Into the Abyss

by Carol Shaben

  Paul Archambault had been rolling his second cigarette, planning to stash a series of them on his body before he was again taken into custody, when the plane’s wing clipped the trees. The second he felt the violent shake of the plane, he dropped his pouch of tobacco and papers. Jesus Christ, he thought, I’m going to die.

  Paul had been in several serious accidents in his life and recognized the sensation of time slowing down. He wasn’t going to wait for death to grab hold of him. As the plane shuddered violently through the trees, he heard the sound of ripping metal all around him. He was jolted forward and an excruciating pain gripped his stomach. By the time the plane hit the ground, he was already fumbling for his seatbelt. Luggage and briefcases flew toward him through the cabin, and cargo and bodies tumbled crazily. Something hard smashed the side of his face. Clawing madly, he found the buckle release and pulled it. Paul sailed through the air as the plane flipped upside down. He circled his arms wildly, swimming above the onslaught of snow and debris like a skier caught in an avalanche. When everything stopped, Paul was lying on top of a jumble of luggage and broken wreckage. He was only still for a heartbeat. The smell of fuel overwhelmed him and he thought: This thing is going to explode!

  In his past dozen years of nomadic, on-the-edge existence, Paul had learned when it was time to get the hell out. He lurched blindly toward the cool air cascading from a broken window and quickly pulled himself through it and out into the frigid wilderness, immediately sinking up to his thighs in deep snow. The sickening stench of fuel filled his nostrils and he waded, as if through quicksand, away from the wreckage. Only then did he turn to look at the plane. Holy shit, he thought, as he stared at what was left. The plane was upside down and both of its wings had been ripped completely off. His next thought was disbelief, followed by anger. The pilot had crashed.

  “You dumb, fucking asshole!” His words rang into the night as he put distance between himself and the wreckage, his legs punching deep into the snowpack. “What the fuck were you doing, you stupid son of a bitch?”

  His fear sailed skyward with every word. Pain ripped through his stomach and he felt blood, warm and wet, flowing from a gash on his forehead as he stumbled through a void of darkness. Dense walls of gnarled, leafless trees pressed in from all sides, and above them was nothing but an oppressive cloak of weather. Paul turned his face to the sky and gulped the sharp night air. His heartbeat hammered in his ears as he began to search for a way forward.

  A single word pulsed through Paul’s frightened brain: escape. His immediate thought was to put distance between himself and the plane. It was bitingly cold, but he was oblivious. He’d slept on the street so often he was accustomed to the bitter chill of night. He had also spent his fair share of time in the bush, both during his training as a naval cadet when he was a teenager, and in his ten years kicking across the country. He scanned the dense brush that surrounded him for a clearing. The terrain was rugged, and the snow was shockingly deep. Still, he was a survivor. He thought briefly of his duffle bag somewhere in the wreckage. In it were his wallet, five changes of clothes and a few personal effects—his life’s possessions. He pushed the thought of losing them to the back of his mind. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d headed out with nothing but the clothes on his back. He also thought about the pouch of tobacco and the rolling papers he’d had on his lap; gone, too. Stopping in the thigh-deep snow, Paul shoved his hand into his jean jacket pocket and fished out the single cigarette he’d rolled before the plane had crashed. One end was wet, so he tore it off and, pulling out the lighter he’d stashed in the front pocket of his jeans, he lit the other end.

  Paul stood still for a moment, inhaling deeply. As smoke snaked into his lungs, he tried to settle his raw-edged nerves. He’d head in the direction the plane had been travelling. He reasoned that the town they were bound for couldn’t be that far away if they were coming in for a landing. Once there, he’d hit the road, hitchhiking, as he always did to put distance between himself and his troubles. If he left now, no one would miss him.

  PART II

  Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

  LEONARDO DA VINCI

  FLIGHT

  Erik Vogel came to his passion for flying honestly. Vogel means “bird” in German, and Erik grew up in the slipstream of flight. His father, William Vogel, was a senior pilot with Air Canada, Canada’s largest commercial airline. From an early age, Erik had watched his dad don a crisp white shirt, navy blazer and captain’s hat, shoulder his enormous leather flight bag, and head off for work. While most of his friends’ fathers were bound for nearby offices, stores or work sites, Erik’s dad was winging across the country or around the world.

