winds. She looked even un-happier when Lawson announced that they'd be spending the night outdoors.
“In a tent?” Charlotte said. “My room isn't much, but at least it's got a bed, thanks.”
Lawson pretended to take it in good humor-or maybe, Michael thought, the guy really was impervious to any negativity- and said, “No, no tents. We'll be building our own igloos!” For a second, Michael thought Lawson was going to clap his hands in joy.
“Well, if that's how things are done at the South Pole,” Darryl started to say, before Lawson corrected him by saying, “Pole. Just pole.”
None of them entirely understood.
“No one says the South Pole down here,” Lawson explained, “or even the pole at all. It gives you away as a newcomer, or a tourist. Just say, for instance, ‘We're going to pole next week,’ and you'll sound like an old hand.”
While they all silently tried mouthing the new locution, Lawson produced four serrated ice saws from his rucksack, handed them out, and proceeded to show the class how to cut blocks of snow and ice from the ground as if they were slicing up a wedding cake. Then he went about demonstrating the proper method of stacking the blocks atop each other, though slightly cantilevered, in order to fashion a kind of sloppy dome. Even though the temperature was in the low twenties, Lawson was sweating profusely by the time he was done, and stood back to admire his little Taj Mahal.
“Didn't you forget something?” Charlotte asked.
“You must mean the door,” Lawson said, grinning. His teeth were as white as Chiclets. “I was just taking a breather.”
Then, with the saw, a shovel, and often his mittened hands, he started burrowing into the ground like a beaver. Chips of ice and snow, pocked with the occasional bit of gravel, flew behind him as if he were a wood chipper. As Michael watched in wonder, he dug a shallow, and very narrow, tunnel that ran down through the snow, then up into the igloo. Casting the shovel aside, he got down on his belly, and gradually, his whole body disappeared, one segment at a time, into the earth, until, finally, his boots, too, wriggled out of sight. Michael crouched down at the open end of the tunnel, and called out, “Everything okay in there?” and Lawson's voice, sounding winded and sepulchral, came back, “Snug as a bug in a rug.”
Charlotte looked like she'd like to squash that particular bug.
But when he reemerged, he managed to cajole them, under his close supervision, into making their own snow dome. Although he guided their every move, he insisted that they do the manual labor every step of the way, unaided. “You've got to know how to do this- and believe that you can do this,” he said, hovering above them as they chopped the blocks of snow. “It could make the difference between life and death.”
The close proximity of death, Michael reflected, was becoming a frequent refrain at Point Adelie.
That night, instead of repairing to the commons for dinner, they huddled behind an ice wall they'd built with the leftover materials from the snow dome, and thanked God for the NSF gear they'd found in their closets. They ate field rations that Lawson had brought along; they weren't labeled MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat, but Michael suspected that they came from the same fine kitchens that supplied the U.S. military. Michael's can said corned beef hash, but with his eyes closed, he wasn't sure he would have been able to identify it as such. When they were done eating-a quick and cold business-Lawson passed a plastic bag around and every scrap of refuse was gathered up and tossed inside.
“Out here, we leave nothing behind,” he said. “Whatever humans bring in, we take out.”
The base itself was maybe a half mile off, and downhill; its bare white lights, illuminated even in the constant sunlight, were just visible by the shore of the Weddell Sea. Charlotte was looking off at them as if they were the lights of Paris. When the wind blew their way, they could faintly hear the howls of the sled dogs in their kennel.
“You sure we can't call it a night?” she said to Lawson. “I mean, we know how to build igloos now. Do we really have to sleep in ‘em?”
Lawson cocked his head, and said, “I'm afraid so; we're just following the chief's orders. Ever since that beaker-excuse me, I mean the geologist from Kansas-got lost and died out here, Murphy's required a full day and night of snow school for all new arrivals.”
Darryl stood up and slapped his arms around himself to get the heat going. “So, who's sleeping where?” he said. “It looks like one of the dorms will have to be coed.”
“Right you are,” Lawson said, in keeping with his apparent philosophy of complimenting them on anything, no matter how obvious, that they uttered. “Michael, why don't you share with me? I made this first one with extra leg room.”
Each one of them picked up a subzero, synthetic-fill sleeping bag from the sled, said good night, and while Michael waited for Lawson, flashlight in hand, to squirm his way inside, Charlotte, in her great big green parka, waited for Darryl to go into the other one.
“Least he won't get seasick in there,” Michael said, and Charlotte just nodded. Her eyes were fixed on the hole in the snow as she held the rolled-up sleeping bag.
On a hunch, Michael said, “Don't even think about trying to walk back to the camp. It isn't safe.”
She glanced over at him, and he could tell he'd read her mind-or at least her inclination.
“Come on in, anytime,” Lawson called out in a muffled voice.
“See you in the morning,” Michael said, before scrunching down, pushing the sleeping bag into the hole, and crawling in.
It wasn't a long tunnel, but it was a tight squeeze. Lawson was, like Michael, over six feet tall, but the guy was built like a rubber band, and Michael wished that he'd provided just a little more leeway. The ceiling grazed his head every inch of the way, and to make any progress he had to dig the tips of his boots into the snow, then shove himself forward with the front of his body supported on his elbows. He didn't suffer from claustrophobia but that would have been a terrible time to develop it; his entire body was stuck in the snow, his lips were wet with flakes, and the sleeping bag he was pushing ahead of him blocked out nearly all the light from Lawson's flashlight. When it finally popped through, it was like a new world; Lawson shoved the bag out of the way and helped pull Michael in.
“Best thing about it,” Lawson said, “is that you don't need a fridge.”
Michael crawled in and got to his knees; the roof was only a few feet high, but the walls-firm and already slicked with ice from the condensation of their breath-were wide enough apart that, if he let his feet protrude into the tunnel entrance, he'd be able to lay out his bag to its full length. Lawson had covered most of the floor with insulated sleep mats.
But it was the light inside that truly stunned him. The flashlight beam was angled upward, and it sent twinkling rays of light in all directions. The walls seemed to glow with a glistening blue-white sheen, and a few errant flakes of snow, fallen from the roof, idly turned in the air, like diamonds on display. Michael felt like he was caught inside a snowball.
“The roof will drip a bit during the night,” Lawson said as he shimmied down into his own sleeping bag, “especially around the blowholes. It's nothing to worry about, but I'd suggest you drape the waterproof flap of your bag over your face.”
Lawson lay back, and loosely threw his own flap over his head. “Like this,” he said, his breath puffing up the fabric.
Michael unrolled his bag, and even though he managed to bang his head on the ceiling three or four times during the process, laid it out. He took off his boots, leaving on the wool socks and boot liners, then scrunched his parka, as Lawson had done, into a pillow. But the hardest part was squinching himself down into the bag with so many other layers of clothing still on. In the closed space of the snow dome, he got a good whiff of himself, and it wasn't a pleasant smell. He wedged himself down, a little at a time, until his feet hit the bottom of the sack. Lawson had already stuck the end of his own bag into the tunnel, but there was just enough room left over for Michael to extend his legs without playing footsie. He put his head back on the balled-up parka and stared up at the curved ceiling, wondering if the whole thing might not cave in at any second. Instead, a big single drop of ice water dangled from the roof, then landed with a splat on his stubbly chin. He'd been shaving less and less in recent days, in anticipation of just such events as these, when any protection, even whiskers, might come in handy. He brushed the droplet away with the back of his glove, then fumbled for the sleeping bag flap to drop over his face.
“Lights out?” Lawson muttered.
