Big Dead Place

by Nicholas Johnson

  Men tend to informally size up the situation as early as possible, gauging at the start of a season, whether summer or winter, their chances of getting some. In rough order of increasing potential, the male network determines who is a lesbian, who has a long-term boyfriend, who is married, who has a short-term boyfriend, and who is looking for action. According to those who aren’t getting any, the town is jammed with lesbians. A common resentful appraisal of an overly popular woman is that she is merely “a plane ride away from being ugly.” A more constructive maxim suggests, “Go ugly early.”

  Despite these complications, few men long for the puzzling days when the Navy insisted that women in Antarctica would spoil their grand adventures, as when Richard Byrd suggested that his Antarctic base was “the most peaceful spot in this world, due to the absence of women.” (By the end of his first expedition the crew was on the verge of mutiny.2) Admiral Reedy once called Antarctica “the womanless white continent of peace.” Rear Admiral Dufek said, “I felt the men themselves didn’t want women there. It was a pioneering job. I think the presence of women would wreck the illusion of the frontiersman—the illusion of being a hero.”

  At the end of the season, during Ship Offload, the entire Waste crew was given redeployment dates of around February 19. Margaret wanted to leave earlier to meet her boyfriend in Christchurch. She asked Saul, the full-time Waste manager, if she could leave earlier. He said no, because it is in all cases easier for managers to say no than yes. I told this to Margaret and mentioned to her informally that if she really wanted to leave early she should be persistent, to let Saul know that her desire was not whimsical but important to her. She said she didn’t want to screw us by giving us extra work. “We’re going to work ten-hour days and get everything done whether everyone’s here or not,” I told her. “In exactly two weeks no one is going to give a shit whether it was five people or six people who got everything done. Vacation in New Zealand sounds good, and since everyone else doesn’t want to leave early, there’s no reason you shouldn’t.”

  A few days later I was doing a walk, checking the trash bins around town, when I ran into Margaret in front of Medical doing the other half of the walk.

  “Hey,” I said, “I heard you might be able to leave early? Is that true?”

  “Yes, I wanted to talk to you about that,” she said.

  We halted in front of Medical and stood facing each other, holding our clipboards.

  “I could handle another week of delay,” she said, “but if I had to wait ’til the 19th then there would have to be some changes in the workplace.”

  Uh-oh.

  The previous summer Margaret had come up to the Waste Barn a few times to work with the Waste crew, testing out the waters to see if she would like the job. That summer the crew was tight, we had fun all the time, and our breaktime conversations were always absurd. Margaret was a General Assistant and, like all GAs who are thinking of returning to the ice, was looking to move into a better job. Sizing up the Waste department as a casual and fun-loving crew, void of redneck machismo and intimidating vibes, she sought a position there.

  During that short time she had established her preferred images of herself. Vermont. A desire for fresh organic vegetables. A love of the outdoors, trees, and sunshine. McMurdo is about loud machines that leak oil, and meals of ancient frozen chicken. Where a behemoth ozone hole makes the summer sun a relentless blazing sphere that will sear the eyes and plant tumors in exposed skin. Where most of the outdoors is a restricted area, and where the average lot is ceaseless toil interrupted only by dead sleep or stupefying intoxication.

  Earlier in the summer, while we were clipping boards with a chainsaw, Margaret asked what my favorite children’s book was. I said I liked Kit Williams’ books and the Babar series. I asked what her favorite was.

  “The Giving Tree,” she said.

  I was barely able to contain my horror.

  The Giving Tree is a story of a tree and a boy. When the boy is very young he enjoys climbing in the branches of the tree. The tree is happy that the boy is happy climbing in the tree’s branches. Later the boy no longer climbs the tree, but comes to take the apples from the tree. This makes the tree happy, because the boy is happy when he sells the apples. Finally, the boy slaughters the tree, chops it up, and sells it as timber.

  This makes the tree happy.

  Because the boy is happy.

  The tree sacrifices. The boy profits from the sacrifice.

