Thursday, September 14, 2006

November 25, 1975: Tuesday

Found the crack. Took a grab. Depth was only 170 meters, too shallow according to the map. So we went out 165 meters. The grab didn’t close. Went the other way 174 meters. The grab closed but only water was in it. We figured the slope is negligible between these points, so we must be on the valley floor.

“Shipboard depths are always fifty percent high,” Kathy says.

Sitting up all night long, getting out every twenty minutes to wind the winch up, knowing that the current is zilch. We got some numbers, once, but the second messenger had gotten lost on the way down and the stop hadn’t tripped, so it revolved coming up.

We’ve renamed 590 the RV Messenger, in memorium. I bet we’re about the only people in the entire world that have done oceanography from the back of a pick-up.

About 2:00 a.m Mac Center announces a flight from the pole. “All stations, please acknowledge.”

“Chalet, copy.”

“Hill Cargo, acknowledges.”

“Dispensary, copy.”

“One Alpha, copy.” That’s us, you know, with a little pure apple and orange (and gin), a product of New Zealand.

Later, Kathy rang up (that’s Kiwi for called).

“Mac Center?” That’s all, just Mac Center.

“Go ahead 590.”

“Could we have a time check?”

“04:40.”

They were 45 seconds off.

Maybe we were off.

Kathy got 26 of the States right. We gave her clues for the other twenty-four.

The night went by super fast. About 7:30 things began to get slow. Kathy had a difficult time talking at eight o’clock. She went to sleep right after.

Bio-Mike and I finished the three runs we were on and headed back to camp. Dr. Treves wanted to talk to Leon at 10:00, and we had to get the transit.

Kathy woke up on the way home.

We let her out and told her to go to sleep. She was headed for the tent as we took off. Instead of sleeping, she took it down.

It’s starting to get to be a joke. Kathy’s very close to being a perpetual motion machine. Maybe that’s why she drives me up the wall. Cal put it correctly (after we’d gotten back). You can be stiff with her. Or you can be civil and gentlemanly. That doesn’t work. But it’s the only way I know how to treat anyone (young ladies in particular) when I feel something “good” about them.

It’s turned cold and windy. It was very nice all night long. For starters, Bio-Mike forgot to watch the cable and it wound up over the rim and onto the drum, being squeezed in. We had two more readings to do, but we figured they’d be zero, zero, zero. So we cut the cable and unwound it from the drum. The 25 brass weight promptly plummeted down to the depths.

So we put down the orange peel grab, twice. Neither one worked.

We took angles to four mountains, measured the angle and the distance to the other holes. One and a half Thingies, each.

And we go home.

Kathy had been getting things together for the trip home. Jim and Mike joke about Kathy’s endless abundance of energy. They time her sitting down. Never stays more than three minutes. Jim says that no one would want her for a wife because she doesn’t stay in one place long enough.

It’s an odd phenomenon. It takes more energy to wind her down than it does to wind her up. A problem for entropy. We invent a new unit of power, Kiwis per acres second. It’s the number of acres a standard Kiwi can cover in one second. It’s abbreviated KATH (Kiwis per Acre Thecond).

Mike throws out some lines that if Berzel had said them, I would have thought he’d said them on purpose. Especially about being in the crack the other night.

Waiting for the helo in the Jamesway, hot, tired, bored. But she doesn’t want to wake up for the helo. She just sits with heavy eyelids and circles beneath, brown and nice, with no expression on her face. I look at her. She raises her eyes to mine, and I say, “Smile!”

She plays with her split ends and says she needs a haircut, but doesn’t trust anybody on the ice. I tell her she can cut mine, so Mike goes and gets a pair of tin snips.

She picks up a Playboy and thumbs through it. No expression on her face. I go over and sit on the table with her and try to get her to laugh at the funny ones. It’s hard to do, because I’ve already read the issue.

After supper we play some hockey. The Drillers trounce us, 7-0, so we didn’t play the second half.

The helo finally comes. While Rich Sluys has supper, we load the helo by carting all that heavy stuff over from the sign post to the helo.

Back in town, we unload, put on clean clothes, and wander up to the lab. Helo flights have been bringing drill rods and equipment all night. Tomorrow all the drillers will come home.

The mast is the last flight tonight, and it’s very impressive to watch. So we drive down to the pad. Kathy sits in the back, next to me, and when Katsu gets out, she remains beside me.

All weekend she’s been kicking me with her boots when I say something. And I’ve been slugging her in the arm, more or less rasslin’ with her. She wears that big huge downy jacket that puffs up with air when you hit it.

Anyway she fumbles around, changing film in her camera. She doesn’t have any more. She’s very tired. She’s hassling with Peter about going out to Taylor Glacier early tomorrow. She really doesn’t want to go. So they argue for a while. If she’s up by 09:00, she’ll go, if she feels O.K.

I told her to sleep until 9:45, as my solution.

At least I’d thought she didn’t want to go. But she doesn’t take suggestions very well.

From her, I found out some interesting and informative things about Peter. He’s going home Friday. His wife (he’s married, but perhaps it’s his girlfriend, I’ve heard both) is pregnant.

It still doesn’t clarify her position with him. But I never thought it was admiringly serious, even though she acted that way, occasionally.

So Rich landed the mast and he and his co-pilot came up to the lab and had Japanese noodles with us and Pat Martinez, ‘til 2:00 a.m. That’s 38 hours for me and 41 for Kathy.

Sidebar: Chopsticks and Everything.
Chopsticks are easy to use.
Just roll the noodles around them.


Kathy sits on the big swivel chair and I sit on a little office chair in front of her, listening to Rich and Peter insult each other about helos and trips to Shapeless Mountain. Rich wants prior approval by VXE-6 of all of next year’s field assistants, meaning Kathy.

She sits there, smiles once and a while and kicks at my bunny boots and contemplates. Now, I shouldn’t pay such attention to details like that, but I do, especially after what David W. did to Joy the night of her going away party. So all I can do is think of Kathy’s face, the freckles scattered hither, unmake-upped cheeks, round and full, the soft round chin, and brown, brown hair and eyes.

When the party had broken up, I waited to walk her down the hill.

I ask her if she’s going to do her laundry in the Hotel. Some people like to talk and some people like to listen. I’m a pretty good listener.

I think she said I was “nuts, then.”

But by this time she was mumbling and the wind carried away her Kiwi accented words so that I imperfectly understood their meaning. I wondered aloud if I should ask for an explanation.

“You’ll never find out, the way you’re going.”

And again I missed her meaning in the wind, important concepts blown asunder as she let me move in front of her and she took the center of the road.

So I said “Good night,” and discovered I’d lost my key. Throwing my things on the hall floor and waiting for Peter to walk down, I sit in a chair and wonder.

Another sidebar:
Should I pursue the subject? If she’s distressed at my attitude towards her, I should make amends. My position clear. But perhaps I should throw the incident out. Rebuild upon the firmer portions of an already meaningful relationship.

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