In Valhalla's Shadows

by W. D. Valgardson

  He hoped that Siggi would run out of ammunition and return. Instead, the sound of the motor stopped and there was silence.

  Oh, crap, was all that Tom could think. Oh, crap. Oh, crap. He backed deeper into the bush. Siggi would be waiting for him.

  He could hear his father saying that most people have no common sense, no ability to understand consequences, no understanding of cause and effect. He wished he could get his father to have a chat with Siggi. No wonder Siggi liked bears. If they were hungry, they ate. If they were angry, they killed. Living in the moment.

  The successful dealers were perfect psychopaths. He’d had to deal with people like that. They were never anxious or worried. They lived completely in the moment. Often charming, always manipulative and completely ruthless. They killed each other without any agonizing, dumping bodies into shallow graves or rivers. Their weakness was that they were so self-confident that they made mistakes, and because they had little if any anxiety about the future, they seldom planned well. They never became chess masters. The successful ones were cool and calm, never impulsive. Freyja was right, he thought. Siggi was in the wrong kind of work. He was too emotional, too impulsive, too sensitive.

  He edged forward, waded into swamp where the bulrushes were over his head. He found an open lead, and careful to make no sound, frog-kicked across the open water, then pulled his way through the rushes.

  Siggi was impatient, Freyja had said. What he wanted, he wanted now. He was given to fits of rage, like a child having a tantrum. But his attention span was short. He was easily distracted. There was nothing calm or robot-like about him. He was unpredictable, and unpredictable made people nervous. Sorry afterwards, even apologetic, falling into a kind of torpor in which he sat and did nothing for days, hardly speaking. “He’s not a bad person,” Freyja had said. “He can be lots of fun; he’s just crazy. He doesn’t think.”

  With Siggi to the north of him, it was too dangerous to go that way. There was nothing but wilderness and swamp to the south. The lake lay to the east. He remembered when he went to Angel’s funeral that the road had stopped just beyond the church. There’d been large limestone blocks at the end. Beyond that the bush had been cleared for a road, but nothing had been done to finish it. Weeds and small plants had grown up, yet the path was obvious. There had been tire tracks around the limestone boulders that blocked the way. The trail, it was hardly a road, was usable, and from what he had learned from Freyja, Siggi had built a private road from it east through the marsh to the embassy.

  He only knew that if he didn’t find the cut in the bush, he’d have to turn back to the beach, wade and swim his way to the lake, wait until dark and swim until he figured he was past wherever Siggi might be waiting. He came to a muskrat house and stood on it. He could see that the bulrushes and pipe grass were being replaced by willow and then by trees. Red-winged blackbirds hung onto bulrushes, making their sour cry. After he’d rested, he eased himself back into the water and swam toward the line of trees. When he was free of the swamp, Tom checked his legs. His Nikes were covered in mud and there was a bloodsucker clamped to his left leg just above his knee. He shivered, slid his thumbnail under the head end, and when it pulled its head back, he flicked it away. It left a round red mark.

  He sat there, listening, but there was no sound. Siggi was still waiting at some choke point.

  He pushed his way through the bush, keeping low, cursing the fact that he’d lost Sarah’s rifle that he’d worn shorts. His legs were covered in a thousand scratches. Given the crap he was wading through, he wondered if he’d die of blood poisoning.

  Eventually, he found the cut in the bush for the road, where the trees were smaller and the shrubs lower. He turned north and limped along, slapping at mosquitoes.

  He was marooned in the wilderness but not lost, and when the unfinished road ended, there would be water to slake his thirst, and the blinding forest that pressed in upon him would be replaced by a gravel road. At the end of the overgrown trail, there would be the church on one side and the graveyard on the other. He’d been told that the church door was never locked. He could find shelter there, go inside and lie down on a bench. He wished that there was a breeze, even if it were momentary, to cool him. There was the buzzing of bees. A few of them flew about his head but quickly disappeared.

