is the best plane for this weather and it’s
on wheels. But if we fly into eighty knot winds, we’d be making
only sixty knots across the ground.”

“
Yeah, and we can’t get
down on the water because if the rollers are forty feet high,
they’d knock us out of the sky.”

“
We’d probably ice up
before we reached open water.”

“
We’d have to refuel in
Homer and I doubt if we could find the field in this
stuff.”

“
Fighting those winds, we
might run out of fuel before we get there.”

To get out of the rain that was vertical
now, they stepped behind a shed near the dock where the planes were
bobbing in the storm. Catwalk said, “So, what do you think?”

“
We can’t tell Hank, he’d
never let us go.”

“
Where can we get the
serum?”

“
Doc Fellars.”

They walked a block to a clinic and found
the doctor eating lunch in his office. They told him about the kids
that had been bitten. His reply was, “You guys can’t fly in this.
The fleet came in early and that means it’s bad out there.”

Catwalk said, “I’ll pay you for the
serum.”

The doctor shook his head and said, “If
you’re going to make an attempt to get it there in this storm, I’ll
give it to you.” He went to a refrigerator and brought out two
bottles. As he packed it in ice, he said, “This is one hundred
percent equine serum. There’s plenty here for both kids. Good luck
and Godspeed.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

After leaving the doctor’s office, the boys
talked about the suicidal mission they were attempting. Catwalk
said, “If this is a big low pressure system like some of those
hurricanes they have down in Florida, it could be two hundred miles
across.”

“
How fast do those things
move?”

“
It depends but I think I
read that they usually move about ten or fifteen miles an
hour.”

Curly sounded apprehensive when he said, “So
if this thing has been blowing for an hour, it could be just
getting started, right?”

“
Yes, but that’s if we’re
in the center of the storm. We might be on the edge of
it.”

“
So, what do you
think?”

“
Those kids need the serum
or they’ll die.”

“
Let’s go. We’ll take the
Vega.”

Curly flew the left seat for the first leg
from Valdez to Homer. As soon as they were airborne, Catwalk said,
“The wind is worse than I thought it’d be, but it’s a warm storm.
That might keep us from icing up.”

“
Hell, Cat, it might clear
up too, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

Curly hugged the shoreline to stay away from
the rough seas farther off shore. Normally, he’d head out over open
water; because the weather never gets right down to the water,
there’s always a thirty or forty foot gap between the clouds and
the water. With the rough seas however, he didn’t have that option
because the swells were too high. He had a quarter mile of water at
the shoreline he could fly over, and still some of the breaking
waves were closer than he liked.