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By Root 252 0

observe. All Bigelow knows is that one moment he is standing outside the louvered shed, notebook in one hand, pen in the other, trying to turn to the current page; but there is something—a bit of food?—and the leaves of the book stick together. It’s a small thing, an irritant to a person particular in record keeping, but no more than that, the kind of minuscule impediment that would ordinarily provoke a sigh, a frown. But on this day, Bigelow stamps his feet and curses, he hurls the notebook and pen at the shed, then launches himself after them. In a wild and kicking frenzy, he beats his fists and feet against the slats, splintering two, knocking others out of their frame, driving slivers into the heels of his hands, where they burn and ignite more rage. He pulls one panel off the shed, then turns on the equipment inside, shoves the thermometers over and the hygrometer, too, whacks it with his forearm and watches it fly. He tears the barometer from its stand—the instrument that only a day before he had tested with a plumb line to be sure it was standing absolutely vertical—and hurls it to the ground, watching as its tube shatters, spraying needles of glass onto the frozen mud.

The frenzy is short-lived, a minute or two, and that’s it. Bigelow kneels beside the mess. The barometer, a gift from his mother and sister when he completed his training at Fort Myer, lies like something unearthed from a tomb, evidence of an earlier age of wealth and surprising refinement. He sees that even in pieces it is elegant.

He picks up the polished brass collar, uses it to push the beads of mercury together into a slippery blob. With his pen he tries to pick debris from its surface. For most Alaskans a dish of mercury suffices as a forecasting tool: when it freezes solid, stay indoors.

Improbably, all three thermometers are intact; the hygrometer, dented, will function after some tinkering. And Bigelow has another barometer, one issued by the bureau, a utilitarian instrument, its scale drawn with a mingy officiousness.

What has possessed him to destroy this thing he loves, the one object he has that partakes—partook—of other places, civilized places? Made in France, the brass collar is stamped with an address: 12, AVENUE DU CIEL, CHERBOURG. Number 12, Avenue of the Sky. How likely was that? Perhaps more whimsical invention than truth, and the French words inscribed on its case in fanciful, curlicued script—Tempête, Variable, Beau, Vent, Pluie— did make the piece more suited to a drawing room full of ladies deciding the outcome of a picnic than to a person of serious meteorological intent. Yet it was an exact instrument, and one of great charm. Each time he moved, from Fort Myer to Seattle, from Seattle to Anchorage, Bigelow packed it with care, swaddling it in layers of clothes and blankets.

At least there was no one to see his tantrum. Although, Bigelow thinks as he picks up the broken slats, if he did not feel so alone, perhaps he would never have fallen prey to his temper.

Bits of glass and mercury gleam underfoot; too small to pick up, they elude fingers and broom straws. When he stands he’s surprised by what he’s seen a hundred times before: how quickly a sky can darken, on the water a few glints of silver even smaller than those underfoot.

HE TAKES READINGS from his mended instruments, he enters data in his logs. He walks to and from the inlet, the creek, the telegraph office. When storms threaten, he warns the Alaska Engineering Commission, but to no purpose. Work on the railroad has ceased during these darkest, coldest days.

December. January. February. He sits at his table and chews the pads of his fingers, and the man reflected in the window’s pane chews his fingers, too. The light that enters his room, that falls on his table and maps, is blue and cold. Heavy, like slabs of ice.

He tries to imagine what might have summoned her from her home. Illness? A death in her family, or a birth? Only the most dire explanations make sense to him—passages in and out of this life.

But maybe she was just tired of Anchorage, of its mud,