Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [27]
So ends the final crumpled page. This was to be all that Edgar Allan Poe would see of Peters’s narrative, all that his imagination would have to draw from.
But in Peters’s manuscript, there is more to the story. Sewn together with a thick purple ribbon reduced to pale lavender by time, there it is: the fourth page. An unrumpled, withered, yet clean sheet that clearly shows none of the harsh use of the other three. And on that fourth page, in Dirk Peters’s signature liberally inked chicken scratch, is written the following:
He points at us to land our boat and Pym got out first, and I went to follow and this big thing makes like I’m not welcome, pushes me back in the boat and gives it a kick. At this time, I don’t even mind, because this white thing gives me the shivers. He ain’t born right, I can see. I was far down there, about longitude 3.34 and latitude 34.3 by my calculations. And being as weak as I was, and as tired as I was, I assumed death was waiting at sea for me. But the same tide that pulled me down from the Tsalal Island in a few days pulled me back again. I came in at night, gathered up some of them dried sea turds fishes, and in a few days I sailed off again. Picked up by the crew of the Blue Fortune on what they said was November 17th.d
Longitude 3.34 and latitude 34.3. What we today know as Morter’s Point on the Ross Ice Shelf. Longitude 3.34 and latitude 34.3; on the map it was a rather big place. It was the size of a small city, actually. But in the right place, at the right time, aimed in the right direction, what Dirk Peters’s notes told me is that you could sail from there off this frozen continent to a hidden tropical utopia within a few days of floating. I knew this in my heart: that if I found the right place at those coordinates and launched a vessel from it at the right time of the month, that regardless of global warming or centuries, the path to the isle of Tsalal would still be viable. That just as it did for Dirk Peters, the current would pull me to the island, and to discovery.
I called my cousin Booker Jaynes at the number he left for me. Garth’s handwriting wasn’t much better than Dirk Peters’s, but I got through anyway.
“Booker Jaynes?”
“Captain Booker Jaynes.” The voice was abrupt, graveled. I apologized and started in with family small talk but only got a few seconds before he interrupted me.
“Mr. Chris Jaynes, I have three questions to ask you before we say anything else,” he told me. I stuttered a bit, then went silent. After a few seconds of this, satisfied, he put them to me.
“One. You want to go to Antarctica, to the Ross Ice Shelf, take a group down there and do some research. Is that correct?”
It was. I’d told him in my original message. Clearly this was why he bothered to call me back. He sure didn’t want to talk about Great-Uncle Oley.
“Two. Do you have the kind of money it would take to get down there, rent equipment, hire a professional crew, and make it through any weather delays necessary to get the intel you need?”
It looked like I did. The first settlement offer from the college was a little more than I had invested in the books themselves. Not as much as I knew the books’ worth had probably appreciated to, but getting in the ballpark. Added with the year’s severance I’d received for not suing them for firing their only black professor, I could do this.
“Three. Are you willing, are you willing to swear on your God, swear on your heart, swear on the very Jaynes bloodline, that you will not tell a soul about our meeting, or reveal any information therein—not one goddamn word—without my approval? Can you handle that?”
I could, did. I wrote the address of the bar he wanted to meet at the following night. Then