Icefields

by Thomas Wharton

  ICEFIELDS

  NUNATAK FICTION

  Nunatak is an Inuktitut word meaning “lonely peak,” a rock or mountain rising above ice. During Quaternary glaciation in North

  America these peaks stood above the ice sheet and so became refuges for plant and animal life. Magnificent nunataks, their bases scoured by glaciers, can be seen along the Highwood Pass in the Alberta Rocky Mountains and on Ellesmere Island.

  Nunataks are especially selected works of outstanding fiction by new western writers. The editors of Nunataks for NeWest Press are Aritha van Herk and Rudy Wiebe.

  ICEFIELDS

  THOMAS WHARTON

  © Copyright Thomas Wharton 1995

  Seventh Printing 2007

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law. In the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying of the material, a licence must be obtained from CAN-COPY, the Canadian Reprography Collective, before proceeding.

  Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Wharton, Thomas, 1963-

  Icefields

  (Nunatak fiction)

  ISBN 978-0-920897-87-4

  I. Title. II. Series

  PS8595.H37133 1995 C813.54’ C95-910502-6

  PR199.3.W52133 1995

  Editor for the Press: Rudy Wiebe

  Editorial Coordinator: Eva Radford

  Cover painting and design: Diane Jensen

  Interior design and layout: Brenda Burgess

  Photo credits: Alberta Environmental Protection, Natural Resources

  Service —Parks: pages iii and vii, Provincial Archives of Alberta: page

  ix, Ernest Brown Collection (B 9822); pages 1, 61, 139, 185 and

  224, Public Affairs Bureau Collection (PA 225/2)

  NeWest Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Edmonton Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

  We are committed to protecting the environment and to the responsible use of natural resources. This book is printed on 100% recycled, ancient forest-friendly paper.

  NeWest Press

  201, 8540 109 Street

  Edmonton, Alberta T6G 1E6

  780-432-9427

  www.newestpress.com

  PRINTED IN CANADA

  FOR MY FAMILY

  AS IF EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD

  IS THE HISTORY OF ICE.

  Michael Ondaatje

  COMING THROUGH SLAUGHTER

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  This book is a work of fiction and as such

  contains deliberate historical and geographical

  inaccuracies. The characters, places, and events

  depicted are products of the author’s imagi-

  nation or are used in a fictional context. Any

  resemblance to actual events, locales, persons, or

  glaciers, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  NÉVÉ

  THIS HIGH PLAIN OF SNOW AND ICE FROM WHICH THE GLACIERS DESCEND CANNOT BE SEEN FROM THE VALLEY.

  IT MUST BE IMAGINED.

  1

  At a quarter past three in the afternoon, on August 17, 1898, Doctor Edward Byrne slipped on the ice of Arcturus glacier in the Canadian Rockies and slid into a crevasse.

  Frank Trask, the expedition guide, was the first to notice his disappearance. He paused in his slow trudge to make a head count and saw, against the glare of the ice, one less dark, toiling figure than there had been moments before. Trask called out to the others walking farther ahead on the glacier. They turned at his shout and descended quickly to where he stood.

  On this bare, windswept slope of ice there was only one place Byrne could be. The climbing party crouched at the edge of the chasm where the young doctor’s snow goggles lay, the strap caught on a projecting spine of ice. They shouted his name down into the darkness, but heard nothing. Trask unwound the coil of rope from over his shoulder and knotted a stirrup in one end.

  —I’m not married, Professor Collie said. I’ll go.

  Trask shook his head.

  —I am, he said. I will.

  There was no time to argue. One end of the rope was secured around a rough bollard hacked out of the ice, and Trask tied the other around his chest. Slipping his foot into the stirrup, he took hold of the rope and stepped backwards into the abyss.

  In blue-black darkness almost sixty feet below the surface, his gloved hand touched the doctor’s boot. He realized Byrne was wedged upside down between the narrowing crevasse walls. Trask spoke his name and nudged him cautiously with his knee, but Byrne did not respond. The only sound was the muffled splash of meltwater. Trask shouted up to the others and after a few moments a second rope snaked down towards him from above. He caught the end of the rope and hung in space, waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the deep blue gloom. After a few moments he could see that the rucksack on Byrne’s back was jammed against an outcrop of the ice wall. This lucky chance had saved him from falling even further, but now the rucksack would only be a hindrance to the rescue.

  Trask squirmed himself down into the narrow space beside Byrne. With his hunting knife he sliced through one shoulder strap, then worked the free end of the rope behind the doctor’s back, grasped it with the fingers of his other hand and slowly tugged it around. The doctor did not move. Trask let out a long breath. He felt sweat cooling on his neck.

  When the rope was snug and knotted under Byrne’s arms, Trask cut the other strap and gave the rucksack a shove with his boot. It tumbled down into the dark with a muffled clang of metal.

  What the hell was he carrying in there?

  Byrne began to slide downward, but the rope went taut and held him.

  —I’ve got him, Trask shouted. Pull him up,

  slowly.

