Up and Down

by Terry Fallis

  “But I can still see the bottom here,” I said as I looked down over the canoe’s gunwale into the water.

  “You have to be systematic about it. I’m just setting our eastern boundary. The drop-off starts right here, so that’s where we’ll start.”

  It’s hard for one person to leave a canoe without dumping the other. But somehow Landon managed it. When she’d spat into her mask and cleaned it to keep it from fogging up, she pulled it down onto her face. It was all I could do to keep from laughing when she looked my way. It wasn’t a modern and sleek black scuba-diving mask. Rather, it was quite a large brown rubber concoction from the forties with what looked like a big pane of glass on the front. And it looked ridiculous on her. I returned her thumbs-up as she put one leg on each gunwale, then inched her way backwards towards the bow. I could feel the canoe vibrating with her effort as she tried to keep her weight centred. Finally, with her hands gripping the gunwales, she lifted herself up and pushed back, clearing the canoe and landing in the lake. It was quite impressive. I rocked a bit but took on no water. I grabbed the paddle and tried to stay close to Landon as she began a series of exploratory dives in search of a lost plane and a lost father.

  There was quite a bit of ground, er, water, to cover. Landon kept lining herself up with a landmark of some kind on shore. Sometimes it was a tree, other times a rock. She obviously meant it when she’d talked about searching systematically. I found that she could hold her breath for quite a long time. She would dive about eight or ten feet beneath the surface so I could still see her hazy form. Then she would seem to hover there scanning as much of the bottom as she could, before surfacing. And she did it over and over again.

  I looked at my watch. It was nearly 3:30. Landon had been diving for almost an hour.

  “You must be frozen. Why don’t we take a break, warm up, and try again later?”

  She bobbed next to the canoe with her mask pushed back on her head, revealing a red ring it had left encircling her eyes and nose.

  “It’s getting deeper now, but I thought I saw something down there that didn’t quite match its surroundings. So sit tight for one more look,” she said before hauling the mask back down over her face.

  She took a few deep breaths before holding the last one and heading back down. She seemed to go deeper this time and stay longer, hanging weightless in the water. Finally, she rose.

  “Mark this spot well. Triangulate with something on the shore. We’re coming back.”

  I did what I was told, lining up our position with a tall dead tree and a large outcropping of rock.

  “Okay, I need you to lean over the far side of the canoe while I pull myself in over this side.”

  “You sound like Lucy inviting Charlie Brown to kick the football before she yanks it away and he breaks his back in the ensuing acrobatic fall,” I replied.

  “Trust me and let’s go. We’re burning daylight.”

  I actually did it, and stayed dry. It was close, but she managed to flop back into the canoe while I leaned precariously over the gunwale to maintain our equilibrium. There was lots of rocking, but no tipping, and no water on board. I was quite proud of us.

  Landon huddled in the bottom of the canoe wrapped in a towel while I attempted to paddle us back to the dock. While the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, the canoe had a different theory.

  “I could see something down there. It was too deep to make it out, but there was a kind of shimmering shape below that didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the scene. It’s probably a different shade of rock but the edges of the shape were quite straight. It’s just too deep to see it clearly.”

  I nodded, concentrating on keeping the canoe pointed towards the cabin. We made it back, following a somewhat meandering route. As soon as we touched the dock, Landon was up and out of the canoe before I’d even laid my paddle across the gunwales.

  “Stay put. I’ll be right back,” Landon instructed.

  I held on to the dock as she disappeared back into the storage room beneath the veranda. There were more sounds of debris being overturned as she searched. Then she was back out the door, labouring under the weight of what looked like a deflated inner-tube with a lawnmower engine in the middle. She made it down to the canoe and, with care, laid down her load.

  “What is that?” I asked, getting a closer look at it.

  “I gather it’s called a Scubuoy. A neighbour gave it to my father I think in the late sixties. We’ve never used it. It’s supposed to be a floating air pump but the inner-tube is shot.”

