Surviving Antarctica

by Andrea White

  Andrew looked closely into the water. Milky’s guts were floating up to the surface like a string of blood sausages. He turned his eyes away.

  “What are you staring at?” Robert called to him.

  “Looks like sharks!” Andrew called back. The churning water reminded him of a scene from a horror movie.

  He sounds amazingly calm, Robert thought.

  Robert, Andrew, and Cookie didn’t make it to shore until four hours later.

  Polly hugged Andrew.

  Grace patted him on the back.

  Billy shook his hand and said, “Good job.”

  “You’re a hero,” Polly said.

  “But I lost Milky,” Andrew replied.

  “You’re a hero anyway,” Polly said.

  In all his life, Andrew had never once thought that anyone would call him a hero. He was sorry that he had lost Milky, but he couldn’t help beaming. Then he remembered the floating guts. “Sharks got her.”

  Polly looked sharply at Robert.

  “Hey, I know. But don’t make too much of the coincidence,” Robert said to her.

  “It proves that the dangers Scott and his men faced are the same dangers we face today,” Polly said.

  “Polly, Scott and his men didn’t make it. We’re going to,” Robert said. He couldn’t put his anger into words. But he sensed that Polly believed getting to the Pole was impossible.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Andrew asked.

  “Scott lost a couple of ponies to killer whales. Polly warned me before you left. I didn’t want you to panic,” Robert explained.

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Andrew said, and then wondered if he would have been more scared returning over that open water if he had thought about the fact that the killers were real, not props in a horror movie.

  “See,” Robert lectured Polly, “we have to be optimistic.”

  Polly almost laughed. If only Robert knew how hard that was. Besides everything else, it was cold, so cold here. She shivered. The shivers made her do a little dance in the soft light.

  “We need to go,” Robert said. With the morning gone, they’d be lucky if they made ten miles instead of the fifteen he had counted on.

  18

  WHEN STEVE WOKE up, he immediately sensed that something was wrong. He glanced at his clock on the table beside him. It said 7 P.M. He was over an hour late for work, and it was the day that the kids were setting out for the Pole. He hadn’t watched that afternoon’s episode of Historical Survivor. He felt completely out of touch. Anything could have happened to the kids!

  I must have forgotten to set my alarm, he thought as he threw on a T-shirt and pants. He grabbed a few slices of bread and ran out the door.

  Steve started jogging down the narrow path through Shanty Town. The homes were a hodgepodge of corrugated metal, plasterboard, plastic, wood, and other recycled materials. There were no sidewalks, but every so often a huge orange trash can with CLEAN STREETS, CLEAN MINDS written on it in bold black letters dominated a front yard. Laundry flapped in the breeze, and everywhere he looked he saw a maze of antennas and the blue glow of television screens.

  Steve left Shanty Town behind and started through the high-end district, full of expensive town houses and restaurants. Since most businesses were open twenty-four hours, the street was full of people coming from and going to work, shopping, and running errands.

  As he passed a row of fancy town houses, a loudspeaker blared out a Fair Society commercial: “Life’s a game. Each person gets a Toss. Winners are winners. Losers are losers. But it’s not like the old days, when life wasn’t fair. Now everybody gets a chance.”

  A light went off in a window of one of the elegant homes. A coworker had told him that the Secretary lived somewhere on this street, in a luxury town house with a mood room, three fireplaces, and a heart-shaped Jacuzzi in her bathroom.

  The Secretary was going to sleep in a bed with silk sheets while five kids were facing their first day trekking in subzero weather. Steve didn’t care what the government wanted him to believe. Life wasn’t fair.

  When Steve finally made it through the door of the production room, several members of the night shift were standing around in front of the screens. “What happened?” he cried.

  Chad turned around and looked at him. “Why are you late?” he said.

  Steve felt himself flush. “I forgot to set my alarm.”

  “Did you watch the program today?” Chad asked.

  “No.”

  “The ponies got caught on an ice floe, and Andrew tried to rescue them,” Chad said.

  “Andrew was a hero,” John Matthews said.

  “Andrew got Cookie back,” Jacob explained. “But Milky didn’t make it.”

  “He took a horrible risk,” Chad said, looking into Steve’s eyes.

  Steve hung his head. “I should have been here.”

  “It happened this morning. The Secretary broadcast the scene live,” Chad said. “You couldn’t have helped anyway.”

  “We watched the episode earlier tonight than usual. We just got back from the screening room,” Raymond Chiles explained.

  “You’ll be so proud of the kids,” Jacob said.

  Steve felt the eyes of the whole crew on him.

  “Is he the Voice?” Raymond muttered.

  “Yes,” Chad said.

  “But we barely know him,” John objected.

  “I knew his father,” Chad explained. “We can trust him.”

  “Excitement’s over.” John turned toward the basement.

  “He’d better keep our secret.” Raymond’s tone was stern.

  But Steve hardly heard Raymond’s warning, because he had just noticed that the screens weren’t all dark. The kids were still traveling. He hadn’t missed the whole day!

  “Let’s go play cards!” John called to the group.

  “So tell me exactly what happened,” Steve said to Jacob, but his eyes were on the live screens.