  Byrne, and then Trask, were hauled to the surface. The doctor’s skin was pale blue, his beard and clothing covered in a lacquer of refrozen meltwater.

  Professor Collie knelt and examined him, unwound the ice-encrusted scarf from around Byrne’s neck and felt for a pulse.

  —He’s alive. Unconscious.

  With his teeth Trask pulled off his soaked gloves and spat them onto the ice.

  —Then he missed all the fancy words I used trying to get that damn rope around him.

  —Hypothermia, said Professor Collie. We have to get him warmed up.

  The four men carried Byrne down the long, sloping tongue of the glacier to the terminus, where the wranglers were camped, waiting with the horses. Nigel the cook saw them coming and had a fire started and tea brewing when they arrived. Stripped of his soaked, stiffened clothing and bundled in a wool blanket, Byrne was propped upright in front of the fire. Drooping forward, he made a barely audible sound, a gasping hiccup. The professor rubbed his limbs and chest.

  —The pulse is weak, but he’s still with us.

  Byrne shuddered and moved his arms. His breathing became audible. A pink glow spread slowly from the center of his chest, outward to the limbs, suffusing the blue pallor. He yawned, opened his eyes, and shut them again.

  The professor forced hot tea down Byrne’s

  throat.

  —We must get him away from the ice, Collie said. I’m afraid that if we bivouac here he might relapse.

  As he spoke, he pried the pocketwatch from Byrne’s closed fist.

  2

  Dark was rising in the valley and, with it, a liquid chill to the air. Collie int
ended to make camp in the shelter of the nearest stand of trees, where there would be some cover from the freezing wind off the glacier. He stood up from his ministrations over the doctor and glanced around.

  —Where is Trask?

  —He thought he saw lights, Thompson said, further down the valley. He went to have a look.

  After a few minutes, Trask rode up.

  —I’ve got us some shelter. He had found people living at the site of the old Arcturus trading post, just a short ride away. He told the settlers about Byrne, and they would have blankets and hot food ready when the expedition arrived.

  Trask was astounded at his own discovery. —I thought the place had been abandoned years ago.

  The wranglers improvised a sling with a blanket and willow poles and carried Byrne while the others rode. Trask led them through the stunted trees along the edge of the creek into a grassy clearing. They saw lighted windows in the darkness and headed toward them.

  —Dear God, Stutfield said. To think people live here through the winter for the sake of a few marten skins.

  A woman stood at the door of the nearest cabin, holding up an oil lamp. She beckoned them inside.

  3

  Byrne dreamed of flowers.

  He breathed their scents and read the names that ran in orderly columns down the pages of his botanical notebook. Names of the flowers he had been collecting. The seeds and bulbs he had stored with their native earth in the tin specimen box he carried in his rucksack. He walked among them, he breathed and named, not knowing or caring if the scents matched the names he gave them. Flowers of snow melt, of early and full summer, of dry August.

  Western Anemone, or Chalice Flower. Glacier Lily. Wild Blue Flax. Four species of violet, three of Orchidaceae.

  Flowers of the lush valleys and the high, wind-scoured slopes.

  Yellow Mountain Avens. Bluebell, hedysarum. River Beauty and Grass of Parnassus. Indian Paintbrush.

  4

  He woke in a log cabin, on a bed, under soft blankets of fur. Looking up at smoke-grimed rafters, the glitter of melting frost on the wood. His arm was stiff, held tightly against his chest with a cloth or bandage. He moved, and was aware of his nakedness under the thick fur blankets.

  He lifted his head and looked around at sagging shelves cluttered with tins, bottles, books. Skins and sleek pelts hung from the walls between the shelves. A pot-bellied stove stood in one corner. There were three small windows, two of them on one wall papered over with oil-stained parchment.

  Framed in the open doorway, a meadow of flowering grass. In a chair by the door sat a woman, reading.

  She heard him move and glanced up.

  —The flowers, Byrne said. In my rucksack.

  —Lost, the woman said. The guide had no choice. He couldn’t free you without cutting away your kit. Don’t try to sit up. Your collarbone.

  Byrne lay back on the furs.

  —You’ll have to stay here for a while, the woman said.

  —Where am I?

  —This is Jasper.

  5

  His fall.

  They had unroped minutes before, at Professor Collie’s insistence. The ice was bare of snow and unsafe for roped travel: one man’s mishap would bring the others down with him. The guide had argued with him over that decision, but Collie’s word was final. Trask had been hired in Banff to lead the expedition as far as his knowledge of the terrain surpassed the professor’s, and to him the glacier was unknown territory. This was Collie’s domain.

  Once free of the rope, they started up through the labyrinth of crevasses and snowbridges at the base of the first icefall.

  They skirted the edge of a narrow chasm. Byrne stepped up close, intrigued by the rippled bands of ice along the rim of the crevasse. Frozen waves. A faint childhood memory came to him, a fairy-tale sea from one of his mother’s stories. There had been a picture of waves like this in the book she read to him in bed at night. He took off his green-tinted snow goggles for a better look. The ice was aquamarine, deepening further down to blue-black.

