Cooper took her tray to the dish pit before beginning the long walk to Summer Camp—Denise had the studio until noon, so Cooper thought she’d grab a nap. She was zipping up her parka outside the galley trailer when she heard Sal calling her name.
“Wait up,” he shouted from the stairs, where he was fumbling with his parka and mittens. He half-jogged to where Cooper was standing. “I almost forgot. I have something for you. Come with me.”
Sal had a room in the elevated dorm with the other physicists, who were mostly from Palo Alto or Madison, cities that were apparently hotbeds for astrophysicists who liked ice-time.
“Yo, Sal,” a guy in a toolbelt said as they passed him. “What’s the word on the new Pole marker? You come up with a design yet?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you, sweetcheeks,” Sal said.
“Just don’t disappoint us. All eyes are on you, my man.”
“I thought the Nailheads hated the Beakers,” Cooper said after the man had passed them.
“Unlike the vast majority of my Beaker brethren, I respect the Nailheads. We wouldn’t be here without them. I let them know that on a regular basis.” Sal pushed open a heavy steel door. “Therefore, I am not hated.”
An overwhelming stench of body odor hit Cooper full on. “Oh shit,” she choked.
“Welcome to the Beaker Box. I should’ve warned you. Scientists smell worse. No one knows why.”
Cooper looked down the narrow hallway at the solid doors, the absence of enormous heaters, and the comparatively luxurious quarters of the Beakers and senior Nailheads. “Why do you guys get the nice rooms?”
“Because we’re important,” Sal replied.
As they walked down the hall, men in various states of undress sat hunched over tiny desks, studying papers or working on their laptops. “Skirt alert,” Sal called. A few doors slammed shut; others flew open, and were followed by shaggy-haired heads.
Sal’s room was much bigger than Cooper’s, with a large desk and an Ethernet connection. Their beds were the same size, though, she noted with satisfaction. Against the back wall, a small window looked out onto the runway and, beyond that, the Dark Sector. Sal crouched down and began flipping through books stashed in a bookcase fashioned from an apple crate. Finally, he pulled a hand-bound book from the shelf and handed to her. It was plain, White Album–style, and the length of a novella. The cover was torn and the pages had been stapled together. It was titled The Crud: Or How to Deal with All the South Pole Bullshit.
“I have to say, I’m already intimately familiar with the Crud,” Cooper said as she flipped through the book.
“This is about the existential Crud. It’s full of stuff not found in the South Pole Station Handbook. Think of it as a secret resource for coping when things get hard. And they will get harder, trust me. There’s a sequel waiting for you when you finish.”
“Why are you giving this to me?”
Sal reached for his anorak. “Because I’m invested in your mental health, as it relates to the tot-art you’re working on for me,” he said. “But be careful with it. VIDS would give up two antiballistic missiles to get a hold of this book. This is the last remaining copy on the ice. The rest of them are in Al Gore’s lockbox.”
“Right next to my ability to produce decent art,” Cooper said, tucking the book under her arm.
“Art’s easy,” Sal said. He pulled on the anorak. “Just present a subject and make a statement about it.” He grinned at her. “Don’t get mad. I’m kidding.” He picked up a stack of papers from his desk and waved them at her. “By the way, everyone completed the survey, except you, Tucker, and Pavano.”
“For someone with such big cosmic questions to deal with, you seem really worried about weirdly inconsequential things.”
“Inconsequential? I don’t like politics in my science. Do you?”
“I don’t have politics or science.”
“Well, that’s your problem, then. All art is politics.” He pointed at The Crud. “Do not let this fall into the wrong hands.”
“That may have already happened,” she said.
“No,” Sal said, tapping the book gently, and brushing Cooper’s fingers as he did so. “It’s definitely in the hands of the person who needs it.”
* * *
When she finally arrived at her room in Summer Camp, Cooper found a piece of paper attached to the door, flapping in the draft. To the (wo)man who spilled his/her piss on my boots and then fled (piss-and-run): Identify yourself. Otherwise I’ll be forced to spend the rest of the summer looking for you. Signed, Super Angry but Willing to Forgive at the Right Price Electrician in D3.
