Turtle Valley

by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

  Jude set the chair down at the head of a table, beside his wife, and Lillian took her place in it like a queen about to hold court. Her hair already contained streaks of grey, and the extra weight she carried made her look much older than Jude, though likely she wasn’t more than five years his senior. She had suffered from multiple sclerosis since I had known her, and her limp accentuated the impression of age to the point that I had assumed they were mother and son when I had first seen them together. They had not elected to have a child up to this point; I assumed her illness was the reason.

  “You know Katrine,” Jude shouted over the music.

  Lillian nodded and smiled. “Of course I do.” She took my hand. “You’ve grown into such a beautiful young woman.” She turned to Jude but didn’t let go of my hand. “You should ask her to sit for you, don’t you think? She’d make a wonderful model.”

  Jude crossed his arms and glanced away, at the dance floor. “Yes, I suppose she would.”

  Lillian dropped my hand.

  “Katrine won’t be staying long,” Jude said, “so I’ll get a ride back home with her.”

  “Oh?” said Lillian.

  “As long as that’s all right with you,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “Evidently she has to have a dance with Gus first, though it seems he’s already engaged.”

  My father was on the dance floor with Mrs. Simms, bounding out a polka to the band’s rendition of Blondie’s “Call Me.” The younger dancers boogied listlessly around them, stepping out of the way as my father and his dance partner swung through the room.

  “We saw a moose and her calf on the way here,” I said.

  “I’ve never seen moose in this valley,” said Lillian.

  “Katrine got some photos of them, for the paper.”

  “At least now I’ve got something for the front page.”

  “You should do a story on Jude,” said Lillian. “He’s got a show coming up in a couple of weeks. You could get some photos of him during the next raku firing. High drama. Lots of smoke and fire.”

  “I can’t work with people watching me.”

  “You are trying to sell these pots, aren’t you?”

  “I’ll do a story,” I said. “When are you firing next?”

  “You said Sunday, right?” said Lillian.

  “I usually drive out from Salmon Arm on Sunday nights to have supper with Mom and Dad,” I said. “I could stop in at your place on my way by.”

  Jude made a face.

  Lillian reached up to pat his cheek. “Think publicity. Think mortgage payments. You’d think with a gorgeous mug like that he wouldn’t mind having his picture taken.”

  Jude put his hands up. “Okay! Okay! But not until late in the day, when I’m in the flow. When distraction is less of an issue.”

  We all watched the dancers for a moment.

  “So, you want a beer?” Jude asked me. “Or may I have the honour of this dance?”

  “Is that all right?” I asked Lillian.

  “Go! Dance! God knows I can’t.”

  Jude gave an exaggerated bow and held out his arm to escort me to the floor, and, following my father’s lead, he charged me around the room in a polka, forcing other dancers to jump out of the way. When the song ended, the band began to play the Red River Waltz, a tune I knew my father must have requested. Jude and I stood facing each other for a few moments, breathless, with our hands hanging at our sides, watching my father and Mrs. Simms dance. Then Jude held out his arms for a waltzer’s embrace. “Shall we?” he said.

  I glanced over at Lillian. She was turned the other way, chatting with Ruth Samuels, who ran the organic carrot farm near the reserve. “Lillian won’t mind?”

  He shrugged and placed a hand on my waist to guide me around the floor. As we circled, I looked over his shoulder at the neighbours I had known all my life, drinking beer from cans and wine from plastic cups and shouting at each other across the tables. Mr. Simms, who could no longer dance comfortably because of his arthritis. Sandra Henderson, who had once taped a note on my back that read Wide Load when we were in grade five. Uncle Dan, my mother’s brother, red-faced and tipsy on Kokanee, flirting over a table with Mrs. Randalls. He winked a conspirator’s wink at me when he caught me looking his way.

  Jude’s cheek brushed against mine. “You smell like cookies,” he said. “Vanilla.”

  The back of his shoulder where I held him was damp from sweat. His hand was hot in mine. I felt him begin to grow against my thigh before he stepped back to put a space between us.

  11.

  THIS WAS WHAT I MADE FUDGE FOR: the feel of the little ball between my fingers in the cold water as I tested it, the chewy texture of it between my teeth. That first sweet taste. When I was sure it was ready, I set the pan into a sink partly filled with cold water, then added the butter and vanilla before stirring it. When it suddenly thickened, became lighter in colour and lost its sheen, I poured the penuche into a greased pan.

  I checked Jeremy, and then Ezra, to make sure they were both sleeping soundly, then I picked up Jude’s box, the tray of penuche, and the manila envelope containing my grandfather’s files, and slipped outside to follow the path across the field. A water bomber that had just been put on night duty droned low overhead. But still the fire marched on, breaking through the fire guards that ground crews had built, advancing ever farther across the top of the range.

  Jude’s kiln shed stood adjacent to his studio and had an open floor plan that made me think of the cookhouses at some government parks. Large garage doors could be opened on three sides to allow the air to flow through. Shelves all around the kiln held glazed pots and vases, ready for the raku firing. A few finished pieces sat here and there on the top shelves.

