In Valhalla's Shadows

by W. D. Valgardson

  “No need. He got the message. No country wives when he’s away working. No coming home saying I got a kid with someone else. Not like some other men around here.”

  He leaned away from the cloud of smoke. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Don’t go asking Pearl no questions. She’s a nervous wreck as it is. She’ll think you’re digging that up. People got secrets.”

  “I thought you were criticizing her.”

  “Criticize, shmiticize. I love her. We play cribbage and she likes to have a drink or two at happy hour. She keeps buying these things she doesn’t need. Mail order. She’s crazy for mail order. I can’t stand that.”

  “Is Ben a customer of yours?”

  “He hasn’t got much money. Just getting by. Now and again, I slip him a meal. Stuff that’s starting to be in the freezer too long.”

  “He’s been hauling stuff for me.”

  “He’s a good guy. Not many go cold turkey. It’s not like he was a moderate drinker, either. Gave his wife, Betty, a bad time. She just kept knitting socks and sweaters, and making bannock and fancy beaded moccasins to sell to the tourists. Shipped quite a few to the Indian store in Winnipeg. Quiet. She’d come to visit Pearl, and she’d knit and Pearl would do housework, and she’d never say a word. Betty straightened Ben out.”

  “Anybody have anything against Angel?”

  “I dunno. Kids keep kids’ stuff to themselves. You know what I mean? There could be a chainsaw killer and they wouldn’t tell you. It’s a code of silence. Nobody’s going to be a squealer. We were the same. You think she was killed?”

  “I don’t think anything. To think something you’ve got to have information.”

  “You going to interview people, like on TV? You visited Albert. He gives me the creeps.” She started shaking, imitating him. “You think it was him?”

  “Her clothes were on. There were no bruises.”

  “Maybe it was one of those accidents, if you know what I mean? People do stupid things. Like accidents happen and no use wrecking a person’s life over it? You can’t fix it. That’s the way it is here, you know. Things happen, but once they’re done, there’s nothing you can do about it. Like putting a person in prison is going to make things better? Not that I’m saying anything happened, but since you’re asking, maybe you think something happened.” She butted out her cigarette. “Kids do stuff. Booze, drugs, sniffing gas. It’s just the way it is.”

  “I’ve seen lots of it,” he said. “Often, they still have a needle sticking in their arm when we find them.”

  “That’s what I mean. Stuff goes on.” She picked up the cigarette butt, looked at it and realized she’d broken it when she butted it out. “Pearl thinks you’re great. You gave her those chocolates. She’s not used to anybody giving her presents. I think that’s why she mail orders so much.”

   Chapter 14

  The Funeral

  Tom had thought the funeral would be in the community hall. Instead, when Sarah asked him to give her a lift, she said they were going to a church south of the village. It was on a rutted dirt road that meandered along the lake. At one time it had been part of a trail that snaked through the swamps to various homesteads, but had become secondary when the harbour at Valhalla was built.

  Sarah was all done up. It was the first time he’d seen her in a dress, and he was surprised that she owned one. Usually, it was jeans and a checked shirt and cut-off rubber boots or runners. The pink dress looked like she’d had it a long time, not because it was worn out, but because it was so out of style and still looked new.

  “A little tight,” she said and tugged at it as if it might stretch.

  “Me too.” His white shirt was stretched across his stomach. It didn’t show when he stood up, but when he was sitting behind the wheel, the cloth strained at the buttonholes at his waist.

  The bush on the sides of the road was white with layers of limestone dust. Here and there, where there was higher ground, fields had been cleared and there were crops for cattle feed, but most of the land was good for nothing but grazing. There were frequent piles of rocks, and seeing them he knew where the stone had come from for Dr. Ford’s fireplace.

  “Hard work,” he said, “with a stoneboat.”

  “Making a living has always been hard here. My husband never farmed, thank God,” Sarah said. “Trapping and fishing were hard enough. I’ve seen them—kids following a sled, picking up rocks, throwing them onto the boat. All day. My kids stayed in school. I wasn’t going to have them spend their lives working part time for next to nothing.”

