The Dead Man's Wife

We were cruising at a low altitude over the lush green jungles of northern Guatemala. My headset was clamped tight but it didn’t block much of the engine noise. The Cessna U206’s 300 HP engine was always loud. Sweat dripped down the side of my face and inside the rubber ear-cups that fit tightly over my ears. It trickled into my ears and dripped off my chin. My shirt was soaked. The temperature at this altitude was about 90 and I looked forward to climbing up to where the air was much cooler. We were getting ready to cross the mountains that separated the hot, humid northern lowlands from the coastal high plains - and Guatemala City, our destination. 

My medevac patient was lying on a stretcher, placed directly on the floor of the plane behind me and to my right, taking up the spot where two seats would otherwise have been installed. An IV gently swayed, hanging from a hook above him. He was alive, but barely. I took a moment to pray for him, my custom, developed during hundreds of flights like this - I prayed for his comfort, peace and strength - for God’s mercy on his soul and that he would survive the climb over the mountains. 

The man’s wife, a plump, middle-aged, Mayan woman was in the seat directly behind me, sitting next to her husband. The clinic I had picked them up from couldn’t spare a nurse, as was frequently the case. Most of my flights were into tiny Mayan villages with dirt airstrips, where no doctor or nurse had ever ventured. Picking up this patient, at a real clinic, such as it was, ranked as uncommon for me. Usually I was taking patients to clinics like that. The man’s wife was a brave woman, she had to be. Mayans from the village are generally petrified of Guatemala City. The woman was on her way to an alien world where people spoke a language she barely understood with a husband that could not even open his eyes. Many Mayan women didn’t speak Spanish, or very little and most had no idea how to survive in a city like Guatemala. I could smell her - and him. I could smell everything. The man’s wife brought a woven Mayan bag that contained her belongings and a little food. She had put a thin Mayan pattern blanket over him. The smell reminded me of the women at home in our village. It reminded me of home! Ours was a small 3 room cabin near the center of the village of “Mayalan”. Many Mayan women would spend long hours on our porch talking with my wife, Jennifer (la gringa) who exemplified hospitality, was an angel on earth and was the darling of the village. 

Genna and Jennifer Get Gifts

Almost every day a woman would stop by with a gift of tortillas or pineapple or avocados. We always kept something on hand to give in return; candles, klim (powdered milk), coloring book pages for the kids - something. The women who visited almost all seemed to have the same familiar smell - not a bad smell, just familiar. 

A big drop of sweat dripped off my nose and fell on my green clipboard, soaking into a page and smearing the ink and the names of my passengers. Looking to my left, a few thousand feet below, I could see the Karst foot-hills that ran north south on the west side of Alta Verapaz, the district we were flying over. They were so green you could almost smell them - in fact, I think I could. The hot humid area conducted smells, somehow. Like dye in water. The smell of oil, fuel, hydraulic fluid mixed with the smell of, soiled clothes, sweat and, yes, a Mayan lady. 

Karst Hill Near Coban 

It wasn’t bad. Most Mayan village women had a particular smell, not a bad smell, just distinct, like wet wool and dirt. If they were carrying

babies on their back, then they also smelled of urine, but that was unavoidable since the babies didn’t wear diapers. They would just pull them out of their rebozo and hold them at arm’s length - and they would generally pee on command. Our son, who was born in that little Mayan village, grew up having the same smell. I always thought he just had the village dirt ground so far into him, it wouldn’t come out.

I added power and began to climb. The mountains rose over 8,000’ along our route and the climb would take some time. I kept the plane as low as I could for as long as possible, giving the patient more time on good thick, low-level oxygen. That wasn’t going to last as we had to climb to thin air now, and pretty fast. I flipped over my transparent clipboard and read the checklist items for the climb, touching each item as I read them: mixture, throttle, cowl flaps, oxygen. I wished I had some to give the man but I didn’t and the clinic didn’t. The smell of the rich mixture fuel burning at high-power hit my nose like the smell of chocolate chip cookies. Then the thought came to me, what about the fuel… I’m using a lot to climb. I glanced at the fuel gages and they “looked” ok but you can’t trust Cessna fuel gages farther than you can throw them. 

