Nothing

Polar bear or snow gust?

           I play that game every time something moves in the distance. I take off my sunglasses and expose my eyes to snow blindness as I try to focus. Until a shape detaches itself from the barren, obscenely white landscape.

           Heart rate goes up. My hand tightens on my rifle, ready to send a warning shot. I both hope and dread it’s a bear. I’m either about to face the biggest challenge of my life or nothing at all. A squirt of snow twirls in the air and floats back down.

           It’s nothing. More nothing. The usual snow, ice, and rock in every direction. Cold, lifeless land. Mountains stand far away like a row of tombstones. I kick a block of ice with my steel-toe boot.

           I was alive for 4,5 seconds.

           Like booze and drugs, extreme emotions last a bit and then you sober up. People do those things for the fleeting moments of life. But the rest of the time I’m like that CPR manikin we had in my first aid class. Compressions keep you alive, but you’re also dead. It’s purely mechanical, what keeps my heart beating. No electricity, no passion, no joy. No true will. My feet just move forward, knowing I’ll retrace the same steps I did yesterday and all the days before, and I just follow.

           I take off my gloves to light a cigarette and by the time I put the gloves back on my fingers have started freezing. The kind of cold that feels like a burn. I do the windmill with my arms to send the blood to the tips where it’s needed.

           Hi, I’m Paul, I’m an alcoholic, and occasional drug abuser when I can get my hands on it, and I hate my fucking life. I work as a wildlife monitor for an iron mine on Baffin Island (Google it) and I’m there to make sure no worker gets attacked by polar bears. It hasn’t happened yet in the two years I’ve been here and I’m not even ashamed to say I’m a bit disappointed.

           I can’t even quit my job; you need a plane to get out of here. I’m trapped.

           And it’s about to get a lot worse because polar night starts tonight. Weeks of darkness, of nothingness. Things always get weird. Like a full moon. People get in fights, drink themselves into an amoeba. Even more than usual that is. We’re about to enter a big sensory deprivation tank. No stimuli. Stuck with your thoughts. You must keep yourself stimulated so you don’t go nuts. Last year, one guy ran outside in jeans and a T-shirt to build a snowman. We found him frozen to death the next day.

           I patrol until the end of my shift and head to the bar with the intention of getting wasted after twelve hours in the cold. At 6 p.m., it’s dark already. Polar night’s on. You can hear the screams from the bar. The buildings look like containers in the camp. Calling this a village would be a gross exaggeration. It’s mostly whatever’s needed for the mine’s maintenance and a place for the workers to sleep. But people need bars more than they need grocery stores or hospitals. The owners know that and found a way to make their employees give most of their paychecks back to them.

           I sit at the bar and get an IPA. The place is packed, of course. People shout more than they speak. Glasses clink. Balls roll on the pool table.

           Joey comes lean on the counter to my left, leaving an empty stool between us like a good boy, and we nod at each other. Then he takes out that dumb picture of his wife and stares at it like a moron. I grab an olive from the bowl and throw it in his face.

           “Again with that shit?” I say. “Why don’t you move the fuck on? She moved on the second you walked out the door.”

           “I like looking at it,” he says.

           “Throw that thing in the trash. We come here to forget and be forgotten. Let it go.”

           He slides his thumb on the picture.

           “That’s all I got left,” he says.

           “But that’s nothing. You don’t have her, she’s gone. You got nothing.”

           “I know it’s nothing. But it’s better than nothing nothing, you know what I mean? It’s the memory.”

           I throw another olive at him.

           “You know what, you’re right,” he says. “Bartender, trashcan please.”

           The bartender lifts the can and Joey drops the picture in.

           “There you go,” he says. “Moving the fuck on. Move on, adapt.” He downs his pint. “I’m gonna go play some pool.”

           I finish my pint too, then another one. The door opens and everyone starts whining about the cold air getting in.

           A polar bear walks to the bar and sits on a stool. He towers at the end of the counter and puts his huge paws on it. The bartender slides him a plate of seal fat, but the bear doesn’t touch it. He just stares at it.

           Joey comes behind him and taps him on the shoulder.

           “Look at you, brooding over global warming bullshit again. Why don’t you learn to swim? Move on and adapt like people do.”

           The bear swings his paw and rips Joey’s head off, sending it bouncing on the pool table.

           I get up, aim my rifle, and shoot the bear in the heart. He falls with a big boom on the floor. Everyone applauds. I’m useful and they appreciate it. The bartender gives me a drink on the house.

           Sticking my nose in my beer, I feel the cold. Joey pats me on the back and waves goodnight and heads for the sleeping quarters. I keep drinking until I pass out.

