The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [60]
He could not help eyeing the low belly of the semi-seaplane and the accumulated runway glop. "Will this thing clear?"
"Just," Jake said as if were a sure thing. Coming around the nose of the plane, he lobbed a bundled flying suit, which Ben instinctively caught. "Ready to go for a ride?"
With Jake applying considerable body English to make up for two fewer engines and a couple of thousand fewer horsepower than he was used to, the Widgeon crawled into the air above Fairbanks. After the B-17, which was like traveling in a submarine in the air, to both men the floatplane felt like a flying raft, fickle every time it met a new air current. Slowly, slowly, it wafted over the tin rooftops of Fairbanks, its shadow lagging and shrinking behind it as if reluctant to leave the safety of the city limits. While Jake was busy coaxing the engines to smooth out, Ben peered out his side window at the glistening ice of the Tanana River and the curd of war materiel along its banks, instantly reaching for his pad. The supply dump, as it was aptly called, consisted of an infinite number of crates of aircraft parts, heaps of tires, long ranks of belly tanks, runway equipment of every sort; some of it tarped over and some of it not, the Lend-Lease mountains of supplies resembled an otherworldly tent encampment, strangely peopleless, strewn beside the frozen river for miles on end. Ben jotted as fast as his hand could go, adding the scene to others of untold weaponry stacked on Pacific atolls and Atlantic docks. He had read that the weight of impounded water in gigantic dams, Fort Peck and Dnieperstroi and their serpentine ilk, in theory added up to enough to affect the rotation of the earth. Looking down at the enormity of the random arsenal piled up on one Alaskan riverbank, it could be readily imagined that the depots of war were pooling into a mass force certain to make the world wobble on its axis.
"Pilot to copilot," Jake intoned from two feet away. "Say farewell to Fairbanks, it's all bush from here on."
Ben glanced up and out over a sunlit wilderness seemingly unmarred by anything but the frail cracklines of the cockpit window. Sky, land, perimeter of the earth, all seemed to enlarge as the plane throbbed out into the circle of blue morning. To his astonishment, winter gradually gave way as they headed southeastward toward Yukon Territory. Fairbanks was caught in some isobar that had slipped from the North Pole, but snow had only seeped into the highest elevations along the upper Tanana. The river threaded ahead of them, marked as far as the eye could see by the gold of birches captured in its valley.
Expansive as the outdoors around them, Jake grinned over at him. "Not bad, huh? Feel like Jack London yet?"
"Trapped this way in a tiny cabin with White Fang for days on end, yes, I do."
"My, you are cranky today. We'll purr into Northway in time for lunch, you'll see."
Time slowed, attuned to the stately beat of the engines. Half-hypnotized by the ceaseless tapestry of scenery, Ben sat back and let his mind drift. First of all to Cass, the situation with her always up in the air, an apt locution right then but one that made his lips draw tight. Off sideways to the piece he'd done on Dex, legerdemain he couldn't maintain forever for Tepee Weepy and was not at all sure he should. Back around to Jake, sitting here hoping to ride written words and padded