The Pole (13 page)

I didn't know about any of that, but I knew my Bible well enough to know that God made man in His image, and we were all God's children … each and every one of us. I wasn't sure about that Darwin guy and the whole theory of evolution—no way I was related to apes or monkeys—but even if Darwin was right, it still meant we were all related, all brothers and sisters and cousins—all family.

I looked down at the little manger. I wondered what Jesus would make of any of this. Standing on the ice in the freezing Arctic temperatures, the sun nowhere to be seen even though it was nearly noon, all of us dressed in layers of clothing, I couldn't imagine any scene farther away from Bethlehem.

Every member of the party—crew, expedition, and Eskimo—stood there listening to the Captain. The Eskimos were mostly not Christian, and only a few had a good grasp of English, but they had all come to the service. They were like that. Curious, and polite, but mostly respectful. Maybe they didn't understand the words, or would agree with what they meant if they did, but they were prepared to listen. They all bowed their heads when we did, yelled out “Amen” when the Captain did, and nodded their heads enthusiastically, following our lead.

Being around the Captain and Matt, I'd certainly learned a lot about the Bible.They could both quote verses for almost any occasion. There was a lot of learning in that Good Book.

I'd also learned about Eskimo beliefs, their religion. It was all told in stories, none of it written down, just passed on from person to person, father to son and mother to daughter, from one generation to another. There were times I'd go and sit in the shelter with the Eskimos. It was awfully crowded, but they always made room for me. I'd sit down, join
them in a circle, and listen to their stories.They loved to tell stories. Of course I understood less Inuktitut than most of them understood English, but still I listened. Oatah would translate some of it—give me the meaning of the story—but what I really loved was just listening to the voices rising up or getting all quiet, watching the gestures, or acting—pretending to run or throw a spear or whatever—and the way everybody reacted. People would cheer or hiss or clap or whistle in response.

Even more interesting than the stories was the way I was treated. Everybody, but especially the women, was really kind to me. They were always talking to me—using what little bits of broken English they knew—and patting me on the back, bringing me food to eat. I remember the first time I was offered a piece of raw blubber to eat. I wanted to spit it out, but I didn't. I chewed it slowly, almost gagging before I swallowed it down. Now, it still wasn't my favourite food—I think all meat should be cooked—but I could eat it. Certainly it wasn't any worse than eating pemmican.

At first I thought they were all being nice to me because I was white and different.Then I noticed how they treated all the children in the party. Eskimos love children. Not just their own, but any child.They were just so kind and caring, and they made me feel like I was almost part of their family.That would have been
something, to be part of a family that big. If you lost your mother or father there'd still be others around to step up and take care of you.

Captain Bartlett came into the Eskimo shelter sometimes, but the only other person who visited there regularly was Matt. Of course he knew their language, but it was more than that. He cared for them, showed respect, knew their customs. Some of them called him
maktak kabloona,
meaning black white man, but he was as much Eskimo as he was black or white … he was a combination of all of those things. They also called Matt one other thing,
Miy Paluk
. It meant “Dear Matt,” and that was how he was treated.

“As we stand here, thousands of years and thousands of miles removed from the birth of Jesus, I ask you to look up,” Captain Bartlett said as he raised his eyes skyward, and we all followed his gaze to the heavens above us.

“The millions of stars that form the ceiling above our 'eads are the same stars seen by Joseph and Mary. Perhaps the North Star,” he said, pointing directly at it, “was the one followed by the Three Wise Men as they travelled to pay homage to the baby Jesus.” He paused as we all looked at it. “As we stand 'ere beneath that same star, we are small, an' alone, and fragile.” He paused. “But remember, it is not just the star that looks down upon us. We are under the
loving gaze of the Lord. He is strong and powerful, and we are never alone because He is with us.We are His children—all of us are His children—and God will care for us. Let us go forth, our souls bathed in the warmth of that love. Let us now bow our 'eads in prayer.”

I bowed my head as Captain Bartlett started to pray. I listened to the first part, and then my mind drifted away. I wasn't thinking about Jesus as much as I was about what was going to happen tomorrow … the race … the big dog-sledge race.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

DECEMBER

I BENT DOWN
beside my lead dog—the name I'd given him was Lightning, because he had a white zigzag bolt across his chest. I scratched him behind the ear, right where he loved being rubbed, and he pressed his head against my hand. He and Blackie were my favourite dogs, but Blackie was a little guy, not strong enough to be a lead. Lightning was big and strong. Not the biggest or the strongest, but a lead dog had to have more than just strength. It had to listen to what it was told and get that message to the rest of the team. Sometimes that meant snarling or growling or nipping at the other dogs, but mostly it just involved pulling them in the right direction.

I looked down the line at the rest of my team.Ten dogs, including Blackie, all hand-picked, all the dogs I wanted. I knew each and every one of the huskies, what they were like, and that was no small task.We'd
started out at camp with close to two hundred dogs and we'd lost twenty-three. Two were killed by the polar bear and the others had died of sickness.

I remembered when I couldn't even tell the dogs apart by looking at them. Sure, some were bigger and some smaller, male and female, and their coats were somewhat different in colour and pattern, but a whole lot of them looked pretty much the same. At first I'd learned by necessity.When I was cleaning up after them on the ship I had to learn which ones to avoid if I didn't want to get bitten. Then, as I got to know the dogs, I just grew to like them—at least some of them. Oatah had helped me to understand the dogs, what to look for. He'd explained to me that what made a good sledge dog didn't necessarily make for a good companion dog, and vice-versa. Now, I had a good team hooked up to my komatik.

