Stony River

by Ciarra Montanna

  “I see you’re reading a good book,” he noted, settling on the edge of the other chair as if he intended to stay only a minute. “Thought I’d stop and see if there’s anything you need before I go.” He was about to leave for his week at the mission.

  “I don’t know of anything, David. I appreciate you thinking of me, though.”

  “You’ll be gone by the time I get back.” They had already said their goodbyes officially Wednesday night at church. He had even organized a small party in her honor, to which he had contributed some sunken cupcakes no one had touched. Nobody would be happier to have Krysta home than the members of the food committee. “Is Willy helping you with the move?”

  “Yes, he’s got it all arranged.” There was something she liked about his eyes. They were surrounded by eyelashes darker than his blond hair, intensifying their blueness. Now they were considering her with some unknown thought behind them. “I’ll look up the church you told me about in Calgary,” she said, to fill a little pause that had fallen in the room.

  “That makes me feel better about you going.”

  Even though he had never said so, she suspected he had guessed about Willy and her. And she felt he was disappointed. Maybe he was still hoping she would distract Joel from Chantal and save the day. But life wasn’t perfect; she was sorry she couldn’t accommodate his rosy, unrealistic wishes concerning her and his good friend Joel. He was such an idealist—the way she had been before she was disillusioned.

  “Well, I’d better be on my way. I’ve got dinner at the Johnsons’, and a few other people to see before I leave.” He nudged his chair back in.

  “Making the rounds?” she asked, making no effort to hide her regard. Ever the vigilant shepherd of the flock.

  “You could say that. Probably it’s foolish of me, thinking I’m more indispensable to people than I really am.” Looking bemused, he moved to the door.

  “No—oh, no. You make everything right somehow. I can’t ever thank you and Krysta for your many kindnesses to me.”

  “I wouldn’t say they were so many,” he said, but he beamed at her words. “You be sure to let me know if there’s ever anything you need, won’t you, Sevana—even after you move? I’ll still just be a phone call away.”

  She nodded wordlessly. There was a tight constriction in her throat. She was desperately unhappy, but she could not tell him that.

  Then he sighed, dropped his hand from the doorknob. “There’s no use evading it,” he said reluctantly. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time, and there’s no sense leaving until I do.”

  Sevana’s heart began to pound, and for a minute everything seemed wrong. Krysta’s extended absences flashed through her mind, the cordial attentions David had paid her, even the odd intensity of his presence there in the room—and her eyes flew to his, afraid to hear what his next words might be. But quickly she saw how unfounded her fears were as he continued, “There is a despair in your eyes I don’t miss, Sevana. When you smile, your eyes do not. Are you having trouble with Willy again? Or perhaps your job?”

  “No, Willy is behaving perfectly. And my job is going well, better than I could ask.”

  “Then why do I get the feeling your heart is not here, but somewhere else entirely?”

  It was useless to deny the truth when he’d discerned it with such accurate insight. “I’m not sure where it is anymore,” she admitted. Her lostness had become so much a part of her, it was no longer such a sharp-edged, painful emotion as a quiet, dug-in futility.

  He came back to his chair again. “It must be somewhere,” he insisted.

  “I think always of Stony River,” she said, the statement holding no other significance to her than simple fact.

  “I see.” He took a moment to ponder that declaration. “I lived in Cragmont not many years ago, you know.”

  She nodded.

  “It was my first pastorate after seminary, when the call was so new I was still living in a state of elevated expectancy. Even the church was new—they were just finishing the building when I came. I helped frame the windows and doors, quite an undertaking for someone more accustomed to writing dissertations than wielding a hammer. And I’d just met Krysta a few months before, and already knew she was the one for me, so I suppose that added to my overall sense of anticipation.”

  Sevana was interested in this divulgence. “Where did you meet her?”

  “On the reserve where she’s teaching now. My seminary had a working ministry with that mission, where she was volunteering as a teacher and cook. Why do you think I knew right away I couldn’t live without her?” he asked in self-effacing humor. “We kept up a close correspondence all the time I was at Cragmont. I suppose being in love enhanced my perception of the area. But whatever the reason, that town will always stand out as an exceptional place in my mind.”

  “It is an exceptional place, a place entirely its own. It’s a place of unforgettable beauty.” Emotion warmed in her tone despite her mood of detachment.

  “Perhaps you feel that way because it belongs to you,” he suggested, hearing the new timbre of her voice.

  “No, I don’t think so.” Her eyes played on his with a certain rueful awareness. “I think I feel that way to remind me some things are unattainable.”

  “Unattainable, how?”

  “It’s a place that belongs to my past, not my future.”

  The good preacher regarded her thoughtfully. “So you are settling for the attainable?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “It only makes sense. What good is the unobtainable? If you want anything at all, you’d better go for what you can have.”

  “And you are happy with that?”

  The spirit went out of her. She looked down at the worn pages of the Bible. “Happy, no—I can find no happiness,” she said, low. “My life is better than I hoped, and yet I find it’s not enough. Perhaps it would have been, if I hadn’t spent last summer in the mountains.”

