Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

It was a bright, cloudless day with little wind. She could see why the Boss wanted to take advantage of the weather to get his crew out to the telecommunications station. She turned and walked backward up the hill so that she could look out across McMurdo Sound. Black Island seemed to float above the glistening ice, a vague slash of distant volcanic rubble rising from the frozen sea. Sixty miles was a long way to go on a tractor. I’m going to drive a Challenger! she told herself.

Turning back around, she continued her climb with a big, fat smile on her face. Presently, she heard the crunching foot-falls of another pedestrian on the road. Glancing nervously over her shoulder, she saw a woman carrying an orange duffel. She was a freckled kind of pretty, her cherry-glossed lips a contrast above the collar of her Carhartt jacket, which was streaked with grease and grime. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey yourself.”

The woman grinned, snapping a mouthful of gum. “You must be Valena. I’m Edith.”

“Edith?”

“Yeah, I’m your crew foreman. You’re replacing Steve, right?”

“Right.” Valena’s mouth sagged open. It simply had not occurred to her that her crew would have a foreman, much less a good-looking girly woman.

“I’m starting you out in the Delta with one of the guys,” said Edith, “but then you can take your turn on the snow machines if you like. We’ll also have a Challenger, but that will be pulling a goose—that’s a sort of plow thing on skis—so with apologies I’m not going to let you learn how to drive it while we’re off the main routes because if you screw up we’re stuck. You can drive it on the way back tomorrow, after we get off the soft stuff. Dave will be driving it. He’ll teach you.”

“Dave.” There was a David on Ted’s list , thought Valena. Manny called him Dave.

“Yeah, he’s our Cat skinner.”

“Not a blaster.”

“Dave? No, he drives a Cat. The blasters are part of another outfit.”

“That’s a common name.”

“You’d be amazed how many Daves we have this year. Some years we’ll have only one Dave and thirteen Alistairs. Anyway, then we got Wee Willy and Hilario. So the Boss says you’ve driven heavy equipment during a potato harvest.”

“Yes, I have.”

“Aces.” They had arrived at a small prefabricated building. “Okay, here we are: Home sweet Building 17. You can load those lunches straight into the cab of the Delta.”

Valena turned. Instead of a passenger box on the back, this Delta had a flatbed on which had been loaded a huge PVC water barrel, several large wooden packing crates, and a heap of bamboo poles tipped with bright nylon flags. There was a short person on top of the load dressed in Carhartts. He was wrangling a water hose into the barrel to fill it. This will be either Dave, Wee Willy, or Hilario , she presumed.

She got the box of sack lunches up into the Delta, taking a moment to look the machine over more carefully than she had when she had been a mere passenger on her way to Happy Camp. Its wheels were almost as tall as she was. It had a huge engine mounted behind the front axle and the cab, which was a six-foot cube cantilevered out in front, hanging about shoulder height above the ground. Unconcerned with aerodynamics, its designers had simply constructed a metal box with square corners, giving the cab the appearance of having been added as an afterthought, like a brick left sitting on a board. It had two doors on each side, with the handles set at the bottom so that she could hope to reach them from the ground. Access to the cab was up metal ladders, the bottom rungs suspended from metal chains. The whole mess had once been red but was now faded to a soft rose, and the forward doors had been embellished with a lovely cartoon of a leaping porpoise above lyric yellow lettering that read FLIPPER. Somehow this did not inspire confidence.

She reached up and yanked open the forward door and shoved the box of lunches and her backpack in onto the floor, then climbed up the ladder to the running board. From there she could maneuver the lunches and her pack onto the backseat, which was already heaped with other peoples’ duffels. The windshield and other windows were flat slabs of glass, and the dashboard was olive drab metal with placards listing the vehicle’s weight, which was eleven tons. Long windshield wipers hung on pivots from the tops of the windows. The whole thing looked like a stage set for a World War II film about the mud-ridden life of the GI.

Valena climbed down and gave the door a healthy slam.

At the sound, the short man on the flatbed turned and saw her. “Oh, hey, you’re the new Steve,” he called. “We’re all filled up. Have to fill this thing at the last minute, as it would freeze if we left it overnight. Let me screw this lid on and we’ll get on our way. Oh, and I put Steve’s sleeping bag into the cab for you. It’s behind the driver’s seat.”

“Thanks.”

Half a minute later, he had climbed down and was standing on the ground in front of her, pulling his gloves off and stuffing them into his pockets. He was short and swarthy and had coal black hair, dark brown eyes, and wide cheekbones.

“Are you Hilario?” Valena inquired, pronouncing the name with the Spanish accent she had learned from friends in Colorado.

He gave her a look of appraisal. “Latina?”

“No se,” she replied. I don’t know.

Hilario tipped his head and stared at her. “You don’t know?”

“I was adopted.”

Hilario flashed a row of even, white, teeth. “Aw, screw it then, you’re Latina. Chica fine as you I claim for todos los Latinos.” He threw a hand over his head like a bullfighter.

“Well, thank you,” said Valena.

The door to Building 17 opened and the Boss stepped out. “Hilario, come in here, please. And get Edith, will you? Dave and Willy are already in here.”

“Sure, Boss.” He turned and called to the crew chief.

“Does he want me in there, too?” asked Valena.

Hilario shook his head. “Don’t sound like it.” He disappeared into the building, with Edith close on his heels.

Valena stood in the door yard and waited. Time was ticking past. She wanted to get moving. She burned to get out onto the ice. She itched to speak with Sheila Tuttle. And she wanted desperately to step beyond the reach of George Bellamy. Something was wrong, she could feel it in her gut. When he had stepped outside the door, the Boss had not looked as jolly as he had the night before. In fact, he had looked upset. Had he been told he could not have Valena’s help? Did that mean that the traverse to Black Island was scratched until Steve could recover?

What was taking them so long? Were they talking about her? Were they changing their minds, deciding that she wasn’t up to the task?

I’m getting really, truly paranoid , she chided herself.

Two more men in insulated canvas clothing came hurrying along the road. “What does he want?” one asked the other. “Dunno. But I don’t like it,” said the other. A truck pulled up, and three more men hopped out and hurried into the building. The last slammed the door behind himself.

At least this means it’s not about me , Valena decided.

Ten minutes passed. It felt like an hour. She began to get cold. She pulled up her hood and hopped from foot to foot.

Finally, the door opened. One of the last men to enter shambled outside, walked to the far side of the road, and stared up into the surrounding hills. He stood with his back to Valena. Lit a cigarette. Hung his head. Kicked at the ground.

A second man came out. His eyes were red and swimming with tears. He wiped his sleeve across his nose. When he saw Valena, he averted his eyes, pulled up his hood, and hurried away down the road.