The Boxcar Blues

by Jeff Egerton

  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.

  “You gonna cut through Moose Pass and fly the west side of the Kenai Mountains, or stay on the leeward side?”

  Fighting the controls and struggling to see through a rain soaked windshield, Curly said, “We’ll see how it looks when we get to the pass. I think we’d be better off to stay on this side of the mountains.”

  “Yeah, I’d rather die in the ocean than slam into a mountain.”

  Curly looked at Catwalk to see how serious he was and said, “Would you really?”

  “Sure. Drowning is supposed to be peaceful.”

  Curly jammed the throttle forward as a downdraft threatened to drive the plane into the surf. The engine revved and after precious seconds they climbed back to a safe altitude, where he retarded the throttle before they climbed into the overcast. He then watched as a spit of land passed by and the wind increased from the west. They were over open water at the south end of Prince William Sound, and he steered into a thirty degree crab just to hold their course. Without his protection of the shallow water close to shore, the rolling swells were getting dangerously close.

  Several minutes later, fighting to keep the plane above the spray of the swells and below the storm clouds, he said, “Who says drowning is peaceful? If someone drowns, how the hell are they going to tell you it’s peaceful? Can you answer that?”

  Ignoring his question, Catwalk said, “There’s some islands up ahead and one of them’s got some pretty good hills on it.”

  “I know, but there ain’t no way we’ll see them until we see the surf starting to break.”

  Several minutes later, Catwalk said, “There, at eleven o’clock. Shallow water.”

  Curly saw the water beginning to break over the reefs and steered to the west to avoid the hills on the island. A bolt of lightning crashed in front of them, hitting the island. Both men instinctively turned away from the flash. Curly shouted, “Shit, that was close!”

  “I don’t think it hit us. All the instruments look O.K.”

  “I ain’t so sure this was a good idea, Cat.”

  “We’re doing all right—except for the ice.”

  Curly turned to look at the leading edge of the wing. He saw the shiny glow of a thin coat of clear ice. It wasn’t bad now, but he knew it could accumulate enough to spoil the lift of their wings—before they could find a place to land.

  Reading his mind, Catwalk said, “If we need to land, we’re coming up on Seward, but I don’t think we can find the field in this stuff. Probably have to set it down on the beach.”

  “I’m climbing into the weather to see if it helps.” Curly advanced the throttle and the water below disappeared as they ascended into the clouds.

  Watching the compass, Catwalk told him, “Thirty degrees left.” Flying in the weather, their one objective was to stay away from the mountains—they had to stay over water. To that end he had to make sure Curly didn’t get pre-occupied with the ice and drift toward land.

  Curly looked at the wing, then told Cat, “The ice has disappeared; that’s in our favor.”

  Cat said, “If the ice becomes a problem again, at least we know how to get rid of it.”

  Curly slowly descended out of the weather, but found himself over the angry, turbulent water of the open sea. Again, he let the plane slowly drift toward land until he saw the breaking surf.

  At the end of the Kenai Peninsula, Curly turned west-northwest, toward Homer and into the teeth of the wind. They had a quarter of a tank of fuel left and Catwalk summed up their situation. “We’re not going to land with a lot of fuel left.”

  “If we land with a pint left, that’s just fine by me.”

  Forty five minutes later, they saw the field a half a mile inland. With his fuel gauge on empty, Curly slammed onto the dirt runway and chopped power. They breathed easier, but still, the storm threatened to fl
ip them over. Taxiing in, he said, “We’re halfway, partner.”

  “Yeah, but if we refuel in this rain, we risk getting water in the fuel tank.”

  “I’ll see if they got a tarp we can throw over us while we fill the tank.”

  Catwalk stayed in the plane to study the chart for his leg of the flight. Once they got to Kodiak, he wanted to be able to find the town with no delay. Curly walked into the line shack and a tall, young man in white overalls said, “You must be Curly Levitz.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Hank called and said, ‘If you guys end up drowned in the ocean or dead on the side of a mountain, you’re both fired.’”

  “I figured as much. You got a tarp we can use to cover us while we refuel?”

