“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.
With Keller behind me, I step through the hatch, down the half dozen steps to the ice. The air hitting my face is so cold it stings, the whirling snow a blinding white. As I put my hand up to shield my eyes, I see the Terra Bus that will transport us to the station from the runway. The bus is even more cramped than the plane, and after boarding I don’t see Keller among the parkas, hats, and luggage stuffed inside. Fifteen minutes later, the station comes into view through the bus’s small, square windows.
With its bare industrial buildings, McMurdo looks like an ugly desert town whose landscape is drab and brown at the height of the austral summer and so white in the winter that you don’t know which way is up. On clear days, Mt. Erebus is visible in the distance, steam rising from its volcanic top, and later in the season, when the sun finally begins to set, the mountain looks as if it’s on fire.
I’m stretching my legs, taking it all in, when I notice Keller watching me.
“I was thinking,” he says. “Maybe I could shadow you out there one day? See the colony firsthand.”
I tell him, “Maybe,” both charmed by his interest and a bit wary of it.
We’ve been assigned to different dorms and say quick good-byes before going our separate ways. We don’t make plans to see each other, but I know I’ll eventually bump into him around the station, in the cafeteria. At McMurdo, during the busy season, you can’t avoid people even if you want to.
Yet I don’t see him again until two days later, when I’m heading out for my fieldwork and find him standing outside the Mechanical Equipment Center, wearing a jacket that looks too light for the temperature and that same red bandanna tied around his neck like a scarf.
“Hey,” Keller says in greeting as I approach the building. “Are you heading to the Garrard colony?”
“That’s right.”
“Is this a good time for me to tag along?” he asks.
I look at him, wondering how serious he really is about learning about the penguins. “Don’t you have dishes to wash?”
“Not until tonight,” he says.