Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem

by Gary Phillips

  “Hey, just beyond those trees,” he said, pointing in the direction he meant.

  “Okay.” A three-story Gothic Revival with turrets and gables came into view. A row of rectangular religious-themed stained-glass windows framed the second story of the mansion.

  “I think that’s John the Baptist’s head on a plate in the middle,” Coleman observed.

  “Yeah,” he said, hauntingly recalling his stepmother Nelle reciting Bible verses as she beat the hell out of him and his sisters. He shook it off. “Anyplace to set down?”

  “Well,” she drawled, “there is that bridge. Looks sturdy enough and plenty long enough.”

  “Girl, you done gone simple? What about the traffic?”

  “They’d clear out when they see me coming.” She half-turned her head to grin at him.

  “And when the police come, what then? Even if we’re not near the plane, they’ll confiscate this relic.”

  They were following the ribbon of the Hudson when they both saw their possible solution below atop a rise of land off the river.

  “Looks like it used to be a paper mill,” Coleman said.

  “Whale rendering was big around here once upon a time, too,” Henson said, not sure why he should recall that bit of history or how he knew it. Numerous windows in the abandoned plant had been busted out and the doors boarded over. There was a good sized paved lot that must have been used for trucks hauling away loads of paper.

  “Is that going to be long enough?” Henson wondered aloud, referring to the lot.

  “Son, I can put this thing down on the head of an anteater.” Coleman banked the plane and took a pass over the plant, evidently calculating the lot’s length. She circled back and, cutting the engine speed, brought the craft down quickly, Henson’s stomach suddenly in his throat. But she got them on the ground and taxied to a stop with room to spare ahead of the main building.

  They got out. Cars passed by on the highway, but a plane landing at an abandoned factory didn’t garner that much attention. Maybe the motorists thought this was some financier come to inspect his new property. With their leather helmets and goggles on, from a distance, you couldn’t tell they were black—that might have been seen as an anomaly. Dressed in plain clothes, Coleman in khakis like Henson, the two made their way back to the mansion. Passing others on the street, both were pleased they were unmolested.

  “Guess they figure we’re the help what with these big houses around,” Henson said to her.

  “And it don’t hurt we’ve seen a few of us colored out and about,” the aviatrix noted.

  “There is that,” he replied dryly.

  The house in question sat on a leafy hillock at the end of what would be considered more of a lane than a street. This, too, coincided with what Henrik Ellsmere had told Henson.

  “Let’s check out the garage first.”

  “Right.”

  The way the house was constructed, partially into the hill itself, the three-car garage was on level ground with earth and greenery over that. Creeper vines hung over the tops of the segmented doors. Each garage door had its own window set in the middle. Henson and Coleman, both on tip-toe, looked into each one.

  “No cars,” Coleman said.

  Henson remarked, “Did they clear out after the professor escaped? Hedging he might bring the law back?”

  “Or this joint isn’t populated most of the time, anyway.”

  Henson nodded, pointing toward the house. “One way to find out.”

  To the side of the garage was a winding set of concrete steps. They took these up through shrubbery on either side at intervals which brought them to a portico and the expanse of the porch.

  “The gardening hasn’t been done lately,” Henson noted. The shrubbery appeared to need trimming.

  “So far, so good,” Coleman said. She looked down onto the path and the homes nearby. “Can you see into the house?”

  “No, the curtains are closed.” Henson had moved to one of the front windows then came back over to Coleman. “Around back?”

  Coleman was already in motion and he followed her. Due to the design of the house and the foliage, they were mostly hidden from view as they went around to the right of the house toward the rear along a dirt path.

  “This might be to the maid’s quarters,” Coleman guessed, stopping at a door. There was a concrete path that led to the far side of the house and presumably another part of the roadway

  “Keep your eyes open, Bess.” Henson stepped close to the door and, using his ice axe, as quietly as possible chopped at the wood around the single lock until the door gave. They stepped inside, and he closed the door behind them, even though it no longer was able to latch. It was gloomy in the house, and smelled musty from the lack of human presence.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “Okay, boss,” she said, mimicking Stepin Fetchit.

