Godi-4 shook his head and looked away into the tangle of trees and underbrush. “There was money missing. Jason says two hundred dollars.”
Godi-4 hesitated. He rubbed a bit of strawberry on his hand and stretched it out in hopes that the hummingbird would sit on it. The hummingbird lifted up and disappeared over the roof. Godi-4 licked his palm to clean it. “I would like to be like Saint Francis and have the birds flock to me. It has always been an image I’ve admired.”
“The Vikings would have eaten them.”
“They were not just warriors. They were great storytellers, poets, goldsmiths, boat builders. It is the violence that many people are attracted to, unfortunately.”
The breeze was blowing the smoke away, but it was caught among the branches of the trees in places. With the sun behind them to the west, the shadows of everything lengthened. Daylight would linger until late, but the moon was visible, nearly transparent, looking like it might be made of ice. When he was alone, Tom hated the long passage from day to night, when human company meant everything, when the memories and thoughts that he had locked away with sunlight and work forced their way out and he had only himself to converse with.
He glanced through the door into the meeting room and envied the people who were working together, talking and singing snatches of songs. As he watched, a woman came up to a man and hugged him, then let him go and went to pick up one end of a bench. Tom would have given a lot for that spontaneous expression of friendship and affection. Others were standing outside. One woman was plucking the strings of a guitar, trying out a tune, while others stood around and made suggestions. Suddenly, they all laughed, delighted by what she had done.
Godi-4 was sitting, contemplating the snapdragons, his face pensive. At last, he sighed and said, “Jason was born here. That makes him One. However, after his birth his mother left, disappeared, and took him away. He came back when he was twenty. That was three years ago. He came back with five followers, but each year he has brought a larger group, a tribe, perhaps the beginning of a cult.”
“That’s why they live on the beach.”
“They have the use of the huts. If they so choose. But then they have to live by the rules of One. They prefer their vehicles and tents.”
“They don’t seem to fit in.”
“There is a great injustice in our country, and many would have us rescue those who are lost. That is not our task. We are not Mother Teresa.”
“Men wait at bus stops watching for vulnerable girls who need a place to stay, who need a friend. I saw it every day.”
“Yes,” Godi-4 agreed. “But there are the poor of India, of Pakistan, of the world. There are governments for this, NGOs, charities. From time to time we find believers, and after a while they become One. Our way is not easy.”
“Some of our people do go out and do street work, rescuing young people, mostly young women. We don’t recruit them for Odin, however. A couple of our wealthy members have set up safe houses for young women where they can get counselling. Many are pregnant and ill.”
“Angel was pregnant,” Tom blurted out. “Did she come seeking refuge?”
Even as he spoke, the trees had become darker, closer together, so they hid more secrets. The horizon, what he could see of it through the gaps in the trees, turned purple with a slash of flaming red like an open wound. So far apart in most things, he and Godi-4 shared this, then—a harrowing, wandering stream of endless children with uncertain, haunted faces and frightened eyes.
“She spoke with one of the women who showed her how to play the dulcimer when she was here last summer. Angel had learned quickly. She was a natural musician. They had formed a bond. She told her she was pregnant. She was afraid of what her grandfather would do when he found out.”
“Ben loved her.”
“Yes, but what he loved more was her perfect image. Her grandfather’s need for her to be virtuous was a heavy burden.”
“Did she say who the father was?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“Here? Or in Winnipeg?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“This girl who disappeared. What was her real name?”
“Jane Smith.”
“Not as romantic as Morning Dawn,” Tom said, and he remembered that Jane Smith was not the name she had given him as she implored him for his help.
“Many want a new beginning. Is choosing a new name such a bad way to begin?”
