Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [36]
“Shackleton’s Sorrow looks just like those mountain ridges out here. Tell me it don’t. Now how could Karvel know that?” With a sweeping movement, a coconut creme roll clutched in his glove, Garth motioned to the space beyond our frozen windshield, his thick parka and snack cake cellophane rustling in unison to accent his gesture. It did look like the painting to me. So did all the other mountain ridges Garth had made the same claim of in the weeks before. This range was about ten miles away; its pale ridges were all that gave the landscape a sense of scale. Antarctica felt to me like nothing. Frozen nothing. Nihilism in physical form. If it was to be loved, it was to be loved for its lack of content, people, possessions.
The drill was mounted to an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) the size of a Volkswagen, and it took a good ten minutes just to get it unchained off the flatbed tow and then driven down to the ground. It was my turn, so Garth helped me set it up, then abandoned me for the warmth of the cab. It was an expensive piece of equipment. Every time we took it out, Booker Jaynes told us it was an expensive piece of equipment, but it looked mean and old. Once again it shook, it shuddered, and burrowed its way down the hole to its bottom, pumping and thrusting into the cold ground. Once it reached its target, the drill would remove an eight-inch tubular sample, and then we could drive on.
After I got the drill going, I walked back to the cab to refill my thermos. Garth was looking through his rumpled Karvel catalog. Nearly every page was worn from overuse, its corner intentionally turned. I tapped on the window, and he rolled it down, reached his thermos to mine, and poured.
“You hear that drill? Your mom wants one with rubber on the end,” I told him. When the cup was filled, I took it into two thickly gloved hands, where it was not so much held as laid.
“Dog, you joke. But she had one. And your pop stole—”
Midsentence, Garth’s expression turned from squinting speculation to wide-eyed revelation. Before I could react, one of his padded mitts reached out to grab my shoulder but slipped and took a firm sirloin grip on my neck instead. I reflexively jumped back, but not far because the big man had a grip on me, his face twisted with an emotion I had never read there before. I grabbed Garth’s wrists just as he hit the accelerator on the truck—if I hadn’t he might have run over me. With the engine roaring, we lurched forward, me holding on to Garth’s arm with both mittened hands as fiercely as he was holding on to my neck. Under our mittens, we locked onto each other with a death grip. I looked up at Garth, his face ashy from the blistering cold, eyes facing the windshield, and saw that he was screaming. Between the roaring engine and the jackhammer of my adrenaline-pumped heart, I couldn’t make out what he was saying. It might have been “Chris, I am about to ram into a snowdrift about twelve feet high, so you should brace yourself,” but I didn’t hear it. Just felt the jolt as the truck slammed into a powdered wall.
The truck bounced lightly back from the resistance; I came to rest less gracefully. Maybe it was the shock of the moment, or the shock of slamming into the drift, but I felt nothing on impact. Only confusion as I looked back at the truck.
Garth got out of the cab, his jacket unzipped in the polar wind, and didn’t even glance at me, collapsed on the ground. He was looking back in the direction from where we came.
“Sweet baby Jesus.” I could just make out his mumbling. “Ain’t that something?”
In the space where we had just been standing, there was now nothing. Nothing: not the drill,