Ice Island Read Free

guy told a chocolate-colored dog that looked more Lab than husky.
    Someone else was singing, “We all live in a yellow submarine.…”
    Tatum spotted Beryl’s team by a cargo container,sprawled out in shades of black, brown, and yellow. A breeze played across their ruffs. They looked ready to run another thousand miles. One year a musher did just that—turned his team around and mushed back to Anchorage.
    “Beryl!” she hollered.
    “Hey!” Beryl called back. Her brick-red hair was matted into a braid. Sunglasses held a piece of cardboard over her nose. She didn’t look half as good as her dogs, more like she could sleep for a week. She’d lost a bunch of weight too.
    Tatum leaned into the fence. “Everything okay?”
    “Nothing a hot shower won’t cure.” Beryl said it like a hot shower was a luxury. “Now get in here!”
    “I don’t have a pass,” Tatum said.
    “Climb the dang fence!”
    Tatum found a slot wide enough for her boot. She pulled herself up, dropping down on the other side. When Bandit saw Tatum, she made a beeline for her. Bandit was black and cinnamon, except for her white muzzle and belly and a dark patch around one eye, which made her look like she was winking.
    The rest of the team circled Tatum at about a hundred miles an hour, yipping happily. Tatum hugged them all, then squatted beside Bandit. “Guess you missed me!”
    Bandit crawled all over her, licking her face. She wagged her tail so hard her back end shook.
    Tatum wrapped her arms around the dog, kissing her on the nose. Bandit licked her whole face at once. She must’ve smelled last night’s cheeseburger. “I’ve missed you too!” Tatum told her.
    Tatum massaged Bandit’s shoulders, which the dogloved. Even though mushers used padded harnesses, the dogs’ shoulders sometimes got sore.
    “It was a long, hard haul, but they never gave up,” Beryl said, cooing to her dogs constantly. “Dropped Calico and Boots early on. Upset stomachs. Bandit got us through the gorge before she tired out. Cried like a baby when I put her in the sled, even though it was only for twenty miles.”
    “Where did you come in?”
    “Twenty-third,” Beryl said. “Not bad in a field of sixty-seven.”
    If Beryl was okay with her finish, then so was Tatum.
    Tatum helped rub ointment on the dogs’ feet. Race rules said mushers had to carry enough booties to last more than a thousand miles. Even so, snow could work its way through the material and rub against the dogs’ toe pads. The dogs licked her face the whole time, tails thumping the ground.
    “You have the best dogs!” Tatum said.
    Beryl smiled. “They’re all team players.”
    Part of Tatum’s summer job had been cleaning up after them. Just shovel their business into a wheelbarrow, right?
Wrong
. It froze to the ground hard as lead. First she had to chop it loose with an ax.
    “Wish I could sweat through the pads of my feet and nose,” Beryl said. “Save a fortune on deodorant.”
    Tatum laughed at that one.
    “You know, sweat is the leading cause of—”
    “—dehydration.” Tatum finished the sentence. She knew it was a real danger on the trail, for both mushers and dogs.
    “You’re a great student,” Beryl said. “It was so hot in Knik I wore my boots without socks.”
    Tatum knew “hot” could mean twenty degrees.
    “One musher used a turkey baster to squirt water down a dog’s throat,” Beryl said.
    “To keep it hydrated?”
    Beryl nodded. “You have to be creative to be a musher.”
    Tatum’s dad called it ingenuity.
    Beryl filled an ice chest with warm water. Her sneakers crunched the snow while she bashed frozen meat into smaller chunks. “I’m heading off to teach a wilderness survival course to a group of kids in Wyoming,” she said. “My flight leaves this afternoon.”
    Tatum dropped the meat into the ice chest to thaw. “What about the banquet? And who’ll take care of your dogs?”
    “I’ve been to a million banquets.” Beryl stirred the