Chapter 6

After leaving Mom and Dad at Yosemite, I made my way out to Interstate 5 and turned north. I crossed the Canadian/U.S. border north of Seattle and drove into British Columbia en route to Alaska. Dad and I had discussed the opportunities for operating a small flying business back in Texas and elsewhere. I could have found a niche somewhere in Texas for something like that, but the major carriers had plenty of feeder airlines funneling passengers and cargo from rural areas into the major hubs. It would have been tough.

I had no interest in becoming a commercial airline pilot. I—very unkindly and unfairly—considered airline pilots as little more than bus drivers in the air. I wanted to fly small aircraft into places where almost no one traveled, but I wanted to make money on the deal too. Alaska seemed the best bet for that.

In Alaska, I got a job almost immediately. I had to; everything cost an arm and a leg there. I wound up flying small planes for a little operation based in Anchorage. Frederick Simpson had a fleet of six Otters he used for trips to remote villages carrying small groups of passengers back and forth, plus odds and ends such as small shipments of perishable goods. A job flying for Mr. Simpson was right up my alley; I was gaining experience in flying and small business management too.

I don’t know if time heals all wounds like they say, but it will surely paste a big ol’ band aid over them. The last couple of years had been—interesting. I’d caught my wife having sex with her boss and his wife, and though I’d given up all the anger and resentment, the way our marriage ended couldn’t help but affect me.

I also had tons of “what might have been” questions about Mercedes and me—and to a lesser extent about Stephanie and me—but time was helping me put those issues aside. A lot of the memories still hurt, but I was managing to accept things as they were.

Almost a year after I arrived in Alaska, another birthday had rolled around and I had settled into a routine of flying almost daily. I was officially thirty-one years old. In my Dad’s words, I was old enough to know better—but young enough to do it anyway. I didn’t exactly know what “it” was, but the sentiment seemed appropriate.

I flew an old, but still rugged, DeHavilland single-engine plane up to a new “destination” on the north slope of Alaska, carrying nine sightseers north to a little hole-in-the-wall village called “Barren.” Someone had divined there should be a place for people to come see giant caribou herds, a coastline choked with ice floes three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and the oil drilling off to the northeast. I had NO idea why people would pay good money for that, but they apparently did. Perhaps it was simply the novelty of it.

This destination/resort/town/whatever had a restaurant that offered sandwiches and soup for lunch. The furnishings were brand new and serviceable, but the food was a little suspect. On the other hand, since they had a total monopoly on cafes and restaurants in this thoroughly “company town,” I patronized the place.

I was munching on what was purported to be a chicken salad sandwich. I wasn’t all that convinced it actually was chicken. I hoped the onion soup cooling in the bowl beside my plate would taste more like what it was named for.

“May I sit with you, please? All the other seats are...”

I looked up, glad for the interruption. It was a young woman I’d brought up to Barren a few days ago.

“Certainly, Ms. Kincaid, please do!” I replied. I stood up until she was seated. Company always made for a better lunch.

Sharon Kincaid seemed to be several years younger than I was; maybe twenty-seven or twenty-eight. She was ordinary looking—not terribly pretty, but not plain by any means. She might have been fairly attractive if she would try wearing a little makeup. She was about 5’5” or so, and from hints I got watching her move around, I was pretty sure she had a nice figure beneath those rather unflattering garments she wore.

Some of the outer coverings she had to wear were dictated by the icy (even in summer) winds outside, but it seemed to also be a personal choice to wear baggy, almost shapeless, clothing. I wished she would make better choices for her clothing. Her legs seemed to be awfully long. I liked leggy women.

“Sharon,” she said as she made herself comfortable on the straight-backed chair across the table from me.

“Sharon, it is, then,” I replied. “And...” I half stood again and looked over her head and all around the room as if looking for eavesdroppers. “Okay ... no one’s listening,” I hissed. “You can call me ... Matt!” I told her facetiously. I grinned to make sure she knew I was kidding.

“Smartass!” Miss Kincaid—Sharon—remarked sagely, examining her sandwich for clues as to the meat’s origin.

“Wow,” I said, “ ... we only had a few hours together on the flight up here, and now these few minutes and ... my God ... the lady doth know my soul!”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes at my silliness. But there was the faintest suggestion of a smile on her lips. That was nice; it lit up her face and relieved a lot of the stress I saw in her features. I liked what I was seeing.

