My Last Continent (6 page)

In science, in the natural world, things make sense. Animals act on instinct—of course, they have emotions, personalities; they can be cheeky or manipulative or surprising—but, unlike humans, they don't cause intentional harm. Humans are a whole different story, and I learned at a young age that, in most people, meanness is more instinctual than kindness. I'd been a boyish kid—tall for my age, with cropped blond hair, a science geek. After being physically kicked out of the girls' restroom in junior high by girls who were convinced I was a boy, I grew my hair halfway down my back. I wore it that long, usually braided, until just last year, when I chopped it to right below my chin—long enough to look like a female, since I never wear makeup, and to still be able to pull it back and out of the way.

“What is it?” Keller asks. “What're you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” I say, and he hands me a fork.

“How long have you been with the
APP
?” he asks.

“About eight, nine years.” I take a bite of salad and rice. “And what about you? What did you do before entering the world of janitorial services?”

He shrugs. “Something a lot less interesting.”

There's something closed off about the way he speaks, and I don't ask him anything else. We finish eating, and I get back to work. Despite my earlier vow not to cater to Keller's schedule, I get everything loaded back into the snowmobile in time to return to the base for his shift.

That night, I lie awake in bed for a long time, despite the exhaustion that sears the space behind my eyes. A lot of people have trouble sleeping at this time of year, thanks to nearly twenty-four-hour daylight, but I know this isn't the reason.

The next day, Keller's waiting for me at the
MEC
again, and he asks if he can help me count the birds.

“Did you bring me lunch?”

He nods.

“All right, then.”

At the colony, I spend more time observing Keller than counting the birds. I watch how carefully he moves among the penguins, clicking their numbers on my counter. I watch his eyes inspect every inch of the carcasses we kneel beside, as I explain how to identify the cause of death. “Only an autopsy can determine if their stomachs are empty,” I tell him, pointing at a thin, hollowed-out body, “but you can see here that this one was in really poor condition. Hardly any body fat at all.”

I become so absorbed in the work that I fail to notice the wind whipping up around us. It isn't until I feel icy snow pelting my face that I look up and see that there's no longer a delineation between ice and sky, that the world has gone white.

“Shit,” I say under my breath, and I radio the station. They've already restricted travel, and the winds are over fifty knots. We need to get back now.

I call out to Keller, and immediately he's at my side, helping me load the snowmobile. Within a few minutes we're ready to go—but the engine won't start.

I try again, the engine grinding slowly but refusing to turn over.

“Dead battery?” Keller asks. He's sitting right behind me, his mouth next to my ear, but I can hardly hear him over the wind.

“Could be,” I shout back. “But if it was, I probably wouldn't get any juice at all.”

We dismount, and it's then I realize that we don't have time to troubleshoot, let alone to fix the vehicle. The wind is bracing, my hands so cold I can barely move them, even inside my gloves. When I glance back at Keller, only a few feet away, he's a blur, his hat and parka coated with snow.

“We need to take shelter,” I say.

“Let me check the battery.”

“Forget it, Keller.” The driving snow is pricking my eyes. “Even if we fix it now, we're not going to make it back.”

While Antarctic weather is notoriously capricious, I'm annoyed; I can't believe I let the storm creep up on us this way. Keller is still going on about fixing the Ski-Doo as I pull our survival pack out of its hutch, and I turn and shove it into his chest. “You have no idea what this weather can do,” I shout over the wind. “Get the tent out. Now.”

There's no time to dig ourselves a trench, which would be the best way to wait out the storm. As it is, we're barely able to pitch the emergency tent and scurry inside. We've got just one extreme-weather sleeping bag and a fleece liner, and I spread them both out over us. Even if the tent weren't so cramped, the freezing air instinctively draws our bodies close, and without speaking we wrap ourselves up, pulling the fleece to cover us completely, including most of our faces. Despite the protection from the wind and our body heat, it's probably no more than thirty degrees inside the tent.