The thing about fuel is, without it, the engine quits. Of all the dynamic and fluid things that can go wrong with a flight, fuel is one that the pilot has almost complete control over. Even so, an astonishingly large number of aircraft run out of fuel and crash. When the clinic called me and asked if I would do this flight, I instinctively switched into what my wife calls “airplane mode”. I focus, to the point of emotional detachment, on the calculus of the flight and the risks that need to be considered. As soon as the doctor on the other end of the phone says, “can you pick him and his wife up here in Flores and take him to Guatemala City”, my mind begins to connect the dots. “him and his wife”, they say, equals 250 lbs, probably. “Here to Flores to Guatemala City”, That is 1 hour to Flores, about 1.5 to Guate then if the weather is bad over the mountains, another hour to get to my alternate (either home or back to Coban). 3 hours of fuel is at most 42 gallons. That is 252 lbs of fuel. Add the patient, his wife, me and some gear will be 672 lbs more-or-less. It’s 9:00 in the morning, by the time I get the plane ready (about 9:30) and make it to Flores at about 10:30 and wait for the ambulance and file a flight plan, I may not depart until 11:30. An hour and a half to get to Guatemala City and/or my alternate. The Cessna can hold 90 gallons but I never fly missions with that much on board. I usually keep enough for a trip to a village and then Guatemala City, so, 40 gallons. On my green, transparent clipboard I keep a yellow legal pad. There are many pages that have been filled-up and rolled over the back, the paper puckered from humidity and occasional light rain. The ink on some pages running and illegible. When I flip the clipboard over, I can read my checklist through the transparent green plastic. Both normal and “yellow-highlighted” emergency checklists. On the other side, a hand-written record of everything - including the amount of fuel that was on board before and after the flight. The names of the patients, phone numbers, take-off and landing locations - notes about rough village airstrips, names of village leaders and their numbers, everything. I flipped the clipboard over and read down to the last line where I had entered the fuel load before I even left Mayalan - it read 35 gallons. Then, added to the right in a scribble - then an ink blot where my sweat had fallen on the page and smeared the next few words… Did I add 10? Did I? The heat was getting to me and I had to concentrate. Now I remember, I did pull two 5 gallon jerry cans from the storage shed and emptied them into the plane. So, 35+10 = 45 (I wrote next to the ink blot). 

The smooth air and rumble of the engine started lulling me. I started daydreaming, thinking about the call that started this trip… 

The sun was rising over the horizon to the east bathing the village in a hot, steamy yellow blanket of warmth. We had just finished breakfast and I was playing with the kids on the porch. Our little home, situated about 8 miles south of Mexico in the very rural, northern Guatemalan lowlands of the Ixcan, the village of Mayalan.

As the sun crested the ridge, the warmth became really warm and then HOT. We rarely closed any windows or door. Having no windows or screens allowed what little breeze there was to move through the house. We went to sleep when it got dark and we woke up when the birds woke us up. We played on the porch until the sun cut over the tree-line, then we retreated into the house. The kids got home-schooled in a paradise and I did God’s work in a place that looked like paradise. 

The 3-room house was plush compared to most of our neighbors. Built from rough cut lumber and corrugated roofing, on posts about 16” above the ground. Plush, by our village’s standards. Nobody in Mayalan had running water, electricity, plumbing or screens - but our house had some special features. Being raised kept most snakes and other creatures out - mostly. The rain barrel, fashioned from a 50 gallon plastic drum, was once used to store hydrochloric acid (somewhere), then as a fuel drum in my bodega, before finally ending up in the back of our house as our rain barrel. It sat horizontally on a platform, raised to nearly the edge of the roof, where I had wired a galvanized gutter to the edge of the corrugated roofing. A large hole in the top allowed water to flow in, when it rained. A t-shirt stretched over the large hole served as a kind of filter, keeping most of the bugs and bird droppings out. On the bottom of the drum, I fastened a garden hose, which ran to our front porch and to a slab along side the house. On the slab, I fashioned a kind of screen with tarps and a wooden frame in which we could shower. Another hose ran to the front porch railing where I had fabricated a simple plastic basin with a drain. That water was used mostly to wash dishes. Even that rudimentary setup attracted interested observers from all over the village. They would stop by to visit and just to look at the arrangement - nobody had anything like it. It was truly high technology for that village.

