Ice is the Riverbend's real winter, not the picture-book kind but a hard overnight glaze that welds a car to its own driveway. Tri-County Services works the small hours through it, plowing drives and lots around Wood River, cutting walkways open, spreading salt so the surface lets go before morning traffic starts. The route runs wide, town to town across the valley, and for most of the night the truck's headlights are the only ones moving. By daylight nobody sees the work, only the absence of the problem. That is exactly the point of it.