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By Bump Diamond
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Fiction: Ookpik Archive
A Crash In The Night: An Ookpik Adventure
Chapter 2: Juanita Clarita and Hans Errmann
February 14, 2006
She imagined Hans Errmann as an artist's brush, a red figure painting the side of the mountain with his bold ski strokes, and she felt exhilaration, as if she were transported. She saw that he painted the snowy canvas with bold, wide brushstrokes—aggressive, angry, audacious. She conjured the artist Franz Kline, throwing bold, beautiful, black, abstract expressions onto the snow. She followed, and imagined herself embellishing her man's expression, adding color and whimsy to his brushstrokes. In her mind's eye she saw de Kooning's "Untitled XXIV," its curves reminding her of her line down the hill, the painting's understated blues and oranges becoming the snow under her feet, its dark, curved lines becoming the shadowed tracks of her skis.A Crash In The Night: An Ookpik Adventure
Chapter 1: We've Only Come For Dancing
January 4, 2006
By Buck MeadowsYankton Rondeau rose from the hot spring and lifted his hand from the water, palm out. “Shhh,” he said to the dog, Barco. The man searched the moonless sky. His yellow eyes flashed in the darkness. He swiveled his ears this way and that. The December meteors—the Geminids—streaked across the sky, painting the black expanse with brushstrokes of white fire. The man could barely make out a faint glow, caused by runway lights at the Ski Town's small airport, more than a mile away. In the distance, coyotes howled against the downslope wind off the mountains. Yankton Rondeau, the French Canadian adventurer, thought he heard singing on the crest of the wind. “Shhh.” Barco, a husky from the Great North, lay among the sagebrush and bitterroot in the snow by the side of the hot pool. “The midnight sky only seems to be beautiful, mon ami,” the man half-whispered to the dog. He spoke with a thick Québécois accent. “But tonight it is also dangerous. It is good that Juanita Clarita has chosen not to come.”
Ookpik: Chapter 1
March 14, 2005
By Buck Meadows(Mammoth Monthly December 2004) Yankton Rondeau and the dog Barco arrived in the Ski Town on a Monday morning near the end of October. They were from northern Québec. They arrived in their covered pickup truck after...Ookpik: Chapter 2
March 10, 2005
Chapter 2 (Mammoth Monthly January 2005) On the night of the first snow, Juanita Clarita sat bolt upright in her bed and shrieked. Someone—or something—shook her awake by the shoulders, kept hold, and whispered in her ear, as if to...Ookpik: Chapter 3
February 28, 2005
Chapter 3 (Mammoth Monthly February 2005) “Tell me about Maria,” said the dog, Barco, to the man, Yankton Rondeau. “Tell me why we are here in this Ski Town.” Barco, a husky, lay on the rug, in front of the...Ookpik: Chapter 4
February 1, 2005
Chapter 4 (Mammoth Monthly March 2005) Hans Errmann, chieftain of the Ski Patrol, blasted through the final snowdrift blocking his path. He maneuvered the snowmobile to a protected spot, under a roof and on the lee side of Old Main,...Ookpik: Chapter 5
January 24, 2005
Chapter 5 (Mammoth Monthly April 2005) Hans Errmann, chief of the Ski Patrol, left the small, brick explosives-supply building at midmountain and went into the storm, just as Juanita Clarita, the shaman Deion Von Rondt, the stranger Yankton Rondeau and...
