Farthest South & Other Stories

by Ethan Rutherford

  “I said, they’re angry, but it’s not your fault,” murmurs Franklin. He sees there is blood on my grandfather’s chin. Delicately, as though handling a child, he dabs it off. He notices that my grandfather is avoiding looking at something in the southern corner of the depot but cannot see or imagine what it might be.

  A STILLNESS—A COLLECTIVE FUGUE—settles over the group. Within another month Franklin is amputating frostbitten feet and hands. The bandaged children hop around, confused and furious. Their songs lose their melody, become deep guttural chants. After my grandfather lowers the lamp each night, there is a shush of masturbation that comes from the heap of sleeping bags before each child falls into troubled dreams.

  The expedition turns its corner. The children lash out at one another; they become cruel. They catalog the failings of their friends, of Franklin, of my grandfather. They’ve taken to taunting the remaining dogs.

  Why is this happening to us? Why did you bring us here? Why did you do this to us? Why? the children cry out. My grandfather knows they will wait forever for an answer. But soon they quiet; they stop asking and my grandfather is too tired to give the question the consideration it deserves.

  “THEY’RE GETTING OLDER,” Franklin says one night as he and my grandfather are walking the perimeter of their camp. They are taking measurements of the ice. “They’re not quite themselves.”

  “It’s not just that,” my grandfather says. His energy has left him, his throat is raw. His stinging eyes won’t stop watering. It’s all he can do to stay standing on the ice, to not lay his head down and go to sleep. “They are terrible children. They’re plucking your feathers while you sleep.”

  “I know,” says Franklin, rubbing his back.

  Above them, the dark sky is pricked with starlight. It unfurls like a sail and covers them completely. It feels as though they have truly found the end of the world. “It’s beautiful,” Franklin says. As they watch, a curtain of light, green and blue, is drawn across the southern sky. It shimmers, and bends; it points to some larger mystery; it moves as though responding to music neither of them can hear. To the questions of why one leaves the comfort of home to traverse such an inhospitable landscape, one answer might be this, the very thing they are witnessing.

  “At moments such as these,” my grandfather says, reciting from memory, “a man may feel as though he is at the bottom of some great and deep ocean, gazing up through the depths to the peaceful surface and the silent, folding waves.” He coughs. “Let’s just stay here a little longer.”

  Franklin, looking up, can think of nothing to say.

  WHEN THEY GET BACK to the depot, the door is tied shut from the outside. Inside, they see only Hjalmar. He’s sitting near the stove, with his knees pulled to his chest, crying softly into his elbow. “They left,” he says. “They took the rest of the dogs.”

  The depot has been emptied. All the sleeping bags are gone. Half the biscuits. Most of the dog meat, one or two maps, though my grandfather with relief sees his navigation bag still hooked above the worktable.

  “I wanted to go with them,” Hjalmar says. “But they wouldn’t let me.”

  “You should’ve insisted,” my grandfather says. His ears are ringing with heat. He takes off his coat and goes to lie down near the stove. Franklin brings a blanket to cover him. “Oh,” he says, when he checks my grandfather’s forehead.

  My grandfather can feel his pulse pushing all rational thought into small, winding rivers behind his eyes. This fever … it’s a bright one. Hjalmar begins to fret. He brings my grandfather tea, brings him his book, tries to get him to take some pills that look like raisins. He stands and pulls my grandfather’s navigation pouch from the wall and begins listing and cataloging its contents.

  “Let him sleep,” Franklin says.

  “His gums are bleeding,” Hjalmar whispers. “I know,” is the reply. “It’s not good.”

  Leave me alone, my grandfather thinks. He closes his eyes and tries to send his mind to the back of his skull. Here’s the order of the expedition, he thinks. After the mountains, an inland lake. A large bird. A winter depot. A rookery. The pole.

  “We’re at the winter depot now,” says Hjalmar softly, applying pressure to the bridge of my grandfather’s nose.

