The Land God Gave to Cain (14 page)

We had come to the airstrip and he turned in through the wire and pulled up at the despatch office. “All the more reason why I should get you out of here to-night.” He flung open the door. “You leave to-night and she'll know there was nothing to it. Okay?” He sat there, looking at me, waiting for me to say something. “Well, it doesn't much matter whether you agree with me or not. You're taking this plane out of here to-night and that's the end of it. And don't try anything clever,” he added menacingly. “If I find you still here to-night when I get back from town, Goddammit, I'll half-kill you. And don't think I don't mean it. I do.” He got out then and went into the despatch office.

The sky was a darkening splurge of colour, lurid red down by the horizon, but fading to purple as night spread across it from the east. An old Dakota stood in black silhouette, a fork lift trundling supplies out to it and a little knot of men standing waiting. They were all types, men waiting to be flown up the line. I wished I were going with them. I was feeling the need for action. But maybe I could do something down at Montreal, see the authorities, something.

The door beside me was jerked open. “Okay,” Lands said. “It's all fixed. That's your plane over there.” He nodded towards a small, twin-engined aircraft parked behind us. “Take-off is at twenty-thirty hours. If you'll come into the office now, I'll hand you over to the despatcher.”

I got out, feeling suddenly tired—glad to be going, to be getting out of Seven Islands.

“Can you lend me some money?” I asked as he handed me my suitcase.

“Sure. How much do you want?”

“Just enough to see me through till midday to-morrow,” I said. “That's when my plane leaves Montreal.”

He nodded. “Twenty bucks do you?” He pulled his wallet out of his hip pocket and handed me four fives.

“I'll send you the sterling equivalent as soon as I get home,” I said.

“Forget it.” He patted my arm. “To be honest, I'd have paid that and more to get you out of here. I guess I'm a sentimental sort of guy. I just don't like to see two people's lives busted up for the sake of something that nobody can do anything about.” He took my suitcase and led me across to the despatch office. The despatcher was the same man who had been on duty when I arrived. “Ed, this is Mr. Ferguson. Comes from England. Look after him for me, will you? And see he doesn't miss his flight.”

“Sure. I'll look after him, Mr. Lands.”

“Here's his flight pass.” Lands handed over a slip of paper. And then he turned to me. “I've got to go now. Ed will see you on to your plane.” He held out his hand. “Glad you saw it my way in the end.” He hesitated as though he wasn't sure whether he ought to leave me there on my own. But then he said, “Well, s'long. Have a good flight.” And he went out and climbed into his station wagon and drove out through the wire.

“You've got about an hour to wait,” the despatcher said, writing my name on a despatch sheet. Then he slapped my pass on to a spike with a lot of other papers. “Flight leaves twenty-thirty hours. I'll call when they're ready for you.”

“Thanks,” I said, and walked out into the hangar that adjoined the office. It was full of stores, and outside it was dark. The last patch of red had gone from the sky and the arc lights had been switched on, flooding the apron, and the Dakota was still there, waiting. The last of the freight was being loaded into it by hand, the fork lift standing idle beside the hangar door. A starter motor was wheeled into position under the port engine and there was a sudden surge amongst the waiting men as they crowded close around the open door of the fuselage.

Maybe the idea had been at the back of my mind all the time. At any rate, I found myself walking out across the apron to mingle with the construction men who were waiting to board the plane. I hadn't thought it out at all. It was just that this plane was going up the line and I was drawn to it by a sort of fascination. “Gonna be cold in that rig, ain't yer?” said the man next to me. He had a dark, wizened face half-hidden by a large fur cap with ear flaps. “First time you bin up the line?”

I nodded.

“Thought so.” And he spat a stream of tobacco juice out on to the ground. “Where you bound for?”

I hesitated, but he was looking at me, expecting an answer. “Two-two-four,” I said, remembering that a replacement engineer was being sent up there.

The little man nodded. “Be snowing up there I wouldn't wonder.” He said it with a grin, as though he relished the thought that I should be cold.

