The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories (9 page)

That night, Eric and Scott came to me and said this back-and-forth needed to stop. Any other year, when we weren’t crunched on our numbers, when enrollment wasn’t down, maybe it’d be fine. But this year? Tit for tat was unacceptable. And anything short of a decisive and resounding Winnesaka victory was, frankly, untenable in the long haul. They’d talked it over and were in agreement that we needed to mobilize a little more professionally if we were ever going to find Moosey. Eric said, “I know this is a camper thing, but . . .” I sighed. I said okay.

The two Chickapony campers they shanghaied . . . it was dark, and maybe they didn’t grab the right ones, I don’t know. Eric put these orca masks over their heads so they couldn’t see and sequestered them in the basement of the Arts and Crafts complex. The idea was that maybe they could tell us about Moosey, and the totem pole, and where we could find them. That was all we wanted. But these kids . . . I think they might have been autistic or something. Normally if you put a camper down there, spin him around a few times, and tell him he’ll never see his Pen Pals again, he’s giving up family recipes and apologizing for the time he diddled his brother in Grandpa’s basement. But these Chickapony kids, nothing. They wouldn’t crack. And then, see, it’s a bit of a dilemma. Return them to Chickapony, where they will most likely help out with future raids, especially now that they
know
the lay of the land here at Winnesaka, or hang on to them until things blow over?

We didn’t have too much time to think about that, though, because the next morning we woke up and the Tribal Thunder Stick was missing. We’d only posted sentries on the dock, it hadn’t occurred to us that they might come through the woods, don’t ask me why. It wasn’t an encouraging development. In response, we had the campers stage another raid, and this time they came back with some more Chickapony kids. We tried everything on them—duct tape, maple syrup, dirty talk—but still, nothing.

At that point, some of the campers began wondering if we were ever going to find Moosey. They were just sort of questioning things, which is natural, sure, and part of every camper’s development, but I mean, why now? I told them, beyond a shadow of a doubt we were going to find Moosey. And the totem pole and the Tribal Thunder Stick. And they needed to have faith in me as Head Eagle. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s second-guessing, and I think I’m only human in that respect. The implication is that I don’t want every camper to have a Winnesaka summer that, you know, shimmers in memory long after the sun goes down. And that’s just not true. You think I don’t have your best interest at heart? There’s a time and a place for this line of inquiry, and to raise these concerns
now,
when we’re already invested . . . I mean, honestly.

It came to me in a dream, I think, what we were doing wrong. We just . . . the thing was that we weren’t sending enough campers across the lake on our raids. It was taking us too long to search Chickapony, and now, especially, that we had to get Moosey, the Thunder Stick,
and
our totem pole back, it, well, it just made more sense to have everyone go over at the same time.

We didn’t have enough boats, though. And this was a problem. It was Eric’s idea, I think, the felling of the Spirit Grove. Sure, those trees had been there forever. And they
were
beautiful. And yes, they did house the Ancestral Shades, at least according to Winnesaka legend. But we needed boats. So I figured what we’d do next summer is make it a Winnesaka priority to have the campers plant saplings. Then chart their growth in the growth charts we could have them make in Arts and Crafts. It would be a new type of bonding experience, and also one we could put in the brochure. Plus, the campers could now add boatbuilding to their list of Winnesaka Activities Mastered when they went home at the end of the summer. They could add logging too.

Before going on, I’d like to say how much I admire the campers at Winnesaka. I’d like to make that clear. Never have I seen such selfless industry. Such unflagging enthusiasm. Such a unity of purpose. Plus, they really seemed to
enjoy
building the boats. We honored every fallen tree with a shout of “Moosey.” I caught Sam Stopwell genuflecting as he passed Ward’s poster in the Sandy Can. Flotilla formations were drawn up,
X
’s and
O
’s and arrows drawn in the sand. Our campers were campers again. Or maybe for the first time. And . . . well, there’s just no substitute for the feeling that gives you as Head Eagle.

