Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [85]
“I know where it is, dog!” Garth said to me, completely unsurprised by my arrival. “Thomas Karvel’s base camp. I figured it out, found the mountain peak in the painting, found it in one of the photo books Jaynes has. It’s right there!” he gushed, holding his snapshot of the painting up to the horizon and the mountains of ice that stood there. The resemblance between the two images was nonexistent to me.
“No, man. Look at the ridges, look at the outline. The top’s basically the same, right? Just flipped. That’s why it looked so familiar but I couldn’t place it. This image was painted from the other side. That’s where Karvel’s base is, man. Over that ridge. Has to be. It takes him weeks to create a masterpiece; he would need somewhere to stay.”
Looking at the outer shape of the formation, wanting to believe it so much because I had no other vision to invest in, I began to think that for a moment I’d seen what Garth was talking about. There were similarities. I ignored the fact that all the mountains basically looked the same to me.
“So, you down? You want to run away to the promised land?” Still staring at the photo and then back at the horizon, still wanting to see what Garth saw that gave him this level of conviction, I nodded my cold head in the affirmative. However mad the big man’s suggestion, it was the closest thing to a logical course of action available.
* This sound was yet another trait I had seen exhibited only by Augustus and not by his race in general. The others either didn’t laugh or did so in a way that seemed less like they were clearing their sinuses of a decade of congealed mucus.
† Shirley Temple was America’s biggest star during the twentieth century’s Depression, but she was a national obsession that from a distance of time now seems quite disturbing. Just a little girl, Temple was the ultimate symbol of purity: the sacred virgin, worshiped by all. There is an innocence to the virgin icon, but at its center it is still a sexual role. Little Debbie, I must say, was beyond such considerations, her purity unassailable. You don’t talk about Little Debbie.
‡ I had wondered about these creatures’ religious inclinations, whether they believed in a soul or felt they had one, and what I saw I took to be a sign of their primitive faith. Of course they worshiped an ice cube. Without natural predators—which were often the favorite subjects of worship of primitives—what would they bow down to? In the absence of bears or big cats to run from, the ice itself seemed a natural (though abstract) choice.
GARTH explained to me that the cutting of the truck’s tires didn’t matter to us, that our journey wouldn’t require them. The ice ahead was uncharted, and any seemingly harmless stretch of untouched snow might conceal a deadly chasm, or paper-thin surfaces unable to carry the weight of the vehicles. It was better to take the snowmobiles and hope that even they weren’t too heavy. Garth had managed to bring one bike by himself to the site and used it to drag another. There were two more waiting back at the Creole’s base camp; the captain could get one and Angela could double up on another. Now that he knew I was game, Garth would make a quick trip back for supplies and meet me here again. That was our escape plan.
After this course of action was agreed on and I had blissfully filled my belly on forgotten glove compartment energy bars, my first order of business was to find my cousin and put Booker Jaynes back in charge, because now more than ever we needed his leadership. Captain Jaynes was a member of the baby boomers, the last generation of African Americans to fight the race war directly—I can admit without embarrassment that I have always been impressed by that. Leaving Garth on the surface so that I could bring the good news to Angela and the