In Valhalla's Shadows

by W. D. Valgardson

  Horst had appeared and stood just behind his wife. His face clouded over as he stared at Tom. “Communists!” he declared. “Lousy communists. It shouldn’t be allowed in a free country.”

  Tom was going out the door as Linda Olafson was coming in.

  “I’ve got a message for you,” she said. “The kids have summer complaint, so I forgot about it. Bob phoned. That girl you got him to take with him. Morning what’s her name. She took off. They got to Winnipeg. He stopped to gas up, and she said she was going to use the washroom and she never came back. You owe him twenty bucks.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I thought she was in trouble. I’ll pay you at the end of the month when I get my disability cheque.”

  “Cash,” she said. “I don’t want to drive all the way to town, take the kids or find a babysitter, just so I can cash a cheque.”

  “Okay,” he said. He wished he hadn’t made a fuss about the fruit cocktail. Karla cashed cheques for people she liked, and Frenchie took the cheques to town to deposit. She charged 5 per cent. He’d ask Ben.

  He walked down to the dock and wandered along it looking at the sailboats, nodding to the boaters who were suntanning. He watched three kids climbing onto the top of a boat and jumping into the water. There was a lot of squealing as they cannonballed to see who could make the biggest splash. At the end of the dock, Jumpy Albert was sitting on a canvas stool, with a line in the water and an umbrella to keep off the sun. He had on a Tilley hat, a short-sleeved khaki shirt and shorts. Tom stopped to look at Albert’s catch. He had four good-sized perch on a line attached to the dock, a string run through one side of their gills as they lay near the surface, slowly waving their tails.

  “A good catch,” Tom said.

  “Good enough,” Albert replied. His rod was jiggling in his hand. Beside him was a minnow net, a child’s red plastic pail with water and minnows in it. “I hear you went to visit the headmistress.”

  “Who’s that?” Tom asked.

  “Verthandi, the Icelandic queen,” Albert replied. “She was a headmistress at a fancy schmantzy private girls’ school. Used to having everyone do as she says.”

  “A schoolmarm?”

  “Nose in the air. Better than you and me. Always teaching us inferior creatures a lesson. Came by one day and gave me a lecture on what was wrong with my birdhouses. She’s never made a birdhouse in her life.”

  “Bossy?”

  “A know-it-all. Knows your business better than you do. What’d she want? She never invites you unless she wants information or a favour.”

  “She wanted to know about my mother.”

  “Are you one of them?”

  “Half,” Tom said. “My father was from London.”

  Albert looked up sharply. “What do you think? Are the sagas more important than Shakespeare?”

  “Is it a competition?” Tom asked.

  “She thinks so,” Albert said. “Skuld’s in our reading club. Starts in September. She stays most of the year. You going to join?”

  “Probably,” Tom said. It was the first he’d heard of it. “Verthandi is here in the summer?”

  “Now that she’s retired, she stays until the first snow flies. It’s Skuld who stays for six months and a day. They’re not going to miss out when the Odin’s gold is found. Verthandi isn’t here during the winter, but she’s on the committee that picks the books. She always wants them to be Scandinavian writers. You’d think nobody else had any writers.” He sounded petulant. “You’d think she’d never heard of Swift or Defoe or Austen.”

  “Good writers,” Tom agreed.

  “She and Mrs. White got into it at the last meeting. That’s because Mrs. White’s Danish. She wanted a novel by Blixen. Two wildcats in a burlap sack.”

  “It should be entertaining,” Tom said. He hesitated, then asked, “Do you know if Angel swam?

  “Like a fish,” Albert said. “Not here. Too many boaters. They take over the dock. She and Mary swam off the shore.”

  “Mary? Baby Jesus’s mother?”

  “She’s a few years old than Angel. She used to babysit her. Nice girl until she got caught up in the craziness.” Albert stopped to pull in his line. A fish had stolen the minnow without biting on the hook. He re-baited his hook and cast his line.