  “I don’t quite get it,” I said, puzzled.

  “You will,” she said before disappearing up the path and back under the veranda.

  Five minutes later she returned with a small gas can, a roll of duct tape, some tools, and a long hose.

  She shoved one end of the hose onto a spigot of sorts protruding from the Scubuoy unit and tightened a hose clamp to secure it. Even to me, it was starting to become clear. I noticed that attached to the other end of the hose was a mouthpiece.

  “Jacques Cousteau would be proud,” I said.

  “Well, we got to get it working first,” she replied.

  “The hose has split down near the motor,” I said, pointing to it.

  “That’s the very reason duct tape was invented.”

  She carefully wrapped the hose in the sturdy grey tape, starting before the split and ending well beyond it. By this time, I’d managed to get out of the canoe and tie the rope to the dock ring. While Landon smoothed out her tape job, I grabbed the red gas can and filled the small tank on the Scubuoy.

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “You don’t need to wear a big scuba tank on your back, you can just rev up the old Scubuoy and it’ll push air down the hose directly into your mouth?”

  “That’s it. But you’re limited to the thirty feet or so of hose.”

  “Right.”

  Landon pointed to the engine.

  “Shall we?” she asked

  “By all means,” I replied, stepping over and grabbing the pull cord.

  I pulled and pulled and pulled, generating nothing more than buckets of sweat, an aggravated rotator cuff, and a series of anemic gurgles from the engine.

  “Hold your fire!” Landon said before reaching down and connecting the spark plug lead to the spark plug. “Sorry, try it now.”

  The next pull produced a major backfire, a large puff of very black smoke, and the fleeting but very encouraging sound of the garden variety internal combustion engine. I pulled once more, and it not only started up, it kept running. It sounded a bit rough, but it was working. Landon set the throttle to what we both thought sounded reasonable, then she inserted the mouthpiece where one usually inserts mouthpieces. She pinched her nose and was definitely still breathing. About thirty seconds later she pulled it out.

  “Well, it sure doesn’t taste great, but I’m pretty sure it’s air.”

  Good enough for me. Landon made one more dash to the storage room and returned with a big flashlight and a tired and faded wetsuit with Scubuoy emblazoned across the back. She pulled it on over her bathing suit, though it was a little big on her. I used duct tape again to seal a tear in the rubber on her left elbow. She had me tape the suit up at her ankles and wrists to prevent water from flowing in. The neck seemed tight enough with the zipper pulled up. Then she held the canoe tight against the dock as I lowered the Scubuoy onto the cedar ribbing on the bottom. She grabbed the hose and mask and settled into the bow seat again. We were both pumped up now. I navigated as Landon paddled us back out to the spot.

  “I think you’ll have to equalize for the pressure as you go down,” I said. “But I’m not certain how you do that. I think you have to pinch your nose and blow, or something like that.”

  “Yep. I think you’re right. Well, start her up.”

  So I did. Two pulls on the cord and we were in business. Landon used the same technique as before to get back in the water and once again, the
canoe stayed upright. She treaded water beside the canoe and pulled her mask into position. I handed her the mouthpiece, which she promptly put in her mouth. Then I loaded the big flashlight into the large Ziploc freezer bag and sealed it. She floated there for a moment, then put her hand out. I passed her the improvised underwater flashlight. She couldn’t speak with the mouthpiece in, but she nodded to me before starting down.

  I watched her descend slowly, pinching her nose periodically as part of equalizing the water pressure in her ears. I could barely see her at twenty feet, but there was a glow when she fired up the flashlight. As she faded from view into the dim glow, I realized I should have tied a line to her so I could pull her back up if something went wrong. I held the last coil of hose in my hands so she couldn’t pull it off the motor trying to get a little deeper. She was down as far as she could go without dragging the canoe under. It was unnerving to have her down so deep, beyond my view. She’d agreed to tug once on the hose every few minutes or so to confirm she was okay and she was pretty good at sticking to the schedule.