They piled into the boats. They were canoes, actually, and we’d painted them to look like tiger sharks and killer whales. I stood on the dock, steadying keels, letting each camper know how important he was to Winnesaka. And to me. I told them we are given few opportunities to shine in this life, and that this was probably one of those opportunities. They began paddling. Fifty yards from shore, one of the kids, Tony Jameson, turned to wave at me.

Well, if I knew then what I know now about the trees, that the reason it was called the Spirit Grove was because all the trees were pretty much rotten and that, you know, even just one rotten plank can seriously affect flotation, things might have turned out differently, sure. I would like to have anticipated that. It would’ve been nice if someone had pointed that out. It also would’ve been nice if the life jackets we did have came with better instructions, and if they were going to be the kind that flip you on your back that they would’ve said as much. Or at least have been manufactured in such a way that it was impossible to fasten them on backward. But you’re not given a crystal ball when you’re hired as Head Eagle. I’m not a soothsayer. We’re given a budget each summer, and the question is always, do you sink it all into new boats and better life jackets, or do you use it for other things, like sturdy bunk beds, or a new chef? I mean, especially now that we have to have a vegetarian option at every meal. Problems come up, and you solve them as best you can, is what I’m trying to say.

We fished the stronger swimmers, the ones who made it back to the dock, out of the water with pike poles. Eric went to fire up the whaler, but the pull cord had snapped last summer and hadn’t been fixed.

Obviously, parents were upset. The phone was pretty much ringing off the hook until we disconnected it. I drafted a letter, which told them that with every death of a camper I, as Head Eagle, die a thousand little deaths myself. Clearly, I wouldn’t have sent them if I—I’m paraphrasing here, but it’s not the
how,
which, yes, the how was sinking boats and a life jacket shortage, or malfunctioning, it’s the
why
. You have to keep the why in mind. And these campers, they died to protect the integrity of Camp Winnesaka for the Papooses still here, and, not to mention, for the generations to come. To call it negligence . . . well, that doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter. And it’s undermining, not to mention, demoralizing, for the campers who behaved, and were
continuing
to behave, admirably in the service of preserving all things Winnesaka. To sow seeds of doubt in young hearts, I’d say that’s unforgivable. The world has enough of that as it is.

We had a ceremony. Of course we had a ceremony. Eric went out of his way to make sure the bonfire didn’t get out of control. There was some drumming, and some dancing. The campers read poems to help usher the spirits of their bunk mates safely to the other side, where their spirits could watch from the tops of the rustling trees to see they had not passed over in vain. Which they had not. Because two days later we commenced our Night Owl Rocket Campaign.

It was part of a larger plan to—I mean, we sort of figured this had gone on long enough. We’d all pretty much had it, at this point, with the pussy-foot approach, which was getting us nowhere. Moosey was still missing. We’d lost campers. It was just . . . the feeling was that you can push Winnesaka around only so far. Ronald Beltry, a camper here, wanted to be an astronaut and he knew about fuel cutoff and trajectory, and Todd Splendo, who’d been in juvie, or something, before coming to Winnesaka, he knew a little about gasoline incendiaries. There was the issue of converting our model AO-562 GI Parachute rockets into usable ballistics, but that only took a couple of hours. I mean, besides Jamie Wilson, who, I guess, when he was siphoning gas from one of the Condor Transports, didn’t know enough to take his mouth off the hose, or didn’t do it quick enough, or just swallowed on reflex maybe, it was a pretty smooth operation to get these rockets up and ready to fire.

We used a wagon to get the rockets down to their launching pads on the beach. After everything was set, I called the campers to me. I told them that there are days, and there are
days
. And this, well, this was one of those days. Honor Ward Hamilton, I said, who would be proud of you, and all the other Papooses who have crossed over in the name of making Winnesaka the safest and most admired camp on Lake Oboe. I told them that people would always be jealous of the fact that they were Winnesaka campers, and that it was a burden they should carry proudly. I looked at them, looking at me. Every pore and follicle in every camper’s face appeared to me a tableau of courage. Do not be diminished, I told them.

