by Donna Milner
And, at the end of each hike, before heading home, it is now her daily ritual to visit the landing.
If the clearing is empty, and often it is so, she climbs up on the knoll above and waits while Pup plays below. The moment he lets out an excited yelp and takes off onto one of the many logging trails leading into the landing, she knows it won’t be long before he and Virgil’s dog—who has accepted Pup’s right to be there and even sometimes lowers himself to play with him—come racing back together. And close behind will be the team of Clydesdales, their harnesses rattling and leather creaking as they drag newly felled timber to the landing.
Sometimes she turns the music on before they arrive, welcoming Virgil into the clearing with the strains of a Vivaldi or Mozart violin concerto. Each day, his body language portrays nothing more than the rote movement of his chores, as he unchains the logs and loosens harnesses. Yet, each day he brings his Thermos and joins her on the knoll. Often, now, she brings muffins with her in her backpack or other baked goodies to share with their coffee. A silent ritual, for even she does not speak during these encounters, as if speaking would somehow diminish the moment. She is not certain if Virgil’s unacknowledged acceptance of her presence is shyness, or politeness, on his part, and does not want to know. It is enough to be here.
Then one afternoon in early October no lunch bucket sits on the stump at the edge of the clearing, and she knows without question that Virgil is not working that day. On the way home she sees that his pickup truck is not parked at the back of his cabin. The next morning it’s the same.
A dusting of snow covers the ground on Friday, the third day of his absence. Wrapping herself up to take the dog for a quick walk in the early morning darkness, Julie follows Ian outside to his idling truck.
“You look after Julie while I’m in town, Pup,” Ian says, opening the door.
She glances down at the anxiously waiting dog. “Who’s looking after whom, eh?” she asks, shivering in the cold. She’s still not ready to let him go off alone for his morning constitution, wonders if she ever will be. Pulling her jacket tighter she turns her attention back to Ian, who is still standing by the open truck door, staring at somewhere beyond her.
“What’s this?” he asks. “Another gift from Virgil?”
Julie follows his gaze back to the house until she sees what he’s referring to—a tall, narrow cardboard box leaning against the siding near the back door with a life-sized picture of a camera tripod visible on the front.
“Strange,” Ian says. “What makes him think we need one of those?”
“He must have noticed me taking photographs.”
“Must have,” Ian agrees, but he doesn’t sound convinced. He studies her face, then shrugs, and climbs into the truck. She waves goodbye, hoping he hasn’t noticed the flush she feels rise to her cheeks. She is surprised by her own reaction—relief that Virgil is back.
Beside her Pup whines at the truck driving away in a whirl of dry snow. “Okay, let’s go,” Julie tells him, and he runs ahead of her searching for a spot to relieve himself. Once he’s completed his business, he begins to examine the changed landscape, pushing his snout and blowing in the fresh snow, growling at every new suspect shape under the thin blanket of white. Only as they head back to the house does it occur to Julie that there’s no other tracks, except their own—no evidence that Virgil or the horses have passed this way. Perhaps he went to work much earlier, before the morning snowfall. But later, when she and the dog go for their daily hike, the snow lays clean, undisturbed on Virgil’s driveway, even though the pickup truck is parked behind the cabin. On the logging trail, and up on the landing, the carpet of snow is unmarked. Virgil is not here. The following day he does not show either. Neither is he there the next day, nor the next.
30
Virgil’s story
It snowed the night they came and smashed his hands. Weightless flakes fell in hushed silence into the footprints leading across the campus grounds. No roommate or neighbours—all either hiding behind dormitory doors or conveniently out late on that distant night—warned of their coming.