  She’d been down for about twenty minutes when the periodic signal tugs just stopped. After five minutes of the Scubuoy hose equivalent of radio silence, I was starting to panic. Should I dive in after her? Should I give my own tug on the hose and risk pulling the mouthpiece out of her mouth? Should I bury my head in my hands and moan? As I contemplated these burning questions, I suddenly realized I could see the light below getting stronger. Landon was on her way up. As she got closer, I could see she was looking up. She broke the surface and just held onto the gunwale. She didn’t move for quite some time. Eventually she spat out the mouthpiece. I gathered in the hose and shut down the Scubuoy. She lifted the flashlight into the canoe, then used her free hand to pull off the mask. She wouldn’t lift her eyes to mine. She just held on and seemed to stare directly into the side of the canoe with a look on her face I’d never seen. She was trembling a bit. Even with the wetsuit, she must have been cold.

  “Landon, can you make it into the canoe? Your lips are blue. We should get you back and warmed up,” I said in a quiet and even voice. I really wasn’t sure what was happening.

  That seemed to rouse her and she nodded and started to haul herself in. Fortunately, I was ready and leaned over my side to balance us. It helped having the extra ballast of the heavy Scubuoy resting in the bottom of the canoe. I handed her the towel and she draped it over her shoulders. It was not yet 5:00 p.m. but the sun was beyond the mountains. The light fell and so did the temperature. I paddled us back to the dock as quickly as I could, struggling to keep the canoe pointed at the cabin. Landon seemed to be in some kind of a trance. She was rocking just a bit, pulling the towel around her. I was nearly overcome with curiosity but to speak to her just then seemed like trespassing, so with considerable effort, I held my peace. Just as we glided up to the dock, but before my inept steering crashed the canoe into it, Landon reached down and picked up something from underneath the flashlight, and cradled it in her hands like a newborn bird.

  When we finally came to rest, which happened quite suddenly, I grabbed the dock and held on.

  “Now go up and get warm, I’ll deal with all of this,” I said with a little more authority than I usually employed with Landon.

  She didn’t argue. Her face was very calm, even serene, as she headed up.

  “Thank you, David.”

  I considered my situation and decided to pull the canoe up on the pebbled beach next to the dock before unloading it. Good call. Trying to hoist the heavy Scubuoy up and onto the dock would probably have played out like a scene from The Keystone Kops Go Canoeing, with me ending up in the lake. I stowed everything back in the storage space beneath the veranda and then tried to muscle the canoe back onto its rack. I used the same technique I’d watched Landon use. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that it wasn’t precisely the same technique. When I pulled the canoe up onto my thighs, I forgot to compensate for the shift in my own centre of gravity and quickly found myself seated on the ground with the canoe quite literally in my lap. It felt just excellent. I managed to slip out from underneath by rolling the canoe up and over my shins. I’ll have to check my files, but I don’t think I’ve ever experienced pain quite like that. It took me another fifteen minutes to position the canoe on the rack. When I finished, dusk had descended. I looked up and saw Landon leaning on the veranda railing watching me.

  “I usually position the canoe the other way around on the rack, with the stern at the north end,” she observed. “That way I’m already headed in the right direction when I get it in the water.”

  My heart sank and I briefly considered trying to correct my mistake, the operative word being “briefly.” I just shook my head.

  “I’m not sure the canoe would survive another attempt,” I explained. I looked up at her in the fading light. “Are you all right?”

  “I am more than all right. Come up.”

  Landon had built and lit a fire in the stone fireplace. A mug of hot tea was waiting on the pine box. I collapsed into the chair. Landon sat in her usual place across from me.

  “Okay, tell me,” I said.

  “There’s not much to tell. He’s down there. He’s really there, just as you surmised,” she began. “The Beaver is upright with both pontoons pulled away at the front and folded behind, still attached by the rear struts. The prop blades are bent back in accordance with a nose-in impact on the water. The windscreen is smashed away, but the rest of the plane looks in good shape. It’s been sitting just off the dock for more than forty years while I’ve been flying all over hell’s half acre looking for a fiery crash site.”