We fired the rockets. It looked like—well, like nothing
I’d
ever seen. But it reminded me of a legend we tell the campers on orientation night about Chief Winnesaka, who, one day, in his infinite wisdom, realized that what was missing from this forest-world of injustice was light. And so he appealed to the heavens, and said, Let my brothers have light, so that they too can see the beauty of the pinecone and the crystalline simplicity of a swamp frond collecting a drop of rainwater. Let light break through this redwood canopy to mottle the earth so the flowers can bloom and grow and deliver their sweet pollen to the bumblebee. And the heavens, ever mindful, opened in benevolence. The rockets, at their apex, went silent, and forgive me but I feel it’s only appropriate to say that at that moment I felt someone standing beside me, a warm and tacit companion, whose nod of approval was small enough to fill eternity.

And I guess it was then that Eric pulled me aside and said he had something I needed to see. I told him it wasn’t a good time, the second brigade was readying their rockets and needed a pep talk, and—

He insisted.

He led me through Spirit Grove to the Hondo Lodge. He was sweating a little bit. He was dancing back and forth on his toes and finally I said What? And he said, Well, and then opened this door marked
CUSTODIAN,
and sitting there, among some life jackets I didn’t even know we had, was Moosey.

It was kind of an Oh Shit moment.

Eric said, Oh shit, and I said, Oh. Shit.

It’s hard to explain how it—I mean, there are times in every Head Eagle’s tenure when he’s given a test. And something told me that this was probably one of those times. I knew the impact this revelation could have on things and I didn’t like it. I mean, the whole summer, down the drain. That’s what’s at stake here.

But beyond that, even. Without Winnesaka, would I have ever learned the difference between a red-tailed skooker and a split-wing skooker? And appreciated the value of that difference? Would I have ever canoed across a moonlit lake to put my hands up Sarah Soleil’s shirt and rub her pillows after Lights-Out? At the age of fourteen? Would I have ever known countless cookouts? Sing-alongs? Bunk Prank Day? Would I have ever grown up to become Head Eagle, presiding like a benevolent, but firm, older brother to the kids here at Camp? Would my life even have remotely resembled the one I have now? All of that was going through my head. But also going through my head was another question, which was: why is this something that I have to deal with?

And I suppose it was then that Eric turned and said he’d thought it over and come up with a solution. We didn’t have to say anything. I didn’t respond right away. But it was then, I suppose, that I began to understand the burden we, as counselors, carried. And me, their leader.

Moosey’d started something, sure, but this thing now, it was
bigger
than Moosey. And the campers, they were really having
fun
looking for him. They had come to think of their time here in really specific terms. And if we told them that Moosey hadn’t ever been at Chickapony, but had been here, in this janitorial closet, all along?

I guess I would argue that it’s selfish, to shatter belief like that. People—cynics—will tell you facts are essential. But facts can be misleading. One fact is not the entire story. And they are downright destructive if you want to get anything done.

Safeguarding Winnesaka, that’s my entire job. In perpetuity. If I perceive a threat to camp life, it’s my responsibility to address it swiftly and in no uncertain terms. Those art fags at Chickapony, they
did
steal our totem pole and our Tribal Thunder Stick. And, if you think about it, they
were
the reason we didn’t have a Spirit Grove anymore. Or Ward Hamilton. Not to mention the other campers.

Eric looked at me. I nodded. We leaned down, put our hands on Moosey, and lifted him off the floor. He was lighter than I’d expected. His expression was unreadable.

We carried him through the meadow, past the gully ferns. Buried him near the Outer Teepees in a patch of brambles.

As we tamped down the soil we could hear the second wave of rockets whistling their ascent. The sun was out. Eric, he flipped open his Swiss Army knife and made a small cut on his thumb. He handed it to me and I did the same. Then we pressed thumbs together. As we walked through the Clover Grove, Lake Oboe came into view, calm and welcoming. On the beach, our campers were dancing around in circles, holding hands like the small children they were, and singing.

the
saint anna

I
n the middle of an endless Arctic night, miles from land, we wake to yelling. “Who’s peeing on me?” Vlad is shouting.

“Accident, accident,” Dmitri is saying, backing away with his palms up, fly still unbuttoned.

Vlad is standing now, doing a little dance to shake off. “Do you have eyes or just an asshole? The bucket’s behind you.”

