Stony River

by Ciarra Montanna

  “I could go,” she said quickly.

  “That’s what I figured.” He nodded in ready agreement. “Figured you’d be the one to ask. Came by to see if you could. ’Course I was over this way anyway,” he reiterated, not wanting her to feel under obligation. “I didn’t say anything to Fenn. This here was just my idea.”

  “Of course I’ll go.” Her thoughts were in a whirl. “All this can wait.” With a bare look and a flutter of the hand she dismissed the entirety of her possessions. “I can go with you now.” She appeared poised to fly out the door without further notice.

  “Take your time, pack what you need,” he said easily. “I’ll wait in the truck.” Looking gratified and much relieved, he turned for the stairs.

  As Sevana stuffed a satchel with clothes, her thoughts were all for Fenn. She wondered how bad off he really was, and what his reaction would be when she showed up at his door. Would he be grateful or resentful?—she couldn’t decide.

  Then she ran down to call Willy on the shop phone to tell him what had happened. How swiftly one’s life could change—in an instant! Willy was not pleased, but admitted he could get along without her for a little while. She apologized for throwing a hitch into his well-ordered plans and said she’d move later on her own. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she promised. In the background she could hear Ralf and Len arguing over the best way to move the ponderous cherry bookcase they had inherited when Willy realized the bay window took up too much of his new living room.

  “Call me every night,” Willy ordered.

  “Fenn doesn’t have a phone. I’ll write. Good luck with the shop, Willy.”

  “Come back soon, or I’ll come get you myself. How do you get there?” he asked after additional thought.

  “It’s forty-seven miles up the river from Cragmont,” she told him as she hung up.

  Riding west with Mr. Sutter, she listened as he described the accident, and shuddered to think of it. Fenn and Mr. Sutter had been working below a log deck when the tree holding it snapped, and the whole deck had cut loose and started rolling down the hill toward them. “We both heard it,” said Mr. Sutter, “but when Fenn looked up and saw it coming, he stopped dead in his tracks. I yelled at him, but he didn’t move a muscle. I ran back and grabbed him and pulled him along until he came to his senses, and then he ran like hell. We cleared the main deck, but a couple of the logs bounced and went rolling off a different direction. The end of one caught Fenn and knocked him flat. ’Fraid he was a goner there for a while. He was knocked out cold, but he came around. We got him to the doc and he fixed him up. Five cracked ribs, and a knock on the head to boot.”

  Sevana was gripping her hands together so tightly her knuckles showed white. “Oh Mr. Sutter,” she breathed thankfully, “you saved his life!”

  “Well now,” he rubbed a hand over his stubbly whiskers, “guess maybe I did. My first instinct was just to get the hell out of there—but a man can’t leave somebody in a pinch like that, just to save his own skin. I took him home and saw to it he was fixed for groceries, but that’s about all I could do. Looked in on him a few times, and he’s not making out too well.”

  “How does he seem?” she asked. “I mean, his attitude?”

  “Well, that’s one thing. He’s less cantankerous since it happened. Maybe he’s had some time to think.”

  They drove straight through Cragmont and soon the Stony was meeting her eyes. It was high and turbulent, its surging jade waves breaking into wild white foam—in no way the hostage river of her winter trip. The brush and deciduous trees were almost fully leafed-out, sap-green among the towering conifers. And the air!—that inimitable smell of cedar trees and cool river moisture and leafy plants overwhelmed her with a poignant familiarity, causing all the feelings of last summer to come flooding over her, as if she was in those very days again.

  They turned up the side road, rutted from the spring mud, and jostled uphill to the clearing shining plushly in the evening sun. Sevana’s hands were clasped tightly in her lap again. It was all just as it had been a year ago, when she’d laid eyes on it the first time.

  Mr. Sutter pulled in beside Fenn’s truck, leaving the engine running. He walked with Sevana to the house and energetically knocked.

  There was a long wait, then finally a sound within. Fenn slowly opened the door. His eyes, too blue in a washed-out face, went from Mr. Sutter to Sevana. “Fenn,” Mr. Sutter said heartily, “I got you a housekeeper.”