She tore the note off the door, grateful once again for the anonymity provided by polarwear, and opened the door. After removing her ECW gear, she got under the covers with The Crud. The table of contents included chapters like “The VIDS Clusterfuck,” “How to Score a Shower Curtain and Keep HR from Confiscating It Because for Some Reason They’re Illegal,” “Surviving DVs: Distinguished Visitors and Other Annoying VIPs,” and “Why McMurdo Sucks.” The book indicated, for example, that McMurdo-ites were mostly unfit for true polar service. Apparently, the fact that Discovery Hut was within walking distance of McMurdo, and that this historic site was a preferred location for clandestine blow jobs, caused the polar philatelists no end of grief. (It was also why Cooper had not felt moved to visit Discovery Hut during her layover at McMurdo—that, and the fact that it had been mobbed by cruise ship passengers, all of whom were still wearing life jackets.) McMurdo-ites also sucked because of their obsession with penguins; they were not above slithering across the ice on their bellies to get photos of indifferent Adélies.
Cooper’s reading was interrupted by a commotion in the hallway—the canvas-duck walls rippled with the constant opening and closing of the Jamesway door. By the time she’d scrambled out of bed and opened her door, a squirming mass of bodies had filled the hall. Everyone was getting into ECW gear. Suddenly All-Call—the station’s public address system—crackled on, and a robotic Speak & Spell voice began chanting: “A fire alarm has been reported. Please stand by for further instructions.” Before Cooper could fully process these words, Kit grabbed her arm.
“You’re on the fire team, right?” he said. Cooper thought for a moment—yes, back in Denver she had been assigned to the fire team. She scrambled back into her ECW gear and was almost out the door before she thought to grab the vial. She was stuffing it into the deepest part of her parka when Kit yanked open her door and pulled her down the hallway.
Outside, a flock of snowmobiles awaited them, piloted by the heavy machine operators who’d been on shift at the time of the fire call. Kit helped Cooper onto one, then climbed on in front of her, and they zoomed off toward the Dome.
“Do you see anything?” Kit called over his shoulder. Cooper pulled her face out of Kit’s parka to look. Nope—just the half-sunk diamond dome and the orange Skylab tower behind it. No plumes of smoke, no sign of fire, besides the insect-like agitation of the Polies Cooper could now see mustering at the station entrance. The snowmobile they were on zipped past the Pole marker and entered the tunnel.
Under the Dome, the fire team was pulling on bunker gear and hauling air tanks off the ground and onto one another’s shoulders. Bozer and Floyd were leading a group of Nailheads down the entrance tunnel to Skylab, where Tucker stood wearing a massive amount of firefighting equipment. “I got another one for you,” Kit shouted above the din and pushed Cooper into Sal, who was spewing acronyms into his radio, which was promptly spewing them back. Sal pointed urgently, and Cooper wandered off in the general direction where he’d pointed, joining Birdie, who was already outfitted. He slammed an air tank against Cooper’s back and pulled the shoulder straps around her arms.
Cooper’s heart pounded and she realized she was sweating. She lifted her nose in the air, like a dog scenting the wind. The only smells she could detect were gasoline, exhaust, and, somewhere on the edge, the scent of Pearl and Bonnie’s
evening meal prep drifting out from the kitchen. “We’d be smelling smoke by now if it was bad, wouldn’t we?” Cooper said to Birdie. He only blinked at her.
Suddenly, the activity level slowed down. The chorus of muffled walkie-talkie voices diminished to occasional solos, and the robotic All-Call voice was no longer chanting like a Gregorian monk. One by one, snowmobiles roared down the entrance tunnel. As the din subsided, All-Call came on again, but this time it was Dwight’s voice that was chanting: “This has been a false alarm. A false alarm. Please return your equipment to the stations. Repeat: This has been a false alarm. Please return your equipment to the stations. Postmortem at All-Hands Meeting.”
Cooper’s legs began trembling. She kicked the air in front of her, as if to remind her legs that they were functioning limbs, but this only made things worse. A prickly heat climbed up her torso, up her neck, all the way to the top of her head, causing her face to flush; it felt as if someone had placed a cinder block on her chest. She lowered her body to the ground, trying to maintain some semblance of control. When the tears came, she was only half surprised.