“I bet this isn't what you had in mind when you came to Antarctica,” I say, my voice muffled by the fleece.

“On the contrary,” he says. “This is exactly what I had in mind.”

I turn slightly toward him in the dim light.

“For God's sake,” I say. “You're not worried at all, are you?”

He moves his head slightly, and when he speaks I hear a smile in his voice. “I'm impervious to ice.”

This feeling he has—insane, illogical though it is—is one I understand. I'd felt similarly invincible once—at times, my life down here on the continent seemed surreal, a dreamworld in which whatever happened remained separate, protected from real life. It's a notion that many who come here can relate to, but it lasts only for a brief time.

“You've read about the continent's history, I take it?” I say. “You know how many bad things have happened here.”

“Plenty of miracles, too.”

“Is that what you're hoping for?”

“Not really,” he says. He pauses, then adds, “Maybe.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know I'm not the first one who's come here for a change of scenery. Midlife crisis sort of stuff.”

“Definitely not.”

“You wouldn't have recognized me three years ago,” he says. “I was a lawyer. Married. Nice house outside of Boston. Everything most people want.”

“Everything my mother wanted for me, that's for sure,” I say. “So what happened?”

A pause, and then he says, “The unthinkable happened.”

He goes quiet. I listen to the rhythm of our breathing,
barely audible over the keening of the wind outside. I can tell he is still awake, and I ask, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he says. “You?”

I nod, and we're close enough that my head nudges against his. We fall silent again, snuggled together like puppies for warmth. As time drifts, I think back on the day's work, and then I sit up with a start.

“What is it?”

“My notebook,” I say, patting my parka, trying to recall whether I'd stashed it in one of the oversize pockets. “I don't remember where I put it.”

“It's in the hutch.”

“Are you sure?”

“I saw you put it away.”

I stare at the opening of the tent, though I know it would be foolish to venture outside. “I hope it hasn't blown away.”

“It won't. You secured it tight.”

I wonder then if he's been watching me as closely as I've watched him.

“Relax,” he says. I feel his hand on my back, and when I lie down, his arm remains around my shoulders. I feel the day's exertion, finally, take over, draining my body and mind of what little energy is left. I turn toward Keller, and my icy nose meets the warmth of his neck.

I let my breathing slow, but my eyes remain open wide, fixed on the stubble on Keller's face, on the spot where his earlobe joins the skin of his jaw. I never imagined I'd find myself in a situation like this again—in a tent with another civilian, another amateur—and a part of me is afraid to sleep, afraid to risk waking up alone.

I don't remember closing my eyes, but I wake hours later to a bright gold glow. For a long moment, I don't move, savoring the heat of Keller's body next to mine. When I sit up, he stirs and opens his eyes. The look on his face is one I haven't seen in a while—sleepy, not quite sure where he is, a hint of a smile as he remembers.

But it's not me he's smiling about; he's looking past me, at the shadow hovering over my shoulder against the backlit tent.

“The snow,” he says. “Look how high those drifts are.”

Outside the tent, the sun is a halo behind thin clouds, and a light wind lifts the snow, surrounding us with sparkling dust.

We have to kick the snow away to step out of the tent, and I'm glad I'd remembered, at the last minute, to bury a flagged pole in the snow near the Ski-Doo, which is now hidden under several feet of snow. I radio the station to check in, let them know we'll be on our way soon. By the time I turn back, Keller's uncovered the snowmobile and is bent over the engine.

“I think the spark plugs got iced over when the temps dropped yesterday,” he says, straightening up. “Clean and dry now. Give it a try.”

The engine starts right up. I let it run while I pack our tent. As we head toward the base, with Keller sitting behind me, his arm around my waist, I wish we weren't on our way back. The cold, exhaustion, and hunger don't compare to my sudden desire to remain with Keller, away from the busyness of the station.

As we return the snowmobile to the
MEC
and set off for our dorms, I try not to delude myself into thinking he's more
interested in me than in the birds. In fact, when I see him later and he suggests we meet at the Southern Exposure, one of McMurdo's bars, he asks if I can bring my notes, if I'd mind sharing them.

