Melt (22 page)

Both Chuck and Kelly looked down with their mouths open, stunned into silence. Jordan caught Malik’s eye and the two of them smiled knowingly at one another. It was a magnificent sight to behold the first time. And the second and third and fourth.

“It’s a waterfall!” Chuck finally said.

“In a glacier,” Kelly added.

“How far does it go?” asked Chuck, turning to Jordan excitedly.

“To the bottom,” Jordan answered. “Right here, the ice is three hundred feet thick. We put a line down and that’s what we concluded, that this waterfall has carved a hole all the way through the ice to the bedrock.”

Chuck turned his gaze back to the waterfall and whistled appreciatively. “Where does it go after it gets to the bottom?”

“We think it turns into a stream down there just like any waterfall anywhere. So it flows under the ice to the sea, through natural contours at the base of this canyon. It forms a kind of slip-and-slide for the ice above. And that’s what I believe is the reason for the rapid movement of this glacier, all that liquid water carrying it along.”

“This is mind-blowing!” Chuck remarked. Obviously, even with all his experience, he had never seen a sinkhole quite like this before. “Sheffield, you wanna…” He turned to locate her. She was at the edge of the ice, camera clicking. “Ah. She’s got it.”

“This feature hasn’t been here very long,” Jordan said. “It probably won’t hang around much longer with the movement of the ice. Your timing was lucky.”

“It’s incredible!” breathed Kelly, pausing in her picture taking to simply stare. Then she turned to them, energized, and said, “I have to go down there!” Her face blazed with excitement.

“It isn’t safe,” Jordan informed her. “You can walk out on the glacier and get some different angles, but you’ll want to stay well clear of the edge.”

“No,” Kelly contradicted decisively. “I have to go down. I need to get below the top of the waterfall so I can shoot it looking up. You’ve got equipment, right? Ropes, rappelling gear? I’ve done it before, in caves.”

“Caves are a lot more stable than ice,” Jordan stated.

“Sorry, but this isn’t something I can pass up.” She strode to the ATV, motioning for Malik to accompany her. “Where’s the gear?”

“Chuck,” Jordan implored, “aren’t you going to stop her?”

He shook his head. “Nope. That’s her job and that’s why I brought her along. Shit, this girl’s got the goods.” He winked at Jordan. “Besides, she’s not going to listen to me.”

They watched as Malik helped Kelly suit up.

“She’s a good photographer, then?” Jordan asked.

“Hell, yeah! She’s still young. She’ll get better. I don’t think she knows what direction to go yet, how to specialize. She’s really great at seeing something profound in ordinary objects and teasing a surprise out of it. She’s going to be an artist, a real artist someday. But personally, I wouldn’t mind if she catches the itch to do this kind of thing permanently. I could use a regular photographer to go down in sinkholes and shit like that.”

Wearing a harness, fingerless gloves, helmet and crampons, Kelly traipsed over and handed her camcorder to Chuck. “You shoot me while I’m shooting this,” she instructed. “Film the whole thing and don’t forget to zoom in a few times. Oh, man, this is going to be awesome!” She walked to the edge of the pit, seeming not the least bit frightened.

“Chuck,” Jordan began, speaking quietly, “did she know ahead of time I’d be here?”

He nodded. “I gave her a list of our contacts.”

“Did she tell you she knew me?”

“No.” His gaze lingered on her face, as if he were trying to read her. “Should she have? Is there some issue?”

“No!” Jordan rapidly asserted. “None at all. I was just curious.”

“Here goes,” Kelly announced, giving them a thumbs-up as she leaned back at the edge of the ice pit, her camera over her shoulder, both hands on the rope. She carefully lowered herself over the smooth edge and down the vertical wall, planting the claws of her crampons firmly into the ice with each step.

The rest of them watched her go down. Chuck stood with his feet firmly planted, filming with a steady hand. Jordan gulped nervously as Kelly’s head disappeared from view. Nobody spoke. Jordan and Chuck moved closer so they could keep her in view.

At regular intervals, she stopped, leaned back with her weight on the ropes, and shot photos. Then she descended a few more feet. The lip and walls of the pit were smooth, sculpted by flowing water like the rocks of any river, but this had happened over a matter of days instead of centuries. Kelly’s main line had already carved a groove four inches deep at the lip.