Tom thought it was silly—or he thought his father would have thought it silly—this pretending to be something you weren’t. But when he’d been a child, and even when he was a teenager, he’d often imagined being a character in the books he’d read or the movies he’d watched. When picking up severed limbs and bloody corpses had started to weigh down on him, he’d begun to fantasize about being a different person in a different place, where nothing bad ever happened, a place where there was nothing to do except those things he enjoyed doing. He’d even thought about going to a monastery, a place where everything was orderly, organized, with no sirens, no sudden moments of terror. He imagined learning hymns, learning responses in Latin, and he was glad he’d kept his father’s Gregorian chants. They dissolved the images of dead children, of bloody wounds, of burned bodies. They filled up his head so he couldn’t think, and he wondered then if that was why his father had listened to them, to block out images from his past.
“The local people won’t tell us much. They take our produce, but they wait for news of the gold. It’s like having a ticket in the lottery.”
“Why would they care?”
“After he hid the treasure, Godi-1 wrote that when it was found, those families who had stayed in Valhalla should be given a share. There has to be an unbroken line.”
“Can they go away and come back?”
“Yes, but they must be here when the treasure is found. Temporary absences are fine.”
“You expect this treasure will be worth a lot?”
“Yes. At one time we had many wealthy patrons. Our friends will be rewarded. We do not forget those who have helped us. Our directive says that is to be. Too often in life, we go to great expense and trouble to punish wrongdoers but neglect to reward those who behave well.”
“And your enemies?”
“We are not pacifists. We live in this world. The streets of many cities are dangerous.”
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?”
“We leave revenge to the Christians. We try to avoid situations that would tempt us to revenge.”
The music that followed supper was enjoyable. Twenty or more village people had come to listen, and now they were all walking back to Valhalla. He’d told Sarah and Freyja about Godi-4 wanting the use of his pasture.
“So, they want your pasture,” Sarah said as they walked home.
“I’m not surprised. They tried to have sheep and milk cows, but their land isn’t suitable. One of their rented cows stepped into a crack in the rock and broke its leg. They had to pay the farmer for it. It was expensive, tough beef.”
As they walked along the forest path, they slapped at the mosquitoes, but it was better than risking a fall on the limestone slabs on the beach.
“I’m just planning on using the uncleared part as a woodlot. Godi-4 said in a dry year, there might be thirty acres of hay. In a wet year, maybe twenty.”
“So you’ll say yes.”
“I get fresh food. I just have to go pick it up whenever I want. They might even deliver.”
“Oh,” Freyja said suggestively, teasing him, “I saw those women eyeing you. They’ll be happy to bring you a basket of carrots and beets and chard. I’ll bet they’d even cook it for you and provide dessert.”
The rich smell of the forest loam and the sweet smell of the trampled grass enveloped them. Shafts of moonlight slanted through the trees so that the forest seemed
like intricate lace.
The evening had been fun. He’d particularly enjoyed the South American panpipes. The children had formed a band, and if they hit a sour note, it didn’t matter. Cuteness overcame everything else. Gabriel was there, playing his recorder, his knee bandaged.
“Was that all they wanted?” Sarah asked, her voice sharp, suspicious. “They are great bargainers. Never accept a gift from them until you know what they want.”
“They want to use the pasture. That’s easy enough. I’ve no use for it. I’m not going to be raising any sheep or cattle.”
It was the kind of evening when everything was soft—the air, the moonlight, the slight moan of the rippled waves on the beach, the sweet smell of wild strawberries crushed under their feet—and Tom thought, for a moment, of the basement apartment he had left and was grateful he had risked it.
Chapter 31
Horses
There wasn’t much wind from the northeast, but it was enough that areas of the beach that had been exposed were now underwater. Walking the beach to Siggi’s like he’d done before wouldn’t be possible.
Tom went to Ben’s and asked if he could borrow his canoe. He explained that he’d dropped Sarah’s rifle in the lake and needed to drag for it. “I’d dive for it, but it’s down a hole. I don’t know how deep it is.”
