In Valhalla's Shadows

by W. D. Valgardson

  Horst came to the front door of the café, but he didn’t cross the threshold.

  The voices were trained, melodious.

  “This is private property,” Karla said, her voice rising. “You have no business here. You’re trespassing. I’ll call the police if you don’t stop.”

  One of the women slipped her arms inside her sleeveless blouse and began to spin. She spun in small tight circles, and her bright red blouse spread out. A woman with a bright green blouse, and then one with a blue blouse, spun. Each woman’s blouse was a different colour. The men not playing instruments began to sing and clap.

  As the women spun, faster and faster, their loose, brightly coloured blouses with weights set in the hem began to lift. The cloth rose up, became whirling discs resting on their shoulders. They weren’t wearing anything underneath.

  The dancers, Tom thought, were in a trance. The men who were singing began to rock from side to side. The women were now spinning like brightly coloured tops, their bare feet turning on the ground, their golden anklets spinning and glistening in the sun. The men continued singing and swaying.

  Karla’s face was bright red with indignation. One of the local men laughed and yelled, “Karla, come on. Give us a spin.” He did a couple of turns to encourage her.

  “There are children here,” Karla yelled. “Think of their morals.” She stamped her feet, but on the wood it made no sound. “Do something,” she yelled at Horst. He quit staring at the dancers and scuttled inside.

  Gradually, the chanting slowed, and with it the spinning slowed, the brightly coloured blouses fell down, concealing the dancers’ breasts. The dancers slowed and slowed, one of them losing her footing from dizziness.

  When the singing and the music stopped, the group stood silent, their eyes open now but staring straight ahead, ignoring all the people who had been watching them.

  Jason looked directly at Karla. “We have cast a spell on all who reside here,” he proclaimed. “May those who have brought us harm be harmed. May those who have thought ill of us suffer ill. We call upon the spirits of the earth and sky to strike all these asunder.”

  He had a deep voice. With his long black beard and hair, he looked like a prophet from the Old Testament. It would not have been unreasonable to expect the earth to open, for earthquakes to tumble down the houses, for the lake to rush over everything. But all that happened was that a raven on the top of a spruce tree began its harsh cry.

  Jason stepped forward and tacked a piece of paper to one of the veranda posts.

  The group, so animated minutes before, now looked exhausted. They turned as one and walked away.

  “I never,” said one of the women from the boats.

  “Me neither,” one of her neighbours replied.

  One of the local men, Ingvar, said in a hoarse whisper, “Nice tits.” He leaned toward Tom and said, “What the hell was that all about?”

  “Don’t know,” Tom said. He’d met Ingvar at the dock when he’d helped Sarah lift some anchors out of her skiff.

  Ingvar was heavy-set with a florid face; the swollen, red nose of a heavy drinker; thick eyebrows; and a day’s growth of dark beard.

  “Nice tits,” Ingvar repeated. He was looking longingly after the cacophony of colour retreating down the beach. “Some guys are lucky. Lots of women. Good-looking women. Why don’t they come dance for me?”

  “I think,” Tom said, “they were casting a spell.”

  “They can cast a spell on me anytime,” Ingvar said. He tugged down on his shoulder straps as if his overalls had become too tight in the crotch.

  “I’m Larry,” the scrawny fellow beside him said. He was short, needed a haircut. He reminded Tom of a scruffy fox terrier.

  Tom wondered if he should just say, “I’m the cop.” But said instead, “I’m Tom Parsons.”

  “Never seen anything like that in my life,” Ingvar said. “I wonder if they do it every night or if it was just special?”

  “I saw some of them on the beach the other day,” Tom said.

  “The main bunch got Viking buildings and a Viking ship behind the beach,” Larry explained. “You gotta go see the longhouse. They got an old schoolhouse they brought in on a barge. They give musical concerts in it.”

  “Not like that,” Ingvar said. He was rubbing his face with his right hand and contemplating the possibility of regular performances by the spinning sisters.

  “Do you go?” Tom asked.

  “It’s free,” Larry said. “Why not?”

  “Not much to do here,” Ingvar added.

  “Do people mind their coming here?”

  “Some do; some don’t,” Ingvar said. He was finally able to tear his eyes away from the disappearing cluster of colourful outfits.

  “Why not just have them kicked off the property?”

  There was silence as Ingvar stroked his chin and Larry continued to watch the disappearing dancers. The silence stretched out. “Can’t do that,” Ingvar said. “One of them’s great-grandmother was one of the people who bought the property and built the place. She used to talk in tongues. Dance and dance until she fell down and people would pick her up and she’d talk in a language nobody understood.”

  “Russian, maybe,” Larry said, “or one of them Chinese languages.”

  “They were big here at one time. Lots happening. There weren’t many strangers came here in those days. No road.”

  “Just for the summer,” Larry added.

  “They didn’t believe in marriage. It was sort of communist sex. That’s the way they worshipped.”

  “That one in the yellow top was cute,” Larry said. “Like cute, cute, like oh-my-God cute.”

  “Go get her,” Tom said.

  “They don’t mix,” Larry said. “You’ve got to join and give them everything you’ve got. You can’t get girls there.”