We talked; at first just about the sandwiches and mystery soup, but then we tackled other topics at random. She had nice eyes that warmed as she relaxed. Hazel, they were ... first woman I ever met who had that shade. Very nice. She had nice hands too—well shaped and delicate.

After lunch, since neither of us had anywhere we needed to be and nothing special to do once we got there—so we took a long walk around the site, finally returning to the dining facility in time for dinner. All in all, the day was very pleasant, at least for me; and I think for her too. I hadn’t detected any attempt to ditch me over the space of several hours. We seemed to have connected well enough.

It surely felt good to me. I’d dated a few times after Mercedes and Stephanie went back to their dance troupe based in Philadelphia, but there hadn’t been anything “there” to explore.

By design, Ms. Sharon Kincaid and I met for breakfast the next morning and spent most of the day talking and strolling around, thoroughly investigating this little patch of the North Slope of Alaska. It was all very pleasant; I enjoyed getting to know her better. Her eyes sparkled as she talked and her cute grin was really nice to see.

In the evening, since it was Saturday, there was a dance sponsored by the resort in the restaurant. Most of the tables and chairs in the dining facility were removed and stored elsewhere, except for a number of smaller tables scattered around the wall. The center of the big room was now a dance floor. The music was provided by a DJ and a mediocre sound system.

I was late to the dance. I was flying the DeHavilland out the next morning and I’d spent several hours inspecting all the systems, making sure the navigation maps were close to hand where I wanted them. There were a zillion details to check, and good pilots do all of them before strapping on a machine and coaxing it into the air.

When I got there, I was surprised to see Sharon at one of the side tables, sitting alone and apparently not dancing. I didn’t have a clue why that would be. Women, particularly reasonably attractive women, were at a premium here on the North Slope and Sharon’s time should have been monopolized by someone—or a lot of someones—from the crowd of unattached males restlessly circling the room. Curious...

“Hi, Sharon ... may I sit down?” I asked. I sort of knew the answer because of the way her face lit up and how she’d smiled at me when she saw me approaching. She sat up in her chair and gestured toward the empty chair gracefully.

I liked her smile; she should do that more often—smile, that is. It made her eyes sparkle.

She really, really looked great. She had a blouse and slacks on—skirts were nonexistent up here, of course. Her long, slender legs were covered by the slacks but she was finally wearing shoes instead of boots. I caught a glimpse of a delicate ankle attached to those hidden legs I’d been admiring. She looked scrumptious.

I ordered a diet Coke instead of a beer. I was flying the next morning and didn’t need even the slightest trace of alcohol in my system. Sharon and I wound up dancing most of the evening, only taking short rests during which we talked while sitting at the table.

Mercedes and Stephanie were professional dancers and, in our time together, they’d schooled me pretty well in several basic dance steps. During the few weeks we spent together, I became reasonably good—at least good enough to hold a vibrant woman in my arms while she danced.

Sharon and I did well together. I felt good out on the floor with her. It was great just being with her, so when the DJ announced the end of the evening, I was profoundly shocked at how quickly the time had flown by. I could feel the chagrin on my face and I know she saw it. She looked pleased that I was sorry the evening was coming to a close.

Holding hands, we strolled back to the little cabin where she stayed and after she unlocked the door, she turned and I took her in my arms as naturally as if we’d been doing it for years. She lifted her face and we had our first kiss; it wasn’t a peck on the lips, and it wasn’t a deep lover’s kiss, but it was nice.

Her lips were soft and they were awfully, awfully kissable. So I did. Sharon, hesitantly at first—then more enthusiastically—put her arms around my neck and returned the kiss, with interest.

When we broke the second kiss, she looked up at me with a tentative, defensive cloud in her eyes. “You know they call me the ‘Ice Bitch Princess’, right?” It was clear she didn’t think it was an affectionate nickname.

I did not, in fact, know that, and I couldn’t imagine why anyone would call her that. I held her close, my hands at her waist over the points of her hips. I searched her eyes—for what I didn’t know. I saw a deep warmth there, perhaps a lingering sadness—and loneliness. I could recognize that; I felt the same way.

