“Come on, let’s go look at the Christmas tree.”
They walked down the entrance tunnel in silence for a few minutes, the sounds of their breath coming through their face masks almost in sync. Outside, Cooper blinked against the sun, then looked across the ice through her goggles, toward the great invisible boundary that separated the six-month day from the six-month night. She thought about the catalog of polar art she’d studied on the flight from Los Angeles to Auckland—some of the painters had chosen to paint the explorers, but they made certain their work underscored the great hubris of these adventurers, not their heroism. The painter who’d depicted Shackleton’s ship listing in the hard-packed blue ice had taken care to emphasize the continent’s triumph over the “cartographic imperative,” by making the men translucent. But, in fact, the vast majority of the work deemed resonant enough for inclusion in the catalog had been nearly featureless, experiments in light, shade, and variations of blue and white using acrylic and ink. Oil, it appeared, was passé, as was chiaroscuro: the place was too flat, too dead-seeming, for body.
“Let me ask you a question,” Cooper said. She pointed at the horizon with her mitten. “What do you see when you look out there?” Pavano gazed at the smoking ice—a light wind had lifted the top layer of snow. “I’m supposed to see something profound,” Cooper continued. “I’m supposed to translate this profound thing through art. But to me, it just looks like snow.”
Pavano considered the plateau, his arms hanging slack by his sides. In his stillness, his profile seemed to Cooper to take on the aspect of bas-relief. He was Lincoln on the penny.
“Just as I thought. Impossible,” she finally said, and began walking again. Pavano didn’t walk with her.
“Wild horses,” he said.
“Wild horses?”
“Yes, to me, the sastrugi over there looks like a herd of wild horses. Running into the wind, just about to leap into the high prairie grass. Frozen, naturally.”
Cooper looked at Pavano, surprised. “I’d give that a B-plus.”
“You’re a tough grader.”
“Should I grade on a curve?”
“Only if it’s not the Keeling Curve,” Pavano said, and chuckled. Cooper resolved to look up the Keeling Curve later. They walked a little farther in silence. “Have you been out to the ice-coring camp yet?” he asked. “Ah. No, of course you haven’t. What I meant to say was that you should come out to the ice-coring camp. It’s a slightly different icescape. It might jog something loose, perhaps provide some inspiration.”
“That’d be nice, but they’re not handing out Airbus rides to tourists like me.”
Pavano seemed to think about this for a moment. “Then come as my research assistant.” Cooper laughed, but Pavano continued. “I’m entitled to one, though they haven’t exactly made it easy for me to find a willing volunteer. Currently, I’ve been assigned one of Sri’s research techs, though she’s made it clear that she has no interest in being part of my project.”
“I don’t think they’d allow me to get anywhere near the site. And anyway, I don’t know how to do research.”
“Isn’t this research?”
“What, taking a walk?”
“Metaphorically, all research is a long walk.”
“And all great literature is set in Madison County,” Cooper replied.
They reached the Pole marker. Just a few feet downwind was the Christmas tree. At the very top, a snowflake of aluminum nuts sparkled in the sunlight.
“I find myself thinking of that tree as I fall asleep at night,” Pavano said. “It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”
Cooper regarded the tree for a moment, then Pavano. “If you can get me on the manifest, then I’ll go,” she said. Pavano turned his radiant face to Cooper and smiled. His smile plucked something deep inside her, and a feeling—familiar and yet out of reach—washed over her. Her heart began to pound and she silently recited, The urge to jump reaffirms the urge to live.
She left Pavano without saying goodbye and hurried toward the machine shop, praying to find it empty. It was deserted, and she slunk between a grader and a bulldozer. Her face was numb and her fingers felt only half there: she could bend them, but even bent they felt as if they were straight. She rubbed her mittens together, but this did little to distract her from the powerful feeling that had overcome her as she stood with Pavano. The urge to jump, she told herself again, affirms the urge to live. This had been drilled into her head by different therapists, who told Cooper the feeling was common, that it even had a name: high-place phenomenon. The desire to throw oneself off a building was the brain’s misinterpretation of the instinctual safety signal. But at the time she had first encountered the impulse, it did not feel like a signal. It seemed very much like a voice. Cooper and David had just turned eighteen. He’d been strange for two years, but had not yet been accurately diagnosed. The first diagnoses—attention-deficit disorder, generalized anxiety, bipolar disorder—had initially inspired hope, but had faded like fireworks. This was the twilight time, before things became clear. They were, all of them, standing atop the Dahl Violin Shop in downtown Minneapolis—Billie, Dasha, and Bill in the background, Cooper and David standing at the edge of the roof. Below them, the Aquatennial parade streamed past. The Queen of Lakes sat perched atop her float like a doll.
The impulse to leap off the edge seized her without warning. It was a drumbeat, a song. Her mouth went dry, and it felt as if her limbs were filled with sand. It was the most powerful feeling she’d ever experienced. She gripped David’s hand, and he looked over at her in surprise.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I kind of want to jump off,” she whispered. “I don’t know why.”
David turned back to the parade. “Because he’s telling you to,” he replied coolly. “Don’t worry—I hear him, too. There’s only one way to make it stop, you know.”
Goose bumps rose on her forearms. Here was confirmation. The faceless thief had taken him.
A snowmobile careened through the shed, sending a shower of snow crystals over Cooper’s head, and she forced herself to begin walking back toward the station. Nothing about Pavano was like David. Nothing, except their loneliness.