Stony River

by Ciarra Montanna

  Len came to Jillian’s rescue, muttering to Ralf, “Who died and made you ski patrol?” But Sevana could see that Ralf’s gruffness was in direct proportion to how much he cared about Jillian, and wondered why she was so slow to see she meant the world to him.

  After dinner the three drinkers went to the bar, but cut their time short in deference to the fourth member of their party, who preferred to wander the little shops lining the hardwood hallways of the hotel. Rejoining forces, they watched a movie in their room, for the four of them were sharing one suite to cut down on cost—Ralf, in particular, ever mindful of the money he was spending. Jillian had given up her time zone for the compatibility of the group and stayed up as late as everyone else; but since they were all so tired out by so much outdoor exercise, it really wasn’t much of a concession.

  Sevana hadn’t known until she studied a relief map on the lobby wall that the resort was practically in Cragmont’s front yard as an eagle flies—separated by only one mountain chain. For the remainder of her time there, she stared often toward those rock-ribbed ranges, trying to guess how Fenn was faring during the holidays alone. She had already mailed him a present for Christmas—the warmest, most beautiful sweater she could find; but on the last evening in one of the gift shops, with Jillian looking on slightly aghast, she rang up an exorbitant sale of candy, dried fruit, beef jerky, and salted nuts, all elaborately gift-wrapped. But Sevana had no conscience for it. So close to Fenn in actual distance but still so unreachable, their quarrels long since forgotten…the extravagant package helped say something she wished she could say to his face.

  But Ralf wouldn’t let her mail it on the trip home. Turning the carryall onto a westbound highway, he informed her that in a secret confab last night, they had agreed to let her deliver the package in person. Sevana was staggered by the announcement, even while dazzled by the magnificent prospect. “It’s—it’s a long way,” she stammered. “And the road is terrible. I don’t know if it’s even plowed.”

  “We’ll find out,” Ralf said cheerfully, and Jillian, the main instigator of the plot, flashed her a confident smile. For where more traditional folk might have balked at the lengthy detour on a hazardous, snowcovered road, those zany art types viewed it as an added adventure in an already spontaneous trip, laughed hysterically at the prospect of meeting another car as they squeezed through the icy narrows, thoroughly made Sevana feel good by raving about the pristine scenery, and said they wanted to walk up and see her brother’s hermitage for themselves, for they could scarce believe anyone lived out in that snowy waste.

  The plowing ended at the bottom of Fenn’s road. Ralf parked beside the faded red truck and the four of them trooped up the snowy trail—Sevana excited and wondering what Fenn would say when she showed up accompanied by the whole crew. When they came into the clearing she saw him right away, sitting on the front steps in a plaid wool coat oiling a heap of metal traps. Her heart skipped a beat and she ran forward, leaving the others behind. “Fenn!”

  He dropped his work in the surprise of seeing her. “What the blazes are you doing here?” Familiar hard blue eyes…set jaw…strong-featured face, paler now without its summer tan…blond hair darker, longer, unkempt.

  “My friends and I were skiing and we decided to drop by to wish you merry Christmas,” she said all in one breath.

  “What for?”

  “So I could give you this.” She thrust the box upon him.

  “You already gave me a present.” His gaze was narrowly on the approaching figures. “Who in tarnation are all those people?”

  She detected more than a tinge of whisky on his breath. “My art friends from Lethbridge.”

  He glowered at her. “What’s the big idea—you decide my life is too peaceful, so you come up with a way to bring the whole city to me?”

  “No, of course not,” she retorted, finding his character none improved for the winter. “It wasn’t even my idea. My friends were kind enough to bring me, that’s all. And I was foolish enough to believe you might actually be glad for a few minutes of company during this long, frozen winter.”

  “Don’t talk to me of the winter!” he ordered, taking a swig from a small flask in his coat pocket. “It’s done its worst, and now there’s nothing to keep the sun from coming back.” There was an odd jubilation in his voice.

  Sevana looked at him oddly herself, and turned to the group hanging back in politeness. “Jillian, Ralf, Len—this is my brother, Fenn.”