And so, over the next couple of weeks, we continue our routine—days counting birds together, nights in the bar after his cafeteria shift. We get to know each other slowly, drink by drink. Once we're a few beers into the night, the conversation becomes personal. Keller doesn't like to talk about himself, and I have to fit together his pre-Antarctic life in puzzle pieces. It's an image that remains with me when I see him each morning—a faded cardboard picture with the seams still visible, the cracks still open.

But I want to put the puzzle together; I want to understand who he is. He's unlike most men I've known, men whose experience here is more academic. Keller seems to go about discovering Antarctica like one of the early-twentieth-century explorers, part fearlessness, part eagerness, and part ambition, as if he's got something to prove. I'm intrigued, as if I've unearthed a new species, one I'm eager to study, bit by bit.

One night I'm gazing at him, trying to picture it—the ­buttoned-down life he said he'd once lived—this man I've never seen in anything but denim, flannel, and Gore-Tex, whose hands are chapped from nights working in the galley and days counting penguins.

“So you were a lawyer, married, house in the suburbs,” I say, wanting the rest of his story. “Kids?”

He says nothing, and something in his face makes me wish I could withdraw the question. I stand up and wobble my way over to the bar to get us another round of drinks. When
I return to the table, he's staring at the wall, at a photo of an emperor colony. Our beers slosh as I put them down on the table, and I tumble into my seat.

Finally he turns to me. “Remember the other day—you told me how penguins that fail to breed will sometimes choose new partners.”

For a long moment, I can't comprehend what he's telling me.

“It was our first child,” he says. “Only child.”

He takes a long drink, and I try to remember how many rounds we've had. “She died,” he says. “Car accident.”

I don't know what to say. He is very drunk, and he's talking far more than he ever has, yet his body remains still, lean and almost statuesque in the chair. “I thought we might try to have another baby,” he says. “But she decided to try another husband.”

“Just like that?” As I look at Keller through the bar's haze of cigarette smoke, I'm finding it impossible to imagine anyone walking away from him so easily.

“Just like the birds,” he says with a harsh laugh. “I can't blame her.”

I want to touch him then, but I don't move.

He shifts in his seat and pushes his hair off his forehead in a slow, tired motion. “It was my fault,” he says. “Ally was nineteen months old. Britt, my wife—she went back to work after Ally's first birthday, and we took turns dropping her off at day care, picking her up. I was supposed to pick her up that afternoon, but a meeting got rescheduled. I called our babysitter, Emily—a grad student who took care of Ally from time to time. Ally loved her. I even bought an extra car seat so Emily could take her places. She used to joke we were killing
her love life, with a baby seat in her car. It was this crappy old subcompact. If only I'd bought her a new car instead.”

He reaches for his beer, but he doesn't pick it up, doesn't drink. “I had my phone off during the meeting. I went home and no one was there—no Ally, no babysitter, no Britt. Then I turned on my phone.”

His hand tightens around the glass. “I went to Children's,” he says, “but she was gone. A driver on a cell phone had run a red light and slammed into the back, on Ally's side. Emily survived. Britt blamed me more than anyone. I was the one who should've been there.”

I reach over and touch his hand, still wrapped around the glass, his skin rough and wind-chapped, and I think of how Antarctica toughens you up, how maybe this was what he wanted—maybe this is what we all want—to build calluses over old wounds.

He turns slightly in his chair, leaning almost imperceptibly closer to me. “It didn't fall apart all at once,” he says. “It's strange, how people disappear. No one likes to talk about it—as if it might be catching. Our friends, Britt's and mine, didn't know what to do—I mean, all of a sudden, we didn't have kids who played together anymore. My sister was the only one who would listen, really listen. She's the only one who calls me on Ally's birthday. The only one who invited us over for dinner on the first anniversary of her death, so we wouldn't have to be alone. She's good that way, like my mom was. Everyone else—they seemed to want to pretend it never happened.”