  “You were happy then?”

  “Oh yes!” Her face lit for a fleeting second. “I didn’t know such a life could be, it was so good.”

  “Like a good dream,” David supplied, understanding her.

  “Yes, it was like a dream,” she agreed sadly, “and like a dream, quickly gone. I loved it even then—and yet when I looked at the mountains, I thought they were calling me to something I had to go search for. I thought I would find it here in a life of art, but it hasn’t turned out that way. And now that life is lost, and this isn’t the life I want, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “I didn’t know,” David confessed. He sounded regretful, as if he considered himself negligent in his duties. “All this time I thought you were wholly intent on pursuing life as an artist—as which, may I say, you are doing a very fine job.”

  “Thank you.” She gave a hint of a smile. “All my life it’s been my plan to do just what I’m doing now. But I didn’t know I would find other dreams along the way.”

  “No one can know their whole heart at once, Sevana,” he assured her. “It’s a slow process, often just a hit-and-miss process, discovering what’s in it. Sometimes you stumble onto your main purpose in life quite unintentionally, and you realize with surprise it was what you were meant for all along. It’s a valuable thing, indeed, when you learn what it is you want, and your goal becomes clear and defined.”

  “It does no good to know what you want, when it exists only as a memory,” she said absolutely.

  “Maybe so, maybe not.” David didn’t commit to agree. “What if this discovery—this realization of what you really want—was necessary before you could pursue it? You can’t seek a dream until you know what it is you’re looking for, can you?”

  “No—” she said dubiously, “but is a lost dream worth seeking?”

  “Well, Sevana,” David said, very kindly, “much of the truth of life is a contradiction—the very opposite of what we might expect. Sometimes the things that seem irretrievable are the very thing
s God is keeping to give back to us. I am no stranger to despair myself, and in the darkest time of my own life—when Krysta broke our engagement and went off like some zealous missionary to work with Indian children in the Northwest Territories, and all I’d hoped for was gone—He gave me back my best dreams, and more. But then, who should know my heart better than He? And why should He make me with the dreams I have, if He doesn’t intend to let them come to be?”

  Sevana looked at him skeptically, wanting to believe him, but not fully able to. But despite her cynicism, something that had been too tightly drawn unknotted, some strain that had been a constant in her over many months relaxed. A bit of hope woke at his assertions—and she realized hope was a quality she’d possessed very little of, for a very long time.

  “Never be deaf to what your heart’s telling you, Sevana,” he went on, when she said nothing in reply, “even if it seems completely out of reach, or everything argues against it. One thing I’ve become convinced of beyond any doubt…the ideas that won’t go away, even when there’s no reason for them to stay…the things you are sure of, even when there isn’t any evidence to support them…those things are more real—always more real!—than the world around you. And in the end, they will become what is true before your eyes.”

  She tried to grasp the significance of his statements, remembering someone else who had spoken about the truth of life lying behind the visible world. “You sound like Joel,” she said.

  David grinned widely. “I take that as a great compliment.” Then he glanced at his watch. “Not much time,” he said regretfully. “I’m due at the Johnsons right now. Just remember, Sevana, even if you can’t make your dreams come to life, there is Someone who can—just as surely as He gave them to you in the first place. But that’s something you must find out for yourself.”

  She offered him a tentative nod. She knew he was in a hurry, but her curiosity had to be satisfied on one point. “What made Krysta change her mind?”

  David paused by his chair. “Well, she went off to a small settlement up by Yellowknife and got in over her head. She’d always wanted to work with children, but she soon realized she belonged with me as a pastor’s wife instead of being a missionary out on her own. But you see, Sevana, I know all about losing someone to the frozen North.” His parting smile held special significance as he conducted himself out.

  Sevana paced the room when he was gone. The very air seemed electrified with possibility. What if it was true? What if the things in her deepest soul did not exist merely to torment her by their lack of being, but were a signpost pointing to what she was intended for? The very prospect that her destiny might be the same as the desire that lay within her heart, filled her with an energy the apartment couldn’t contain. She was out the door very fast for the prairie.

  She walked north to the lone tree, seeking it as she would a loyal comrade who had participated in her trials, and leaned against the scabby trunk which had supported her during the times she’d had no strength to stand alone. She thought back over what David had said, and it was like a precious thing she was holding onto carefully so she wouldn’t lose it. And because of his encouragement, she sent up a prayer beyond that sunwashed expanse to the Master of Destiny—hesitantly at first, but then the words came more freely, as she dared to ask that if the dreams she possessed were for a reason, He would see fit to rescue what was lost, and make the things that lived in her heart a reality.

  And then she stood silent in wonder, for within her being was a quietness never hers before…a deep calm like the stillness in the high pasture, like the silence of the mountains. She wasn’t sure what the outcome of her request would be, but one thing was settled to her satisfaction anyway. How had she ever thought she had left Him behind at Stony River? He might walk the high paths of the mountains, but He walked that barren plain as well.

