Inukshuk (7 page)

In his last drawing, he'd depicted Hoar with an arm over Goodsir's shoulder, something like what Commander Franklin used to do with Hoar—pulling him aside to enforce a pause in his duties, set aside the hot water, the polish, the razor strop, the tea service, the lint brush, be still and listen while Franklin clarified something about their purpose here in the Arctic, or explained a passage from the Bible as it applied to the icebound men. Until this expedition, Hoar had never been particularly religious; now it fills his head every waking minute (which is most of every single day from sunup to sunup), and is his only real source of solace. First, Goodsir babbling as usual (Thomas's note to himself here for later, for actual directing purposes, or for whoever else might eventually shoot the scene:
a little of this goes a loo-o-ong way
). New frame: Goodsir and Hoar, both men facing the camera, huddling for warmth.

Goodsir: “ . . . At first they says
it's just the one man. We need him to stew, see, so's all the rest of us can survive
. Of course! Just followin' orders, sir!
Don't want to waste none of him, and none of his private bits in the mash, see—no fingers or toes or the like, nothing to discourage the men from eating
. But of course, sir, Captain Crozier.
Goodsir's your man, handy with the saw and knives
, they says,
knows where to cut 'em to get the best meat
, says they.
The most nutritious
. So's it just the one then, says I? Just the one?
Aye. Aye
, says they,
just the one, to be sure
. 'Cause I'll only do it once. It's their heads and faces,
is the problem, see, all scurvy and frostbit. Ever wonder what goes on in a man's head? I'll tell you what it looks like inside anyway. Tell you better how it cooks. To get the best bits . . . listen, to unhinge a man's head for the cheeks and the brains, you make a cut
here
to break the jaw open first. You don't want to waste nothing. Listen! It's important. It could be me dies first and then will you ever wish you'd listened to old man Harry Goodsir. But you'll tell them for me won't you, if you make it home, their families that is, I never meant 'em any harm? Not a one of 'em. They was dead already anyway, most of 'em. If you make it home?
He's the man for the job,
they says. Wasn't my choice.
Handy with a knife and saw,
they says. Just the one then, is it? says I. 'Cause I won't do another.
Aye. Aye
, says they. . . .”

Two-shots and shoulder shots alternated down the page. Thomas lay on his stomach on the floor of his bedroom, face as close to the page as he could get without losing focus to become more deeply engrossed, feet lifted and swinging, spinning the notebook around and around for differing perspectives on the men: Hoar with his handsome, frostbitten blond face, a little like the evil Jeremy Malloy, really; Goodsir, the more he drew him, resembling Cody/Dakota, the proportions on his nose shifting from frame to frame, wider, shorter, longer, the frozen Welsh-wig hat thing on his head like Cody/Dakota's insane mess of tubular dread-locked hair.

Hoar: “Only pray with me. We've done 'em no harm. No one. They was
all
dead already. I for one, if it was me and I was dead, and the choice was life or death for my mates, I'd say make a stew of me! Come. Prayer. It's the only answer.”

Goodsir: “That's Franklin talking.”

Hoar: “No, it's me. Franklin's long gone. With
Erebus
. Died on board
Erebus
. Remember, sir?”

Goodsir: “Of course I remember. Who do you think'd remember better? And don't you be
sirring
me none, young man. I see right through your type. See right through your cunning, conniving skull. You're only waiting for your moment. Waiting till the time's ripe and then smack old Harry in the head with whatever's handy. Back, I tell you! Back!”

