In Valhalla's Shadows

by W. D. Valgardson

  There were clouds drifting over the moon. The fish shed was dark, and there were no lights close to it. The back door of the truck wasn’t padlocked. He eased the doors open, then felt along the floor until he found a seam. He slipped his pry bar between the two sections and lifted up half the floor. He used his pen flashlight to look. The space was empty, but it was wet and smelled of fish. He eased the section of floor back into place.

  The next morning he was replacing siding on the veranda when he heard someone behind him. He glanced back. Freyja was standing there, watching him speculatively.

  “You went home early,” she said.

  ”Hard to dance with a bum leg.”

  “After you pulled me out of the snowbank, I said I’d buy you a drink. It’s a hot day. How better could a man spend it than sitting under an umbrella, looking at the view, sharing a cold drink with an attractive woman?”

  He put down his hammer. “Okay,” he said, “but there’ll be gossip.”

  “There’s gossip already. Don’t you think people saw me walk over here?”

  He looked at her, in capris and a blouse, with flip-flops, her hair done in a long ponytail to get it off the back of her neck in the heat. She might, from a distance, have been fifteen, like Angel.

  They walked to the café without saying anything. She had freckles, not many, but a spray of them across her nose, onto her cheeks. A piece of hair had come loose. She took off her cap, undid the elastic band, shook out her hair, gathered it up, put it back into a ponytail.

  “You burn easily,” he said.

  “That’s why I’m wearing this hat.” It was a washed-out brown, paler than her freckles. She turned so her back was to him. She undid the metal snap at the back at the bottom of a hole where her hair would fit through. She put the cap back on and said, “Fit my hair through the slot and click the snap. It’s hard to do myself.”

  He hesitated because he had not touched her yet, and as innocent as it was, he felt that a divide was being crossed. He felt the silkiness of her hair, saw how its redness shone with light and saw the vulnerable curve of her neck. The weight of her hair made him pause; then he took the two ends of the narrow strap and clipped them together.

  The sun filled up the sky, shining so intensely that it made the umbrella nearly transparent, but the shade, as little as it was, was a relief—beyond the shade, the sun burned like a fire that was too close. The boats in the harbour were still, and no one was moving about. Tarps had been set up on the dock, foamies thrown under them, and people slept or read lying down or sitting in lawn chairs.

  They ordered Coke floats and then fell into an uncertain silence. Is this a date? he wondered, and felt a momentary rush of his adolescent insecurity.

  Freyja turned back toward him and studied his face as if looking for something hidden. Quietly, she said, “You haven’t been here long. There are storms in Valhalla. We get snowed in. Sometimes for a week or more. Few people come here in winter. We forgive each other our trespasses for good conversation. Unless you think slasher movies are art and debates about trucks and how getting stuck and unstuck and how shooting or not shooting a moose are intellectual conversation, you’ll need some of us and some of us will need you.”

  He remembered what the town had been like when he’d come the winter before. Buried in snow. Picture perfect but silent, without anyone outdoors, only a rabbit and a chickadee. And Pearl. He remembered Pearl scuttling away through the drifts. “What do you do in the winter?” he asked, thinking of the long silence to come.

  “When I’m not teaching? In the evenings and on weekends?”

  Her voice had an edge to it. He was, he thought, on dangerous ground, the kind of ground where a misstep could make someone an enemy instead of a friend.

  “I read a lot. DVDs. I used to watch Siggi's big TV. Not anymore. Ben said you had boxes of books. Maybe you could lend me a book. Maybe we could discuss it. Would that be all right? Or would that be too risky?”

  He was admiring the way her cheek turned under her eye and her pale lashes. “That would be fine. What do you like to read?”

  “Hospital romances,” she answered sarcastically, and her jaw was tight. When he didn’t rise to the bait, she added, “Novels. Poetry. Short stories. A bit of drama even. How about you?”

  “Mostly non-fiction. Essays. Biographies. History.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You probably eat porridge every morning. Oatmeal every day.” She obviously had a bone to pick, and he wondered what it was. Him, or her ex, or men in general?

