Season of Storm (10 page)

He said, "Canoeing can be dangerous, especially in these waters. If you take a canoe and try to make a run for it you can expect to end up drowned—unless you are very expert indeed."

Smith looked indignant. "I wasn't—"

He interrupted her. "Yes, you were." He gave vent to a little laugh. "If ever I saw anyone who didn't know when to quit, you're it." His tone was exasperated but admiring, and Smith felt like a child being praised. She couldn't help a little delighted laugh escaping her.

"Well, why should I make life easy for you?"

"Why indeed?" He was so reasonable it was impossible to hate him. "But don't take Wilf's canoe. Or mine. You couldn't handle it on your own in these waters."

Later, in her room, she felt the silence of the place descend around her, and realized how impossibly alone and helpless she was. Johnny Winterhawk could do anything he wanted to her here, and no one would ever know. Lying in the dark, with moonlight streaming in through the large window, she was assailed by fear again. Somehow tonight, in his presence, fear had left her. But alone now, she felt the weight of her situation fall on her.

She slept fitfully, her sleep troubled with dark dreams in which Johnny Winterhawk was sometimes her enemy, sometimes her friend. By the time dawn had turned the sky red, she knew she wouldn't sleep anymore.

Smith got up quietly and dressed in the clothes he had given her last night, rolling up the pant legs and shirt sleeves, belting the loose waistband, and feeling like an undersized orphan as she did so. The wooden floor was cool on her bare feet, and if Johnny Winterhawk expected her to stay here for very long, he was going to have to come up with a few more things for her. She needed shoes.

The house was completely silent when she opened the bedroom door, and when the thin dark figure rose unexpectedly at her feet Shulamith screamed.

"Well, she can scream, anyway," said a dry, crackly voice to no one in particular. Smith immediately calmed.

"Wilfred Tall Tree," she guessed aloud.

He was short and wiry, his bones and his long thin muscles very evident under the ageing brown skin. His white hair was thick and hung down his back, and his dark, deep eyes sparkled with amusement as he looked at her.

"She knows things, too!" he remarked appreciatively, and his eyebrows went comically up and down in the brown lined forehead.

Smith felt a little off balance, not sure whether she was in the presence of a saint or a fool. "Do you always speak in the third person?" she asked, half amused, half irritated.

The old man looked over both shoulders, and then shrugged in broadly drawn mystification. "Third person?" he asked stupidly, but she knew suddenly that he was not at all stupid, and that he was poking fun at her. She decided to try a little sauce for the gander.

"He thinks he's very funny," she said to the air, and was rewarded by the sound of Wilfred Tall Tree's delighted cackle.

"Is he?" he asked, his bright bird's eyes fixing her.

"Doesn't he know?" she countered, leaning against the doorframe and crossing her arms.

"When I laugh at my own jokes I'm not sure," he confessed in a throaty confidential whisper. "If someone laughed with me I'd probably think I was a pretty funny man."

She somehow couldn't pinpoint his character; he seemed to be in a constant state of flux. She looked down at the sleeping mat across her doorway. "Are you my watchdog?" she asked.

"A
dog!
Am I your dog?" he repeated, with an expression of arrested interest, as though she had asked a question of profound philosophical import. "Well, sometimes I'm a dog; I've been called a dog." He looked down at himself in surprise, holding out his arms and, one after the other, his feet for a better view. "I didn't think I was a dog right now. Maybe I am." His eyebrows were in motion again as he looked at her, and again Smith was sure that he was making fun of her, that he wasn't in the least crazy.
 

"Am I allowed to go to the kitchen and make myself a cup of coffee?" she asked, pointedly ignoring his last remarks.

"She's asking a dog for permission!" the old man marvelled. "I must be a very dangerous-looking dog. Usually I'm a friendly mongrel, but today maybe I'm a Doberman pinscher! "

He was having the oddest effect on her: she began to feel as though
she
was the foolish one and he was making perfect sense. With a small exasperated exclamation she stepped across the mat at her feet and started off in the direction of the kitchen.
 

