Stony River

by Ciarra Montanna

  “It was a grizzly, and he was coming our way,” Joel said evenly. “I saw him from the rock. I didn’t want to scare you, but I knew we had to get out of there.”

  “A grizzly?” She gave a shiver, a little fascinated.

  “I’m sorry, Sevana, that was irresponsible of me—taking you into prime grizzly habitat this time of night without a gun. I was trying to fit too much into too short a space. There are so many places I would show you, if I had the chance.”

  Sevana had no regrets. “I’m glad we went, Joel. Today will be one of my favorite memories of the summer.”

  Driving home up the river valley, with the wild-scented black water rippling at their side and the velvet-blue band of sky studded with gemlike stars overhead, Joel observed out of a silence, “Heaven is closer at night.”

  And when Sevana thought about it, she realized he was right. The sun blinded you from it by day, but at night you were looking straight into heaven through an open window.

  The house was dark when they got back. Joel carried in her groceries and quietly left again. Sevana put the paintbrush flower in water to revive it, and tiptoed up to bed. There was a faint burned smell in the air, as if something had spilled on the stove.

  The disconsolate wind and desolate ranges of Landmark Peak stayed with Sevana that night, and in the morning they had not left her. That mountaintop land had lit a hunger in her—she wanted to go back. The lonely wind of the high ridges sang on in her mind, and the forbidding peaks lured her with their remembered beauty. But she didn’t tell Joel that his kindness in taking her to look over the wilderness hadn’t satisfied her, but had only intensified her longing to see it.

  That afternoon Sevana carried a batch of shortbread cookies up the trail for Joel to pack for his trip, and found him filling saddlebags and panniers on the front porch while his animals grazed the flat behind the house.

  He thanked her, trying a buttery square on the spot and insisting she have one for the hike home. “You’ll spoil me so I won’t be content with my oatmeal and rice,” he said.

  “It won’t be the same without you, Joel,” she said sadly. “I wish everything could stay the way it is right now.”

  “I know, Sevana. The time we’ve spent this summer is over all too soon.” He put the cookies into a pocket of the saddlebag and cinched it tight. “When do you leave for Lethbridge?”

  “Around the end of September. Class doesn’t start until mid-October, but I need time to get settled and find a job.”

  “September is about the end of the season for me, too.”

  She departed soon after that, not wanting to take up his time. When she bid him goodbye, he said he would see her on his way down in the morning.

  All the way home, Sevana contemplated the brief time she and Joel had shared that summer. It had been time set apart, separated from the rest of life by more than distance. The sunny days in the pasture under the abiding forms of the mountains, where happiness was the only possible state of heart—those days were ending, and she knew nothing in the world could ever take their place.

  Sunday morning Fenn felled a beetle-killed larch opposite the house and bucked it up for firewood. Sevana worked with him, righting the sawed rounds in the road for him to chop, and loading the split sticks into the back of the truck. But the butt-section of the larch was tight and green, and it took even a powerful man like Fenn a lot of pounding with the maul to make it split. Sevana had plenty of free time, and with it she watched the road, waiting for Joel to appear.

  Finally, after wandering around the bend to try to catch sight of him, she saw Glacier leading the flock into view and Joel following at their end. Then the reality of his leaving hit her in a way it could not, without seeing him walking lightfootedly down the road with a pack strapped to his back and Goldthread looped around his neck, and Flint beside him also tied down under a bulky load. Suddenly she realized he was going to keep walking down the mountain, and once he was lost from sight, he would be lost to her…perhaps forever. Stricken, she stood like a statue in the road, while the sheep streamed around her like water running around a stone—without her even noticing them, for once.

  “Sevana!” Joel hailed her as he approached. “I didn’t think I’d ever get loaded up, but I’m off at last.” His eyes were alight and he was smiling; he had the look of a man doing what he wanted to do.

