The Boxcar Blues

by Jeff Egerton

  With the ice building, he touched down on the river with no problem, but immediately found that the current was incredibly swift. He felt like he was making close to ten knots just floating down the river. He wondered, if a shoreline came along, would he be able to maneuver the floatplane to a landing area?

  He watched in awe as the plane floated down the river, with the gale force wind trying to turn his airplane in every direction on the compass. Using his power and limited steering he was able to keep it in the middle of the river, but didn’t know how long he’d be able to stay there.

  Then, he saw a bend in the river ahead. On the right side of the curve was a sloping shoreline. He steered for the sand and just before he came abeam it, applied power.

  The plane hit the beach with a scrape and crunch, but the floats held fast. He grabbed his mooring ropes and stakes and hurried out to tie the ship down before it floated away. Once it was tied down he returned to the cockpit, put on his parky and thought about Curly.

  Curly was three miles in trail of Catwalk when he hit the weather. He’d also flown down the river and like his partner had seen the ice build up on his wings. He’d found a suitable mooring area, landed and tied the plane down. His problems started after he was tied down.

  He was sitting in the plane with his heater going, eating a candy bar, when he saw a dark shadow moving through the sleet. The visibility was so poor that he couldn’t tell what the shape was, but it wasn’t human—it was too big. He watched the form move toward the plane, and when it was less than ten feet from him, Curly recognized it as a huge grizzly bear. Astonished, he started to say something, but caught himself in time. If the bear didn’t know he was there, he didn’t want to get its attention. He then remembered hearing about a bear’s remarkable sense of smell. He put his candy bar in his pocket, but there was nothing he could do about four tubs of fish in his plane. Sooner or later, the bear would discover them.

  Catwalk worried about Curly. He hadn’t seen the plane go by on the river, so that meant Curly had landed somewhere, but was he O.K? In these volatile weather conditions and with their limited experience in floatplanes, the chances for an accident were high. He decided to walk the shoreline in search of his partner.

  Curly watched the grizzly coming closer to the plane. Every now and then it would stand up to sniff the air, and he was still amazed at the size of the creature—it looked like it was eight feet tall! He took his pistol out of his flight bag and checked the cylinder. He had six rounds, but was six rounds from a measly thirty-eight enough fire power to stop this monster?

  The bear sat down on the shore line and looked over a dead fish. It started to eat it’s find, and Curly hoped this would curb it’s appetite.

  Catwalk walked along the shoreline, knowing there was a stretch of shoreline where he hadn’t seen any suitable mooring spots. He’d checked his watch when he left the plane and decided he’d walk for thirty minutes. If he didn’t find Curly in that time, he’d return to his plane because he didn’t want to be roaming around in this wilderness after dark.

  The bear had finished the fish and decided to explore the plane. Curly got ready to explode out the door if the bear tried to get at the fish. With his heart pounding, he watched as it came to the right side of the plane to check out the float. The bear pawed at the float and toyed with the struts, less than five feet from him. He felt the plane rock every time the bear tugged at the strut. His mind was racing; Could the bear get into the plane? Did they eat humans? Could he outrun a bear if his gun didn’t stop it? Was there any way he could make it go away?

  Catwalk rounded a bend and saw the Stinson moored onto the shoreline. Upon seeing that the plane was in one piece and in good conditions, he smiled. He was going to yell at Curly, but then saw him in the seat with his back to him. Thinking he was asleep, he decided to sneak up on him and scare the daylights out of him.

  Curly turned to open the door in case the bear came after him. Then he saw Catwalk coming up the shoreline. He couldn’t yell, but he had to warn him somehow. He quietly opened the door and began waving him back. When Catwalk didn’t respond and kept coming toward the plane, he yelled, “A bear!”

  The bear turned toward the voice an let out a snort. Catwalk stopped in his tracks. He barely saw the creature on the other side of the plane. Curly jumped out of the plane and moved toward Catwalk with his pistol pointed at the bear. The bear ambled around the nose of the plane and looked at the two men. Then it got a whiff of the frozen fish.

