Stony River (24 page)

CHAPTER 16

“This was a crazy idea,” Joel confessed as they drove downriver. “It’ll be too dark to show you the town. Mist’s hooves were bothering her, and I treated the whole flock as a precaution, so I got a later start than I’d planned.”

But Sevana cared not at all, was only light-hearted because she was going somewhere in pleasant company. She was young and resilient, and had already adjusted to the fact that she meant nothing special in his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I like to do crazy things.”

Even the one-lane stretch didn’t worry her this time. She had complete faith that Joel would know what to do if they met an oncoming car. But they encountered no one at all in the darkening passage.

Just past the narrows Joel pulled over, saying he wanted her to see the rapids while it was still light. A thunderous roar echoed off the canyon walls as they walked to the edge of the road and looked down at the torrential whitewater boiling over stairlike slabs of rock in the tight shaft below. Speaking with raised voice to be heard, Joel said it was called the Devil’s Ladder, and Sevana thought the name needed no explanation.

As they drove on toward Cragmont Joel fell into thought, and he soon revealed why.

“Sevana,” he said seriously, “talking to you the other night helped, it really did. It made me see how far out of hand I’ve gotten. I want to apologize for the things I said—they were out of line. It was the lateness of the hour, I guess, and the letter I was writing that got me talking. You were a guest in my house, and didn’t deserve a raving maniac for a host.” He appeared deeply rueful at the memory. “Not exactly the secure haven I intended to provide you for the night. I just want you to know I don’t plan to act on my rash statements, and had no right to make them.”

“That’s all right, Joel,” she assured him easily. “I can understand why you felt that way. There’s no simple answer to a situation like that.”

She had noticed a road up on the mountainside she hadn’t seen during her first trip in. When she asked about it, Joel told her it started at Cragmont and ended at some logging units up Fire Creek. It was the only road south side the river, and with any luck it would always be—he didn’t like to see those magnificent old-growth forests logged. “No offense to your brother,” he added politely.

Sevana thought about that. It was true, Fenn’s job was destructive by nature. It didn’t seem to matter when the timber was so endless, but what if they just kept cutting until it was all gone? She knew that, like Joel, she didn’t want to see the splendor of that beautiful valley diminished.

On the edge of Cragmont they passed a log building with its front door standing open into the summery twilight. The community church was having its Saturday-night prayer meeting, Joel made comment, but it was too late to catch it tonight. Of course they could always take in the last five minutes, if she cared to. Lord knows, after that outburst last night, it might be what he needed to put him back in line.

Sevana was glad he could joke about it, satirical though his tone. “We can if you’d like to.” She wasn’t there to interrupt anything he would normally do.

He seemed surprised she would be willing to consider it. “I wouldn’t mind dropping in just to touch base,” he admitted. “Folks get to wondering if I’m all right, if I don’t put in an appearance once in a while. Sure you don’t mind?” He was slowing the truck.

“Not at all. I went to chapel when I was at school.” She didn’t mention that she hadn’t gone regularly—but when she did go, she remembered liking the safe-feeling atmosphere and the thought of a Heavenly Father, however unknown to her, overseeing things when maybe her own father was too busy to notice.

“Let’s do it, then.” Joel made the turn in a wide spot. “It won’t take long, and it’s easier to keep in touch than explain why I haven’t been around.”

They went in while the pastor—a lanky man with bushy brown hair and a suit that didn’t quite reach his raw-boned wrists—was standing at the front near an unlit barrel stove. They took a seat on the last bench for the final minutes of his talk. Sevana had secretly been worried about appearing in church in her informal clothes, but one glance around told her that no one was dressed up. In fact, the whole lot of them looked as though they’d come straight out of the backwoods. And then it came to her, ironically, that Cragmont
was
the backwoods. All summer she’d had the notion that she was the only one society was presently going along without, but in reality there were a lot of other folks it was sidestepping as well.