  But Sevana’s eyes held no answering brightness—they were dark and murky and frightened. “Oh, Joel, I may never see you again,” she said, speaking the only thought in her head.

  “See me again?” He sounded surprised. “Of course you will. I might be back before you leave. But if not, I know where to find you. I’ll be paying a visit to my sheepman this fall.” He set Goldthread on the ground. “And anyway, I’ll be at your first autographing party. I’m going to buy a signed original.”

  He said it with such conviction she almost believed him. At any rate, it would have to suffice. Whatever was going to happen, would happen; her preference would not change the course of fate.

  “How’s Goldthread?” she asked.

  “Good as new. But I’ll carry him once in a while, just to be on the safe side.”

  “And all the other lambs, too, so they won’t feel left out?” She found she could still tease him, even though the weight lay heavy on her heart.

  He accepted the remark with his natural humor. “No, they’ll have to walk, this trip. But we’ll take it slow. I’m going to add another day or two for more grazing and rest along the way.”

  He went down the road after the flock, and Sevana fell into step with him. There was a difference in the sheep she could mark. Their heads were up, their ears were up, and the lambs were even more ill-content than usual to walk placidly—prancing and cavorting as well as they could within their ranks. “The sheep seem different today,” she said. “It’s almost as if they know where you’re taking them.”

  “The older ones do know,” he answered, “and there’s nothing they like better. And the little ones are excited because the others are.”

  Sevana felt disheartened, deserted, confined to her small world, while he went off to adventure high and free. She wanted to beg him to let her go with him—but she kept quiet, knowing it would do no good.

  They came to Fenn, swinging his might into the hard wood. He stopped to wipe the sweat off his forehead and leaned on the axe, watching the sheep go by.

  “Hello, neighbor,” said Joel, giving Glacier the command to stop.

  Fenn gave him a nod. “Headed for the high country, I see.”

  “Stormy Pass,” Joel acknowledged.

  But there was no holding the sheep back. Deciding their master wasn’t coming, they went on without him. “Guess I’m off,” Joel said wryly as his flock disappeared down the road.

  “Till snow flies,” Fenn said, the prospect of losing his only neighbor for the summer making him unusually cheerful. He loosened his axe from the round.

  Joel turned to Sevana as she stood despondent, the ends of her hair lifting listlessly on the breeze. “Take care, Sevana. Enjoy the river for me.” He shook her hand with warmth.

  This couldn’t be the end of all the days they had spent in such pleasant company. How could it be over—just like that? “I will,” she said faintly. “Have a good trip, Joel.”

  “I intend to. And if I don’t see you before, best of luck in Lethbridge. I’m sure I’ll soon be hearing of your climb to fame and fortune.”

  “Or my level path to mediocrity.” Right now it didn’t make much difference, one way or the other.

  “No, not you.” His incalculably dark eyes held hers one moment more. Then he was off after the sheep at an unhurried pace, knowing he would catch up to them soon enough.

  Going to the wilderness! While the hot dusty air blew back in her face, Sevana contemplated the cool springtime into which they were heading, and her heart was going with them. Then she realized Fenn was watching her as she stood staring discontentedly down the empty road.r />
  “Wouldn’t it be fun to live like that?” she asked, turning to him in a concerted effort to appear unaffected by the loss of her most cherished friend.

  “Up in the high country, you mean? This, from the girl who misses her curling iron?”—for he had once witnessed her unsuccessful attempt to heat that particular object on top of the stove.

  “I do miss it. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to try that kind of life.”

  “It might be fun,” he drawled, “if not for often being cold and wet and hungry.” He set a new round in the road.

  “Still, I should like to wander the high mountains,” she said covetously.

  “Sevana, you are a dreamer,” Fenn stopped work to say in derision. “I ought to lock up that horse of mine, before you take a notion to ride into the wilderness and vanish altogether.”

  “I’d come back,” she insisted, hands on her hips.