“Don’t go fooling around in no hole,” Ben replied. “We’ll be dragging for you.” He was rubbing his jaw as he considered the situation. “With the water up, will you be able to stand and drag? How deep was the water when you dropped the rifle?”
Tom thought about it, trying to remember. The bottom was uneven, knee deep in places, deeper in others. “Crotch deep.”
“Is it right up against the cliff?”
Tom said that it was.
“You can’t use the canoe there. You’ll get pushed into the cliff. A couple of whacks against the cliff and you’ll be buying me a canoe to go with a rifle for Sarah. You’ll need to beach the canoe, wade into the lake. Those waves are going to make you unsteady. You can’t fight the waves and drag. Better to wait for tomorrow.” Ben stepped out of the doorway to study the sky. There were small clouds scudding along. “You need to wait for it to calm down.” He said calm as if were spelled cam. “Keep an eye on the water. It calms down and you come get the canoe. The paddle is in it.”
Tom agreed, then went down to the harbour. The waves weren’t high, not storm waves crashing into the shore but steady waves, maybe a foot or so. He kept imagining sand being pushed shoreward, dropping into the hole, filling it up, burying $350. If he cleaned up Asta Palsson’s Enfield and gave it to Sarah, he still wouldn’t have a hunting rifle. He and Sally had never been rich, they’d run an overdraft at times, but most of the time they had enough money to get the things they wanted—skates for both kids, computer games, the occasional night at a hotel by themselves. There’d usually been money in their savings account. He wished he’d insisted on a more even split, but when they were dividing things up, he’d been thinking about shooting himself, about having another car accident—this time, one that would be fatal, no turning the wheel at the last moment in an instinctive desire to survive. Their negotiation wasn’t really negotiating. She’d say she wanted another piece of furniture, more money and he’d say fine, fine, whatever you want. He was a mental and emotional basket case, and he wasn’t planning on living long enough for it to matter anyway.
The shrink had said, “Hang on and you’ll come out the other side. All tunnels have two ends and you’ve got to plan for when you come out into the light.” But Tom had been unable to hear that. There wasn’t going to be an end to the tunnel where he was trapped; instead, it grew narrower and darker and lower, until he was suffocating. He’d wake up at night unable to breathe, and the pills didn’t do any good, little blue pills that were supposed to bring him sleep. And when they did no good, he’d slip into the back lane and begin to walk past the parked cars, the garbage cans, the garages, the fences, the trees, wishing he could run until he was exhausted but terrified of slipping on the ice and snow, of the pins and plates wrenching loose and then having to crawl to safety.
The shrink had added, “Run, run. What does it matter if your leg comes apart and you crawl up beside a garbage can and you freeze to death? You’re thinking about suicide anyway. You’re thinking about making it look like an accident. Why not have a real accident? You see,” he said, jabbing his index finger at Tom, “there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It may be very small, no more than a pinprick, but it is there. If it weren’t there, you wouldn’t worry about your leg or what would happen if it collapsed.”
In a distant room in his mind, Tom knew the shrink was right. But it didn’t stop what went on in his head any more than it would have for soldiers with shell shock who were told the war was over.
He realized that he’d been standing and staring at the waves for a long time. The repetition of them, their sound as they broke on the shore, had hypnotized him. He pulled his hand from the wall that ran along the outside of the dock. Without the wall, the storm waves would crash over the dock, sink open boats moored inside the harbor. The dock with its plank wall, set as it was against the great sweep of the lake jutting into the water, looked fragile, as if it might be cast up into a tangled, broken mess on the shore, but yet it held, protected people against the fury of the water.