  “All for one and one for all,” Ingvar said. He grabbed Larry’s arm. “Come on. We’ve got nets to lift.”

  The two of them shambled away in their rubber boots, which made a soft whiffling noise as they walked.

  The crowd that had gathered to see the spectacle was slowly dispersing. Karla was still standing on the porch, holding on to one of the supports. Her face was white, and her left hand gripped the support so tightly that her fingers were also white.

  “What was that about?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied in a harsh whisper. “We don’t want people like that here. They aren’t worth the little business they bring. They’ll drive our respectable customers away.”

  Tom pulled off the piece of paper Jason had pinned to the post. It was a diagram and had what looked like four lines of verse, but they were in Icelandic, so he couldn’t read them. He handed it to Karla. She looked at it, crumpled it up and threw it on the ground. Tom sat down and gestured at an empty chair for her to join him. “They came. They left. Great show. It’ll give people lots to talk about when they go back home. Great dinner party stuff. The day of the tits,” he said.

  She was clenching her jaw when she slid into the chair. “Tracy,” she said to one of the waitresses, “get Mr. Parsons a Coke float.”

  “Why give a performance here?”

  “I don’t know. They’re all crazy. Free love. They’re like mink screwing each other and praying. Godi-1, their first prophet, with long white hair and a white robe, at his pulpit ranting, and people humping. All together. On the stage. On the floor. The women were as bad as the men.”

  “Before your time?”

  “Yes, long before my time. But everyone knows about it. They tried to get local people involved. They were knocking on doors, ‘Be immortal, be immortal.’ Some of the men thought it was a wonderful idea. If they had dared, they would have been there every night, working their way to being immortal along with the big-shot money people, women from New York, hoity-toit
y, down on their hands and knees for anyone who wanted them as they talked in tongues. They made people crazy.”

  “And the local women?”

  “They clasped their Bibles to their breasts and repeated Matthew 6:13. ‘Lead us not into temptation.' They were outraged by this summer camp for sinners."

  “A cult?”

  “I’d call it that. They came for four months every summer, brought everything they needed with them. Not all at once. A few, then more. Maybe,” Karla paused, “I’m not sure. Maybe a hundred people. You could have asked Jessie. They were her enemy.” She stopped. “I shouldn’t be talking about this. The soda is on me. Leave Tracy a tip.”

  She got up to greet a family of four who were coming up from the dock.

  “Why not?” Tom asked.

  She stopped, looked frustrated at his lack of understanding. When she replied, her voice was edged with annoyance. “Don’t you see?” she asked. “Do you think these people want to be associated with craziness? They’re successful, respectable. They want to feel secure. No stress. It’s all about values.” With that, she hurried away to meet the approaching family.

  Tom picked up the piece of paper Karla had thrown on the ground. He smoothed it out with his fingers, folded it and put it in his pocket, then sat there, staring at the boats and the lake. There was nothing to indicate this day was different from any other day. The people who had been drawn to the performance had drifted away. The sun was high overhead, a large scorching circle in the sky that would burn your eyes to blindness if you presumed to look upon it. Tom could feel that the armpits of his shirt were soaked.

  The reflection from the lake was painful. Tom put on his sunglasses. Cataracts, macular degeneration, the ills of age created by carelessness in youth. His mother had lectured him on these things. She would have been horrified by the day’s spectacle, not just the nudity but the violence of it, the noise, the intrusion, the presumption, the disorder, the lack of respect, of decorum, except there’d been no disorder in the performance; it was organized, planned, practised, a ritual, like a religious service. What, he wondered, had they been praying for, or to whom? Karla must have an idea of what it meant; otherwise, why would she be so upset? But for others, like Larry, it was all meaningless except for the tits. And even that had meaning because the women of the community hid their breasts behind bras, shirts, blouses, sweaters, layer upon layer of cloth secured with their crossed arms. The dancers’ swirling tops rising until they spun from the shoulders created possibilities, other ways that people might be, might behave.

  He wondered briefly about that, about the other ways people might behave, and wondered still more if the women who were watching wished they, too, could dance like that, spin and spin for their men, for themselves, for their sisters, for a life filled with colour and sound and passion, for the dance implied passion—no one watching could be satisfied with a quick coupling in a dingy bedroom on a narrow bed in the missionary position. He wondered if the boats in the harbour would rock tonight, might have started to rock already, if the trailers, houses, cottages might rock and if the people having sex were thinking of the dancing, twirling, brightly coloured half-naked young women, were hearing the wild sounds of the pipes and drums.

  He thought then of Freyja, of what she would look like dancing like that if she were dancing for him, if he, magically, could play the South American panpipes, high and keening, until she fell exhausted onto the floor and he joined her.

  I need, he thought, a cold shower, two cold showers, a tub full of cold water and ice. The crotch of his pants was too tight and, like Ingvar, he shifted to loosen his undershorts. Whatever the performance had been about, it had at least created one miracle.

  And he could see his mother’s disapproving eyes, as if she were dead, magically knowing the thoughts behind his still face. She told him that the dead know everything. Every thought, every fantasy, every sin. Them and Santa Claus. He’d been terrified of Santa Claus.