  “How’s it going, Fenn?” Ralf stepped forward and extended a hand, which Fenn did not reach out to accept. Immediately Sevana regretted not warning her friends about him. Following this display, Jillian voiced her salutations with a little wave from where she stood. But trying to show up Ralf, Len decided to give it a go. “Good meeting you, Fenn,” he said, sauntering over to lean a gloved hand against the porch upright. “Sevana wanted to show us how impressive your place is, and I’m inclined to agree. That’s a mighty spectacular range.” He nodded toward the tree-covered ridge across the valley, its steep slopes silvery with frost and crowned by the sun resting in a dip of its crystalline treeline, fire touching ice.

  “It’ll do,” Fenn growled. “It shuts out the rest of the world—which is worth more than I can say; and the only trouble that remains for those who dwell below it are the shadows it casts and leaves in their minds.” Even as he was speaking, the sun slipped behind the bulk of the mountain, and shadow slanted across the canyon to fall over the little company, plunging them into gloom. A sudden chill gripped the air.

  Sevana viewed him strangely. “Are you still logging?”

  “Not right now. The crew took a break for the holidays. If you came looking for your handsome shepherd, he’s not here,” he added pointedly.

  “I know. He’s selling his place to the warden.” She said it stoically, despite the dagger-thrust it brought to her heart. “Have you seen Mr. Radnor around?”

  “He came around first of the winter—new neighbors, helping hand, the whole spiel. Haven’t seen him since. From what I understand, he got sent off to some salmon-monitoring project and will be gone till spring.”

  “That should suit you,” she said astutely. “You don’t even have a neighbor anymore. You’re all alone, just the way you like it.” She wasn’t accusing him, was merely making a statement from his perspective—but it seemed to catch him off guard, and he had no reply.

  “What else have you been doing?” she asked more softly then, not wanting to know the what as much as the how, but hoping to discover the same by a different means.

  “Trapping.” He shrugged. “Keeping busy.”

  “Did the sweater fit?”

  “Yeah, thanks. I didn’t expect anything.”

  She gave him a smile. “Well, we don’t have much time—we’re on our way back to Lethbridge. I want to show my friends the river, and then we’ll be on our way. Is it frozen enough to walk on?”

  “In most places—but stay away from any free water. I won’t be there to pull you out this time.”

  She nodded. As her eyes remained caught in his level blue gaze, it seemed to her that something existed between them in that moment, some unspoken affinity—even though remote and fleeting and probably unacknowledged even to himself. But she couldn’t stop to wonder about it now. “I will. Merry Christmas, Fenn.”

  “Merry Christmas,” echoed the other three in an earnest attempt at sociability. Sevana herded her comrades down the snowy path.

  “What handsome shepherd?” Len demanded promptly.

  “Fenn’s neighbor up the hill,” said Sevana, and caught the sidelong glance of Jillian’s catlike eyes.

  “Does Willy know?”

  “There’s nothing to know,” she retorted. “Thank you, all of you—I feel so much better seeing for myself that Fenn’s all right.”

  “You call that all right?” Ralf exclaimed, his mustache twitching rapidly in vexation. “What’s with him, anyway?”

  “That’s just the way he is.
” Sevana was anxious they not take his behavior personally. “I’m sorry I didn’t think to warn you.”

  “You put up with that all summer?” Len sounded as incredulous as Ralf as he scooped up a handful of snow.

  “Yeah—how come you think so much of him?” Ralf wiped the splattered snow off his shoulder and dove for his own ammunition.

  “Because he’s her brother, dummy.” Jillian put an arm around Sevana and drew her out of harm’s way as the two men declared open warfare on each other. “This is a perfectly glorious place, Sevana, an artist’s paradise.”

  “You’re right, Jillian; there was always something to paint.” Sevana felt badly that her friends had invested so much in a trip which had bought them nothing. She hoped the river would make up for it. She led the way down through the untracked drifts to the leaning cedar.

  The sitting rock was there, dusted with powdered-sugar snow under the laden cedar boughs. Other than that, Sevana didn’t recognize the place. White stretched evenly across the river from bank to bank, a level floor lying undisturbed in the deep-blue shadow of the mountain. The Stony had been captured, locked up so it couldn’t sing.