Jarred awake by his door exploding inward, he saw the first surge of bodies lodged in the doorway, momentarily stuck, struggling against each other in their haste to get at him, before bursting through. He knew right away that this was not some sophomoric prank, not some rite-of-passage ritual. Naked, except for jockey shorts, he leapt out of bed, his first thought only to protect his violin from the ball-peen hammer gripped in one of the intruder’s hands. On any given day he could have taken any one of them, perhaps two, but there were too many. They, with their muscled necks and wrestler’s shoulders, overpowered him before he took a single step. They body-slammed him onto the floor; a tooth cut into the inside of his cheek as his face ground into the linoleum. Two football players—he recognized the popular line-backers, who had never made an attempt to hide their animosity toward him whenever their paths crossed on campus—yarded his arms above his head then pinned them to the floor with their knees. Another three heavyweights sat on his back and legs. No hoods or masks hid their faces, so certain were they of their righteous indignation, so blinded with a rage fuelled by alcohol. He fought, knowing it was futile, yet refused to beg for mercy.
Out of one eye he saw the violin snatched from the stand on his desk. The instrument slowly turned over in menacing hands. A voice crooned, “Daddy’s fiddle, hmmm?”
His struggling stopped, and a moan rose in his throat. Fiddle. He had called it a fiddle.
“What do you think of your music scholarship now, boy?”
“This is what we do to niggers around here who mess with our girls.”
Even before the violin came slamming down on his splayed fingers, like a dull axe blade, again and again, even before the hammer gave the parting blow, he knew it was over—less than a year and his university days were done. And he knew why. The badly mended bones would forever-after remind him of his foolish infatuation and his even more foolish giving in to it.
She had looked so much like Margie Smith. The Margie of his childhood who had never become anything more than a friend. He liked to believe that was because he, unwilling to jeopardize that friendship, had remained silent about his feelings. After high school, Margie had headed north to university, and he, east on a musical scholarship.
Alice Edwards, who even dressed like Margie, in her leather-fringed vests, miniskirts and knee-high leather boots, had caught his eye during his first lonely week on campus, and never let go until she had satisfied her curiosity. Blinded by the blonde hair hanging straight and silky to her shoulders, the blue eyes, inviting him into her world, he had entered without caution.
But, unlike the girl she no longer reminded him of, every thought that popped into not-Margie’s head, popped out of her mouth, uncensored and unedited, a trait that had become tiresome even before they made scratching, clawing, animal love, for the first, and last, time on his dorm room cot.
Once the deed was done it was clear that they had both been looking for something other than each other. He had been looking for Margie in the scent of her skin, in the secret creases of her body, the sweet juices of sexual abandon, and because he had never known these intimacies with Margie, had not found it with her either. And she—by her own admission as she lay naked and glistening with sweat on the twisted sheets afterward—had simply been looking for a ‘notch on her belt’; he was, in fact, her token ‘coloured.’
Six weeks later she reappeared at his dorm-room door casually demanding three hundred dollars to get rid of the results of their one-night stand. Sitting down on the edge of the cot to absorb the news, he heard himself offer to marry her, but was shamefully relieved when she snorted, “What? Are you crazy?” She walked casually over to the desk muttering, “Me have a black baby—Christ!” She took the violin from its stand. “You could sell this fiddle for the money.”
He jumped up. “It’s a violin,” he said removing it from her hands. “It was my father’s.
”
“Is that him?” she asked pointing at the photograph pinned alongside those of the rest of his family on the bulletin board above his desk. When he nodded, she laughed. “A negra cowboy, now if that don’t beat all.”
“I’ll get the money.”
And he did, dipping into the fund that he and his mother had so carefully budgeted to last.
He would just have to work longer hours at the restaurant where he bussed on the weekends to replace the funds. He never got the chance. One day, a week after delivering the money, he ran into Alice on campus—the captain of the football team at her side—looking no different than she had when he last saw her.
They came that night.
Before they left him curled up on his dorm-room floor, his unfeeling hands cupped and protected—too late—against his bleeding and battered body, they took the ball-peen hammer to the violin. On top of its splintered remains, they tossed the torn photograph of his father. And he knew; only she could have told them.
In the morning the snow was melted, the footprints across the campus grounds were gone. And so was he.
31
For three days, a relentless rainstorm drenches the Chilcotin countryside. This morning, slanted rain splatters against Ian’s office windows and beats a soft rhythm upon the roof.