Dmitri looks. Sure enough. “I couldn’t see,” he says. “I’m
sorry
.”

We are sailors aboard the
Saint Anna,
now in our second ice-bound winter. There are twenty-five of us and we lie like pickled herring in a packed hold, breathing stale air, huddling for warmth, hats on, hands in our armpits, waiting, waiting, waiting. In an aft cabin our captain Brusilov sleeps in comfort with his niece, Yerminiya Zhdanko, dreaming, no doubt, of the walrus and polar bear we have yet to hunt and the route we have yet to map. We are somewhere in the Kara Sea, locked in an endless sheet of ice, 2,400 miles north of where we should be. Against our wishes we are moving with the ice pack toward the Pole. Land has not been spotted for thirteen months.

We are the forgotten, the unfortunates. Dominoes in a rucksack. Dots on a floe. On all sides we are surrounded by an expanse that cracks and groans according to pressure and accident. Below deck the darkness is complete. Spirits are low. Expectations? You’re talking to the wrong crowd. We would think ourselves already ghosts except for the misery of human necessity. What I mean by that: we pee and shit in the subzero, eat to prove we’re alive, then sleep and wake to do it all over again.

“Ice-ho,” Dmitri says, from inside his sleep-sack.

“Ice-ho,” is the response.

M
y name is Piotr Bayev, and at nineteen I am the youngest aboard. I sleep as far away from the bucket as possible, surrounded by Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, atheists, agnostics, harpooners, navigators, profiteers, carpenters, and criminals. We’re marginal seamen, peasants in sailor hats. Men who under
normal
conditions do not get along. Disagreements flash up hourly but our invective is muted, our politics halfhearted. What’s the point? Are the twenty-five of us going to solve Russia’s problems? We can’t even navigate a lead in the ice without someone falling in. We’re concerned only with outlasting the ice. Russia can do what she wants while we’re away.

The
Saint Anna
is a British-built, gaff-rigged schooner, and we sail under official capacity, sponsored by Nicholas himself. The success of our voyage will be judged on two counts: how thoroughly we are able to explore and map the Northern Sea Route, that hazy passage from Atlantic to Pacific; and the split profits from the hunting expeditions conducted along the way. We hit ice and found early encasement at the hands of our captain, Georgi Brusilov, and as a result have neither mapped nor shot. But Brusilov’s an optimist, unburdened by the little things. The kind of czarist who considers our recent war with the Japanese a moderate, if not striking, success. The kind of captain who packs twenty-four months’ worth of dried fruit and biscuits for a planned sixteen-month voyage but stocks fuel according to favorable winds. We shoot him looks and he swivels to see who’s behind him, as if we might blame someone else for what’s happening. We are nowhere now but every day he writes in the log for hours, as if what we’re currently undergoing is momentous. As if history will bear us out.

“History might bear
him
out,” Yevgeni says. “I should keep a log. ‘December 15, 1915: Today I drank some tea. Today I choked myself on a biscuit. Today I went above deck and was surprised to see the ice not moving faster.’ ”

“Don’t forget to write down you’re an idiot,” Albanov says. “And that we’re waiting to freeze to death and all you do is complain.”

The temperature outside, when it is clear, is consistently thirty degrees below zero, the kind of cold that fuses teeth together. The wind is cruel and slingshots over the ice like a fury, whistling rigging, snapping stays. From below it sounds like small-arms fire; on deck it’s huge oaks cracking.

We’ve boarded up all hatches and portholes to buffet the cold. We squeeze in, two per sleep-sack, and it doesn’t help much. Some of us move in and out of illness. Others simply refuse to rise from their beds, even when Yerminia Zhdanko pleads with them in warm tones.

“It would be good for you to move,” she says.

“Why?” is the normal, blanket-muffled response.

Her usual diagnosis is homesickness. That and the fact that we have nothing to do all day except think of the ice. “What are
you
thinking about?” Dmitri asks her from his bed.

We wait for an answer. Dmitri folds his arms. “You can get back to me,” he says.

