Until the Night

From the Blue Notebook

And what is the going rate for dead Victorian teenagers? Dahlberg inquired. As his red beard grew thicker, he was taking on something of the look of Robert E. Lee.

I told him how Vanderbyl had presented two large hams to the Inuk, who cradled them in his arms like twins. How Vanderbyl had opened the door and released him once more into the night.

What does Hunter have to say about all this?

He’s beside himself that he slept through it. I guess we should have woken him.

Dahlberg was down on one knee beside the cot where we had placed the dead youth. This fellow can’t be from the Franklin expedition, he said. We’re nowhere near their last known location.

We talked about the various expeditions. The stray graves and markers. The three headstones on Beechey Island.

His clothes look too early for the Greely expedition, Dahlberg said. That was the 1880s—and didn’t they end up eating each other?

Frostbite had turned the boy’s face and hands deep purple.

Do you suppose others found him and took his outer garments? Dahlberg said. He can’t have lasted long like this.

Whoever he may have been, I said, you can’t do much for him now. But you need to look in on Ray. He’s acting a little … unsteady.

Dahlberg glanced at me over his shoulder. I can’t discuss him with you. He’s a patient.

I’m surprised Vanderbyl hasn’t said something.

If he had, I couldn’t discuss it with you. Dahlberg felt in the boy’s pocket. He pulled out a tiny coin and held it up in the window light. Sixpence, 1832, he said. He felt in another pocket and pulled out a compass. This time he stood up and we both examined it.

A Tinsly, Dahlberg said. They went out of business before the Gutta Percha Company. He opened the case and the needle swung first one way, then the other.

Wouldn’t have been much good, I said. Too near the magnetic pole.

Fire and food would have been the only things of use to him, and I don’t think he had either, poor bastard.

Dahlberg fussed with a camera for a few minutes. When he finally took an exposure, the flash left an afterimage, the dead boy’s face adrift in the frigid air.