Delivering a steaming cup of coffee to his desk, Julie glances outside. The valley lies socked in under a blackened dome of low-hanging clouds. Whitecaps foam on the windswept lake. In the ranch yard runnels of water meander in every direction, creating lacy patterns on the mud-slick surface. Through the mist, Julie can make out a tendril of smoke rising from Virgil’s chimney, visible now through the leafless branches, which intertwine through the evergreen canopy above the cabin.
Last week, before the heavy rains started, Ian had gone to the cabin to collect the October rent. Curious to know if he would find their tenant at home, Julie had stood at the office window watching as a flock of migrating finches lifted from branches of the mountain ash along Virgil’s driveway, heralding Ian’s arrival and then his departure, an hour later.
She envied him that visit, had wanted to go with—no instead of—him. The idea of visiting Virgil in his home has played on her mind for days, yet she can find no good excuse to do so. She wonders if the two men sit in silence, during their time together. If Virgil ever uses his Electrolarynx to speak? How strange and impossible that seems, yet a secret part of her laments the thought that she will never hear this man’s voice.
Still staring out of Ian’s window, Julie asks, “So what’s our tenant up to these days?”
She turns to see Ian glance up from his computer screen, his hands poised motionless over the keyboard. “Virgil? He’s over in the barn this morning. Why?”
“Just wondering if he’s still logging.”
“Hmm? Yeah. Far as I know.” He returns his attention to the computer, frowning as he searches for where he left off.
“I haven’t heard him working up on the north slope lately,” Julie says hoping her voice sounds casual. “Is he cutting in another area?”
“I don’t think so.” Ian pauses, then pushes his glasses up onto his forehead and pinches the bridge of his nose. “What’s this sudden interest in Virgil anyway?” he asks.
“Oh, nothing. Just curious why I haven’t noticed any smoke from his chimney lately.”
Ian leans back in his chair. “He went to town for a few days, but he’s back now.” He places his hands behind his head with his fingers knit together, and contemplates her. “When this rain lets up he’s going to start rounding up the cattle and bring them down from the summer range. If you were really serious about trying out the saddle horses one day, why don’t you ride along with him?”
Julie shrugs. “I just might do that,” she says walking out of the room.
As she enters the barn, Virgil doesn’t bother to glance up from the first stall, where he is bent over at the waist behind one of the saddle horses, a hind hoof held firmly between his leather-clad thighs. He must know that she is there, his dog having warned him long before she slid open the heavy overhead door, just wide enough to step inside, yet neither he nor the bay mare he is working on give any indication they are aware of her presence. She pushes back the hood of her macintosh, and wipes the rain from her face.
While she waits for Virgil to finish, she turns and slides the barn door closed then stands in front of the stall letting her eyes adjust to the dim light. Except for the day when they came out with the realtor—and, she has to admit, she wasn’t paying attention to much more than Ian’s reaction then—this is the first time she has been inside the barn. She is impressed by the unexpected neatness, the orderly storing of equipment and tools on walls and work counters. The ranch odours are intensified in here. Once again she finds the mingled earthy and animal scents of fragrant hay, horsehide and manure comfortingly pleasant.
Above her, the rain beats a staccato dance on the tin roof. The other horses shift in their stalls as Virgil’s hammer taps nails into the mare’s new shoe. He takes the last nail from between his pursed lips, taps it home, and then releases the newly shod hoof. He straightens up and pats the horse’s rump as she swings her head around to him.
“She looks like she’s enjoying her pedicure,” Julie says.
Virgil nods at the sound of her voice, acknowledging her presence without meeting her eyes. He shifts over to the mare’s other hind leg, which she has lifted without prompting.
Julie takes a few steps closer to the stall. “Ian says you’re going to bring the cattle down from the summer range,” she says. “I, uh, well I wondered, if it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. I mean—if I wasn’t in the way, that is—if I could ride along with you?”
