My Last Continent (8 page)

WE DON'T TALK
much about it after that day. I don't think about what Keller might do for work in Oregon, about the
fact that he'd only recently begun a whole new life. All I can think about is him coming back with me—the first time I've been able to bring home something I needed, a part of the place that always seems to make me whole.

The last days in Antarctica before heading Stateside usually make me jittery, but this time it's Keller who's on edge during our final week at the station.

“It's always hard to leave,” I assure him. “But we'll be back.”

“I know
you
will,” he says. “You've got a career. I'm just a dishwasher. And everyone wants to be a dishwasher in Antarctica.”

He's right; the competition for the most menial jobs at McMurdo is astounding. “But you got here,” I say. “You've proven yourself. They'll want you back.”

Our last days are busy—I'm gathering my final bits of data and wrapping up the project; Keller, as well as working in the galley, has been filling in for Harry Donovan, one of the maintenance guys, who's been sick. We're spending less and less time together, which doesn't concern me because soon we'll have nothing but time. We're among the last of the summer staff still here—already the base is shrinking down, getting closer to its winter size of two hundred. In six more weeks, the sun will set and not rise again for four months.

When I see Keller at Bag Drag, at the Movement Control Center from where we'll load our bags onto the Terra Bus headed for the airfield, the place is overstuffed with people, cold-weather gear, and luggage—amid all this, Keller looks strangely empty-handed. It's not unusual for flights to be delayed or canceled, but I have a sinking feeling that's not the case. I lower my bags and look around. “Where's your stuff?”

He hasn't spoken, hasn't moved; he's just watching me.

“Deb,” he says.

His tone, low and cautious, causes my chest to tighten, and I don't want him to say anything more. With my foot, I slide my duffel toward him. “Help me with my bag.”

But he doesn't move. “I don't know how to tell you this,” he says, “so I'm just going to say it. I'm staying. For the winter.”

I sling my laptop bag over my shoulder, keeping my eyes on the floor. I'm afraid to look up at him, as if seeing his face will make what he's telling me real. For the moment, it's all just words in the air.

“Harry's got bronchitis,” he goes on, “and he's going home. I'm here, I'm vetted—so they offered me his job.” A pause. “It's a step up from dishwashing, at least.”

I'm silent, still staring downward.

“I'm not sure if I'll ever make it back here otherwise, you know?” I hear a pleading note in his voice. “Come on, Deb, say something.”

I look up at him finally. “What's there to say?”

“Tell me you understand.”

“I don't.”

“I need this, Deb. I've tried to start over—with Britt, with my job—nothing worked. But here”—he raises his hands as if to take in not just the building but the whole continent—“I feel as though it's possible here.”

He steps forward, gathers my hands. “You'll be back before you know it. Next season. Or even sooner—for Winfly, maybe,” he says, referring to the six-week fly-in period between winter and the main season. “Or I'll see you in Oregon. Like we planned.”

When I don't answer, he squeezes my hands. “I'm doing this for my future here. For ours.”

When I look at him, I know that he's fallen head over heels—not for me but for this continent. I can't blame him. I myself had overwintered after my first visit to McMurdo. Much like Keller, after I'd gotten a taste of Antarctica, I didn't want to leave. Because there'd been no research for me over the winter—the wildlife disappears when the sea ice encompasses the island—I'd taken a job as a firehouse dispatcher. I'd have done anything to stay.

And I want to tell him so many things. That it's exhilarating—the way the sun dips below the horizon for longer and longer each day, a glowing orange yolk that leaves behind a reddish black sky. That it's lonely—that he will hear the waning sound of the season's last plane echoing in the sky for a long, long time. That it's dangerous—that the storms here are unlike anything he's ever seen, with winds at a hundred knots, temperatures at eighty degrees below zero, snow blasting through the air like violent ghosts and seeping into buildings through the smallest cracks imaginable. That in the six months of total isolation, with no supply deliveries, no company other than two hundred other wintering souls, he will long for things like city streets, oranges, the leaves of trees.