  He was not prepared for this. The streets of his childhood had been paved, controlled by traffic lights, lit by streetlamps, awash in the steady noise of traffic. Even when he couldn’t sleep and sat in the window at 3 a.m., there were vehicles appearing and disappearing and the sound of sirens from time to time as ambulances rushed through the city.

  He licked his lips to moisten them, but they dried right away and he could feel that they were chapped. He would have sat down to see if there was a splinter in his foot, but there was nothing to sit on and no place on the ground that was open, because the forest had grown with a fierce determination to reclaim the land that had been stripped bare. He wondered what it was that had been planned. Perhaps a summer resort, cottage lots, a scheme that would make friends of the local MLA rich. He blew out his breath and grimaced, wished he’d been able to return along the lake and could cool off by swimming part of the way.

  With no hat, he squinted against the sun that pressed down, trying to set the world on fire. There was a faint smell of wild roses, roses that had grown tall where the bush had been cleared. He ripped a flower off and put the petals in his mouth, chewed on them, then spit them out. He thought about how, in spite of his father’s warnings, Tom had, from time to time, given food to people he found sleeping in the back alley. He was desperately thirsty, and now that he wasn’t scrambling to escape, he was hungry. He wished he could magically have one of the sandwiches he’d given away. He scavenged food from the apartments he cleaned, and when his father was at work or out playing bridge or chess, Tom cooked up beans or pasta or made sandwiches, took them out. No matter how hungry they looked, if they had a dog with them, they’d share whatever he gave them. Right now he would have been hard pressed to share a sandwich with a dog.

  He followed the trail until it came to where the road started, and standing in the shelter of the bush, he studied the graveyard and manse. It was a dangerous location. Although the land rose up from the lake so that anyone standing on the beach couldn’t see anything but the very tip of the church spire, it was a choke point, and if Siggi were sitting on the slope where he could see both the church and the beach, he could watch two hundred feet of cleared ground. Anyone trying to cross it in daylight would be a dead man. Tom waited, watching for any movement. He didn’t want to go into the bush and work his way toward the beach to see if Siggi was there. A movement in the bush might draw a burst of shooting. He slapped at a mosquito and looked to see if he had any wood ticks. They were often thick in the tall grass.

  From where Tom stood, he could see the graveyard, the church opposite it. On the south side of the church, in front of the manse garage, Pastor Jon was working on a car.

  The rear wheel was off and he was studying the brake. He was wearing white coveralls, a cap blackened by years of grease and oil, and heavy work boots. Tom waited, watching the pastor as he worked, couldn’t keep his eyes off the black pump with the red handle that he’d seen at the funeral. Ice-cold water. He ran his tongue over his lips. When he was certain that Siggi was not watching, he limped to the car. Pastor Jon was a bit deaf and didn’t notice Tom.

  Tom went to the pump and began to work the handle. It creaked and squealed. Pastor Jon looked up. Tom waved at him, but a drink of water was more important than good manners at the moment, and Tom wondered if he could even manage to speak with his throat so dry. The well coughed, and cold water gushed out all at once. He put his left hand over the spout to hold the water back, then bent down and began to drink. The water was so cold that it took his breath away and made his forehead ache. He took a deep breath, then bent down and drank again. When he’d had e
nough to drink, he put his leg under the spout. His skin went numb. He rubbed his leg, and the mud thinned out and ran onto the ground. He rinsed off his right leg, then the left one. When he finished, he turned to the minister.

  “A Jew by the side of the road,” Pastor Jon said, clearly searching for an experience in his past that would explain the present. There was a double outhouse with a moon cut in the top of one door and a star in the other, and beside it a small greenhouse and garden. Past that was a barbed-wire enclosure with sheep lying down and beyond that the marsh. There were ten beehives, and the humming of the bees entering and leaving the hives was a steady low murmur.

  “Tom Parsons,” Tom replied. “I live in Valhalla. I bought Jessie Olason’s house.” As they stood there, Tom wondered if it were really possible that Siggi had been trying to kill him, that he had been running and swimming for his life. Here, everything was quiet, the only sound that of the bees that flew by while the sun hung in the sky, a huge lemon disc watching over a landscape where everything was at peace.

