Stony River (76 page)

Sevana tried the call on several other occasions, still without making a connection. “You have to hit it just right,” she was told. “The winter really did a number on the battery. High noon after a series of sunny days is best.”

“Maybe you should get a new battery,” she voiced the suggestion with some timidity after giving up any idea of getting through to Willy.

But the battery was mounted on some remote mountaintop, not accessible until the snow melted off the nine-mile trail, so there was nothing to do but wait. There was also the factor that when the time came, Hawk might not be able to scrape up enough money to replace it. So the boys lived with their telephone that was more temperamental than the
Kootenay Queen—
but they were happy to have any link at all to the outside world.

Sevana was so occupied with the thought of Willy’s arrival that she all but forgot about Melanie. Then, too, Melanie had turned down an invitation earlier that summer, so she didn’t have much confidence she would accept this time. Therefore, she was floored when not three days later, a dented olive-green pickup truck pulled up close to noon and Melanie walked cautiously to the house. Sevana was caught so off-guard by her arrival that she had to mentally collect her wits as she went out on the path to meet her.

“Sevana—” Melanie grabbed her wrist and pulled her close to whisper, “what’s Fenn’s truck doing here? I thought he’d be at work in the middle of the day.”

Sevana knew that was the only reason she’d had the courage to come. Likely the hope for a little news of Fenn had caused her to accept the invitation—but not if she’d known he was home. The wounds—as the love—were deep.

“Don’t worry,” Sevana said, “he’s busy in the other room. He won’t see you out here.” And she told Melanie about the accident.

As soon as Melanie heard how he’d nearly been killed, she swallowed her pride and asked to see him. So Sevana poked her head into the living room where he was cleaning the blackpowder gun. “Fenn? Would you mind if we have a guest for lunch?”

“Who is it?” And then he dropped the ramrod, for he saw Melanie looking around the corner.

“Fenn,” she said, stepping forward with a brave toss of her reddish-gold hair, “I heard about the accident—and I had to come see you.”

“Oh—well, that’s nice of you.” He didn’t seem to know what to say.

She came further into the room. “Will you tell me how it happened?”

“Sure. Well, it’s kind of a long story.”

“I’m going to set out the lunch things,” Sevana said, and ducked out of the room, hoping Melanie could fend for herself.

She hurried so as not to leave Melanie in that awkward situation for long, but when they were sitting around the table, she saw her worries had been for naught. Fenn and Melanie couldn’t take their eyes off each other. Looking at them, Sevana was filled with happiness. She’d known all along they still loved each other. After lunch she excused herself and went outside to stay out of their way. She didn’t think they even noticed.

To pass the time she climbed up to the three pines and higher, eventually tying in with the trail. She had no destination in mind, but her feet took her unerringly to Joel’s cabin, which was still the closest thing she had to him. The place looked lonely, uncared for. She sat on the low porch and gazed across to the mountains—his mountains. The ungrazed grass stirred in the wind; the scratchy spruce trees whispered their songs to no one.

Rising restlessly, she climbed to the meadow and sat mid-pasture, weaving a circlet of wildflowers and wishing Goldthread was there to be so adorned. But lacking other subjects, the queen of the meadow wreathed her own head. After a while, the warm sunshine overcame her, and she lay back drowsily on the hillside, almost hidden in the blades of grass.

Sometime later—not knowing if she was awake or dreaming—she heard a deep voice speaking above her. “A wolf has eaten all your sheep, shepherdess,” it said.

Her eyes flew open, and she blinked uncomprehendingly at the vision of a dark-haired man looking down at her with a whimsical smile against the high sun. Then sense returned, realization swept her, and she started up, exclaiming, “Oh, Joel, you’re back! You came back!”

As she was scrambling upright, he grasped her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Yes, I came back. Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“I thought you’d been lost to the wilds of the north,” she murmured, staring up into his face and wishing he hadn’t let go her hand.

“To tell the truth, I nearly was.”

