The Adventures Of Indiana Jones (27 page)

They flew west.

Willie huddled in her damp, sequinned dress, looking for warmth while dozens of crated and nervous chickens kept attacking her. “Quit pecking at me, you dumb clucks, or you’re gonna be sitting on plates with mashed potatoes.” This was really too much.

The worst part was it brought her back to her beginnings—on a chicken farm in Missouri. Dirty, no-account, nowhere chickens.

Her mother used to tell her that was where she belonged, that no amount of dreaming, or aching to be somewhere else, was ever going to get her off the farm. It would take a miracle to do that, her mother told her, and there were no such things as miracles.

It was no miracle that Willie won the county beauty queen contest when she was eighteen, though: she was just simply the most beautiful girl in the county.

With her prize money she went to New York, to be an actress and a dancer. No miracles there, though; everyone in New York wanted that, it seemed. So Willie drifted west.

She fell in with bad company in Chicago, had to leave in sort of a hurry. Which got her off on the wrong foot in Hollywood—which is a bad foot to start off on if you’re a dancer.

So it was either back to Missouri or keep drifting west. And one thing Willie knew for certain was that of all the places in the world where miracles didn’t exist, they didn’t exist in Missouri.

She hitched a ride with a snazzy dresser who promised her the Orient was wide open. Well, that much was true, she’d found out: like a big hole.

She never saw a miracle in Shanghai, either, but things had finally begun working out. She’d developed a nice little local reputation; she had a following. She had a suitor or two. She had prospects.

But that was all ancient history. Now, instead of prospects, she had retrospects. Now she had chicken feathers in her mouth. And it tasted just like Missouri.

The door opened at the rear of the plane; out stepped Indiana Jones. He had changed.

Now he wore a beat-up leather jacket over a khaki shirt, work-pants and work-boots, a gray snap-brim hat, a leather bag across his shoulder, an old army holster at his waist. He walked forward carrying the rolled-up tuxedo in one hand, and a coiled bullwhip in the other.

He sat down between Willie and Shorty, dumping the formal wear on the floor, hanging the whip up on a coat peg.

“So, what’re you supposed to be, a lion tamer?” sneered Willie with some amusement. Men were such boys.

“Since I was nice enough to let you tag along, why don’t you give your mouth a rest. Okay, doll?” He patted her leg condescendingly. She was definitely starting to get on his nerves.

She removed his hand from her thigh. This guy obviously had only one thing on his mind—and this wasn’t the time, it wasn’t the place, it wasn’t the guy. She picked up his dinner jacket from the floor. “I’m freezing. What do you mean, tag along? From the minute you walked into the nightclub, you haven’t been able to keep your eyes off me.” She started toward the rear of the plane, wrapping the coat around her shoulders.

“Oh, yeah?” said Indy.

He smiled, lay back against a wall of chicken crates, tipped his hat down over his eyes, and went to sleep.

The cockpit door opened a crack. The copilot stared intently into the cargo hold.

He saw Willie sleeping on a pillow of sequins near the rear, curled up now in Indy’s dark formal pants, white dress shirt, and tuxedo jacket; Indy was asleep portside, his hat over his face, chicken feathers dotting his coat, and Shorty was sleeping peacefully beside him in sneakers, baseball cap, quilted pants, and a frayed, cotton coolie jacket, his head resting on Indy’s shoulder.

The copilot looked over at the pilot, who was receiving radio instructions from his employer. The pilot looked back at the copilot and nodded.

The copilot pickcd up a large wrench, hefting it as he scrutinized Jones. After a moment, his second thoughts got the better of him; he put down the wrench and drew a knife from his belt.

As the copilot started out the door, Indiana rolled over. The copilot pulled back.

The pilot swore in Chinese, handed his assistant a .45 automatic. The copilot studied the gun, asked if the woman and the kid had to go too. The pilot nodded. The copilot felt this would engender some bad karma, and said so. The pilot vehemently disagreed. They had words. References were made to each other’s ancestors.

Ultimately the pilot took his gun back, ordered the copilot to take over the controls, and went to do the job himself.

Indiana still slept soundly. As the pilot took a step toward him, an egg rolled out of a high overhead crate and fell—fell two inches to a wad of rag, then rolled end over end along an inclined plank, dropped to a finely balanced nest, teeter-tottered down to a narrow ledge, hovered an instant, and finally plunged. Without waking, without moving a muscle more than necessary, Indy held out his hand and caught the egg before it hit the ground.

