Canada Reads 2008, Entry Two

Indigo, John and Richmond, leaning in the book stacks.

Caucasian male, early 30s, with wavy, brown hair and dark beard, wearing plaid green jacket, black jeans with stitched back pocket, carrying an old leather bag.



Icefields, Thomas Warton (NeWest Press)

Page 180:

He digs absently with the toe of his boot. There is a faint blue shadow in the hollow where the spilled liquid fell. He crouches, brushes away the snow crust with his gloved hands, digging a hole into the powdery layers beneath. Further down the snow solidifies again. Sexsmith stabs his alpenstock into the hole, strikes a hard surface. Rock, he thinks, and scrapes at it, glimpses a faint reflected gleam.

On the other end of the long drive, while three will shovel a throughway, one will have to make the pathless haul to the front door to turn on the power. They spend the last thirty minutes trying to find a radio signal, listening out for commercials, playing a bastardized version of Rock, Paper, Scissors they made up in high school, twenty years earlier. A pizza jingle beats a car ad, a car ad beats a realtor, and anyone selling hot tubs or saunas beats them all. Inside the cottage, he strips to his shorts and jogs in front of the space heater, an open bottle of red breathing on the counter beside frost-bitten ice trays.


Canada Reads 2008