  “I can’t believe you guys flew over in this stuff. You must be nuts.”

  “We ain’t got a lot of time, friend.”

  The man took him outside where he handed Curly a folded canvas tarp. He then gave them a hand holding it in place while they refueled under the cover of the tarp. Catwalk noticed the storm was not letting up and most of his leg would be over open water.

  After refueling and a quick cup of coffee, Catwalk departed into the same weather they’d fought on the first leg; fifty to sixty knot winds, driving rain, and now sleet, which meant the rain was freezing, and their chances of icing up were increasing. After he passed the fishing settlement of Port Graham, they were over open water and the swells seemed to leap up at the plane, trying to smack it, as if to say, “You’ll pay for this foolishness.”

  Once he found a comfortable altitude, just above the swell and just below the overcast, he felt better for a while. It was always in the back of his mind, however, that the condition of the seas or the level of the cloud bases could change in an instant, and there was always the chance that they could encounter a rogue wave that could knock them out of the sky. They were completely at the mercy of the storm.

  He looked over at Curly and remembered that day in the box car several years ago. During their run from the law that followed, he was thankful to have Curly by his side and he felt the same comfort at his presence now. He said, “You think this is better or worse than running from Jones and the railroad bulls?”

  “This is much better. Ain’t anyone shooting at us and we got plenty to eat.”

  In spite of having to wrestle with the controls to hold his course and altitude, Catwalk smiled. They’d come a long way since those days and he wondered, where were they going?

  He returned his thoughts to the storm because the wind seemed to increase and the plane was being thrown around like a kite. Then, he and Curly heard it at the same time; in unison they said, “A miss!” Curly reiterated, “God damned engine’s missing. What do you think it is? You think some water got in the fuel?”

  Catwalk listened and watched the tachometer. He said, “It doesn’t sound like fuel contamination. I’d say a plug wired got shorted by the rain.”

  “One ain’t bad. We could fly to Hawaii with one bad cylinder, but if it gets worse, we’d better prepare to ditch.”

  “How far from land are we?”

  “Twenty miles.” As soon as he said it two lightning strikes lit up the sky in the windshield. Crack!—Ka-boom! Two loud crashes reverberated through the cockpit. The engine was still missing but it seemed like there were longer intervals between the misses; or was this just wishful thinking. He’d learned from experience that when you’re flying in a high pressure situation, you often hear things that aren’t there and don’t hear things that you’d prefer didn’t exist.

  Ten minutes later they saw the surf crashing on the northern shore of Shuyak Island. Catwalk headed for the shoreline and felt relieved that the worst part of the flight was over. He and Curly looked at each other. Both of them felt like the worst was behind them, but neither of them wanted to jinx the flight by saying anything.

  Catwalk felt the wind let up. He thought it was due to the high terrain to their right and knew, even though he had less wind, he’d have to be careful of downdrafts.

  They’d just crossed the inlet between the islands when Curly said, “The town is right up ahead, we got it made partner.”

  “Not so fast.” And just as he said it, the engine started running rougher, then it quit. In the deadening silence, Catwalk looked for a level spot on the beach, but the rain still limited visibility to a hundred feet or so.

  Curly shouted, “There after those boulders, the beach is as flat as a pool table.”

  Catwalk saw the spot and began to flare the plane to land. The wheels had just touched down when he saw an unbelievable sight.

  “Son of a bitch!” Curly yelled.

  Catwalk stood on the brakes but the fallen tree, no bigger around than his waist, was laying across the beach and coming up too fast. His wheels hit the tree trunk and the nose went over. In a grinding crunch, the propeller dug into the sand.

  Catwalk felt blood on his face. Then he felt the gash on his forehead from the dash board. He thought, if that’s all that’s wrong, I’m O.K.

  He looked at Curly, who also had some small cuts on his face where his head had slammed into the instruments. He said, “You O.K.?”

  Curly looked at him and actually had a smile on his face. “Wait ‘til I find the dumb bastard that put that tree there.”

  “I guess you’re O.K.?”

  “I’m fine. And we made it, Cat! God damn it, we did it. Now all we gotta do it take the serum into town.”