  “I’m getting along,” Fenn said, but held the door wider by way of invitation. Sevana stepped inside.

  “Gotta go,” Mr. Sutter said, handing Sevana her bag over the threshold. “Anything you’re needing from town?”

  “Doing okay,” said Fenn. “Thanks.”

  With a look that wished Sevana luck, Mr. Sutter took his leave.

  Fenn closed the door. As he made his way back to the leather chair and eased into it, Sevana saw how it hurt him to move. “I’m sorry you’re laid up,” she said.

  He shrugged his good shoulder. “Hazard of the job. What are you up to these days?”

  How could she tell him of the things that lived a life of their own in her heart, and would sound so foolish if expressed aloud? “I’m leaving Lethbridge to work in Willy’s new shop and take classes at the University of Calgary,” she said. “But first, I’m going to take care of you…long as you need me.” She took in the disorder of the kitchen—the counter heaped with unwashed dishes, the empty woodbox and water bucket, the cup of cold coffee and bread crumbs on the table. “I wish you’d let me know,” she scolded. “I could have come sooner. You shouldn’t be looking after yourself. I’ll start the stove and make you some dinner.”

  He smiled weakly. “Guess I can’t stop you,” he said.

  CHAPTER 52

  At dinner Fenn ate hungrily, and Sevana wondered how long it’d been since he’d had a good meal. There was plenty of food in the cupboard, but she doubted he’d been able to do much cooking. It seemed to cause him great pain to stand, and he walked with slow, shuffling steps. He’d always been stocky and strong, but now he was thin and gaunt, and his face was pale. It hurt her to see him in such condition, and threw herself into the work that had to be done with zeal.

  Fenn went out on the porch after dinner. He was sitting bowed in reflections of his own, but looked up when Sevana came out. “Could you look after Trapper?” he asked. “I’ve not been caring for him as I should.” So Sevana filled Trapper’s feedbox and watering trough, and curried him at the barn.

  Fenn thanked her when she returned. “Maybe you could ride him tomorrow. It’s been too long since he was ridden.”

  She was noticing something about him. There was pain in his eyes, and maybe sadness, but not the cold hardness when he looked at her anymore.

  “I’d like to,” she said, taking a seat on the other end of the bench. The pine-rich air was still and dreamlike. After a while she added, “I’d like to ride up to Joel’s place and see the mountains again.”

  “Mountains are still there,” he answered laconically. “But you won’t be finding Joel.”

  It was only then, when her heart plunged so peculiarly at his words, that she realized she’d secretly been hoping when she climbed the mountain again, she would find Joel back home in his cabin where he belonged. She had almost trusted that magic to be stronger than anything else. “I know. I meant Mr. Radnor’s place.”

  “Randall isn’t there, either,” remarked Fenn. “His fish project is keeping him longer than he was told. And the boys at camp are ecstatic to know they’re not currently being watched by the Eye of God.”

  There was a long silence between them, in which the low sun spilled yellow-gold over the feathery green forests as Sevana had seen so many times before. A thrush shrilled a single plaintive note, piercing the quiet. A love for the place swept her powerfully. Everything in her rose up in resistance for not being able to call it her own. In her heart it was hers, it always had been; it was impossible to deny t
he sense of belonging.

  “What’s this about Calgary?” Fenn asked suddenly. “What’s wrong with Lethbridge?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with it. But Willy moved the art shop to Calgary, and I’m moving with it.”

  “Well, it’s worth it for a dream, isn’t it?” he asked—but remarkably, there was no sarcasm in the words. “Painting has always been your dream, hasn’t it, Sevana?”

  Her eyes were on his face, wondering at how much he had changed. “Yes, it has,” she replied slowly. “One of them, anyway.”

  Soon Fenn went upstairs, for the unrelenting pain took his stamina from him. Sevana went upstairs, too, and made up her old bed on the windowbench. But then she went out and sat on the porch again, while the line of shadow crept slowly up the timbered wall opposite and the valley echoed with the river’s windlike rushing. And Sevana was remembering, and her heart was full. When dusk slowly deepened into night, she stole up to bed and soon slept peacefully—for if only for a little while, yet for now she was home.