Yet he's made up his mind. While overwintering isn't for the faint of heart, I know Keller believes it will be easier for him to be here than at home. And he's probably right.

I drop his hands and pick up my duffel. I can't speak, so I nudge past him toward the door.

“That's it?” He's speaking to my back as I approach the exit, the sunlight from the open door blindingly bright.

I stop and turn around. “Come with me, Keller. If you stay here . . .”

He comes close, puts a cool hand on my cheek. “It'll be fine,” he says. “It's just a few months.”

“Six months,” I remind him.

“That's nothing, in Antarctic time,” he insists.

It's forever, but I don't tell him that. I'm still holding my duffel, which is heavy, and I feel the painful stretching of muscles in my arm as I stand there, waiting for Keller to change his mind, knowing he won't. When he reaches for my bag, I let him take it. We don't talk as I get weighed with my bags, have my passport checked. We share a brief wisp of a kiss, nothing more. Keller waits on the ice as I board the bus, as it rumbles toward the airfield on its massive tires.

As I watch Keller through the bus's small windows, I think of the look on his face when he'd watched the Adélies that day on the ice, the first time he kissed me. I remember telling him that the Adélies will sometimes mate for life, but they are loyal first and foremost to their nesting sites—and now it seems that Keller and I are no different, loyal first and always to the continent.

At McMurdo in the depth of winter, people come together for many reasons—loneliness and boredom even more than attraction and compatibility—and I wonder if Keller will emerge from the dark with another woman in his life, just as at the end of each winter, an Adélie will return to its nest, but if its partner doesn't show, it will choose a new one and move on.

FIVE DAYS BEFORE SHIPWRECK

Aitcho Islands, South Shetland Islands
(62°24'S, 59°47'W)

I
t's early in the morning when I go up to the ship's “business center,” a tiny space with a short row of computer terminals and a satellite phone. On the
Cormorant,
the emphasis is on seeing the sights, not on staying connected, but there's just enough here for the die-hard workaholics to plug in if they need to. From what I've heard about the
Australis,
all the passengers' and crew's quarters have in-room phones, so it should be easy enough to reach Keller.

After an operator connects me, I listen to the ringing of the phone—a strange sound to hear as I look out at nothing but sea and ice. I've never had to reach anyone from the Southern Hemisphere before—everyone back home knows when I'm away and when to expect me back—and this need to connect fills me with an unfamiliar anxiety, as though I've learned a new language and am fumbling to find the right words. As the ringing continues, I wonder: Do these in-room phones have voice mail? And if so, what will I say?

After another moment of static, I hear his voice—clear and familiar.

“Keller, it's me.”

“Deb?” He sounds concerned. “What's the matter? Are you all right?”

“You're asking
me
what's the matter?” The worry, the skip in my heart upon hearing his voice, unexpectedly translates to anger, and I can't mask my irritation.

He sighs but says nothing.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I thought Glenn might change his—”

“I know, I talked to Glenn,” I interrupted.

“I was hoping to see you in Ushuaia, but we set off earlier, and since then it's been so busy I haven't had a moment to think. I've been trying to figure out how to contact you.”

“Why the
Australis
? That ship is a bull in a china shop. You know that.”

“I needed a job; they needed extra crew. And it gets me closer to you.”

I picture his face, in an expression of the innocent, misguided hope that we might actually see each other, and this softens me a bit. “But what are you planning to do, jump ship and steal a Zodiac? I want to see you, too, but how in the world is that going to happen?”

“I'm still working on that part. We're in the same hemisphere, at least.”

“I just wish you'd told me,” I say. “Back in Eugene. Maybe we both should've stayed home.”

“That's exactly why I didn't tell you. You need to be here, just like I do. I'll patch things up with Glenn eventually. I
actually think he would've taken me back, if he hadn't been able to find anyone.”

“Thom. He found Thom.”

“I know.”

“Why didn't you just keep your mouth shut?” I'm thinking back to last season, the moment that got him on Glenn's blacklist—our shipboard lecture, the defiant passenger, Keller's short temper—and I wish I could go back and seize the mic from Keller's hands.