  “Um, is he there? Is he in the Beaver?”

  “Yes. He’s still there, strapped in. Died with his boots on while flying. A perfect way for him to go. He couldn’t have planned a more fitting end.”

  Landon reached for what looked like an oversized wallet sitting on the pine box. A damp water mark was left behind in the wood when she picked it up.

  “My father always flew in a leather flying jacket with what was supposed to be a watertight zipper pocket. I was down there for so long because I was wrestling with a zipper that hadn’t functioned for four decades. It was a tad reluctant to cooperate. But I got it opened and can confirm that the pocket was not watertight. But I found this, and it’s not in bad shape for being down there for so long. I remember this leather wallet.”

  She was smiling as she spoke, as if a heavy burden had finally been lifted. And I guess it had.

  She opened the wallet and passed it to me. There, behind a foggy and yellowing plastic window, was a now stained photo of a young woman and her father standing on the pontoon of the very same Beaver that now rested on the bottom just a ways off the dock.

  “I was fourteen in that shot. I’d just soloed for the first time. My father was beyond proud.”

  I passed it back to her, at a complete loss for words. Landon’s eyes were now glistening in the firelight.

  “I’m pretty nearly overcome. Reaching space and finding my father have been the two constants in my life. And now, thanks largely to you, I’ve done both. You can’t know what that means. I don’t yet know what it means.”

  She paused and looked into the fire. Then she looked at me.

  “Though inadequate the words may be, from the bottom of my heart, from the bottom of my lake, thank you. David, after forty years, you found my father. Thank you.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “Landon, I just pointed. You found him.”

  The day I returned to Toronto, Amanda met me at the airport. I’d been feeling pretty good about my trip to Cigar Lake, but I very nearly forgot about it all when I spied her waiting outside the baggage claim area at Pearson Airport. As I waited for my bag to come down the conveyor, I watched as other passengers with their carry-ons walked through the sliding doors to meet family or friends, or just to catch a cab. Each time the doors opened, I could see Amanda waiting on the other side. She hadn’t yet picked me
out of the crowd so I could just look at her for the three or four seconds the doors were apart. It was nice.

  We went out for dinner that night and I gave her a complete play-by-play of my weekend with Landon. Amanda had been a little skeptical about my east wind theory when I’d told her about it before heading west. Even after I’d shown her the forty-year-old meteorology report, she worried that I was getting my hopes up when the odds still seemed impossibly long. So she was downright pumped and proud when it all panned out.

  We ended up closing the place that night. I had no idea where the time had gone. We just started talking and the night evaporated. I barely remember what I ordered or if I ate. Despite being preoccupied with one another, I couldn’t help but notice that my BlackBerry sitting on the table was flashing. Amanda, similarly afflicted with the need to check emails as soon as they arrived, saw it too. We both stared at it for a second or two, then I looked at her.

  “You can check it,” she said. “I’d be forced to check mine if it were flashing, but it’s not.”

  “I’ll just take a peek.”

  I snatched up the BlackBerry and scanned the inbox. There was one new email.

  “It’s from Kelly Bradstreet,” I explained, clicking it open.

  I read it and started laughing. Amanda just smiled at me.

  “What?” she asked.

  “The NASA brass just had a look at the top line numbers from the tracking study that went into the field during Landon’s triumphant post-mission media tour.”

  “Yeah, so dish the news already! I’m dying here,” Amanda said.

  I scrolled down in Kelly’s email to get the numbers for the most important question of all.

  “Okay, here you go. It was a North American-wide gen pop survey with a sample size of 3,800. Here’s how the all-important ‘launch or lunch’ question breaks down. The share of those who would rather watch a shuttle launch than go out for lunch jumped from 45 per cent last quarter, to 61 per cent last week,” I reported. “Wooo-hooo!”