  “You’re hilarious,” he deadpanned.

  Inside, the furnishings were tasteful and expensive, what there was of them. As Coleman had suggested, it seemed the home wasn’t used full-time, but was meant to be a getaway of some sort. The icebox was empty, though there were some canned goods in the larder.

  “A summer home?” Coleman speculated as they looked around.

  “Somebody with the silver,” Henson agreed. “But none of the furniture has been covered. Are they coming back soon?”

  Coleman lifted a shoulder. They continued prowling. The two found the area that had been Ellsmere’s lab, but it was cleared out. Upstairs, there were bedrooms, bedding untouched. Back downstairs in what would be the study, there were animals mounted on the wall.

  “What?” Coleman said, noticing Henson drawing in a breath sharply at the sight of the heads. “These dead deer and whatnot bother you? You mean to say them stories they tell about you skinnin’ a polar bear with just a butter knife wearin’ a loincloth ain’t true?”

  He’d moved more into the room, glaring up at the head of the buck.

  Coleman noted this. “Yeah, so he’s a hunter like you?”

  “I hunted for food or hide to wear,” he said, distantly. Then brightening, “I get it now. What with his hatchet men running around in animal masks.”

  “Who you talking about, Matt?”

  He answered her as he jerked open drawers of a colonial-style desk. Nothing.

  “Shit,” Coleman hissed.

  Henson looked over at her. “What?”

  “Pretty sure I heard voices outside.”

  The front door opened on a creak. In stepped two older women carrying linens and cleaning supplies. From where they were in the study, Henson and Coleman could see them through the slightly ajar study door.

  “Guess they’re here to clean and shut the place up,” Coleman whispered.

  “Then we can find out who hired them. I already got a powerful notion, just want to confirm it.”

  “You gonna rough up them old gals, are you, Matt?” She spread her hand imagining a newspaper headline. “Famed colored explorer arrested after assaulting two old white women.”

  “What kind of idea you got?”

  Coleman smiled. After getting a window open in the study and going outside, Coleman came back around to the front of the house and knocked on the door. It was opened by a heavyset, lined older face.

  “Yes,” said the woman.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, but I understand Mr. Davis is hiring on help to keep this here fine house going while he’s away?”

  The other woman took in Coleman in men’s pants and leather jacket. “You wear that getup all the time?”

  “Huh?” Coleman said. “Oh no, ma’am, just got through with a job packing apples off a boat is all. I gots a maid’s proper uniform and what not.”

  “Well, I don’t know what Mr. Davis intends to do with this house long term. Me and Ophelia were hired to dust and close it up for now.” Her companion could faintly be heard humming as she began her tasks in another pa
rt of the house. Henson and Coleman had spotted various cleaning supplies, mop and so forth in there already. “You might check with the Albright Employment agency here in town. They’re the ones who hired us, care of him.”

  “I ‘preciate that,” Coleman said and walked away. She met Henson back at the plane.

  “You were right,” she told him. “A Mr. Davis owns the place. Who is he?”

  A grim-faced Henson explained, “Fremont Davis. Among other things, he owns a shipping line and fancies himself a big game hunter. Big wig in the Challenger’s Club and was on the board of the National Museum who backed our seventh trip to Greenland.”

  “The one where you finally reached the North Pole?”

  “No, that was the eighth. The seventh was to fetch the Tent.”

  “Get a tent?”

  Henson was at the propeller and at her signal, turned the prop and the engine caught on the third try. He came toward the cockpit. “A name for a meteorite like you ain’t never seen.” He climbed in as she began turning the plane around to take off. “It was thirty-four tons and took us the better part of a year to dig it out and move it to the ship. The hardest time of all my years in the land of ice and snow.”

  “That’s saying something,” she yelled back as the plane gathered speed.