  “They got good jobs?”

  The land had dipped, turned into muskeg. Water gleamed darkly in places, but most of the surface was thick with bulrushes. With the sun beating down on them, they were unable to open the windows because of the dust, so the truck cab became stifling. Although every vent was closed, the fine white dust settled over the dashboard.

  He said to Sarah, “Hold the wheel; keep us on the road,” and while she steered, he pulled out a red-and-black tartan bandana that he tied around his head so that it covered his nose and mouth. Sarah laughed and said he looked like a bank robber in an old Western.

  When he’d taken the steering wheel back, she answered his question. “Good enough. Union work. Trade ticket. One of them went to university. He’s a prof now.”

  There was a slight breeze from the lake, so the dust plume drifted to the west side of the road. The bushes, trees, weeds went by like ghostly images of themselves.

  “Any of the kids go back to Ireland?” As he asked it, he wondered about the English streets he’d never visited. There were, after all, still relatives in England, though they were likely to be the descendants of his grandfather, who had never admitted his existence. He doubted he’d be welcome. Tom never followed his mother to Iceland, because he was afraid of what he might find—if she were still alive, would she want no more to do with him than his English relatives? To have her shut the door in his face would be more than he could bear. Anna, after all, had said she’d taken everything with her that she wanted and left behind what she didn’t want. Her china and silver, her Royal Doulton figurines, her furniture, her husband and her son.

  “Yes, my youngest, the prof. He gets research and travel grants from the university and teaches Irish poetry.”

  “Does he visit family?”

  She turned her head and studied him. He could see her jaw tense. “Once. He wasn’t impressed and neither were they. They didn’t know anything about Canada and he didn’t know anything about Irish manners.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay. He waits until the evening before he leaves, rings up and asks how everyone is doing. Uncle George and Auntie Flo, Cousin Berty, et cetera. All so he can tell me how they are when he comes back. They say, ‘Oh, you should have told us and come to stay,’ and they don’t mean it. And he says, ‘I would love to, but I’m swamped with research,’ and he doesn’t mean it. It works fine.”

  “Families,” he said, thinking of his father’s relatives who came at Christmas and sat straight backed on the couch and dining room chairs and sipped sherry and ate fruitcake. They weren’t the kind of people he’d choose to spend time with. He always wondered what they were thinking or what they thought about. The men were nearly all short and stocky, in tweed jackets and grey pants and ties. The men all wore ties, except Cousin Donald, who wore a bow tie. The women wore dresses that were grey and brown and usually came to their ankles. They reminded him of beetles.

  “What is that?” Tom asked, slowing down and pointing to a small stone building on the lake side of the road.

  “The folly of the past informing the present,” Sarah replied, and he thought she might be joking, but she was not. He slowed to a stop. “When the first settlers arrived, there was already a Scotsman here. He was trading furs and wanted to start a lumber mill. Cranky o
ld coot. He was determined to live in a stone house just like in Scotland. This was one room, and he was going to add on more rooms until he had a small castle.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was rescued by one of the Icelandic widows, who made him build her a wood house. No hot soup, no hot sex until he had a warm house. She said she hadn’t come all this way to live in a house that was colder than in Iceland.”

  Tom laughed and drove away.

  “You went to see Ben, and then you went asking questions,” Sarah said in an accusatory tone. “You aren’t going to let it go, are you? You’re like a dog I had once. There was a skunk living under our shed. Doing no harm. But the dog couldn’t let it be. It got sprayed more than once, but it kept going back.”

  “Did it get the skunk?”

  “Yes, but by that time it stunk so much that even washing it in tomato juice did no good. It had to sleep outside instead of on a nice warm bed. And nobody, I mean nobody, would have anything to do with it.”