We’ve put Yerminia Zhdanko’s age at twenty. She has a round face and thin arms. Nice breasts, which are most of the time hidden by heavy woolen shawls. The skin on the inside of her forearm, glimpsed at intervals as she fusses about, taking our temperatures, is the color of milk. The logic of her being aboard escapes everyone.

“Think of her as our nurse,” Brusilov has said. “Or don’t think of her at all.”

“Right,” Vlad said, when he had gone. “Don’t think of her. Easy.”

Topsides, snowdrifts slope gently from the ship’s rail to the ice. Accumulation blankets the deck, deep enough in places to tunnel through. Our bowsprit is an enormous, improbably levered icicle that points north toward more whiteness. Fog hangs like cotton in the air for days at a time.

We joke over biscuits that if there were birds in the sky even they wouldn’t be able to distinguish the
Saint Anna
from the floes, though with our luck it’s probable they would nonchalantly circle and shit a bull’s-eye.

“How is that different from your life ashore?” Brusilov snaps.

“Ashore,” Dmitri says, “we’d have vodka.” The word itself gets a round of applause.

We flesh out scenarios: the ice will either crush or release us, depending on the current; either we will starve to death or we won’t. Twenty-five minds and that’s about as creative as we get. We’ve been in the floes for a year and a half. How do you reckon with something millennia in the making? We loathe our astounding inertia. We despise the shivering spectacle we’ve become. Every day we drift farther north with the ice pack, but the feeling is not that we’re moving but that the rest of the world, and Russia, have turned and are drifting slowly away.

W
aiting for me in a less frozen part of the world, St. Petersburg—a city with its own problems—are my parents and sister. A tiny house in a blackened part of the capitol district. Like many families ours was unlucky. We queued for bread and compared stories: bad food, not enough food, no food. I had five sisters, four of them dead before adolescence. My older brother, a droshky driver, was killed when his horse kicked him in the head, caving his skull in front of the Mariinsky Palace. His fare, whoever it was, left him in the road to find other transportation. No one told us for days. When my mother finally heard she stopped talking and spent a full week at the stove, stirring vegetable broth into whirlpools. My father stayed at work or attended basement meetings through the night. My sister and I entertained ourselves by seeing who could go unnoticed the longest.

I left home because I couldn’t understand the politics that kept my father hopeful. Because he is a Bolshevik I was a Bolshevik, but where had it gotten us? It had gotten us nowhere. He spouted rhetoric and took pride in our immobility. He read
Proletarii
and nodded in agreement. We are the chosen class. It will be manifest. Just look at our sacrifice! How can that not be rewarded? Meanwhile he was being ground away by labor as the party fought with itself accomplishing nothing.

Of course he didn’t understand why I was leaving. I told him it was because much happens to a man while he’s away. He said: A person like you, a ship will kill you. I knew what he meant. Compared with my brother, I had no personality: no life experience, no opinions about anything, not even two thoughts to rub together. We’ll see, I told him. He told me a real worker would never leave. I shrugged. What was I going to do, point out his haplessness? Even the leaders of the party had the good sense to decamp to hotels in Paris; even
they
didn’t want to be here. He told me if you don’t stand for something you stand for nothing. I shrugged again. The look he gave me went so far beyond disappointment I considered staying. “You are not your brother,” he said, finally. “Your brother would not have gone.”

“And where is he?” I said, and braced myself.

I left the next morning without saying good-bye.

I
found the
Saint Anna
in February. I climbed aboard and was officially added to the ledger. My first two months at sea I managed to fool no one into thinking I belonged. Within an hour of embarking, I saluted the cook twice. I stood in contemplation when told to help the second mate with the foresail halyard. I fouled rigging. One morning, when I was helping Dmitri with the sounding cable, he told me my lack of competence was, at this point, bewildering.

“Wasn’t there some kind of test?” he said.

I mentioned my willingness to learn.

“You mean your willingness to do what you’re told,” he said.

Brusilov had been in such a hurry to disembark he’d all but waved me aboard. “Have you been at sea before?” he’d said. I nodded. “Can you lift that box?” I’d lifted it. “We leave tomorrow.”

