In Valhalla's Shadows

by W. D. Valgardson

  “The American dream,” Tom said.

  “You gotta take your opportunities,” Frenchie insisted. “It’s not like we’re forcing people to buy our fish. The restaurants, they get in touch. They want mariah. We can’t get buyers because they don’t have scales and the Bible says don’t eat fish without scales. We get two cents a pound from the mink farms. The restaurants pay fifty and sell it to the suckers as cod or halibut. You wanna go after somebody, go after them.”

  “I don’t work for Fisheries,” Tom said, then went home.

  Tom waited until the restaurant was closing. Karla was standing behind the counter. Horst wasn’t in sight.

  “We’re closed,” Karla said. “It’ll have to wait until tomorrow.” He could see that she was tired. Her smile was forced. She was studying a pile of money with disapproval, as if she might scold it.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Tom replied. “You and me.”

  “Won’t Freyja be jealous if you take me swimming?”

  “Then we won’t go swimming.”

  Karla shifted nervously. “I’m busy,” she said. “Maybe another time.” She started counting bills into the cashbox to make up the next day’s float. It was for cash sales that didn’t go through the till.

  “I think it would be good to talk to an ex-cop instead of a cop.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. Word had got around about him and Freyja, and now, if he had hope she would consider asking him up the back steps, it was dashed. “You’re being a pain. Go back where you came from. And leave my girls alone. I pay them to work, not gossip with the customers.”

  “I hear you run a talent agency for the girls.” The building was empty. The Closed sign was in the window, but the door was unlocked. Even though they were talking quietly, their voices echoed a bit.

  “Barbara isn’t pretty enough. Her hips are too big. It’s like ballet. You got ambition but the wrong body, you don’t get to be a prima ballerina.” Her voice was harsh now, angry at the idea that anyone would interfere, would presume she didn’t know what she was doing.

  “Underage girls serving booze at private parties,” he said. “That’s illegal.”

  Karla shifted nervously. She lost track of counting her change and slammed a roll of quarters onto the counter. “Who says the girls serve liquor? You tell me who says they’re serving liquor.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and her words were angry and defiant.

  “TV executives. Moviemakers. Looking for the next great star. The girls eat that up, don’t they? A big boat, fancy clothes. Spend a little money. It doesn’t take much to impress people.”

  “Everybody needs a chance,” she said defiantly. “Everybody needs somebody from somewhere else to see them. You see any big chances in this dump? You think I want to see these girls end up here like me? Do you think this was my plan for my life? Does this look like Nashville?” She said these last words as if she were choking.

  He’d touched a nerve, and the anger that lay just below the surface of forced smiles and exaggerated greetings made her face look hard and, at the same time, vulnerable. He’d dealt with people like that who had passed over opportunities for mundane jobs—teaching, civil service, banking—and then it hadn’t worked out. They had gambled everything and lost. And the image Tom had from listening to his father when an artist of any kind was mentioned was that of a poor wretch standing on a street corner, trying to interest passersby in his poetry or CD or painting, instead of sitting in a comfortable apartment, warm and well fed, with money in the bank and the prospect of a pension. Although, after all his planning and anticipating, his avoidance of risk, his father had never gotten to enjoy much of his pension.

  Just then Horst appeared from the store’s living quarters. He was dragging his oxygen container behind him, and his shoulders were bent forward as if it were a great weight. “What do you want?” he demanded. “We’re closed. Come back tomorrow.”

  Tom went back to tearing down the shed. There was a sense of privacy, of aloneness among the spruce trees. The ground was inches deep in needles from years past, a sort of reddish-brown soil that had little substance to it but that was so acidic nothing grew in it except here and there a dispirited thistle or a few strands of wiry grass that did not look like they would long survive. All the lower branches of the trees, deprived of sunlight, had died back and become dry and brittle, stunted, while branches higher up spread out, creating a canopy of sorts. He’d left the shed partly dismantled. Now that boards were missing, it had lost its romantic look with its moss-covered roof and sides weathered to silver.