Wilfred Tall Tree followed her, his bare feet as silent as her own on the wooden flooring. He was dressed neatly in a pair of denim jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt; she realized with a start that except for the long mane of white hair, the old man was absolutely unremarkable. Until you looked into his eyes.

She went out onto the large open balcony, and when she got into the fresh morning air she paused. The sky was a clear, cloudless blue, and the only sounds were birdsong, the water breaking on rock far below and intermittently, if she listened closely, the wind in the trees.

Smith breathed deeply and stretched in the pleasure of the cool morning, aware that Wilfred Tall Tree had stopped beside her.

"Why
do
you speak in the third person?" she asked, and he winked at her conspiratorially.
 

"That's the way to get to talk to a wild animal," he said. "Never talk directly to a wild animal until he's talked to you first: they're very snobby, especially squirrels. Birds, too, sometimes. Some of them, like deer, are just shy. They get embarrassed if they think you're looking at them. So what you do, you find yourself a nice interesting rock, or maybe a tree, someone who knows how to keep up his end of a conversation, and you start talking. It's very hard for an animal to resist eavesdropping when someone is talking about him. Then of course once he's interested it's only good manners to come and sit down and join in the conversation."

Smith remembered the way she had calmed down earlier when he spoke, and she looked at the old man in curious annoyance. She could almost imagine him deep in conversation with a rock, with wild animals all around. After a moment she continued on to the kitchen, wondering if he had told her the truth or had merely been laughing at her again.

"Would you like coffee, Mr. Tall Tree?" she asked as she filled the coffee maker. Behind her the hoarse chuckle sounded again.

"
Mr. Tall Tree!"
he repeated in respectful admiration. "Good, that's
very
good. You don't like someone, you talk politely and offer him coffee, eh? That's pretty smart."
 

There was no mockery evident in his voice this time, but she knew it was there. When she turned to face him his look was all open interest. Smith set two cups down on the counter and took an infuriated breath.

"Well, what would you like me to call you?" she demanded. He had hit close enough to the truth to make her angry: she realized that she had unconsciously hoped to disarm him with her polite conventionalities.

The black, black eyes opened wide, and the eyebrows went up and then down. "This is very confusing for a crazy old man who's also a dog," he reproached her. "First when you're angry you smile and get very polite, and now suddenly when you're angry you bash the cups around and your voice gets sharp. How can I learn the rules of social behaviour if you keep changing them?"

Smith had never in her life felt so close to losing all control. She was completely off balance. She wanted to throw something. She glared at the old man, who had sat in a chair by the table and was watching her. Perhaps he was crazy after all.

"My friends call me Wilf," he said with a broad smile, "but since you don't feel very friendly toward me you can call me Wilfred. That's formal enough for a watchdog, eh?" He laughed loudly and slapped his thigh. "Even a Doberman pinscher!" His raspy, cackling laugh deepened till his whole body shook with it.

"Good morning," Johnny Winterhawk said close behind her, making her jump. "Morning, Wilf." He was wearing a silky grey suit and a white shirt, no tie. He looked very different from the tousled, tired abductor of the day before. "Is there enough coffee in there for three?" he asked her, eyeing the dark liquid trickling through the filter.

The old man, wiping his eyes, finally stopped laughing. "Good morning, Johnny!" he carolled. A last little hiccup of laughter escaped him.

Automatically Smith reached into the cupboard for another cup. She was nervous around Johnny Winterhawk this morning; she could vividly remember his voice saying, "Damn it," and the way he had kissed her.

"Have you two introduced yourselves?" Johnny asked, pulling out a tray and setting the sugar bowl on it. He moved to the refrigerator. He seemed to have no special awareness of her now.

"She introduced
me,"
said Wilfred Tall Tree, "I'm Wilfred Tall Tree, a dog. But I didn't introduce her yet."
 

Johnny Winterhawk smiled slowly and gave Smith a speculative glance.

Smith gritted her teeth. "He was sleeping across my doorway!" she explained sharply. "I asked him if he was my watchdog! And he's been laughing about it ever since!"

Wilfred Tall Tree slapped his thigh again. "That's right, Johnny!" he called.

