Farthest South & Other Stories

by Ethan Rutherford

  Two miles a day over the ice, then break, then pen the dogs, then set up camp. Then eat, sleep, wake, roll up the tents, pack everything into the sledges, count the dogs, count the children, sight the route, mark the journal, pray for holding weather, head down, walk.

  The children set up soccer pitches when they can, and under the low, gray sky kick around a ball made of frozen socks.

  At night, my grandfather feeds the dogs Norse fish from tins, heats food for the children; he tells them stories of brave men and heroic sled dogs on the ice; and then, as they settle in—as the Primus stove is extinguished, and the light goes soft—Franklin stands to his full height and opens his black beak to the top of the tent to sing gently to the tired group. Some of the children join in with their sweet voices, a boys’ choir falsetto, delicate and true if a little quavery. But most only mouth words until the melody lulls them to sleep, where in dream each is visited by his favorite dog from the pack.

  “I didn’t know you could sing like that,” my grandfather whispers.

  “You never asked,” says Franklin shyly.

  Later, in their tent, my grandfather admits he’s worried about the pace they’ve established, the resilience of the children, the supplies they are towing, the increasing wind, the plunging cold, the dimming sun, and the fact that he still can’t tell one child from another.

  “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow,” Franklin says and pats his hand. “It only empties today of its strength.”

  ONWARD THEY WALK, carving a straight line across the ineffable ice. Hours, days. They haul sledges up snowdrifts and skid down furrows, traverse glass ice and black ice, trek through a low red fog that hounds them for miles. They circumvent pressure ridges, narrowly escape sliding into a crevasse. They brace themselves against the cold and the wind, admire the view, stomp their feet to encourage circulation.

  Expeditions have good days and bad days. These days have been good. This continent is a blank canvas, thinks my grandfather, and we are its slow painters.

  At rest, Franklin conducts blister inspections on the children, oohing and aaahing; he asks them to be brave for his lancing, and rewards each with a small lump of sugar. They are trying to be resilient; they are doing their best. But before bed, when my grandfather reads aloud from his own book, Franklin sees exhaustion and boredom and frustration on their small faces, and now and then glimpses genuine fear.

  “Exploration,” my grandfather says warmly as he shuts the book, “is the crucible of the human imagination.”

  “And into notational night we go,” Franklin says, lowering the lamps. “Good night, little seals.”

  The children answer, a quiet chorus, and Franklin and my grandfather bow through the flaps of their tent. The dogs sleep. There is no wind, no snow, and the sky is like an artist’s rendition of sky, alive with brushed light. This will not last, my grandfather thinks.

  “We never expected it to,” Franklin says.

  THAT NIGHT, THOUGH my grandfather’s sleep has become less troubled, the heads do find him. They bob above the barrier ice like glowing, floating apples, each face deprived of oxygen, each cheek sunk. They file in, deep blue with black eyes, circle his bed, gather themselves in the corner of his tent. He pulls his sleeping bag over his head. In the darkness, he wills himself to feel gratitude; that is what they are here for. He tries to push this feeling into the room, wishes to say there is nothing here but love, but that is not what he feels. What he feels is terror, and he cannot speak. “Do you know where you are?” one of them asks. He will not answer.

  When he wakes from these corridors he is shaking and shivering, covered in sweat, and there is no one for him to recognize, for the room is dark and empty. He listens for a sound that will tell him where he is. He hears the squeak of hospital shoes and whispered voices, some distant laughter.

  He closes his eyes, opens them again. Franklin sleeps next to him now, he can see him in the dark, standing with his beak tucked low on his chest, his eyes firmly shut and dreaming, no doubt, of small fish darting through the flashing deep.

  THE WEATHER TURNS, and the cold gets worse, the climb harder, the daily drudgery of an expedition such as this more numbing and rote. They make three nautical miles a day, but the parties move at a different pace, and the children are sluggish. As they close in on the pressure ridge that abuts the St. Edwards Range, my grandfather grows worried, for even from ten miles out he can see that it will be a climb like no other.