  “I wonder what Hank’s going to say when he finds out we wrecked his plane that we stole?”

  “I wonder where we’re going to work next?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Using their first aid kit, Catwalk and Curly hastily cleaned and bandaged their cuts. Once this was done they walked toward town. Curly said, “Do you think we’re gonna have to look for another job?”

  “We don’t know that Hank’s going to fire us, but he probably will. I don’t know if I want to stay up here or not. I’m kind of tired of the weather, but there’s more flying jobs here than back in the states.”

  “I know what you mean. I’ve kind of been thinking about going into the service. With this war coming, I’d have to sooner or later. I think I’d like to fly bombers.”

  Catwalk looked at his friend. This was the first he’d heard him talk about enlisting. He hated to see Curly leave, but didn’t want to dissuade him. He said, “Why bombers?”

  “They’re like the Boeings, except bigger. I’ll bet bomber pilots get a lot of girls.”

  “Go for it, man. There’s no reason why you can’t.”

  Thinking of Catwalk’s situation, Curly felt bad for his friend. Knowing Cat as he did, he knew he’d want to join the service in the event of a war. But there were many reasons why he couldn’t pursue a hitch in the service. He said, “Someday they’ve got to change things in the military, so black men can join up. It’s ridiculous that they keep you out.”

  “I think it’ll change, but I’m sure they won’t make it easy.”

  Seeing docks in the distance that were packed with fishing boats, the men knew they’d reached the town. They walked into the first open business, which was a restaurant. Curly asked a waitress, “Where can we find the clinic? We’ve got the serum for the two rabies victims.”

  Seeing their bandages, the waitress said, “Oh, my gosh! You guys look like you could use some patching up yourselves. It’s down the street, same side, white sign, you can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks.”

  They turned to leave and she said, “You guys get done there, come on back. Dinner is on us.”

  Once at the clinic, the doctor thanked them profusely and told them that his staff would clean them up at no charge. He then left to help the kids who’d been bitten. True to their boss’s word, the staff treated the two pilots like royalty. They were given hot coffee and donuts while their cuts and abrasions we’re treated.

  While she tended to Curly an attractive young nurse sai
d, “I can’t believe you guys flew over in this storm. That must have been scary.”

  Curly jumped at a chance to impress her. “Aw, it wasn’t nothing. Heck, me an’ my partner, we do this all the time. If we can help someone, we don’t mind risking our necks.”

  After they’d been treated, Catwalk said, “We’d better go, Curly. We’ve got to find someone to repair the Vega. If we can’t, we’ve got to find a way back to Valdez. We might have to wait for a fishing boat.”

  Curly’s mind was still on the nurse. With a smile, he said, “I wouldn’t mind sticking around here a few days.”

  Two hours later Catwalk dragged him out of the clinic and they returned to the restaurant where they were served elk steaks and gravy, fresh fish and greens. As they ate they were beset with questions about the flight over. Upon hearing about the wreck, one of the locals said, “Denny, down at the airport might be able to make that plane flyable if he can get the parts. Problem is, the high tide might carry it off before you can get it out of there.”

  Catwalk and Curly looked at each other. Curly shouted, “Damn it! The tide.”

  Catwalk asked, “How high is your tide and when does it comes in?”

  “It’s a fifteen foot tide and it’s been coming in since about the time you landed.”

  They thanked everyone and dashed back into the storm, which had quieted to a rain shower. When they reached the shoreline, Curly said, “The tide is in three or four feet already; the plane might have floated out to sea. Lucky, the fuel tanks were almost empty so it might float for a while.”

  When they got to the crash site, they both stopped in their tracks—the Vega was gone. For Catwalk and Curly their worst dreams had come true. They looked off shore and saw it, a half mile out with a wing up—going under. Curly screamed, “Holy shit, Cat! We sunk a plane.”

  Catwalk added, “Now, we’re fired for sure.”

  Two days later, Catwalk and Curly returned to Valdez compliments of Wien Airlines. They were met with cheers and congratulations for their feat, which made the papers from Anchorage to New York.