  “Right,” my grandfather says. “Of course.” He is having trouble feeling his legs. He thinks: my ship, my dogs, the children. “They will surely perish,” he finally says. The thought brings him no sadness whatsoever.

  HIS FEVERED MIND opens its letters. He’s back aboard his first ship, a young captain, nervous, waking early to see the ocean, dark blue and leaden and still, achieve its creased texture under a swift-rising sun. He glides like a tern over a crevasse that opens at the base of a volcanic Mount Erebus. Now he is gripping hands with Frederick Jackson, and Frederick is saying hull, salmon, sledge, good luck, good luck, good luck.

  Darkness. Then, in a large lecture hall, he listens as the speaker at the podium raises his elegant, bearded chin to the quieting crowd. “Our clothing,” the man begins, “was made from sealskin, reindeer skin, wolf skin, Burberry cloth, and gabardine. Our sledges carved from Norwegian ash, with steel-shod runners made from American hickory.”

  Sitting in that great hall, he is filled with admiration and jealousy. He leans forward to hear more, but his mind is pinwheeling now and won’t cooperate, and suddenly he is home, in Svalbard, it is Christmas, and his older cousin is visiting. They are young, which is why they are sharing his bedroom. His older cousin has removed his pants and is making lewd gestures. My grandfather knows what is coming next, he has never forgotten it. He can hear his parents talking in the next room. They are speaking of his loneliness, his strangeness, and his penchant for solitude and self-pity. Why is no one helping that boy? he wonders.

  “Yes?” the speaker says.

  Every face in the lecture hall turns toward him. There is a deep and resonant silence. But my grandfather has caught himself up. He’s seen too late that the speaker has no body. He is only a floating head.

  “Not today,” my grandfather says. “Forgive the interruption.”

  When he wakes, it is evident to him that some time has passed. He can’t move his head. Above him he sees a scudding cloud. Things smell white and clean, and he can hear the crunch of footsteps on snow. It’s bright, and he must close his eyes to the streaming sun. “How long have I been sick?” he asks. Franklin and Hjalmar, who are pulling the sledge that my grandfather is strapped to, almost fall over from surprise at the sound of his voice.

  “Two months almost!” Hjalmar exclaims. “I can’t believe it.”

  “A miracle,” says Franklin. They’ve both got their harnesses off and are peering down at my grandfather, who is trying to stand.

  “Franklin wouldn’t leave your side,” says Hjalmar. “He just sat there, feeding you apples and blueberries all mashed up.”

  “You would’ve done the same,” Franklin says.

  Hjalmar tells him they’re fifty nautical miles away from the pole, and that they’ve already passed Mount Helmer Hanssen. They’d already spotted, in the distance, the children who had peeled off from their expedition with the dogs.

  “All dead,” says Hjalmar, sadly.

  “What about the rookery?” my grandfather asks.

  Franklin tears up. “Gone, gone,” he says, picking up his harness. “It’s not how I remember.” Hjalmar adjusts his hood. “We kept walking. There was nothing else to be done. We should go and set up the tent.”

  “I’d like to see,” my grandfather says, and, working together, they unclasp his restraints, unzip his blanket, and prop him up on the sledge. The ice stretches and bends to the horizon. It’s reflective: in it he can see the quick-forming clouds. To the north stretches the Queen Maude Range, and beyond that the barrier ice, and beyond that his ship. What else, what else? He’s too tired now to keep his eyes open. But they see, they see … he doesn’t know what it is, at first. “Franklin,” he says, and reaches for the binoculars,
and raises them. Settled, sighted, a round view, and he sees it’s one of the dogs, bounding happily toward their small group across the ice. He approaches with his black tongue hanging out, panting loudly in the cold air. His eyes are like beautiful blue marbles. The snow has begun to flour his fur. “Where are your brothers?” my grandfather says. “And where is your sister?”

  “Right here,” says the dog. And then Franklin disappears, and then Hjalmar, and the world is without color, and then without any sound. When he wakes again, there are flowers on the windowsill. And when he wakes again, they are gone.