I moved away from him, edging my way in amongst the rest of the men. “You on this flight?” A man in a long-visored cap standing in the door of the fuselage was staring down at me.

“Yes,” I said, and it was only after I'd said it that I realised I'd committed myself to something I was by no means certain I could see through.

“Well, just wait till I call your name.” He turned to the others. “Okay, boys. Let's get started.” And he began to call their names one by one and tick them off on the list in his hand as they climbed aboard.

I hadn't reckoned on them having a passenger list just like an ordinary airline. The crowd was dwindling fast, and I wondered how I was going to explain that I'd tried to board a plane going up the line when I was booked out on a flight to Montreal? Unless I could bluff my way on to it! I was thinking of Staffen and his need of engineers.

“What's your name?” The last man had climbed up into the plane and the man with the list was staring down at me.

“Ferguson,” I said, and I could hear the tremor in my voice.

He ran his finger down the list. “Your name's not here. What's your job?”

“Engineer.”

“This plane's going to One-three-four.” He jumped to the ground beside me. “You work there?”

“No,” I said. “I'm going on up to Two-two-four.” And I added quickly, “The engineer there had an accident and I'm replacing him.”

“Yeah, that's right.” He nodded. “West. They flew him down this evening.” He was looking at me and I could see him trying to make up his mind. “Did you have a flight pass?”

“Yes,” I said. “The despatcher has it. Mr. Lands drove me down and asked him to be sure I didn't miss this plane.”

“Ed didn't say anything to me about it.” He hesitated, glancing down at the list again. “Okay, let's go over to the office and sort it out. Hold it!” he shouted to the man with the starter motor.

“What's the trouble, Mike?” asked the pilot, who was now standing in the entrance to the fuselage.

“Won't be a minute. Leave your bag here,” he said to me. “We got to hurry.”

We ran all the way to the despatch office. There was no turning back now. I'd just got to make the despatcher believe me. I remember a car drove up just as we reached the office, but I had other things to worry about, and in the office I stood silent whilst my companion explained the situation to the despatcher.

“You're booked out on the Beechcraft,” he told me. “Twenty-thirty hours for Montreal.”

“There must be some mistake,” I said.

“No mistake, mister.” He had got hold of my flight pass now. “There you are. See for yourself. Montreal. That's what it says.”

I repeated what I'd said before, that I was bound for Two-two-four, and I added, “You were here when I arrived this afternoon. I came to get a job, and I got it.”

He nodded. “That's right. I remember. Came in on that freighter and didn't know who you wanted to see.” He scratched his head.

“Maybe I got the wrong pass or it was made out incorrectly,” I suggested. “Mr. Lands was asked to drive me down specially so that I wouldn't miss this plane.” I pulled my passport out of my pocket. “Look, if you don't believe I'm an engineer …” I opened it and pointed to where it gave Occupation.

He stared at the word Engineer. “Well, I don't know,” he said. “On whose instructions was the pass made out?”

“Mr. Staffen's.”

“Well, I won't be able to get Mr. Staffen at this time of night. They pack up at six.”

“Is there room for me on this flight up to One-three-four?”

“Yeah, there's room all right.”

“Then can't you just alter the flight pass? Look!” I said. “I'm not taking a plane down to Montreal. That's certain. Why would I want to leave when I've only just arrived?”

He laughed. “You got something there.”

“And just when I've got the job I came to get. Besides, Mr. Staffen said I was to get up there right away. He's short of engineers.”

“Sure. They're having to move them about all the time.” He looked at me and I saw he was making up his mind and said nothing more. “Okay,” he said. “I reckon it's a mistake, like you said. After all, I guess you're old enough to know where you're supposed to be going.” And he chuckled to himself as he put a line through Montreal on the pass, wrote in One-three-four and altered the despatch sheet. “Okay,” he said. “You're on the list now. Lucky you found out in time or you'd have been back in the Old Country before you knew where you were.” And he laughed again, good-humouredly, so that I hoped he wouldn't get into too much trouble for altering the pass.