  “You can say that again, sister.” Henson sat back, not seeing the landscape drop away but the hunched backs of men sweating in sub-zero weather. “You can say that again.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Heave, heave,” yelled Amos Leeward as an assortment of white and Eskimo men in furs.

  The men shoved the big rock off its hydraulic jacks—each designed to lift thirty tons—as others on the opposite side pulled the chains and ropes attached to the black craggy surface. They rolled the rock over again onto the wooden tracks on the ground, a kind of makeshift railway. At the end of the tracks, they’d be dug out, and placed farther along, then the process would be repeated. A process of heave, dig, roll, dig and do it all over again and again. This work had gone on for more than twelve months over less than 100 miles. They ate, slept and shat moving the rock which had been nicknamed “Ahnighito” by Peary—his daughter’s middle name. Donkeys had been brought on this trip to help move the Tent. The bitter cold had killed the animals, and they’d been fed to the dogs. It was as if the more than fifty members of the crew and laborers had found themselves in Purgatory, and the punishment was only for humans and machines to undertake this seemingly Sisyphean task. Possibly an eternity later they may have been judged to have completed their duty. Several fingers and toes had been sacrificed along the way from frostbite or a slipped jack.

  But damn if they had finally hadn’t reached end of their journey. In sight was the bay, and the ship, the Hope.

  “Take a break,” Matthew Henson said in English and Inuktitut. A chorus of relieved groans went up.

  “Hey, who put you in charge, darkie?” Leeward said. He was a lean, long-faced individual from some damn place in Kentucky.

  “I told you about using such language,” a bearded Peary said to Leeward.

  “I’ve about had it with you and your pet monkey, Captain.”

  “Why don’t you shut the hell up Leeward, and save your hot air for loading the Tent onboard.” Henson said.

  “It’s Mr. Leeward to you, boy.”

  “I’ll call you what I feel like.”

  Ootah, who spoke a degree of English, had positioned himself close to Leeward. By nature, he was a hard-faced man, but he now displayed a bland expression. His knife was in his hand under his furs.

  Leeward was aware of this. “You won’t always have your chink manservant nearby, Henson.”

  “I’m happy for just you and me to settle the score. Any goddamn time you want, Johnny Reb.”

  “Let it go,” Peary said.

  The two antagonists glared at one another until Leeward broke contact.

  By mid-afternoon as it was reckoned, the largest of the three meteorites was winched onto the ship. This time of year, the midnight sun hung low on the horizon. The men and the environs were, at any given time, washed in various arrays of color. There wouldn’t be darkness for another month.

  Some of the laborers had feared the Tent was so heavy it would sink the vessel. Two years ago, when he’d first sighted it, Peary had estimated it weighed at least twenty-five tons. But once it had been unearthed, a better sense of its true heft had been determined at over thirty-four tons.

  Henson sat on the starboard side of the boat, making notes in his diary. Kudlooktoo came over. He’d taken a shine to the youngster, and the young man was fond of him as well.

  “Hey now, Luke. How’s the professor?” Like many Inuit, the orphaned teenager had acquired an Americanized nickname.

  “The same since he was brought back,” he replied in English. “He eats and sleeps, and when he’s not doing that, sits on his bunk talking to himself.”

  This had been Henrik Ellsmere’s second excursion with the crew. The storms, the harsh conditions, the life so close to the edge, it got to even the most experienced. Ellsmere snapping had been unexpected, as there had been no warning signs. Or at least none anyone paid any attention to. But one day out on the tundra as the men moved The Tent along, the professor, who usually stayed in the encampment, had come out to see the progress. Making small talk with Peary, Henson saw the man abruptly stop, his mouth agape, like someone snow-blind and disoriented. He peered up into the sky, a man who suddenly couldn’t recall how he got here.

  “Professor?” Henson had asked.

  “Yes, yes, I must get to my class,” he muttered, looking right through the other man.

  And that was that. He was helped back to his cabin on the ship, and Luke given the task to checking in on him.