  “Sally—” he stopped, surprised that he’d said her name. He was going to say that Sally thought he should read more popular fiction. “My mother liked fiction, drama, poetry. My father loved history and biographies.”

  She ignored his comment about his father. “Sally,” she said. “Who is this Sally? Have I got competition?”

  “My ex,” he replied, not certain what to say, because it seemed the moment something was said, the entire village knew about it. “She’s not quite my ex. There’s a two-year waiting period for mutual consent divorces.”

  “We’re both waiting for the judge to say you’re free. How long were you married?”

  “Twenty-one years. You?”

  “Nine months. Siggi Eyolfson. You shook hands with him at the dance. You’ll see him around. Sometimes he brings his pet bear Bruno in the back of his truck. Is your wife contesting the divorce?”

  “No. She already had a boyfriend waiting to move in.” He didn’t want to talk about it, so he tried to distract her by talking about the dance. “Did your boyfriend in the blue suit get the last dance? Did he walk you home?” He meant for it to be playful, but as he said it, he could feel his anger surfacing. There had been the edge of an accusation in his voice.

  “When you get angry, breathe deeply,” his shrink had said and given him a large pillow to punch. “Don’t direct anger at those that don’t deserve it.” Once, he’d smashed a teapot on the floor, and in a rage when he and Sally had a fight over money, he’d punched a hole in the rec room wall. He’d repaired it, but Sally had said, “I’m afraid of you,” and the shrink, the next time he saw him, said, “Better the wall than your wife.” Once he was on his own, the anger became less intense. He didn’t have Sally sneering at him. He didn’t blame her. She’d had hopes of his rising through the ranks, giving her bragging rights with her family. One of her sisters was married to a dentist. The other to a stockbroker. He’d failed her in a lot of ways.

  “You heard Barnabas at Angel’s reception. He has the road grading and snowplowing contracts. He works full time. He kissed me when we were in grade one. Are you jealous?”

  He was, but he couldn’t admit it. Not because Barnabas had kissed her in grade one but because of the ease with which he danced away with her.

  “Nine months isn’t very long to be married,” he said.

  “I was married for a shorter time than that when I was sixteen,” she said. “Six months.”

  “Impetuous?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” she answered. “But your hanging around for twenty-one years didn’t work either.”

  “We have kids. We tried to keep it together for the kids.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” she said. “People haven’t got the guts to leave.”

  “Do you have kids?”

  “No. Just a miscarriage. Three months after I got married the first time.”

  “Your husband,” he corrected himself. “The latest. You said he’s still around?”

  “Siggi. He’s got a business here.”

  “The blond guy with the broken nose?”

  “That’s him,” she said. “He usually introduces himself to everyone he sees. He’s got a filing cabinet in his head. He never forgets a face.”

  He expected her to elaborate and when she didn’t, he asked, “What business?”
r />   “The greenhouse business.” She said it quickly, as if it had been rehearsed, but she ran her tongue over her lips. It was a habit he’d often seen when he was questioning someone and they were lying.

  “Greenhouse,” he said, genuinely surprised. “Up here?”

  “The government gave a lot of people grants to have greenhouses and grow fresh food. A lot of people’s diets aren’t very good. You’ll see greenhouses in some people’s yards. Most people did it just to get the grant. He made a business out of it.”

  He wasn’t surprised that people’s diets were bad. He’d seen the limp vegetables at the emporium. However, she wasn’t telling him the truth. He wondered what it was about her husband’s business that she didn’t want to talk about. But he wasn’t going to push her. It wasn’t any of his business.

  “You were a cop,” she said.

  “RCMP,” and he didn’t wait for her next question. “I was in a car accident. Made a mess of my leg. Some people think it made a mess of my head.”

  “Are you taking some time off?”

  He shook his head. “I’m done. Retired. Disability. Mindi Miner says that people will be envious of me.”

  “She left you before or after your accident?”

  “After,” he said. “Did your first husband leave you before or after your miscarriage?”

