by Donna Milner
Somewhere In-Between
Donna Milner
Copyright © 2014 Donna Milner
01 02 03 04 05 18 17 16 15 14
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, [email protected].
Caitlin Press Inc.
8100 Alderwood Road,
Halfmoon Bay, BC V0N 1Y1
caitlin-press.com
Text design by Tania Cran.
Cover design by Vici Johnstone.
EPUB by Kathleen Fraser.
Cover photo from Arcangel Images. MI-5794, photographer Mohammed Atani.
Caitlin Press Inc. acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publisher’s Tax Credit.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Milner, Donna, 1946-, author
Somewhere in-between / Donna Milner.
ISBN 978-1-927575-38-3 (EPUB)
I. Title.
PS8626.I457S66 2014 C813'.6 C2013-907875-4
In memory of my mother, Gloria Jonas.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Acknowledgements
About Donna Milner
1
Virgil Blue came with the land. Along with two draft horses, four cow-ponies, one hundred range cattle and a barn full of haying equipment, keeping the reclusive tenant, who occupied the old trapper’s cabin on the six-hundred-acre ranch, was a non-negotiable condition of sale.
Sitting in the overcrowded Tim Hortons on the highway outside of Waverley Creek, Julie O’Dale watches her husband’s reaction as the real estate agent across the table from them brushes over this little detail.
“You won’t even know the old guy’s there,” the fresh-faced young man says, oblivious to Ian’s body language.
Julie raises her mug and holds it in front of her lips to hide her involuntary smile. Well, there’s a deal killer.
The salesman is new since Julie left the business in October, over six months ago. He shuffles through his information package until he finds what he was looking for. “You can’t even see the tenant’s cabin from the main house,” he continues, retrieving a stack of letter-sized photographs from the papers. “Only the million-dollar view of your own private lake.” He passes the glossy photos across the table to Ian. Julie recognizes his technique, this sleight-of-hand minimizing of a negative fact by placing the prospect purchasers on the property. No matter. She lets the rookie realtor, Richard-something—she can’t remember his last name—continue selling illusions. After all, this is Ian’s dream, not hers.
Even the realtor senses this and is directing all his comments to her husband. She might as well not be here. At one time this would have bothered her.
She sips her lukewarm coffee while Ian admires the photographs and Richard extols the virtues of the mini ranch. Mini ranch? Julie would describe this remote six-hundred-acre section of land, with its one-thousand-acre range permit in central British Columbia, as anything but mini. Better adjectives, such as isolated, secluded and wild, come to mind. She is vaguely familiar with the property.
Twenty years ago, when she herself was a newly licensed agent, the previous owners had contacted the office about selling. Julie had taken the call. Full of beginner’s confidence, certain one could learn anything, she had made an appointment to meet with the owners to discuss listing the ranch. How different could selling rural property be from selling houses in town? She would drive out, view the ranch, compare it to the current market, to competitive listings, to recent sales, then come up with a price. It had all seemed so simple.
Early the next morning, armed with statistics and her black leather briefcase—a gift from Ian after she passed her real estate exam—she had followed the owner’s directions west into Chilcotin country. She returned to town that evening, her new white Ford Taurus caked in mud and cow dung, and handed the information over to the office’s ranch expert, Leon Walker.
The seasoned realtor had leaned back in his chair, propped up his polished, yet carefully worn-down-at-the-heel, cowboy boots on his desk and given Julie a paternal smile. He could have warned her, he told her, if only she had let him know she was going to attempt to break into ‘his market.’ Her fatal mistake had been wearing open-toed high heels, forever reducing her credibility in the rural property market to zero.
Pushing back his wide-brim Stetson, Leon had said, “Ranchers expect you to look the part.” The next morning, wearing a snap-button Western dress shirt stretched over his wide girth and tucked into crisply ironed Wranglers, a fist-sized bull rider’s belt buckle at his overhung waist, he took a float plane out to the ranch. Knowing that Leon, a fellow transplant from the city of Vancouver, had moved to Waverley Creek only five years before she had, Julie was certain that he had never ridden a horse, much less a bull. Yet, late that afternoon he had returned to the office with the signed listing in hand. In time, after overhearing his conversations with the local ranchers and cowboys about the weather, cow-calf units, range permits and leases, after witnessing him hold court behind his enormous burl-top desk, his blue heeler curled up at his feet, Julie had come to respect his art for staging. ‘It’s all in perception,’ was his motto and he played it to the fullest.
His young protégé, sitting across the coffee shop table wearing a black bolo tie, matching black cowboy hat and out-of-the-box-new boots, has yet to perfect it. He’s no Leon Walker, but Julie recognizes many of the tag lines of his veteran mentor. Leon, who is still in the business, but by his own definition, getting too old to traipse out into the countryside, had offered to fly them out in a float plane, a trip that would have taken less than half an hour. Julie had refused. She wants Ian to be aware of the reality of the long drive, the vastness of the Chilcotin country.