As soon as the meeting was dismissed, people crowded around them where they stood. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to shake Joel’s hand and inquire into his well-being, saying how glad they were he’d come down from the mountain to grace their presence that night. He seemed to be as one especially favored in their eyes—for which Sevana did not wonder, for she felt the identical way about him. But then those same eyes were turning toward Sevana and there was a bit of confusion, people curious and warmly welcoming in their assumption that her relationship to Joel was something different than it was—eager to include her, inviting her to some function they were having that week so they could get to know her; and Joel having to explain more than once that Sevana was just his temporary neighbor for a few months, and this was probably the only time she’d be in town all summer.

After that, Joel seemed in more of a hurry to go, as if he hadn’t considered how it would look when he brought Sevana to church—had not thought their unique relationship might be interpreted to be something other than what it was; and he sought out Jarrod Holte to shake his hand and introduce Sevana so they could leave. But to Sevana the thought had occurred much earlier, first when she’d caught the look on Pastor Holte’s face as they came in together; and again when she’d stood with Joel for the last hymn, holding a book with him and trying to sing a song she didn’t know, and looking just like all the other couples sharing a book and singing together.

“Sorry for that,” he said when they were walking across the yard. “I think some of the women have sort of made it their project to get me married off, and when they saw you, they must have thought they’d gained their purpose. You know how people are—can’t leave well enough alone, sometimes.”

Sevana brushed it aside. It was natural they couldn’t understand why a desirable man like Joel was still single. Of course they didn’t know about Chantal. You didn’t go around telling your church friends you were in love with someone else’s wife.

She had observed something else at church. It was the first time she had seen Joel out of his solitary environment. And he was not wholly at ease in groups of people. It wasn’t evident unless you knew what he was like on his own ground. But even though he conducted himself admirably, he was shyer and less socially versed than she would have believed. It made sense, then, the life he had chosen. It was not just because the piece of land he’d bought happened to be in the middle of nowhere. He liked it that way. He resembled Fenn in a sense, but hadn’t hardened himself against humanity as Fenn had. He didn’t prefer to be part of a social group, but made a point to do so occasionally, as he obviously thought church was important.

Joel drove from there to the telephone booth by the post office and took his call on schedule, while Sevana mailed her father’s letter and waited on the street in the warm summer dusk. After Joel checked his mailbox, he set to entertaining Sevana in the ‘big city’. The mercantile was closed, so shopping, regrettably, was not an option. They ended up walking down the sloping road to the Lakeshore Lodge for ice cream.

All the tables were empty when they entered. Joel ordered the house flavor (which he privately interpreted to Sevana as meaning ‘only flavor’) from the tall, pretty waitress who appeared at the counter. Then he led Sevana to a table made from a varnished slab of a once-mighty pine—so they could have counted its concentric rings to determine its age if they’d desired. Their window held a picture-perfect view of the placid lake mirroring the dark mass of the craggy-spined mountain range above it.

The bowls of hand-churned ice cream brought by the same girl were rich with heavy cream and fresh peaches, and almost unbelievably good. Sevana ate hers slowly while she eyed the sandy lakeshore, which looked an inviting place to go walking. She didn’t ask Joel what he and Chantal had discussed on the phone. He had talked to her earnestly a good while, bending close to the receiver and occasionally pressing his hand to his forehead; and even now he appeared unsettled by it, as though harboring an underlying thread of agitation or carefully concealed excitement.

But he brought it up himself. Now that the subject had been introduced, he seemed to appreciate having a confidante. “Chantal’s in Nova Scotia,” he said to her discreet silence. “But she’s going to arrange her travel plans to see me on the way home. I told her I didn’t think it was a good idea. I told her we needed to take a deep breath and back it up a step, before we go ahead and ruin three lives.”

Sevana could see how hard he was struggling to live within his ethics, fighting against something he wanted with all his heart.