  He was methodically taking boards off and piling them to one side when Barbara appeared. She was crying and immediately burst out by saying, “I’ve been fired. It’s your fault. Mrs. White didn’t want me talking to you. She said I was causing trouble.”

  Tom hadn’t heard her come up. He was startled and turned toward her with his crowbar partly raised. When he saw who it was, he lowered the crowbar and said, “I’m sorry. Talking to me shouldn’t be a cause for being fired.”

  She put her hands to her cheeks, as if she were trying to keep her face from falling apart. Her glasses with their black plastic frames were too big for her, and as she held onto her cheeks, the glasses got pushed up and looked like they might fall off. Her eyes were red and swollen. “What am I going to do? There aren’t any other jobs.” Barbara sounded desperate.

  “What about babysitting for the cottagers? Cleaning for them?”

  Through tears, Barbara said, “She’ll tell them she fired me. They won’t hire me.”

  Tom wondered how many more things could go wrong. He thought about how much he had in his bank account. The house needed to be cleaned, but he couldn’t afford to hire her. He’d need to ask Freyja for advice.

  Locally, the two people who had money were Siggi and Helgi History. Maybe Freyja could get Siggi to hire her to clean the embassy after he and his friends went back to the oil fields. From the way she described it, they treated the embassy like a dorm room. The four guys and their friends partying meant that the place would be a shambles. It wouldn’t work, he realized. Not unless she had an armed guard. It would be like throwing a rabbit into a den of wolves.

  Helgi definitely needed his place cleaned. Windows washed, dishes washed, floors vacuumed, everything tidied up, but whether he would trust a teenage girl not to knock over his books was a question. Money, Tom thought. Always easy to spend, hard to make. Shit, he thought, here he was, already thinking about asking people for favours. Once he started getting more jobs, he wouldn’t have to be so careful with his budget. He wished he had the twenty dollars he’d wasted on Morning Dawn.

  “I’ll talk to a couple of my friends,” he said, trying to calm her down. “What was it you weren’t supposed to talk to me about?”

  “I told her I didn’t tell you about the lingerie parties. There’s all this fancy underwear, and Tracy and Amanda and Shirley, they get to go onto the yachts and serve food and put on a lingerie show. They do photo shoots to take back to the States to show people in TV and the movies. You’ve got to have a good shape. Mrs. White says I’m not built right.”

  “Would you really want to do that?”

  “They get big tips. I’ve seen what Tracy got one time. She’s got big boobs and she’s pretty and she’s got a good voice.” Barbara held her forehead with both hands and leaned forward, and her face crumpled with the despair of not being good enough to be wanted and admired.

  “Her voice isn’t as good as yours. Not even close.”

  “My folks don’t have money for me. I’ve got to pay for my own clothing and stuff. My dad hears that I’ve been fired, he’ll kill me.”

  “Do the girls sometimes have sex with these men?”

  Barbara looked scared and blushed furiously. “I don’t know. They never told me anything like that.”

  “Did you tell her we just t
alked about your singing?”

  “She wouldn’t listen. She didn’t like it that Angel and I were friends.”

  “Didn’t she like Angel?”

  “She just likes C&W. Angel wasn’t going to sing C&W anymore. It’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s not fair at all.” Many times he’d thought that, and the most unfair thing of all was discovering how unfair life is too soon. His father, instead of protecting him from unfairness, preached about its pervasiveness, about how life was rigged so that those who had more got more, and those who had little got less. Rich people got elected and got to make the laws that gave them more.

  “Can you tell her I never told you anything?” Barbara said.

  “I can try, but I don’t think it’ll do any good. I’ll tell you what. I’ll talk to people I know. Maybe we can find a job for you.”

  “What’ll I tell my folks?”

  “Tell them the truth. You didn’t do anything wrong. Mrs. White is upset because you and Angel were friends.”

  “She keeps our tips for us so we won’t spend them,” she said in an aggrieved voice. “I said I wanted my tips because I was fired, but she said I’d have to wait and she’ll give them to me at the end of the month when she does the books.”