  When he didn’t reply, she said, “Have you met Pastor Jon yet? He’s Unitarian, or was Unitarian. You’ll see. He’s a bit of everything.” When Tom shook his head she said, “He’s Icelandic, not like from Iceland, but FBI, full-blooded Icelander. Traces his family on both sides to great-grandparents from Iceland. He’d come to Valhalla on his holidays for years. He’d stay with friends and give summer services. Three years ago, he had some dispute with his parish and quit before he had a stroke. He’s got high blood pressure.

  “He knew the Lutheran congregation was desperate to get rid of its church property. It was sitting empty because Biblio Braggi, the Bible salesman who had rented it, had up and left in the middle of the night. Biblio Braggi,” she repeated and laughed. “He was a lay preacher of sorts. He got himself ten beehives, three sheep, a dozen chickens and a cow. He kept the cow in the church. When people objected, he always replied that Christ was born in a manger. He played the fiddle and gave music lessons. He sold his Bibles and gave private lessons to the buyers. If the rumours are true, he gave some of the local farmers’ wives personal lessons on sin.

  “So here you are, a church that’s been turned into a stable, a manse that needs repairs, property that needs tending and animals that need to be fed and watered. Pastor Jon sold his house in the city, bought the church property for next to nothing. His wife had died a few years back. No kids.

  “The Lutherans were glad to be shut of it. Many years ago, after the Christmas Eve service, the evangelicals put skids under the church and hauled it five miles to a farm property of one of the elders. The liberals weren’t having any of that and they went one night and hauled it back and bolted it to the foundation. For a while it looked like it was going to be gunfight at the OK Corral. Instead, everyone got fed up. They started using the hall in town for events, and the manse and church sat empty until the Bible salesman came.” With that, she pointed ahead to where a white spire topped with a cross rose over a grove of maples. When they got closer, he saw that the cross was missing one arm.

  “Broke off in a storm,” Sarah said, answering his unasked question. “You want to make a friend, get up there and fix it. Pastor Jon can’t stand heights. We all have weaknesses.”

  The driveway and small parking lot were full, so Tom pulled up at the end of a row of vehicles parked on the edge of the road. The four vehicles ahead of him were lifted trucks, big tires, muscle trucks, and one he recognized—a black Dodge Ram. He was sure it was the truck that had nearly forced him off the road when he’d come in the spring to see Jessie. It had a bumper sticker that said, I Still Miss My Ex, but My Aim Is Improving and another that said, Love Me, Love My Gun. There was a set of truck nuts attached to the trailer hitch.

  The road was narrow, so he had to park on the very margin, where the road and ditch met. Sarah let herself down by holding on to the doorframe. The ditch was dry, but the side was steep. When she slammed the door shut, dust flew up.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I should have dropped you off at the church and come back to park.”

  “You could,” she replied, “lay down your jacket so I can step on it, but there’s no accommodating puddle.”

  Just past the church, the road ended in a tangle of bush. Although it was now overgrown, it was evident from the different height of the saplings that the bush had been cleared in anticipation of the road continuing. Instead, where it now ended was blocked by large limestone rocks. The impression was of a green trench, and he wondered what had happened. An ambitious plan during a time when there was money, an economic plan gone awry, a change in government, all arbitrary, all decisions made in Winnipeg or Ottawa by people who had never been here. Budget cuts at meetings in boardrooms, visions and people abandoned.

  Across from the church was a small graveyard. The stone monuments were old, many covered in moss. The grass grew high around the stones. A single pathway had been mown from the wooden footbridge to where there was a fresh pile of black dirt.

  A crowd was gathered around the front steps of the church. It was Tom’s first time seeing everyone dressed formally. In honour of the occasion, men were wearing suits that were a bit tight and farm caps in various colours, and some of the women were wearing preposterous hats with large brims and artificial fruit or flowers.

  The crowd was larger than he had expected. There were more people than for bingo. People had obviously come from around the surrounding countryside. Sarah said hello to everyone, but she didn’t let the greetings slow her down. When Tom paused, Sarah gave him a nudge up the stairs. “I’m past standing any length of time—varicose veins. Let’s get a seat.” He noticed as they went through the crowd around the front steps that there were three women in traditional Icelandic dress.

