Into the Abyss

by Carol Shaben

  As he trod the now well-worn path back to the fire, Erik could not decipher this deadly chain of events. Reaching the survivors he tottered unsteadily around the perimeter of the clearing, almost tripping over Scott’s snow-covered body. Even by the dim glow of the fire, Erik’s face looked white and drawn.

  “I’m going to pass out,” he said.

  Paul jumped from his seat and stepped quickly forward just as the pilot began to fall toward the fire. Catching Erik in his arms, he lowered him to the ground where he would remain for the rest of the night.

  With Erik’s collapse, the task of stoking the fire fell squarely on Paul’s shoulders. Over the past few hours he’d lost count of how many trips he’d made into the bush looking for wood. Each time he’d returned more exhausted and disheartened. Every fifteen minutes, the fire burned itself down to its embers and the men were forced to their feet once more.

  Never in his life had he felt less like moving. He pulled out Larry’s pack of cigarettes, slid it open, and looked inside. Only one cigarette remained. He glanced toward Larry. The older man stood lost in thought on the other side of the fire, his head slightly bowed, the dim glow burnishing his broad forehead. Larry’s eyes were closed and around them were dark bruises and cuts from where his glasses had smashed into his face.

  “I’m going for wood,” Paul said, starting down the path. As he moved away from the fire, Paul pulled the last cigarette from the package and lit it.

  “I’ll come,” Larry offered.

  Paul loped on ahead, but when he got to the fallen tree across the path he stopped. Larry would need help climbing over it. As he caught up, Paul pinched the butt of his cigarette between his lips and guided Larry over the tree.

  “I’m ready for one of those,” Larry said, smelling the smoke.

  There was a long pause before Paul answered, “We’re out.”

  Until that point, Larry had managed to maintain his equilibrium, but Paul’s confession upset him unreasonably. The little bugger’s a chain-smoker, he thought, kicking himself for entrusting his cigarettes to Paul.

  The men walked in stony silence, advancing down the path that snaked alongside the wreckage and then some five hundred feet beyond it into the crash impact zone. There, the plane had plowed a strip of forest and the going was easier, but where large broken branches had once littered the ground, now there were only twigs. Over the course of the night, the two men had developed a rhythm of sorts, Larry trudging behind Paul, his hand clutching the back of his jean jacket; Paul walking slowly ahead, making small talk by cracking jokes. Now they pushed deeper into the wilderness, stopping often but not speaking. Paul tried without success to unearth heavier limbs beneath the snow and hacked futilely at their branches with the pocketknife. The two men laboured silently for half an hour before Larry spoke.

  “Tell me about your family.”

  The question surprised Paul. It was not what he’d expected. But, reluctantly, he began to talk.

  Paul was the eldest of five kids, he told Larry—three brothers and a sister. His parents had divorced when he was ten. A few years later his mom had taken up with a man named Jean-Pierre, a Quebec policeman who was a mean-spirited and abusive drunk. Paul’s mom, Gayle, bore the brunt of that abuse. Paul came home one day to find his mother bruised, bloodied and lying unconscious under a chair. Jean-Pierre, pissed as usual, was cleaning his gun. Paul had flown at the man in a rage and severely beaten him. Then he’d moved out. He was fifteen years old.

  For a few years Paul bounced between Aylmer, Quebec, and Toronto, Ontario, where his dad lived. Though Paul didn’t admit it to Larry, he loved his booze and pot, and when intoxicated, had a habit of taking stuff that didn’t belong to him. By age seventeen, that “stuff” included cars. Paul had been staying with his dad in Toronto when one night, after partying into the wee hours of the morning, he had found himself way the hell and gone on the other side of the city. He decided to hotwire a car to drive himself home. The cops picked him up at his dad’s place a few days later and packed him off to jail.

  That was in 1976 and since then Paul had served four years in Ontario and British Columbia prisons for various break-and-enter and robbery offences. The last time he’d been released from jail, he’d returned home to Aylmer and landed a maintenance job at the Gatineau Golf Club. On September 12, 1983, while he was working there, a B and E occurred and $10,000 was stolen from the club. Paul, accused of the crime, fled west.

  He had plenty of stories he could have told Larry about his time behind bars, but he kept them to himself. If he’d wanted, he could have entertained the men around the fire all night, showing them how he ate in prison, hunched over his dinner plate, elbows outstretched like chicken wings, fork firmly clasped in a fist. Or regaled them with tales of how, when he’d worked as a prison mechanic, he’d turned down the idles on every cop car that came in for repair. If he’d felt like it, Paul could have shown off the eagle tattoo on his right bicep that he’d gotten during one stint in the slammer, or the swirling green serpent an inmate had inked onto his chest during another. But to Paul, the craziest story of them all was the one that had landed him in this fucking mess.

  In the early hours of Sunday, August 5, Paul had staggered out of the tavern in Grande Prairie’s Park Hotel. Though still summer, the warmth of the nights had begun to wane and the faint promise of autumn’s chill was in the air. He’d swayed unsteadily for a minute, then lurched across the wide sidewalk, stepped off the curb, and crossed the road.

