Read A World Elsewhere for Free Online

known in St. John’s as “Carson of the Gilbert,” legendary for his heroism and the manner of his death.
    Landish had known Carson but not well. They had never had a conversation. First mate of the Gilbert , and the only man who knew the ice as well as Captain Abram Druken did. Francis Carson, who would not under any circumstances abandon the men and boys of his watch. Captain Druken had sent them out from the Gilbert when all hands could tell that a blizzard was imminent. They lost their way in the storm and, despite Carson’s advice to return and his ministrations, lay down to die. Had he left them to their lonely deaths, he would almost certainly have saved himself because he was stronger than them and had twice before survived a night outside on the ice. He’d have seen his wife again and seen their baby born. But he couldn’t bear to leave his men. The best first mates were as loath to leave the men intheir care as a captain was to leave a sinking ship. And so he stayed with them. And a piece of the ice pan on which the watch of men were huddled broke off and Carson drifted away, though the men of the watch—for all of whose deaths Captain Druken would also have been responsible because he had discontinued the search for them too quickly so as not to lose time hunting seals—were saved by the captain of another ship. Not even when drunk and at his most vainglorious did Landish fancy he might someday be as good a man as Carson of the Gilbert . A chastening life. A chastening death.
    He was the opposite of sole survivor. Carson alone was left behind. He may have written something in case his body or effects were found, last words that were never read. Last words to his wife, first and last words to the child who was not yet born. He wouldn’t have burned the words he wrote, wouldn’t have cared how they’d be judged. He may have spoken aloud to his wife and unborn child, to others, to himself. The sole lost soul. There should be a word for all saved but one.
    He alone had not come home. Deacon’s mother must have thought a lot about that. Why hers but no other woman’s husband? Why him but no other men? An inscrutably arbitrary death—or had God spied out some secret sin in Carson of the Gilbert that now would be forever secret? A young, pregnant widow pondering the motives of the universe. No doubt she would have blamed herself, however absurdly disproportionate to her “sins” her punishment was.
    Captain Druken lives on in a warm house, but also alone, surrounded not by family and friends but by the effects of a life spent at the hunt. Alone though his son is but a mile away, while his neighbours, whose houses he has never been inside of and who have never been inside of his, wonder how much that is said about the man is true. Survived by his son and his ship. Landish wouldn’t be surprised if he scuttled the Gilbert so that no one else could be her skipper. Still, he wrote to his father, asking him to help the boy, assured him that hewould not spend on himself one cent of any money that his father gave him. There was no reply.
    Landish discovered that, if he spoke to him long enough, Deacon, though he couldn’t understand a word, would fall asleep. Landish called his bedtime soliloquies “tranquiloquies.” The tranquiloquies kept Landish from getting too lonely.
    Landish wrote, and read aloud to Deacon:
Like other children who come from the orphanage, Deacon did. It is called an orphanage because children of orphan age live there. Up to twelve. Grown-ups can pick you, but like a snot they won’t. No one in Cluding Deacon got picked. The longest one was Kenneth. Fifteen. A favourite but a burden on the colony.
It was heave ho, out you go. You had your chance, now make the best of it. And if you do nothing else, never forget who was here for you when what you needed most was a good kick in the arse. Don’t come back to us with your bed between your legs and some boy named Lloyd curled up inside of