{"id":1204,"date":"2019-01-21T16:55:44","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T00:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bernadettecalonego.com\/eng\/?page_id=1204"},"modified":"2019-02-08T11:56:42","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T19:56:42","slug":"excerpt-the-stranger-on-the-ice","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bernadettecalonego.com\/eng\/books\/the-stranger-on-the-ice\/excerpt-the-stranger-on-the-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Excerpt The Stranger on the Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Copyright @Amazon Crossing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapter 1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\ncaught his eye at once. Just off the Ice Road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A tiny point at first. He drove several feet closer. Dark blue. Couldn\u2019t mistake it in this white wilderness. He certainly wouldn\u2019t. His eyes picked up anything unusual here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was constantly on the ice in winter. Day after day. Him and his truck. A powerful machine that could lug sixty tons. Today he was pulling a trailer with housing for the new foreign workers. Those guys from the south get on Skype to their families back home and say they\u2019re drilling for gas in the Arctic Ocean. Not that people three thousand miles away have the slightest idea what that means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Must be a blue pickup. Probably did a pirouette on the ice. Sure didn\u2019t mean to, unless the driver was just playing around on the ice. He already knew what to expect. The hood plowed into a snowdrift. Wheels pulled away like dislocated shoulders. Seen that all too often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The usual yahoos, for sure. Goddamn amateurs. City types with giant egos inflated like a frog\u2019s throat and with an even bigger lack of experience. Highway cowboys out of Calgary. Or Vancouver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe an engineer from ORS Gas & Oil. Or some jerk of a globetrotter from Italy. Even worse, an American from Texas. Last year it was Brits wanting to film muskox. Not here, on Banks Island. Of course they just had<\/em> to race down the Ice Road. Instead of muskox they got themselves a broken axle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those idiots haven\u2019t the foggiest idea how to drive a vehicle on glass fifteen feet thick. They\u2019d laugh him out of court if he told them, \u201cThat glass is alive. It\u2019s called ice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He knows where those big-city babies get their crazy ideas from. TV, of course. Ice Road Truckers<\/em>, a reality show. He\u2019d never have watched anything like that himself. But his wife Judy talked him into it. \u201cJust so\u2019s you see how they do it,\u201d she\u2019d said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His eyes almost popped out of this head. Those TV people really lay it on thick. \u201cPolar Sea Adventure! Only for the boldest and most daring drivers. They risk their lives on the winter road over the frozen delta of the mighty Mackenzie River. They drive to beat hell, and with a sixty-ton load. They could fall through the ice at any moment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His pal Poppy Dixon had dropped\nin with a case of beer, and they\u2019d howled with laughter. Poppy pounded him on\nthe back so hard that he almost fell off the sofa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWow! We\u2019re fuckin\u2019 big heroes,\neh, Todd? And we didn\u2019t even know it!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adventure? Bullshit! Last year\nPoppy\u2019s truck had gone through the ice. Eighty tons went down. Rebar for a gas\ncompany out there somewhere. A couple of Helvin West\u2019s men hoisted him out with\na crane. Poppy hadn\u2019t laughed at the time. His face was white as snow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now he could clearly make out the\nblue pickup. Nose first, deep in the wall of snow bordering the road. What a\nmess. And what was that in the snow? A reddish brown shape. A dead moose. Or\nwhat was left of it: the head. The long tongue hanging out of its mouth. Red\nstreaks all over the place. Red as Judy\u2019s nail polish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His foot tapped on the gas pedal.\nHe couldn\u2019t risk going more than thirty with that heavy load. End of March and\nsun already, sun, sun, sun. Nothing but sun for four days. Four damn days in a\nrow. The ice was still holding. But who knows for how long? Only Clem Hardeven,\nthe ice master. If he said the ice road was closing, then it would be closed.\nEven Helvin West listened to Clem. And Helvin was Clem\u2019s boss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He geared down. Slow, slow, slow.\nTodd, my friend, enjoy the spectacle of this idiot who dug his own grave in the\nsnow. The blockhead braked too hard on the ice when he saw the moose\u2019s head,\nI\u2019ll bet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You gotta learn how to brake on\nthe ice. A rookie, was all he could say, a beginner. Maybe the guy had had a\nfew beers too many in the Crazy Hunter. Big mistake. You don\u2019t play with fire\non the ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suddenly, even before he\u2019d\nstopped, a light bulb went on in his head. Blue! The pickup was a shiny dark blue!\nWith white lettering. He didn\u2019t even have to read it. Holy shit!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He put on his gloves and fur hat\nand zipped up his down jacket. He climbed down from his truck and waddled over\nthe sparkling ice like a curler. It was easier for him to drive than walk. The\nIce Road was slippery as wet glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Axle wasn\u2019t broken. He could see\nthat right away. He adjusted his sunglasses. Too much sun and too much white\naround for his liking. Nothing moved inside the car. He tried to open the door.\nCouldn\u2019t. He tried the other side. He pulled and twisted until the door popped\nopen, and he almost fell over. He peeked inside. Nothing. Not a soul. The bird\nhad flown the coop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What to do? Best hightail it to\nInuvik. Wasn\u2019t far. The cops would certainly know what\u2019s up. He\u2019d lost enough\ntime as it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As he drove on, the pickup\ngradually disappeared in the rearview mirror. Too bad the wreck didn\u2019t vanish\ninto thin air. He didn\u2019t want anything to do with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One more long curve, and he could\nalmost smell Inuvik.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there was something else. A\ndark heap beside the road. What the fuck! He knew it wasn\u2019t a moose. His truck\nskidded to a halt. Out into the cold again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took some effort to work his\nway over. A woman. Lying right on the ice. Curled up like an embryo. Not\nmoving. Her head lying on one arm, eyes closed. Her cap still on her dark hair.\nHer hood flipped back. Like she was asleep. He bent down and shook her. Shouted,\n\u201cHello, hello!\u201d But he already knew. So stiff and ice cold. She was young. And\nshe was dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He didn\u2019t know the woman. Just\nthe pickup. And he couldn\u2019t make any connection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Penguin-like, he waddled over the ice back to his truck and reached for the satellite phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright @Amazon Crossing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Copyright @Amazon Crossing Chapter 1 It caught his eye at once. Just off the Ice Road. A tiny point at first. He drove several feet closer. Dark blue. Couldn\u2019t mistake it in this white wilderness. He certainly wouldn\u2019t. His eyes picked up anything unusual here. He was constantly on the Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":109,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1204","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bernadettecalonego.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bernadettecalonego.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bernadettecalonego.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bernadettecalonego.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bernadettecalonego.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1204"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bernadettecalonego.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1794,"href":"https:\/\/www.bernadettecalonego.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1204\/revisions\/1794"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bernadettecalonego.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bernadettecalonego.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}