In Valhalla's Shadows

by W. D. Valgardson

  The bottom had dipped then risen with the sandbar so that they were knee deep. “It drops steeply away from here,” Freyja said, “There’s another sandbar farther out.”

  She dove into the water and he dove after her. They swam together along the moon’s path. The water, as it was flung off their arms, turned to drops of silver in the moonlight. The second sandbar was wide and two feet under the surface. They stood up and shook the water out of their hair. Then Tom put his arms around Freyja and kissed her, and as he kissed her, he pushed the straps of her bikini top off her shoulders and pulled it down so it fell around her waist. They sat down on the sandbar and, with the water around them, they kissed and he ran his hands over her breasts and her back. He pulled off her bikini bottom and she tugged at his swim trunks until they came off.

  “Not here,” she said suddenly and plunged into the water to swim to shore. He felt the sandbar for his swim trunks but couldn’t find them. She reached shore ahead of him and was drying herself by the time he reached the blanket. She gave him a quick once-over with the towel. He put his arms around her and pulled her down beside him. “Have you got a condom?” she said. “I’m not on the pill.”

  “Not here,” he said, wishing that he’d had a vasectomy after Joel was born.

  “In the house?”

  “In my swim trunks.”

  “Oh, shit,” she said. “How good are you with your tongue? I’ll return the favour.”

  The limestone cliffs were ragged, with indentations and projections, not more than a few feet high but high enough to provide privacy. And then the clouds drifted across the brilliant face of the moon so that the small indentation in which they lay was in deep shadow.

  Afterwards, Tom went to the lakeshore to retrieve the bottle of wine, and he pulled out the cork with the corkscrew, careful not to pull back too soon and break up the cork. Freyja held up the two wine glasses. The clouds had uncovered the moon and light reflected from the rims of the glasses. He set the bottle aside, they touched their wine glasses together and the sound was a precise musical note. They drank the wine in silence. That surprised him, because he had thought that when this happened they’d have a lot to talk about, that they’d need to share their entire lives, that there would be a waterfall, a raging torrent of words, but instead, there was no need to say anything.

  After they had emptied their glasses, they lay on the blanket with their arms around each other and kissed over and over again, as the clouds hid them from each other and then revealed them, and he wished that he could see in the dark, that the water was transparent and he could swim out and find his swim trunks. He told her this, and she laughed quietly and said, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. That’s what Sarah says.”

  They lay there with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her, and he said, “When Verthandi asked me why I’d come, I should have told the truth. My world ended. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I’d never been anything but a Mountie. It was my community. I got up in the morning and I knew what I had to do. I knew my purpose in life. It was all gone. Identity, community, purpose. Just like that. One bad decision.” He paused, then added, “Mindi Miner—I think it was him—said flotsam and jetsam wash up here after storms.”

  Behind them, the spruce trees rose up as a solid wall. They were made of forged iron and filled with lurking beasts. A late-night breeze came off the lake, and Tom wished that they had brought a second blanket so they could have slept there on the very edge of land and water, falling asleep and then waking up to the sound of small waves on the shore.

  Freyja leaned over and kissed him, then said, “Time to go.”

  He wrapped himself in the blanket and Freyja made a skirt from a towel and put on her short robe. They stopped at his place so he could put on a shirt and trousers, and he walked back with her to her place. “Do you think you can find more condoms?” she asked when they got to her doorstep.

  “I’ll try,” he said. “Can I buy a package from White’s?”

  “Don’t you dare,” she said. “It’ll be all over town. People buy condoms there and everyone knows when they bought them, how many they bought, when they came back for more. They keep track. It’s a hot topic at coffee time. Go to Ben’s in the morning. Ask him to get a box for us. He keeps his mouth shut.”

  He kissed her slowly, wrapped his arms around her and felt her towel start to slip. She grabbed it, pulled it tight and said, “Don’t get me started again. I don’t want to be a mommy.” She opened the door, stepped inside and locked it behind her.

  The next morning, he pulled apart the boxes until everything was spread around the living room. No condoms. He walked over to Ben’s and when he asked for Ben, Wanda said he hadn’t been feeling well. He’d been having chest pains. Derk had driven him into town to see a doctor.