  If it were winter, he’d have chopped a hole in the ice and dropped into the water for a minute or two to get everything under control again, but it wasn’t winter, and the plumbing for the bathtub wasn’t working, so he couldn’t even buy ice from the fishermen to put in a bathtub full of water. Instead, he went home and masturbated.

  Later, he went over to the Olafsons’ on the chance that Linda might be able to tell him about Angel.

  Linda was working in the garden. He asked her if she had time to visit and she said, “Yes, sure. Why not?”

  There was a playset in the yard, bright red metal, two swings and a slide, a sandbox made from a large tire. There were two boys and a girl playing in the sandbox with a dump truck, a grader and a tractor. Close to the sandbox there was a large vegetable garden.

  “I was weeding,” she said, “when I heard the drum.”

  She was wearing a yellow cotton dress with an apron over it, a white straw hat with a large brim and a yellow ribbon. She was holding a trowel.

  They went inside and she poured them both cold lemonade from the fridge, then called the kids to come and get lemonade.

  “Quite a show,” he said.

  “Nothing I haven’t seen before, but they were sort of flat chested.”

  He laughed. No one could say she was flat chested. She was large all over. He thought about Bob and hoped she’d been feeling affectionate before her husband left just after midnight.

  The kitchen was chaotic. Friendly, welcoming, a place it was easy to be relaxed, but dishes were piled haphazardly, cupboard doors open, toys scattered about the floor. The kids drank their lemonade and she gave each one a kleinur, then gave one to Tom.

  “Go on,” she said to the kids. “Go out and play or go have a nap.” The three kids tumbled out the door.

  She plopped down in a chair. “When Bob’s here, I ignore everything but him. I bake stuff for him to take with him. I give him lots of attention. I want him to want to park his truck in front of this house.”

  “It’s a hard life. Not many truckers have a home to go to.”

  Linda took a kleinur from the basket on the table and bit off a piece. “Gone for nearly a month each time. The kids forget who he is. We have our life. Then he appears. He thinks he needs to bring us gifts to make up for being away.” She waved at the toys. “Same with me. Nice things. More than I need. He’s been at it nearly ten years. He hits ten years, then it’s over.”

  “And then?”

  “I dunno. Maybe move to the city. Get a job as a dispatcher. Or a diesel mechanic. There’s a big shortage. Start a business fixing truck beds. Anything so he can come home after work.”

  “Where are all the other Valhalla men?” he asked. “There don’t seem to be many husbands around.”

  She thought about it for a moment. “Away,” she said. “They’ll come back in the fall. A lot of them work up on the Mackenzie River from breakup to freeze-up. Away six months. Home six months.”

  “Like Bob?” he said.

  “Other wives at least get a husband full time for six months.”

  “Bob says Angel used to sleep over here.”

  Linda’s smile faded. “That’s right. Pretty hard for Ben at his age to be a mom and a dad.”

  “Were you her mom?”

  Linda’s hands tightened into fists. “No, I got enough taking care of my own. Besides, every time her mother dumped her latest boyfriend, she’d come looking for Angel. Angel would start to have a life and then her mother would drag her off to the city to a dump. I think a few of those boyfriends liked little girls. She ran away lots of times. Hitchhiked back here. You can’t get involved in other people’s grief.”

  “You got any idea what happened to Angel?”

  She shook her head slightly. “Kids. I’m terrified of my kids growing up. Who knows what they’ll get into?”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “There’s no predicting how
things will work out.”

   Chapter 17

  The Family

  Tom left Linda’s and walked to Ben’s to see if he’d tell him something more about Frenchie and the good stuff. When he came around the corner of the garage, Derk was lying on a lounge chair made from aluminum and purple strapping. A matching purple umbrella had been tied to a pole and stuck into the ground so it cast its shadow over him. The air was so thick and heavy that even the leaves on the small tree growing beside the tin garage were limp and lifeless. When he saw Tom, Derk tensed, put one foot on the ground as if he might suddenly spring away. Derk’s Dodge Challenger was backed close to the front door, its front pointing toward the road out of town, and Tom thought Derk might be calculating how quickly he could reach it.

  “Nice wheels,” Tom said. He didn’t want Derk fleeing, so he pulled up a lawn chair, sat down and leaned back. Butterflies and bees and the occasional dragonfly flitted about, attracted by the ragged row of hollyhocks that grew against the south side of the house.

  “Whaddaya want?” Derk drawled. His dark hair was carefully combed to hang over one side of his face. If he hadn’t been so sullen, he would have been handsome. His face was heart shaped, his eyes dark, his nose narrow. Girls who loved bad boys would love him—the sullen look, the styled hair, the gold chains, the gold ring with the diamond that sparkled when he moved his hand.

  In deference to the heat he was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and white cotton pants with a white belt. A pair of white sandals were lying on the ground beside him, and Tom wondered what any locals walking by would think of white sandals and the designer sunglasses sitting on top of his head. Derk rested the book he was reading on his stomach and waited for Tom to say what was on his mind.