The next frames showed the snow increasing, each man at his respective end of the longboat again, Hoar muttering prayers, Goodsir just muttering. For a while, Hoar tries in vain to light a fire at the bottom of the boat using pages from a novel (from
Erebus's
one-thousand-volume library and hauled all these miles over the snow in hopes of being tradable to the Eskimos for food), scraps of wet rope, and the few remaining slats and wood shards from the deconstructed snow sledge formerly underlying the longboat. Close-ups of Hoar's hands working the flint. Flames catching and licking the pages, then flickering out; burned, blackened corners of pages. Again he works the flint; flames again, and here's Hoar's face in the sudden light of new warmth as he leans closer to blow gently, bringing the fire to life; then for two more frames, the blessed glow of flames strengthening against his frozen and now almost heat-blistering flesh, until—poof—a gust of wind snatches it all away: flaming paper extinguished, blown skyward, nothing but blackened bits of rope and wood left. Again and again he tries, more close-ups of his shaking, frozen fingers, and this time as the camera draws back, Hoar leaning in and curling himself around the failed fire at the stern of the longboat, finally giving up, face frozen in an expression of beatific rest and release; the camera pans backward fast, super-fast, Google-fast, up along the coast of King William Island thirty, forty, fifty miles north, in the path of the boat sledges—barely a trace anymore of the men in their misery, harnessed and hauling the longboats, two tons apiece, through ice, slush, rock snowdrifts—back all the way to Victory Point, the stone tent circle and the ships frozen in going on three years now, stuck dead in the polar ice pack; and back farther than that, up Peel Sound, past Beechey Island again and back out into the open bay until we're on board
Erebus
again, sailing. Again Hoar's hands work the flint, and this time there's the pleasing crackle of lit, smoldering coal as flames glow and jump to life. (Thomas's note to himself here in the margins:
Check this. Boiler? Coal grate in commander's cabin?
) The same happy expression on his face as he turns and rises, dusting his hands on his knees.

“There you are, sir. Fire's all fine now. Would you be wanting anything else, then, sir?”

Franklin, in the little ring of light thrown from his oil lamp, pauses from his writing, lays aside his pen, and calls Hoar closer. “Edmund Hoar,” he says. “In your opinion, Master Hoar”—here he purses his lips and pauses to draw a breath—“would you say the punishment of twelve lashes and no rum in their rations the next fortnight was good and appropriate action considering the fisticuffs on board earlier today?”

“Begging your forgiveness, sir, and bein' a mere steward . . .”

“Yes, yes, but I
asked
your opinion, so you may give it. You are
free
to an opinion, Master Hoar. We are each of us free and fallen, every single one of us to a man,
and
made in God's image. Now then.”

“Yes, sir. Bein' as it's only my opinion and all, still I'd say, sir, it was really Private Braine as instigated the whole thing. They're always after the sailors, them Royal Navy, always passing off their work if they can do, and sometimes stealing rations to sell back if no one's looking, especially their share of cook's prerogative, and . . . now as I see it, they made it so poor Thomas, there was nothin' he
could
do but fight back or suffer a beating, or else fight back
and
suffer a beating but at least save his dignity some. I'd say it was fair, sir, absolutely, the disciplining actions, only it mighta been more fair had it been Braine got all of it.”

Pause and close-up of Franklin's face as he considers this. “
In your humble opinion,
that is, Master Hoar.”

“In my opinion, sir. Yes. I said that, sir. In my own opinion.”

“And
in your own opinion,
would you say the outcome of said disciplining will be of an overall positive and ameliorative effect? That is, are you more convinced of man's inherent decency and tendency toward goodness and godliness, as am I, or of his essential lack of empathy toward his fellow man and knack for finding trouble, always trouble, any sort of trouble, wherever it may lie,
regardless
the size of the rod and number of lashes awaiting? This is a
very serious question,
so please think a moment before answering.”

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“On the question of discipline, Hoar. We're talking about discipline. Do you believe in a man's tendency toward goodness and godliness, or his eternal need for strictest disciplining?”

“With all respect, sir, I'd say, in my opinion, it's entirely depending on the man in question. Some's not as good as others, to be sure. And that Thomas Work, now there's a fellow'd never hurt a fly, but . . . you shoulda seen him in there with the Royal Navy one. Meaning no disrespect to the Royal Navy, but some of us was even bettin' on him to—”

“That's all right now, Mr. Hoar. That's enough. You may go. I thank you for your considered
opinion
.”

“Would you be wanting your tea, then?”

“At teatime, thank you, and not a minute sooner. Now go.”