“She said she won’t be satisfied until she sees me again and we come to some sort of decision together. I should have told her”—his voice roughened and he sounded like a man lacking oxygen—“that I didn’t need to see her, I already knew it couldn’t go any further. But I didn’t. I agreed to it. I wanted to see her again, too.” The confession plucked away some of his tense energy, and his words concluded on a ragged note.

As if to shift focus from the disturbing subject, he took out the letters he’d stashed in his shirt pocket. The first, a thick one, he put back without comment. Glancing at the address on next one, he remarked conversationally, “Looks like I’ve got another violin order.”

“Do you work for a shop somewhere?” Sevana realized she hadn’t considered the particulars of how he conducted his business.

“No, I work for myself. All my business is special-order, and I’m always behind, with more orders waiting.” He pocketed that envelope also.

She could hardly accept that he was in that kind of demand, when he lived such a disengaged life. “How do people know about you?”

“When you’re in the business long enough, your name starts getting around,” he said in an offhand way as he examined the last letter. “Mind if I read this? It’s from the Province.”

“No, not at all.”

He tore open the envelope, scanned the contents, and gave a low whistle.

“What is it?”

His eyes were still on the paper to be sure of his facts. “New government regulations. Grazing permits are being given out only on a case-by-case basis. I’ve got to reapply if I want to be considered.”

“You mean—there’s a chance you might not get one?” The thought of him being forced to give up his summer range was almost too awful to contemplate.

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t. It’s just more red tape.” He folded the notice and put it back in the envelope, as if in doing so he was deliberately dismissing it from his mind.

The splinter in Sevana’s finger throbbed. Even though she knew it was bad manners, she opened her hand and poked at it a little desperately, and Joel noticed. “Got a splinter?”

She nodded. “I can’t get it out.”

“Working with wood as I do, splinters are almost a daily occurrence for me.” He reached for his pocketknife and flipped it open. “And I am volunteering to be your surgeon.”

With a laugh she extended her hand across the table—and with no more than a few deft digs, he presented her the bit of wood on the blade. “Oh, thank you!” She was too relieved to be self-conscious about it.

When Joel paid the bill at the register, the waitress gave Sevana a second, studying look. “Excuse me,” she said reluctantly, “I don’t mean to stare. It’s just that your eyes—look so much like someone I know…Fenn Selwyn.”

“I’m his sister, Sevana.”

“Oh, you are!” She seemed relieved she hadn’t been completely off-base. “He did say he had a sister back east. It’s nice to meet you. I went out with Fenn for a while.” She acted wistful, but guarded, too, as if she didn’t really want to discuss it.

Sevana wasn’t sure what to say. “Oh—that’s nice.” At least Fenn wasn’t a total recluse.

“How is he?” The words seemed to escape against her will.

“Oh, he’s—fine.”

“Is he…seeing anyone?”

“Oh, no… I—don’t think so.”

The girl produced an unconvincing smile, and whisked off with a brisk step to clear their table.

Joel lifted an eyebrow and gave Sevana a slight shrug as they went outside. “Don’t know what that was all about,” he said in a low voice.

Quickly, before the opportunity was lost, Sevana asked, “Joel, could we go out on the beach—just for a minute?”

“Sure. I’m in no particular hurry.”

They strolled along the dusky shoreline, where tiny swells lapped infrequently at the sand. “This is nice,” Sevana said contentedly. “The way the lake lies so quiet and protected, as if the mountains are holding it in their hands.”

Joel was looking toward a secluded cove down the beach, and it took him a minute to answer. “It
is
nice.” He picked up a pebble and sent it skimming over the water, bouncing three, four, five times before it sank. Amazed, Sevana demanded to know how he’d done it.

Joel showed her—and by the time it was too dark to see, she had developed enough of a knack to occasionally skip a stone herself. Once by complete accident she achieved a double skip, and they shared a laugh over her sheer dumbfoundment.