  He went back to the beach, took off his clothes except for his black undershorts and waded to the first sandbar, then swam to the second. The water was fairly clear. He crawled along the sandbar and found Freyja’s bikini top but no sign of her bottoms. He tied it around his left arm and dove on either side of the bar. He could feel the current pulling against him. Freyja had warned him about it. It ran along the sandbar. He remembered what Freyja had said and he swam with it, using as little energy as possible, and when it weakened, he broke free of it. It flowed north toward the dock.

  He swam back to where he had entered the water, got dressed and went to White’s. He handed Horst two dollars and said he was renting a punt for an hour max. Horst called to Tracy and sent her to the storeroom. She came back with two oars and oarlocks.

  He went down to the shore, flipped over a punt, remembered how the one he’d used before had leaked, searched for a bailing can, then rowed out of the harbour, turned and rowed back on the south side. The water wasn’t deep and he could see the bottom as he rowed. He thought he should have brought a rake, but he’d have a hard time explaining what he was searching for. He eased the punt under the dock. The shadows darkened the water so he couldn’t see. He was dragging one of the oars over the sandy bottom when he saw a flash of colour where a shaft of light came through the boards of the dock. The space was too tight to use the oars, so he pulled himself over by grasping the pilings. There was a pink flip-flop caught on a spike end that stuck out from one of the pilings. When he pulled it loose and held it into a shaft of light, he realized it was a match for the one the large poodle had found.

  He pushed his way back into the sunlight and rowed around the dock and into the harbour. He beached the boat. Angel’s, he kept thinking, Angel’s, but when he got to the Whites’ porch to return the oars and oarlocks, he looked into the galvanized tub that was full of flip-flops for people to wear into the store and many of them were exactly the same as the one he thought was Angel’s.

  He took the flip-flop with him to the picnic table. He thought the first one would be on the ground under the picnic table, but it wasn’t there. He’d raked up the leaves and debris, so he went to search the piles he had made. He’d taken two loads to the dump. It could have been in one of them. He studied the flip-flop. It was the same colour, and it looked like it was the same size, but he couldn’t be sure.

   Chapter 29

  Siggi and the Bears

  Around ten o'clock, he walked over to Freyja’s to tell her about his failed search for his swim trunks and to return her bikini top, but she wasn’t home. In case she was gardening, he went around to the backyard. Her red Jeep was gone. He went back to the front door to see if her rifle was beside the door, but the screen door and the inside door were both locked.

  He thought about the night before, the trucks circling the house, Freyja’s reaction and Sarah’s warnings about the embassy, and he got his truck and drove over to see Sarah. She wasn’t there, but the door was unlocked. He let himself in, picked up her rifle, rummaged in the cutlery drawer for six cartridges and drove home. Freyja had told him that
the driveway to Siggi’s embassy was half a mile long and had two gates that were kept locked all the time. There was no way he could drive in or walk in from the road. The land alongside the road to the embassy was swamp—impassable except in winter. Too marshy to walk, too mossy to canoe, with patches of bulrushes and pools of open water.

  The lakeshore was a possibility. From the lakeshore, the ground gradually rose to form a slight ridge parallel to the lake, its crest a quarter mile from the water. The embassy was built on the eastern slope of the ridge. The land immediately in front of the embassy was cleared, but after that there was a fringe of underbrush and thick tangled forest. The trees along the lake were higher than the ridge, so no one with a rifle and a scope could get a clear shot at anyone in front of the building or spy from the lake with binoculars. Between the bush and the building was a hundred feet of sloping yard. They held barbecues and parties there and, according to Freyja, brawls. When she was last there, they were saving all their liquor bottles to build a glass shed. They were greatly amused by the idea and determined to do their share to increase the supply of building blocks.

  Tom was grateful that the breeze was offshore because it exposed more of the beach. The broken limestone meant he had to pick his way carefully, but without the water covering it, there was less danger of slipping or his foot dropping into a space between the rocks.