  Pastor Jon rubbed the side of his face and got a streak of dirt on it. “Jessie was my most faithful servant. She never came without peanut butter cookies.”

  “I was here for Angel’s funeral. I was better dressed then. I came with Sarah McAra.

  Do you think I could get a ride into town?”

  Pastor Jon hesitated—not because he would have said no, but rather he had to take time to figure out how he would do it. He pushed his glasses up on his nose to get a better look at Tom’s condition. “I can do no less than a Samaritan,” he said, “but would you mind riding in the back of my truck? The seat covers are new.”

  Just in case Siggi had worked his way west to the road, Tom lay flat in the back of the truck. The truck bumped in and out of ruts, and Tom had to brace himself sideways to keep from being thrown in the air. There was an old blue tarp in the truck box. The dust was so thick that Tom pulled the tarp over himself to protect his eyes and lungs. The limestone dust rose up in a cloud and settled over the tarp.

  There was a place where the road curved nearly to the shore, an open piece of ground on the lake side of the road, and on the other side, swamp. Siggi had decided to wait here. He had the lake, the lakeshore and the road covered. Tom heard Siggi yelling, felt the truck slow then stop, and he wondered if Siggi would shoot him while he was lying in the back of the truck or if, out of consideration for Pastor Jon, he’d make Tom get out first. The dust caught up with the truck, swept over it. Pastor Jon climbed out of the truck, and Tom heard him walk to the far side of the road and Siggi yell, asking if he’d seen anyone on the road, and Pastor Jon yell back that no, he hadn’t seen anyone on the road. He could hear Pastor Jon’s footsteps on the gravel, then the truck door open and close, the truck shift into gear and roll forward, and Tom realized that he’d been holding his breath, tensing, ready to leap from the truck at Siggi. There was no point in trying to run from a man with an AK-47. It would have been charge and maybe survive. He’d done it before with a domestic dispute in which a husband with a shotgun was just inside a door. Tom, seeing through a crack in the back edge of the door that the husband lowered the shotgun so it was aimed at the floor, slammed the door hard so it knocked him off balance, and then Tom was on him, taking him down hard. He didn’t get any medals for it. The consensus at the station was that he should have shot the guy, never mind the distraught wife and two kids. “She’s still good lookin’,” one of his colleagues had said. “She can get another guy next week.”

  After they were out of Siggi’s sight, Pastor Jon stopped the truck, leaned out of the window and told Tom to get into the truck.

  “You and Siggi don’t get along,” Pastor Jon said as he put the truck into gear. “Money?” Tom shook his head. “Drugs?” Tom shook his head again. “Women?” Tom nodded. “Centuries go by. Nothing really changes. Samson and Delilah. Bathsheba and David.

  “Look at me. Harvard. Oxford. Living in the midst of—” he took one hand off the steering wheel and swung it in a small arc indicating the passing swamp and forest. “Taking care of bees and cattle. I’m going to buy a breeding pair of goats from Albert Scutter. I hunt and fish a few nets. I spend more time fixing motors than I do preaching.

  “I’m not complaining, though. In Iceland, ever since the Vikings became Christianized, it was never assumed that a minister should derive his entire living from taxing his parishioners. Instead, he was given land and a few sheep and maybe a cow or two, and he was expected to mow his own hay, milk his sheep and cows, or have his wife milk them, and even join the yearly exodus to the coast to fish from an open boat at peril of his life, then walk back five days to his farm and church when the winter’s fishing was over. There were no trees and no grain grown, and hardly any vegetables struggled to life in Iceland. The way of the preacher could be hard.”

  “Harder than Mindi Miner’s life? Or Ben’s?”

  “No, no harder than their lives. It’s just that some people think that the clergy should all make a vow of poverty. And so should teachers and doctors. People want things but don’t want to pay for them.”

  “Like the Freemen on the Land?”

  “Yes, but they are extreme. They are searching for false solutions. We are all searching for answers. We think if we find them, we will be free of pain. If you came to church, it might help heal your soul and you’d get to meet people who might hire you. Sarah said you would fix the cross on the church. She thinks highly of your skills.”