  After Barbara left, Tom went to Freyja’s to see if she had any advice.

  “That bitch,” Freyja said. “I know Barbara’s dad. He’s not an easy man to be around.”

  “How not easy?”

  “He’s got a temper. He may slap her around. I’ve seen her with bruises.”

  “What about the cottagers?”

  Freyja said no, Barbara was right. Karla had an in with the summer people, and all she had to do was sound hesitant and give a lukewarm recommendation. That would be enough.

  “She can outsing all of them. Karla included.”

  “That’s part of the problem. There are people who don’t like others around who are more talented than them.”

  “What about me?” Tom said, wondering about the power of gossip in Valhalla. “If she didn’t want Barbara talking to me, then she didn’t want me talking to Barbara. How about if she lets people know that she thinks I’m no good.”

  “You’ve got women making up lists of things that need fixing. Linda is already singing your praises for fixing her light. Arlene tells people that you’re going to put in drywall. Karla has her own list. She’s having trouble with one of the showers and the roof is leaking in one corner. The emporium is falling apart around her.”

  He thought about Horst’s piercing stare and rude comments. “I don’t think Horst likes having me around.”

  “She does put on a show for you, and you don’t help by checking the inventory.”

  He went back to his place. Not pretty, he thought. It was the luck of the draw. Barbara wasn’t ugly, but nothing quite fit. Her features were indistinguishable; her skin was pale. Her hair was mousy, and in a society obsessed with sex, she didn’t have big breasts and hips. Makeup, a decent haircut, contact lenses and she’d be okay. What was it, he wondered, that tugged us toward one type of look and not others?

  There had been girls in his school that attracted boys in packs. They weren’t necessarily the best looking, but they triggered male hormones, jumped up testosterone levels. He thought of Freyja and wondered if she looked like Barbara, would he have been drawn to her like iron filings to a magnet, like a bee to a clump of brightly coloured flowers on the bald prairie? Why Freyja and not Dolly, for Dolly was certainly attractive. Maybe Dolly’s being desperate seeped into her looks.

  No breaks for Barbara, he thought, and he’d made it worse. All he’d done was praise her for her voice. She’d complained about Karla, but what teenager didn’t complain about the boss, especially if she played favourites?

  Myrna wouldn’t win any beauty contest, but she was attractive, good-looking, striking. She had an attitude about her that brooked no nonsense. If anyone tried to bully her, she would see they didn’t do it twice.

  And Joel. Too thin, with his lopsided grin and his sense of helplessness. Sweet, charming, with a crazy sense of humour and a brain that never stopped working. If he was bullied, he’d slip sideways, out of reach, use sarcasm and logic like a razor.

  Tom jumped the narrow ditch onto the main road, crossed the road, and then jumped the second ditch. There was no evidence that anything bad had happened. No one had put up a cross and festooned it with artificial flowers, as they would have if Angel had died in a car accident. All was as it had been—the sailboats, the fishermen’s boats, two yachts, the lake barely moving. He knocked on Freyja’s door and borrowed her phone.

  When Anna answered, she said, “Thomas, is it really you? You need to come back to the city. The wild animals will eat you up if you stay there.”

  He reassured her that he wasn’t going to be eaten; although when he thought about Siggi’s bears, he wasn’t so sure that was true. “I’m calling to ask a favour. Do you still need help cleaning apartments?”

  “Do you want your old job back?”

  “No, thank you. But I know a girl who needs work. She’s a hard worker and dependable.”

  “You need to come by for tea more often,” she complained.

  He felt guilty because he had avoided her when his marriage was breaking up. If she had known what was happening, she’d have found him an apartment in one of her buildings, insisted he come for meals and, now that Tanya was divorced, invited her to join them. He might, he thought in retrospect, have been better off to have settled for perohy and borshch and bingo. He probably could have learned to ignore the plaques and the religious icons.