Overhead a barn owl lifts his wings and hoots his proverbial question as Virgil straightens up. Before he can deny her, Julie adds, “I do know how to ride. Well, a little. I took English riding lessons when I was a child. My mother would tell you I wasn’t great at it, but Western saddles look a lot easier, and I just thought…”
Realizing with a start that she is rambling, Julie gives a nervous laugh. “You never know, I might be a help.”
It seems an eternity until he finally gives a brief nod. Before he turns his attention back to the mare, he holds up one finger, followed by a sunburst gesture of both crooked hands.
“Right,” she acknowledges, “the first sunny day.”
She leaves the barn knowing the truth; Virgil has agreed to this against his will.
32
She doesn’t have long to wait. The clouds break that afternoon, exposing promising patches of blue before nightfall. The following morning, stars twinkle in the predawn sky through the window above Julie’s bed. She rises in the darkness and slips into her housecoat.
Downstairs in the mudroom—and in these last few days Julie has truly come to appreciate why it’s called a mudroom—she lets the dog out, closing the door quickly against the morning cold. They have only just begun to allow Pup outside on his own. Julie has reluctantly given in to Ian’s argument that there’s no good reason why either of them should stand around in the pouring rain while a dog, who never seems to want to stray too far from his mistress anyway, does his business. So far there has been no reason for concern. Still, she watches him through the mudroom window. Over at the barn, light spills from the open doorway, revealing the familiar silhouette of Virgil’s dog sitting guard.
She goes back up to her room and quickly dresses, layering her clothes for the unpredictability she has come to expect of the Chilcotin weather. Back downstairs she tosses her woollen ski cap and mittens on the top of the washing machine, retrieves her camera from the closet and hangs it around her neck.
“You’re going out early,” Ian says, coming through the doorway.
She glances quickly over her shoulder. “Yep,” she replies pulling on her cap. “Today I’m the assistant wrangler.”
A blast of cold hits her the moment she opens the door to c
all the dog.
Beside her Ian shivers. “It’s bloody freezing this morning. Are you certain you want to do this today?” he asks for the second time. If it hadn’t been his suggestion in the first place, Julie might wonder if he’s as nervous as she is.
“I’m dressed for it,” she says, letting the dog in. Agreeing with Ian that it’s best to leave Pup home, she slips outside before he can follow. As she hurries across the yard, the first rays of sunlight break over the eastern ridge exposing the edge of an azure sky. Two horses, the bay mare and the black gelding, are saddled and waiting in the shadows beside the barn, their reins tied loosely to the top rung of the corral fence.
Julie bids good morning to Virgil, who is laying a coiled lasso over the gelding’s saddle horn. Certain that the bay mare is meant for her, she walks toward her, giving her hind end a wide berth. The mare sidesteps nervously and Virgil comes over. Before Julie can protest, he removes the camera from around her neck. As he retreats into the barn with it she wonders if this is his way of letting her know that this day is meant to be about work and not pleasure, or an indication that the ride is going to be a little rougher than she has anticipated.
Determined to mount her horse before he returns, she steels herself. Okay, here goes. Reaching up she grabs the back rim of the saddle with one hand and the horn with the other, but placing her left foot into the stirrup proves to be a little more difficult. “Either this horse is too tall or I’m too short,” she mutters. Suddenly Virgil is beside her, bending over with his crooked fingers knit together for her to step into. The moment she complies he boosts her in one swift motion onto the saddle, which shifts slightly sideways with her weight. Beneath her, the horse’s flanks expand with a heaving breath and Julie’s heartbeat pumps madly into her throat. Still she forces her shaking hands to grip the saddle horn while Virgil adjusts her stirrups. Once he is satisfied that they are short enough, he unties the reins and leads both horses through the gate and out into the south field. He passes Julie her reins and mounts his own horse. As if sensing Julie’s nervousness, the mare fights the bit, tossing her head, antsy at having an unskilled rider on her back. Virgil circles his horse and comes alongside. Their thighs rubbing together, he reaches over and loosens the leather reins in Julie’s hands, then trots ahead. The mare follows, her nose almost touching the gelding’s tail, her rider bouncing along feeling like a child at some country fair.