  “Does my soul need healing?” Tom asked.

  “If it didn’t, you wouldn’t be here,” Pastor Jon replied.

  They rode in silence for a time, then Pastor Jon said, “Siggi is a conundrum. But so is the devil. The devil is a fallen angel. Most people don’t know that. What Siggi does with drugs is destructive. But he is also generous. What he has he often gives away. He paid for a new roof for the manse. Unasked. A half dozen locals turned up. Ben delivered the shingles. Said Siggi had paid for them. It is hard to live in a small village where everyone believes that you will be in the NHL or lead a famous band and become rich and successful and for it to come to nothing but a job in the oil fields. He is violent, and then he is sorrowful. Will you,” he said, turning his head to the side to look at Tom, “take Uriah’s wife?”

  “She’s getting a divorce,” Tom replied.

  “I pass no judgment,” Pastor Jon said, and he quoted from Romans: “Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats.”

  They were within a mile of the village, so Pastor Jon, not wanting to have it seen that he had given Tom a ride, and that news getting back to Siggi, stopped at the side of the road.

  “I will drop you off here,” he said, “but I will continue on my way to buy a pound of bacon that I lust after. The Israelites would not eat pork because the pig has a cloven hoof. I don’t eat its trotters, but I like bacon sandwiches with fresh garden lettuce and tomatoes, a bit of cheese. Besides, it will be clear to everyone why I drove into town. That which is unknown is speculated upon.”

  When Tom stepped onto the road, he spit three times to try to get the dust out of his mouth. His nose felt plugged and his eyes gritty.

  “You could get your road graded,” he said.

  “Barnabas and I have ecclesiastical differences,” Pastor Jon replied. “He says that if you believe, that is all you have to do. It doesn’t matter how you live. I say you have to live the Bible.”

  “Thank you for the ride. It would have been a long walk.”

  “Are you going to come to church?”

  “I lost my faith on my job. God never turned up when I needed him.”

  “I’m not sure about God, either, but I believe in goodness and fellowship.”

  Pastor Jon put his truck in gear but didn’t pull away. Instead, he leaned out the window and said, “I heard you might sell Jessie’
s property to the Whites.”

  Tom said no, he wasn’t planning on it.

  “If you decide to sell,” Pastor Jon said. He pulled out a business card and handed it to Tom. “I’ve my real estate licence. I get some business because Horst is difficult to deal with.”

  As they talked, a truck appeared from a dead-end road that led to the swamp where the fishermen dumped their fish guts. If Pastor Jon had wanted to keep Tom’s ride a secret, it wasn’t likely to be anymore.

  “I told no lie,” Pastor Jon said. “He asked if I’d seen anyone on the road. I never saw you on the road. I saw you in my yard. There are times when being precise is important.”

  “I’ll come by one day and fix your cross,” Tom said. “I’ll see if I can borrow a ladder.”

  “Johnny Armstrong,” Pastor Jon said. “He’s the only one who’s got a ladder tall enough.” Pastor Jon reached behind the seat, pulled out a jar of honey and handed it to Tom. “Take this. You can pay me later.”

  Pastor Jon pulled away before the truck reached them. It was a beat-up Toyota half ton, covered in rust. The back was filled with empty gut barrels. As the truck passed Tom, he saw Ingvar and Larry inside. Ingvar didn’t slow down, and a cloud of dust enveloped Tom.

  When Tom arrived home, he got a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo. He went to the lakeshore, lay in the shallow water, took off his runners and washed them. He pulled off his shorts and scrubbed them with his hands. He took off his shirt. The pocket was torn and two buttons were missing. His sunglasses were still in the pocket. He lifted them out. One of the arms was bent. The scratches and scrapes on his legs stung, and there were numerous fine thorns sticking into them from the wild rosebushes.

  When he’d finished bathing, he went inside, looked in the mirror and realized that his face was stinging because of the scratches and gouges on his forehead and cheeks. Scabs were starting to form. “I hope that son of a bitch waits there all night and the mosquitoes suck him dry,” he said out loud.