  “Craziness?” Tom said.

  “She got pregnant. Said she’d never had sex with any man. Swore up and down. I saw her standing on the dock crying and I worried that she was going to throw herself in. She’d always been polite when she brought Angel over. They liked to watch me carve. I carved whistles and birds for them. I think they had a flock of them. They’d come by and say, “Make me a robin. Make me an oriole.’”

  “What’s crazy about that?”

  “Nothing about that. Joseph has always had this religious streak. Doesn’t really know much about religion. He likes Westerns better than the Bible. Hides them in those black Bible covers.” Albert jiggled his line, pulled it gently to see if he had a bite. “He probably doesn’t know more than the stories in those pasteboard books for kids. Or maybe not. I don’t know. Anyway, he said his name was Joseph and her name was Mary and he believed her, and when she had her baby it was going to be a virgin birth. Her parents had kicked her out and she was staying with this person and that. Joseph married her. She moved into his winter cottage with him. I don’t know what she’d have done if he hadn’t taken her in. Went to the city and lived on the street?”

  “Oh, shit,” Tom said.

  “You never know, do you?” Albert said. His body looked like it was having an earthquake. “Maybe I’d have asked her to stay with me until she got sorted out. But I couldn’t. People would have talked. They’d have said all sorts of things that weren’t true.”

  “If Mary had thrown herself off the dock, where do you think her body would have ended up?”

  “If she did it inside the harbour, hard to say.” Albert pressed his elbows against his sides as he tried to stop the shaking. “Not much wave action in the harbour. If she didn’t come up against anything, she’d have drifted onto the shore.”

  “At the waterline?”

  Albert turned to look at Tom as he realized what Tom was implying. “Remember where she was when we found her?” Albert looked back at the water, then toward shore, but the boats were moored in the way. “If she fell in,” Tom continued, “how did she get from the edge of the water up that extra five or six feet?”

  “I didn’t see anything. Not until I saw you move. You were against the horizon. I could just barely make you out. I wondered if someone was stealing fishing equipment. I thought maybe she’d taken drugs. Kids passing out.”

  “No drugs,” Tom said. “She’d made a promise.”

  A silence fell between them and Tom watched as Albert’s line tugged. He jerked it to set the hook, then pulled in another golden perch. He took out the hook, slid his catch line through the fish’s gills, then eased the fish back into the water, where they lay close to the surface, slowly waving their tails back and forth.

  “I heard,” Tom said, “you get a remittance.”

  “That’s me,” Albert admitted. “A remittance man. They were ashamed of me back home. Sent me away. Send me a cheque every year to stay away. Bunch of hypocritical snobs. If Marcel Proust turned up, they’d have offered him tea.”

  “Your carving is just a hobby?”

  “Not anymore,” Albert said. “When I came out, the cheque was substantial. I was able to do lots of things. I didn’t live like a lord, but it was pretty good. The trouble is that the cheque has stayed the same and the cost of things hasn’t. I need to make money from my hobby now.”

  “You invest anything with Siggi? It’s not a professional question, just personal. I’ve heard a lot of people have.”

  “They’re going to be making marijuana legal pretty soon. Get in on the ground floor. Besides, when I use some, the shaking isn’t so bad.”

  Later that evening, Tom had eaten supper and was sitting at the picnic table wh
en two children appeared at the edge of his trees. They moved silently, not there and then there, magical, mysterious. He wasn’t sure if they were watching him or if they were watching the two ravens at the picnic table. The ravens were bold, cheeky, even demanding, walking up and down the bench. He put a piece of potato on his shoulder and waited for one of them to jump up for it. Instead, the other one grabbed a spoon and flew off with it. “Thieves,” he said to the remaining raven. He’d moved and the potato had fallen onto the table. The remaining raven pounced on it. “You will sit on my shoulders,” he whispered to it, but it was ignoring him and staring at a piece of carrot. Would greed and familiarity be enough to train them? And would they whisper into his ears all that they had seen during their travels the previous day? Not that they travelled far. They seemed to spend most of their time in the spruce trees around Valhalla. He’d seen them on the beach, turning over stones as they looked for crayfish and clams. They rummaged on the dock, looking for bait left behind or leftover barbecue. They probably also mooched at the cottages.