  The less said about the weather, he writes that night in his journal, the better. The fog has cleared, but the cold has gripped. His breath frosts the paper, the pencil will not bite. He thaws the page with a close-held match he has trouble lighting.

  The children have started to understand how this expedition will go. They take to hiding in their sleeping bags in the morning, they drag their feet. All but one has begun to complain about the food. All but one is slow to roll his gear and secure it on the sledge. And this one boy, my grandfather is pleased to see, is Hjalmar.

  Hjalmar is not much of a puller. He is wanly complected, with pallid cheeks, delicate eyes. The other children don’t like him. But he has shown a keen interest in navigation, and an exuberance for sighting that my grandfather feels should be encouraged. “Come, Hjalmar,” he says, when they’ve stopped to repair one of the sled runners. He hands Hjalmar the navigation pouch, and the two of them trudge in snowshoes a quarter mile away from the group. “We are ten thousand feet above sea level,” my grandfather says as they walk. He knows it’s important to be impartial, and not to give preferential treatment to anyone in the traveling party, but he’s become fond of this boy, and worries what will happen to him if left too much alone. At the camp, Franklin hammers away, tireless and cheerful, realigning and repairing the sledge while the other children stand around, expressing boredom.

  “Those are the Queen Maud Mountains,” my grandfather says, and points. “And beyond that, you’ll find the King Edward Plateau.”

  It is while he is sighting the horizon with Hjalmar that a cry goes up from the camp. Franklin is signaling to them, and, once he has their attention, points frantically. The children have spotted something due south. When my grandfather looks through his binoculars, he sees what seems to be a cairn of some kind. It’s nestled within a gentle slope of snow that makes it nearly invisible against the ice.

  “Not good,” Franklin says, when my grandfather returns. He’s nervously flicking his toes against ice.

  “They’ve seen it,” my grandfather says. “We have no choice.”

  THE CHILDREN WORK IN PAIRS to shovel through the drift, and soon they have cleared a path to what seems to be a tent from long ago. My grandfather chips the ice from the tent’s frozen flaps, inhales deeply, then peels them wide for all to see.

  The children gasp. It’s as though he’s drawn the curtain on a diorama in a natural science museum. Three men in fur hats sit frozen around an ancient stove facing one another. Their emaciated faces are deep brown, their eyes closed and sunk in the sockets. An open journal rests in one of their laps. The scene is oddly tranquil—they look comfortable, at peace. There is no smell. But it is impossible not to see the heap of bones stacked on one of their cots.

  Franklin coughs and begins ushering the children out of the tent. “Those are chicken bones,” he says, laughing nervously. “Imagine having chickens all the way out here!”

  The children are perplexed. “Who are these shriveled people?” one of them asks. “Brave explorers,” my grandfather intones. “Friends of mine.” Carefully, he steps across the tent and pulls the journal from the lap of one of the frozen men. After he has read to his satisfaction, he turns to address his own party. “They did not find the pole,” he says. “This,” he gestures to the tent, “is as far as they got. They ran out of food. They grew weak. They gave up.” The children say nothing. They look at one another and shuffle their feet. “This is good news,” he says.

  They close up the ancient tent and leave it to the
weather. The sledge is repaired, the dogs are eager to move, and Franklin has gone silent. On the horizon, a mountain range stretches, brown and iceless, across their path. They should see the rookery as soon as they reach King Edward Plateau. Half a mile behind, the children hum and kick ice clods as they trundle along.

  Friends, my grandfather is thinking. Friends. Now, as they walk, he finds himself lost in a strange sort of reverie. Each foothold is like a mark across his brain; his veins run warm; it feels as though he’s weightless. A new pain begins at the base of his skull and braids around his chest. The ice pulls away from his feet; there’s a plunge, and it’s as though he’s sliding down a chute into one of the earth’s dark, endless fissures. There he sees his children, small, pulling for air, then growing; they are sullen, indifferent to him; he sees them with children of their own, images that flash by like a deck of shuffled cards. He takes another step, and then another. He sees his wife, Eva, and calls for her. The cold has crisped his throat; no sound.