Indiana Jones was not without flaw, but he had a sense for falling eggs.

It was a feat that stopped the pilot in his tracks. Amazed and afraid of this dangerous sorcerer, he backed up two steps, smiling sheepishly at the copilot. They discussed the matter calmly; they made suggestions. They had their orders. But they decided it was a matter best left to the gods.

The pilot pushed the lever on the instrument panel that emptied the fuel tanks. The copilot fitted them both up with parachutes. Then, quietly, they walked to the rear of the plane.

Willie awoke in time to blearily see the copilot enter the aft bay, closing the curtains behind him. She rolled over to go back to sleep, when she noticed the pilot emerge from the cockpit, walk back, and disappear through the same curtains.

It seemed rather odd to her. It wasn’t that big an airplane; she didn’t think any more crew could fit up there. Hmm. No more crew. “I wonder who’s flying the plane, then.”

She got up, walked forward, stuck her head inside the cockpit door. Nobody flying the plane.

She slammed the door shut with a yelp. “There’s nobody flying the plane!”

Short Round, ever vigilant, woke up as soon as she shouted. Indy, still groggy from the aftereffects of the poison, kept sleeping.

Willie rushed to the back of the plane. She parted the curtains. There stood the two and only crew on the brink of the open cargo door, parachutes strapped to their backs.

“Oh, my God! Don’t go! Help, Indiana! Wake up, the pilot’s bailing out!”

Shorty ran over to her. Wow! No joke! The pilot was abandoning ship.

Groggily, Indy opened his eyes. “We there already?”

In a flash Willie was shaking him, waking him, beseeching him. “Nobody driving . . . jumping . . . parachutes . . . Do something!” This cowboy had to be good for something; surely this was a flight jacket he was wearing. Surely he knew how to fly this old bus.

Indiana got up and ran back to the open curtains. Nobody there. Just two chutes billowing open in the clear sky beyond.

He ran up to the cockpit, Willie at his heels. In an instant he appraised the situation and slipped into the pilot’s seat, at the controls, with absolute confidence.

Willie was teary-eyed with gratitude. Laughing, nodding, seeing there was a reason, after all, for this dubious doctor to exist. With a sigh of relief to her own question, she asked: “You know how to fly?”

Indy surveyed the control panel, turned a couple of knobs, flipped a switch, took the wheel. “No.” Then, ingenuously: “Do you?”

Willie turned white; she felt her stomach rising.

Indy flashed a big had smile, though. “Just kidding, sweetheart. I got everything under control. Altimeter: check. Stabilizer: roger. Air speed: okay. Fuel—”

There was a long pause. Willie hadn’t exactly gotten over his little joke about not knowing how to fly yet, so she was in no mood for humor now. But then this silence on Indy’s part did not, in any case, sound like a humorous silence.

“Fuel?” said Willie. “Fuel? What about the fuel?”

Indiana stood up slowly. Willie followed his gaze out the window: the last engine sputtered to a stop. All the props were motionless. The plane began to nose downward.

“We’ve got a problem,” said Indiana.

He walked past Willie, into the hold. “Shorty!”

Short Round ran up breathless. “I already check, Indy. No more parachutes.” Maybe they could grow wings, like when the Monkey-God Wo-Mai gave wings to the silkworms so they could become moths, to escape their earthly prison.

Indy began to rummage through all the storage lockers.

In the cockpit, Willie was jerked rudely out of her catatonia by the almighty ludicrous vision of a snowy mountain looming immediately ahead of the windshield. “Indiana!” she bellowed, less as a call for help than as a last moment of human contact before annihilation.

The gods were generous, though. The plane barely missed the peak, knocking a noseful of snow from the highest pinnacle, clearing the crest by inches.

Willie’s heart nearly stopped. She ran from the cockpit, to see Indy pulling a huge wad of yellow canvas from one of the storage bins. Printed across its side were the words
EMERGENCY LIFE RAFT
. “Are you nuts?” she screamed at him in fury.

He ignored her. “Give me a hand, Shorty,” he told the boy.

The two of them dragged the folded canvas over to the open cargo door, as Willie kept shouting, “Are you crazy, a life raft! We’re not
sinking,
we’re crashing!”

