In Valhalla's Shadows

by W. D. Valgardson

  In Valhalla's Shadows

  In Valhalla's Shadows

  W.D. Valgardson

  Copyright © 2018 W. D. Valgardson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, info@accesscopyright.ca.

  Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.

  P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0

  www.douglas-mcintyre.com

  Edited by Pam Robertson

  Front jacket design by Anna Comfort O'Keeffe

  Text design by Shed Simas / Onça Design

  Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd. acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Government of Canada and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Valgardson, W. D., author

  In Valhalla's shadows / W.D. Valgardson.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77162-196-0 (hardcover).–ISBN 978-1-77162-197-7 (HTML)

  I. Title.

  PS8593.A53I58 2018C813'.54C2018-901900-X

  C2018-901901-8

  My thanks to Nina for all her help.

   Chapter 1

  Valhalla

  When Tom nearly tripped over her, the false dawn was just starting. The east side of the lake had lightened with nautical twilight, but there was no sign of the sun. Pools of darkness obscured everything, including the person lying on the ground.

  It, he thought, it, he, she, someone, a person, a person was lying there, where no one should be. But on weekends there were often bonfires like a string of small stars on the curve of beach to the north and people partied all night long. If he walked out at night and stood on the water’s edge, he could see the dark shapes of people moving in and out of the light cast by the fires, and when they threw a log onto the coals, he could see the shower of sparks rise into the darkness.

  He’d slipped out of the house, threaded through the spruce trees at the edge of his property, crossed the road to the harbour area and was heading north across the gravelled space between the government dock on the south and a reef on the north. He was being careful not to stumble over boat trailers or fish boxes that were left scattered about. He’d only moved to Valhalla six weeks ago, but he knew where the commercial fishermen piled their plastic tubs and stored their blue gasoline barrels close to an aluminum-sided shed.

  Because of seasonal high water, the store and the six adjacent one-room rental cabins centred on the harbour area were built well back from the lake. The area was low-lying and a strong northeast wind often flooded the ground. The store and cabins were set on concrete blocks, and even the houses farther back were raised so that storm-driven water went beneath them without doing any damage. People just sloshed around in the yards wearing rubber boots for a day or two until the northeast wind fell and the water receded. In place of basements, everyone had a shed. Many of them were in disrepair.

  That there’d been high water recently could be seen in the remains of a sandbagged wall at one side of the store. The property just to the south that Tom had bought was opposite the store but on higher ground than the surrounding area. In spite of that, the foundation of his house had settled at one corner, and he was going to have to lift the house and straighten it.

  When he realized someone was lying on the ground he was annoyed. Stupid kids, he thought. Drinking and drugs and passing out before they made it home. He’d had enough of stupid kids. He was tempted to leave the kid lying there to sleep off whatever he’d taken, but he knew he couldn’t. He didn’t want to roll him over onto his back. If he vomited, he’d choke. However, he could put him on his side.

  Tom put down his rucksack, tackle box and rod, opened the box and took out his penlight. The white shirt was too large and so were the blue jeans, and he thought for a moment that it was a young boy but was shocked when he realized it was a girl. When he pulled her onto her side, one leg stayed in the water-filled rut and the other lay on top of the mud. Her feet were bare. No socks, no shoes, no service popped into his mind. It was a sign on the window of the store behind him. Little feet, little hands, a kid, he thought, maybe early high school.

  Her long black hair was plastered to the side of her face by the mud. He felt her hand and it was cold and there was no pulse, and he wished that he hadn’t been driven out of the house by nightmares. Although he’d brought his fishing tackle, he’d planned to just sit and wait for the sun to come up, for the surface of the lake to turn from slate to silver to pale blue and to listen to the faint lap of the water at the edge of the shore.

  He’d seen them dead before, too many of them, in wrecked cars mostly, thrown from motorcycles, stupid tricks gone wrong, kids with their arms or heads out of car windows hitting a sign, diving into shallow water, drinking, drinking, drinking, dealing, stabbed or shot or overdosed, always immortal until the moment they weren’t.

  He kneeled in the mud and leaned close to her and smelled whisky. He leaned so his nose was nearly touching her and there was no mistaking the smell. He then leaned over the water in the rut and smelled it; it, too, smelled faintly of whisky.

  I don’t want this, he thought. I’ve had too much of it, and he wondered if he could slip back to his bed and go to sleep and pretend it had never happened. The dead are dead, he thought, you can’t resurrect them, not unless you’re God. And he thought about picking up his minnow net, his rod, his tackle box, his father’s World War II rucksack that was an affection, an affectation; his father had brought it home from the war, and when he died it was one of the few things of his that Tom had kept, along with his chess set, his fly-fishing equipment and his music. It was out of date, not nearly as light or efficient as anything he could buy at Walmart, but it suited him.

  His father had taken it on every fishing trip. Tom couldn’t imagine going fishing without it, without a thermos of coffee with cream and sugar and an egg salad sandwich to eat as he watched the sun rise. He’d moved here for that, for silence, for casting his line over the still surface of the lake, for getting away from all the noise in his head, from all the memories. Away from the grow ops, the meth labs, from young studs shooting each other to save face and territory, from drunken family brawls, from battered wives.