  The tree represents people. The boy represents other people.

  And the reader awards the dead tree a medal for its service to humanity.

  The Giving Tree is a hideous tale, a blueprint for a society of parasites.

  Now Margaret and I stood in the frigid wind looking at each other through sunglasses on a treeless continent with wooden clipboards in our gloved hands. Margaret told me that the work environment was unacceptable. She pointed out numerous obvious improprieties to me and said that, yes, she was leaving early. She had approached Butch and made it clear that if she couldn’t leave early she would make an issue with HR. She was not angry, and was actually slightly apologetic, as if it were too bad it had come to this.

  By any grab-bag standard, Margaret had a point. Our break conversations were filthy. We swore constantly. I had once explored the intricacies of mating large felines with real estate agents, and accused Butch of molesting me before asking him for a raise. A woman had once surveyed us all on our masturbation habits. There were no creepy advances like the ones in the orientation videos, nor was Margaret implying such, but there were a thousand examples of filthy talk. We were nasty, crude garbage grunts. Though there were five women and three men on the crew, an official investigation would certainly implicate our male supervisor, who was in a convenient position to add some weight to Margaret’s request to leave early.

  On the last day of Mainbody I ran my loader down to MCC, where the final group of summer people was checking in for last flight. The day before, they were reminded to wear their ECW gear, to have their passports ready, and not to show up intoxicated. Dressed to the nines in cold-weather gear and lugging their orange bags, people loaded onto the caravan of vehicles that would transport them to the runway.

  The end of summer is unceremonious. People are working beside you, then suddenly they get on the plane to leave. Next season people would be promoted, or fired, or would change departments, or would not return. Buildings would rise or be torn down. Odd new equipment would be crawling around town. Saying goodbye to Kath and Señor X and Butch and the Hot GA was sad not only because they would be absent, but also because the concoction would never be duplicated even if they returned. The abrupt ending—one day is summer, the next is winter—only aggravated the melancholy.

  As the Terra Bus and the vans and the shuttles drove in a line down the road toward Scott Base, it was a moment of finality, like placing a bet, or like hearing the verdict at the end of a trial.3 My loader idled as I watched the vehicles disappear in the distance; its soothing industrial purr assured me that all this was much different from the early days, when the crews watched as the wooden ships that had dropped them off for the winter sailed over the horizon.

  CHAPTER 5 NOTES

  1 Also known as simply Offload, or Vessel, as in “Does the Galley have any more cajun shrimp left? No, but there’s some coming at Vessel.”

  2 After the booze-fueled near-mutiny of Byrd’s first expedition, he insisted that no liquor be taken on the second expedition, except for medicinal purposes. Thomas C. Poulter, Senior Scientist, was put in charge of Little America I, and noted carefully where the sled of medicinal liquor was stored. As soon as the supply ship left, Poulter hid the liquor in an old disused tunnel behind a wall of snow. A few months into winter, he gave permission for some spiked punch to be served. That night one of the crew was found outside toppled on a snowbank. “Never again,” wrote Poulter in his journal, and by the end of the month, people were “hunting for my liquor cache by probing t
hrough the snow with six foot long steel rods.” Before they could get to it, he moved the liquor from the hidden tunnel to the shack that housed his meteor observation platform. To sate the thirsty mob he authorized another night of spiked punch. Poulter reports that one man passed out in a hole outside, and two others passed out in the dog tunnels, where it was minus 50°F. He decided to dump the liquor. He removed a board from the floor, drilled a hole, and began dumping the liquor into the snow through a funnel. During the procedure he burned wool to mask the odor of 500 bottles of Golden Wedding Whiskey, after which he was left with 500 empty glass bottles. He dug holes in the snow and crushed the bottles in the holes. “A wooden 4x4 worked very well for tamping,” he wrote, as if recording a Standard Operating Procedure. He made sure to refill the top of the holes with lots of snow so that “exploratory digging” would not reveal the evidence. “Charlie Murphy was the only other person in camp that knew about this and it was never told until the movie of the Expedition was released by Paramount Studios after our return. Charlie Murphy wrote the script for that movie and he incorporated the story of the liquor in a conversation between two penguins in the picture.” Meanwhile, the ship’s crew on the New Zealand arm of the expedition was selling the ship supplies. The ship’s cook had borrowed a thousand dollars from New Zealand citizens and then disappeared. “Authorities are hunting him,” wrote Poulter. By May Poulter felt it was obvious that some of the crew had another source of alcohol, because one of the crew became “quite argumentative—to the extent that he is quite a nuisance.” “Wish I knew where their supply was and I would take it,” wrote Poulter, who began to fear that the crew was drinking vanilla extract. “I dumped 13 quarts of vanilla extract tonight,” he wrote at the end of May.—Thomas C. Poulter, Senior Scientist, Little America I, “The Winter Trip to Advance Base: Byrd Antarctic Expedition II 1933-35.” Typed and bound, P.J. Skellerup Antarctic Library, Christchurch, New Zealand.

