by Will Hobbs
I could scarcely believe the scale of what I was seeing. Clint and I exchanged glances, and he said, “Here’s your payoff for coming to the N.W.T.!”
“Thanks,” I told him. “Nothing could beat this.” But along with the thrill, my stomach felt queasy just looking at all that relentless churning power.
Below the falls the river boiled back on itself, again and again, before it sped on its choppy way down a narrow canyon splashed with colors—orange, white, pink, and gray. According to the map, this painted canyon was the first of four canyons that started below the falls and got deeper and deeper as they went.
Raymond, who’d been born a couple hundred miles downstream from here and had never seen any of this, was studying the endless surging fury of the falls, but his face gave no hint of his feelings.
“Na-ili Cho,” the old man said solemnly. “Na-ili Cho.”
“That’s the name of the falls in Slavey,” Raymond explained. “They say it means Big Water Falling Down.”
“Perfect on both counts,” Clint agreed. “It’s certainly big water, and it’s definitely falling down. Virginia Falls is a terrible name for it, if you ask me. Some American came up here and named it after his daughter in the 1920s. A lot of people think they should go back to the native name.”
Clint circled the falls, giving us a revolving look from as close as he dared. Our right wingtip came within a hundred feet of the rockslides at the base of the mountain that rose out of the river—the map called it Sunblood Mountain. I turned my eyes back to the falls, noticing details like the enormous slabs of rock sticking up out of the river in the rapids above the big drop and hundreds of logs below the falls that were beached in a driftpile. Stripped of their bark and branches, as smooth as telephone poles, they spoke eloquently of the raw grinding power of thundering water.
“Do many people know about this place?” I asked Clint. We were upstream of the falls again, over the long run of calm water that led to the rapids in the gorge and very quickly to the falls.
“Some do,” he said, and pointed out the little dock below on the river’s right shore, along the stretch of slack water. “There’s where the floatplanes tie up in the summer. Look how clear the river’s running—nearly as smooth as glass. What about a pit stop?”
“You mean, land down there?”
“Sure. We can walk out along the cliffs right above the falls and take a close-up look. That’s what everybody does.”
“Is there room enough to land…above the falls?”
With a laugh, he replied, “All the room in the world!”
We flew around the falls for a third time, then back upstream a couple of miles before Clint swung around and landed facing downstream, holding the nose up while splashing down so gently the plane barely made a dent in the lake-like surface of the river. “Sweet landing,” I said. I was relieved he’d landed so far up-stream, maybe half a mile above the dock.
Clint eased the throttle back. We were about a hundred feet off the right shore, taxiing slowly downstream, when suddenly the engine quit.
Inside the plane, it was eerily quiet. Not even the sound of breathing could be heard inside that airplane. The only sound to be heard was the dull roar of the falls.
7
CLINT TRIED TO RESTART the engine. “Charge on the battery’s good,” he muttered. “Should be starting.”
I checked our speed against the trees that stood above the ragged ice lining the riverbank. We were drifting faster than I would’ve guessed on this flat water. All I could think of was the falls, and all I could hear was the falls and the groaning starter. Within a couple of heartbeats I went from worried to terrified. Raymond and I exchanged glances as Clint tried the starter again and again. “It could be vapor locking…some air in the fuel line,” Clint said, thinking out loud. “Could be trouble with a screen, or maybe the fuel injectors. Could be electrical. Hang on, keep cool….”
We were drifting, completely helpless, as Clint kept trying to restart the airplane. He had his left hand on the ignition switch while with his right hand he was trying to adjust two levers at the same time, one with a black knob and one with a red one. In the midst of all that he was changing the frequency on the radio and hitting the TALK button. “Mayday! Mayday! This is Cessna 6–7-Z-RAY at Virginia Falls on the South Nahanni River. Have landed on river, engine out, floating toward the falls. Mayday! Mayday! This is Cessna 6–7-Z-RAY at Virginia Falls. Engine out. Mayday! Mayday!”