  “Yes,” he said. “The next time I’m in the city, I’ll come for tea. Maybe I’ll shoot rats for you.”

  She always liked it when he mentioned shooting rats. She’d never been able to find someone to replace him, someone willing to lie patiently on the fire escape landing waiting for a clear shot. She made him bring her the tails before she would pay him. One time, he had shot a rat with no tail, so he’d brought the entire rat, but she still wouldn’t pay, saying how did she know that one of the tails didn’t belong to the rat? He’d shown her that the stump of the tail was healed over and the cuts on the tails were fresh. She gave him his money.

  “That’s good,” she said. “This girl? You think she would do a good job? Could she also babysit my grandkids?”

  “Yes,” Tom said. “She would be perfect for babysitting your grandkids. She’s a good girl. There’s just no work here in the bush. No apartment blocks.”

  “No apartment blocks? How can that be?”

  Anna, as far as he knew, had never been outside the city limits. Wilderness, for her, was City Park. “Everybody lives in a house.”

  “Tanya needs help with the kids, and I need help with the apartments. I’m not so young anymore. Is this girl boy crazy?”

  Boy crazy. He smiled at that. It was the greatest criticism. If a girl was labelled “boy crazy,” she was beyond redemption. Unreliable, emotional, untrustworthy, the kind of girl who would leave an apartment uncleaned while she chased after a guy. Her daughter had not been allowed to be boy crazy. When young men came to take her out, Anna questioned them, evaluated them. If they were, in her opinion, girl crazy, they didn’t get a second chance. She’d approved of a suitor who had been an altar boy. It hadn’t done any good. The marriage foundered after ten years and two kids.

  “No,” he said. “Not boy crazy. She’s a hard worker.”

  “You going to bring her and introduce her?”

  He hadn’t thought of that, but he needed to go to the city anyway. He agreed to bring her and introduce her. “We’ll bring her with us when we come.”

  “We?” Anna said, her voice picking up. “Who’s we?”

  “You’ll see. Maybe I’ll introduce her, too. But we’ll just be staying two nights in the
city, then going back.”

  “You can stay longer. You can have supper with me one night. You don’t need to go to no expensive hotel. I’ve got a nice furnished bachelor empty. You don’t need nothing. Good kitchen. New mattress. Nice furniture. No bedbugs. No fleas. You can have a holiday.”

  After he hung up, he said, “The greatest sin a girl can commit is to be boy crazy. It’s Anna’s eleventh commandment.”

  “Maybe,” Freyja said, “she’ll think I’m boy crazy. Do you think she’ll say I’m boy crazy? Maybe I shouldn’t go with you. Maybe she wants you for her daughter.” She thought about that for a moment. “Maybe I’d better go.”

  He ignored her. “We’ll take her five pounds of pickerel fillets, two jars of honey and peanut butter cookies. She likes peanut butter.”

  After he left Freyja’s house, he went back to tearing down the shed. He pulled away a corner support, and when the roof came crashing down, he jumped back to escape the dust. He got a flat shovel and slid it under the shingles. When the shingles were removed, he pulled apart the roof trusses. He threw everything into a pile. He would save it for the communal bonfire.

  He’d been told there was a dance in the community hall on New Year’s Eve. At midnight everyone went out on the lake where scrap wood had been piled high on ice four feet thick. They set the pile on fire, then danced around the fire, drank, sang. The ice surface was scraped clear of snow during the day so people could skate around the fire. Picnic tables were hauled onto the ice, and hot chocolate and apple cider were served. It was in memory of an old ritual. In the first terrible winter of 1875, when the Icelandic immigrants settled in New Iceland and thirty-four out of a hundred people died from scurvy, hunger and pneumonia, at New Year’s they built a pyre on the lake, lit it and danced around it.

  He wanted to be part of that. He wanted to watch the stars in the dark night, the light on the snow, the flames leaping into the darkness. He wanted more than a place out of the weather. More than an apartment in the city with neighbours who were constantly changing, neighbours he did not know. He wanted to be part of a community and share the beginning of the new year.