           I wake up on the floor next to my bunk bed with my cheek in a puddle of vomit.

           I was alive for a couple of hours.

#

           For my first shift in complete darkness, I can sip from my vodka bottle without being seen. I do that a lot. Guess what happened during those twelve hours? Fucking nothing.

           When my shift ends, I stay outside. I get hungry, get dizzy.

           I walk further and further away from the camp, much beyond my usual patrol route. Only guided by the sound of my boots crushing snow and ice.

           The wind picks up. I’m in a storm and I keep walking. Hard snowflakes crash on my face. The wind’s howling. Gusts of snow whirlwind around me. Or is it polar bears? I couldn’t care less.

           I turn and walk toward the open-pit mine until my toes are above the gigantic pit. Balance is an option now. I finish the vodka and throw the bottle down the hole. My beard and eyebrows are frozen stiff. Can’t tell if I still have ears.

           One step forward and it’s all done.

           I turn on my flashlight and send the bean down the mine, shining it on all that rock, on those huge CAT haul trucks filled with minerals and dirt.

            The sides of the pit are angled and shaped like rocky stairs, with each step circling the whole mine. Someone told me why that’s for, but I forgot. Or maybe I didn’t care.

           Those walls are a bit like life. Each year you take one step down, contours get narrower. Your circle of influence gets smaller. The possibilities, experiences, and abilities all diminish. When I got my first car at seventeen, I would drive all night. Going nowhere, but feeling like I could go anywhere. I’d keep driving through new cities and landscapes, dreaming about all the possibilities that would come with adulthood, when I turn eighteen, when I get more money, when I get a real job, when I… I thought the circles got wider with age. They don’t. In your teenage years, you’re always moving around, going from a friend’s house to the park to school to a house party to a bar. When you’re an adult, you’re looping between home and the workplace, with traffic in between. Then you’re old and you walk in circles in your hospice room.

           One more step and…

           It’s 9 p.m. and I’m still looking down that hole.

           I’m not getting inside until something happens. I need something to happen.

           Like going on a hunger strike to protest starvation, I’m going on a passivity strike to rebel against nothing.

           10 p.m. I’m not moving. My black coat is now covered in white.

           Show me something. Show me it’s worth it to keep going. Show me one live plant in the desert and maybe I’ll start moving again.

           I aim my rifle at the dark in front of me and shoot. To provoke the night. Right in its cold, empty heart. Something’s gonna fucking happen.

           An alarm rings in the distance. When I realize it’s not in my head, I walk toward the camp. There’s a motion sensor in the area where the dumpsters are. In case something wants to feed in there.

           I get to the fence, rifle in hand. The sliding doors are spread open. We don’t lock it anymore because the lock’s been frozen for months. No one takes out the trash at this hour, they know the alarm’s on.

           So it’s a bear.

           I look down for signs, but any bear track would be buried by snow within a few minutes.

           I get into the enclosure. Can’t see three feet before me even with the flashlight. Just a wall of snow and dark. Can’t hear a thing with that wind either.

           I glance around as I walk, expecting a huge white shape to jump on me at any moment.

           When I get to the dumpsters, something lies in front of one. It’s Joey. The snow covers him like a body bag.

           That’s something.

           He’s not wearing a coat. He’s completely still, pissed drunk, with frozen drool around his mouth. I shake him. His eyes barely open.

           I rummage through the dumpster and pull out the picture, then take Joey inside. I throw a blanket on him, give him a coat and gloves, and ask some guy to go get coffee. When he can move, I make him walk around a bit, but he sits back down almost immediately. Then I hand him the picture.

           “I can’t move on,” he says, looking at the floor.

           “Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I’m full of shit. You’re lucky to have nothing. I have nothing nothing.”

           We stay there a while, as hypothermia slowly leaves his body. When I see he’ll be fine, I head back outside.

           “Hey,” Joey says. “Thanks.”

           I nod. I think I smile a bit, or maybe it’s just a repressed cough.

           Back outside, I close the dumpsters and walk to the gate. Fresh bear tracks pass through the sliding doors. The rear paws twice as wide as my boots. Couldn’t have been made more than a minute or two ago. I didn’t think to check if bags had been torn in the dumpsters, and I don’t feel like doing that now.

           I stare at the darkness ahead for a bit, listening to the howls of the wind.

           Doing my job right would mean hunting down the bear and shooting it. Because he’s food-conditioned now and will come back. But I don’t feel like killing or dying tonight. I’ll see about it tomorrow. Let the bear live for now. Let the memories live, the peace, the hope. Until it all gets buried. Until things sober up.

           For now, right now, I’m alive.