  Bush grew to the water’s edge in places, and because of erosion from high water and storms he had to climb over trees that had toppled. Willows grew thickly in the swampy areas, creating patches of sand infested with sand fleas. Rather than try to force his way through the thickets, he waded into the lake. Occasionally, small streams drained the swamps. In early spring, the streams would be large, the water difficult to wade through, but now, with the meltwater having run off, the water was turgid, stained brown by rotting vegetation. He hated these slow sediment-filled streams because wire-thin bloodsuckers twisted about in the water. Even though fish often gathered near where the streams entered the lake, he never fished near them. Bloodsuckers were often clinging to their gills, and, inside, when he slit the fish open, there were long flat tapeworms. After he’d waded through each of the streams, he stopped to check his legs.

  The bush along the shore was made up of larger trees, and beneath them was thick tangled undergrowth of dead wood and low bushes, the kind of forest you’d have to push your way through, breaking branches, forcing shrubs down, watching for holes and crevices in the limestone. The ground was uneven and treacherous from the eroding limestone, covered in moss and thick layers of leaves. On the other side of the beach was the lake, a vast expanse of silver-blue water, with no land in sight. Two distant sailboats made precise white triangles against the horizon.

  The day was perfect, warm, sunny, the slight breeze taking away the intensity of the heat, the sky clear. A heron, disturbed by his appearance, rose up, its wings pumping hard, and a flock of terns ran ahead of him. Five pelicans swooped down and landed on the lake not far from shore. A soft, sweet smell wafted from the forest. This is crazy, he thought. Nothing bad should happen on a day like this. But he knew from experience that human craziness paid no attention to beauty or goodness but was tangled up in its own dark forest. Terrible crimes occurred on the finest of days.

  When he joined the Mounties, he’d had an idea that he’d be stopping people like the Nazis, that he’d be joining with a force dedicated to justice, organized around mutual loyalty, that he’d become part of an extended family. Instead, when he’d gone to his first posting there had been a reserve nearby. His sergeant had taken Tom’s pistol and locked it up—“No arms allowed on a reserve,” he said. He drove him to the community centre, dropped him off and said, “I’ll pick you up in two hours.” Tom had been in three fights before his ride came back.

  He learned to fend for himself, to ignore a host of small crimes, to know when he would be on the losing end of a fight and avoid it. The people he dealt with, he realized, didn’t have to hate him personally. They had lots to hate, and he was just the representative of whatever they happened to be angry about at the moment. When he moved to other small towns, nothing improved much. In the surrounding countryside there’d be shrinking villages with a church, a graveyard and a closed store, and five houses with outbuildings, some of which were being used as grow ops and gun shops.

  The limestone formed a white line separating the green of the forest and the blue of the water. The slight lapping of the water could have lulled him to sleep. He sat on a piece of driftwood large enough to make a comfortable seat, with a stub of a branch providing support for his back. He wondered if everything would be all right if he just stayed where he was, if the craziness of the world would stop, if his craziness would stop. He should have brought a fishing rod instead of a rifle, caught perch or bass, made a fire with driftwood, sat here in the silence, cooking the fish, eating it, no sound except the noise of his feet on the rock. And for a moment he thought about McAra, about Sarah resentfully saying he could have had a job at the pulp mill but couldn’t accept living by a clock. But that wasn’t it, that wasn’t it, Tom thought. It was more than that. In the pulp mill there would never be silence. There was the incessant noise of the machines overriding everything else, shutting out everything else. For Tom it had been the car radio, the voices, the static, the motor, the car doors slamming, the siren wailing, sidling up to the driver’s window of a car he’d pulled over, waiting for the sound of a pistol, the sound of a bullet tearing through flesh and muscle and bone. Life was never so good, no day so beautiful that it would stop the noise and the craziness.

  He stood, hefted the rifle in his left hand, feeling its weight. There was no reason for it to be loaded yet. He felt the two shells in his shirt pocket and the other four in the pocket of his shorts. The pockets of his shorts were large, could have taken a dozen shells, but he knew from experience that seldom were more than one or two shells needed.