  Then she was running through the fields, feeling light, feeling like laughing, racing the setting sun back to town. The warm evening breeze was skimming the earth, brushing over the wild grasses, and she lifted her face in gladness to it. It was only the ordinary prairie wind, but it sounded like music.

  Willy was at the apartment looking for her. He said all his kitchen effects were boxed up, so he was going to eat out—and he’d come to take her with him.

  “I can’t,” she said radiantly. “I have to stay home and pack. I didn’t get anything done this afternoon, so I’m way behind.”

  “Well, don’t look so happy about it.” Willy looked at her curiously.

  “I can’t help it,” she said, and tried to explain: “I just had a long talk with David.”

  “The preacher?” Willy acted taken aback. “Isn’t he married?”

  “Yes, of course—what are you talking about?” She waved her hand helplessly because he didn’t understand. “He just helped me with some of the things I’ve been wondering about. You know, Willy, I don’t think we can ever know what it all means, without taking into account there’s more to life beyond what we see.”

  But Willy was not sufficiently interested in the metaphysical to question her further. Instead he said he guessed that since she had a new man in her life, he would have to drink away the pain with old friends who had not yet cast him off—and left her alone with a happiness that boasted no solid evidence, but was anchored in something as real as if it had.

  CHAPTER 51

  The day following was the last day at the shop. The movers arrived to box up the inventory and transfer it to Calgary. All that was left for Willy and Sevana was to gather the few items they wanted to hand-carry to Calgary, and say goodbye to their openly woebegone customers, who dropped by in a steady stream to view the dismantling of their treasured art center and munch on the gargantuan pyramid of glazed doughnuts Willy had ordered in for the occasion.

  Willy was in a state of positive euphoria, certain he was on the threshold of greater and more lucrative prestige and popularity. Sevana was quieter, but was persuaded that if she waited, sometime light would come to her, sometime she would see the things she was supposed to understand.

  At noon Sevana and Willy stood outside the shop a last time. They didn’t linger long, for the moving van Willy had rented for their personal belongings was due to arrive at his house any time.

  “End of an era,” Willy said meditatively. “But it’s only the prologue of bigger things to come. Can you be ready for the truck by late this afternoon?”

  Sevana answered to the affirmative and hurried upstairs. Her apartment was in disarray. The bedroom was only half packed, and the kitchen counter and stove were piled indiscriminately with the contents of drawers and cupboards. To put off dealing with the chaos, she sat down and went through the day’s mail. From between two circulars fell a small square envelope with no return address.

  She opened it without thought, then realized what it was by the gilt-edged card. A chill fell over her the way a cloud eclipses a sunny day. Joel Wilder and Chantal Rycroft request the honor of your presence…June 27…Vancouver, B.C… She read it in a blur, a tightness constricting her chest. There was no accompanying note. The only personalization was the handwritten envelope itself, addressed to Sevana in a fluid script.

  She looked at her hand. It was shaking. Last night she had been on some kind of cloud, but this was real life staring her in the face. And she had known it was coming. It was just hard to see it written down, the embossed script on satin paper driving home the fact it was really going to happen.

  She tried to sort out the implications. Joel must be back, to give Chantal the go-ahead for a date—unless he had been in contact with her from the Yukon. And he must have given her his guest list, because Chantal would not invite her on her own…unless this was her way of announcing she had won?

  She hurled the card across the room and stood up pretending she didn’t care. She’d been having trouble getting up enthusiasm for this move, but now she had all the motivation she needed. Surely in the years to come she would cease to think about that da
rk-eyed woodsman, and to feel at times he was thinking about her, too—so she could almost swear their thoughts touched over the miles. She started jamming kitchenware into a box.

  There was a thump—she thought some precarious item had fallen over in the clutter. But no, it was someone at the entry. She stepped around a heap of boxes to open the door to Fenn’s boss. “Mr. Sutter!” She stared at his homely round face, quite without the ability to account for him there. “It’s a surprise to see you here!”

  “Hello there, Sevana,” Henry Sutter said affably enough, but looking ill-at-ease as he hooked his thumbs through his suspenders.

  “Come in! I’m sorry about the mess—I’m in the middle of a move. How are you?”

  “Fine, fine.” His heartiness sounded a bit hollow, and he didn’t move from where he stood. “Came over this way on business, and thought I’d stop by. Heard you were living at the art shop, and there was only one in the phone book.” He scuffed at the threshold with his logging boot. “You—haven’t heard from Fenn lately, have you?”

  Suddenly she was terribly concerned by his presence there. “No, why?” she asked quickly.

  “Guess you haven’t heard, then. He had an accident last week, hit by a rolling log.”

  As she gasped and took hold of the edge of the door, the color draining from her face, he hurried to add, “He’s okay—just a few broken ribs and so on. Could’ve been a lot worse. Doc taped him up and sent him home to mend. Guess he won’t be logging for a while, though.”

  Sevana still felt weak from the fright. “I didn’t know anything about it. Are you sure he’s all right?”

  “I’ve been out to check on him myself. He’s on the mend, but having a hard time getting around. He needs someone to stay with him, but you know how he is—he’d never ask for help. He’d die doing it himself first.”