The Amazing Spencer Gray

by Deb Fitzpatrick

  The Doc and his boy would be back around 3pm, so that gave Reg plenty of time to go home now and have some lunch and a little nap before returning to meet them, help push the Drifter off the runway and sign off on the paperwork for their flight. As the duty pilot, it was his job to make sure the day’s flights were completed safe and sound.

  Right now, though, ham and cheese toasties and a snooze were beckoning him.

  26

  The wings of the Drifter intercepted the raindrops loudly. They should have landed gently in the soil, on the small scrubby leaves, a quiet arrival, but not this fat splot splat splot.

  Spencer looked at Dad. His knee had swollen to the size of a footy, despite the ice.

  And Spencer suddenly realised: even if he could wake him, what was Dad going to be able to do? Hop down the mountain?

  The Drifter’s radio was down. There was no mobile reception. He either had to sit tight and wait for help to come to them, or he had to go and find help himself.

  ‘Mphhhhh,’ Dad groaned.

  Spencer leaned over. ‘Dad?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Dad, if I talk, can you hear me?’

  He moved his lips painfully, and croaked, ‘Yesh.’

  ‘Okay. I’m gunna talk, and tell you what’s happened and what I know.’

  ‘Mmph.’

  ‘We’ve crashed. The Drifter, it’s crashed.’

  ‘Yesh.’ His eyes moved behind the lids.

  ‘We’re on the side of the Stirlings. Bluff Knoll. The big one.’

  Dad frowned. ‘Sho shorry ... gushty wind...’

  ‘I know, Dad, don’t worry about that now, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Shorry...’

  Spencer gripped Dad’s hand. ‘Dad, I think you’ve broken your leg—or your knee. It looks bad.’

  ‘Mmph.’

  ‘I think you might have some other ... injuries, too. But I don’t know what they are. It’s just that you’re unconscious most of the time and I don’t think that can be from the leg.’

  There was silence for a moment, then Dad said, ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know what else is wrong with you, Dad? Is it shock, or something?’

  Dad sucked in a breath before saying, ‘Donno. Not shock.’ His forehead creased up, like he was in pain, or was really concentrating.

  Spencer squeezed his hand and knelt forward so he was directly above Dad’s head. He checked out the bloody area without touching anything. ‘It looks like you’ve cut the back of your head. There’s a bit of blood there ... Is it hurting?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really? Okay ... but I’ll look at it in a little while just to make sure. I’ll have to move your head a bit to do that, Dad, is that okay?’

  ‘Yesh.’

  ‘One other thing—the two-way—I can’t get it to work. No one’s answering, anyway. Is there a trick? And I found your mobile and tried to call Mum and then I tried to call Reg but there’s no reception up here.’

  Spencer could see his dad struggling to open his eyes.

  ‘Flight notice _____ Reggggh.’

  ‘Huh? Flight notice? What’s that?’

  ‘Reg _____ has _____ route. Duty _____ pilot.’

  ‘Do you mean that Reg knows where we were going—the route we flew?’

  ‘Yesh,’ Dad said thickly, his face slumping back into sleep.

  That was good to know. Very, very good to know.

  ‘Rest up now, Dad.’ Spencer said quietly. ‘You need to rest up.’

  Spencer tried to make him more comfortable in the limited space, shoving anything soft underneath and around him. He kept away from the leg. The Leg. It wasn’t nice, that thing. The angle of the lower part to the knee was hideous.

  He knew he couldn’t avoid Dad’s head much longer. Even The Leg was better, somehow, than blood oozing from your dad’s head.

  He took deep slow breaths, like Mr Petrich showed him to do when he had a stitch and wanted to stop running. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

  And again, Spence, in through the nose, out through the mouth...

  27

  ‘Shall we head off, Pips?’

  Pippa sighed. ‘I s’pose.’ She paused, an idea brewing. ‘Will you play Monopoly with me when we get home?’

  Mum noted the greying sky and shunned a little nub of worry that was trying to make its way in. She took a breath and looked at her daughter. ‘I’ll have to get the washing in off the line, but after that, yes, I don’t see why not. So long as I can buy the railway stations.’