I guess I liked being around the dogs because they reminded me of the dog I used to own. Candy was her name. She was a great dog, but we had to get rid of her when my mother died. My sister had room for me in her home, but not for Candy. Funny, I think I cried more about having to give Candy away than I did about my mother dying. After all, losing Candy was a bolt out of the blue. With my mother, I'd seen it coming—knew how sick she was—and there really wasn't anybody to blame. It was just God's will … I guess for a while that was who I was mad at. Probably
it was not smart to be mad at God, 'cause what if He decided to get mad back? Especially up here, in a place where so much could happen so suddenly.

Candy was born two doors down from our house, and my mother brought me to the Hendersons' place to look at the new litter of puppies. I think she was trying to take my mind off the fact that my father's ship was late returning. I wasn't worried, but I knew she was. Candy was just a little scrap of black-and-white fur, even smaller than the other tiny puppies. She was the runt of the litter, and Mrs. Henderson told my mother—in a voice she thought I couldn't hear—that the little one “would be dead before the morn.” Mrs. Henderson was old and half deaf and her quiet voice was pretty loud.

When we got home I asked my mother if I could have the little pup. She told me yes … if it lived. I was little but I wasn't stupid. I figured she'd only said that because she thought it was going to die. But it didn't die. That little puppy kept fighting, kept growing, and survived. My mother said it was a lot like me.

I was a little runt too, born too early and too small, and nobody thought I was going to live. I spent my first days in a little box, all bundled up, right by the stove, the heat of the fire pulsing life into my body. I was supposed to die, but I didn't. I lived, and so did Candy. We were bonded together at birth, even though those births were seven years apart.

And my mother kept her word. I guess she didn't have the heart to say no after we got the news that my father's ship had gone down and there were no survivors.The puppy was my present. Not a birthday present. A death-day present. Candy was born the day my father's ship was supposed to return—the day, we later learned, that it was lost. My father's death brought that dog into my life. My mother's death took Candy away.

Funny, when the men were talking about not getting too attached to something you might have to eat, I was thinking how it was wise not to get too attached to
anything
you might lose, and that meant
everything
.

Understanding the dogs meant seeing beneath what they
looked
like to what they
were
like. Every one was different. It was easy enough to see which huskies were the biggest, but that wasn't enough to know if they would be good sledge dogs.You had to know what they were like. Just as important, you had to know how they acted when they were around different dogs. Some dogs just plain didn't like each other and fought. Others liked each other too much and didn't listen. Especially didn't listen to English. I'd learned enough Inuktitut to give the basic orders, but I wished I knew more.

Oatah told me that the most important thing about the dogs was maybe the hardest to know. It
wasn't the size of the dog that mattered, but the size of the spirit within the dog that counted. Some dogs had a spirit that wouldn't allow them to stop or lose.

It seemed to me that everything Oatah taught me about dogs didn't apply only to the dogs, it applied to people as well. You had to look for the spirit, the heart, not the size of the person carrying it around. Being small meant nothing if your spirit was large.

The dog-sledge race was Captain Bartlett's idea. He wanted the members of the expedition to become more skilled sledge-men, and he thought a little competition would bring out the best in everybody. And he was right. Everybody started taking all this race stuff pretty seriously. Nobody wanted to lose. I think he asked me to be part of it only so that everybody would dig a little bit deeper, 'cause nobody wanted to lose to a fourteen-year-old boy. They saw the boy, but they didn't know about the spirit inside. I knew that because of the way they had chosen their dogs—get the biggest, pick by weight and height but not by spirit.

George was the most excited about the race. The athlete in him loved to compete, and he'd be hard to beat. He'd chosen a good team, but he was also the strongest, fastest person in the competition. He'd be able to run alongside the sledge longer than the rest of us, and that meant his dogs wouldn't tire as quickly.

Above all, everyone wanted to prove to Commander Peary that he'd made a good choice in bringing them along on this expedition.And then maybe, just maybe, if they showed him they were good enough, he would take them all the way to the Pole.

Stretched along the start line were the seven teams in the race—the four members of the expedition, two crew members, Alex and Sandy, and me. Standing, sitting on snowbanks, talking, and laughing, every single member of the party was there. I was nervous enough about having to race, but it made it worse to have everybody watching. I didn't expect to win, but I was afraid of embarrassing myself in front of the whole world, and that's what it felt like. Maybe it was only sixty people or so, but that was everybody in the world I was living in. The rest of the world, my sister and her family, heck, all the people in Newfoundland and even New York, didn't exist any more. As far as I knew, everybody who existed in the entire world was right here, watching.

“You ready, Danny?” Matt asked.

“I'm a little nervous.”

“A little nervous is good.”

He walked down the line of dogs, patting one, pulling the harness of another. I knew he was checking up to see if I'd tied the leads right. I might have been offended, but I knew it was being done for the right reason.

“Have you memorized the course?” he asked.

“What's to memorize? I'm just gonna be followin' George.”

“That will work if he doesn't get too far ahead of you, or if you're not in front of him.”

“I don't think we have to worry too much about me bein' in the lead,” I said. I was worried about being left behind, though. “Don't I just follow the markers?”

“The markers are there. Alternating blue and red.”

Matt and the Captain had marked the race course, using the usual pemmican cans. Of course I'd still have to keep my eyes open. They'd be spaced out pretty far because it was a ten-mile course, curving in a big circle right back to the starting line.

“I stay to the left of the blue and the right of the red, right?” I asked, not feeling one hundred percent sure.

“That's correct. Just remember: red is right. Alliteration.”

“Alliter …?”

“It means they start with the same letter. It makes it easy to remember.”

“Oh, okay, sure, I can remember that. Hey Matt, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“If this is just a race, why did they load all this stuff on our sledges? Wouldn't we go faster if there was no weight?”

“Definitely, but this is to help people get accustomed to driving a loaded komatik. Besides, the load includes things you might need.”