  “I left him.”

  He thought she was beautiful, but he wasn’t sure what to make of her. If they kept talking, he’d find out what she didn’t want to tell him. Secrets, there were always secrets, stored in containers like Russian dolls, the easy ones in the first doll, harder ones in the next doll, all the way back to the smallest doll that held the darkest, most painful secrets.

  “Barnabas,” she said, smiling at him, “is light on his feet. He doesn’t look like it, but he is.”

  “He has two good legs,” he said.

  “Before your accident, were you light on your feet?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t step on my wife’s toes. We took ballroom dance lessons.”

  “You should have stayed and danced. The ladies would have appreciated it. People will think you’re shy. Are you shy? Do women make you blush easily?”

  “Yes,” he said and shifted uncomfortably.

  “Shy,” she said as if she could not believe it. “A shy man in Valhalla.”

  “Are there no other shy men?”

  “Albert Scutter. But he doesn’t blush. He stutters. I’ll have to think of ways to make you blush.”

  He knew she was teasing him, but he didn’t know how to respond. Sally never teased; his mother never teased. They were very different, but in that way they were the same: direct. He searched for the words, all denotation and no connotation. A cigar was just a cigar. He thought Freyja might have liked him to have teased back, but he wasn’t sure how.

  “Thanks for shovelling out my car. It would have been a cold walk back to Valhalla.” She put the money down for the sodas.

  When she had gone, he thought she was a tease, but there was nothing mean about it. He wasn’t sure what to think. After he left Sally, he made up his mind never to have another relationship. He thought it would be easy. He hadn’t counted on the loneliness, not having someone to talk to about the day. Not that he wasn’t lonely when he was married. He wished that Sally had done crossword puzzles with him, played chess, bridge, even whist. He had enough macho stuff at work. When he got home, he needed quiet, a chance to do something that required his complete attention. She wanted to spend her time going to sports bars, having a drink or two or three. She wanted the kids in hockey, soccer, baseball, even tried to get Joel to play lacrosse. He wasn’t interested. He referred to lacrosse players as “louts.” Myrna got penalties for cross-checking.

  As he sat there sipping his soda through a straw, he wondered if Freyja did crossword puzzles, then thought that wasn’t something he could ask. What kind of a nerd wanted to know if a woman did crossword puzzles?

  He finished his soda, then went home, back to pulling nails out of the boards in the living room.

   Chapter 20

  Unfinished Business

  Two days later, as he was cleaning out rotten wood, Sarah drove up in her Ford. When she climbed down from the truck, Tom saw that instead of wearing coveralls and a man’s shirt, she was dressed in black slacks and a pink frilly blouse. Her clothes made him feel that she was going to a foreign and dangerous place and was ill prepared.

  “Going travelling?” he asked.

  “I am. The big city. You need anything?”

  “Shopping trip?”

  “Anders needs a couple of teeth pulled. I’m taking him in. He’ll have two teeth out tomorrow morning, then I’ll bring him back.”

  It was an unsettled day. Clouds seemed to form and disappear so there was no telling what the weather would be like. Now Sarah looked like a stranger. If he’d seen her on a city street, he wouldn’t have been sure he should say hello. She’d curled her hair so it turned in at the edges. In her normal Valhalla clothes, in spite of her diamond willow cane, she seemed ageless, solid, like her house, made of sturdy beams, but now, wearing black shoes with raised heels, she seemed old and vulnerable.

  He went inside, quickly made out a list of things he could think of on the spur of the moment, made out a cheque for two hundred dollars and gave it to her.

  “Ten per cent,” she informed him. “If the bill comes to two hundred, you owe me twenty.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “You got lots of orders?” He looked into the cab and saw Anders, a narrow-faced man with a shock of brown hair holding his hand against his jaw.

  “Longer than my arm. Ten per cent will pay the gas, and Anders has a sister in town. We can stay there. I’ll shop tonight and tomorrow while he’s being worked on.” She leaned toward him. “It’s Friday. Those yahoos from the embassy may turn up tonight. They get drunk, make a lot of noise. They’re always looking for trouble. There’s a couple of them are bad actors.”

