Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

She looked at the tired mountaineer. “Thank you, Manny. I’ll leave you in peace now.” As she rose from the table, she thought about all the questions she would ask this man and all the other citizens of McMurdo if she was not afraid of being downright rude. People here ask where you’re from and what you’re doing here, but what I’m beginning to wonder is, why are you here and what are you hiding from?

THE COFFEE HOUSE WAS MADE FROM TWO SMALL QUONset huts connected at right angles. Half buried under a sad-looking bank of dirty, thrice-frozen snow that had been thrown up by the plows, the little watering hole seemed to be holding onto the past as much as to the ground. The corrugated iron arches were old, battered, and painted an unappealing shade of brown. At the point where they joined, a small plywood airlock had been constructed, so long ago that it now sorely needed paint. Valena pushed open the outer door of the airlock and passed within.

Inside, the atmosphere was comfortingly dim. The structure had no windows, creating the illusion that the sun had actually set, returning her world to low-latitude normalcy. She passed down a short hallway that housed coat hooks and a bulletin board displaying photographs of a number of local women dressed in ball gowns as they carried out their daily routines on the ice; driving Cats, riding snowmobiles, cooking chow for a thousand people or so. The shorter Quonset opened off to her left. It was filled with derelict couches that faced a large-screen TV. Nothing was on, but one couple sat familiarly close on an eight-foot-long divan that featured fuzzy, grass-green upholstery. They had their arms around each other, and if their wineglasses had been any closer together, they could have dispensed with one and simply shared the other.

Valena turned right into the other Quonset. The inside of its low barrel arch had been paneled with knotty pine, yielding an arched rendition of a hunting cabin, though without the crackling fire, stuffed heads, and frosty windows looking out over pine-dappled landscapes. Into this space had been stuffed a bar, behind which stood a bartender, and a great many small, square tables surrounded by miscellaneous hard-backed and overstuffed chairs, another McMurdan monument to scavenging. Various pairs and groups of people sat around talking, swigging vino, and playing cards or board games. A huge man in canvas overalls played darts with a woman who couldn’t have weighed over ninety pounds.

Valena looked right and left, searching the room for Major Muller. He wasn’t there. She finally spotted Betty the firefighter sitting with a group of people at a table toward one end of the room.

Betty raised her sleepy eyes as Valena approached. “Hey, glad you could make it,” she said. She gestured to her left, toward a man in military fatigues. “May I introduce Tractor Larry, who is standing in as protocol officer for Tractor Waylon. That guy with the turquoise eyes next to him is Tractor Matt. Next to him we have…”

The names began to blur in Valena’s mind. She had met entirely too many people in the past few days. Appellations seemed to descend into a netherworld even as they emerged from Betty’s lips, almost as if she were on television and the sound had been turned off. Even the faces were beginning to merge into one big composite southlander, a hardy soul of intermediate gender who eschewed fashion for warmth, easy care, and fitness. In fact—she realized, now that she thought of it—Antarcticans, while attractive people on the whole, wore no fussy shoes or constraining clothing and almost no jewelry, and she saw not a lick of makeup on any of the women present. She smiled. In a very true sense, she was home. She took a seat next to Tractor Matt, a burly man she had last seen whooping it up in the galley with the man who, with Cupcake, had found the missing Cat driver.

“May I serve you some wine?” asked the flyboy to her left.

“Ah, sure. What are we having?”

“Red, I think.” The man pulled one of three bottles out of the center of the table and poured. As Valena took a sip, another flyboy said, “Got any Georges to send north?”

“Georges?”

“One-dollar bills. We’re bringing Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea, and Jefferson south and sending George home.” He produced some two-dollar bills and one-dollar coins from his pocket. “Even exchange.”

Valena pulled her wallet out of her back jeans pocket and emptied out most of her folding money, holding back her New Zealand currency and the two US twenties that lurked behind them. “Here’s a five to contribute to the wine money,” she said. “And here are all the ones I have.”

“Good woman.” The man pounced on the money, swapping her two-dollar bills and dollar coins for the singles. The five he approached differently. Producing a stamp and green-inked stamp pad, he printed little green antique tractor symbols all over it. Then he hit all the singles as well, apparently for good measure. Then he ceremoniously slipped his tractor stamp into a special pouch. A block of wood lay next to his hand. It was about three by four inches, and adorned with large green letters that read MOATS.

“What does ‘moats’ mean?” asked Valena.

The man grinned. “It stands for ‘Mother of All Tractor Stamps,’” he said. He turned it over, revealing a very large version of the antique tractor symbol on the other side. “Come to think of it, I’m behind on my job here,” he added, charging the enormous stamp with ink. He examined each of the wine bottles in turn and rolled the tractor onto the labels of those he had not previously hit.

The man with the stamp raised his voice a bit and addressed the group again. “As president pro tempore in lieu of Tractor Hugh, who could not be with us this evening due to grave and unavoidable duties in the line of duty and so forth, I call everyone’s attention to…”

Larry said, “Some more new business.”

“Yeah. Tractor Larry, as the meeting of the Tractor Club is already in session, how do we proceed with the introduction of this new candidate?”

Larry rubbed his buzz cut as he mulled this question. “I believe that, in emergency situations such as these, we can use the abbreviated form. In any case, we must start with introductions.”

Valena interrupted. “Is it okay if I do this even if I’m about to leave?”

“Leave?” said Matt.

“Uh, yeah. I just got here Saturday evening, but my—uh, Professor Vanderzee had to leave. So they’ve scheduled me to go out on the next flight north.” She glanced at Larry, wondering if he’d be the pilot of the plane that took her away from the ice.

Matt said, “So they aren’t even having you go ahead and do your scientific research?”

“Not unless I can get my professor back,” said Valena. “Or find a job all of a sudden. Anyone have employment for a beaker who’s mislaid her professor?”

“Aw hell,” said Betty. “Most beakers don’t even lay their professors, much less mislay them.”

The crowd broke into cheerful laughter, with hoots of, “Good one, Tractor Betty,” and, “Oooo, it burns!”

The man with the stamp said, “Then we must proceed with speed on two accounts. Okay, let’s go around the table and introduce ourselves to the candidate. Members please state your names to the candidate.”

“Tractor Betty.”

“Tractor Larry.”

“Tractor Matt.” Matt made eye contact more pointedly than most, then hopped up and wove his way between the tables toward the bar, where he leaned an elbow next to a man who was perched on a stool there working on a bottle of white and engaged him in earnest conversation.

Meanwhile, the introductions continued around the table. “Hi, I’m Valena,” she said, when the process ended with her.