  The tattered hems of his jeans scraped along the asphalt and a car zoomed by, honking. Loping into Germaine Park, a derelict city lot that was a local hangout for drunks and drug dealers, he’d moved into the shadows to take a piss. Then he’d meandered east along 100th Avenue, past the flashing red neon arrows of Al’s News, and the painted brick façade of the Imperial Garden Restaurant. He stopped to light a cigarette and watched as, across the street, Corona Pizza locked its doors for the night. He’d lost track of the hours that had passed since he’d finished his shift washing dishes at the popular local restaurant and lounge, and took off for a few beers with his buddy Blackie. Now that the bars had closed and the booze was gone, he knew it was time to head home.

  Paul shoved his hands deep into his jean pockets and his fingers closed around a set of keys. They belonged to a friend who’d offered his apartment while away working on the oil rigs, and though it was only temporary, Paul loved the feeling of having a secure roof over his head. The apartment was halfway down the next block, less than a minute’s walk—one of a half-dozen units tucked away on the second floor of a drab, flat-fronted commercial building in the city centre.

  He’d continued east until he arrived at the building, which housed Lee’s Sub Shop and Baldwin Pianos on the ground level, and a doctor’s office above. Paul stopped in front of a metal-framed glass door. Through the large single pane he could see a steep set of stairs rising up to the dimly lit landing that led to his friend’s place. Paul inserted the front door key into the lock and tried, without success, to turn it. He remembered the deadbolt was finicky and jiggled the key in the lock. No luck. He jerked the key roughly, yanking on the door’s broad metal handle. At the sound of approaching voices, he stopped and turned to look. A young man and woman swayed down the sidewalk from the direction of the bar. The man’s arm was stretched down the small of the woman’s back, his hand submerged beneath the fabric of her skin-tight jeans. She was laughing.

  Paul’s eyes lingered on the couple until they disappeared around the corner, then he turned back to the door and tried again. He rattled the key violently, then felt a flush of anger rise and kicked the door hard with the toe of his shoe. The glass shattered and shards of it flew toward him like translucent arrows before clattering onto the sidewalk. He staggered back and looked around, but there was no one in sight. He yanked the key from the lock, reached through the broken glass, and flipped the deadbolt. Inside, he climbed the steep carpeted staircase, steadying himself on its worn w
ooden banister. Reaching the landing, he lurched down the short hallway toward his buddy’s apartment door, unlocked it, and slipped inside. Without turning on the lights, Paul kicked off his running shoes and groped his way blindly toward the bedroom. Pitching across the threshold, his legs jammed into the bed and he sprawled onto it. He rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling. The bed seemed to pitch beneath him, and after what could have been minutes or hours, he closed his eyes. Somewhere in the distance a siren wailed. Paul wondered briefly if it was coming for him and tried to raise himself from the mattress. But now that he’d surrendered to the booze and his exhaustion, his limbs felt leaden and wouldn’t respond. I’ll be fine, he told himself. Then he was asleep.

  A few hours later, the cops were at his door. They escorted Paul out of the building where more cops were waiting. When Paul saw them, he flipped out, swinging his arms and trying to run. The cops pinned him to the ground, nearly choking him before hauling him into the station. Paul was locked up inside a windowless concrete room where he slept on the floor. When he awoke, he called out to the attendant.

  “What do you want?” the man said.

  “I need to get out of here so I can go to work.”

  Paul worked as a janitor at Corona Pizza and had a shift starting at noon. It was important to him that he get there on time. Theodore Bougiridis, the Greek who owned the restaurant, had taken a chance on him and Paul didn’t want to let him down. For some reason, Paul had been straight with Teddy right from the start, telling him about his criminal record. To Paul’s surprise, the old guy had offered him a job anyway. Since then, he’d treated Paul with nothing but respect.

  Paul couldn’t say the same for the prison attendant, who ignored his plea. Furious, he started pounding on the steel door.

  “You fucking assholes,” he yelled. “I’m a human being just like you.”

  Paul beat his fists against the door until the tiny hatch in its centre opened and the attendant’s face appeared.

  “I need you to be quiet,” he said.

  “I got to be at work.”

  The attendant regarded him dispassionately and then closed the hatch.

  “You want me to steal and rob for a living?” Paul screamed.

  “Seems you got no trouble breaking the law,” the attendant replied from behind the closed door.

  “Go fuck yourself!”

  Paul slammed his fist once more into the door. Fuming, he’d paced the room cursing and punching the door. Finally, at about 4:00 p.m., after signing a promise to appear in court later that month on a charge of public mischief, he was released. He’d been taken into custody without his shoes, so he raced back to his friend’s apartment to retrieve them and then ran to work. Starving, he’d grabbed something from the kitchen and asked the bartender to pour him a pint to calm his nerves. That’s when Teddy saw him.

  “You want to come here to drink, but you don’t come to work?” he said. “You’re fired.”

  His words were a devastating blow to Paul, who’d liked his job and been proud of the increasing trust Teddy had placed in him. Recently, his boss had let Paul make the night deposit. He loved the people he worked with and the way Teddy and his wife, Donna, treated them more like family than employees. On top of that, Paul had recently fallen for a waitress at the restaurant named Sue Wink.