  William Vogel, however, was more than a pilot—he was a prominent political figure. In 1973, when Erik was thirteen, his dad successfully ran for public office and became a civic counsellor in Surrey, a growing municipality forty minutes’ drive southeast of Vancouver. By the time Erik graduated from high school in 1978, his dad was mayor. Bill Vogel had a reputation for scheduling his flights around council meetings and the multi-tasking mayor’s expectation that his oldest son would make something of his life was high.

  Though Bill had urged his son to pursue flight training with the military as he had, Erik chose a different route. Two months after he graduated from high school, the eighteen-year-old began his pilot’s education at Trinity Western College, a nearby small Christian liberal arts school. Erik selected Trinity not because of any religious devotion, but because its two-year aviation program was considered more prestigious than many of the smaller private flying schools in the area. Largely owner-operated, most local flight schools provided little more than the requisite forty-five hours of instruction required to certify for a private pilot’s licence. Trinity, by contrast, offered a five-semester program from which graduates emerged with a commercial pilot’s licence. For Erik, this was to be his fast track to becoming a pilot for a major commercial airline.

  After a discouraging desk-bound semester studying avionics and the principles of flight, Erik was allowed to take to the sky. His training took place in a Cessna 150—a trim two-seater with dual controls. Unlike the jetliners his father flew, the cockpit of the Cessna was like a steamer trunk with windows. The top of the console was level with Erik’s eyes, making him feel like a small child who couldn’t quite see over the dashboard.

  Erik folded his lanky frame into the tight cockpit and stared nervously at the controls—an unsettling array of dials, levers, switches and knobs. Though he’d studied avionics on paper, the instruments crowded in front of him seemed like confusing clock faces in a surreal Dali painting. He was practically thigh to thigh with his instructor, a squat nugget of a man with a weathered face and thick meaty hands, which he jabbed toward the instruments, asking Erik to identify them in turn.

  Airspeed indicator. Artificial horizon. Altimeter. Turn and bank indicator. Heading indicator. Vertical speed indicator. Compass.

  Then Erik was nervously ticking his way down the pre-takeoff checklist and run-up procedures.

  Priming engine. Fuel mixture: full rich. Fuel selector: on. Carburetor heat: off. Throttle: one-quarter.

  His instructor, seemingly satisfied, hit the ignition switch and after a few creaky turns, the propeller blurred into motion. The heavy hum of the engine filled the cockpit while Erik sat stiffly, awkward and oversized in the small space. He felt compressed, surrounded by a flimsy bubble of metal and Plexiglas, and held the control yoke in a death grip.

  “Lightly on the controls,” the instructor counselled, inviting Erik to follow his movements. “Same with your feet. Lightly on the pedals.”

  The instructor punched a button on the NAV/COM panel and requested clearance. His communication with the control tower, clipped and precise, sounded like a rapid-fire exchange in a foreign language. As soon as the tower cleared them, the instructor
throttled forward and the plane began to taxi toward the runway. “Hardest thing to master, taxiing,” Erik remembers him saying.

  Beneath the soles of his running shoes Erik could feel the pedals gently moving, first one, then the other. The instructor deftly aligned the plane with the centre line of the runway awaiting final clearance. When he got it, he opened up the throttle in a smooth practiced movement. The engine roared and the plane accelerated down the runway. The control yoke eased back beneath Erik’s hands. Then, without effort or warning, the small craft was airborne. It climbed steadily, and as it rose, the buildings of the airport appeared below, grey and brick-like, and the sound of the engine seemed deafening despite Erik’s headset. The plane steadily gained altitude and in the co-pilot’s seat, Erik let the instructor’s movements at the controls radiate through his hands and feet. Exhilaration surged through him.

  “Great, isn’t it?” the instructor asked. “Think you can keep her level?”

  Erik’s hands tightened nervously on the controls, and then remembering, he eased his grip. He nodded. As the plane hummed toward the Pacific Ocean, Erik found himself grinning.

  He was flying.