“Well... , “ I said softly, “no one who ever called you that ever really knew you, did they... ?” I kissed her again—this one lasted longer, and so did the next one. I finally broke away because if I hadn’t, steam was going to come whistling out of my ears, and I didn’t want to push her into anything she wasn’t ready for.

“I have to go, honey,” I said, at length. “I have to get my rest; we’re flying tomorrow.”

She nodded her understanding and gave me another quick kiss and unwrapped her arms from around my neck. I smiled and turned away. I didn’t hear her door close. I wondered if that meant she was watching me. I couldn’t turn to look, of course.

As I walked down to the hanger where I’d been assigned a small room, I was pretty sure I could have talked my way into Sharon’s bed had I not left. I thought I could have, but I was also pretty sure I didn’t want to talk my way into her bed. I didn’t want to push her beyond a limit with which she was comfortable. I was learning I liked her way too much to chance wrecking the beginning we’d made.

I was almost asleep when I realized I’d called her “honey” and she hadn’t objected.

We were airborne at 9:18 the next day on our way to Fairbanks, a flight of around four hundred miles. We had a range of a little more than five hundred and fifty miles fully loaded, so we were good to go. There were ten souls on board, including me.

The DeHavilland I was flying was configured as a float plane. Wheels extended below the bottom of each float, so we could use an actual landing strip like the one here at Barren, or we could use water for takeoffs and landings. I hadn’t been certified very long in float planes; Mr. Simpson had tried to hire an experienced pilot for that specialized aircraft but he’d had to settle for me. On the other hand, he wasn’t too terribly disappointed in me. I actually liked landing on water, not that it was any more forgiving than concrete if the landing went wrong.

Sharon Kincaid was in the co-pilot’s seat for the trip home. I’d made the invitation as she boarded, hoping she wasn’t irritated at me for walking away last night, or because I’d presumed to kiss her, or—whatever. Apparently she was not. She gave me a happy grin and climbed into the co-pilot’s seat more gracefully than I could have managed. She looked all around the cockpit interestedly, her face animated. She looked wonderful. I wondered how I’d missed that the first few times I was around her. I could get lost in those flashing hazel eyes.

After I got the obligatory captain-to-passengers remarks out of the way, Sharon and I talked on the intercom for quite a while. The rest of the group didn’t have headsets on so they couldn’t eavesdrop. Sharon and I were getting good at this—communicating easily and naturally. We were getting to know each other on any number of levels. It felt good; it was something I’d been missing in my life since Mercedes and Stephanie left me behind.

We were flying VFR, Visual Flight Reference, meaning, essentially, that I could see the horizon and could figure out whether we were upside down, in a bank, or flying straight and level while following a compass heading. A thick cloud cover was way above our heads, totally obscuring the sun and the real estate passing under the nose looked identical to every other patch of untamed wilderness in Alaska.

Shortly after noon, I began to be uneasy. Fairbanks is just a few ticks off due south from the Prudhoe Bay/Barren area and we’d flown long enough in that direction that we should have been getting close to the second largest city in Alaska. But we weren’t seeing any signs of it.

My anxiety ramped up a couple of notches. We should have been hearing radio calls and perhaps even seeing air traffic in and outbound from Fairbanks, but there hadn’t been even a hint of anything on the guard channel. Visibility was poor, so I wasn’t that concerned we hadn’t seen anything in the air, but still—very strange.

“Fairbanks ... November six-one-zero-five Sierra Charlie...” I was calling the Fairbanks controller ... just because I wanted to get in touch with someone. There was no answer. I called twice more before I gave up. I slid my seat closer to the control column and studied the instruments. Sharon put her hand on my forearm when she saw I was concerned about something but she didn’t speak.

I took her hand and squeezed lightly. I didn’t let go and she didn’t try to take her hand back. She didn’t interrupt my concentration by asking questions I didn’t have an answer for yet. One more thing to like about her.

Something flickered—one of the instruments had done something. It had been too quick and I’d only caught a flash from the corner of my eye. I bent closer to the panel and, just for the heck of it, I tapped the cover of the attitude indicator. To my surprise, the stylized little aircraft in the display spun around crazily for a few seconds before it steadied up again. I swallowed hard. My inner ear, and a glance outside the cockpit, told me we had NOT just done a hard roll to the left until we were inverted and then rolled all the way back up to straight and level, but that’s what the instrument had shown.