  ‘Mum, you can’t always get them, you know.’

  ‘And why not?’

  Pippa rolled her eyes. ‘Well, it’s not fair, is it?’

  ‘Says she, who always racks up hotels on premium real estate!’

  ‘M-u-u-m!’

  ‘All’s fair in love and Monopoly, Pippa-Poppa. Race you to the car!’

  28

  Flares! Spencer thought. Boats had them—what about gliders? He peered through the diminishing light at all the gear that had been flung around the cabin. Or—what were those other things? E-things? Charlie’s dad’s boat had one; his mum’d insisted on it when they got the boat, otherwise ‘there wasn’t gunna be a boat’—Charlie had said, doing his best-ever impersonation of his mum in scary mode. EPIRB: that was it. He had no idea how they worked, but it was possible that there was one in the Drifter somewhere. If only Dad were awake and sensible, he could ask him this stuff. Spencer looked over at him, spread awkwardly with jumpers strewn this way and that. He looked pale. He hadn’t eaten anything since the crash. Or had any water. Spencer was going to have to get him to have something, to keep his energy up, as Mum would say. In fact, neither of them had had anything since that apple on the tarmac back at Skippers.

  Spencer reached over and grabbed the esky bag. Mum. Thank you. He was ravenous, he realised, looking at the food. Go easy, champ. Don’t know how long you’re gunna be stuck up here.

  His throat glued up at the thought of that, of what might lie ahead.

  He put the bag down again. He didn’t think he could eat.

  After a moment, in that grey fear, Spencer reached for the bag again. He took out one of the water bottles. He’d heard Dad talk about nurses doing this with really sick patients in hospital: wetting their lips, just keeping them moist. He spun the lid off the water bottle, and took a slug. He felt guilty as it went down, cold and clean—he guzzled almost crazily—but he felt better almost instantly. He hadn’t realised how much he’d needed a drink.

  Spencer dipped his fingers into the bottle and daubed drops of water over Dad’s lips. Dad moved his head slightly. Spencer watched as, semiconscious, he tucked his bottom lip into his mouth and sucked the water off.

  ‘That’s good, Dad,’ Spencer murmured. ‘You need to drink.’ He poked his finger back into the bottle and smeared his lips again. Once more, Dad sucked the water off. Spencer kept at it for a good ten minutes or so, until Dad seemed to have had enough and slumped back into himself.

  He couldn’t put it off any longer. Spencer leaned over him. The blood in Dad’s hair had congealed darkly. There was a sticky patch just to one side of his head. Gingerly, Spencer tilted Dad’s head to one side, so that he’d be looking out the window, if his eyes were open.

  ‘Wish you could enjoy the view better, Dad,’ he murmured, as a balloon shape of blood floated towards him.

  Spencer panicked and snatched the fleece from Dad’s chest and dropped it onto the blood to soak it up. Then he got down as low as he could so that he could see whatever he needed to see.

  Carefully, he lifted Dad’s head up off the floor about a centimetre. It was actually quite heavy. Spencer felt his own pulse come to the top of his throat as he looked. A raw meaty gash yawned from the back of Dad’s head. Blood flooded into it as he watched. It was deep and messy.

  He rushed: pushed the arm of the fleece over it and slightly in, to block it up as best he could. Then Spencer rearranged the jacket around Dad’s neck
for comfort and lowered his head down onto it. He pulled his hands back quickly: he couldn’t wait to get away from it.

  The rain got steadily harder. Every few minutes Spencer looked over to Dad’s head, to see if there was any blood seeping out under the fleece. So far, so good. Spencer knew that he had to try to stop the bleeding.

  Through the window, Spencer stared at the thin long wing of the Drifter. It shone—far too white amid the dirty green scrub, and the grey rock that was scattered about like broken tiles wherever he looked.

  After he’d wiped the sticky blood from his fingers onto his cargo pants, Spencer looked around for something he could catch some of the rain in, in case it stopped—though that seemed very unlikely. There were no cups. Or bowls, or pans. This wasn’t meant to be a camping trip! He needed a plastic tarp or something. His eyes landed on the wet weather jacket he’d brought. That could work. He grabbed it up and twisted around in his spot to face the door. He spread the jacket out flat on the ground, bunching it up at the edges so the water wouldn’t flow away. A bowl, of sorts.