  3 Someone wearing an alien mask and holding a sign that said “Jordan” stood by the side of the road as the procession went by.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE GRINDER AND THE PROJECTED MAYHEM INDEX

  Their great physical suffering went deeper than their appearance. Their speech was jerky, at times semi-hysterical, almost unintelligible.… These events had rendered these hapless individuals as unlike ordinary human beings as any I have ever met. The Antarctic had given them the full treatment.

  —Captain John King Davis, rescuing the Aurora party at Cape Evans

  My experience is that in general the members of expeditions do not get along very well with each other.

  —Finn Ronne

  THE FIRST INTENTIONAL winter-over expedition in the Antarctic was a private British expedition managed by Norwegian Carsten Borchgrevink in 1899. Before they had even landed on the continent, Borchgrevink notified geomagnetician and physicist Louis Charles Bernacchi, who kept extensive journals, that he considered all crew diaries to be his property. When this was protested, Borchgrevink told the crew that he would allow them their diaries, but that all private notes significant enough to constitute books were his.

  During a summer sledging expedition, camped on shore, they awoke one morning to find that huge waves threatened to carry away their sledges, supplies, dogs, and even the tents they slept in. While the rest of the crew rushed to pack the gear, Borchgrevink ran out of harm’s way to the top of a slope and, after watching them struggle in the waves for a time, called for one of them to bring him a box of biscuits.

  Months passed at their little hut on Cape Adare, cut off from the rest of the world, and by midwinter the spirit of the group had soured. Bernacchi wrote, “Such oppressive feelings is [sic] reigning within our four walls, that everyone looks as if he is half dead. If one of us should try and start some fun [to] enlive[n] the rest, he would be suspected of an attempt to break down the discipline, and under such circumstances the safest thing is to keep as quiet as possible so as not to make the discomfort greater than it is…”

  The crew’s disgust with Borchgrevink climaxed when he read aloud a letter supposedly signed by the expedition sponsor which asserted “That the following things would be considered mutiny: to oppose C.E.B[orchgrevink] or induce others to do so, to speak ill of C.E.B., to ridicule Mr C.E.B. or his work, to try and force C.E.B. to alter contracts etc.” Bernacchi regarded the letter as a forgery; it was written on their ship’s paper.

  On the Queen’s birthday they had a party, after which Borchgrevink told them all that he felt he had not been included in the spirit of celebration. A few weeks later, he dismissed one Colbeck, but said he would reinstate him and destroy evidence of disciplinary action against him if Colbeck admitted “his ingratitude towards him.” Bernacchi wrote in his diary that Colbeck had “always done his duty willingly and to the best of his ability.…As Borchgrevink cannot prove a charge of misconduct or gross insubordination against Colbeck, and according to contract he is compelled to give him three months notice, Colbeck has a very good case of breach of contract.”

  This was the first winter human beings had lived on the continent.