  He picked his way along the broken slabs until he came to an area where the limestone cliffs were high, reaching into the lake, and, holding Sarah’s rifle with his left hand, steadied himself with his right by gripping the rough surface of the rock. He was grateful that here there were no snakes on the ledges. He faced the rock and worked his way sideways like a crab. The lake bottom was sand mixed with pieces of limestone that had been forced loose from the cliff by water and ice. Why, he wondered, why can’t people behave sensibly? Why can’t they just behave themselves, show a little self-control? Why have they got to get into conflicts all the time? Why have they got to want stuff so badly that they do crazy things to get it? Why can’t Siggi just screw Dolly? And why can’t Freyja give Siggi back his house? Why have people got to want things they can’t have and be unhappy with what they do have?

  He was in hip-deep water, grumbling to himself, when he stepped into one of the many holes created by erosion in the lake bed. As he plunged straight down, the water closed over his head. The hole was narrow as a chimney and he banged against projections. He had his left hand down with the rifle and right hand up. He tried to lift his left arm, but the rifle caught on the rough edge of the limestone. The noise of the water from his thrashing filled his head. He let go of the rifle, caught the edge of the chimney with his right hand and pulled himself up. He shot to the surface, heaved himself free of the hole and stood on the rocky bed. He leaned against the cliff, gasping, and fought back the panic of nearly being trapped in the hole.

  Once he was breathing normally again and his heart had slowed, he thought about having lost Sarah’s rifle. Shit, shit, shit. There was nothing philosophical or profound about it. He just leaned against the cliff and said, “Shit,” thinking about having to tell her that her rifle was at the bottom of the lake. He hoped she wasn’t emotionally attached to it. He could come back with a rope and hooks and drag for it. The pocked, shattered face of the cliff in front of him was dangerous with eroded rock. He took a pencil stub out of his shirt pocket and ja
mmed it into a crack to mark the spot.

  His arms were sore. He held up his left arm, then the right and saw that in thrashing his way out of the hole, he’d banged and scraped them on the rock. He looked at his legs. They were both scraped, and he could see that there were going to be bruises shortly. Blood thinned with water ran down his arms and dripped into the lake. Thank God there are no piranhas, he thought, then wondered if the blood would draw bloodsuckers.

  Freyja, he thought, as he worked his way along the beach. Why couldn’t she just shrug off Siggi and his jealous behaviour? If she’d gone to confront him with her peashooter, they’d turn her into a rag doll and use her for target practice. He remembered what Mindi Miner had said about the fate of Billy Begood and the Jones boys. Or Siggi might profess his undying love and, if she played along, treat her like a princess.

  Freyja had told him about the sandy beach and wooden steps up to a path that led to the embassy. As he came around a corner of limestone, he saw the beach—twenty feet of sand in a tiny cove. At one time the four steps were painted grey. Wind and rain had stripped away most of the paint, but bits of it still clung to rough spots on the wood. There was a floating dock, with a jet boat tied up to it. Tom had seen one like it that had been seized in a bust in Ontario. Someone said it was worth US$78,000 and could go ninety-eight miles an hour. Beside it were two Sea-Doo Speedsters. Tom waited at the edge of the cliff until he was sure no one was around, then picked his way along the shore. The boat and the Sea-Doos were chained to the dock.

  He climbed the steps so he could look down the path. It was grassy, narrow and turned to the left. The trees spread over it, blocking out the sun. To follow the path was to risk traps or cameras or Siggi and his friends walking to the beach. He crossed over the small cove, made his way along the beach for another fifty feet, got down on his knees and forced his way into the bush. The forest floor was thick with moss and decaying leaves, the smell of the ground heavy with the soft scent of rotting wood. A woodpecker startled him by suddenly tapping at a tree, then stopped. He could turn back to the beach, he thought, to the open sky and water, slip away unseen. After all, Freyja had never asked him to rescue her. She might be there, in bed with Siggi, and if he appeared like Sir Galahad, she might say, “What are you doing here? Are you crazy?” Saying, “Whoops, sorry, my mistake” and backing out discreetly wouldn’t really rectify the situation.