  In the following weeks, his instructor taught him straight-and-level flight, climbs and descents, and turns and slips. Then Erik was on to bigger challenges: takeoffs and landings and recovery from stalls and spins. Each session was a revelation. From the second he climbed into the small cockpit, Erik was in another world, one of magic and possibility.

  His first solo flight came unexpectedly. It was the morning of a clear fall day and Erik had spent forty-five minutes flying circuits around the Langley airfield with his instructor in the right-hand seat. At the end of each circuit Erik would do a touch-and-go—landing the plane, then immediately taking off again while the plane’s wheels were still rolling.

  His instructor had been hard on him, putting him through the paces without giving him pause to think, only react. Finally, Erik landed the plane and brought it to a full stop. Instead of telling him to taxi to the terminal, his instructor opened the door and climbed out.

  “Don’t dive at the runway when you’re bringing her in,” he said, reaching back into the cockpit to re-clip his safety belt. “And if you’re in doubt about landing, just go around again.”

  The instructor leaned forward and adjusted the elevator-trim control to compensate for his missing weight. With a nod, he closed the cockpit door.

  Erik felt a momentary panic, his mind suddenly devoid of all he had learned. Then, with the ringing whap of the instructor’s palm against the thin metal fuselage, it came rushing back. Erik throttled forward, turned and taxied back to the end of the runway. He radioed for clearance and when he got it, released the brakes and opened up the throttle to full power. Without the weight of his instructor in the tandem seat, the plane surged forward as if it wanted to take flight.

  Erik’s hands were light on the controls, his pulse quickening as he picked up speed. He pulled gently back on the controls to raise the nose. He was in the air. As he climbed steadily skyward he felt his heart leap as if freed from his chest. The clean lines of the land grew fuzzy and the vibrations of the engine rang through his bones. To the north, the Coast Mountains rose with their craggy peaks, and westward he saw the blue-grey ocean, its surface frosted with tiny whitecaps.

  Erik felt a rush of pure elation. For the first time, he was absolutely certain that it was his destiny to fly.

  But destiny had a caveat. When Erik graduated from Trinity Western College, local flying jobs were non-existent. Though he had a commercial multi-engine pilot’s licence and 250 hours in the cockpit, he was still on the bottom rung of the ladder when it came to a professional flying career. To achieve his dream of becoming an airline jet pilot, Erik needed to build flying hours, and lots of them.

  In Canada, rookie pilots must log 1,500 hours before they can apply for an Airline Transport Pilot Licence. An ATPL allows pilots to captain large multi-crew airplanes the world over. The highest level of certification, it is also the minimum requirement for pilots hoping to land a coveted job with a major commercial airline.

  Determined to build the flight time he needed to make it to the majors, Erik headed north in search of work. With his parents’ help, he purchased a one-way ticket to Yellowknife, the gateway to one of the continent’s last true frontiers: the Canadian north. He was twenty years old.

  Winter still clung to the land when Erik arrived in early May 1980. From above, Yellowknife appeared like an ancient outpost of pale, low-slung buildings dwarfed by the massive expanse of Great Slave Lake and limitless treed and rocky plains. The land looked bruised, and long stretches of tarnished snow mottled the earth. Situated on the 62nd parallel, Yellowknife was the last major population centre before the end of the treeline and the beginning of the Barren Lands, a vast sub-Arctic prairie also known as the tundra. Though the city of 9,000 seemed small and desolate to Erik, it was home to almost one-tenth of the entire population of northern Canada—a vast and rugged landscape covering almost 4 million square kilometres. The North, as Canadians colloquially call it, comprises almost 40 percent of the country’s land area and stretches from the 60th parallel all the way to the North Pole. It is a land of harsh temperatures and hardy inhabitants, fewer than 3 per 100 square kilometres. Erik was excited to be among them, making his living as a pilot. He felt that his life was finally beginning.

  Erik had learned from a former college buddy that a small northern cargo carrier by the name of La Ronge Aviation was looking for co-pilots. Just come, his friend had urged. The day after his arrival, Erik paid a visit to the airline, confident that with his aviation college training and recently acquired IFR rating, he’d be a shoo-in for a job. To his disappointment, the owner informed him that the company wouldn’t be hiring until after Victoria Day, three weeks away. Erik must have looked stricken, as the man then suggested that he try The Range.