  “You don’t see that it’s a hard life.” Fenn was unwilling to tolerate her idealism. “You see the mountains as pretty scenery, and don’t know they are inhospitable and treacherous and can easily cost a man his life.” He raised his axe and struck the wood a ringing blow.

  An instant she regarded him speechlessly. He was right, of course. Her few experiences in them had already proven that much to her. Soberly she went to gather the sticks he had splintered across the road.

  CHAPTER 23

  Sevana had made the shortbread a day early for Joel’s trip, but that night she went into full production, making stacks of cookies and brownies for all the loggers. She packed them in a box and sent it off with Fenn Monday morning over his muttered threats that he wouldn’t play Saint Nick to a bunch of cretins. At dinner she asked if the crew had liked them. “They liked them, all right,” was his inelaborate reply.

  But when she went out to the truck to get his tape-reel to measure the picture frame she was making from the thick bark of the firewood tree, she found the box still on the front seat. She returned to the house highly indignant. “You didn’t give the cookies to the crew,” she accused him, while he sat tediously inverting a new pair of leather work gloves with pliers so the bulky seams would be on the outside—an invention of his now copied by the entire crew.

  “They’ll get eaten,” he said, fazed neither by his crime nor her disappointment in him.

  “I didn’t make them all for you.” It had been a lot of work, and she was still incensed.

  “They don’t need cookies,” Fenn said. “They have a cook at camp who keeps them stuffed to the gills with that kind of thing. Fine soul by the name of Cleaver Dan.”

  “That’s not the point.” But then she clammed up, knowing it was impossible to make him conform to her wishes. She let him keep his precious stash, and later was even able to look back with amusement on his hoarding of all those cookies like a disobedient schoolboy.

  When he was starting on the second glove, she asked, “If there’s a cook at camp, why don’t you eat your meals there?”

  “The company’s not handing out free food,” Fenn retorted. “They take it out of their paychecks and it’s no small amount. And they ship cases of surplus food to these out-camps, so there’s not always a lot of variety.”

  “You don’t exactly have a smorgasbord up here.” She missed what she had always regarded as common foods—beef, chicken, pork, fresh milk and cream, summer fruits and vegetables…the list was almost endless.

  “True. I did eat with the crew the second winter I was here, when the road slid shut and there was no way to get to town for two months.”

  She looked up from the bark she was holding at right angles while the glue dried. “You were snowed in for two months?”

  “That’s what I said. There was plenty of food in camp, but it was all pretty much the same. The only fruit on hand were cases of canned pineapple and plums. There was a big bowl of one or the other for breakfast, and every night Dan made plum or pineapple pie. By the end, we never wanted to see either kind again.”

  Sevana was stuck on the thought of being stranded out there for half a winter. She felt isolated with the road open and in good shape between there and Cragmont. “Have you ever been snowed in since?”

  “A couple of times, but not as long. We get avalanches every winter, but Hawk’s equipment can usually dig them through. But ever since that winter, I’ve kept food on hand for the possibility.” His inside-out gloves ready for morning, he emptied the teakettle into the washpan and turned to his nightly ablutions.

  A few days later, a slight figure sitting straight-backed on a brown quarter horse rode the five miles to the logging camp under a hot morning sun, balancing a box in front of her. She dismounted in front of the mess hall where a small sign decreeing ‘NO CAULKS!!’ was posted by the door. The door was open, so she walked in. Words were exchanged with Cleaver Dan—a burly, balding man mopping the hardwood floor, who modestly introduced himself as possessing the ability to drink more beer faster than any other man in camp; and she returned without the box. Just as mysteriously, a note appeared on Fenn’s porch next day while she was rock-hopping up Avalanche Creek. It said, THANKS FOR THE GOODIES, and was signed by all the crew but Fenn…who, if he’d caught wind of the affair, chose to remain ignorant of it—at least for all appearances.