  Still, he mused, it would not be a bad thing if they came each day to tell him what they’d seen and heard.

  The children hadn’t moved. The way they were dressed made him think they might be part of Odin. The girl wore a long dress with short sleeves, and her hair, caught at the back, fell between her shoulders. The boy wore brown shorts and a loose tan shirt. They both wore straw hats with wide brims.

  The girl was taller than the boy and he wondered how old they were—maybe seven and five. He tried to remember his own children when they were very young, but his children had been noisy, argumentative, boisterous, constantly fighting. They would never have stood like this, silent, unmoving, watching.

  Since they had come to his property and now were standing about fifteen feet from him, he thought he’d wait for them to say what they wanted. He wondered if they’d been told that he was RCMP and they’d come expecting to see him in full dress uniform. He didn’t know the Odin group’s etiquette. He wished Freyja were with him. She would have known what to do. He didn’t want to do anything that would bring the whirling dervishes—nice tits or not.

  “Hi,” he finally said, “my name’s Tom. What’s yours?”

  It was if his voice had broken a spell the girl was under. She immediately came forward until she was about three feet away. She had hold of the boy’s hand and pulled him with her. The girl said, “Samantha,” loud and clear. “And my brother’s name is Gabriel.”

  “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “We are messengers. We have been sent to invite you for supper on Sunday with the Godar. We will have a musical afterwards. If you will share with us, we will be sent to get you.”

  “Godi?” Tom said questioningly.

  “Godar,” Samantha replied. “It’s plural and applies to all of us.”

  “I see,” he replied. “I didn’t know that.”

  “We’ll be here at five o’clock.” Samantha sounded quite precise and as archly proper as it was possible for a seven-year-old to be. Tom was charmed.

  The Norns and Karla had warned him about attractive young women with flowers in their hair wearing diaphanous gowns. They hadn’t said anything about charming children. The two should have had wings on their feet instead of sandals. Cherubs meant to melt the heart. He couldn’t imagine saying no to them. “Yes,” he said, “I accept.”

  With that, Samantha and Gabriel smiled, looked at each other and ran away holding hands through the trees, their mission accomplished.

  He went to the emporium for an ice cream float and was sitting at an outside table when Freyja came to the store. When she saw him, she joined him. “I ran out of salt,” she said. He could see that she was annoyed. He knew that she bought staples from the Whites as seldom as possible, making lists of everything she needed, paying Ben to shop for her, occasionally driving into the city to load up on groceries.

  “There’s a box of Jessie’s salt in the kitchen cupboard,” he said. “You’re welcome to it. I’ve got my own.” She beamed and relaxed. He wanted to prolong the visit, so he offered to buy her a Coke float. She insisted on having it made with diet soda.

  He told her about the two emissaries from the Godar. “How can anyone say no to a couple of cute kids?”

  “You have a tender heart,” she said.

  “Could you have said no?”

  “No,” she admitted. “They know the best messengers to send. Small angels. I’ve seen them around. They’re very huggable. Especially Gabriel. He’s got a smile that would melt any heart or get any passerby to drop money into his hat when he plays his recorder on the street. His sister plays the violin.”

  “I’ve been had,” he said. “They’re con artists.”

  “How come I can’t pull on your heartstrings like that? I’m cute.” She adopted a pose and he laughed.

  “When you asked me for supper, I came right away.”

  “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, Sarah says.”

  He looked down at his stomach. It was tight against his pants. “Big heart, big stomach.”

  Freyja looked pensive. Finally, she blurted out, “I’ve got a kitten.”

  He was surprised but said, “Good. Where did it come from?”