  “Let’s go out on it,” she urged, filled with wonder over this new thing. “Fenn said it was safe. And I saw what it looked like before it froze—even if we did fall through, it’s only knee-deep.”

  After Len made Ralf test the snowfloor because he weighed the most, they all ventured onto it. Cautious at first, they were soon walking grandly down the middle of the channel like strollers on some broad boulevard, their voices and laughter ringing out in the frozen silence. They marveled at the giant trees lining the banks—one grandiose, broken-top cedar on the far bank foiling their attempt to ring its spreading base with eight joined hands—and examined the prints of deer and elk and coyote crisscrossing from one bank to the other. They found only one narrow opening in the ice where the water ran with a constant trickling sound, unnaturally loud in the wintery silence. They skirted it at a safe distance—all except Len, who went right up to the edge and dared Ralf to do the same. Jillian, however, wouldn’t let him.

  “Mediocre Lethbridge Artist Vanishes Under Ice,” Ralf chanted from the clutches of Jillian’s arm.

  “Annoying Reporter Drowns in Freak Accident,” Len muttered in turn, and tried to lynch his bigger friend and drag him toward the hole—the attempt lacking the necessary leverage, especially with Jillian acting as ballast from the other side.

  “It’s more than knee-deep, Sevana,” Len reported, showing her the wet mark on a dead branch he’d run down.

  He was right, and Sevana couldn’t figure it. Maybe the ice changed the way the river flowed, damming it up in pools before it froze. Maybe they weren’t as safe as she’d thought. But they saw no more openings, and the snowcovered ice felt solid as pavement under their feet.

  Winter here was not a prison of darkness and cold—Sevana could see it now firsthand. During the days of fall, the sunless canyon had seemed a bleak and uninviting place; but it wasn’t that way when you knew it as a world unto itself—a frozen world of perfect stillness and beauty. Fenn had said the winter was too long and dark…but she thought if she could walk down that winter-hushed corridor every day, she wouldn’t find it too long at all. She remembered Joel remarking that winter was the best season of all. He had told her he would walk on the ice with her, and yet here she was with her new friends, and he didn’t even live there anymore.

  They returned to the car cold but exhilarated, pronouncing it the highlight of the trip. It was not every day one walked on a frozen river.

  Sevana opened the shop by herself after New Year’s, wondering if Willy had been delayed on his trip. But he came striding in the door a few minutes later, in a heavy fur-lined parka she hadn’t seen before. Just to witness his sunny look brought a corresponding smile to her own face. “Willy!” she sang out, running to help him off with the bulky coat. “Did you have a good Christmas?”

  “Good enough.” He seemed gratified by her illuminative welcome. “Say, how’d you know I needed a new watch?” he joked, as if she hadn’t been witness to his yelp of outrage when the damage to the other one had occurred.

  “It was just a crazy whim.” She fingered the bit of gold at her neck. “The locket is lovely, Willy. I’ll always treasure it.”

  “Like it?” he beamed. “I was hoping you would.”

  A little later he said, “Well, Sevana, it’s a new year, with a whole new range of possibilities. I’m going to Calgary to scout some of them out, and since I missed out on the big ski trip with my friends, I want you all to come with me. How’s next Saturday, when Ralf and Jillian don’t have to work? I can close the shop for such an occasion.”

  Saturday happened to be Sevana’s birthday—but no one knew it except her, and she had nothing planned. “Saturday’s fine with me.”

  “Here comes Mad Thad.” Willy’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial level as a white-haired figure passed the window. “Every year after Christmas, he shows up with a whole load of pictures he’s painted over the holidays while the shop was closed. I bet one is a haystack. Just when we finally got rid of the last one.”

  He was at the door receiving Mr. Helding’s newest offerings graciously, making special praise of the haystack without so much as a sly glance at her. Sevana was awestruck. Not only was Willy a gifted artist and teacher, he was also an actor.