  In the morning she was overjoyed to wake to the hand-hewn logs and rafter beams with their old-timbered look and smell. She slipped down to the river first thing while Fenn slept on. The whole bank was submerged, the whitewater dashing past with unbridled song and unstoppable force. Even the sitting rock was engulfed, the old cedar standing up to its feet in water. All that water going by so continuously! She tried to comprehend that it was the snow that had buried the high country all winter. She tested it with a finger—icy water hurrying, racing down from the wilderness. Winter had never gone by so fast.

  She began on the housework in earnest when she returned, and by the time Fenn came down for a late breakfast, things were in good order. “Sevana, what did you do to this place?” he exclaimed, sitting down to the hot oatmeal she brought him. “I’m not going to be able to find anything.”

  After breakfast she helped him locate his boots and his book. When he was settled in the leather chair, he told her to get on up the mountain—he didn’t need her waiting on him hand and foot. She smiled at him happily and went to get Trapper. She liked very much the man she saw in him now, not much hidden by his gruff exterior.

  She rode away eagerly, flying on Trapper like old times through the shaded wood. She remembered how that enclosed forest had intimidated her the first time she’d ventured into it, but now she loved its viridian depths, its valuable peace. A raven cawed, and she joyfully felt like answering it back. But her spirits fell when the road opened up to the empty turnaround. It was hard to let go that ridiculous, stubbornly established hope that the black truck would be parked there, just as it always had been.

  The sight of the cabin standing deserted hurt her again: nothing could keep her from it—not logic, nor an efficiency-obsessed game warden, nor a gilt wedding invitation residing somewhere on her living room floor. She even knocked at the door, waited a long time before turning away. At the bottom of the pasture she stopped again, vainly scanning the empty hillside for a shepherd and a flock of sheep, before she dismounted and led Trapper to the top.

  And then she was standing in the place that had never ceased to occupy her thoughts, the mountains dominating the sky so grandly they dwarfed even her best recollections of them. Everything was exactly as before—the grass-covered slope dropping to the valley floor in a breathtaking sweep, like a curtain torn away, to reveal the snowpeaked crests rising in their glory to the sun. It was all so eternal, so unaffected by man’s comings and goings. It would be here year after year for anyone who came to see it—and even if they didn’t.

  Gratitude welled up in her. If she was never there again, there was something momentous in being able to stand attendant on that spot after all the months away. It had happened—her desire had been granted: she had seen Graystone and Old Stormy and Bearclaw again with her own eyes. This moment was hers as a gift forever.

  She took a seat and fingered the lush grass. It was fresh and fine-bladed, growing high, watered by mountain snows and spring rains. If only Goldthread and Hawthorn could be there to revel in it! For all her pleasure, it didn’t seem right to enjoy it without Joel and the flock to share it with.

  Fenn was asleep in the big chair when Sevana got home. She was adding a can of clams to the potato chowder, proud she still remembered how to work the makeshift little can opener, when he hobbled sleepy-eyed into the kitchen and took a chair to watch her work. At dinner he asked how the mountain was, but little else. He seemed possessed by thoughts of his own.

  Sevana washed the dishes and cared for Trapper. When she came back from the barn, Fenn was on the bench watching the smoky blue shadows deepen amid the tree points on the ridgeside. And she couldn’t bear the melancholy in his eyes, and went to put her hand on his shoulder, for she wasn’t afraid of him anymore. Still, she didn’t know what to say.

  He shifted his gaze to rest on her briefly, then back to the far view. “Why did you come, Sevana?” he spoke up.

  “I thought I could be of some help to you,” she said, surprised he should even have to ask.

  “Why would you want to?” There was humility in his voice she’d never heard before.

  She looked at his stoical profile in disbelief that such a perceptive man could be so blind. “Because I love you,” she said.

  At those words, he bowed his head as though they were too great a weight upon him. “Forgive me,” he said after a time, without looking up. “Sevana, forgive me.”