Clint turned to me and blurted, even though I hadn’t asked, “Somebody might’ve heard us. We’re not sure the radio’s broken.”
I kept looking downstream, checking the distance that remained between us and the beginning of the gorge where the whitewater began. It was deathly quiet again inside that airplane. Suddenly Clint said, “Gabe, remember that partition in the back of the plane right behind where we loaded the duffels. There’s two canoe paddles back there. You and Raymond get out on the floats and paddle. Paddle real hard.”
I hesitated barely half a second, just long enough to catch a glimpse of his eyes. “Go!” he yelled. “And grab the tie-rope too.”
Scrambling past Raymond and his great-uncle, I tore off my ski gloves and attacked the gear in the back, throwing it forward onto Raymond and the old man, trying to free up enough space to get at the partition and remove it. It was taking too long, way too long! All the time I was listening for the engine to catch, but all I heard was the starter laboring worse and worse as the battery weakened. I shoved the metal boxes aside, tore out the partition. I saw an ax and a rifle and a big packsack. Now I saw the canoe paddles, farther back in the narrowing tail section of the plane, taped down under some cables. I jammed myself in there and tore them out.
Raymond was waiting—he’d already removed his bulky parka. I threw mine off, then grabbed the coiled tie-rope as I climbed onto the float out the left side of the plane. While I tied the rope to the struts, Raymond crawled up to the front of the airplane and dropped out the right side onto the other float. We both knelt on one knee and started to paddle. Our strokes didn’t seem to do any good.
This is impossible, I thought, but I kept digging, and Raymond matched me stroke for stroke.
The starter kept groaning, slowing, stopping. The battery had to be about dead. Maybe we’d paddled the plane a little closer to the bank, it was hard to tell. I knew the engine wasn’t going to catch now. All the while the trees along the shore kept slipping by. Now we were drifting past the dock where the floatplanes tie up.
“You’re gaining on it,” Clint yelled from the open window of the cockpit.
He’s just saying that, I thought. I kept paddling and so did Raymond. I paddled until I thought my heart would burst. Above the rumbling of the falls, I could hear the choppy sound of the whitewater racing down the gorge to the brink. With a glance downstream I saw the tree-lined riverbank ending where the cliffs of the gorge rose sheer from the river and started to climb.
We’re not going to make it, I thought.
We kept paddling. I heard Raymond gasping for air; I was doing the same. It was so hard to move that airplane, and yet we’d cut the original distance to the shore by half.We still lacked forty or fifty feet. Who knew how much time was passing. It felt like forever, and it felt like no time at all. “Can you swim?” I yelled to Raymond, though I could barely manage the breath.
“Sort of,” he wheezed.
“What about the old man?”
“I don’t know.”
With another glance downstream I saw the end of the flat water approaching, like a near horizon, and I knew we couldn’t possibly get the plane to shore in time. Thirty feet remained between us and the shore. “Got to swim for it!” I yelled to Clint.
To my surprise I found Clint stepping onto the float, right beside me. He was wild-eyed, dressed only in his thermal underwear. “We need this plane and everything that’s in it,” he shouted. “You guys keep paddling and get me close, I’ll tie up!” With that he grabbed the c
oil of tie-rope, dove into the icy water, and started sidestroking for shore. He was swimming hard. We have a chance, I thought, if he doesn’t lose a stroke.
Keep paddling, I told myself, just keep paddling. But I could see the cliffs rising just downstream. The current suddenly grew stronger, much stronger. Not going to make it, I thought, and my mind lurched wildly in the direction of my father, trying to glimpse what this would do to him. A few seconds later I felt the airplane tilt as it dropped into the first whitewater riffles. It felt like we were starting down a slide.
I looked up and saw Clint struggling onto the ice along the shore, crawling on his knees. At last he was up on his feet and snubbing the rope around the only tree within reach. Too late? The plane was already into the first choppy waves of the rapids. I caught a glimpse of Raymond’s face, the whites of his eyes: he knew we were dead. He was looking downstream into the thundering maw of the rapids, where whitewater poured between ledges, surged into deep holes, and boiled against enormous slabs of rock.