  “They looking for co-pilots?” Erik asked hopefully.

  “Nope,” he told Erik. “Waiters.”

  The tavern at The Gold Range Hotel was exactly the kind of drinking establishment you might expect to find in a northern mining town. It was dim and the stench of beer and cigarette smoke was steeped into its walls and threadbare carpet. A hefty bar ran its length and behind it were shelves stocked with an assortment of whiskey, rum and other spirits. The tabletops were worn smooth by the elbows and forearms of big-boned miners and oil patch workers who made The Range their second home, and the carpet was pocked black with cigarette burns.

  Erik had frequented the Scottsdale Pub back in his hometown of Surrey where many of the male waiters did double duty as bouncers. He assumed the same code applied in a tough northern mining town. He was wrong. In Yellowknife waiting tables was women’s work, but after a good word from the folks at La Ronge, Erik became the first male server ever hired at The Range.

  He took the ribbing that accompanied his new job in stride. The way he saw it, he had no choice but to stick it out until La Ronge was hiring again at the end of May. A few days into the job, Erik served a group of young men who rattled his resolve. They were clean-cut and self-assured, different from the regular crowd. One man, wearing a white shirt and sporting a close-cropped haircut, remarked on The Strange’s new waiter. He asked Erik his name and then took to derisively calling him Enrico for the night. Erik soon discovered that the men were pilots who had also come north to build flying time. Two more weeks as a barmaid suddenly seemed far too long.

  The next day, Erik dropped in on Ptarmigan Airways, one of the larger carriers providing scheduled passenger service out of Yellowknife.

  “Enrico,” a voice yelled as he entered the office. It was the pilot who’d ribbed Erik the night before. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for a flying job,” Erik said.

  The pilot looked sheepish and introduced himself as Duncan Bell. When Erik asked about a job with Ptarmigan, Bell shook his head. The airline had no jobs, he said, but
reassured him that La Ronge always needed co-pilots for their summer season.

  “Just don’t expect too much,” Bell had warned him.

  A few days into his new job, Erik understood what Bell had meant. Being hired at La Ronge as a “co-pilot” was little better than being a rampie—a heavy labourer who loaded, unloaded and fuelled planes. Erik began his shifts hauling drills, drill rods and other cargo bound for remote oil camps, as well as 450-pound fuel barrels to power the return flights. Then he’d climb aboard for the ride. Because there were no runways where the planes were bound, aircraft were equipped with oversized tires—called tundra tires—for landing on rough terrain or with floats to land on water. When the pilot reached his destination, the co-pilot would unload the cargo and manually refuel the aircraft using a hand pump—a tedious, arm-numbing task. It didn’t take Erik long to realize that he’d been hired more for his size than for his flying skills. Where the other new hires were referred to as grunts, Erik was called Supergrunt. All were licenced pilots looking to build flying time, but in contrast to the pilots at La Ronge, who earned $8,000 a month, co-pilots earned $1,000.

  Erik’s first flight took place on May 21 and lasted seven-and-a-half hours—a far cry from the one-hour training circuits of his college days. Vast distances separated the remote camps and Erik soon found himself at the controls across hundreds of kilometres of tundra. Summer days north of the 60th parallel—the “land of the midnight sun”—were almost endless. With the pilot and co-pilot taking turns at the helm, La Ronge’s planes could literally fly around the clock. Typically, the pilot handled takeoffs and landings, and flew until he was tired. Then he would clamber into the back of the plane to sleep and Erik would take over, waking the pilot when it was time to land. The problem was that Erik couldn’t claim any of his flying hours until La Ronge gave him a Pilot Proficiency Check or PPC—an evaluation by an approved check pilot certifying Erik as competent to fly a particular aircraft. Though Erik and the other co-pilots reminded their bosses about the required PPC, they didn’t do so vociferously. Young eager pilots willing to take their places were plentiful and flying time, even if not officially sanctioned, was better than no time at all. Still, without a PPC, Erik was little more than a phantom flyer, taking the controls during the deep crease of still-light night when the world slept, and sliding back into his rampie role when morning or civilization arrived.