  He glanced over the lake at the eastern horizon. Nautical twilight, the best time of day, soon civil twilight, then dawn. There was a thin crimson line that might have been drawn with one stroke of a brush but no sign of the sun. The masts of the sailboats at the dock stood up sharp and threatening like lances against the lightening sky. The powerboats and yachts, though, anchored farther out in the harbour, were still obscured by darkness.

  He turned the girl fully onto her back and used the flashlight beam to probe the rut where she’d been lying face down. The sides of the rut had been forced upward and then eroded by the rain. It had maybe four inches of water in it. Not much, but you didn’t need much to drown.

  She couldn’t, Tom thought, have been lying here for long. The ruts were from the sports fishermen pulling up their boats the previous evening. Normally, fishermen, and even the sailboaters, lingered on the water, then crowded in as the light began to fade, but there had been a storm warning, high winds and rain. Everyone had come back early. No one wanted to be caught on the lake during an electrical storm, with squalls that co
uld turn a boat upside down in an instant, then disappear as suddenly as they came. But most dangerous of all were the reefs. The locals knew where every reef was, those that rose above the water, those that lurked beneath the surface. Numerous visiting anglers had wrecked a propeller or holed their craft. The reefs that rose above the surface of the water were hazardous but, unless the sports fishermen were too busy partying, could be seen and avoided. Those that lay just below the surface were the ones that brought visiting anglers and sailboaters to grief. There’d been some discussion of putting markers on the submerged reefs, but nothing had come of it. There was a small but steady business rescuing anglers and repairing their boats.

  The rain hadn’t come before dark. Off to the north, lightning had woven in and out of a thunderhead, and then there had been bolt lightning. Lying on the couch reading a biography of Churchill, he could hear distant thunder. Normally, he would have waited expectantly for the storm to roll over him, but he’d been so tired that he fell asleep with the book on his chest.

  She could, he thought, have passed out in the rut before the rain came. She’d have been in no danger. She’d have slept off whatever mix she’d taken, gotten up and gone home. She’d have been thirsty, with a headache, a sick stomach, maybe puke a few times, but she’d get over it. Unless, of course, she’d taken something laced with fentanyl.

  The rain had been hard, a Manitoba summer downpour. A peal of thunder had wakened him and the rain that followed had come all at once like a waterfall, pounding on the roof. He’d listened to it for a minute or two, then got up and lowered the windows until they were nearly shut. It had been hot during the day, muggy at night, and he’d been sleeping with the windows open so the cooler air from the lake would seep in through the screens. During the day he’d been ripping out dry rot, putting in new two-by-fours. Between the work and the heat, he was exhausted, so when he rolled back into bed, he quickly fell asleep. When he woke from his nightmares, the rain was over, but he could smell the heavy mustiness of it, smell and feel the cooler air, the dampness.

  This morning, when he’d stepped off the back porch, there’d been puddles. There should have been a story in her footprints, other footprints, but the churned clay was soft and the hard rain had blurred everything.

  It was not unusual for people at the beach to walk around barefoot. People walked along the water’s edge barefoot. Waded barefoot. Went barefoot up to the store, where there was a galvanized tub filled with flip-flops for people to put on before they entered. Just like in classier restaurants where a jacket was necessary but not necessarily your own jacket. The hostess would bring you a jacket from a nearby closet. Dress codes were one thing. Losing business was another. Of course, if the hostess didn’t like the cut of your jib, there would be no jacket brought out of the closet. His father often had said that: the cut of your jib. His father had been in the army not the navy, but he’d picked up a small dictionary of military terms that peppered his speech.

  His father had had a moustache that he carefully scrutinized in front of the mirror every morning. If there were an errant hair, he clipped it with a tiny pair of scissors with curved blades. He was a bookkeeper, and his days were taken up with numbers. Every number had to be in its precise place by the end of each day or he couldn’t go home.

  Tom jerked his attention back to the girl lying in the mud and water. Since his accident, he found it difficult to focus, his mind pulling him away from anything stressful, blocking it out with memories. “Focus,” he whispered to himself, “focus, focus.”

  No jewellery on her ankles or fingers. He stood up and walked toward the lake. He thought whatever she might have been wearing on her feet could have gotten stuck in the mud and might indicate the direction from which she was coming. The pale circle of light revealed nothing in the mud, nothing at the water’s edge.

  The light was spreading up the sky, the shadows shortening. He went back and forced himself to crouch beside the body.