  Robert, riding one snowcycle, with Billy and Polly on the other, blazed the trail. Andrew followed, riding Cookie. Driving the dogsled, Grace brought up the rear. The sun, still hanging unnaturally low in the sky, looked as discouraged as Grace felt.

  Although Grace’s grandfather had a house in Alaska, he spent hunting season moving from place to place. He had felt stuck in Arizona and had hated living on a reservation. “Life should be lived on the move,” he used to say.

  But so far dogsledding hadn’t been the smooth ride across ice that her grandfather had so lovingly described. It had been a series of jerky lurches. And Grace didn’t feel like a fearless Eskimo on a hunt, but like a frustrated American on a vacation gone wrong.

  Even the analogies that popped into her head were American, not Iñupiat. Dogsledding was like riding in a car that was alive. What was the car going to do next? Which way was it going to turn? She had to stay attuned to every twitch of dog muscle, every howl and every growl.

  Apatosaurus nipped Diplodocus; Diplodocus halted. The dogs in the back line toppled over those in the front line. Grace got out of the dogsled, straightened the traces, cuffed Apatosaurus and Diplodocus, and then climbed back into the sled. Her dogs didn’t understand that they needed to maintain a steady pace on the trail. What was she doing wrong?

  They had been traveling for a while, but the mountains appeared no closer. After spending the morning rescuing the ponies, they had spent the afternoon adjusting the sled contents and hooking up the sleds. Robert seemed determined to make up the lost time.

  The other kids were so far ahead now that they were only specks, but Grace wanted the dogs to move slowly. They made fewer mistakes that way. She let the whip dip beside her and watched the swirling pattern it made in the snow.

  Grace could no longer hear the roar of the motors, only the growling of the dogs. The warmth of the sun on her face reaffirmed her sense of the timelessness of this land. For the moment, the dogs were moving forward in rhythm. She wondered if any foot, either human
or dog, had ever touched the ground that she was crossing now. If Grace got her wish, she and her dogs would experience the seasons on this plain, more expansive than any she had ever imagined.

  Looking around her, Grace compared Antarctica to her home at Pueblo Village. Life on the snow was so different. For one thing, she had never gone so many hours without seeing trash. For another, if she moved her family to Antarctica, their home would be an igloo.

  Her grandfather had told her how to fashion a home out of blocks of ice. How to cut the ice into smaller and smaller blocks, how to lay the largest blocks in a circle and step inside it to put the rest of the blocks up, how to fashion a low arch for an entrance and build a long passageway to break the wind, and how to leave a hole in the top block to let the warm air escape.

  She realized that her grandfather had told her many times how to build an igloo, but except for his description of the smell, she had no idea what it was like to stay in one. During hunting season, no one bathed, and together with the grease and smoke, the smell was unique in this world. It was up to her to build her own igloo and find out what it was like to live in one.

  T-Rex jerked to the right, and Polacanthus tripped over his traces. The forward motion of the sled dragged him along until Grace stopped it and scolded him. Would she ever get these dogs to run smoothly? She cracked the whip over the dogs until they cringed. She was ashamed of herself as the team started off slowly again. Frustrated as a dog driver, she felt like crying. Grandfather, if you didn’t mean for me to live here, why did you tell me stories about the woman who adopted a seal and the hunter who became a bear? Why did you describe the taste of seal ribs? Why did you show me how to hunt a whale with a harpoon? Why did you bother to make me want to be part of a tradition six thousand years old? If I’ll never be able to manage the dogs, why did you tease me with a vision of the northern life?

  The wind changed, and Brontosaurus howled.

  Suddenly the right runner caught in deep snow. The sled edged sideways, and Grace frantically shifted her weight to steady it. But she wasn’t quick enough, because the dogs in the rear stampeded into another pile. You need to pay more attention, she lectured herself as she hopped off.

  T-Rex stood there with his ears pinned back, as if to say that something was wrong.

  Maybe this pile-up wasn’t her fault after all.

  Triceratops was dangling over a shallow crevasse. Only the traces held her up.

  Grace stepped away from the crevasse, and using her most serious tone, she called to T-Rex. He ran toward her, eager to obey. The team easily pulled the little one out. She thanked T-Rex before turning to Triceratops. The little dog whined as Grace checked her for injuries and found none. She walked over to the crevasse, pulled off her goggles, and stared bare-eyed at the shimmering ice. Even though the crevasse was only five feet deep or so, it seemed to hint at another world she couldn’t know. Her grandfather had once told her a story about ice tunnels that extended for miles under the snow. She looked at the horizon. The tracks that the others had made stood out like a frosty highway. But her team was wider than their tracks. This crevasse was just a few feet from where Billy and Robert had ridden so confidently, so unaware.

  “Danger is one with life on ice. It sharpens your senses, clears your mind. Lets you know that you’re alive,” she heard her grandfather say.

  He had been right. She could still feel her heart pumping in her chest as she settled back into the sled and cracked the whip. “Let’s go,” she cried.

  The dogs bounded forward in one wild, uncoordinated lurch. A box fell off the sled.

  She stopped the team again. Would the sled steer better if she shifted most of the weight to the back? She repositioned the box before climbing back in.