It was then I felt the tie-rope go taut and seize the airplane. I was jerked off balance and lost my paddle, but I managed to cling to the struts as the plane swung like a pendulum against the shore under the cliff at the beginning of the gorge.
In another moment Clint was there, along an icy ledge, helping me and Raymond and the old man to safety. The next moment Clint was inside the airplane handing things out to us as fast as he could, from me to Raymond to the old man: parkas, gloves, duffel bags, my daypack…Here came the metal boxes, the packsack, the ax, the rifle, even the hockey stick and the electric guitar.
“Thank God we’re all safe,” exclaimed Clint as he regained the safety of the shore. We grabbed whatever gear we could carry and worked it up the ledge to the bank. We made a second and then a third run. The old man was surprisingly nimble on the ice. The rope to the plane was as taut as a bowstring and seemed as if it might break at any second. Clint said, “The airplane’s in an awful lot of current—I’m afraid we’re going to lose it. We’ve got to try to get another rope on it, find something else to tie to—”
“Do we have another rope?” I yelled, looking around. I sure didn’t see one.
“Look in that packsack by your foot,” Clint hollered back. I pulled a tentbag out of it, saw two sleeping bags in stuff sacks, a red wool blanket. “No rope,” I reported. Clint didn’t know it, but he was so cold after being in the river that his skin had turned purple. The wind started blowing hard, and it was cold, cold. Raymond and I pulled on our parkas and our gloves. “Get some clothes on!” I said to Clint, but he ignored me. His eyes were on that rope and he was trying to think.
Clint was right—the rope was going to break, maybe real soon. I thought about what might still be on the plane that we needed. “The emergency transmitter!” I yelled. “Can you get it off the plane?”
“It’s built into the plane, like I told you,” he yelled back, but he was thinking about it, I could tell. He said, “I might be able to get back in there and activate the switch….”
Clint stared at the rope, then at the plane. Suddenly he looked up and gasped, “My God, the box of rifle shells…it’s still on the plane, under my seat. I’ve got to try to get back on the plane!”
“The rope, Clint,” I yelled. “Look at the rope!”
“We need those shells!” he shouted, and skittered back down the ledge, stepped to the float, and disappeared inside the airplane. I followed him down the shore in case I could help.
Suddenly, with a loud cracking sound, the spruce tree that Clint had tied to broke loose at the roots. It wasn’t the rope that broke, it was the tree. Raymond and the old man were clear of it, but that stubby tree was shooting my way, and I could see I was going to get brushed right off the ledge and into the river. I reached for the packsack at my feet, then timed my leap as best I could. The tree passed under me, most of it—a branch tripped me up, and I fell hard. I swung around and saw the tentbag go into the river. Then I looked up and saw the tree sloshing through the waves, and out beyond it, the airplane already well downstream, with Clint standing there on the float and looking back at me. “Gabe, catch!” he yelled.
Clint tried to heave the box of ammunition to me, but he was already too far away and the box landed way short. “Clint!” I hollered back, but there was nothing to tell him to do. I stood frozen in place, utterly helpless.
Over the roar of the whitewater, I heard him shout, “Sorry!” He kept looking back at us as the Cessna wallowed into the first hole and came out upright. So far he was still hanging on, still looking back.
Clint never tried to swim for it. On both sides of the river down there it was nothing but sheer cliffs, with huge whitewater wall-to-wall in between. Clint clung to the struts, trying to ride it through as long as possible. I saw him lift his cap and wave it with his free hand while he hung on one-handed. Like he was riding a bull, I realized. Then I heard him whoop as the plane rose up onto the first of two roller-coaster waves.
Miraculously, the airplane was staying upright. But just before the rapids bent out of sight and raced down to the brink of the falls, the plane was swept against a boulder jutting out of the river. The Cessna crumpled like a toy, tipped over, and was swept away. I saw only the briefest glimpse of Clint being pitched into the whitewater, and then he was gone. “Clint!” I yelled. “Clint!”
