The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [66]
"That changes things. Raise Newbride, quick"—as Jake spoke, Ben already was on the radio chanting their position—"then grab the chutes. Toss me mine and the bivvie bag and you go first."
Having no choice, Ben clambered into jumping position, aware of the tail and other portions of the plane that he did not want hitting him when he went out the hatch. Jump plenty far out when you jump, at least I remember that from flight school. He gripped the rip-cord ring. Great gulps swept through him as he attempted to blot out Dex's experience of puking in mid-air. Clinging in the hatchway, he stared past the toes of his flight boots, trying to judge. The Widgeon was losing altitude like mad, he could see individual stumps and logs down there; wasn't the ground too close for jumping?
"Get out! Now!" Jake's bellow and the sickening shift of the plane as he abandoned the cockpit sent Ben out into the air.
Two opposed things happened almost simultaneously, the sensation of floating as the parachute opened and the uprush of a monstrously large downed evergreen directly beneath him, its root-ball splayed toward him like a natural mantrap. With everything he could muster, dangling and falling at the same time, he tugged at the parachute's lines in an effort to miss the log. At the very end of his mid-air dance of trying to twist aside, a limber root end raked up his body, swatting him under the side of the jaw and taking some face skin with it.
The next thing he knew he was on his side on the ground. The tree, as prone as he was, was close enough he could reach out and touch it. Still foolishly gripped tight in his hand was the rip-cord ring.
Raw-faced and wincing from the sideswipe by the tree root, he lay there testing himself for anything broken. Except for his breath, nothing seemed to be. He was gasping his way toward normal intake of air when he heard, somewhere off across the mess of downed trees, the nasty sound of a crash. Too big for Jake. Had to be the plane. That started his thought process whirring. Before he even was onto his feet he was calling at the top of his voice:
"Jake! Jake?"
It took several shouts, but then a voice not all that far away answered. "Tone it down, Ben. I don't want my ears hurting too."
"Where are you?"
"How the hell do I know? Over here."
Using the root-ball as a rough ladder, Ben managed to climb high enough to see across various logs to where a white drape of parachute indicated Jake's location.
"I'm on my way. Doctor yourself till I get there, can you?" The optimistically named bivouac bag, containing a medical kit and other emergency essentials, was with Jake.
"Who said I need doctoring?"
To Ben, that response did not sound particularly convincing. Wasting no time, he bundled up his own chute in his arms like dirty laundry and began picking his way through the maze of downed trees. Mostly the forest here had been tipped over by a big wind, roots and all, like a spill of wooden matches. A good many tree trunks, though, had been snapped off, leaving stray splintery snags tall as totem poles. Here and there stood survivor trees, incongruous loners with their kilts of evergreen branches above it all. The muskeg footing was laborious. Ben was sweating by the time he rounded the last big log and there was Jake, upright but wincing as he stood there flexing the ankle in his unlaced left boot.
"How bad?" Ben asked.
"I feel beat to hell, about like you look."
Another spasm chased across the big man's face as he put weight on that foot. "Think maybe it's a sprain, not a break. Not gonna take the boot off to find out, the way the damn thing is swelling."
Jake's eyes met Ben's. "Tell you what really hurts—I dropped the bivvie bag coming out of the plane. Piss-poor time to fumble. Sorry about that, Ben."
"Don't worry," Ben spoke it with effort. "We've still got our chute packs. Can you walk?"
Jake hobbled around to test that out. "More or less. We're not