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Authors: Michael Winter
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things, and I believed the way to be against them was to rant and argue and never be conciliatory. I loathed diplomacy.
I slept in the tent in a room on the second floor. Bad to worse, I thought.
25
I went over to the Bartletts’ to see Bob. Rupert showed me in. The Newfoundland men were short, like me. Except when sitting down. When they sat down they appeared taller.
Bob Bartlett was talking to Bud Chafe. Bud’s son Charlie was still missing in the Arctic. Bob was saying he was all right, he would be fine, Bud. He just needed to get a ship back to Wrangel Island. If the men kept their heads Charlie would be all right. Bud said, Is it money. I have money.
Bartlett came over to me. He had his mother on his arm.
My best girl, she is.
And we shook hands. His big tough hand.
So what made you come finally. Besides me. New York to Brigus is twelve hundred miles.
I’ve wanted, I said, more than anything to live on the ocean.
Probably for no other reason than you were born inland.
He thought, when he met me, that my wish to come was eager rather than lasting. I told him of a bath I’d had. It was in Gerald Thayer’s basement in Manhattan. When you dunked your head under you could hear the subway go by. It was the only time you heard the subway and I loved it. But all else about New York I could eschew. I wanted to explore the hem of the coat of a continent. It was the chunk-shunk of the subway underwater or this.
He said he had a bath coming to him. He was lousy. Almost always was on board boats. Lice, he said, won’t go to an unhealthy person.
We stood in his Artic Room — the old way of spelling Arctic — which had green-and-gold wallpaper, but you could hardly see the walls for the congestion of framed photographs of Bartlett in the North. It was my first time in this room. The picture frames touched each other clear across the length of the wall. I wondered but did not ask if there was room for a brother’s exploits. Or if Rupert considered exploits. I wondered later if this was part of why he’d signed up early, got commissioned, and threw himself into France and almost begged to be destroyed by a fresh young war and blown up in a new way.
Bob: You sure took the farthest house from town. Dont you find it a bit of a march?
Me: An artist must walk a lot.
Oh you’d like it down north, then.
The photographs of Bartlett glinted in square slants like a panel of windows in a ship. There was a photo of that first day of April, when Peary had forced Bob Bartlett to return to the Roosevelt . That was the morning, Bartlett said, that Peary betrayed me. He took the coloured man, Henson.
Betrayed you.
In small ways I can see the rationale.
It is a powerless moment, isnt it. When someone tells you what to do.
It has humiliated me. It’s dampened my passion for other people’s witnessing my deeds.
Bob Bartlett could not live in a world that had no audience, and when the audience was broken into individuals, he could not stand their accolades to his face.
I love printed praise, he said. I think the world of newspapers.
I stared at this photo of Bartlett’s argument with Peary, an argument only because Bob had defined it as such — it was of two men staring at each other in the distance of a foreground of white, Peary’s mouth open, a hand gesturing, while Bartlett stood at slouched attention, as if carrying a heavy bucket in either hand.
A photograph, he said, is much like the physical image of an inner, fleeting, unspoken moment. This one here, that’s when Peary came back to Greenland with Crocker Land sighted. We discovered new land. It’s the last land in the world to be found, and we found it.
Crocker Land. Named after George Crocker, Jenny’s father. We leaned against the mantel and had a drink. Bob took coffee. I touched a soldier brick in the fireplace — called that because it stands on end. Bud Chafe said he had to go. Mrs Bartlett was seeing to dinner. Rupert was on the stair, his nose in
I slept in the tent in a room on the second floor. Bad to worse, I thought.
25
I went over to the Bartletts’ to see Bob. Rupert showed me in. The Newfoundland men were short, like me. Except when sitting down. When they sat down they appeared taller.
Bob Bartlett was talking to Bud Chafe. Bud’s son Charlie was still missing in the Arctic. Bob was saying he was all right, he would be fine, Bud. He just needed to get a ship back to Wrangel Island. If the men kept their heads Charlie would be all right. Bud said, Is it money. I have money.
Bartlett came over to me. He had his mother on his arm.
My best girl, she is.
And we shook hands. His big tough hand.
So what made you come finally. Besides me. New York to Brigus is twelve hundred miles.
I’ve wanted, I said, more than anything to live on the ocean.
Probably for no other reason than you were born inland.
He thought, when he met me, that my wish to come was eager rather than lasting. I told him of a bath I’d had. It was in Gerald Thayer’s basement in Manhattan. When you dunked your head under you could hear the subway go by. It was the only time you heard the subway and I loved it. But all else about New York I could eschew. I wanted to explore the hem of the coat of a continent. It was the chunk-shunk of the subway underwater or this.
He said he had a bath coming to him. He was lousy. Almost always was on board boats. Lice, he said, won’t go to an unhealthy person.
We stood in his Artic Room — the old way of spelling Arctic — which had green-and-gold wallpaper, but you could hardly see the walls for the congestion of framed photographs of Bartlett in the North. It was my first time in this room. The picture frames touched each other clear across the length of the wall. I wondered but did not ask if there was room for a brother’s exploits. Or if Rupert considered exploits. I wondered later if this was part of why he’d signed up early, got commissioned, and threw himself into France and almost begged to be destroyed by a fresh young war and blown up in a new way.
Bob: You sure took the farthest house from town. Dont you find it a bit of a march?
Me: An artist must walk a lot.
Oh you’d like it down north, then.
The photographs of Bartlett glinted in square slants like a panel of windows in a ship. There was a photo of that first day of April, when Peary had forced Bob Bartlett to return to the Roosevelt . That was the morning, Bartlett said, that Peary betrayed me. He took the coloured man, Henson.
Betrayed you.
In small ways I can see the rationale.
It is a powerless moment, isnt it. When someone tells you what to do.
It has humiliated me. It’s dampened my passion for other people’s witnessing my deeds.
Bob Bartlett could not live in a world that had no audience, and when the audience was broken into individuals, he could not stand their accolades to his face.
I love printed praise, he said. I think the world of newspapers.
I stared at this photo of Bartlett’s argument with Peary, an argument only because Bob had defined it as such — it was of two men staring at each other in the distance of a foreground of white, Peary’s mouth open, a hand gesturing, while Bartlett stood at slouched attention, as if carrying a heavy bucket in either hand.
A photograph, he said, is much like the physical image of an inner, fleeting, unspoken moment. This one here, that’s when Peary came back to Greenland with Crocker Land sighted. We discovered new land. It’s the last land in the world to be found, and we found it.
Crocker Land. Named after George Crocker, Jenny’s father. We leaned against the mantel and had a drink. Bob took coffee. I touched a soldier brick in the fireplace — called that because it stands on end. Bud Chafe said he had to go. Mrs Bartlett was seeing to dinner. Rupert was on the stair, his nose in
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