  From fifty feet away, Catwalk and Curly watched the bear move slowly toward the door. Even though it could be deadly, they marveled at such a magnificent animal. The bear stuck its nose in the door, then crawled into the plane and dug through the tub of ice for the fish.

  As they watched from behind a fallen log, Curly whispered, “The son of a bitch is eating my fish.”

  Catwalk, who also had his gun out, asked, “You think we should shoot it?”

  “Our thirty-eights might not stop it. What if we just piss him off?”

  “Let’s just leave it alone. Maybe it’ll just eat a few fish and then run along. It can’t eat the whole two hundred pounds of fish, can it?”

  “Damned if I know. If it comes after us, then we start shooting.”

  The bear sat in the plane for half an hour. It grew dark and Catwalk didn’t relish the thought of walking back to his plane in the dark of night, with grizzlies in the area. Finally, the bear crawled out of the plane, looked at the two men for a minute and then ambled up the shoreline. When it was out of sight, Catwalk and Curly returned to the plane.

  Curly reached the door first and shouted, “Oh, God damn it!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That fucking bear crapped in the plane.”

  Catwalk got whiff of the bear’s mess and couldn’t help but giggle. Then he started laughing out loud. Curly said, “It ain’t funny.”

  “Yes, it is, Curly. It’s hilarious—bear comes along and eats your fish, then poops in your plane. I think it’s funny as hell.”

  Curly looked at his friend and started laughing himself. Before long both pilots were standing on the shoreline of the Chilitna River, in the middle of the Alaskan darkness laughing until they had tears in their eyes.

  Once the hilarity of the situation passed, they cleaned the mess out, but the odor remained. They decided to walk back to Catwalk’s plane and spend the night. Curly said, “It only ate a few of the fish. You think they’ll dock our pay?”

  “I don’t know. We’re about to find out how they deal with something like this.”

  The next morning they couldn’t takeoff because the freezing rain continued. The heater kept them warm in the plane while Catwalk read, but Curly was growing restless; he clearly wanted to get back in the air. It was early afternoon before the storm abated and they saw sunlight peeking through the clouds.

  “It’s breaking up, Cat. I’m going back to my plane.”

  “O.K., I’m going to wait until I see—or smell—you go by, then I’ll take off.”

  “That ain’t funny.”

  Catwalk and Curly landed on Lake Hood two hours later. When they told Hank about the missing fish, he merely asked what happened. When they told him what the bear did in the Stinson, he roared with laughter, then said, “Funny thing is, it ain’t my plane. I just borrowed it from Dave Reynolds. Wait’ll he hears that his plane smells of bear shit.”

  Catwalk and Curly then headed for the bar to get a beer.

  They’d been in the bar for ten minutes, when Hank walked in and spread the story about the bear around. The men in the bar thought the tale was hilarious and ribbed Curly unmercifully. A story like this, however, had its merits. Their adventure had cemented their relations with the local gentry and other pilots. They left the bar, not as newcomers, but as accepted members of the working community.

  By the time they left for dinner, Catwalk was higher than he’d ever been in his life, but he felt wonderful. While they waited for dinner,
he explained to Curly, “Do you know this is the first time in my life, I’ve been able to be one of the boys; drink beer, laugh and let my hair down, without worrying about someone making as issue of my presence. Curly, it feels great.”

  “I’m glad for you, old buddy. You deserve to enjoy yourself after all the crap you’ve been through. Maybe we should stay up here for a while. Hell, there ain’t nothing waiting for us back in the states.”

  “You’ve got a point there, Curly.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Catwalk and Curly quickly learned the hazards of flying the bush. They avoided major accidents, although they had their share of minor incidents such as, broken oil lines, frozen crankcase breathers, hard landings, broken skis, all of which were part of bush flying. They constantly had to change their planes from floats to wheels to skis, depending on the time of year and their destination. When their planes were on skis, they spent a lot of time thawing out frozen skis with boiling water. When they were on floats, they concentrated on avoiding sandbars. On wheels, they just had to find level places to land because in so many remote locations graded runways didn’t exist.

  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 ti
me, 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?”