"And you told me the way you talked to me was the way to talk to wild animals," she reminded him with a flashing look, "so I think as far as insults go we can call ourselves even."

Johnny Winterhawk was laughing, his square, white teeth flashing against his dusky skin, and it was like a sudden breath of normalcy blowing across the odd confusion of her mind. Smith shook her head and laughed, too. Was it something about the old man that had made her so strangely irritable, or was it just the pressure of the whole situation?

Wilfred Tall Tree was laughing more uproariously than ever.

"Wilf, allow me to introduce Shulamith St. John. This, as you've guessed, Miss St. John, is Wilfred Tall Tree."

"We've met," she said dryly, and all three of them laughed. "Call me Smith," she said. "Nobody calls me Shulamith."

Picking up the tray with the coffee things on it, Winterhawk crossed to the table where Wilf was sitting against a backdrop of sky and trees and the breathtaking rocky gorge. Smith followed.

"Shulamith," Winterhawk repeated. "It's an interesting name. Where does it come from?" His forehead was wrinkled as though he were trying to catch an elusive memory.

"From the Bible, the
Song of Songs,"
Smith said. "The quote is,
'Come back, come back, O Shulamite.'
Scholars say it means 'maid of Shunam', but my mother believed it came from the Hebrew word for peace."
 

"Peaceable Woman," Wilfred Tall Tree said suddenly, and then something that sounded like
nalohka'am gah.
 

"What did you say?" asked Smith.

He repeated the words, but this time it sounded like
nalohga'am kah.
 

"What does it mean?"

"Young woman of peace," said Wilfred Tall Tree. "That's how we would translate your name into Chopit."

Stirring her coffee, Smith tried to repeat the name, but she couldn't get her tongue around the sound that sometimes seemed to be
k
and sometimes
g.
Suppressing the suspicion that Wilfred was laughing at her again, she gave up the attempt with a smile.
 

"I think I'll stick with Smith," she said. "It's easier to pronounce."

Johnny Winterhawk finished his coffee and stood up. "I'm going into the city," he told Smith. "I've asked Wilf to keep an eye on you."

"I suppose that means he won't let me out of his sight all day." Smith turned to Wilfred Tall Tree in renewed irritation.

He looked at her from twinkling dark eyes. "Maybe," he said. "But maybe you won't notice me all the time."

"I hate the idea of being watched," she said, "and I'll hate it no matter how quietly you creep around after me."

The old man winked and said nothing.

"I'll be back by six," said Johnny Winterhawk. "Try not to come to blows with Wilf, will you, Peaceable Woman?"

"You're going to Vancouver?" Smith asked.

He looked at her for a moment. "Yes."

Smith extended a slim bare foot from under a rolled- up cuff. "I need a pair of shoes," she said. "Size six. Preferably sneakers."

"I'll see what I can do," said Johnny Winterhawk.

"In the meantime," Smith persisted, "do you have anything that would fit me for today?"

Winterhawk smiled. "Do I look as though I have a pair of shoes that would fit you?"

Smith looked at him from under lowered lashes. "I thought the lady of the dragon robe might have left something more behind," she said.

Johnny Winterhawk didn't rise to the bait. "Did you now?" he said dryly. "Well, I'm afraid not. But perhaps if you behave Wilf will show you how to make yourself a pair of moccasins."

Smith glared. "No, thanks," she said, not sure why she was angry suddenly. "I've no intention of chewing hide for a week before I take a walk!"

There was a pause while she realized how unforgivably rude that was.

"Oh, I think the leather is already cured, isn't it, Wilf?" Johnny Winterhawk said, his voice deceptively soft. "And now that I think of it, it might do you good to perform a primitive labour to fulfil your own needs. If you want shoes, make them. It'll be a lesson in basic economics.''

Smith sputtered.

"Not to mention diplomacy. For example, I advise you to be polite to Wilf, if you want the benefit of his expertise."

"Go to hell!" she snapped, finding her voice.

The air was crackling with their suppressed anger as they gazed at each other. Smith could not understand what had made her so angry so quickly.

"Not me," he said.

Wilfred Tall Tree was watching them from shining dark eyes, saying nothing.