My Last Continent: A Novel(59)

We’ve already cordoned off a section of the lounge, now a mini–triage center supplied with blankets and first-aid equipment, and it’s time to let the passengers in on the news. As we head down the steps to the lounge, Amy leans close and speaks into my ear. “He’ll be fine,” she says. “If anyone can handle something like this, it’s Keller.”

The rest of the packed, overheated lounge looks as if it’s ready for any regular presentation, with one exception: the silence. The passengers wait, their nervous eyes focused on Glenn as he explains the situation. They remain calm, passive, probably because they’re in a bit of shock themselves.

“As a precaution,” Glenn concludes, “all guests will be required to wear life jackets from this point forward, around the clock. Guests will no longer be permitted on the bridge, in the fitness room, or on the rear deck, where we will be staging search-and-rescue efforts.”

Search and recovery is far more likely; as much as I want to remain optimistic, I’ve been in these waters and in this weather long enough to know what it can do—to boats as well as to passengers. I picture the listing Australis and wonder where Keller had been when it hit. Had he been on the phone with me at the time; was that why we’d lost our connection?

“I know this is not what any of you signed up for,” Glenn says, “but I urge you to remain in your cabins as much as possible. I know many of you have medical expertise and other skills we’ll need, and we may call on you. But for now, you need to keep yourselves safe and out of the way.” He draws in a breath. “Finally, and I know this is another of many inconveniences you’ll experience over the next few days, I’m going to request that everyone agree to take on an additional passenger or two, if possible, in your cabin. You can double up with one another or take on someone from the Australis.”

Glenn signals to the staff, and I get into place as we begin the emergency lifeboat drill, the same one we’d gone through the first night on board, in the Beagle Channel. It seems much longer than a week ago—back then, everyone was laughing and taking photos as they put on their frumpy orange life jackets, excited as they anticipated the Drake and what awaited them beyond. I remember thinking that this would be a long journey, but for entirely different reasons.

Now the passengers are somber as they put on their jackets and assemble at their muster stations. I stand at my station, unable to make eye contact with anyone. Nature and I have always gotten along, or so I’d believed; we’ve had a good relationship of mutual respect and understanding. But perhaps I’ve had little to fear from nature because for so long it’s always been only me. As the Cormorant hurtles south, I feel anxiety knitting closed my throat. As every Antarctic traveler knows, once you begin to fear the ice, the relationship changes forever.





TWENTY YEARS BEFORE SHIPWRECK


The Missouri Ozarks





Deep in the forest, the humidity is oppressive, especially for September. It’s too hot to cover up completely, and I’ve been slapping at mosquitoes all morning. I wear long pants to avoid poison ivy, but I’m in a short-sleeved shirt, drenched in sweat and sticky, acrid bug repellent.

Everything in these woods has a way of enveloping you. As I bend down to pick up my field notebook, I brush my bare arm against a bush that’s sprouting poison ivy. I look at the batch of triple leaves, then dump half the contents of my water bottle on the spot where the plant touched my skin.

Pam hears me and looks over. It’s only midmorning, but her dark-brown hair is escaping its loose ponytail, and her face is bright red, as I imagine mine must be.

“How’re you holding up?” she asks.

“Great.”

Pam’s twice my age, and this is my second year as her research assistant, but still she’s always asking.

“Beastly out here today,” she says.

“Better than serving mystery meat at Dobbs.” Until I’d begun working for Pam, my work-study job had been food service in the cafeteria near my dorm.

I’d registered for Dr. Pam Harrison’s biology class two years earlier, during my first year at the University of Missouri. Even then I knew I wanted to focus on birds; my childhood obsession with them had never waned.

I’d hoped to go to Seattle for college, to the University of Washington, where I could get involved with the Magellanic penguin program I’d heard so much about. But I was too daunted by the size of the loans the UW program would require to consider it. Stupid, Pam would later tell me, when she heard how I ended up at Mizzou. How’re you going to get anywhere if you don’t take risks?

The housing lottery assigned me to Jones Hall my freshman year, and I soon learned that the all-women’s dorm is a coveted place to live for sorority girls thanks to its proximity to Greek Town. My roommate, Taylor, was a petite, lively blonde from Springfield whose main goal in college was getting into the Tri-Delts. Taylor invited me to all the parties, insisted on doing my makeup—since I usually wore none—and opened up her wardrobe to me. “It’s too short,” I’d say after squeezing into one of her tiny skirts. “That’s the point,” she’d reply and hand me a tube of lip gloss.

Thanks to Taylor and her makeovers, I felt as though I’d just met a new version of myself, along with scores of other new students, and, for those first months, I relished this glimpse of who I could be, having shed the tomboy of my childhood. Yet as the months passed, I found it hard to bond with this new me, as well as with the other students. I’d be in a crowded fraternity basement, beer flowing, music blasting, and feel a sudden need to push my way out, happier the moment I began walking home alone in the cold night air. I’d find myself wanting to sneak out of a guy’s bed so we wouldn’t have to try to make conversation as soon as we sobered up. The fun was fleeting, even though, week after week, I’d show up hoping it would be different.