“Like you wouldn't have said the same things?” he says.

“But I
didn't
. That's the difference.”

“Well, I can't do anything about it now. I'm here. That's what matters.”

“Why does it matter so much if we can't be together?”

“You'll see.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you'll know when I see you.”

Thoughts sweep through my mind—whether we might actually see each other, whether Keller does have a future with this program—and a moment later he says, “Look, we'll figure it out. Let's talk later, all right?”

I'm not ready to let him go; I want to ask,
When? How?
But before I can get the words out, the line goes dead. I'm not sure whether we've been disconnected or Keller has simply hung up.

AS I HEAD
toward the dining room to pick up a quick bite before our scheduled landing, I'm still arguing with Keller in
my head, changing words and sentences, hoping for a different outcome. Our voices rising. The line going silent.

Then I stop—the voices are real, and they're apparently coming from a couple just inside one of the hatches to the outer decks. I don't want to listen, but I can't pass without interrupting, so I wait, hoping they'll move on, or at least reconcile quickly.

After a moment, I recognize the voices—Kate and Richard Archer.

“If you don't want to do the landing, why on earth did we come down here?” she's saying. “Why come all this way if you don't even care?”

“For you,” he says. “You wanted this trip.”

“I wanted something for us. To get reacquainted, Richard. Not just to be on a boat with a hundred other people. To go for a walk, to see the penguins, to see their chicks, to—I don't know, share a moment together.”

“Do you remember how we met?” he asks.

“What are you talking about?” She sounds exasperated. “Of course I do.”

“That day in the café, when your computer crashed. You had a memory leak.”

“Richard, can we talk about this later?”

“Let me finish,” he says, his voice louder.

“Okay, okay.” She speaks in a whisper, as if she might be able to quiet him by example.

“The software was eating up your laptop's memory,” he continues. “That's why it crashed. It was an easy fix, but you didn't know that. I wanted you to think I was a hero.”

“What are you saying? You don't think I value you enough?”

“No, I'm saying that this trip, this sudden obsession with the penguins and the melting ice, it's like a memory leak,” he says. “It's consuming your mind, our plans—”

“Richard—”

“To retire early. To start a family.”

“No,” she says. “
You
wanted to retire, not me. And you've earned it. About the baby—I never said never. I just wanted to talk about it some more, that's all.”

There's a pause, and then Richard says, “I thought we'd already made the decision.”

“We aren't like your computers, Richard. Our life is not a software program. We're allowed to change our minds, to change our plans.”

“Except that you're the only one changing,” he says. “I've held up my end of the bargain. What about you?”

“What
about
me? You're bargaining with yourself, Richard. You've left me completely out of it. And that's not my fault.”

He doesn't answer, and I hear the slamming of the hatch, which means that at least one of them has gone out to the deck. I wait a little longer, until I'm certain they both must be gone, and then I continue on to the dining room. Breakfast is in full swing, but I don't see either one of them.

LANDINGS ARE METICULOUSLY
organized in order to ­appear efficient and seamless. Glenn and Captain Wylander find a spot to anchor, a place to land the Zodiacs. Glenn gives us a timetable, since he has to coordinate everything with the galley as well; due to the ever-changing weather, the chance
to go ashore takes precedence over scheduled mealtimes. A few naturalists set off to scout trails for hiking, to make sure there are no leopard seals napping nearby. We find the best place to bring passengers ashore—preferably a shallow beach where we can haul the Zodiacs as close to dry land as possible.

The passengers, meanwhile, line up in the B Deck passageway leading to the mudroom, where they'll sterilize their boots and move magnetic tags with their names and cabin numbers from an
ON SHIP
to an
OFF SHIP
position. It's low tech, unlike the
Australis
-style ships that have electronic swipe cards for everything, but it helps us make sure every passenger who leaves the ship eventually gets back on.