Then she saw how spare he was, how his eyes glinted above sharp cheekbones and his skin had an abnormal pallor to it. “What happened? Are you all right?” She was anxiously reaching to touch the haggard face before she realized she was acting on instinct, and hastily withdrew the offending hand.

“Just a little tired, is all. A few good nights’ sleep, I’ll be fine.”

His eyes were on her with a peculiar focus—and she remembered the wreath on her head and pulled it off foolishly, while he broke into a chuckle. “I was hoping you’d leave it on, you looked so much the character of springtime itself.”

“They were for Goldthread,” she said.

His smile faded. “He’d like to see it now. Place looks a little overgrown, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” She didn’t like to see the regret in his eyes. “Are you just now back from the Yukon?”

“Yes. I kept thinking it was May in the mountains and I couldn’t get here fast enough. And if I’d known you were here, Sevana, I would have driven still faster. Seems a little like old times, finding you here.”

She smiled at the sentiment, but told him, “I came back to take care of Fenn. He was hurt in a logging accident.”

“He was? How bad?” His voice was quicker with concern.

“He’s back on his feet, but he won’t be doing any sawing this summer.”

“Sorry to hear it. And you—are you here for the summer?” he asked, but he didn’t sound as if he expected the answer to be yes.

She looked at the chain of glacier lilies in her hand. “No, Willy’s coming for me tomorrow.”

“Back to Lethbridge?”

“Calgary. He moved his art shop there a few weeks ago. I guess he’s been really busy running the new shop by himself.” She felt she was parroting words coming from someone other than herself.

“Say, big doings. Well, you deserve it. You got a place to live up there?”

“I’m holding for an apartment. And Willy said I can stay with him until it opens up.” She was still speaking without true meaning or feeling, a player on a stage.

His eyes held other questions he did not ask. Instead he seemed to draw into himself and turned to look around the meadow. “I came up here to find Randall, but it doesn’t look like he’s been home for a while.”

“He’s been gone all winter. Something about a salmon-spawning project.”

“Oh? Well, I’ll ask around.”

Something was eluding her. His easy familiarity had been replaced by an unnatural tension he was trying not quite successfully to keep pushed below the surface. “How’s your father?” she asked.

“Did you get the letter I mailed last month?”

“From the Yukon?” she inquired in surprise. “No, just the postcard.”

He pushed the hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, it’s probably still sitting on Chilcote’s counter in the ‘To Be Mailed’ box—unless somebody opened it some slow night for entertainment. I should bring you up to date.” He looked up the slope. “Want to go to the top? I’ve been thinking of the view from up there all this day and the last.”

Sevana could imagine how much he had missed it, having longed for that same scene herself almost continually over the winter. She started out with him but soon lagged behind, too preoccupied to keep up with his ground-covering steps. From the back, he was the Joel of last summer—the straight shoulders beneath the rough workshirt, the old leather boots, the freedom of his stride—if only when he looked back for her, she could find the familiar eyes she had known before, instead of ones reserved and remote and faintly troubled.

Reaching the upper edge of the meadow she stood quietly, letting him search out the strongholds he knew so well. A hawk circled with a high screech that took her to an earlier time, and filled her with an almost unbearable sadness.

“Feels like I’ve been gone a long time,” Joel said at last.

“You have been,” she said faintly.

“You know what, I’m thirsty.” He seemed revitalized just from the short look he had taken. “Let’s get a drink from the spring.”

As they shared a round of icebox water from the tin cup, Joel disclosed, “You know, I actually thought about this cup last winter. I was wishing I’d taken it with me when I left. I didn’t like to think of Randall using it, when he’s not a member of the Community of Two.”

“Oh, so now you’re going all exclusive on me,” she scolded, even though her heart had skipped a beat at the confidential inference. “Mr. Radnor isn’t good enough to be included? Next you’ll be barring him from the country club if he doesn’t wear a tie.”

And for an instant everything was all right again, as their laughter echoed out over the hillside.