  Inside the open kiln, pots appeared translucent as the glazes swam on their surfaces. Jude lifted one of these vases with a pair of blackened tongs and carried it to a galvanized garbage can. He wore a red flame-resistant Nomex workshirt, and heavy Kevlar gloves that extended up his arms. A cloth smoke mask was strung around his neck, but he didn’t wear it as he worked. His hair was as unruly as ever, but peppered now with grey.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you bear a striking resemblance to Harrison Ford?”

  He swung around and grinned. “Only you.” He pulled out another pot and placed it in a garbage can and arranged newsprint around it as flames shot up over his gloved hands. “I didn’t think you were coming. I mean, I was just thinking, why would I imagine that you would come? But here you are.”

  “It took me a little while to get organized. I was making fudge.”

  “You were making fudge in the middle of the night?”

  “You’re firing raku when we could be evacuated at any moment?”

  “What are we supposed to do? Put our lives on hold? My sister phoned from Vancouver last night, and I told her I was making linguini and she said, you’re cooking? As if that wasn’t the thing to do when the mountain above you is on fire. But you’ve got to eat, right?” He went back to the kiln for another pot. “And I’ve got a show in Vernon next week.”

  I leaned against the doorframe to watch him work.

  “How can you get away with a firing during this evacuation alert?” I asked him.

  “I’m working in a contained area. It’s legal.”

  “But is it wise? You could start another fire.”

  He grinned at me. “Haven’t yet.”

  He closed the kiln to bring it back up to temperature, then lifted each of the garbage-can lids one by one, to let more air in, to stuff more newspaper around the pots, to spritz some with salt water and vegetable oil to further crackle their glazes. Flames blasted up from the garbage cans as he opened them, and bits of burning newspaper swirled up and drifted down to the concrete floor. The insides of the garbage cans were black from countless fires.

  “You and Val were working pretty late tonight,” he said.

  “We’re still hauling out Mom’s things, and now
we’ve got to make room for a hospital bed for Dad. The cancer has spread to his bones. It looks like a matter of weeks.”

  He stood straight to face me. “Oh, Katrine.”

  “He refuses to stay in the hospital. We hope to bring him home tomorrow. I don’t think it’s a good idea, but it’s what he wants.”

  “I’d want to die at home.” His eyes were glistening. I had forgotten this, his ability to feel so passionately, to tear up so readily over another’s heartache. Years before, I had watched him wipe his eyes over newscasts describing the plight of earthquake victims, or those who had lost their homes to floods. In my ungenerous moments his sentimentality had annoyed me. But now it had the effect of making me weep as well. I wiped the corner of my eye with the heel of my hand and turned away.

  “Here,” he said. “Let me put in my next load so we can talk.”

  I watched him stack his glazed pots and plates, cups and teapots into the kiln. He closed the lid with gloved hands and flames shot up out of the hole at the top of the kiln.

  “So, that story I was telling you about?” I said. “How my grandfather went missing on the mountain? Val told me tonight that he was never found.”

  Jude flicked his hot gloves to the ground in one practised motion. His hands were dirty with soot and newspaper ink. “He died up there? Why would they keep that from you?”

  “I don’t know. Val made noises about how Mom didn’t want to talk about it, that it was all too painful. And it would have been.” I pulled the manila envelope off the box. “Val found my grandfather’s military files, and his files from Essondale.”

  “Essondale?”

  “A mental hospital. Evidently he was institutionalized a number of times. He was shell-shocked, but he’d also sustained a brain injury during the First World War.”

  Jude rubbed his hands on his pants before taking the files from me.

  “It looks like he had paranoid delusions,” I said, “and thought something was following him, out to get him. He didn’t trust his neighbours, Uncle Valentine in particular. Look at this letter he wrote my grandmother. He thought Valentine was sweet on her. But even with all they had to deal with, there was still passion between my grandparents. He talks here about how she fed him fudge from her fingers.”

  I watched his face as he read through the letter and then paged through the Essondale file. “This letter from the doctor who admitted him is pretty interesting,” he said, and he read it aloud: “Nearly a year ago I considered him insane, but a second certificate was not forthcoming and he was treated at Shaughnessey Hospital and later allowed to go home. He is not safe (in my opinion) to be at liberty at home. He was brought in today by the provincial police after he fired on a neighbour who tried to intervene when Weeks threatened his own family with a gun. His wife had evidently been trying to escape the farm along with her daughter when the incident occurred. His wife is understandably frightened of him. Last year when he was brought in the police—”

  I took the letter from him. “—informed us that he had attempted to kill a hired hand and was nearly successful, though I fancy this was an exaggeration.” I tapped the letter. “Dad was his hired hand. I wonder if that’s how he got the scar, why Mom and Dad wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “What scar?”

  “He has a nasty scar on his arm. He and Mom always said it was from a hunting accident, but when I asked about it in the hospital, Dad got the story wrong. Both he and Mom seemed flustered, as if they were hiding something.”

  “But why would they lie about any of this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He handed me the files. “So, are you going to offer me some of that fudge, or what?”