  FAMILY, HAPPINESS

  THE MAN AND WOMAN were younger then, and one morning they sat together by the pond. Between them, on a towel, was the baby, a boy. The plan had been to take him swimming. But for now, he lay on his back, between them, while they discussed other things. He was their child, but that’s not how it felt to the man. It was more like he wasn’t not theirs.

  The man held out his finger and waved it in front of the baby’s face. The baby’s small hand reached up and grabbed it. Did you see that? the man said. He brought it right to his mouth.

  He does that, the woman said. She held her head in her hands and didn’t look.

  Right to his mouth! the man said. I think he’s hungry.

  No, the woman said. He just does that.

  They had both dreamed of this morning, and here it was.

  IT WAS MID-SUMMER. They’d been told no one else would be at the pond, and that was indeed how things had turned out. In fact, they hadn’t seen anyone else for days, since this was the vacation they’d planned. They’d parked and walked a quarter mile from the road through the forest before the pond became visible.

  What was happening was the baby wasn’t taking the breast. All night he screamed and screamed.

  Now he seemed content, however, to be on his back on the blanket.

  Happy to watch the low clouds shift slowly above him.

  I’M ALONE HERE, the woman said. I feel alone. And I shouldn’t be.

  I know, the man said.

  He pushed his palms together.

  We will never be done with this, she said.

  This! he wanted to say. But he knew what she meant.

  His eyes were burning. He felt like he hadn’t slept in years.

  But he also knew that whatever he was feeling, she was feeling worse.

  EVENTUALLY THE SUN BROKE THROUGH the clouds. In the distance, the light became like solid columns connecting the land and sky. God’s fingers, her mother had called them. Focus, she’d said when they appeared, and the woman said the same thing now, quietly, focus. She stood and shucked her shorts.

  She gingerly pulled her shirt over her head. Her nipples were cracked and angry.

  Maybe this pond isn’t good for swimming, the man said.

  But she was looking off into the near distance and didn’t answer.

  The baby had found his feet and clung to them.

  That’s new, the man said.

  She reached for the baby and brought him to her.

  Do you want me to come? the man said.

  No, she said.

  Do you want me to take a picture? he said. But she didn’t answer.

  THE POND WAS THICKLY RINGED by tall grass. The water dark and still. She was nude and held the baby gently in front of her. There was no one but the man to see them as she walked slowly over the grass to the edge of the water.

  She held him away from her own body as though he were himself coming apart.

  The man knew he should be walking with her, to the pond. But he also knew it was something he did not want to do. He reached for the camera then put it down. He’d become angry and was waiting for someone to notice.

  Husband and wife, he was thinking. Mother and father.

  ALL OF THE GRANDPARENTS were dead and none of them had met the baby. None could offer help. But they did walk as ghosts. Sometimes they were welcomed, and sometimes they were shunned.

  Try harder, one of them had said in the nursery. It should be beautiful, and easy.

  Shhhhhh, another had said.

  SHE HELD THE BABY by his arms now and dipped his feet in the water. He let out a small cry. She lowered him further, up to his chubby knees, and he calmed. She waded deeper, to her own knees, to her waist, to her chest, where she held the baby and the forest went silent.

  The baby had a look on his face that said, this is interesting.

  Suddenly a small red bird landed on the pond’s bank. Little one, little one, what do you see? he sang.

  NO ONE MOVED. FINALLY, the baby, their baby, now submerged up to his small concave chest, opened his mouth and began to answer. The sound was like a gathering of wind, a language now forming and wholly his. The day stopped. The columns of light held their shape. The pond grew large and the water clear. They had all the time in the world. There was no pleasure as pure as the sensation at hand, no pleasure as sweet as being held by his mother and watched by his father, and the sound he made moved toward them and through them until they understood that it filled the clearing and had come from themselves.

  Little one, little one, what do you see? the bird called again.

  And they waited for an echo.