Walking back to the meadow Joel said musingly, “Sevana, why are these mountains so hard to forget? All the time I was gone, I kept looking for them on the empty skyline. But now that I’m back, it feels I’ve never been away; and with you here, it seems the winter never was. So sit with me like old times, and I’ll tell you about my father.”

She did so, sharing a spot in the grass with a thrill that they should be in that place again. As he told her the story of his winter, she let her eyes linger on his face as a sight she’d been deprived of too long, knowing she had the right to enjoy it all she liked while he talked.

“When I got out to the claim, he was so weak he couldn’t get out of bed,” Joel recounted. “He’d run himself down with too much drinking and too little good food, then caught a fever. He was out of whisky, too, and going through hell and highwater without it. I listened to all his ravings, sat with him through the hardest times. He was actually over the worst of it when I woke up one night, and he was gone.”

“Gone?” she repeated in a startled way.

“He’d taken off in a delirium to get whisky—at midnight, in a blizzard. I tracked him toward town and almost lost his trail before I came across him passed out in the snow. It was so cold I was afraid he’d freeze to death, and snowing too hard to carry him anywhere. I used a branch to dig out a snow cave to get us through the night, but it wasn’t deep enough to provide much shelter. I sat in the entrance and blocked the wind from him as much as I could. That was one long night.”

Sevana remembered her dream about the snow that had made her so uneasy, and wondered if it was linked to that event—if her subconscious was so in tune with him, it had been aware of what he was going through.

“In the morning I got him to a trapper cabin nearby. Ended up staying there almost a month because he was too sick and the weather too bad to get him home. Between storms I made trips to his cabin to get food. When he was stronger I took him home on a sled. He hadn’t gotten in his winter’s wood, so I had to gather what I could find—mostly green wood that wouldn’t burn. It was a fulltime job keeping us halfway warm and fed.”

“Toward spring he was better and gaining strength. He was tired of being laid up and decided it was time to get back to work. The second day out setting his traps, he had a stroke. Long story short, I finally got him down to a hospital in Dawson. The doctor said he may make a fair recovery if he fights to regain the use of his arm and leg, but it’ll take time.”

“Oh, Joel, I didn’t know you’d been through so much.” Sevana felt very distressed for him. She’d been eyeing his stiff-looking, discolored fingers with the fear they’d been frozen. And he looked as though the food he’d fetched between blizzards had been doled out in favor of the sick man, while he, working hard and needing the energy, had gone without. “Where is he now? Still in Dawson?”

“No, I brought him down with me. I got him a room at Lakeshore Lodge, with a local woman with some nursing experience looking in on him. Randall has my place, but I’ll find something in Cragmont and he can live with me. He’s game for it. Says he appreciates my help, too—wishes he’d been a better father.”

“I’m glad he sees that.” But her mind was stuck on a statement that made no sense. “But Joel, why would you get a place in Cragmont when you—when I thought you and Chantal were going to live in Vancouver?”

He looked uncomfortable. “Sevana, I may as well tell you. That’s a matter I have to attend to very soon. You see, up in the Yukon I got to looking at things differently.” He cleared his throat of some nonexisting impediment. “And I’m going to have to go tell Chantal—face to face—that the wedding’s off—for good.”

Sevana felt a jolt. The trees and mountains splintered into fragments and swam before her eyes in indistinguishable pieces of color. “Why?” The word, meant to be spoken normally, was barely audible—barely, in fact, intelligible. It was more a gasp of air than a spoken word.

“Well, Sevana—” He was still hesitant, unsure of what to say. “A fellow would be pretty foolish to leave these mountains if he didn’t have to, don’t you think?” And he nodded toward the three stalwart peaks he had once referred to as old friends.

“Oh, yes.” She couldn’t argue in the slightest. “I never thought it was fair for you to give them up.” She wanted to ask what had happened to true love, but couldn’t. He seemed so reticent to talk about it—oddly so, when he used to tell her everything. It was almost as if they were strangers again, after the time apart. He wouldn’t look at her very long before he would look away, as though the contact hurt him in some way. “But Joel, I got a wedding—
your
wedding—invitation in the mail just a few weeks ago.”