The ice in the pit darkened the deeper it went, starting at the top as stark white and gradually changing to sky blue, then a haunting cerulean and eventually midnight blue far below.

Kelly had gotten to the cerulean layer where she could look upward into the spray of the waterfall, capturing the photos she had lusted after.

She’s really something, Jordan thought. Not everyone would be able to hang on the edge of a vertical wall above a bottomless pit. No matter how much you trusted the security of a nylon rope, it was scary. Jordan didn’t think she could do it. She had a fear of heights and knew from past experience how immobilizing that panic could be. But Kelly showed no hesitation at all as she proceeded through her methodical work.

She looked up and caught Jordan’s gaze. She grinned, her eyes sparkling with happiness. Jordan smiled back at her, full of respect and admiration.

“We’re at twenty-five meters,” Malik reported. “Eighty-two feet.”

“That’s far enough,” Jordan said to Chuck.

He gave a short nod, then shouted into the pit. “That’s as far as you’re going, Sheffield! Get your butt back up here!”

Kelly nodded her understanding, took a few more shots, then began her steady ascent back to the surface. When her head finally appeared over the rim of the pit, Julie took the camera from her, then Brian pulled her out.

As she unbuckled the harness, she exclaimed, “That was so cool!” She looked at Jordan as she exuded triumph. “That was so cool!” she repeated, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

Chuck gave her a one-armed hug as he handed the camcorder to her. “Damned fine job!” he beamed. “Now that’s not something you’re going to see every day! Not even in Greenland.”

Jordan was happy too, happy to be able to share the experience and happy to see Kelly so exultant.

Chapter Twenty-One

Kelly walked up to the sink where Jordan was piling dishes into sudsy water.

“It’s my turn to clean up,” she explained.

“I’ll help,” offered Kelly, picking up a dish towel. She took a plate from Jordan and wiped it dry with the towel.

Lunch had been a satisfying but odd combination plate of macaroni and cheese and canned tamales. Predictably, the conversation had hinged on global warming, the disappearing Greenland ice sheet and Greenland’s changing culture. Chuck and Malik, standing by the big tent, were still engaged in that discussion, their expressions suggesting that Chuck was enjoying the debate and Malik was frustrated. Kelly wasn’t surprised. It was Chuck’s typical position to play devil’s advocate, to draw people out and get them to talk candidly in an impassioned defense of their position. It was a journalist’s technique he had employed so long that it had become his ordinary mode of conversing.

“You were impressive today,” Jordan remarked. “You didn’t seem scared at all.”

“I was too excited to be scared. It was the most thrilling thing I’ve ever done. I can’t wait to see the photos.”

“I’d like to see them too.” Jordan gazed at her with an expression of admiration, holding out another plate.

Her eyes fixed on Jordan’s, Kelly reached for the plate and grasped Jordan’s hand instead. The aluminum plate fell to the ground, clattering briefly on the gravel.

“Oh, sorry,” Kelly said, reaching down to pick it up.

She felt light-headed, struck again by how inviting Jordan’s demeanor seemed. She wondered if she was imagining it. But the woman beside her was no Ice Queen. Her eyes were full of warmth. Kelly was moved to speak from the heart and confess her feelings.

“Jordan,” she ventured, putting the plate back in the suds. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

Just then, the sound of raised voices distracted them both. Malik loomed threateningly near Chuck, blurting in his hesitant English, “You do not know what you are talking about! An ancient culture is being lost here because of global climate change.”

Atka stood beside Malik, looking alert, aware of his master’s increasing anxiety.

“What the…” Jordan uttered, drying her hands on the towel.

“Adapt or fucking perish,” Chuck replied calmly.

Jordan walked toward them and Kelly followed.

“How do you expect the Greenlander to adapt?” Malik asked contentiously. “This is the Arctic. Without hunting and fishing, what do we have?”

“Oil,” Chuck answered matter-of-factly. “As soon as this country starts drilling for oil in earnest, everything will change. Hell! Cut yourself loose from Denmark and you’ll be swimming in money. Imagine all that wealth being divided among a mere sixty thousand citizens. You’ll all be fucking rich. You won’t have to eat whale meat anymore.”