Close-up as Hoar exits: Franklin's journal.
My Dearest Jane,
it begins—another letter: his spare, angular gentleman's scrawl, India ink, each word tilting exactly, artfully one to the next; the grooved and brown-black ink-stained calluses on his right thumb and middle finger—and farther down the page: . . .
mined from and later forged in the suffering endured during my previous Arctic experiences (excluding those with B—of which I may here make no mention, though, if you think on it, you will well remember) and further galvanized by our time at Van Diemen's Land (as, again, you know too well), I have in my soul now such an enduring and iron-clad faith in man's essential goodness as can never be shaken. Today's incident on board Erebus has again tested me to the core. Why must it be lashes, always more lashes? . . .

Thomas spun the page again for refreshed perspective. Drew Franklin's fingers again, the ink-stained calluses, the nib of the pen flexing, the words, studying his own hand at work for a model, drawing, writing. If we're not related, he thought, how is it I can channel him like
that
—his voice. Coincidence? Words I've never even knew or heard of.
Ameliorative
. What's it mean? Who knows? He resisted the impulse, a common one when he was deeply enough into it, to pause and find the dictionary to look up the found words he kept stumbling into and for which he knew no true definition. Kept
drawing, hands and more hands, lost enough in it that he must not have heard his father's entrance—the car pulling up, door opening.

“Hey, sailor. Time out for dinner?”

His neck hurt, his elbows, and there was a hollow numb spot in his rib cage from the way he'd been lying. All this he hadn't exactly registered until now—distant aggravations like the prickles in his fingertips. He spun the notebook a final few times to close the line connecting Franklin's thumb and forefinger, like a mapped bay or inlet, like the blank spot on the old maps Franklin had sailed straight into. Done, he glanced back up the page at his drawings: hands and hands and more hands like maps. Snapped the cover shut and sat up, folding one leg under the other.

“Whoa,” he said. “I didn't even hear you. What time is it?”

“Just about six. Keeping busy?”

“No.”

“Homework?”

His father was in his parka still and smelled faintly of cigarettes and cold outside air. Under this were the smells that always distinguished him to Thomas—burned toast, mothballed sweaters, citrus aftershave, and their shared soap and shampoo. Water stood in beads on the scuffed tan toes of his shoes and some had soaked into the cuffs of his khakis. If Thomas were drawing him, he'd want to add more angles to the way he stood now, because most people, he'd learned, came across better in a drawing that way—more active—if you included some kind of S-shaped curvature: a head tilt, hand on a hip, hip jutted and shoulder cocked at an opposing angle, something like that. But his father's natural stance, he realized, was pretty much in constant opposition to this bit of portraiture logic: He stood boringly straight up, hands at his sides, fingers tapping and swatting at something in his pockets. Twenty-five years between them. But, interestingly, in the decade or so during which Thomas had shot up from child to young man and became conscious enough to begin observing his father in anything like a neutral or semidetached manner, his father seemed to him not to have changed or aged outwardly at all. He had not gained weight, gone soft, lost hair, suddenly grayed.
He was pretty much as he'd always been: khakis and striped or plaid oxford shirts and flannel shirts, shoes and jackets rotated according to the season. Maybe he was a little more faded at the temples, duller-eyed, but not noticeably—and he was still the physically superior of the two of them. No question there. Occasionally, Thomas had had the shock of discovering ancient photos of his father in the hall desk or buried in some drawer, black-haired and regal, but the moment of surprise and discovery, seeing how, yes, he was not immortal, he'd in fact been changing and aging all along, however imperceptibly, somehow never stuck with him. Devon and his father had had their tennis and racquetball feuds, one of which had resulted in a dislocated shoulder for his brother, but to Thomas's knowledge there had never been a definitive knockdown game. Devon never satisfactorily wasted or surpassed their father; he just got better at giving him a pretty good game. Thomas and his father had no corollary physical rivalry, so there was not even that as a way of marking the distance between them.

“I figured I'd draw till you were home,” he said. “How'd it get so late?”

“The debate in Cranbrook's coming up—we went a little overtime.” His father's chin tilted upward slightly. “Anything good there?”