Now he struggled to break free of the feeling that threatened to overwhelm him. He wanted to stay in the present, not fall down the rabbit hole into the past. “Five things,” the shrink had said, when he felt like that, “name five things you can see.” He named them. The dock, the boats, the lake, the shed where the fish were processed, the oil drums. “Four things that I can feel,” Tom said to himself and ran his hand over the rough wood of the wall. He touched a mooring line, then an anchor. He reached out toward a seagull hovering overhead, but it slipped away, so he grasped the rusted head of a large bolt. “Three things,” he repeated to himself, “three things that I can hear right now.” There was the pounding of the waves on the dock, the cry of a tern, the rubbing of the mooring lines on the capstans. “Two things I can smell,” he said and took a deep breath and let it out slowly. There was the pungent odour of old fish from the boards on the dock and the sharp smell of spilled gasoline. The last was the most difficult. Name one good thing about himself. For a long time, he hadn’t been able to do that.
“I can work,” he whispered. He held his hands in front of him and studied them. I can work. His father had said that in work is our salvation. Freyja had said that Karla and Horst needed work done. They’d probably want to trade for a credit in their ledger, but maybe he could do part credit and part cash. And he’d have to do serious negotiating with Asta Palsson. She needed a lot more than $350 of work, but she might not care about having things fixed up, she might not have the money. He’d go west, stop at a few farms and tell them he was available, talk to Pastor Jon. He was always travelling around fixing cars and tractors and lawnmowers. He’d know who needed work done and could afford to pay for it.
The white edges of the waves and their steady pounding on the dock had kept him from pulling back into himself, so he went back to the house. But before he could get started on anything, Freyja arrived.
“Remember,” Freyja said, “I mentioned I wanted to ask you for a favour?”
“What?” Tom replied, not remembering. He was thinking about asking her for advice on finding work and admitting he was hard-pressed for cash. He’d taken a bigger loan than he needed for the house because he knew it needed a lot of work, but that money was earmarked.
“You have a small barn on your pasture. Have you looked at it?”
“No. Should I have? You can barely see it in the bush. I think it’s falling down.”
“Oli had a horse and a cow and some sheep at one time. He cut hay and kept it in the hayloft.”
“Is this barn special? Derk th
ought it would make a great grow op. Godi-4 mentioned it. He wants to grow hay and keep animals.”
“I’ve been planning on getting an Icelandic horse. Jessie had agreed that if I did, I could keep it there.”
“Horse? One of those ponies? I’ve seen them on PBS.”
“They’re not ponies. They’re horses. They’re small but not as small as ponies. They’re very good riding horses.” She sounded indignant, as if he’d deliberately insulted her.
“This isn’t riding country, unless your horse has gills and webbed hooves.”
“Don’t say it like that. I’ve always wanted a horse. I used to ride on Oli’s horse when I was a kid.”
He was having a hard time wrapping his head around the idea of a horse. Even a small one. Anna wouldn’t let people have cats in their apartments. Or budgies. Still, people snuck them in. Little dogs and cats and birds and reptiles, hidden in their coats, in their grocery bags. They smuggled poodles in suitcases. The brought Dobermans in packing cases. People were crazy. When he was on the Force, he’d had a call one time from a motel. A customer had brought her horse into her unit because it was cold in its trailer. The customer couldn’t understand why the horse couldn’t spend the night as long as it didn’t make any noise. First, Siggi with his bears. Now, a horse.
“I didn’t want to mention it before because I didn’t want you to feel that I was pressuring you. But now the Godi want the barn and pasture. You can say no to me. I can keep the horse in the garage.”
“There’s no heat in the garage,” he said.
“That’s all right. I can put in a couple of electric heaters.”
“Are you going to toilet train it?”
“Can we go look at the barn?” He could tell she wasn’t amused. When she got determined, she tilted her jaw up slightly and pressed her lips together. It was a look, he assumed, that warned her students to settle down.
They walked. The ravens followed them. They’d begun to think of Tom as the giver of all food. Tom wasn’t sure what to think about horses. They hadn’t kept any horses in the alleyway behind the apartment block. He’d seen horses in parades. There were horses at the RCMP school in Regina. He’d seen them on farms when he’d been posted to small towns, but he’d never gotten acquainted with any horses.
In Valhalla's Shadows Page 49