But I didn't have time to think about that, for I was hustled back to the plane. The port motor started up as we ran across the apron and I was hauled aboard through the cold backwash of air from the turning propeller. My suitcase was tossed up to me and, as I grabbed it, I saw a man come out of the despatch office and stand there, hesitating, staring at the plane. The headlights of a truck swinging in at the gates caught him in their blaze and I recognised Laroche. The starboard motor came to life with a roar and at the sound of it he began to run out on to the tarmac. “Mind yourself!” A hand pushed me back and the door was swung to with a crash, and after that I could see nothing but the dim-lit interior of the fuselage with the freight heaped down the centre and the construction men seated in two lines on either side of it.

There was still time for the plane to be stopped. If Laroche had checked with the despatcher and told him I was really bound for Montreal.… The engines suddenly roared in unison and the plane began to move, swinging in a wide turn towards the runway-end. And then we were moving faster, the fuselage bumping and shaking as the wheels trundled over the rough ground.

I squeezed myself in between two men on the seat-line opposite the door and sat with my hands gripped round my knees, waiting. Nobody was talking. The noise of the engines made it impossible and there was that sense of strain that always seems to precede take-off.

The plane turned at the runway-end. Only a few seconds now. I held my knees tight as first one engine and then the other was run up; and then suddenly both engines were roaring and the fuselage shuddered and rattled. The brakes were released. The plane began to move. And in a moment we were airborne and the nerves and muscles of my body slowly relaxed.

It was only then that I had time to realise what I'd done. I was on my way into Labrador.

II

We climbed for what seemed a long time and it grew steadily colder. I put my coat on, but it hardly made any difference. The plane was a relic of the war, the parachute jumping wire still stretched down the centre of the fuselage, and a bitter draught of air blew in through the battered edges of the badly-fitting door. The dim lighting gave to the faces of the men flanked along the fuselage a ghostly, disembodied look. They were types of faces that I'd never seen before, faces that seemed symbolic of the world into which I was flying—old and weather-beaten, and some that were young and dissolute, a mixture of racial characteristics that included Chinese and African.

The battering of the engine noise dropped to a steady roar as the plane flattened out. The cold was intense. “We'll be going up the Moisie River now,” the man next to me said. He was a small squat man with the broad, flat features of an Indian. “Been up here before?” I shook my head. “I work on the line two winters now—all through the Moisie Gorge and up to the height of land.” There was pride in the way he said it.

“How long before we get to One-three-four?” I asked him.

“One hour, I think.” And he added, “Once I do it by canoe, all up the Moisie and across to the Ashuanipi. Six weeks. Now, one hour.” He nodded and relapsed into silence, and I sat there, feeling a little scared as we roared on through the night into Labrador.

I had some idea of the country. I'd read about it in my father's books. I knew it was virtually unexplored, a blank on the map which only four thousand years ago had been covered by the glaciers of the last Ice Age. And I got no comfort from the men around me. They were all a part of an organisation that I was outside. And their hard-bitten, dim-lit features, their clothes, everything about them, only served to emphasise the grimness of the country into which I was being flown.

I was unprepared, inexperienced, and yet I think the thing that worried me most was that Laroche would have radioed ahead and that I should be stopped at One-three-four and sent down by the next plane.

But gradually the intense cold numbed all thought, and when the chill ache of my body had so deadened my mind that I didn't care any longer, the sound of the engines died away, and a moment later we touched down.

We scrambled out into another world—a world where the ground was hard with frost and a few shacks stood against a starlit background of jackpines. Away to the left a solitary huddle of lights illuminated a line of heavy wagons. There was the sound of machinery, too. But the sound seemed small and insubstantial against the overwhelming solitude, and overhead the northern lights draped a weird and ghostly curtain across the sky, a curtain that wavered and constantly changed its shape with a fascination that was beyond the reach of explanation.