  “Embassy?” he said.

  “Siggi’s fortress along the lakeshore road.”

  “Siggi,” he immediately repeated. “Freyja’s ex?”

  “Him and his Freemen on the Land buddies. They’ve declared his place an embassy. You must have come across these kind of guys. They declare a place an embassy, and then no one has any right to come on their property. They believe they don’t have to pay taxes.”

  “Edmonton,” he said, a memory jumping out at him. “The guy painted the inside of the house black. Took out walls. The owner never got a penny rent. Crazy as hell.”

  “These guys at Siggi’s are all about not paying taxes.”

  “Have I seen them?”

  “Maybe at the dance. They were hanging around the door, drinking. They’re not into dancing.”

  When she mentioned it, he vaguely remembered three or four guys at the door—work boots, most of the time talking to each other, raising a bottle, and razzing women and teenage girls going in and out of the hall. They weren’t wearing colours, so he hadn’t paid much attention to them. They’d seemed noisy but harmless enough.

  “Watch out for Siggi. He’s very aggressive when he drinks. He hangs around with Jason. Alan and Rudy are often with them. They go looking for trouble. Most men go to a dance to dance. Their idea of a good time is to get into a fight.”

  “Freyja’s mentioned Siggi. He doesn’t seem to be her favourite person.”

  “Hot romance turned cold. She likes to think of herself as a sensitive intellectual. Wordsworth and Yeats. I think she secretly writes poetry. He’s into The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. When he was hot after her, he even got his hair cut and bought a sports jacket. He’s very jealous. He beat up a couple of guys just for flirting with her.”

  “Do I need your thirty-thirty?” he said, half joking.

  “I don’t think so, but if you do, it’s just inside the door. There are bullets in the cutlery drawer.”<
br />
  “They’re supposed to be locked up.”

  “So report me. A bear walks through town like last year and I’m not going to unlock my rifle, unlock my shells, and by the time I make it out the door, it’s grabbed a kid off a swing or out of the sandbox or ripped open a screen door to get at the bacon it can smell inside. City rules for city people. I’m just being prepared. In season, moose have been known to stroll through town.” With that, she climbed back into her truck. She read his list. “This’ll come to more than two hundred dollars. Payment on delivery. No returns.”

  “Don’t spend more than two hundred,” he said. “Just leave stuff out.”

  That afternoon, Freyja stopped by. “You get those walls insulated and this place will be snug. I see you’ve got the screens up.”

  “They were under the porch.”

  “Ben always put her storm windows on in the fall, took them down in the spring, put on the screens.” She lifted her hair up and held it against the back of her head and fanned her neck with her other hand. “If I invited you for supper, would you come?”

  “Something cold?”

  “Ice cubes à la sliced ham, ice cubes à la potato salad, that sort of menu.”

  He said yes and she said seven thirty, and he thought that was great because he’d have time to do more work, have a swim and get cleaned up without rushing. He’d polish his good shoes and iron a short-sleeved shirt. He could find a pair of decent trousers in one of the boxes stacked in the guest bedroom.

  He wondered, though, if he were any better than the locals. When he and Freyja were talking he’d been thinking about putting his hand on her ass. Wanted to. But wanting always brought trouble; better to not want anything. If she were agreeable and he did put his hand on her ass, felt her breasts, kissed her, if they made love, then what? It wasn’t like he was a sports fisherman who was staying for a few days and going to have a quickie affair then leave.

  Everything would change, there’d be expectations, the community would observe, gossip, judge. Did he want to date? Whatever that meant in a place like Valhalla. Did he want her to move in with him? Did he want another kid? And he saw it all turning inward the way it had with Sally: the conversations turned to brittle silences, the promises to resentment. The divorce rate was around 50 per cent, second marriage split-ups over 70 per cent. Think, he heard his father’s voice say. Think of the consequences before you do anything. Use your imagination. The world is full of fools who do things and never think about the outcome.