Variable Interest Rates on the Ice Road

The traction control light has been on since 2023, and the ice doesn't care about my credit score.

The heater makes a sound like a dying bird. Not a majestic bird. A pigeon. Something with a respiratory infection. It’s a high-pitched whine that lives in the plastic vent just to the left of the steering wheel, and I’ve tried hitting it, but percussive maintenance stopped working around sixty thousand kilometers ago. Now I just turn the volume up on the radio until the classic rock drowns out the mechanical failure.

It’s minus thirty-two. That’s what the dash says, anyway. The dash also says my tire pressure is critical, my oil life is at 4%, and my door is ajar. The door is not ajar. I can see the door. It’s shut. I slammed it three times. The sensor is just frozen, glued shut by a layer of ice that formed when I spilled that large coffee last Tuesday. But the little red icon is there, glaring at me. Door Ajar. It’s a lie. The whole truck is a liar.

Kevin is in the Ford next to me. I can see him through his side window because he hasn’t scraped it properly. There’s a porthole of visibility about the size of a dinner plate where he’s frantically rubbing the glass with a credit card. Probably a maxed-out Visa. That’s the tool of choice out here. The scraper broke, or he lost it, or his kid took it to dig a snow fort. So now he’s out there buffing the frost away with high-interest debt.

We aren’t supposed to be doing this. The winter road is technically open, but 'open' is a bureaucratic term. It means the government checked it three days ago and decided a semi-truck probably wouldn't fall through. Probably. The ice is four feet thick, maybe five. But the surface is garbage. Rutted, wind-polished, slicker than a politician’s handshake. And we’re about to race.

Not a race. A 'speed comparison.' That’s what Kevin called it. If we call it a race, the insurance voiding happens immediately. If we call it a speed comparison, we have plausible deniability. I need the fifty bucks. Eggs are nine dollars a dozen at the Northern Store. I did the math this morning while waiting for the kettle to boil. If I win this, I can buy five dozen eggs. Or half a tank of gas. The economy of 2025 is stupid.

I rev the engine. It sounds tired. It sounds like it wants to file a union grievance. The tachometer needle does a little jittery dance. I need new spark plugs. I’ve needed new spark plugs since the fall, but I bought a new winter jacket instead because the zipper on the old one exploded and left me exposed to the elements like some kind of medieval peasant. The jacket is nice. It has pockets. The truck, however, is resentful.

Kevin flashes his high beams. That’s the signal. Or maybe he just hit the stalk by accident while flailing at the window. I decide it’s the signal. I shift into four-high. The clunk from the transfer case is audible even over the heater whine. Metal on metal. Expensive sounds.

I mash the pedal. The tires don't bite. They just spin. A high-pitched ziiiiing as the rubber polishes the ice. The speedometer shoots up to eighty, but we are moving at maybe four kilometers an hour. The traction control light is flashing frantically, a little yellow car skidding on squiggly lines. I know, I tell it. I know we’re skidding. Shut up.

Kevin isn’t doing much better. His back end is fishtailing in slow motion, drifting toward the snowbank on the left. It’s the most pathetic start to a drag race in human history. Just two heavy trucks screaming at the sky while inching forward on a frozen lake. I ease off the gas. Let the tires catch. There’s a moment of grip, a lurch, and my head hits the headrest. The unfinished coffee in the cup holder sloshes. It’s cold now. I should drink it anyway.

We pick up speed. Twenty. Thirty. The suspension rattles over the washboard ice. It feels like driving inside a tumble dryer filled with rocks. My teeth chatter, not from cold, but from vibration. I check the rearview. A plume of white snow dust is kicking up behind me, obscuring the horizon. It looks cinematic if you ignore the fact that my check engine light just blinked.

I’m ahead. I think. It’s hard to tell because Kevin is weaving. He’s trying to find a patch of snow for traction, but he’s just sliding sideways. He looks like a crab. A large, metallic, rust-spotted crab. I look at the odometer. 214,000 kilometers. I owe four more payments. Just four. If I wreck this thing, I am walking to work until July.

Why am I doing this? The fifty bucks. Right. And the pride. The specific, fragile pride of knowing my truck is slightly less terrible than Kevin’s truck. That’s the currency we trade in. Not Bitcoin. Not Ethereum. Just 'my truck started this morning without being plugged in.' That’s the flex.

The scenery is monotonous. White. Grey. White. A pine tree that looks dead. Another pine tree that looks dead but taller. The lake is vast. It’s Lake Winnipeg. It’s an ocean of frozen sludge. You can’t see the other side. It feels like we’re driving into a void. A white room where God put all the unfinished textures.

I hit a drift. The steering wheel jerks to the left. Violently. My wrist snaps. Ow. I correct, overcorrect, and the back end swings out. I am now looking out the passenger window at the road ahead. I am drifting. Not the cool Tokyo Drift kind. The terrifying 'I am a passenger in a two-ton sled' kind. I hold my breath. My heart does a weird flutter. Not fear. Indigestion. I ate that gas station burrito too fast.

I gently turn into the skid. The tires find something—maybe a patch of sand the maintenance crew dropped last week. The truck snaps straight with a shudder that rattles the change in the ashtray. I breathe out. The heater whine changes pitch. It’s gone up an octave. Now it sounds like a dentist’s drill.

Kevin is beside me now. He’s yelling something. His window is down. I can’t hear him. The wind noise is deafening. He’s pointing at something. Is it a cop? I check the mirror. No cops. Cops don’t come out here unless someone dies or there’s a loose moose. He’s pointing at my wheel. My front left wheel.