  He’d said nothing to her of his plans before he’d left. Her complaint was always that he preferred the ice to her, and though it’s not true, he could never correct her in a way that settled the issue.

  She is a face carved into the brown range in front of them, now. She is in the low clouds. She is leaning over him, touching his cheek; she is old, he is the cause of her sorrow; she is small in this impersonal room of theirs; she turns from him, crosses the bright, tiled floor; she closes the curtains and then she is gone. He has always been the cause of her sorrow. He regrets that now.

  EXCELLENT DAY, BEAUTIFUL DAY. They make eight nautical miles and camp themselves on the other side of the range. The mountains are imposing, but my grandfather suspects that they will have less trouble once they pull over the ice ridges that smooth into the plateau than they have had on the journey so far. They are steep mountains, glacially cut, and they are pleasantly disorienting to see up close. All of the children know how to ski and, after setting up camp, take to the slopes with abandon. Franklin delights everyone by waddling halfway up a gentle slope, whooping like a crane, and turning to luge down on his belly.

  That night in the tent, the children put on a play. They’ve dressed the dogs as seals and use an overturned sledge as their ship. Everyone laughs, and there is a heroic swell, a moment of doubt, a great drift, and then finally vindication, a safe transport home, a hero’s parade. My grandfather is deeply touched. In the third act, Hjalmar stands suddenly, and begins a rendition of Ja, vi elsker dette landet. His fragile voice pushes beyond the tent and out on to the ice, through the sifting fog, back to their ship. The other children have forgotten their lines, but join him in the refrain: Yes, we love this country / As it rises forth / Love it and think of our father and mother / And the saga-night that lays / Dreams upon our earth.

  When he’s finished, there is a deep and long quiet.

  “I’ve never heard that before,” Franklin says. “Bravo.”

  “Hjalmar,” says my grandfather. “You have an astonishing voice. And a long, distinguished career on the stage ahead of you.”

  Hjalmar nods, a blush beginning at his ears. All the other children stand and bow. A reading that afternoon placed them at 87° 40’ S. The play is complete.

  IN THE MORNING, they trudge and trundle over rock and ice, sledges clattering, sending up shouts of alarm. Finally, the range flattens and the party quiets down, but still threat and danger lurk everywhere, and this leg … feels different. Crevasses open up in front of them and drop three hundred feet into glacial caves. Nesting terns call sharply from the bare mountain walls. “Is that a warning?” the children ask. “An omen?”

  “No,” Franklin replies. “Those are just stupid birds.”

  They come out the other side, but it’s taken three days and they are not intact: blisters have become infected, lethargy is sinking in, there are rumblings of wanting to return home. The children’s goggles fog, their hats are too tight. Their gloves, once wet, won’t dry. Stop complaining, my grandfather wants to shout, but he knows that will get him nowhere.

  They set up camp on the southern edge of the range and pen the dogs. As the food heats up, Franklin pulls my grandfather aside and asks him to acknowledge what they both know is approaching but have not mentioned: that every day the sun sinks lower and lower in the sky, and the stars have emerged more brightly visible; a true dusk is settling, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to note where the white of the horizon meets the white of the sky. What this means is that no matter my grandfather’s careful calculations, no matter his long preparation, polar night is upon them. “We should be farther along,” he says. “I don’t know what happened to the days.”

  “We’ll make do,” Franklin says, but my grandfather can hear weariness and resignation in his voice. “Blackest night, blackest night, light, light, light,” he clucks, and totters off to tell the children.

  That evening, a cold and unforgiving storm comes over the ice like an avenging angel and pins them where they are for three weeks.

  THEY DO WHAT THEY MUST, given the time of year and the storm: construct a winter depot that will shelter them at the base of the range. While they work, a blizzard wipes clean all visibility. The wind is ferocious and pelting; it stings like needles on exposed skin.

  The dogs, restless, begin yipping and yelping in a worrisome way. The children suggest making a more permanent shelter for them, so they can be warm, and happy, and against my grandfather’s objections, a vote passes, and the children set about making a second depot. They manage it, but just barely.