The first leg—from St. Petersburg to Aleksandrovsk—took six months, one longer than expected. We ported in August and waited for additional crew to arrive. They never did. Brusilov paced the deck for days until deciding to go on without them. “And she’s staying?” Vlad said, pointing at Yerminia Zhdanko.

“She’s staying,” Brusilov said.

Yevgeni gripped the rail. “I thought she was sightseeing, would eventually tire and leave,” he said when Brusilov was below. “This is bad luck. Women on ships.”

“You think your luck could get worse?” Dmitri said.

We finally left for Vladivostok on August 28, 1914, so late in the summer it was almost guaranteed we’d get locked in ice. Within two months the leads became too narrow to navigate and we stopped sending men to the crow’s nest to freeze in the wind. Gazing out at the frozen Kara Sea, Brusilov absentmindedly chipped ice from the gunwale and proclaimed that this was as expected, and that we would be disgorged without doubt in the April thaw to continue our journey. The important thing, he said, was to have faith. The sea freezes, it thaws. The trick is patience. At this point, we could still see the Yamal Peninsula, rising darkly over the ice in the distance. Not an inviting piece of land, but it was there, so we had patience.

As we drifted north with the polar currents, we watched the peninsula recede until finally we saw nothing but white in all directions. In December, the leads disappeared as if stitched together, and we watched as floes grew into ranges, mountains proclaiming our solitude. It’s one thing to know you’re at the mercy of something larger than yourself. It’s another to see it. Brusilov greeted our looks with a nod, as if to say Yes, but what can you do? Yerminia Zhdanko, on deck, clung to him like a life preserver and took in her surroundings. The ice. Us.

“Bundle up,” Vlad said.

April came and we failed to disgorge.

I
t is January now, 1916. A New Year’s celebration—Brusilov’s idea—was subdued. We boiled tea with dried cherries and toasted our continuing good fortune. Someone hoisted a cup and requested that we be forever locked together. Vlad explained to him that there are things you can kid about, and things you can’t.

It has fallen to me and Yuri to check the contact points where the ice meets the hull. Every day we lower ourselves down from the rail to make our inspection. We look for fissures. We measure drift. Where we can see wood we check alignment. We submit our daily report to Brusilov in writing, which for the last three months has consisted of one word:
same
.

“What’s the point?” Yuri said one day when handing it over.

Brusilov didn’t look up from his desk. “The point is I told you to do it.”

“Bureaucrat,” Yuri hissed as we left the cabin.

We’ve moved through every possible state of mind. Patience was supplanted with panic, which was replaced by a dull boredom that has mitigated the fear. Yevgeni whittles figurines and arranges them on the bulkhead. Vlad practices knots. We’ve played poker until everyone but Yuri is in unimaginable debt. There are moments of dread. Regret. Listless fatalism. But only Albanov, our navigator, is constantly riled up, telling us we don’t deserve to be locked in ice. His murmuring has grown louder over the last few weeks. We are huddled in the galley when he starts in again, in a low whisper, making it known that he’s never seen such idiocy aboard a ship, and that someone needs to be blamed and punished. That Brusilov’s thorough incompetence needs to be folded back on him.

“What good would that do?” Dmitri says. “Tell me what that would change. Once we’re in charge of the ship the ice will just open up?”

“So you’re just going to allow this to happen to you?” Albanov says. “You’re going to let him take you quietly to your death? We’ve drifted two thousand miles.”

Vlad’s near the stove, boiling tea. “Your point?” he says.

Those of us listening shift uncomfortably. It’s a familiar conversation. “The happy ignorance of the indifferent,” Albanov says to us. “Have you always been like this?” We shrug. “
Happy?
” someone says.

In early January Brusilov takes sick and retreats to his cabin with his niece. She tends to him, boiling tea and bringing him meals. She towels his forehead and locks herself in. None of us have touched a woman since embarking, and we watch the cabin door with an envy that borders on insanity.

“Why lock the door?” Yevgeni says.

“Wouldn’t you?” Dmitri says. There’s laughter.

“Look at little Piotr,” Yuri says. “He’s blushing.”

Everyone looks. “Keep your hands where we can see them,” Vlad says. “Just because
she
can’t see you . . .”