  “I’ll go see him,” Henson promised.

  “Uncle Matt…” the kid began, having learned English from Henson, “There’s a fourth rock from the sky, you know.”

  Henson put his pencil in the diary and closed it, setting it aside. “You mean a piece of one of the three?” There’d been fragments from the meteorites taken back for several years, and not just by the Americans.

  “No,” the young man said, his hair short as Henson had first cut it back then. “The holy man said in his sermon last Sunday. He talked about the brightest light from the stars since the birth of Jesus.”

  “Father Christofferson?” Every now and then a missionary type, usually a Dane, would show up and attach themselves to a group to convert the heathens and bring stray Christians back to the Lord. Henson read the Bible, but didn’t put much truck with these sorts.

  “Him, yes,” Luke said.

  “You know the father likes his…strong coffee,” he said in Inuktitut.

  Luke chuckled. “He was sober,” he replied in English.

  “And how would he know of this?”

  “Don’t know. But I had been thinking on this since then, and now with the big one on the ship, knew I should tell you before you go away again.”

  He clasped the young man on the shoulder. “Thank you, Luke. I’ll check it out.”

  The teenager smiled, having pleased the other man.

  Henson left The Hope and walked to the encampment of tents and igloos where the laborers resided. A yellow haze permeated the area. He got to Christofferson’s ice brick houseas many non Eskimos had adopted using such structures., bent at the opening and called inside.

  “Padre, it’s Matt Henson. You have a minute?”

  “Of course, Mr. Henson,” he replied in his accented English. “Do come in.”

  Henson entered. Christofferson was sitting crosslegged, several loose sheets of paper stacked together on a small board on his lap. His hair was frost white and his Santa Claus beard reached mid-chest. It was close in here, and the smell of unwashed human body order and raw walrus was overwhelming. The priest was particularly fond of snaking on walrus heart. Henson sat.

  “
Luke tells me you claim there’s four meteorites.”

  The fifty-three year-old clergyman looked at him a moment, then clarity shone behind his blue eyes. “Ah yes, right. I was making a point about God’s wonders.”

  “But where did you hear about there being a fourth?’ Henson understood there was probably only one meteorite originally that had broken up, and its pieces had fallen to Earth. Still, a fourth piece would have value. Plus, he would love to see that bastard Leeward’s face if he could be the one to discover it.

  “From a fine woman, a convert who is much devout,” Christofferson said proudly. Like Henson, he spoke several Inuit dialects including Nunavut and Greenlandic.

  Henson wondered if that was his way of saying he’d taken her as a mistress. He wouldn’t be the first outsider, Bible-thumper notwithstanding. “She say where it fell?”

  As an answer, the taller man uncrossed his legs and, crawling out of the igloo, stood up and pointed. Henson followed him. “She knew this story from her childhood. But in her version, it was not the trickster Torngarsuk who threw the Woman, and her Dog and Tent from the sky, but the beneficence of Seqinek. That this was a tear from her daughter who wished only the best for the first people.” The word “Inuit” derived from Inuish, their word for people, as for thousands of years, the Eskimos thought they were the only ones to inhabit the Earth. The ones who had prolonged contact with Americans, Italians and what have you, also referred to themselves as Greenlanders

  “The sun goddess you mean?” Henson said to make sure, referring to the Eskimo deity of Seqinek.

  “Yes,” the priest confirmed, pointing at a peak aglow with warm white against a terrain of stark white in the near distance. “At Robeson Point.”

  Henson considered the information.

  As the Hope wouldn’t be setting sail for another two days, Henson arranged for he and Ootah to set off, saying they would like to bring some seal meat along on the voyage. Once out of sight, they circled around to Mount Robeson. Henson had pointedly asked him not to tell his brother Egingwah. The latter was more attached to Peary, and they didn’t want him gossiping if their two-man expedition didn’t pan out. Mount Robeson was less than a half day’s journey by sledge.