Ethan Rutherford - The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories

We fired the rockets. It looked like—well, like nothing I’d ever seen. But it reminded me of a legend we tell the campers on orientation night about Chief Winnesaka, who, one day, in his infinite wisdom, realized that what was missing from this forest-world of injustice was light. And so he appealed to the heavens, and said, Let my brothers have light, so that they too can see the beauty of the pinecone and the crystalline simplicity of a swamp frond collecting a drop of rainwater. Let light break through this redwood canopy to mottle the earth so the flowers can bloom and grow and deliver their sweet pollen to the bumblebee. And the heavens, ever mindful, opened in benevolence. The rockets, at their apex, went silent, and forgive me but I feel it’s only appropriate to say that at that moment I felt someone standing beside me, a warm and tacit companion, whose nod of approval was small enough to fill eternity.

And I guess it was then that Eric pulled me aside and said he had something I needed to see. I told him it wasn’t a good time, the second brigade was readying their rockets and needed a pep talk, and—

He insisted.

He led me through Spirit Grove to the Hondo Lodge. He was sweating a little bit. He was dancing back and forth on his toes and finally I said What? And he said, Well, and then opened this door marked CUSTODIAN, and sitting there, among some life jackets I didn’t even know we had, was Moosey.

It was kind of an Oh Shit moment.

Eric said, Oh shit, and I said, Oh. Shit.

It’s hard to explain how it—I mean, there are times in every Head Eagle’s tenure when he’s given a test. And something told me that this was probably one of those times. I knew the impact this revelation could have on things and I didn’t like it. I mean, the whole summer, down the drain. That’s what’s at stake here.

But beyond that, even. Without Winnesaka, would I have ever learned the difference between a red-tailed skooker and a split-wing skooker? And appreciated the value of that difference? Would I have ever canoed across a moonlit lake to put my hands up Sarah Soleil’s shirt and rub her pillows after Lights-Out? At the age of fourteen? Would I have ever known countless cookouts? Sing-alongs? Bunk Prank Day? Would I have ever grown up to become Head Eagle, presiding like a benevolent, but firm, older brother to the kids here at Camp? Would my life even have remotely resembled the one I have now? All of that was going through my head. But also going through my head was another question, which was: why is this something that I have to deal with?

And I suppose it was then that Eric turned and said he’d thought it over and come up with a solution. We didn’t have to say anything. I didn’t respond right away. But it was then, I suppose, that I began to understand the burden we, as counselors, carried. And me, their leader.

Moosey’d started something, sure, but this thing now, it was bigger than Moosey. And the campers, they were really having fun looking for him. They had come to think of their time here in really specific terms. And if we told them that Moosey hadn’t ever been at Chickapony, but had been here, in this janitorial closet, all along?

I guess I would argue that it’s selfish, to shatter belief like that. People—cynics—will tell you facts are essential. But facts can be misleading. One fact is not the entire story. And they are downright destructive if you want to get anything done.

Safeguarding Winnesaka, that’s my entire job. In perpetuity. If I perceive a threat to camp life, it’s my responsibility to address it swiftly and in no uncertain terms. Those art fags at Chickapony, they did steal our totem pole and our Tribal Thunder Stick. And, if you think about it, they were the reason we didn’t have a Spirit Grove anymore. Or Ward Hamilton. Not to mention the other campers.

Eric looked at me. I nodded. We leaned down, put our hands on Moosey, and lifted him off the floor. He was lighter than I’d expected. His expression was unreadable.

We carried him through the meadow, past the gully ferns. Buried him near the Outer Teepees in a patch of brambles.

As we tamped down the soil we could hear the second wave of rockets whistling their ascent. The sun was out. Eric, he flipped open his Swiss Army knife and made a small cut on his thumb. He handed it to me and I did the same. Then we pressed thumbs together. As we walked through the Clover Grove, Lake Oboe came into view, calm and welcoming. On the beach, our campers were dancing around in circles, holding hands like the small children they were, and singing.

In the middle of an endless Arctic night, miles from land, we wake to yelling. “Who’s peeing on me?” Vlad is shouting.

“Accident, accident,” Dmitri is saying, backing away with his palms up, fly still unbuttoned.

Vlad is standing now, doing a little dance to shake off. “Do you have eyes or just an asshole? The bucket’s behind you.”

Dmitri looks. Sure enough. “I couldn’t see,” he says. “I’m sorry .”

We are sailors aboard the Saint Anna, now in our second ice-bound winter. There are twenty-five of us and we lie like pickled herring in a packed hold, breathing stale air, huddling for warmth, hats on, hands in our armpits, waiting, waiting, waiting. In an aft cabin our captain Brusilov sleeps in comfort with his niece, Yerminiya Zhdanko, dreaming, no doubt, of the walrus and polar bear we have yet to hunt and the route we have yet to map. We are somewhere in the Kara Sea, locked in an endless sheet of ice, 2,400 miles north of where we should be. Against our wishes we are moving with the ice pack toward the Pole. Land has not been spotted for thirteen months.

We are the forgotten, the unfortunates. Dominoes in a rucksack. Dots on a floe. On all sides we are surrounded by an expanse that cracks and groans according to pressure and accident. Below deck the darkness is complete. Spirits are low. Expectations? You’re talking to the wrong crowd. We would think ourselves already ghosts except for the misery of human necessity. What I mean by that: we pee and shit in the subzero, eat to prove we’re alive, then sleep and wake to do it all over again.

“Ice-ho,” Dmitri says, from inside his sleep-sack.

“Ice-ho,” is the response.

My name is Piotr Bayev, and at nineteen I am the youngest aboard. I sleep as far away from the bucket as possible, surrounded by Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, atheists, agnostics, harpooners, navigators, profiteers, carpenters, and criminals. We’re marginal seamen, peasants in sailor hats. Men who under normal conditions do not get along. Disagreements flash up hourly but our invective is muted, our politics halfhearted. What’s the point? Are the twenty-five of us going to solve Russia’s problems? We can’t even navigate a lead in the ice without someone falling in. We’re concerned only with outlasting the ice. Russia can do what she wants while we’re away.

The Saint Anna is a British-built, gaff-rigged schooner, and we sail under official capacity, sponsored by Nicholas himself. The success of our voyage will be judged on two counts: how thoroughly we are able to explore and map the Northern Sea Route, that hazy passage from Atlantic to Pacific; and the split profits from the hunting expeditions conducted along the way. We hit ice and found early encasement at the hands of our captain, Georgi Brusilov, and as a result have neither mapped nor shot. But Brusilov’s an optimist, unburdened by the little things. The kind of czarist who considers our recent war with the Japanese a moderate, if not striking, success. The kind of captain who packs twenty-four months’ worth of dried fruit and biscuits for a planned sixteen-month voyage but stocks fuel according to favorable winds. We shoot him looks and he swivels to see who’s behind him, as if we might blame someone else for what’s happening. We are nowhere now but every day he writes in the log for hours, as if what we’re currently undergoing is momentous. As if history will bear us out.