  The hot spell had been long, and the sun merciless in its heat: day after day it burned in a cloudless sky. The little creeks tumbling down the side draws were reduced to less than half their volume, and ran clear rather than foamy-white; the ferns edging them were less vibrantly green. The forest litter crackled underfoot when Sevana strayed into the woods.

  Because of the increasing fire danger, the logging crew went on hoot-owl shift, working at night and early morning when the woody fuels were not so combustible. It was a grueling schedule that saw Fenn leaving for work at one in the morning; but he bore these predawn departures stolidly, without complaint—perhaps he preferred them, in finally hitting upon an hour when he could have the house to himself. For Sevana kept to the old schedule, finding the days long enough already. The heat made the hours drag—and she missed Joel’s company.

  Every morning she watered the thirsty gardens, then ran down seeking the welcome shade of the leaning cedar. The river was only a whisper now, and barely covering the rocks it ran over, but it was more beautiful than ever—winding through the valley in a wide golden band, its multicolored stones set in it like sun-catching jewels.

  One afternoon while the sun was beating down upon the thin water as if bent on evaporating it all, Sevana rolled up her jeans and waded in. It was not very cold. She found a stout stick to steady herself on the slippery stones, and with it she crossed the river. Even at its deepest the water reached only past her knees, and the current was barely noticeable.

  After that, she waded the river almost every day. She enjoyed the different perspective from the opposite bank, which was really just a narrow strip of rocks and grass sandwiched between the water and the nearly perpendicular mountainside. And it was while exploring that far bank one afternoon that she found—almost stepped in—a strange metal contraption in the grass. It didn’t look like the pictures she’d seen of Mr. Radnor’s traps, but she thought it had to be some kind of trap just the same. She stared at it in disbelief. After all this time, had she finally stumbled onto an important find?

  Just then Fenn appeared on the other shore with his fishing pole, already home from another early day of work. She waved to him excitedly, and wanting to share her discovery, splashed straight into the water toward him. The current was faster and deeper than where she usually crossed, but she forged ahead—while Fenn, fishing pole poised in mid-air, stood watching.

  In the middle of some rapids now, Sevana placed each step carefully, feeling the current trying to knock her feet from under her. She began to wish she’d gotten a stick. Almost losing her balance, she halted to stabilize herself. “Fenn?” she called, “could you throw me a stick?”

  Fenn located a good-sized one and tossed i
t out to her. She reached up to catch it, but the sudden motion caused her to slip, and she fell headlong into the water while the stick bobbed away. Gasping for air, she surfaced, but was unable to regain her footing on the slick rocks. The current was starting to carry her downstream as she tried to recapture her equilibrium, thrashing to keep her head above water.

  Seeing her predicament, Fenn threw down his pole and splashed in, his extra height and weight allowing him to combat the current easily. He walked downstream of her, snatched her up, and carried her back to shore.

  “Nice going, Sevana,” he said bitterly as he set her down. “My boots are going to take two days to dry.”

  “I’m sorry, Fenn.” She was breathless and distraught, shaking the water out of her face. “I thought I could make it. I’ve crossed downstream from here lots of times without any trouble,” she added in her own defense.

  “Downstream the river’s wider—which translates into not as deep, if you want to bother with logic,” he retorted. “What the blazes were you thinking?”

  “Fenn—you’ll never guess—I think I found one of the poacher’s traps over there.”

  Even Fenn was startled by the announcement. “You sure?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  He looked down at his clothes and grimaced. “Guess I can’t get any wetter.”

  “We can go downriver to cross.” She was already starting that way.

  “I’m crossing here. You can hang onto me.”

  Sevana could hardly believe it, but after he’d waded into the current he held out his man-sized hand to her. Holding to it tightly, she followed his lead through the swift water. Only when the water was shallow again did he let her go.

  On the other bank she showed him the trap. He got down on a knee to examine it without touching it. “It’s a trap, all right. Freshly set and baited, and the right size for an otter. But it’s not an ordinary trap, it’s a live-trap.”