My Last Continent: A Novel(14)

“And you? You look like an old-timer.”

I look over at him.

“I don’t mean old,” he says. “Just—experienced. Like you know the drill.”

“Yeah, I get it. You here to do research?”

“To do dishes, actually,” he says. “I’m with maintenance. Just something to get me down here. What about you?”

“I’m studying the emperors at Garrard.”

He regards me with new interest. “Really? Is that the colony that was wrecked by that iceberg?”

I’m surprised, and pleased, that he knows of the colony; so many who come to McMurdo for the manual labor and maintenance jobs seem to know about the wildlife only on a superficial level.

“I’m Keller,” he offers. “Keller Sullivan.”

“I’m Deb.”

“Good to meet you,” he says.

“Likewise.”

“I’d love to hear more about the colony,” he says.

He’s turned his head and is looking at me almost sideways. In the dim industrial lighting, the dark of his eyes deepens against his pale face.

“Maybe later? I’m a little tired,” I say. “Didn’t sleep at all on the flight to Christchurch.”

“Me, neither,” he says.

I let my eyes fall shut again. It’s not often anymore that my mind wanders toward Dennis, but right now, it goes straight back. I’m always surprised by how, even after all this time, it can feel like only days ago.

There’d been an investigation, of course, an autopsy, more questions than I knew how to handle. The worst was the media. News of the investigation had leaked out—everything from the fact that Dennis and I had spent the night together to details on his drowning. I think the family hoped, and I certainly did, that Dennis’s death would’ve been kept as private as possible—but when something happens in Antarctica, it’s newsworthy by default. Everyone knew, from my colleagues at the university to the tourists on the new season’s trips south. The investigation ruled Dennis’s death a suicide; the tour company and everyone involved, including me, were officially off the hook.

I still have his ring, the wedding band he’d tried so hard to lose. I’ve kept it hidden away in a small box at the top of my closet with a few other valuables. No one had ever asked about it. When I saw pictures of his wife in the news, I convinced myself that, by being there with him during his last hours, I had more right to keep it than she ever would, since she’d been off with someone else when he died.

I drift away to sleep, and the next thing I know, I’m awakened by an announcement from the pilot. I open my eyes and see Keller’s confused face. When I hear the sighs and groans of everyone in the cabin, I know what the news is—the plane is turning around.

“What’s a boomerang?” Keller asks.

“Bad weather at the station,” I explain. “If the plane can’t land at McMurdo, the pilot has to turn around.”

He nods. We don’t speak again, and we go our separate ways when we land back in Christchurch. When I arrive at the Antarctic Program passenger terminal the next day, I don’t see him. But then, soon after I board, I feel someone sink into the seat next to mine, and there he is.

“We meet again,” he says.

All around us, passengers are pulling their parka hoods over their heads and faces, preparing to sleep, and I offer Keller a brief smile and then do the same, closing my eyes quickly so I don’t have to look at him, so he won’t keep talking to me.

The only problem is, I can see his face even with my eyes closed.

I remain awake, aware of Keller beside me, of his arm lightly brushing mine as he reaches into one of his bags, as he opens a book to read. I don’t know how much time passes until I feel movement next to me again, what I think is the motion of Keller leaning his head back against the netting behind us.

Finally I succumb to sleep—there is little else to do on these flights—and wake to a dull pain in my neck. I’ve slouched over in my seat, my head resting on Keller’s shoulder.

I straighten up, mumbling an apology. Then I notice that he looks very pale. The LC-130 is heaving and pitching in the sky. “I don’t remember it being this bad the last time,” he says.

“We didn’t make it this far last time. It’s often like this when we get close.”

I watch his face, just a hint of tension under the stubble of his jaw, and when he gives me a sheepish grin, I notice that his brown eyes are streaked through with a color that reminds me of the algae veining the snow on the peninsula islands—a muted, cloudy green.

There are no armrests on an LC-130, nowhere to put your hands during a stressful landing. Keller is gripping his knees, his knuckles white. Biting back a smile, I reach over to pat his hand in a there, there sort of gesture, and I’m surprised when he turns his palm upward to clasp mine.

There’s not really any such thing as a routine landing at McMurdo, and by the time we approach the ice-hardened runway, the storm has whipped up whiteout conditions. The pilot circles several times in an attempt to wait out the weather, but eventually he must descend. When the plane touches its skis down on the ice, a sudden gust of wind seems to take hold of its tail, spinning it across the runway and nose-first into a fresh bank of snow.

But the plane holds together, as do Keller and I, our hands still clasped. After the plane stops moving, we let go at the same time. I try to ignore the fact that I hadn’t been ready to let go. That a man’s hand in mine, after so long, had felt good.