RAYMOND’S EYES TOOK in a glimpse of me, and then they stuck on the ground. He looked embarrassed, defeated. The old man with the thick white hair looked distant and sad.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going back home?” I asked Raymond. “I had no idea.”
“It didn’t seem like it was any use,” he muttered. “Then you would’ve tried to talk me into staying.”
“You bet I would have! You should have told me!”
“I know. I was going to tell you this morning, but when I woke up, you were gone.”
“But how come you’re leaving?”
Raymond kept his eyes on the ground. I just kept waiting. Then he said, “At home I can get up when I want to, I can stay up all night if I want to, I can play hockey any time I want, I can play guitar any time I want, I can go hunting with my dad if I want to, I can mess around with my friends…nobody makes any rules.”
“But you said it was boring back home.”
Clint leaned between us and said, “I hate to rush you guys, but we’re burning daylight, and daylight is precious.” As he grabbed their duffels, I gave him a hand with Raymond’s heavy bag—everything he’d brought to school was in there. We stowed all the stuff behind the backseat, Clint arranging the load carefully around a couple of army-green metal boxes. “What’s in these?” I asked.
“Those are ammo boxes,” Clint replied. “Army surplus—they make good waterproof storage. We’ve got some food in ’em and some other survival gear.”
Clint jumped back out and helped the old man into the plane through a little hatch door on the left side that gave access to the rear seats. Then Raymond climbed in. I jumped in front with Clint. I was all keyed up about my first flight ever in a bush plane. I glanced back at Raymond, wishing he was sharing in the excitement. His face had about as much expression as a wooden mask. What were people back home going to think about him dropping out of school?
Inside the airplane, doing his cockpit check, Clint seemed about ten years older than he had when he was driving the van. All business. I was feeling reassured seeing him throwing switches and pulling levers and talking over the radio while my eyes were scanning the complicated array of gauges and controls that he was reading and manipulating by second nature.
Clint told us to wear our headsets or we’d wreck our hearing, the engine was going to make such a racket. As soon as he fired it up I could see what he meant. Our headsets had mouthpieces that swung out in front of our faces. Clint switched on the intercom and started talking to us through our headsets. “Don’t talk to me when I’m taking off or landing,” he instructed us. “Otherwise it’s fine.” Then that boyish grin of his was back. He said, “Don’t worry about this old ship. It’s got a lot of experience—it’s seven years older than I am!”
I clenched my teeth as he taxied out onto the bay. As much as I wanted to fly, I still had a knot in my stomach. I remembered my father saying once, “It’s a rare bush pilot who ends up in a rest home.” I had a feeling Clint was not destined for the rocking chair.
Our pilot suddenly yelled, “Let’s open up the tap and pour on the coal! With that he started his takeoff run. Water sprayed high on both sides, and with a sudden lift we were airborne.
Before long we were flying over an arm of the Great Slave Lake. Ice was showing all along the shore. Out Clint’s side of the airplane I could see the open lake, vast like an inland sea. In another hour it would be noon, but the sun was pathetically low by Texas standards for the thirtieth of October.
For hours I saw mostly swampy lowlands peppered with stunted trees—not a single cabin, not a single moose. Nobody was talking over the intercom, not even Clint. Maybe we were too cold to talk among ourselves. I was flexing my toes inside the best winter boots money can buy. Raymond was hunched up against the cold and his teeth were chattering. He had his winter boots on, winter gloves, wool cap, but not enough under his parka. I couldn’t tell how the old man was doing because he was seated directly behind me. I wondered why he’d been in the hospital.
At last Clint broke the long silence. “After the late start we got, we’re going to have to put down in Fort Simpson for the night. We’ll fly on to Nahanni Butte in the morning.”
As we approached Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie River, I took in the vastness of the Northwest Territories’ biggest waterway. More than a mile wide, the Mackenzie made a spectacular sight. Scattered cakes of ice were floating in the river, and the water was reflecting the pinks and oranges of the sunset. We could see a tributary nearly as big—the Liard River—joining the Mackenzie barely upstream. It was only 4:00 P.M. when we splashed down, but day was done. The Mackenzie was headed for the Arctic Ocean, and we were headed for a couple of rooms in the tiny town above us on the bluff. In the morning we’d follow the Liard River up to Nahanni Butte.
We all ate supper together at the café. It was a pretty silent, gloomy meal, I’d have to say. I still hadn’t heard a word out of the old man. Then Clint and I went to our room and watched TV. I would’ve rather been with Raymond, but when we checked in, Raymond had said he wanted to room with the old man from his village. Probably he didn’t want me asking him more questions or trying to talk him into changing his mind. I mentioned to Clint that Raymond had been my roommate at school. Clint shrugged and said, “I guessed it was something like that. Don’t feel bad about it. They drop out all the time.”
Surfing the channels, Clint got all excited when he found a rodeo from the Cow Palace in San Francisco—highlights, actually, right as the show was ending. “I can’t believe I missed it,” he said. “You ever rodeo down in Texas?”
“Never did,” I said, “but I’ve been thrown by a horse, if that counts.”
“I’ll count it,” he said. “Bull ridin’ was my game.”
“No kidding?”
“Rode in the Calgary Stampede when I was nineteen. I was a hometown boy.”
“Hey, I’ve heard of the Calgary Stampede.”
“I’m not surprised. Calgary’s big time.”
“How come you gave it up?”
“For flying. Not even hockey and bull riding beat flying.”
After breakfast on the last day of October, Clint fueled the airplane and we started southwest up the Liard River, which was lined with cottonwoods. Raymond was still stuck in his gloom. If he’d made a good decision, I wished he felt a little happier about it. Clint was in good spirits, which lifted mine. I’d left the boarding school behind and I was out taking a look at the Northwest Territories.
It was a sunny day, and Clint was delighted with the flying conditions. I noticed he couldn’t keep his eyes off the mountains to the north and west of us.
Everywhere I could see, the forest below was crisscrossed with bulldozed paths running straight as arrows and ending on the horizon. They made a strange sight in the middle of nowhere. Clint explained that they were left over from the last boom—something to do with sonic testing for oil and gas.
Clint looked over at me, and he had a conspiratorial grin on his face. “We should go take a look at the falls on the Nahanni,” he said. “Remember me telling you about it—Virginia Falls?”
“Twice as high as Niagara, right?”
“Hey, what do you guys in the back think of taking a little detour—doing some sightseeing before we take you home?” Clint asked over the intercom.
I looked over my shoulder at Raymond. He said, “Whatever you want.” We heard nothing from the old man.
“Raymond, have you ever seen Virginia Falls?” Clint continued.
“Never been up there.”
“Never seen the canyons either?”
Raymond shook his head.
“Well then,” Clint said, delighted with himself. “It’s settled. We’ve got a perfect day for it. I’m going to give you guys a sightseeing tour you’ll never forget.”
With that he banked the plane to the north and west, at the same time letting out a big whoop. “Let’s go find the source of the South Nahanni River! Follow it down to the falls and then all the way down to Nahanni Butte!”