  He looked up, glanced around. Collie and the others were already well ahead of him. And Trask was several yards behind, taking slow, careful steps, his head down.

  Byrne inched closer to the crevasse. He knew it was foolish even as he did it, but the wet cold seemed to have numbed his good sense along with his fingers and toes. Planting one foot behind him, he slid the other cautiously to the edge. He leaned forward, extended his arms for balance like a man on a high wire. He bent from the waist, craning his neck, and then his forward leg gave way.

  He could not remember falling, but suddenly he was in darkness, meltwater splattering over him. He felt icy rivulets of water slide upward from his neck to his face and into his hair, and after a dazed moment he realized he was hanging upside down.

  He felt no pain, not in those first moments. Distant shouts reached him from above, but when he tried to answer, the ice wall slapped his voice back at him, flat and dead.

  6

  The woman was gone. He was alone in the cabin. He drifted between sleep and wakefulness, jolted awake often by his arms or legs jerking, as if to ward off a blow or escape some unseen danger. In these moments it seemed to him that the different regions of his body lay at an immense distance from one another.

  He remembered the woman saying she would fetch Collie and the others. He was confused by this, thinking that they were still on the glacier and that she would have to climb up after them. Then her words came back to him. This is Jasper. He was in a cabin. They had carried him off the ice and brought him to this place.

  He closed his eyes and remembered the dead gloom of the crevasse. And then the ice creaking and groaning as it flooded slowly with light.

  7

  He knew that the sun must have broken through the swath of cloud hanging over the glacier. Somehow its light had found a way into the depths of the crevasse. The ice wall in front of him became lit with a pale blue-green radiance.

  At first he felt only anger, at himself and the others. Far above him, Professor Collie, Stutfield, Thompson, Trask, would be welcoming the sunshine while it lasted, unwinding the scarves from around their necks, taking off their thick gloves, glorying in that sudden benediction of light. A rest from the dull overcast sky and the stinging crystalline shards streaming off the névé. And while they sunned themselves he was trapped here because of his own stupidity, upside down, freezing to death.

  He struggled to move, to turn his head and shout upward. Still he felt no pain. Nothing, and then horror. I’ve broken my neck.

  He moved his arm. His legs. They still obeyed him. It was the cold that was numbing him, and the shock of his fall. His spine was not broken. The others would find him. They would free him, and he would have a wonder to report to Collie. A hitherto unknown periscopic property of glacial ice.

  He stared straight ahead and realized he could see quite far into the ice. It was almost free of impurities, like a wall of furrowed, tinted glass. He squinted. There was something in the ice, a shape, its outline sharpening as the light grew. A fused mass of trapped air bubbles, or a vein of snow, had formed a chance design, a white form embedded within the darker ice and revealed by the light of the sun.

  A pale human figure, with wings.

  The white figure lay on its side, the head turned away from him. Its huge wings were spread wide, one of them cracked obliquely near the tip, the broken pinions slightly detached.

  One arm was also visible, outstretched, in the semblance of some gesture that Byrne felt he had seen before, but could not interpret. A remembered sculpture, or one of Blake’s hovering, pitying spirits.

  The shape gleamed wetly, like fine porcelain or delicately veined marble.

  Byrne groped for his notebook but found he could not reach around to the side pocket of his rucksack. His other arm was stuck fast, dead. He struggled, gasping against the pressure on his chest that would not allow him to fill his lungs. Pain awoke, tearing through his neck and should
er.

  I’m alive.

  He held himself still, clamped his jaw against a rising scream. He was suddenly aware that any movement could send him plummeting deeper into the crevasse.

  8

  He was thirsty.

  He scraped at the ice wall with his one free hand, pressed his fingers to it until he felt them burn, then held them in his mouth.

  His head and chest pounded with a dull throb of pain that he realized was his own heartbeat. He had to think, keep his mind working and alert. What would the orientation of this artifact be if he were not looking at it upside down? Had it fallen from above? Or seeped in from below? Did the ice encasing it cause a magnifying effect? It seemed to be very large. Large enough, if it suddenly stirred to life and flowed toward him through the ice, to surround and enfold him with its wings.

  He closed his eyes. When he looked again, the light had faded. The ice wall was blank.

  He laughed. It was absurd. A magnificent, impossible figure from a long-forgotten childhood dream.

  9

  How long have I been here?

  Minutes, or hours. There was no way to tell. The pain had sunk and contracted into a jagged stone in the middle of his chest. When he moved his jaw he heard the skin of ice on his neck cracking. He argued with himself, reasoning against the desire to sleep, against the insane thought that he had been wedged in this crevasse for centuries. Freezing into absolute stillness, his thoughts crystallized around one idea. He moved an arm, fumbled at his coat for his pocket watch.

  He had to know the time.

  Time was the one constant. It did not change or freeze into immobility. Time would go on and so would he.

  Do I have the watch in my hand? He could not be sure. His fingers were numb.

  Perhaps it did not matter. He closed his eyes.