  Patience, Grace counseled herself. Grandfather never said that being an Iñupiat was easy. He had said that living on the ice was an impossible life, worthy of love. The dogs leaned into their harnesses and started along the trail. They passed a lone twisted ice sculpture.

  How was that formed? Grace wondered. In subzero temperatures, the wind must have gusted, causing the snow to freeze in midair. Wind art. Only in Antarctica.

  She, Grace Untoka, was driving a dogsled in Antarctica. She wasn’t driving it like an Iñupiat yet, but on the first day of her new life, she held a whip ready in her hand.

  19

  A SMALL OBJECT that Polly hadn’t noticed before stood in the distance. Or maybe it was a large object right next to her? Or perhaps an Antarctic mirage? She squinted at the object again. Could it be a plain metal pole that she and Billy were approaching? She had ridden quietly behind him on the snowcycle for several hours. The roar of the motor discouraged conversation.

  Billy pulled up to the metal pole.

  “Is that the meteorological stand?” Billy shouted, pointing at the pole.

  “I think so,” Polly said.

  Their map said that the stand was nine miles from Safety Hut. Although time was largely irrelevant here, Billy checked his watch. It was almost ten o’clock. Robert had slowed to keep pace with the dogs, but he had told Billy that he wanted him to stop after four hours. That meant that they would camp near the stand on their first night.

  Starting in the 1950s scientists had monitored Antarctic temperatures. But after the Big Bust, when the government no longer had the funds for scientific exploration, the stands were abandoned. Polly couldn’t help remembering that on the Scott expedition, Birdie Bowers had recorded most of the weather data. Since gloved hands would be too clumsy to do the work, Polly imagined Birdie touching his thermometer with his bare hands. Even though Birdie had been the man on Scott’s team most impervious to cold, the daily temperature readings must have been agony.

  Billy turned off the cycle. The plan was to set up camp before the others arrived.

  Polly hopped off and tumbled into the snow. Her left foot was dead; it had no feeling at all. How had she failed to realize what was happening? She looked down at her green parka, now dusted with snow, and tears filled her eyes.

  Billy stared at her.

  “Billy,” she cried, pulling off her goggles.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My foot.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve lost the feeling in my left foot. Can you boil some water quickly? I need to drink something hot.”

  “Sure.”

  Polly tried to get her boot off, but her hands were cold, and she found even this small task daunting.

  Billy went to the sled and rummaged around in the bags. It felt like a long time to Polly, but eventually he pulled out the Primus, just as she slipped her foot out of her boot.

  Polly couldn’t feel her foot, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was frostbitten, she reminded herself. But what if it was?

  Billy fumbled, trying to light the stove.

  “Take your time,” Polly said. This cold made accomplishing even the smallest tasks difficult. She kneaded her toes until they began to feel the way Polly did on being awakened by her mother too early.

  “Darn!” Billy said as he tried to light a match. He blew on his fingers to warm them and tried again.

  Polly pounded her foot with her fist.

  On Scott’s expedition, Titus Oates’s foot had gotten frostbitten. It was clear that the remaining four men couldn’t carry Oates and still survive. Polly wished that for once the Memory would fail her and that she couldn’t remember word for word Scott’s description of Oates’s terrible decision:

  He slept through the night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning—yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, “I am just going outside and may be some time.” He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since.

  … We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman.

  Would Polly be brave enough to crawl off into the snow and let the others go on without her? The books said that d
ying of cold was pleasant, almost dreamy. That you felt hot. She would love to feel hot right now.

  Billy finally succeeded in lighting the match, and he loaded heaps of snow into the outer ring of the Primus. It seemed to take longer for the water to boil than for a glacier to form, but the stove gave off a little warmth, and Polly snuggled as close as possible to it.

  Finally little bubbles appeared on top of the water.

  Scott’s men had described the large white blisters that appeared on frostbitten skin. The men had popped them. Sometimes the pus inside was frozen into hard white balls.

  Billy poured hot chocolate mix into the water and stirred it. When it was ready, he handed her a cup.

  Polly pressed it against her face. She breathed in the delicious smell of the chocolate. It was ironic that in these miserable conditions she could have all the chocolate that she wanted. What she would have given for a cup of hot chocolate each night in their hut in New York!

  Polly didn’t mind that her first sip burned her tongue, because her mouth filled with warmth. She swallowed. The bullet of warmth sped down her throat into her stomach. She took another sip, forgetting to savor it, just craving its life-giving warmth.

  The warmth crawled farther this time, through her limbs, into her fingers—and yes, she felt a trickle travel to her feet, and through her feet to her toes. She took another big swallow and resisted the impulse to unbutton her jacket. For she was feeling warmer—even hot—and she tried once again to wiggle her toes.

  This time the command reached them and they woke up. All five of them began to move. Now, instead of being drowsy and insensible, they screamed in pain. She yelped.

  First little piggy, second little piggy. Ignoring their protests, she made them do exercises: sit-ups and stretches, a regular army drill.

  “How do you feel, Polly?” Billy asked.

  “Better,” Polly said. “But I should stand up and get moving.”