  CHAPTER 45

  The day for the trip to Calgary arrived cold and white. The highway was ice-covered, and Willy wasn’t able to drive as fast as he wanted. Sevana could feel the tension of his impatience as he concentrated on the road. Len and Ralf and Jillian followed in Len’s sedan—Willy’s sportscar noted more for speed and power than passenger room.

  The road improved with the miles, and with it Willy’s mood, his effervescent personality making a welcome return. To entertain Sevana, he told her about Ralf’s latest collision with his wallet. He’d been tackling a portrait of Jillian from the vision in his head. Problem was, he’d picked up his colors at a warehouse sale, and the warehouse must have frozen at some point, because the paint was proving a very incohesive substance: it had begun peeling off the canvas quite as if Jillian had a bad case of sunburn. Ralf had lost days of work and the twenty dollars he’d paid for his set of bargain acrylics. Len had been rubbing in Ralf’s cheap streak to the max, but Jillian was gloomy because the picture had been extremely complimentary before it started to walk off with itself, and she was afraid his next attempt might not be so unrealistic.

  “Do you think those two will ever get married?” Sevana asked, her thoughts straying to Jillian’s confession on the ski hill.

  “If they do, it will take some adjustment on both sides,” Willy predicted.

  “In what ways?”

  “Well, besides Ralf’s delusional state, which has him convinced he can’t afford a wife, and Jillian being a closet mechanic, which is as incomprehensible to Ralf as it is to the rest of us—have you ever been in Jillian’s apartment?”

  “No, why?”

  “It’s neat,” said Willy, “almost scary-neat. You know when she washes the dishes? Afterwards she puts them all away, and the dish drainer and the dish soap and the dishcloth—nothing in sight but the clean kitchen sink. I left a coffee cup on the counter over there once, went back for it a few minutes later and it was gone, vanished—like it’d been sucked into a black hole. Ralf, I don’t know if he could live like that. He’s more laid back about such things.”

  “Still, that’s no reason not to get married if they love each other.”

  “Married,” Willy said softly to himself. “That’s a scary word. Almost as scary as Jillian’s kitchen.” And succeeded in getting a giggle out of Sevana.

  But after a moment’s reflection, she asked, “Does Jillian know Ralf thinks he can’t afford to get married?”

  “Well, yes, she knows,” said Willy. “But she thinks it’s just an excuse because she’s insecure enough to think he’s looking
for one. But it’s not an excuse. Len and I have seen it for ourselves—it’s Ralf to the core.”

  As they entered the outskirts of Calgary, with highrises looming on the skyline and the town sprawling for miles in all directions, Willy became even more animated, brimming with an underlying excitement as he pointed out the sights. The streets were busy, the shops crowded. “Now this is a city!” he exulted, taken up in it all.

  “It’s a lot bigger than Lethbridge,” Sevana admitted.

  “It sure is. Makes Lethbridge look pretty small-town, doesn’t it?”

  “I like Lethbridge. It’s such a friendly place.”

  “Nothing wrong with it,” Willy granted her, “except I’m not going anywhere in it. I want to be in the thick of things, Sevana,” he confided, “—right here in the center of trade and commerce and culture. I can’t be satisfied just to establish a comfortable business. I want to be great, well-known.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with such ambitions,” she conceded.

  He drove downtown in all the fast-paced traffic entirely at ease. The others arrived a few minutes later, Len white-knuckled and Ralf accusing him of nearly getting them killed trying to keep up with Willy’s lane changes.

  Jillian was unusually quiet. After the paper had missed a critical morning deadline because her boss had overslept, she had thoughtfully suggested that if he tried her trick of living one hour ahead, he might find it easier to get to work on time. But instead of appreciating the idea, offered in genuine sincerity as something that worked well for her, he’d had just enough touchy pride to take it as a criticism of his frequent tardiness—not to mention an affront to his authority in general—creating an ongoing antagonism in their office relationship. Ralf had told her to laugh it off since she’d only been trying to help; but she was so traumatized by the incident that she’d decided to first count to three before she said anything ever again, to make sure it wasn’t something she would regret. She started to say something several times, but each time stopped and said, “Um—never mind.”