She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there when someone slid their arms under hers and hauled her to her feet. When she pulled off her goggles and wiped her eyes, she saw that it was Pavano. His face was obscured by his balaclava, but his limpid eyes were unmistakable. By the time Cooper had gathered herself enough to mumble a thank-you, Pavano was already halfway down the entrance tunnel.
* * *
“I want to see a bird,” Dwight said.
“I want to smell a new book,” Pearl replied.
“I want to fondle a fresh bell pepper, and then eat it,” Cooper chimed in.
“I want to pet my cat.”
“What does cat hair feel like? I forget.”
“I want to hear a child laugh.”
“I want to go barefoot.”
“I want a drink.”
Everyone turned at this, like a litter of kittens following a tracking light, to see Marcy standing in the door. Or a weak facsimile of Marcy. She was drunk. Cooper knew this because Marcy was holding herself steady against the door frame leading to the Smoke Bar. Old Marcy never needed anything to steady her gait. She never showed up at the bar already drunk. But now here she was, her normally proud shoulders slumped. It was as if one of the major structural supports holding up the geodesic dome had suddenly sunk ten feet into the ice. Everything still standing, but the building was catawampus.
Cooper and Sal got up from their chairs at the same moment and helped Marcy to a seat. Floyd threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, this is rich,” he said. “She’s back. The case study for Why Women Shouldn’t Be at Pole.”
“Says the shapeless mass of existential impotence,” Sal muttered, as he returned to his seat next to Bozer.
Floyd ignored this and focused his piggy eyes on Marcy. “So is it true?”
“Is what true?” Marcy said without raising her eyes from the table. Her voice sounded bruised.
Floyd continued looking at Marcy for a minute. “You stupid slut,” he said. Sal stood up from his chair so fast his knees hit the edge of the table and sent the beer bottles wobbling. Cooper saw Bozer grip Sal’s arm and hold it firm.
“So who’s the daddy?” Floyd said.
“Mechanic at Palmer,” Marcy replied.
“Oh, so a one-and-done.”
Marcy finally raised her eyes and looked at Floyd. “My specialty.” Cooper saw something change in Floyd’s face—a minuscule shift in the angle of his eyebrows, a faint tightening of his lips. Before he dropped his eyes, Cooper could see they’d changed, too, had widened, child-like, with pain.
The silence of the room felt alien. Cooper watched Bozer calmly sip his Schlitz, his hand still gripping Sal’s forearm. Finally, Floyd hauled himself out of his chair and walked over to Marcy. No one spoke as he leaned down and whispered something into her ear. She nodded, and Floyd stroked her messy hair before pulling her head toward his.
* * *
When Cooper walked in the gym for the second artists’ meeting later that week, the interpretive dancer was not sitting next to the historical novelist, and he was clearly pissed off about it. She, on the other hand, was exuberant. “That false alarm last week was just the kick I needed, because I’m swimming in inspiration,” she said. She flicked her Joni Mitchell hair over her shoulder. “I actually think I’m on the verge of a breakthrough.” She leaned toward Birdie, the only person who appeared to be listening. “I met this Argentinean gentleman online who’s doing research on Weddell seals at McMurdo—something about their estrus cycle. I’m thinking about transferring down there. Since it’s mating season, there would be a chance for me to observe contact improvisation in the wild.”
“But wasn’t your project based on the movements of the hydrocarbon tubeworm?” Birdie asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to interpret its vascular plume. This seal research is brimming with possibilities. I learned from this Latin genius that in order to do the research you have to capture the female Weddells by drawing a canvas hood over their heads, tying it closed, and then taking a vaginal swab.”
“You can dance about that?” Birdie asked, incredulous.
“I see it less as a dance than a choreographed crime scene,” the dancer replied.
“I hate Argentina,” the historical novelist said from across the room, his arms crossed. “Full of Nazis.” It occurred to Cooper for the first time that the historical novelist bore a striking resemblance to Karl Rove.