The cell phone on the kitchen table, near the HF radio, started buzzing. I stepped away from playing with the kids and answered the phone. The call came from the clinic in Flores, up near Tikal in the Petén region. I had done a few flights for them and they actually were interested in paying for part of the cost of the fuel for some medevac flights (though I never did get more than about $50). The doctor I talked to said they had a patient that was critically ill and they could not help him, but, thought that there might be a chance if I could get him to Guatemala City, where there was a hospital. 

I didn’t like doing these kinds of flights because it frequently meant that the clinic knew the patient was going to die, and they were either trying to get them away or perhaps really held out hope. I was never sure about that. Transporting a patient by air, especially over the mountains, was very hard on the patient. Oxygen levels drop off pretty quickly and my little oxygen cylinder (when it was full) didn’t deliver it very well and I think the low pressure at altitude did more damage than the thin air. Sometimes patients would die as we made our way over the passes of the Sierra de Chamá, then Las Minas mountains. Farther west it was the higher ranges of Cuchumatanes. Either way, 8,000 or 12,000’ was a common altitude requirement, depending on the clouds and weather over the ranges. 

I prepared the Cessna U206 for a long flight, an hour to get to Flores then 1.5 from there to Guatemala City and another 1.5 in case I had to turn around over the mountains and retreat if weather turned bad. At 15 gallon/hour, that was 60 gallons. I carried 4 Gerry Cans (5 gallons each) to augment the 40 gallons I routinely kept in the plane. Climbing on the wing I poured the fuel through a filter funnel to remove any debris or water that might have accumulated in the plastic jugs. After a thorough pre-flight check, I taxied the lumbering 206 down to the end of the 1300’ grass airstrip, spun it around and got ready for departure. Being empty, this was a simple take-off, but, I always used good short-field technique. I added full power with brakes, released the brakes and pushed heavily on the right rudder, preventing what otherwise would be a rapid departure off the left side of the airstrip. After building up adequate speed, I added 20 degrees of flaps, pulled back on the elevator in order to get off the ground - but just barely. Once off the ground, the elevator would be pushed forward to force the aircraft to fly only feet above the grass, in “ground effect”. Pushing forward, I held the nose down, forcefully, as the aircraft scoots along 2-3 feet above the grass. This was the only good way to depart a short strip in this type of aircraft - accelerating in ground effect until the best rate of climb speed is attained. Only then could I release the downward pressure on the yoke and allow the plane to climb - and climb it will - and it had better - because at the end of the airstrip were tall trees. To clear those trees we need real climb performance that you could only get at “V-X”, or “Best Angle of Climb Speed”. Clearing the trees, I peeled off to the west and followed the Mexican border all the way to the Peten Region, then northwest to Flores. 

Flores had its own control tower and a paved runway. It got a lot of commercial traffic there, but this day there wasn’t anything going on. I contacted the tower about 20 miles south of the airport and let them know I was landing for a quick turn-around as I expected the ambulance to meet me at the terminal building. Usually the guards would let the Ambulance in through the gate to the ramp area, where I would be waiting. As I rolled up to the ramp, I was a bit surprised to see the ambulance was actually already waiting for me. The doctor accompanied them to the airport and spent a few minutes talking to the patient’s wife, a chubby middle-aged Mayan woman, wearing a traditional Huipil (sounds like weepeel). She had a stoic look about her, like most Mayan women (for good reason) and the female doctor, who appeared to be Guatemalan (of Spanish extraction, not Mayan), walked up to me and thanked me sincerely for doing the flight. She said he was very weak and they just didn’t have the ability to treat the man. He was lying on the stretcher in the back of the truck, obviously near death and just skin and bones. His mouth hung open and the IV in his arm didn’t seem to even be dripping as far as I could tell. He was an older man, perhaps 50, but with the indigenous Mayans, a 35 year old farmer might appear 50. He was covered with scabs and sores from head to toe. His hairless head was covered as well and his eye-lids too. He looked really, really bad. 

