Two
The bullet that had cut through Henry’s parka into his radio might not have entered his chest, but, when he woke the next morning, the pain in that spot was severe enough to make him examine himself with a small mirror. After some agonized probing, he decided the small round red mark had been made by the radio’s antenna post slamming into his skin. Around the spot was an alarmingly large purple bruise. The glow of the morning sun filtering through the orange nylon of his tent didn’t make his wounds look any prettier. He checked the two others and found the one on his arm was already healing but the one on his side was still bleeding. Luckily he still had his medical kit in his main pack, and so he was able to close the wound and bandage it. Finally convinced he had sustained no permanent damage, he got the dogs in order and set off once more towards Scott Base at McMurdo.
He crossed half the remaining distance by mid- morning, and began trying to remember the track he’d taken out of Scott. The power of nine dogs could get him over most obstacles, but, with only four dogs and limited food, he grew more apprehensive with each new wrinkle he saw in the white landscape that loomed before him. Some of the cracks in the ice, while minute compared to the ice shelf as a whole, still presented formidable obstacles to his team. And matters were made even more difficult without the luxury of a lead dog to scout the terrain.
But, as the afternoon wore on, he began to gain confidence that he’d see his friends at Scott by the next morning. It seemed almost as if the dogs knew they were headed home for a little red meat and some R & R. They tucked into the task of pulling the sled like champions, and all he had to worry about was hiking alongside and keeping up with the sled. Twice the team got too far ahead of him and he had to call them back.
But most of the trip was uneventful, if arduous.
To the magnetic south — really slightly to the northeast — of his position he could see the smoking plume of Mount Erebus, a volcanic peak located on a peninsula of its own making at the eastern edge of the Ross Shelf. Pilots look for Erebus as a signpost heralding the approach to Williams Field. At first it seemed so far away that he wondered if he was heading in the wrong direction, but by midafternoon he was confident he was recognizing ice berms and up- thrustings he’d passed on the way out of McMurdo the previous week.
Henry called the place “Lower Alaska” because of the overwhelming American presence there. And it amused him to recall the way most Americans visiting the place were surprised to find out that the Ross Sea and its huge ice shelf are under New Zealand’s jurisdiction; they seemed to think they’d come to National Geographic’s southern amusement park or a hefty US military base established to protect whales, seals and plankton.
He thought about his friends at Scott Base. If he was lucky, Janet would still be there. He tried to remember when her flight out was scheduled. They’d said their goodbyes, but maybe she hadn’t gone yet. While never a ladies’ man, Henry still had a knack for attracting women. His thin six-foot-four-inch frame and prematurely grey hair seemed to draw women to him. But he rarely took advantage of this, particularly since Tess and the kids, ten-year-old Patricia and five-year- old Francis, had died. For whatever reason, when Henry had lost his family he had distanced himself even farther from humanity. Perhaps he didn’t date because it would have felt as if somehow he were cheating on his family, or perhaps he was afraid of ever losing loved ones again.
Janet Petri had asked him out a number of times before he’d consented, and he’d kissed her only once. He’d met her at the airport mess hall in the spring. She’d managed to show up at a dance with a real daisy ring in her auburn hair. He’d said something stupid about his mother being allergic to daisies and she’d said something wonderful. “Are you?” she’d asked with a warm smile.
“Not so far,” was the response Henry was remembering when Shep suddenly howled an alert. Henry halted the team and rushed to the front, bracing his side as he pushed through the snow. Shep was a big grey malamute the meteorologist sometimes called “a pup”, though the dog was more generally described around McMurdo as a monster. But even this enormous dog couldn’t have jumped over the fissure that lay in their path. Henry was astonished at its size. All he could do was stare blankly into the blue-black abyss.
“Where’d your deep ass come from?” he asked in disbelief. As if mocking him, his voice echoed back from deep in the ice.
It must have widened during the past week. No doubt his team had crossed it during the outward journey without even noticing it. He shivered at the thought as he stared down at the crack. The other side was at least a sled and a half’s length away, he reckoned. The malamute whined as it paced nervously at the rim of the crevice. Henry grabbed his binoculars and scanned the distance along the crack in each direction. Whichever way he chose to search for a crossing point looked like a gamble.
“What do you think, dudes and dudettes? Is it eeny or meeny? Your call’s as good as mine.” He patted Shep. “Which way do we go?”
As though taking a cue, Shep bounded off to the right, barking at the other dogs and pulling them along with him. The sled lurched and Henry, swearing from pain, followed along, trying to hold onto it.
They had to go more than a mile before the fissure narrowed enough for Henry and the dogs to cross it. But they managed the crossing without incident, and soon he was once again headed towards McMurdo. At last he caught sight of a plane circling in the distance. He recognized it as an Otter, a light plane rigged for ice landings and takeoffs. “McMurdo comin’ up, you varmints,” he said. “Start putting in your dinner orders.”
It was several hours before Henry and his team could actually see the buildings of the base in the distance. The sun was starting its shallow dip towards the horizon.
By nightfall, with a full moon to light the snow, they finally arrived.
Sam Amunsen and Josh Wallis were outside the Administration building when the weary dog team came to a halt in front of it. Henry limped towards them, out of breath. The two men recognized him immediately.
“Gibbs!” said Josh. “Is that you? What’d you do, eat your dogs?”
Sergeant Josh Wallis was the first person Henry had met when he’d come to Antarctica. He was a lifer who’d grown up in a little backroad town in Mississippi and one of the few blacks stationed permanently at McMurdo. Henry was completely exhausted, and had been for the past two hours, but he’d figured that, this close to home, he might as well continue. It would have taken as much effort to set up camp. He’d rested briefly, eaten the rest of his granola and milk, and made one last big push.
Distances can be deceiving on the ice, and it had taken him much longer than he’d expected to reach the base.
Now he stumbled towards his friends, too weak from exhaustion and loss of blood to say anything. He stood before them for a moment, swaying slightly. When he tried to speak nausea overtook him, and he vomited.
Josh jumped out of the way. “Jeez, Henry, what kind of a greeting is that?”
Sam noticed the blood on Henry’s parka. “Holy shit, Josh. Henry’s been shot!” He reached for Henry’s arm to steady him.
Henry straightened up and tried to speak but the blood drained from his head. All he could say was, “Fuckin’ faux-Norwegians.”
Then he collapsed.
He awoke in a hospital bed with a half-empty plasma bottle hanging over him. A nurse was adjusting the intravenous line that led to his arm. He looked around the room and was surprised to see, behind the nurse, three American military brass standing silently. Stone statues.