My Last Continent: A Novel(82)

Admiral Byrd waddles over, turning his head sideways, showing me a round dark eye. I arrange my legs just so. When he is settled, I remove my gloves and stroke his smooth, dirty feathers.

Sometimes, when I feel the weight of Admiral Byrd in my lap, I feel that Keller is here with us. I think about the day I’ll sit here with Kelly, instructing her to sit, still and quiet, as her father had once instructed me—and I picture the look on her face, in those green-flecked eyes that are all Keller, when Admiral Byrd makes his appearance, then lets himself tumble into her lap.

Because Keller’s body now belongs to the Southern Ocean, I like to believe we’ll see him one day—that we’ll experience a fata morgana and glimpse him standing up amid a cluster of penguins, his red bandanna around his throat, squinting as the sun’s reflection off the ice bounces into his eyes. That he’ll see us and smile. That he’ll say, as he used to, Fin del mundo, and we’ll respond, principio del todo.

The end of the world, the beginning of everything.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS





While the places in this novel—the islands of the Antarctic peninsula, the research stations—are real, I’ve taken a few fictional liberties, among them creating the Garrard penguin colony near McMurdo Station, which is loosely based on a real colony and actual circumstances but is otherwise fictional. The gentoo penguin Admiral Byrd is also fictional and was inspired by an overly friendly Magellanic penguin in the Punta Tombo colony in Argentina, named Turbo, who is beloved by the researchers and volunteers who have had the extraordinary experience of meeting him. (Visit www.penguinstudies.org to learn about the Center for Penguins as Ocean Sentinels and to follow Turbo on Twitter.) The Antarctic Penguin Project is a fictional organization inspired by the nonprofit Oceanites (www.oceanites.org), a nongovernmental, publicly supported organization whose scientific research in Antarctica helps foster education and conservation. Any inaccuracies throughout the novel, made inadvertently or for the sake of fiction, are my own.

I am grateful to all who made the existence of this book possible. Among them: Dr. Dee Boersma, who taught me about penguins from Antarctica to Argentina and whose research with the Center for Penguins as Ocean Sentinels is doing wonders for the conservation of these incredible animals.

Molly Friedrich, whose overall brilliance, keen insights, and tough editorial love helped get this novel ready for the world. A million thanks as well to Nichole LeFebvre, Lucy Carson, and Alix Kaye for being incredible readers and offering enthusiasm and support.

Liese Mayer, who is not only an amazing editor but an absolute joy to know and to work with. Great thanks, too, to the fantastic team at Scribner for such terrific work in every aspect of bookmaking.

Thanks to the Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center, which gave me the gift of time and space to write, and without which this book would still be a work in progress.

Thanks to the Ontario Review, which first published my short story “The Ecstatic Cry,” from which My Last Continent eventually emerged.

Thanks to my family, for love and support. Most of all: John Yunker, for being there for every step of the journey, both on and off the page.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR


John Yunker Midge Raymond is the author of the short story collection Forgetting English, which received the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction. Her work has appeared in Poets & Writers, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, TriQuarterly, and Bellevue Literary Review, among other places. Learn more at MidgeRaymond.com.