“Well, let’s have a look-see
at this little piece of paradise,” Richard says, slapping his hands on the table and rising. On the way out, Julie follows closely behind Ian, her eyes locked on the back of his brushed suede jacket. Meeting here was a mistake. She had momentarily forgotten that, like every other Tim Hortons she has ever been in, this one on the outskirts of town is the gathering place of the locals. As usual, ranchers wearing dusty cowboy hats huddle in one corner, loggers and truckers in grease-stained John Deere caps occupy another. The odd tourist, passing through or stopping to investigate the western flavour of this Cariboo town smack in the middle of British Columbia, have found seats among grey-haired retirees and local businesspeople. And in the corner by the door, a group of local First Nations have claimed their own territory.
Weaving her way through the crowded tables Julie feels the furtive glances and ancestral eyes following her exit. She has only herself to blame; after all, she’s the one who insisted on meeting Leon’s stand-in here, instead of at the office. After six months she still can’t bring herself to go near Black’s Real Estate.
Outside, the May morning sun warms her face as they walk over to their Jeep Cherokee, which is parked right in front of the coffee shop. Opening the passenger door, Julie catches a reflection in the building’s plate glass window. It takes a moment to recognize herself. Has she really changed that much? She’s noticed the changes in Ian over this last winter. His shoulders are more rounded, and his tall, solid frame now appears lanky and thin. His once grey-streaked Irish black hair is almost completely silver. Still, anyone looking at the two of them today would never guess that at fifty-five Ian is ten years older than she is. Julie’s round baby face, which once served her so well in her career, has thinned; the short sporty hairstyle has grown out. Gone too, is the lipstick and mascara, along with the business suits and the high-heeled pumps she once believed were vital. She climbs into the car with an inward smile. There is a certain freedom in no longer caring that at five foot two she looks dwarfed walking beside her six-foot-two husband.
They follow Richard’s silver Dodge crew-cab out of the parking lot and onto the highway. As they turn west at the ‘Y’ intersection, the local DJ reads an announcement for a meeting of the high school 2008 Dry Grad committee. Julie leans forward and switches off the radio.
“Can they really do that?” Ian asks suddenly.
“Do what?”
“Can the owners really force us to let this old guy stay if we buy the place?”
“A seller can set any conditions they choose. Including accepting an existing tenancy.” She considers leaving it at that, but after a moment adds as if it’s an afterthought, “But unless it’s registered on title, and that’s unlikely, once a sale is complete there’s nothing to prevent the new owners from finding a reason to evict.”
“Good,” Ian says with finality.
On the outskirts of town Julie spots one of her old red-and-blue real estate signs on a fence above the roadside.
FOR SALE. JULIE O’DALE.
“Rolls off the tongue like butter,” Ian used to tease in a feigned Irish accent, which had probably disappeared from his family generations ago.
No one has bothered to remove the orphaned real estate sign from the ten-acre parcel. Julie has no idea if the property has sold or not. Nor does she care.
A few miles later they cross the Fraser River and start the steep ascent to the Chilcotin plateau. When they first moved here Julie would have turned around at each hairpin switch-back to look down at the ‘mighty Fraser’ flowing through the deep gorge below. She used to love this drive west. How many times over the years had she and Ian hopped in the car on a whim to drive out to one of the time-warped country cafés, simply for a piece of homemade pie? Not once during those Sunday drives, as much as she enjoyed giving lip-service to the legendary ‘lure of the Chilcotin,’ had it ever occurred to her that either she or Ian would one day consider moving out here. For a brief moment she feels a surge of panic that she has indulged him, even slightly, on this whim, that she has let it go this far.
As the patches of forests give way to the rolling grasslands of the Chilcotin plateau, she opens her window to allow the spring air with its fresh scent of sage and juniper to blow in.
Lulled by the warmth of the sun, the hum of tires, Julie feels her eyelids growing heavy. Without warning, she is suddenly flung against her seatbelt restraints and jarred awake as the Jeep takes a sharp turn off the paved highway. On the road in front of them, Richard’s truck fishtails on the loose gravel. Small stones shoot up from beneath its tires like bullets, strafing the hood and windshield of the Jeep. Julie grabs the armrest as Ian, swearing under his breath, slams on the brakes. Their vehicle skids across the washboard surface and comes to a stop in a billowing cloud of dust. Simultaneously she and Ian press their automatic window buttons to seal the interior against the thick invasion.
Julie clamps her mouth shut, resisting the urge to blurt that he was following too close; to protect him or herself she isn’t quite certain. Criticism of each other is no longer a luxury they can afford.