  Of penguins, Bernacchi wrote, “What impressed me greatly was the general appearance of madness prevailing amongst them. They appear to be under the shadow of some great trouble…”

  In July, Borchgrevink went exploring for ten days (says Bernacchi) to three weeks (says Borchgrevink) and returned with a mineral sample of common iron pyrites that he said was worth £50,000 and said that he had discovered gold in such quantity as to indicate a second Klondike.

  As winter turned to summer, the crew zoologist died and was buried. Borchgrevink informed the crew that he had taken possession of the dead man’s private diary. On Christmas, the crew toasted Borchgrevink’s health with empty glasses, so he withheld the Christmas cards that he had made for each of them.

  When the last plane left, I was helping Thom dump a bin of carpet and tile and insulation. It would normally be a solitary task, but today was windy, and there was a lot of insulation in the dumpster, so it was useful to have someone on the ground to scramble for the larger pieces. The last plane buzzed the town and wagged its wings, the pilot telling us to have a good winter. Soon the mountains would sink into darkness and cold stars would appear.

  After a few hours at my normal routine, while I was in a loader retrieving Contaminated Wood from the Carp Shop, I realized that each person I saw would be here at least until the first Winfly plane in August. Six months was not a long time, but I suddenly felt anxious.

  I would be stuck in an outpost with all-you-can-eat desserts and an endless procession of theme parties. A small town where phone numbers are four digits but the budget is nine digits, where everyone had frequent flyer miles and no one had wisdom teeth. A town that courted ambassadors and senators with luxury accommodations in Building 125. A town with disco clothes and high-power microscopes. A town into which people have smuggled goldfish and where a pet snail from a head of lettuce faces execution by government mandate. A town where going outside requires authorization. A town responsible for divorces. A town where corpses have reportedly been stored in the food freezer and where it is illegal to collect rocks.

  This was America, I realized, all in a tight little bundle.

  And there were no more flights out.

  After work that day, we had our first winter All-Hands Meeting. Because these meetings are public events where, if anyone were listening, a murmur theoretically could sweep through the crowd, the warnings are put softly: we are reminded that the sea ice is off-limits this time of year, or that we need to chock the tires when we get out of our vehicles. After the warnings, the muckety-muck thanks the aggravated and workstained mob for all the hard work we’ve done. The work thus far has met great success. But this is a tough time of year. We must continue to look forward. There are challenges ahead.

  The Winter Station Manager, Larry C., renowned as a decent and unbureaucratic papa-like figure, opened the meeting and told us there were
exactly 222 people wintering in McMurdo this year, and there were ten at Scott Base down the road. That’s 232 humans on Ross Island until August, he said.

  He introduced some key personnel and reminded us about some winter-over dangers. Insomnia and depression can occur. Alcohol will not help depression, it will worsen it; so, in order to facilitate a healthier environment, Raytheon Polar Services Company will sponsor more activities without alcohol this winter, so we can “experience ourselves,” he said. Boredom is a problem. Phones, email, and TV have helped, but the routine nature of this environment is bound to give rise to such problems. We could also expect some loss of concentration and memory. This is an unexplained phenomenon of working in the Antarctic, he said.

  All of us knew of the findings of winter-over psychology studies. On the wall in one of the Crary hallways is a tidy professional display of the results of one from 1996. Thom, my workmate, took part in the study. He said they had to periodically answer questions and take pills. Early in the study, the experimenter had told the participants how to determine if their capsules were placebo or not, which they did. At the end of the winter he and the other participants each received a medal for assisting the scientific study.

  As the summer people had left their rooms, we were now free to move into our winter housing. I moved to dorm 207, where my new room smelled like vomit and bloody boogers streaked the wall. Most people moved simultaneously, so we visited each other in our new rooms and drank Steinlagers from warm refrigerators in half-decorated rooms filled with boxes. Ivan and I were suitemates. We kept the bathroom doors open and occasionally darted over to see the progress of the other’s furniture arranging or to help hang posters or dismantle the beds. The skua piles were enormous, because a thousand people had just left, so we squirreled away mounds of crap.