  He could have let himself be hypnotised by that rain, he could have just stared at it splashing and plipping and forget the stupid two-way and the mobile phone and bloody Dad lying there like a spaz.

  He turned back to the stuffy, broken interior of the Drifter. He checked again: no blood.

  Reg may have had their flight plan, but Spencer had been thinking about that: crashing into the side of Bluff Knoll wasn’t likely to be on Dad’s itinerary. So, apart from Reg thinking that they were running a bit late, he wasn’t exactly in the know, was he?

  He looked at his watch. It was 3.30.

  Spencer wasn’t sure how much longer Dad could handle being in and out of consciousness, or having a football for a knee joint. Or bleeding from the head.

  It wasn’t a decision; there was no choice. If no one had come for them by the morning, Spencer was going to have to go and get help himself.

  There was a road running across the bottom of the ranges, they’d seen it from the air. It was like the cut-mark of a carving knife, smooth and long. As the afternoon inched on, he thought it through: in the morning he’d find the highest spot he could, a place where he could see far around. He had no idea if they were near any trails, but if there happened to be one nearby it would make getting down a million times easier. If not, he already had his mantra: Do not freak out! It didn’t matter how he got down—he’d just walk in a straight line downhill. As long as he was going downwards, he was going in the right direction, he reckoned. Now, Spencer climbed up onto the slippery wet wing of the Drifter, and then onto her white belly. He stood tall, but couldn’t see much from there, especially not through the rain. Now he knew—really knew—what people meant when they talked about poor visibility. The scrub was thick and steady in every direction. There were no paths he could see from here and certainly no road—but he knew the road was there.

  The caravan park was along that road. People—in cars—used that road. It wasn’t rocket science. He needed to get down there.

  29

  Reg looked at his watch. It was 3.30, and still no sign of the Doc and his boy. His hands rested gently on the counter. He peered out the window at the now-dark cloudbank to the north. It just couldn’t be that they’d got into strife. It just couldn’t be. That boy was only, what? Twelve, thirteen?

  He snatched up the two-way. ‘Skippers Cove to Drifter. Come in, Drifter.’

  Nothing.

  He enunciated his words, spoke slightly louder, in case the line was poor. ‘This is Skippers Cove to Drifter. Drifter, do you read me?’

  Reg let out a hard breath of frustration. He had no other guys in the air, so couldn’t get anyone else to fill him in on the conditions up there. His take on the sky was simply that it didn’t look good.

  ‘Rory, this is Reg at Skippers. Do you read?’

  The empty buzz on the other end was so loud it seemed to fill the office.

  He looked out the window. The windsock swung about wildly. Filled then deflated. Filled hard.

  3.40pm. Reg shook his head. Nah, something wasn’t right. He reached over to the landline. In twenty-five years he’d only had to do this once before. He hoped this time they were more successful.

  The number was preset into the phone.

  ‘Southern Districts Police Station, this is Constable Fitch,’ said a young voice.

  ‘It’s Reg Calder, Duty Pilot at Skippers Cove airstrip. We’ve got a problem over here. I think we’re gunna need a ... a search-and-rescue.’

  It didn’t take long before the emergency plan was activated. The rescue chopper pilot was called in, and a hastily arranged search-and-rescue team, made up of local police and State Emergency Service volunteers. Reg was kept on communications detail, in case Rory or Spencer made contact. Reg also had to let Suzie know. He looked at his watch, which he’d taken off his wrist and laid out in front of him on the counter. It was now 4.37. The weather was making itself increasingly felt, and, with every passing minute of roaring silence on the two-way, Reg knew: something had definitely gone wrong up there.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Suzie?’ Reg asked, knowing full well it was her.

  ‘Yes, speaking!’

  ‘Ah, Suzie, it’s Reg here from the airstrip.’

  There was a long pause. ‘Oh, hi, Reg, is everything ... Oh_____’

  ‘They’re just a bit late coming in, Suzie.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Now, don’t get ahead of yourself, we’re just being extra cautious as there’s a bit of weather on the way.’