“He’s quite spiritual,” the dancer said thoughtfully. “Shaman-like, really. I like how he can summon sacred energy. I can actually feel it in my heart.”
“You know what I feel in my heart?” the literary novelist said from deep within the hood of his University of Iowa sweatshirt. “I feel nothing. It’s contracted like polar ice.” He groaned. “Christ, even my similes are stale.”
“You feel disconnected from yourself because you have put all that you are into your manuscript,” the dancer said. “You do not exist outside of your work.”
The literary novelist retreated further into his hood.
Birdie cleared his throat. “This is our second meeting, so I think it would be wise to assess what we’ve produced since being on the ice as a way of holding ourselves accountable. Seeing as I’ve been quite unproductive since arriving, I will yield the floor.”
The literary novelist raised his hand. “I wonder if we can talk a little about the world-building that goes on here. I mean, we’ve been here for a few months now, and the novelty of, you know, living at South Pole quote-unquote has worn off, at least for me. Taking this from a literary perspective, I feel as though”—he cast a sidelong glance at the open notebook on his knee—“there’s this completely separate reality that people down here have constructed for themselves. I definitely still feel like an outsider, like I haven’t been fully embraced. I mean, no one even came and got me during that fire drill. If it had been a real fire, I would have been charcoal.”
“They didn’t come get you because you’re a freak,” the historical novelist snapped. “All of you are. I haven’t met one normal person yet. Not one.” He stood up and began pacing.
“And why exactly are you here?” the interpretive dancer asked him. “Have you figured that out yet?” Cooper heard frost in the dancer’s voice for the first time since the unfortunate radish haiku.
The historical novelist snorted. “To keep my head down and write.”
“And you couldn’t have done that back in Poughkeepsie?”
“As I’ve explained to you in great detail, it’s impossible to situate a speculative World War Two battle set at South Pole without actually being here. Why is that so hard to understand?”
As the dancer and the historical novelist bickered, Cooper realized that the literary novelist was actually on to something: the Pole community was, in fact, a parallel universe in miniature. It was a place yo
u could go where people weren’t flying planes into buildings or shooting up schools. They were just bickering about Poughkeepsie and satellite phone calls and pontificating on the hydrocarbon seep tubeworm’s vascular plume. Most people off-continent didn’t even remember this place existed, except maybe a handful of bored newspaper reporters and the schoolchildren in De Pere, Wisconsin, with whom Sal corresponded.
Cooper tapped the literary novelist on the knee. “Hey, when you were a kid, did you ever lock yourself in the bathroom and pretend it was a house?” He stared at her uncomprehendingly. “You know, like a cottage in the Black Forest: bathtub for your bed, sink for your cooking needs, the cabinet beneath the sink for your oven?” Nothing. “Look, I guess my point is that for me, South Pole is like my fantasy bathroom-cottage. You can pretend you have everything you need here. People might pull on the doorknob and threaten to kick the door down, but you know they won’t do it, and you can be safe here until you’re ready to face whatever ends up being on the other side of it. I like it here because this isn’t the world. It’s somewhere else.”
“And it also has a toilet, so the parallel is complete,” the historical novelist barked. “Christ. I’m counting down the days until I can get out of here.”
“You’re just mad that the Argentinean swabbed your girlfriend,” Birdie said, and held out his pink hand to Cooper for a high-five.
* * *
Cooper finished The Crud the second week of December, having learned important things like where all the waste from the toilets went (a “lake” beneath the ice), and was ready to read the sequel, Skua Birds in Paradise: Wintering Over at SP, which Sal kept hidden in his room. Knowing Sal always skipped game night, she decided to venture over to El Dorm with The Crud to find him and Skua Birds in Paradise.
When she approached his door, she could see that it was half open, and that there was a woman in the room. The banter was intimate, the low lilt typical of people who have recently swapped bodily fluids. Cooper tried to turn back silently on her bunny boots, but the right one squeaked on the linoleum and brought the banter to a stop midsentence. The Frosty Boy tech in the hotpants and trucker hat who’d flown in from McMurdo, and who, Cooper thought irritably, might never leave, appeared at the door.
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