“Get over here, damn it!” he ordered. “Short Round, come on, grab onto me tight.”

Short Round encircled Indy’s waist from behind. This crash would be better than anything in
Wings
, which Shorty had seen four times.

Willie hesitated a moment before deciding that no matter what else, she didn’t want to die alone.

“Wait for me!” the little girl in her called. She grabbed her gold dress—no point in not having something to wear, just in case—ran over and threw her arms around Indiana’s neck, so that she and Shorty were both hugging him from behind.

Indy clutched the bunched-up life raft in front of him as he perused the mountainside rushing close, now, beneath their sinking aircraft. Fifteen feet above the ground. Ten, and diving. Seven.

Indy jumped with all his strength, pulling the inflation cord.

Short Round closed his eyes, ready to fly.

T
HEY SPILLED
from the hatch. As the plane skimmed over the slopes out of control, the raft popped open into its full, bloated form, acting suddenly as a spoiler—a great bulbous kite, soaring against the rushing air, dangling these three terrified souls over eternity.

Short Round made a secret promise to Madame Wind, Feng-p’o, the Celestial Being responsible for keeping them aloft with her bags of swirling breezes.

A hundred yards away, the cargo plane kissed the earth, exploding into a tremendous conflagration of rock, steel, roast chicken. A moment later, the life raft skidded into a snowbank, bounced, flew, hit again, and took off at speed down the pristine slopes.

Indiana held on to the front while Willie and Shorty each had handfuls of ripcords. They rocketed down the mountainside like a bobsled for a few minutes, finally crossing the timberline. It was snowy forest, now. Willie looked up for less than a second before deciding she didn’t want to look again.

Shorty was scared and excited all at once. This was just like the foiled escape in
Ice Creatures From Venus.
But Indy would pull them through. Short Round didn’t have to look to know that. Indy was the ultimate clutch hitter—probably better, even, than Lou Gehrig.

They bounced over a snow-hidden log and took to the air again, directly toward a large tree. Indy tugged fiercely at the perimeter rope, rolled on his side, somehow managed to swerve the raft so it caromed off the snow-drifted edge of the tree. They slid straight down the next bank.

The downhill run continued. They slowed considerably, splashing through first a small stream, then some leafy ground cover. When they entered a clearing at half-speed, finally near the end of the ordeal, Indy chanced to smile at the others with relief.

“Indy, you the greatest,” admired Short Round. Better even than Robin Hood.

Indy beamed at Willie. “Sometimes I amaze even myself.”

“I’ll bet,” she replied weakly.

“Indy!” Short Round yelled.

Indy turned just as they crashed through a tangle of bushes, becoming airborne once again—over the edge of a sheer cliff. None of them looked down.

They dropped in a gentle parabolic curve for probably not as long as it felt, coming finally to rest, with a splash, on a wide bed of water. White water.

The raft plunged immediately into the raging torrent, battering rocks, spinning over roaring waves, twisting between narrow gaps of craggy stone. They held on tightly, choking and sputtering, as the rapids tore them down falls, into boulders, over thundering cascades.

Every ounce of energy was devoted to holding on. No thought to steering, to repositioning, to prayers or recriminations. Just keeping those fingers closed on those ropes.

And then there was one heart-stopping bounce—and the raft seemed to slow. It drifted out of the main stream, over toward a backwater, a sort of small bay on the river. The three bedraggled passengers lay totally still in the bottom of the raft.

Short Round, battered and exhausted, lifted his young head a few inches, to ascertain the safety of his charge. “Indy?”

Indiana coughed once. “Okay, Shorty. I’m okay.”

Willie moaned. She was drenched to the bone—they all were—her hair soaked and stringy, her clothes dripping. She felt like a total mess.

“You all right?” Indiana asked her.

“No,” she winced. “I’m not cut out for this kind of life.”
It was nice of you to ask, though
, she thought. “Where are we, anyway?”

The raft floated to a gentle stop at the shore—more precisely, at a pair of dark legs standing on the shoreline.

Indy squinted up into the sun to see who was attached to the legs. “India,” he whispered.

“Holy cow,” Willie exclaimed. “India? How do you know we’re in—” She rolled over to find herself staring up at the strange, withered face of an old, bony-thin man. She gasped.