  “I don’t know why I brought it over. It won’t set in this heat. I’ll have to put it in the fridge.”

  “I’d like a taste anyway.”

  “I don’t have anything to cut it with.”

  He handed me a knife that had sat on a plate with a half-eaten apple. “Don’t worry, it’s clean,” he said, when he saw me inspecting it.

  I cut into the penuche, wishing I had a spoon instead, and offered him a limp piece. He held up his blackened hands and pointed to his mouth. “You mind?”

  As I held it out for him, he grasped the fudge with his lips, taking in my finger as well. The thrill of his teeth on my skin. He held up his hands again. “Let me wash up.”

  I watched him pull his T-shirt over his head and drop it to the floor. The slick of sweat over skin, his muscles in motion as he hoisted a bucket up from the floor and spilled water into a white enamelware washbasin. Then he washed, splashing water over his face and hair. He flicked the basin with the nail of his index finger, setting it ringing. “I found this in your uncle’s cabin years ago,” he said.

  “It was Valentine’s?”

  He picked up a towel to dry his hands and face. “I imagine I should have offered it to your parents, but I liked it.”

  I ran my fingers around the rim of the basin until I became aware that he was watching me. His bare chest: the moles like constellations, the dark nipples.

  “So, what’s with the box?” he said.

  “The stuff in it isn’t mine. Or it’s not all mine in any case.” I opened the flaps, pushed aside the cards and letters Jude had given me, and showed him the sketchbook. On the cover, in Jude’s handwriting, was my name, Katrine. On the first page was a drawing of me, sitting at the table in my mother’s kitchen, holding a small makeup mirror in my hand. Below the sketch were Jude’s notes:

  I spent the evening at Gus and Beth Svensson’s along with Lillian and a handful of Beth’s other friends and neighbours, a birthday party for their daughter Kat, though Kat didn’t seem too happy about it. Something her mother had forced on her, I think, as she was surrounded by her mother’s friends and not her own. I refilled Lillian’s coffee from the pot on the stove and saw the birthday girl sitting as if by herself at the kitchen table, ignoring the others at the table around her, with her cake in front of her, drawing the late evening sun into the room with her purse mirror, playing with the light as a child might. I thought that scene would stay with me forever, but when I started to sketch at home, this was as much as I could remember. Can’t get her expression right. She looked so lonely. Likely she was only bored. She’s so lovely. I’m thinking of asking her to sit for me.

  I didn’t remember the moment he wrote of. I had lost so much of my life. Was I ever capable of that kind of rudeness, playing with my purse mirror and ignoring the guests at my own party, to make my unhappiness with my mother perfectly clear?

  She’s so lovely.

  “I didn’t know you had noticed me that early on,” I said.

  “How could I admit to that? You were just a girl. And I was married.”

  I turned the pages in the sketchbook. After that drawing there was a flurry of sketches of me that Jude had done in his studio as Lillian chatted with friends in her kitchen. Under one sketch, he had written, The smell of her! Vanilla, I think. I’m not sure if it’s perfume or the scent of apple pie or coffeecake she might have eaten. Or even her natural smell. She said she wasn’t seeing anyone. I hope she’s not seeing anyone.

  I tapped the note. “Do you think I would have let you kiss me that night if I had had someone?”

  “I kissed you and I had Lillian.”

  “You startled me, you know, with that first kiss. You had me sitting there, just so, all arranged like you wanted—”

  “No. Like I always saw you sitting, with one knee up, and the other foot tucked under.”

  “Then you jumped up all of a sudden and marched over to me, still carrying your sketchbook, so I thought you were about to rearrange my hair or my clothing again. But you leaned down and kissed me. Surprised the hell out of me. Your beard stubble tickled my upper lip.”

  “I remember thinking, Her lips are so soft.”

  “You were so, I don’t know … determined.”

  “I was scared shitless. I figured if I didn
’t make myself kiss you then, that night, while I had the opportunity, I wasn’t going to.”

  “Scared?” I said. “Of me?”

  “I wanted to kiss you from that first time we got together, when you dropped me and Lillian’s bloody great gothic chair off at the Turtle Valley hall for that dance. Don’t you remember? When I apologized for being such an ass, about what I said about your photographs in the Observer. I put my arm over the seat behind you. Right there, I wanted to kiss you. But there was a hall full of people in front of us. And Lillian.”

  I looked down at the sketchbook, and leafed through it, feeling shy. There was sketch after sketch of me. At first I was clothed, then naked, and then my belly was as round and ripe as a pumpkin. Then the sketches ended. I paged through the remainder of the sketchbook, following a progressively thinning trail of my life: a grin-and-grab photo of me flanked by smiling arts council members holding a scholarship cheque to help me on my way back to university, a mug shot next to a little story that said I was leaving, an invitation to my wedding at the Turtle Valley Memorial Hall only a few months later that my mother must have sent Jude, against my wishes. Then many empty pages; more than half the book was left unfilled.

  “I had no idea you kept a sketchbook, a scrapbook really, about me, as if I was a subject you were studying.”