I tapped the GPS compass ... and the display whirled around crazily. Outstanding! My instruments were lying to me—at least, some of them were, and I had no idea which ones could be believed, if any. I checked the whiskey compass, but the magnetic deviation on the north slope of Alaska was far too pronounced, and I never trusted them. In any event, this one had a fluid leak and had been broken for months. If I’d had blinders on, I’d know just as much about where we were heading as I did now.

The engine was roaring steadily. That was a very good thing, and the control surfaces responded to inputs from the rudder pedals and the control column, but they were purely mechanical, no electronic interface in this old beast.

I checked the circuit breakers—there didn’t seem to be a problem, but who knew? I was tempted to cycle the breakers, switching them to the off position and then back on, but in my experience I’d learned, sometimes if you turn something off that is performing marginally, when you turn it back on, you might get nothing at all. I sat back in my seat. I didn’t know what was going on, but something was clearly out of whack.

“Sharon... , “ I said over the intercom, squeezing her hand at the same time, “we’re in trouble. See if you can get everyone’s attention back there, will you?”

To her credit, she did exactly what I’d asked for without asking senseless questions, twisting around in her seat and waving at the other eight passengers and yelling. When some of them didn’t seem to notice, she screamed at them to wake up and listen, or suffer unexplained consequences. The girl had a set of lungs on her; I was glad I had a radio headset on. It may just have saved the hearing in my right ear.

I retarded the throttle until I felt if eased it back any more, we’d be in a slow, very shallow dive, not that the altimeter was functioning well enough to tell me that. Throttling back also reduced the noise level enough so I could be heard in the rearmost seats. I swiveled around in my seat as far as I could, which wasn’t all that much, what with the control column, rudder pedals, and instrument panel all in the way.

“WE ... ARE ... IN ... TROUBLE!” I yelled, spacing the works out so no one would misunderstand. I got their attention immediately. The atmosphere was instantly electrically charged.

“MY INSTRUMENTS HAVE DIED ... I CAN’T TELL WHAT DIRECTION WE ARE GOING, WHETHER WE ARE GOING DOWN OR UP, WHAT OUR GROUND SPEED IS—NOTHING! THAT MEANS I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE ARE—”

Abruptly, we could see sunshine again. I twisted back around. We’d come out of the shadow from that huge bank of clouds and it was no longer hiding the far horizon.

We were flying directly into the sun. SHIT! At this time of day, that meant we were flying on a roughly easterly course! Not only that, a mammoth range of tall mountains was just coming over the horizon in our path.

I banked right without thinking about it and steadied up on what should be something approximating southwest. The sun doesn’t generally rise at 90 degrees east, particularly at these latitudes, and it doesn’t set exactly west either, but seeing the sun gave me a vague idea which way we were heading. Making even an immediate and very rough course correction was a lot better than staying on the line we’d been on.

“OKAY ... WE JUST FOUND OUT WE’VE BEEN GOING DUE EAST, AND WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN GOING SOUTH!” I yelled at my passengers. “I STILL DON’T KNOW WHERE WE ARE, BUT NOW I’VE GOT THE OLD GIRL HEADING IN THE DIRECTION WHERE ALL THE CITIES AND TOWNS ARE, SO WE’RE FIXING OUR PROBLEMS AS WE GO!”

And we actually were doing that—sorta. Alaska doesn’t have a very high a population density and the state as a whole just isn’t well settled. Once, an Air Force KC-135 from Eielson Air Force Base, near our destination at Fairbanks, crashed seven miles from the end of the runway. As far as anyone could tell, no one had ever set foot in the nearly inaccessible valley where the plane went down. That was only a few miles from Alaska’s second largest city.

Heading southwest from—well, from wherever we were—was much, much better than heading east into the frozen waste of northern Canada—but it still didn’t get us to a nice room in a Fairbanks hotel anytime soon. Even with the throttle set way back, we were going to run out of fuel relatively soon, which meant I needed to set this old DeHavilland down somewhere, preferably before the engine quit. I much preferred controlled landings as opposed to crashes.