  She didn’t answer right away, and as he waited, a shadow fell over them. Tom looked out across the lake and saw clouds like white islands drifting by so that light and shadow changed intermittently. Tracy brought the soda in its tall glass with the straw already in place. She set it on the table. Freyja said thanks but ignored the drink.

  “Siggi,” she replied. Her voice was tight, frustrated. “I don’t want his kitten. I don’t want his gifts. It’ll give him an excuse to drop by, to say he’s sorry about Ramses. He’ll want to know about the kitten and we’ll talk through the screen door and I won’t let him in, and then he’ll get angry and abusive because I won’t let him into his own house.”

  “Give the kitten away,” Tom said.

  “Then he’ll be angry because he was being kind and thoughtful and I’m an ungrateful bitch.”

  In her anger, she flung her right hand out, caught the straw with her arm and knocked over the tall glass with its bevelled sides. The drink spilled across the table. Tom jerked his chair back, grabbed a handful of napkins from the metal dispenser on the table and mopped up the soda and ice cream. He took the napkins to the garbage can at the far end of the veranda. He asked Tracy to bring Freyja another soda.

  Freyja said, “Bad luck. Spilling a drink. It means that a drunk will come to visit me shortly. Are you wet?”

  He looked at the front of his shirt, his shorts, and shook his head. “The kitten,” he reminded her. “Let it run away.”

  “I can’t do that. Siggi knows that. And he knows I don’t want him giving me anything.”

  “Maybe he was just trying to be kind. I thought about trying to find a kitten for you.”

  “You haven’t threatened to kill me. You haven’t broken into my house when I’m away and pissed on my floor. Then he called and apologized and offered to come and clean it up. He’s that bloody devious.” Her voice had gone tight with frustration and anger.

  There were a half dozen tables on the veranda. Customers eating fried pickerel fillets and french fries out of pink plastic baskets sat at two of them. A motorboat was pulling up to the shore. Its bow wave made a soft hushing noise. One of the men jumped into the water and pulled the boat forward.

  Tom said, “There’s a poster in the window. It says, ‘Come to the White’s Friday Night Jamboree.’ That’s tomorrow. You interested?”

  “Yes. It’s the first one of the summer. I wanted to go, but I wasn’t going to go alone. Siggi will be there. His friends will be there and they’ll snub me and make snide remarks. I need some support.” She reached out and put her hand over his for a brief moment. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to drag you into my problems, but sometimes it’s like clan warfare and he’s got the biggest clan. How could I
be so stupid as to get myself involved in this?”

  “The hardest person to forgive is yourself,” he said. He was repeating something the shrink had said to him many times.

  “I was pretty and school was easy. Everything was a joke.”

  “Yes,” he said, and he thought of all the teenagers he’d helped put in body bags. All the kids on the street with a guitar and a dog. All the angry couples with bills they couldn’t pay and disappointment they couldn’t bear who blamed each other. All a joke until it wasn’t.

  “Is that a yes?” he asked. “To the jamboree? I think we both need some fun.”

  Just then Tracy brought the soda and put it on the table.

  Freyja stood up and crossed her arms over her chest, and her face was dark from the feelings she was having. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking at the soda. “You’ll have to drink two.” She didn’t quite manage a smile and said, “I’ll meet you there.”

  He began to think about insulation—how much he would need and what it would cost. He was just starting to jot numbers down on a napkin when he noticed Mary. She was standing about six feet from the veranda, but she was obviously staring at Freyja’s soda. He picked up the glass and waved for Mary to come and get it. She hurried over and would have taken the soda away, but he pulled it back.

  “Sit down,” he said. “Keep me company.”

  Mary looked nervously around, bit her lip, hesitated, then climbed onto the veranda and sat down. He handed her the drink. She grabbed it with both hands and began to suck on the straw.

  “Where’s Baby Jesus?” he asked.

  “With Joseph,” she replied as she took a breath.

  All at once, Karla appeared and in a quiet but accusatory voice said, “Mary, what are you doing here? Have you forgotten our agreement?”