I began our climb, preparing to cross the mountains along our path to Guatemala City. I prayed that God would ease his pain and give him peace. A few moments later, the man on the stretcher stopped suffering. His wife, who was sitting directly behind me (and next to the stretcher) tapped me on the shoulder. I looked back to see that he did indeed stop suffering. The stillness of a dead man is striking. I turned my head more to face her. “Lo siento”, I said. “Tan triste”. I turned back to face the mountains that were growing in my windscreen - flying along for a few moments, collecting my thoughts and considering our options. 

After a short time I turned around and looked at her, shouting above the engine noise: “Now you no want go to Guatemala City - right?” She shook her head no. Knowing she was from the general area we were flying over, I shouted to her “where do you want me to take you? Playa Grande? Cantabal?” I pointed back to the west, not really thinking that she had no idea where I was pointing to. She nodded. I shouted “We can land in Playa Grande. Do you have family near there?” She nodded again and tears began to run down her cheeks. I stopped my climb and turned the aircraft around, heading to the northwest where lay the dirt airstrip at the abandoned military base of Playa Grande. I followed the River Chixoy to the familiar bend in the river, flew low to the ground over the airstrip to look for wires, drums, cows, horses or soldiers. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, I climbed, turned around and landed on the long, straight, flat, dirt airstrip of Playa Grande. Being over 3,000’ long, I had to taxi down to the end, where I turned the plane around to face back into the other direction. I stopped the engine, got out and opened the cargo doors. The man was dead. No doubt about that. The woman reached over to hold the back of the co-pilot seat and deftly stepped over the body. I helped her down through the cargo doors, and she stood there for a minute, looking at her husband. I reached into the back of the plane and extracted her bag and handed it to her. I pulled the thin Mayan blanket over the man’s face and cradled him in my arms like a little kid. He didn’t weigh much more than a small child. We walked together towards a thatched benab that stood next to the edge of the airstrip. 

As we got close, soldiers seemed to come from nowhere and met me at the thatched frame, and asked me in Spanish, who I was, what I was doing and why I had a dead man in my arms. 

The two soldiers, standing a few feet away, looked at me, looked at the man’s wife and asked in Spanish: “where did he die?” I replied in my village Spanish, “in the plane”. Which was a mistake. I began to explain “We were on our way to Guatemala City from the clinic in Flores”. The soldier on the right said, “we need to call the coroner to certify his death. You, (he pointed his gun at me) “will have to wait here.” I knew that there was no coroner within probably 100 miles. Perhaps some obscure officiator in a nearby town, who would probably never answer a call and, if he did, would take days to arrive. I set the dead man down on a table that was under the benab, looked at the woman and expressed my sincere sympathies. She began to cry and held out her arms in my direction. I held her hands for a few seconds and bowed my head and thanked God for the mercy He shows everyone, eventually. 

I had absolutely no intention of being a guest of the military base in Playa Grande. I had to think of something fast or things would start to get out of my control. In my left pocket, I had a text pager - a device that had saved many lives by virtue of its utility in this environment. I slipped my left hand into my pocket, hidden from view of the soldiers, and found the middle button - which, when pressed, caused the pager to emit a shockingly loud and frantic kind of beep-warble-beep that

could have been mistaken for a phaser on overload. The soldiers’ eyes widened and the woman stepped back. I pulled the pager from my pocket, held it close to my face, squinting as if reading some small LCD text in the bright sunlight. “There is an emergency, I need to make another medical emergency flight!” I exclaimed. The soldiers’ jaws dropped as I turned around and walked, double-time, back to the plane, nearly 50 feet away. 

As I walked, my heart pounding, I listened for the command I expected: “Stop! Alto!” and something like “we will shoot you”. Rehearsing in my head how I would raise my hands and turn around. But I just kept walking. They never said anything, at least not that I could hear. As I reached the plane, I jumped in, started it up and immediately added power, rolled down the dusty dirt airstrip and leapt off the ground, without the benefit of my normal checklist discipline. A wave of relief swept over me. I was heading home! The 100’ tall trees on either side of the airstrip descended below me and revealed the expanse of dark green jungle beyond. I climbed and turned west towards Mayalan, home. 

I think about the man’s wife frequently. We didn’t have much of a relationship, but, she touched me in some way. Many people have died on that plane on their way to what might have been a medical miracle - in Guatemala City or Coban or Huehue. I don’t remember all of them but I do remember her. I don’t know why.