Raymond and I ran up the steep footpath along the rising rim of the gorge. We stopped at a bend in the cliffs and looked down to the brink of the falls. We saw nothing but an insanely tilted river plunging toward the brink, where it was all mist and roar and thunder. “Could he survive that?” I asked Raymond.
“I don’t see how,” Raymond said.
I felt as if every nerve in my body had just been cut with a knife, as if what had just happened to Clint had happened to me. I said, “I don’t think he could be alive either, but we need to go down below the falls and look.” My mind was racing, my heart pounding so loud I could hear it. He must have family back in Calgary, I thought.
“It’ll be dark soon,” Raymond said. “It must be after three already.”
“You’re right,” I told him, checking my watch.
“There’s probably a flashlight in all that stuff that came off the airplane. You go down and look for him, I’ll try to bring a flashlight so we can find our way back.”
Raymond took off running, and I headed into the forest to stay well clear of the cracks in the rim of the gorge. When I was opposite the falls itself, I came out onto the ledges and looked down into the raging sheets of water, the roar and the foam and the spray. I could feel the solid rock below my feet vibrating like a tuning fork. As it ran up through me I felt my whole body vibrating with fear. Downstream in the painted canyon there was no sign of the airplane, but it was hard to see down there through the mist, and the day was dimming down so fast. I imagined Clint holding his breath, tucking himself into a ball, somehow pulling himself up onto the beach right below the falls where I couldn’t see. But I knew I was thinking pure fantasy.
Back in the woods, I stumbled around in the frozen mosses until I found the footpath again. It led in switchbacks down a steep slope to the river below the falls. Above the ice lining the shore it was all rubble down there, nothing but river rocks coated with transparent ice and the driftpiles of slick logs I’d seen from the air. I worked my way upstream toward the falls, which now loomed right in front of me. I kept concentrating, trying to spot the red-and-white colors of the airplane.
I kept thinking I’d somehow find Clint alive on the shore. But I knew that really I was looking for a body. I slipped and crawled the rest of the way to the falls, as close as I could get, where the thunder deafened me and the spray made the water run down the shell of my parka. Nothing. Not a trace of Clint or the airplane, only the endless boiling of the river back on itself before it raced downstream. It was getting dark. Numb, I turned back, slipping on the rocks. I saw a flashlight coming down the last few switchbacks from above. “Find any
thing?” Raymond called.
“Nothing,” I called back.
When we met at the foot of the slope, I said, “What now? What about us? What’s going to happen to us?”
“All I know is, we got to make a fire and we got to do it quick.” Raymond was shivering uncontrollably. “You won’t believe how cold it’s going to get,” he added.
He turned and started walking up the trail on the steep switchbacks. I followed, trying to keep close to his light. “Do you think somebody might have heard Clint’s Mayday?”
“Could have,” Raymond said doubtfully.
“Well, if his Mayday didn’t get through, then we have to hope that the emergency transmitter he told us about is working. Maybe he got it turned on. Maybe hitting those rocks set it off….”
“Are you kidding?” Raymond said, stopping to look at me in disbelief. “The whole thing’s underwater—look at this falls! Don’t you remember what he said about how it works, the antenna and all? The plane would’ve busted up and got smashed over and over against the bottom of the river. That antenna would’ve got broken off. This river, it chews everything up.”
“Maybe it worked for a minute or two,” I said, grasping at straws.
“Maybe.” Raymond shrugged, and started up the trail again. Over his shoulder, he said, “If somebody heard the Mayday, or if the transmitter worked, we’ll know in a day or two. They’ll rescue us real quick.”
My heart was beating so fast I was afraid I was having a heart attack. I steadied myself against a big rock along the trail. “Wait up,” I called, trying to catch my breath. “People will know we’re missing. My dad, your parents…Who searches for missing planes?”