I snapped my microphone boom back into position. “Sharon?” I said to get her attention.

“Yes?” she responded instantly, looking at me from my right side. I glanced at her. Her eyes were level and not panicked.

“Can you take what I say for the next little bit and relay it to the folks back there, ‘stead of me turning my head around and not paying attention to flying?” I asked.

“Certainly,” she replied briskly. “Go ahead...”

“Okay ... tell them we’re going to be running out of fuel in another hour or so ... make sure they understand it’s not right now ... we’ve got a little time. Then, ask everyone to start looking out the windows—what we’re looking for is a nice paved runway ... but I don’t think we’re going to find any. So, failing that, look for a lake ... somewhere with reasonably still water that I can put this bird down on, okay, honey?”

She didn’t answer immediately. I belatedly realized I’d phrased that a little affectionately. I guessed she hadn’t really cared for me doing that. Crap! I’d probably overstepped a boundary.

“OKAY... , “ she yelled into the back of the plane, “MATT SAYS WE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH FUEL TO GET WHERE WE’RE GOING, SO EVERYBODY NEEDS TO LOOK FOR SOMEWHERE TO LAND ... EITHER ON SOME PAVEMENT OR ON A LAKE SOMEWHERE. ALL A’ YOU GUYS BE LOOKING FOR A GOOD PLACE, OKAY?”

It was a reasonable interpretation of what I’d said, and quite possibly delivered in language they’d understand better. I reached out and caught her hand; she was reaching too. We held hands for a long moment. In spite of everything bad happening, touching her gave me a warm feeling.

The engine droned on powerfully, never faltering. It had dragged us some distance to the southwest, but I didn’t know how far. An hour after we discovered we were in trouble, I was beginning to worry even more. Concern about where we were, began to take a backseat to a dread we were going to run out of fuel—and very quickly too.

I’d been doing a series of rough guestimates, judging how long we’d been flying on a faulty course, what our fuel consumption was, and a bunch of other things, mostly unknowns. The gauge said the fuel was awfully, awfully low, but who knew if it was accurate? It could be failing along with the other instruments.

What I came up with was a conclusion that we were absolutely going to go down before too much longer; the only question was whether we were going to go down hard, or relatively softly. I throttled back a little more, accepting a lower speed to save fuel. We began descending in a shallow glide.

“THERE ... OVER THERE!” someone, a guy, yelled at the top of his lungs. I heard him easily over the engine noise, but I didn’t know who it was.

“Where is THERE? What direction?” I snapped. Sharon relayed my questions to the passenger cabin where someone was sounding the alert.

“Left,” she told me, “ ... little bit behind us ... ahhh ... like at seven o’clock? ... know what I mean?”

“Gotcha!” I replied. “Good way to say it!” It was, and it showed she was keeping her head. A woman to walk with a man, not behind him. I was very glad Sharon Kincaid was there with me.

I took the old DeHavilland in a wide-sweeping left bank; I was loathe to maneuver too radically, considering the low speed at which we were flying. A small body of water came slowly into view as we turned, steadying up directly in front of us. It was seven or eight miles off the nose of the aircraft, but hadn’t been in view before; a range of mountains had hidden it until we reached where we were.

“Thank whoever it was spotted it ... really good job of staying alert!” I told Sharon. She relayed the thanks and the compliment.

We flew over the lake; I had to advance the throttle and make a hard turn to the right to avoid flying too close to a mountain that had hidden the water from us before, then I throttled back again and did a slow flyby.

It looked good, damned good. A highland lake, pristine from this height, surrounded by a forest of pines, or maybe firs—hell, I didn’t know what they were—but it was a virgin forest around a beautiful little lozenge-shaped lake. I couldn’t see any sort of underwater objects in the crystal clear water. That was a really good sign—nothing to rip out the undersides of the floats when they touched the water! I made my decision quickly. It was the way I did things.

“Okay, Sharon ... tell them we’re going to set down on that lake down there ... everybody needs to pull their seatbelts tight and brace themselves, okay?” I could see her nodding from the corner of my right eye.