  THE DIVER

  ONE MORE, ONE MORE. And let’s begin like this: first there was an earthquake; then there came a giant wave … but of the wave itself, the boys heard and remembered nothing. They’d been asleep, and when they woke and looked out their bedroom window, they saw their world had filled with water. It seemed impossible that the sea had risen this far inland, but that’s the way it was. The water was dark and sludgy, thick with debris. It had moved through their neighborhood in the middle of the night like some slow, obscure beast who’d unhinged its jaw and quietly swallowed up everything they had ever known.

  They climbed up to the attic and scrambled onto the roof of their house. Still water stretched everywhere, as far as they could see. Most of the houses in their neighborhood were nearly submerged, their windows dark. Everything was deserted, everyone gone. They heard no sirens. No parents called for their children. A tremendous quiet lay over the land. Night fell. In the distance, they saw fires push orange heat into the dark sky. Where were their parents? The boys didn’t know.

  On the second day, they watched a flotilla of fire ants blanket by. On the third day, the sky filled with silent birds. On the fourth day, they woke to find an empty canoe turning in slow circles just outside their window, and they lowered themselves down and climbed in. They paddled through their water-sunk streets calling for their friends. They called the names of their parents and teachers and coaches, but no one replied.

  Why had this happened? And why to them? At first, they were sad, but then, with great effort, they stopped feeling that way. The world was new, that was the only way to look at it.

  Mornings, they ate quietly in the attic before mapping out their days. They paddled farther and farther from their home. When the sun went down, it felt as though they were floating through a dark, flooded cave; the only sound that came to them was the kiss of their paddles stirring the water. Every so often an unusual ripple pushed toward the canoe, or they heard a shallow splash as if a fish had jumped, giving them the distinct feeling they were being watched and followed. But each time they turned toward the sound they saw only their own flat wake licking eerily away from them.

  Every night, they returned to the attic, climbed into their shared bed, and listened to the quiet world outside until they fell asleep. They didn’t want to be alone, but clearly were; the town was flooded, everyone had forgotten about them. And they knew that the sooner they accepted that, the happier they’d be.

  “BUT OF COURSE they hadn’t been forgotten,” Soren said, and held up his hands. His two boys sat still in their beds. They had complained about putting on their pajamas, and brushing their teeth, how it was dark outside but not that dark, but now, in the yellow lamp light of their shared bedroom, they’d gone quiet with anticipation. “And t
hey were being watched,” Soren continued. “For the splashes they heard while they were paddling came from Old Gr’mer. He’d come in on the wave and was, in many ways, responsible for it.”

  Soren shifted his weight at the foot of the younger boy’s bed as they leaned closer. The boys hated to hear about Old Gr’mer, but they loved him too. He’d come to them in a dream, and as far as Soren could tell from the pictures they’d drawn and shown him, he was some sort of red squid the size of a bus. His black beak chomped relentlessly even when he was not eating. He was evil, shifty, a plain fact of the world; but he was also lonely in the deep, and so with his many tentacles, he held the souls of drowned people to keep him company in the abyssal plain he called home. But now and then he rode in on tsunami waves, which was something the boys had been learning about in school. Where they’d gotten the idea of a soul collector, Soren had no idea.

  “But don’t worry,” Soren added. “They don’t encounter him yet. Because that was the night, when they were about to give up, that they met the Diver.”

  “Did they see his light?” the younger boy asked.

  “It hung in front of him like a large blue lantern,” Soren said, “and glowed in the depths as he made his way up their street. They watched from their attic window. It was unmistakable. He looked like an angler fish. They knew, immediately, they were no longer alone, and that was something to celebrate.”

  HANA WOULDN’T TELL Diver stories anymore. She thought they were too violent and sad. Soren could hear her now from the bedroom; she was on the phone in the kitchen. She’d spent the day canvassing, which always left her a little depressed. People listened, nodded, said, I know, I know, but no one signed at the door, no one donated money. I’m not asking for much, she’d say. Vote the right people in! Don’t let the planet choke! When she was tired, she’d yell at the boys for leaving lights on when they weren’t in the room, or for wasting water as they brushed their teeth.