  The next bout of weather seems to come from the pit of the earth; it announces itself with a howl and circles the ice like punishment from the gods. The temperature drops. The snow pushes against the depot walls in steep drifts.

  The children are frightened. There is nothing to say. A mistake has been made; they should be home by now. But whose mistake was it?

  “Disaster, starvation, otherworldly endurance, the crumpling of the will, snow blindness, frostbite,” Franklin says, later, in their tent. “I can feel it all coming.”

  “I know,” my grandfather says. “I can feel it too.” He reaches for his penguin friend and gives his sloping shoulder a gentle squeeze. “This climate is unbearably cruel. There’s nothing we could’ve done.” He takes a long drink of brandy, then another. The lamp is lowered. My grandfather is exhausted. He can feel his black mood returning.

  Outside the depot it is –67 degrees. To not achieve the Pole before the change of the season is devastating to the expedition, but the journey will have to be halted. A small mercy: that evening, the wind abates, quiets, abandons them completely.

  COOPED UP, THE CHILDREN MOPE, circle, they exclude. They’re listless and fatalistic. No stories get through to them. No calls for a stiff upper lip, no tales of endurance ring true, they’ve turned inward. There are no songs that Franklin can sing to get them roused to the clean and clear schedule that must be kept during these long and disciplined and dark days.

  They will not wash. They refuse to exercise. “Your toes will blacken and fall off!” Franklin pleads with them. “Cuts on fingers will infect and transform into brain-frying fevers. We will have to amputate your feet if you don’t move!” This gets the children to shuffle around the depot, but they make faces the entire time. In the mornings, they slink from one corner to the next. In the evenings, they sing a song they’ve made up called “Oh the Tedium, Oh the Monotony, the Betrayal Has Been Great.”

  What’s the matter with you children? my grandfather would like to scream. I’m the one who’s sick. He stands. He opens his mouth to say something but decides against it. Hjalmar sits with his head in his hands, eager for all of this to be over. The children say nothing. They set their little faces in angry scowls.

  In one of their evening plays, a large polar bear swims across the North Sea to lay waste to an unsuspecting village. In another, a heavy cloud rains a wall of knives. “Every awful thing that has happened is your fa
ult,” the children say to my grandfather. He closes his eyes and pretends not to hear. It hasn’t escaped his notice that Hjalmar isn’t participating in these productions, and when they get to the final play of the night he understands why. This one is called “Hjalmar’s Lament.” It’s the story of a young boy, who has neither mother nor father, asking everyone he meets for help. He is forsaken, and shivers; he is the lowest of the low. Finally, a baker sets upon him with a rolling pin and leaves him beaten in the street.

  MONTHS PASS. Outside the depot’s door, the night is thick and unending, black with no texture, the absence of light.

  “We’d hoped to avoid this,” Franklin says. “How we had hoped.”

  The food they’ve brought with them is dwindling, and what hasn’t spoiled already will certainly do so soon. Everyone is hungry. Their supplies will not make it to spring. The children talk of soaking their harness straps until the leather is soft enough to eat; they consider their boots, their socks.

  Franklin is unhappy and quiet, because he knows what happens next. My grandfather is saddened by the prospect, for he has become fond of the dogs as well.

  “Someone has to do it,” Franklin whispers when everyone is pretending to sleep. “It’s why we brought them in the first place.”

  No one will help him. No one will even hand my grandfather a knife. He sets off with creaky bones for the second depot and returns with enough gamey meat to last another month if rationed correctly. The children are silent and unforgiving. They eat the meat. They cough and cry, but not a single child refuses. The difficult is what takes a little time, thinks my grandfather. They avoid eye contact and sleep as far away from him as possible.

  “You can’t feel badly at this point,” Franklin whispers.

  My grandfather doesn’t answer. He is looking darkly at the ceiling. Those dogs were the sweetest creatures, so easy to love. They licked his hand; they had no complaints. So much of his life has been spent heading in a single direction, and it’s brought him here. He can feel his own brain dimming. Where is he going? What is it he sees? With a cough he returns.