  “I don’t hold a thing against you,” she said in a choked voice. “I’ve always loved you, and I always will.”

  He didn’t look up. It was quiet except for the distant churning of the rapids. Hesitantly she sat beside him. “Fenn, you’ve changed so. Why are you so different now?”

  He straightened, his eyes bright with hints of unshed tears. “It’s been a strange time. I’ll tell you about it, if you’d like.”

  In unspoken agreement she leaned back against the log wall to listen.

  “Remember when I got sick last summer, and I had that dream—that log rolling over and over in the sky? It was so vivid I can recall it yet! I told you it was bad creek water that laid me up, but it was actually a bad combination of peyote and alcohol. At that time something seemed to change; and after that, a darkness would come upon me at times, as if I was standing in the icy breath of a howling black void. Darkness! It would come over me and a nameless fear would grip me, until I would shake from cold and terror.

  “I threw myself into my work—hoping the normal routines of the job would bring me out of the strange unreality haunting me. In the commonplace days of hard labor I could find some stability, but I came to dread the night hours when the darkness might close in on me again. It was not that it was always upon me, but I lived in dread of its return. I would stay awake until weariness forced me to surrender, and even then I would sometimes leave a candle burning all night.

  “When the days grew short—after you left, Sevana—living in the shadow of the mountain, I was often terrified. And all the while I was trying to pull myself out of the unaccountable thing I’d fallen into. I would stay among the crowd at the Whiskyjack rather than spend evenings alone in my own mind, where at any time I could become a hunted man. I’d always been a loner, relied on no one but myself, but now my self was not a refuge to me but a trap.

  “At first I couldn’t understand what had overtaken me, but gradually I came to realize the alteration had a name: it was insanity. I could actually feel my mind slipping away during those times. I figured I’d gone too far with the peyote—something I’d purposely started back in military school as a way to get thrown out of there.

  “I was spooked enough to quit everything cold-turkey, even the Old Crow. I welcomed the return of the sun and felt it burning away some of the darkness, but it didn’t leave me altogether and I was tired of the struggle. Then came the day when I looked up to see the log deck rolling down the hill with the blue sky behind it, rolling as if it was marked for me. And in that instant the dream I�
��d had flashed through my mind, and I understood with perfect clarity the meaning of it all: I was going to die. It had been determined by some dark power, and all that had gone before was a prelude to that final event.

  “I couldn’t move a muscle to save myself, so frozen was I with terror. Then Hawk jerked me so my eyes were no longer riveted on those logs, and I came to my senses and ran for my life—for my life, I tell you!—running from the darkness that was trying to claim me for its own. I didn’t want to spend eternity in the company of that darkness. That thought was even more horrifying than the thought of death itself. But if Hawk hadn’t grabbed me, I would have been crushed by that deck for sure, so certain was my expectation that I was done for. And if I had died, I would have died a bitter man,” he said, as Sevana sat regarding him with wide eyes, for his tale was no ordinary one.

  “You know, Sevana,” he went on, “I’ve had plenty of time to think through all this. A man in trouble is not as arrogant as a man at peace. I still don’t understand everything that’s happened, but I do know I’ve been wrong living as I have. You being here last summer—it changed me, though I wouldn’t admit it. For a long time after you left, I wouldn’t acknowledge my life seemed empty without you. I’ve wished you back since.”

  Tears filled her eyes; and when Fenn put his arm around her and gingerly pulled her to his side, she gave up trying to blink them back and let the drops spill freely against his shoulder.

  The whole land was in shadow now, the air cool and damp. Fenn rose stiffly, steadying himself against the logs. “I shouldn’t have sat out so long,” he said in a strained voice.

  “I’ll help you upstairs.” She went around to his good side and took hold of his arm to support him as they went in the house. But the stairs were too narrow, and she had to let him manage them for himself—following anxiously as he tackled each agonizing step. He sank onto his bed white-faced as she lit the candle. Then she hesitated. She didn’t like to think of leaving him alone to battle such things as he’d spoken of. “Does the darkness come upon you anymore?” she asked quietly.