  Where was she from, he wondered, the village, the dock, the cottages, the beach? He hadn’t been in Valhalla long enough to know or even guess. Someone was going to be getting bad news. He hated that, when he was on the Force, having to go to a house, knock on the door and when it opened, ask if he could come in and the mother, father, wife, husband would hesitate, uncertain, then their face would tense with worry, and they’d say, “Yes, of course, officer, come in.” And he’d go in and ask them to sit down, as he had something to tell them, and they’d sit, usually on a living room couch or, especially in the country, on a kitchen chair, and they might distractedly ask him if he’d like coffee and he’d say, “No, thank you, I have bad news for you.” Sometimes, they’d scream or cry, but often they’d just sit stunned, their faces drained of blood, their bodies paralyzed and their eyes not seeing anything. If they were alone, he’d ask if there was a relative they could call and ask to come over. They’d ask him if he was sure, couldn’t it be a mistake, couldn’t it be a neighbour’s house he should be visiting? Or they’d insist it wasn’t possible because they had an event planned for the evening. They’d ask what happened and he’d tell them what he knew. As he left, he’d ask them if they were going to be okay and they’d say, “Yes, I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine,” but he knew they wouldn’t be.

  He heard the faint metallic clank of a coffee pot being put on a stove in one of the boats. An early riser. Unless they were going sailing or motoring to another harbour, most of the boat people slept late. There really was nothing for them to do in Valhalla. That was why they came. Away from the city, away even from the larger towns, to a place where nothing ever happened, where there was nothing to tempt them away from a hammock or a foamy thrown on deck. They would sail out to one of the islands, anchor there, go ashore and wander about. The only wild animals they needed to keep an eye out for were bears. They’d have a picnic, sail back. Occasionally, they’d make friends with a cottager and visit back and forth. Mostly, they visited among themselves, setting up a BBQ on the dock, having drinks on deck, talking, their sudden bursts of laughter like small explosions in the silence.

  The clank of the pot was followed by a brief muttering of morning voices. In the silence, every sound carried. The standard poodle on the Lazy Johanna barked and the owner told it to be quiet. It was a ritual. It barked every morning and it was told to shut up every morning. Once the sun was above the horizon, a rooster would crow from among the cluster of village houses.

  The mud squelched as Tom moved. If he still had his cellphone, he’d have called the local detachment, but he couldn’t afford the plan right now. Lumber, nails, wiring, the price of everything had been going up lately. He’d start the plan again in the fall. In any case, the service here was spotty. You had to walk around with your phone, testing for areas where it would work. Mostly, the message on the phones was No service. He really didn’t need one, though, because there was no one to call. He hadn’t talked to Sally in three months. The last time he’d called, the conversation had been short, awkward. He’d wanted to know if the kids had been in touch. “I’m sure if they want to talk to you, they’ll call you,” she said before she hung up. She took the craziness of their adolescence personally.

  He didn’t understand why she was angry. It had been her idea to separate. She couldn’t, she said, put up with his moping, his being depressed after he came out of the hospital.

  “Get a job,” she’d said, “any job. Go back to school. Don’t just sit there.”

  If his father had been alive, he’d have said, “Buck up. Don’t be like those who got shell shock. Thinking about what you can’t change is a waste of time. Pick up your rifle and keep going. Otherwise, an officer will have to shoot you.” His father had joined the army as soon as the war had started, had survived six years of war. He was a military buff and had a small library of books on World Wars I and II. Being in the army had been the most important thing in his life. Tom thought that when the war was over every serviceman had cheered, but his father said no, that
wasn’t the case. Many had fallen into deep depression because they were going back to being shop assistants or cab drivers.

  Tom looked east. He liked to have his line in the water just as the sun rose. The fishing was always best first thing in the morning, when the water was cool. He liked to sit as far out on the reef as possible, bait his hook with a minnow, cast, then sit and watch another day begin. His father always said still fishing was lazy man’s fishing. He preferred fly-fishing, whipping flies out onto the surface of the water, skipping the fly to tease and trick the fish into biting. More than once he said he wouldn’t have been able to fly-fish in England. Not enough money, wrong social class. He would like to have fished for trout but couldn’t afford the trips, the rentals, the meals. He made do with fishing the rivers that ran through and near Winnipeg.

  There were no trout here, in Valhalla, and if fish came to the surface to feed on insects, it was in the evening, when the water dimpled with overlapping circles. Mornings, Tom stuck to his still fishing, casting his bait out, letting it sink, his finger on the line, waiting for the slight vibration to tell him that he had a nibble and, when it grew stronger, to set the hook. In any case, these weren’t really fighting fish, not like the big jacks or the trout in other spots. This was frying pan fishing. Out of the water, into the frying pan: silver fillets—pickerel, sauger and perch.

  The north beach was still deep in shadow, but he knew what was there. Weekend tenters, usually in their teens or early twenties, roasting wieners and marshmallows around open fires every night. The kind of tenters that the yacht people kept their kids away from, not wanting them to join in the singing and guitar playing, people dancing around campfires, smoking weed, making love in the bushes or in sleeping bags. They didn’t want their kids going over there to have fun with the hoi polloi or, if you believed them, join in the orgies. There was a lot of beer drinking around the campfires, or at least, there were a lot of empty beer bottles stacked in cases behind the store. The local kids scavenged the beach because the store gave them cash for the bottles.