  The next day Paul returned to the police station to provide a statement. He offered to pay for damages if the cops let him off, but by then they had a copy of his criminal record and asked him if he’d be able to help with some thefts that had occurred in recent months.

  “Sure,” Paul lied, “but I don’t know of anyone that’s into stolen goods. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

  He left the station wondering how the cops could be stupid enough to think he’d fink on another man. And though Grande Prairie had become the only home Paul had known in his time drifting around the country, he knew he had no choice but to hit the road once more.

  ICE

  From his icy bed, Scott Deschamps watched Erik collapse. Scott had worried about how long they could hang on and now knew with sinking certainty that time was running out. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed, but it seemed like a good time to resume. With the fire’s warmth fading, the feeling of vulnerability that had niggled at Scott all night blossomed to full-fledged fear. He looked at Erik lying on the ground and then in the direction of the wreckage where Paul and Larry had long ago faded into the darkness. He closed his eyes and tried to conjure some long-forgotten God.

  Please, he pleaded silently, we’re all going to die here if we don’t get some heat.

  Moments later, as he lay shivering violently, Scott became aware of a warm yellow glow behind his closed eyelids. He heard the crackle of burning wood and a blessed heat drifted toward him. When he opened his eyes he saw that the remnants of wood had burst into flame.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  To his relief, he also saw Paul and Larry approaching down the path. The feeling was short lived. Their hands were all but empty. The men tossed their meagre findings on the fire and pressed close to the flame, but the heat lasted only a few moments. When it died, it seemed to take the last of their resolve with it.

  Hypothermia was making its slow deadly advance on all of them, stealing their warmth by degrees. When it comes to hypothermia, degrees mark the difference between life and death. Once the body’s core temperature drops just two degrees below the normal of 37°C, problems begin. Coordination becomes difficult and one’s ability to function deteriorates. Everyone but Paul was shivering now, and while it would temporarily help keep them warm, it wouldn’t last. Without a fire, the men’s core temperatures would continue to fall, their speech would become slurred, and they would grow disorientated. Severe hypothermia would soon set in. Their bodies would experience a complete loss of reflexes followed by coma, ventricular fibrillation and eventually death.

  Scott knew what was happening to him. As a ski patroller, he’d studied hypothermia and now recognized its seductive pull; how it lulled its victims from pain and cold to the paradoxical sensation of warmth and comfort that preceded death. For hours he had fought back, willing himself to embrace his pain and the cold—feelings that told him he was alive.

  Now as he stared into the extinguished mound of blackened coals, his mind began to turn toward a terrible reality: he was not going to get out of here alive. Thoughts of his wife, Mary, his future, his dreams and ambitions raced swiftly past as if his life was in fast-forward. An image came to him of an old man sitting in a rocking chair on a wide, comfortable porch. He was speaking to a young boy about the things he had not done, the places he had never been, the lessons he had not learned, and the people he would never meet. He counselled the young man as a father would a son, urging him to grasp the opportunities that came his way.

  Scott wanted so much more for himself. He realized he wanted to live by the ocean instead of in an isolated northern community. For years he had dreamed of having his own sailboat and exploring the rugged, breathtaking west coast. He wanted to travel the world, to learn another language, to go to university, to run a marathon. Above all, he wanted to have full and loving relationships with his family and friends. Growing up as an only child with few close relatives, Scott realized he had never felt truly connected to anyone. His father, who’d died of emphysema when Scott was eleven, was rumoured to have left a wife and young daughter in Zimbabwe where he’d been stationed during the war. Scott had often wondered about this other family. He had longed to know the truth about it, just as he’d longed for a father’s guiding hand to steer him through the confusing years of adolescence and young adulthood. Scott’s mother, a working single parent, had had little time for establishing the kind of family life that Scott had longed for.

  He regretted upsetting Mary when she’d pushed him on the subject of children. With painful clarity, Scott realized that he did want to have a family of his own. Until that moment, he had di
smissed the idea of having kids as nothing more than an outdated biological urge. The thought that he would never be a father—never accomplish his dreams—brought a wave of devastating regret that washed over him, pulling him under, submerging him, until he finally accepted the inevitability of his own death.

  Defeated by cold, pain and sadness, he opened his eyes. Above him, fog crouched like a heavy beast on the treetops. And then, in the midst of it, there he was. Mere feet above where Scott lay, an old man appeared. He had long white hair and a beard. His hands, pale and creased, were folded in his lap and he wore a flowing white gown. The man’s face, though heavily lined, was devoid of sorrow or concern. As he stared at him, Scott was filled with profound peace and reassurance, the likes of which he had never experienced. Though not a religious man, Scott knew with utter certainty that he was looking into the face of an otherworldly presence: God, an angel or a benevolent spirit, take your pick. The old man did not speak, but his presence enraptured Scott. Through wide eyes he followed the graceful form as it hovered at the perimeter of the firepit. For the next twenty minutes, the old man kept vigil over the survivors, until, just as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone.