The Winter Over(16)

E1. SUB 1. DISCOVERY OF LARKIN BODY



Next to that, he placed the date. It seemed faintly ridiculous to do so—he’d have as much chance forgetting the day Sheryl Larkin had died as his own birthday—but he’d learned over time that any and every bit of information was valuable.

He took out a ruler and marked off an inch of white space with a tiny dot of his pen, then proceeded to write using bullet points and acerbic sentence fragments. He kept at it for the next thirty minutes, sometimes with speed and confidence, but more often with his eyebrows knotted in concentration and tapping the pen’s cap against his teeth, a habit his wife had found infuriating. Ex-wife , he corrected himself, then sealed off that line of thought like he’d closed a tank hatch and spun the wheel.

He frowned when he’d nearly filled the page. The unrelieved red scratches gave a sense of alarm to the whole thing, which hadn’t been his intention. Most of his notes were only observations, with just a few items that deserved special attention. Sighing, he reached into his drawer and pulled out a blue pen, this time to underline only the critical parts, the most significant of which was the last line on the page.

Yesterday, after returning to Shackleton with Larkin’s body and leaving the VMF, he’d acted on a hunch and told Taylor to head back without him. Creeping like a thief, he’d rested his ear against the garage door, then peeked inside to confirm with his eyes what he’d heard with his ears. The intel had been valuable, but he’d slunk away, ashamed of himself. Even now the memory caused him to curl his lip.

He exhaled through his nose, long and slow, consciously purging the thought and the emotions that rode shotgun alongside it. Too much depended on this project, professionally and personally, for him to get squeamish or sentimental about his conduct. If a brief moment of shame was the worst casualty of the winter, it would be a ridiculously small price to pay. He circled the last bullet point and read it once more.

Subject distraught upon return (expressed privately). Seemed to feel personal culpability. Highest—lowest?—emotional point observed to date.

He capped the blue pen and tossed it into the drawer, then blew on the ink to make sure it had dried—an old habit—before the page went into the file to join the others. He let the folder’s leaf fall shut, then tossed the well-thumbed file beside the stack and picked up the next one. Sparing a glance at the name, he slipped another single sheet of unblemished paper from the ream, picked up his red pen, and got back to work.





CHAPTER SEVEN


The two men stared at each other for a pregnant moment until the one behind the desk said, “You just came in on yesterday’s flight with the other fingies, didn’t you?”

“The what?”

A smile. “Sorry. It’s local slang. Fingie stands for ‘fucking new guy.’ It’s just a term we use. No insult intended. Anyway, you just came in?”

“Yes, sir.”

“First time in Antarctica?”

“First time.” He nodded.

“Why don’t you tell me something about yourself?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Like where you grew up.”

He smiled nervously. “Isn’t that all in my file?”

“It tells me where you were born, where you went to high school, where you’ve lived. But those are just facts.” The man gestured extravagantly. “My file says I was born in San Francisco and earned a degree at Stanford. Those are facts, and true, but they mean very little. Millions of people live in that area and tens of thousands have gone to that school. If I said instead that, as a child, I lived in a small town on the coast and woke up smelling pine trees every morning, that tells you something no written record can. Do you see what I mean?”

“I guess so.” He considered. “Though there’s nothing much to tell. I was born on a farm in Iowa, learned how to fix tractors and turn the lights on when they quit, then got the heck out of there as soon as I could.”

“What did your family farm?”

“Boredom.”

Smile. “What did you sell?”

“Soy and corn, like everyone else.”

“Did you have any brothers or sisters?”

His jaw muscles bunched once, then released. “A sister.”

“Was she older or younger than you?”

“Older.”

“Much older or just a few years?”

“She was seven years older than me.”

“Most older sisters boss their younger brothers around. Did yours?”

He paused. “Yes.”

“Did you push back?”

“When I could. There were chores. And work to be done. She whipped me when I didn’t carry my share.”

“Did you run away or did you have to take it whenever she dished it out?”

“I ran when I saw it coming.” He laughed. “She was pretty good about hiding it until it was too late.”

“And where did you run?”

“It’s Iowa. There wasn’t no place to run to . I just picked a direction and went.”

“Out into the fields.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did you do out there? How long did you wait before you went back?”