Ian waits for the pickup’s tail lights to disappear before following at a distance in the settling dust. The first week of May and already the Chilcotin countryside is drying up.
On either side of the road fir and pine saplings dot the landscape of an old clear-cut. Sun-bleached stumps, the remnants of trees cut long ago, lay like hulking animal carcasses in the new growth. Not a pretty sight. But then, growing up in Vancouver, Julie knows she has been spoiled by the majestic cedars of the coastal rain forests.
Ian slows down even more for a white-faced Hereford that ambles along unconcerned in front of them, her udder swaying between her legs. A stiff-legged calf runs beside her, its tail straight up. At the sound of their horn the calf veers off to scurry up the low bank. In no hurry, the cow follows, swinging her head, her huge eyeballs rolling a white-edged warning at the Jeep inching by.
Half an hour later they come to Richard’s truck, its silver paint dulled by a layer of dust, stopped on the side of the road waiting for them. As the Jeep pulls up alongside, the salesman rolls down his window and sticks his head out. With his black hat pushed back on his forehead, he flashes a grin that says, “Isn’t this great?” He points to a narrow side road leading off to the right, “Almost there, folks.”
They fall in behind his vehicle once again. As they head west the grasslands gradually turn into trees, then into dense forest. Although it has been many years since her ill-fated trip to the ranch, Julie suddenly remembers her surprise even then at seeing so much untouched timber. Taking in the towering trees all around she admits that this old- growth forest very well might measure up to the coastal forests. At the next junction she recognizes the fenceline where the ranch property begins. Old instincts kick in and she is about to point out the white survey peg on the bank, then decides that she’ll leave all that up to Richard. Let him do his job. Glancing at her watch, she wonders if Ian has noticed that they have been driving for over two hours.
They round another bend, the downhill grade increases and the roadside drops away on the western facing slope. After a series of hairpin turns, the realtor’s truck slows and pulls over to park on a widened area of the road. The driver’s door flies open and Richard jumps out, waving them to park behind his vehicle. “This is the best view of the place, folks,” he hollers. The sales pitch is back on. Julie has to hand it to him though, the guy is enthusiastic.
Ian is out of the car and standing on the edge of the road before Julie has opened her door. The last, and only time, she passed this way, she was driving and so had missed this vantage point completely.
“Beautiful, eh?” Richard asks when she joins them. She follows his gaze down over the treetops reaching up from the hillside at their feet, and gasps at the sight.
Below, a valley stretches from north to south as far as the eye can see. A willow-lined creek meanders lazily through natural hay meadows. On either side of the serpentine creek, the fresh sp
ring grass sprouts through the dull yellow of winter-killed stubble. A hip-roof barn and a cluster of weathered outbuildings rise like silver-grey islands in the greening landscape.
To the west, a steep granite ridge rises straight up to the Chilcotin plateau, where in the blue distance, a haze of coastal mountains cuts into the horizon.
Richard directs their attention north, to the glistening waters of the lake, which dominates that end of the valley. “Spring Bottom Lake,” he says. “The entire lake is on the property.”
Directly below, an enormous ranch house—new since Julie was here—overlooks the lake’s southern shore, its polished logs a golden glow in the mid-day sun.
“The tenant’s cabin is out on that point,” he adds, indicating a small bay.
Julie thinks she can detect the faint outline of a roof through the treetops. If so, the cabin in the shadows is, just as Richard promised, a good distance from the main house.
“Other than the cabin, the ranch house is the only home in the entire valley,” he announces proudly.
Julie turns to Ian, and sees in his eyes that he will have this place. She sees that, with or without her, he will make it his own. It’s just a matter of time, perhaps days, maybe even hours, before he tells her that he is going ahead with the purchase. He will ask her to give up her home, her life in town, and come with him. And she knows that when he does, she will say yes.
2
Instead of a grieving widow, bowed under the recent loss of her husband, a vibrant woman opens the ranch house door when they pull into the yard. Wearing knee-high leather boots, designer jeans and a silk shirt, Elke Woell flashes a brilliant smile and strides across the back porch to greet them.
Julie feels the woman’s energy even after her hand is released from her firm grip. She recognizes the widow, remembers when she and her husband purchased the property through Leon Walker years ago. The couple were two of many German vacationers who had fallen in love with the Cariboo Chilcotin country, and then returned when the Deutschmark was so high that it was easy to buy into their cowboy dreams.
Over the years Julie has spotted Elke shopping in Waverley Creek every now and then. She’s hard to miss. In her expensive European clothes and carefully coiffed sun-blonde hair she was a head-turner whenever she showed up on the streets of the decidedly casual town. She still is, even though she has to be at least ten years older than Julie.