“OKAY, EVERYBODY,” she yelled over the engine noise. “THE CAPTAIN HAS TURNED ON THE FASTEN SEATBELT SIGN ... PLEASE RETURN YOUR SEATS TO THE FULL UPRIGHT POSITION AND MAKE SURE YOUR SEATBELT IS SECURELY FASTENED. WE’RE GOING TO LAND RIGHT DOWN THERE! HANG ON TIGHT, KIDDOS ... GONNA BE A WILD RIDE!”

I couldn’t help but grin in spite of everything. Sharon was one hell of a woman, and I loved being around her—even in a plane that wasn’t going to be flying much longer. I shot her a quick glance, still smiling and took a second to pat her hand affectionately. She captured my hand and kissed the back of it, then released it quickly so I could put it back on the throttle.

I revved the engine and made another steep bank, coming out of it aligned with the long axis of the lake. I slapped the flaps down to fifteen percent, leveling out high enough to clear the tree tops but not much more. I was about thirty-five feet over the thick forest.

I reduced the throttle way back and let the plane drop, dropped the flaps to 40% and pulled back on the yoke to rub off a little more speed. I lowered the nose again as we passed over the last of the tall trees. The glide path was pretty darn good; we passed over the shoreline at about twenty feet and we were settling fast. I flared, lifting the nose one last time, just enough to raise the front edges of the floats, and chopped the throttle.

We kissed the water almost gently, then with greater force as the weight of the plane forced the floats deeper. Reaching down to the floorboard beside me, I engaged the rudders on the back of the floats and abruptly, we were in a DeHavilland boat instead of a plane. I think it was the best water landing I ever made.

We slowed rapidly. I looked around as well as I could outside my left-side window and forward, but I couldn’t see anything that hinted we were in any immediate danger. When I asked Sharon to look out her side, she couldn’t see any problems either.

There was a lot of cheering and high-fiving going on behind me and Sharon twisted around in her seat to take a bunch of high fives herself. She passed them on to me. We were all ecstatic to be down and safe. We weren’t going to crash now, assuming I missed the random floating tree trunks here and there.

I let the engine rumble in idle, deliberately slowing our taxiing speed so I could better see what was around us. Finally, I found a little inlet off to my left. It led to what looked like a pebbly beach about half-way up the cove. Moving slowly, we taxied up the comparatively narrow waterway and a few seconds later, the front of the floats ground noisily a few inches up a mostly gravel slope—we were at rest.

I turned off the ignition, turned in my seat to grab Sharon in my arms. I kissed her soundly. She returned the kiss enthusiastically, so I kissed her again, more slowly and deliberately. She returned that too.

I reluctantly stopped kissing Sharon. I didn’t want to stop, but there were things that needed doing. Opening my cockpit door, I stepped down on the left float and retrieved a short braided nylon rope with an anchor attached out of a storage bin in the float. I clipped the line to one of the landing gear supports, and walked up to the front of the float, avoiding the super-hot engine exhaust pipes.

From there, it was a short drop onto the gravely shore. The pebbles were damp—probably the floats had pushed a little wave a short distance up the slope—but the ground was dry a couple of yards inland. Pulling the rope taut, I slammed one of flukes down into the pebbly soil, and stepped on the shank, driving it a little deeper. The old DeHavilland was secure enough for now; we’d do a more permanent job later.

Looking back, I saw the passenger entry hatch was open and a guy was easing himself down onto the left float. “Yeah ... hey!” I called, “Ya’ll come on out and get on dry land. Do everything you can not to get your footwear wet, though...”

In twenty minutes, all nine passengers were on dry land with me and trying to massage or walk the cramps out of their legs. They’d brought their tiny amounts of carry-on belongings out with them. We’d pull their luggage out of that compartment in a little while. While everyone else was dealing with tight muscles and working the kinks out of their backs, I climbed back up and hauled myself up on the wing with a dry stick in my hands. I opened the refuel valve and stuck the stick inside the fuel cell. I sighed to myself, closed the cover and made my way down off the wing and onto the left-side pontoon. The aviation fuel had barely wet the end of the stick.

“OKAY... !” I yelled, just to get everybody’s attention. It probably wasn’t necessary—they’d been watching me anyway.

“Okay ... are any of y’all ex Navy SEALs... ?” It got a light chuckle from a couple of the men. “ ... Army Rangers? Marine Recon?” There were a few half grins as they saw what I was doing.