  Silence.

  ‘We’re sending up the chopper to make sure they’re okay.’

  ‘They—they should’ve been back with you about 2.30!’

  ‘2.30 or 3 is what Rory said to me as they left, yes.’

  ‘Have you ... used the two-way, or whatever it is?’

  Reg heard the little girl’s voice in the background.

  ‘It’s nothing, love,’ he heard Suzie say, the sound slightly muffled. ‘No, no, it’s okay. Off you go now. Put on a DVD if you want,’ she said. ‘Yes, love, Horton Hears a Who, that’s fine.’ There was a pause. ‘I’m back, Reg. Sorry about that.’ She sounded disorientated. ‘So ... have you been able to contact them?’

  ‘I’ve tried. I’ll keep trying. But they’re not ... answering at the moment. It could be nothin’ more than a bit of interference, but we’ve got things moving down here just in case.’

  ‘Oh, Reg,’ she whispered.

  ‘I know, Suzie. I know. Let’s just keep positive. You stay by the phone. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.’

  ‘Yes—you must. I’ll be here.’

  ‘I know. We’ll find them. I’ll call you soon.’

  30

  Once he’d made the decision to leave, Spencer just wanted to get going. But he knew he should bide his time till morning—‘They might come,’ he said out loud. They might be sitting in that rescue helicopter right now, you never know! They might have just finished checking it for readiness to fly; the pilot might be depressing the engine starter button now; maybe the engine is firing up right now. Right now. No, you have to sit tight for a bit, Spence. Besides, it’s too late to start the walk down now. You’re lost enough as it is, aren’t you?!! If the Drifter was a car by the side of the road, would you walk away from it? No way. That’s what they say: stay with the vehicle.

  Spencer knew that it got dark at about 6.30 at the moment, because that was when Star Wars: The Clone Wars was just finishing on TV each night, and he never missed an episode. Except for tonight, of course. There’d be no Clone Wars tonight.

  An hour or so passed. Spencer peered into the esky bag. The ham and cheese sandwiches were still in there. He opened the plastic box they were in and the smell of lunch box sandwiches filled the cabin. He gagged and dropped them back in.

  ‘Dad.’

  Silence. Spencer looked at his dad’s chest, noted the slow rise and fall of it.
/>   ‘That’s good, Dad, you rest up. Do you want some water?’ He tipped a little water onto his fingertips and moistened his lips again.

  Spencer sat up. He pushed his head out the door and looked around. In the distance he could hear something; a very different sound, mixed up with the rain. A very particular sound. The chopping sound of a propeller cutting through the air.

  Spencer jerked his head to the sky.

  A chopper! Reg? They were looking for them; they were here!

  Spencer’s knees nearly caved as he scrambled out of the Drifter. He scraped the skin off his back as he went through the doorway but it barely registered. He launched himself up onto the underbelly of the plane. He steadied himself, not wanting to look away from the sound. The wind gusted sharply and threatened to blow him right off and back into the bushes. He glimpsed something, quite far away, but it looked familiar, a bright flash of red; matching the red RESCUE he’d seen on the Bell chopper tail at Skippers airstrip. Was that really this morning? It seemed more like a week ago. So much had happened since he’d walked around on the tarmac, waiting for Dad and Reg to stop talking. He’d been so keen to get up in the air, to get that flight— this flight—happening.

  It had to be them. Spencer raised his arms and crossed them over and over and over above his head, but he knew there was no way anyone in the chopper could see him through the thick grey curtain of rain. They weren’t up high enough to see them. They’d have to change direction and altitude; the best chance he had of being found was if the chopper flew directly over the crash site. He imagined the scene the rescue people would glimpse from above: the sudden whiteness of the Drifter, the trail of flattened trees, the smear of destruction.

  Then, all of a sudden, as if it were sucked into a black hole, it was gone. The sound and the colour just disappeared. Spencer turned around, put his hands around his ears to maybe catch the vibration of the big rotor through the air—any noise from the helicopter at all—but there was nothing. Nothing but gutless punches from the wind. Spencer fell backwards off the Drifter, and lay there, on a medley of bushes, winded, shocked, wild with hope and fear.