  “Amazing Grace” was playing on a boom box that was set up along the wall nearest the pulpit. There was a painting of Christ looking toward heaven on the front wall. His head was surrounded by light. However, the bottom half of Christ was obscured by a massive papier mâché sculpture of a brain that sat in front of it.

  Pastor Jon was already at the front of the church. He was a squarely built man, heavy-set, with a florid face, wearing a white shirt, blue shorts and sandals with socks.

  “Pastor Jon, this is Tom Parsons. He bought Jessie’s place,” Sarah said.

  They shook hands and Jon said, “Your reputation has preceded you. A jack of all trades. That’s good. There’s lots here that needs repairing. Welcome.”

  “I suggested that he fix the cross. He doesn’t mind heights.”

  “That would be a blessing,” Jon said, “It gives a bad impression.”

  While they were talking, Tom couldn’t take his eyes off the six-foot-high papier mâché brain. The different parts were painted different colours and labelled.

  Pastor Jon noticed his interest and said, “I believe in intellect over faith, in history over mysticism, in kindness over dogma. When I saw this left over from a school science fair in the city, I got Ben to bring it out.”

  The brain seemed to float above the stage, since the wooden supports that held it in place could not be seen unless the viewer came close and peered into the space between the floor of the stage and the bottom of the brain. When he purchased the church, Pastor Jon explained, there were angels painted on the ceiling, playing harps, blowing horns, all looking angelically toward heaven. He thought he’d capture the dynamic energy of the brain by having gold-coloured cardboard lightning bolts rise up from its folded surface, but as Sarah had pointed out, it looked like the lightning bolts were shooting the angels out of the sky. He’d taken the lightning bolts down reluctantly.

  Sarah and Tom took seats at the extreme left so that she and her large pink hat wouldn’t block other people’s view. Directly in front of them was an old-fashioned organ. On it were lined up six jars of honey. The light from the window turned them into amber jewels. A white card sat in front of the jars saying, f
ive dollars.

  “Jessie used to play that organ for God. Nobody else knows how.”

  “What is with the jars of honey? Is it sacred?”

  Sarah dipped her head and suppressed a laugh. “The honey. I’m so used to it that I never noticed. Five dollars a jar. Pastor Jon is proud of his bees. He takes in a few hundred dollars a year, tax free. He makes the rounds in the fall. He’ll knock on your door. Buy a jar. Buy two. It’s very good honey. Send it to your family and friends.”

  Because of the heat, the front doors and the side door were open, but it did little good. There was no breeze and the small fan at the front turned without any discernible effect. The leaded glass windows, ablaze with colourful scenes, couldn’t be opened. Although the service had not yet begun, women were vigorously fanning themselves with paper programs that had a picture of Angel on the front.

  Tom heard a car’s tires on the gravel, then a bit of a commotion outside as those having a last drag on their cigarettes were getting ready to come inside. The latecomers slipped into the last seats, and those who saw there were no seats left lined up along both walls. There was shuffling as men who were sitting gave up their seats for women who were standing. Shortly after, two undertakers in black suits came in: one leading the coffin; the other behind. They turned the coffin at the end of the aisle so it was crosswise to the mourners. Tom was relieved to see it would be a closed coffin.

  Ben was wearing a white shirt and a grey sports jacket that was a bit too small for him. Tom realized that he’d never seen him in anything but khaki workpants and checked shirts. He probably hadn’t worn the shirt and jacket since his wife died. The aisle was narrow, and his daughter and grandson came behind him. Sarah leaned her mouth close to Tom’s ear and whispered, “Here’s Wanda and Derk.”

  Wanda was wearing a black dress and black gloves and had on a small black hat that perched on the top of her head at an angle, giving the impression it would fall off at any moment. Derk was taller than her, his dark hair slicked back, and he was dressed all in white. The gold chains around his neck and his gold watch gleamed in the light from the windows. As he walked behind his grandfather, he moved his head slightly from side to side the way a famous entertainer or a member of royalty might do.