The Aitcho Islands are an ideal place to land—plenty of penguins, fairly even terrain. As I lead a group of tourists away from the landing site, the chinstraps roam all around, their webbed feet leaving watery prints in the thick mud near the shore. I issue a strict warning not to go near the birds—but I can see how tempting it might be to pet them, to feel their silky black heads and snowy white faces, to trace the thin black lines encircling the undersides of their chins. The adult penguins, with no predators on land, will often pass close by; sometimes they'll even walk right up to you. We constantly need to remind passengers that this is not a marine park, that we're actually in the wild. Sometimes Keller will show them his ragged penguin-bite scars, which works pretty well as a deterrent.

When it comes to the tourists, our patience can wear thin, Keller's especially—but I'm always reminding him that while we've grown used to this environment, for everyone else it's like a cold, faraway planet that probably doesn't feel quite real.
And, more important, what people learn here might actually make a difference if they go home thinking about how much their actions up north affect the creatures down here.

I point to the guano that covers the nests and rocks, and now covers our boots as well—its sharp, overwhelming stench is the reason many of the passengers have covered their noses with scarves or the tops of their sweaters. “You'll see how the guano is a reddish pink over there, where the chinstraps are,” I say. “That means they're eating krill. Over here, the color's more whitish pink, which shows the gentoos are eating fish as well as krill. What we don't like to see is guano that's a greenish color, which indicates a bird is starving.”

We continue our hike. The hills are studded with nests of rocks and pebbles, and penguins with fat, gray-and-white chicks are nestled up against them. Kate is in my group—Richard is not—and I can't help thinking of what I'd overheard earlier. I feel sorry for her, for both of them, and, for once, I can relate to such relationship issues: to one person wanting something the other doesn't, to missed connections. I'd finally begun to feel that Keller and I were past all that, yet here we are, with him in one place and me in another, not knowing whether we'll be able to find our way back.

I feel a sudden lurch of nausea and pause midstep. Perplexed, I take a breath and try to steady myself. Despite the jet lag, despite the Drake, despite all the passengers and crew crowded together on these trips, I never get sick. And I don't like the thought that I'm getting myself this worked up over Keller.

One of the tourists asks if I'm all right, and I shake it off and keep walking.

At the crest of the hill, we stop and look out over the bay. Beyond lies a sea of rich blue, the water broken by ice and lava flats, the skyline broken by the sharp, ice-blanched peaks of the rugged island chain. I direct the tourists' attention below, to where gentoos and elephant seals share a beach of thick, volcanic sand and fist-size rocks.

I watch Kate, who stares ahead as if she hasn't heard me, as if she's not aware of the giant, belching, molting seals, their smooth, shiny coats emerging underneath a thick, peeling brown layer that's more pungent than the penguin guano. The seals, under the sun's steady glow, use their flippers to fling sand over their bodies, grunting with every move. The humans are wearing hats, gloves, boots, and several layers under thick parkas, but for the animals, it's too warm. The white-bellied gentoo chicks, still fluffy without their insulating adult feathers, are panting in the heat.

The birds are especially active today, and we proceed back to the beach, more slowly than I'd usually walk because my stomach is still threatening to rebel. Once the shoreline is in sight, I let the group go ahead to the landing site and hang back to radio Glenn.

“I need to come back,” I tell him. “I'm not feeling well.”

“What's the matter?”

It's the first time I have ever called in sick. “I'm sure it's nothing,” I say, but I can't explain further than that.

“I'll send someone out to take your place,” Glenn says. “I want you to see Susan when you get back to the ship.”

I know I don't need a doctor, but I also know better than to argue with Glenn.

As I make my way to the Zodiacs, I watch the chinstraps
continue their shuffle from their colony down to the shoreline, where they wade in, then dive under and vanish in swirls of water. Other birds emerge, shaking the water off their backs, and head back up to the colony. The cycle continues, over and over, and all of a sudden something feels familiar in their consistent path, in their methodical gait. I see my own life in theirs: a constant back-and-forth motion, always ending up where I started, and circling back again—focused and simple—and perhaps this is why I chose this life, for the straightforward beauty I'm witnessing right now. Maybe I thought that life down here would remain uncomplicated, and that I could keep the same pace, the same arm's-length existence from the world, forever.