Malik’s glare had not diminished. “We like whale meat.”

Chuck gave a slight nod to the women as they approached, the twinkle in his eye suggesting he was having a grand old time. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” he said to Malik. “Look at you. Your father was a hunter. Barely scraped by, I’m guessing, with nothing but essentials. You’re going to be a scientist. Geologist? Oceanographer? Something like that, right? Some big shot egghead type with a comfortable apartment and a fancy car. Thanks to global warming.”

Malik bristled. “Global warming is a huge, devastating and avoidable crime against the planet.”

“Uh-huh,” Chuck agreed. “And traditional Greenland hunting, in the opinion of the world, is a huge, devastating crime against marine mammals.”

“No endangered species are hunted. This practice is sustainable.”

“Don’t tell
me
that, pal. I know all about it. I’m just telling you how things are in the real world. Once Greenpeace started publishing photos of cuddly baby harp seals back in the seventies, you guys were sunk. People don’t want you killing anything cute. Maybe you can’t make a living hunting anymore, but you can make a living farming shrimp or drilling for oil or as a scientist studying the disappearing ice sheet.” He exhibited a self-satisfied smile. “Adapt…or fucking perish. Like every species ever has done since life on earth began.”

Malik gritted his teeth and sputtered, “You are full of shit!” He threw up his hands and walked rapidly to his tent, his dog at his heels.

Chuck shrugged and faced Jordan, smiling. “That guy’s got a big chip on his shoulder.”

“You’re diddling with what he’s most passionate about,” Jordan commented.

“Diddling?” He pressed his lips together. “You’re right. That’s exactly what I was doing.” He turned to Kelly. “Let’s go, Sheffield. Get your gear.”

“But…” Kelly began, turning a questioning glance toward Jordan.

“I have to be back by four,” Chuck explained. “No time for any more diddling around here.”

Jordan laughed. “Thanks for coming out, Chuck. I hope you got a good story. And, Kelly, send me a few of those photos, okay? I’m sure they’ll be amazing.”

Jordan’s expression was thoroughly public again, showing no sign of the earlier openness she had extended to Kelly. There would be no further opportunity for a private conversation today and Kelly didn’t know if or when another would present itself.

Frustrated and disappointed, Kelly took her cameras to the boat and prepared for the trip back to town.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Despite her agreement with Kelly that they would go together to the cave, Pippa couldn’t wait. It was her last day off work and Kelly was with Mr. Lance at Camp Tootega for the day. Besides, Kelly didn’t believe in Asa, and Pippa worried that her negative energy would interfere with her ability to reconnect. So she took her family’s boat out alone and piloted up the coast, pulling in as close as she could to the location of the cave, and limping with her walking stick over the coastal terrain to the ravine. From the edge she could easily see the patch of cottongrass below that had drawn her there in the first place, white heads bobbing in the breeze. Near them was the opening in the cave roof she had fallen through.

She made her way down to the side entrance she had created and squeezed into the cave, shining a flashlight around the interior. It was as she had left it. On the floor were scattered a few wilted cottongrass flowers, left where they had fallen on that day. The pile of small rocks stood near one wall as before, imbued with a new significance now that she understood its purpose. The sight of it filled her with tense expectation, sending a chill down her spine. Under those rocks was the proof. A tiny skeleton, maybe an animal skin wrapped around it, lay protected there where Asa had left it hundreds of years ago.

Pippa wanted so badly to pull the rocks away. But she knew enough about archaeology to know she had to leave the grave marker intact, to preserve the integrity of the site. Her presence here may have already compromised some of the evidence, such as footprints, hairs and fibers left by Asa and Gudny. But the most important evidence, the grave and the baby, had to remain untainted until someone qualified and impartial could gather the evidence that would prove Asa’s story. Then everyone would believe it, even Kelly.

She knelt beside the pile of rocks and shined her light on the wall to illuminate the carved symbols. “These
are
letters,” she announced triumphantly, her voice echoing in the chamber. She traced the markings with her finger, trembling with the force of knowing that Asa herself had made this message with her own broad, freckled hand, and that the only person ever to see it was Pippa, as if it had been meant for her, like the entire story, sent to her from the past to find a voice, finally, after such a long silence.