I look. It looks like a wheel. It’s spinning. It’s black. It has lug nuts. Wait. It’s wobbling. It’s doing a little hula dance. That’s not good. A wheel bearing? A loose tie rod? I feel the vibration in the floor mat now. A thrumming beat. Thump-thump-thump. It syncs up with the heater whine. A terrible mechanical symphony.

I should stop. A rational person would stop. A person who cares about longevity and safety would pull over and call a tow truck. But a tow truck out here is six hundred dollars. I don’t have six hundred dollars. I have negative twelve dollars until Friday. So I keep going. If the wheel falls off, it falls off. Maybe it’ll roll into the snow and I can find it in the spring.

Kevin pulls ahead. His Ford is surging. He must have hit a patch of good ice. He’s got a bumper sticker that says 'I Love My Wife' but the 'Wife' part is peeled off so it just says 'I Love My'. I wonder what he loves. His truck? His debt? The crushing silence of the north?

I press the gas harder. The transmission hesitates. It thinks about it. It consults a committee. Then it downshifts with a bang that feels like someone kicked the back of my seat. The RPMs scream. I’m gaining on him. The wobble in the front wheel gets worse. It’s shaking the dashboard now. My bobblehead on the dash—a little plastic moose—is vibrating so hard it looks blurry.

We are doing ninety on ice. This is suicide. But I can see the finish line. It’s the turnoff for the access road, marked by a stop sign that someone shot with a shotgun three years ago. The holes are rusted. It’s about a kilometer away.

My phone buzzes in the cup holder. I glance down. It’s a notification from my bank. 'Low Balance Alert.' Thanks. I know. I really know. The buzzing vibrates against the hard plastic. It sounds like a hornet. It adds to the cacophony. Heater whine. Wheel thrum. Engine roar. Bank notification buzz. The soundtrack of my life.

Kevin cuts into my lane. He has to. There’s a pressure ridge ahead. A jagged scar in the ice where the plates buckled. It’s about a foot high. If you hit it at speed, you launch. If you launch, you break an axle. He swerves to avoid it. I’m right behind him. I have two choices: brake and lose, or hit the ridge and pray.

I don't brake. I can’t brake. If I touch the brakes on this ice at this speed, I will spin until I throw up. So I aim for the lowest part of the ridge. I grip the wheel. I clench my jaw. I wonder if I have dental coverage. I don’t.

WHAM.

The truck goes airborne. For a second, it’s quiet. The tires leave the ice. The rumble stops. The heater is the only sound. Eeeeeeeee. I am floating. I am weightless. I am a bird. A heavy, rusty bird.

Then gravity remembers me.

SLAM.

We land. Hard. The suspension bottoms out. The bump stops scream. My head hits the roof. The coffee flies out of the cup holder and splashes onto the windshield, freezing instantly into a brown, opaque smear. I can’t see. I am driving blind at ninety kilometers an hour covered in Tim Hortons dark roast.

I turn on the wipers. They smear the frozen coffee. It’s worse. It’s like looking through a dirty diaper. I fumble for the window switch. I roll down the driver’s window. The air hits me. It’s brutal. It feels like a physical slap. It steals the breath from my lungs. My eyes water instantly and the tears freeze on my eyelashes. This is stupid. This is so stupid.

I lean my head out the window to see. I look like a dog. A freezing, terrified dog. Kevin is slowing down. He hit the ridge too. I see his brake lights. He’s fishtailing. He’s losing it.

I roar past him. My left eye is frozen shut. My right eye is streaming. I can’t feel my nose. But I’m passing him. I see his face as I go by. He looks concerned. He’s holding his phone. Is he filming? Or calling 911?

I cross the imaginary line at the stop sign. I lift off the gas. The truck coasts. It takes a mile to slow down without brakes. I finally come to a stop near a snowbank. The silence returns. well, mostly. The heater is still whining. The engine is ticking as it cools. The smell of burning oil fills the cab.

I sit there for a minute. My hands are shaking. The adrenaline is fading, replaced by the cold seeping in through the open window. I roll it up. It groans. It doesn't want to close. I have to help it with my hand, pulling the glass up while pressing the button.

Kevin pulls up behind me. He gets out. He’s wearing a hoodie. No jacket. Just a hoodie. It’s minus thirty-two. He looks fine. He walks over to my window.

I roll it down two inches. 'You owe me fifty,' I say. My voice cracks.

'You caught air,' Kevin says. He sounds impressed. 'I saw your whole undercarriage. You got a rust hole in your muffler.'

'I know,' I say. 'Did I win?'

'Yeah,' he says. He digs into his pocket. He pulls out a crumpled bill. It’s blue. Five dollars. He digs again. A ten. Another five. A handful of loonies. 'I only got twenty-four bucks cash,' he says. 'I can e-transfer the rest.'

I stare at him. 'Data is down out here, Kevin. You know that.'

'Right,' he says. He looks at the frozen lake. He looks at his truck. 'I have a pack of jerky. Teriyaki.'

I sigh. The heater whines. My eye is thawing out and it stings. 'Fine. Give me the jerky.'

He hands me the cash and the bag of beef jerky through the crack in the window. It’s warm from his pocket. That’s gross, but I’m hungry.

I put the truck in gear. The check engine light is steady now. No longer blinking. That’s an improvement, I guess. Or the bulb burned out.

I turn the truck around. The drive back is slow. I do the speed limit. The radio plays a commercial for a tropical vacation. The announcer talks about white sand and blue water. I look at the white ice and the grey sky. My wheel is still wobbling. Thump-thump-thump.

I eat a piece of warm jerky. It’s tough. It tastes like salt and preservatives. It’s the best thing I’ve eaten all day.