Free The Big Why by Michael Winter Page B

he said. Otherwise I’d never have taken the job. The Karluk . The ship had sunk eight months ago. The men stranded on Wrangel Island. I’m raising money, he said, for a rescue. There’s a Brigus lad, Bud Chafe’s son. I watched him fall over the side and hit his head on the ice. He was unconscious but then came to. We lowered a sheet and he rolled in, like a hammock.
    You okay?
    Sure I’m good, Skipper.
    How many fingers you see?
    Three. Three fingers.
    What’s your name.
    Charlie Chafe.
    And what day is it, Charlie?
    Sexday.
    What did you say?
    Sexday. It’s Sexday, Skipper.
    Charlie if you die in my charge I’ll never forgive you.
    They put him in a bunk and brought him rum and soup.
    At the time I was not attracted to these stories of the North. I listened to them and enjoyed them, but I wasnt interested in other people’s exploits. I wanted to have my own. I was a little envious of Bartlett: here was a man who, after a farewell to thousands on the East River, had tied up in Oyster Bay and been received by Teddy Roosevelt. Bartlett had marched about Sagamore Hill and told the president the strengths of the ship that bore his name. I was sitting with a powerful man who had guided Peary to the north pole, and now he was wanted and it was a surprise to hear him bad-mouthing Peary.
    I left the iceboats and joined Bartlett by the fire under some spruce. He’d built the fire on rocks and the rocks had melted through the ice to the ground. There was a kettle hanging over it on a green pole. Bartlett wiped his nose on the back of his glove. The gloves were trigger mitts, with a thumb and index finger knitted in. He said the Karluk venture was to be a geological survey. What an outfit, he said. They left Victoria with their deck piled high: fresh meat, vegetables, snowshoes, skins, alcohol drums, and canoes. They had unmarked boxes and cases of equipment enough to stretch over this whole pond. It would all get sorted when then reached the rendezvous at Collinson Point. That’s what the commander, Stefansson, thought. It was the worst-organized expedition ever bar none guaranteed.
    Me: Vilhjalmur Stefansson?
    That’s the man.
    I know him, I said.
    I hope he wasnt in charge of leading you someplace.
    I painted a mural for the post office in Washington. It was a letter being mailed in Alaska and arriving in Puerto Rico. I was impressed with the plight of the Puerto Ricans. So I painted a group of women receiving the letter from a mailman on horseback. One of the women was reading the letter. You could see the writing, but it was in a language no one could understand. The post office didnt like that. So they copied the letter out and sent it to a specialist in northern languages.
    Bartlett: And it was Stefansson.
    He knew the dialect.
    It was an Eskimo language.
    Kiskokwims. It said, To the people of Puerto Rico, our friends: Go ahead, let us change chiefs. That alone can make us equal and free.
    Youre a strange bird, Kent.
    They still paid me, which was nice of them. And I thought it good of Stefansson to figure it out.
    I wish he’d stayed on dry land.
    You didnt find him striking.
    An empty craft, Kent, always looms high.
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    I realized that I did not know who lived in Brigus. So as we worked Tom Dobie told me. I credit him with an intimate knowledge of the community. He pointed out obvious ones to get me grounded. The Pomeroys next door. Stan and Old Man Pomeroy, he said, theyre fishermen and woodcutters and Old Man Pomeroy he’s a laugh and I used to steal tobacco off him and hide it under a bureau when I was small and he learned me how to catch rabbits.
    Next to him, Tom said, is Miles Sweeney and he’s a prate box who knows how to do everything except work. Amanda Sweeney she got a big mouth. That’s Bud and Alice Chafe over there, you knows them pretty good. They had three sons. One got killed in a accident and the other one died when he was young and Charlie Chafe he be the third and now he’s lost on the