Stony River (48 page)

“My latest,” Willy said blithely, following her. “I come back here to work when things are slow.”

“I wouldn’t even know how to begin to paint something like that.” Sevana, already dazzled by his talent on display in the front shop, felt another wave of adulation as she viewed the scene of rusty wagonwheels half-hidden in high prairie grass. The piece was so realistic, she could almost see the stalks of grass swaying in the wind. Willy’s cocky air was entirely justified. If she’d had any doubts about her choice, they had been more than dispelled in the past hour, and she knew with complete certainty she’d made the right decision in signing up for his class.

After taking it upon himself to explain the technique he was using for the grass—replete with a demonstration in which he painted in more of it while Sevana watched—Willy looked inspired. “I should keep at this while I can. I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had a chance to do anything on it all week. Blast the shop,” he added.

“It doesn’t leave much room for your own art, does it?” Intuitively she understood his plight. “Probably the only real chance you have to work on it is evenings or weekends like this.”

“That’s right,” he muttered darkly.

“Well, I don’t want to take up any more of your time,” she said briskly, knowing how she felt about the things that kept her from her own artwork. “And I have unpacking to do. Thanks so much for showing me around, Willy—and I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon.” She smiled agreeably as she turned to go.

“Wait!” Willy commanded, laying his brush on the palette and rubbing a little fresh paint into his hands. “What are you doing for lunch?”

“I don’t have any plans.”

“Good. We’ll have it together.”

“I thought you wanted to paint,” she couldn’t resist saying.

“I’ve painted many pictures in my life, but I’ve never once had lunch with you,” he pointed out with indisputable accuracy, and guided her adeptly out the door.

In a short time they were eating some exotic black-bean soup Willy recommended at a bistro down the street. “See here, Sevana,” he said, starting in on his wine-laced potage, “I’ve been thinking for some time about getting me a clerk to help run the store. If I had somebody there, I would be free to come and go, paint when I want to.”

She wasn’t sure what he was getting at, so she waited for him to continue, pushing a mushroom cap around in her bowl. Willy was right, the soup was excellent.

“You’re just what I need. I can tell you’re someone after my own heart where art is concerned,” he continued. “Would you be interested?”

She put down her spoon at the enormity of the question. Work amid all those pictures, surrounded by paints and brushes and all the other things so near to her heart? She flushed with pleasure at the thought. “I can think of no job I’d rather have,” she said honestly.

“See?” he exulted. “What’d I tell you? Someone after my own heart. It’s all settled then. When can you start?”

She was amused by his casual approach. “Whenever you wish.”

“The shop’s closed Sunday and Monday, so how about Tuesday? Tuesday at nine o’clock.”

“Tuesday would be fine,” she agreed happily, as she picked up her spoon to finish her soup.

He was thinking out loud. “For now, you’ll work the same days as me. But after you get used to things, I might have you work Monday through Friday, so I can keep the shop open six days a week.”

“It does make good business sense.”

“Yes, it does.” He looked extremely gratified. “I believe you might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Sevana.”

Willy returned to his easel after lunch, and Sevana went upstairs. She could scarcely comprehend that she already had an apartment and a job—and no ordinary job at that! She wanted to run up the trail and tell Joel all about it. Things were certainly working out well. All she lacked were a few housekeeping items—and she had seen a shopping centre on her trip into town, only a half-dozen blocks away.

Alone in her apartment for the first time, she looked at it more critically than before. The smooth white walls looked remarkably bland and uninteresting after the irregular, handhoned logwork of Fenn’s and Joel’s cabins—the upholstered couch and brown woven carpet equally lacking in character. But for a place to live while she worked and studied, it was absolutely perfect. The kitchen sink caught her eye, and she turned the faucet to watch the water run out. Funny, she would have thought nothing of the miracle less than six months ago.

She soon had her possessions arranged in the contemporary rooms—her hiking boots, which had taken on the character of the steep slopes they had climbed and the dusty trails they had walked, looking out of their element on the rug of the bedroom closet…the pineneedle basket she had woven, perched on the kitchen countertop like the misplaced nest of some small bird…the Indian paintbrush Joel had given her that she had dried and saved despite its dilapidated condition, along with a very shriveled sprig of blue-eyed Marys, and a few pearly everlastings whose perfectly preserved strawlike clusters were marred by limp-hanging stems, huddled pathetically in one of Fenn’s empty whisky bottles on the table. These things—she thought with a sudden deflation of emotion—these things belonged in the upstairs room of a rough-timbered cabin in a reclusive river valley. They did not belong in this city apartment on the plain. It was true she still had her paints as a consolation, but for the first time she felt a faint disloyalty to them: for how valuable was the mere representation of things, when she’d once had the things themselves?

She set out for the shopping centre that lay just before the last crossroad on the edge of town. The traffic was noisy and bothersome; she wanted to push away the persistent sound. At the complex of shops, she found a pay telephone and called her father’s answering service to tell him she’d arrived and found an apartment, feeling crowded by the people on the sidewalk. Then she bought a bag of groceries and hurried home. After stashing the almost incredible bounty of fresh food in the roomy refrigerator, she walked back the same way again, past the last intersection and out into the prairie, seeking solitude from the nonstop activity of town. The road changed to gravel.

A white clapboard building with a pitched belfry stood alone on the empty vista ahead of her—an old-style church set beyond a large dirt parking lot. It occurred to her that it could fit Joel’s description of the church his friend pastored on the city outskirts. She pondered the fact as she walked by. It would be quite a coincidence if she was living less than a mile from the person Joel wanted her to meet.

The land was uneven with gentle depressions and rises, but giving the overwhelming impression of flatness. It was covered by a sparse crop of brown grass, so fine it didn’t hide the hard earth it grew out of. Except for a muted line of low mountains far to the west, the sky stretched open into the pale-blue distances—and with nothing to block it, the wind blew straight and strong.

Sevana left the road and wandered the barren ground. No one seemed to own the land or use it, and there were no fences to bar her way. The peace was welcome, but she could still hear the hum of cars and machinery behind her. She had never noticed before how loud a city was. In fact she had forgotten all about noise—would have to get used to it again.

She came to a slight swell of ground where a leaf tree of indeterminate variety quivered in the wind, dwarfed and scraggly and half-dead. She stopped by that lone tree as if she’d found a friend, and stood looking west toward the low-lying ghost mountains. Somewhere in those distant apparitions resided the sequestered green realm of Stony River. Fenn was probably driving up the valley right now, its forested passages enfolding him once more. There was no insecurity for anyone who found themselves within the configurations of those high-standing walls, she thought longingly, and hugged herself because she stood in the unguarded open. There would be no supper waiting for him when he got home, but no matter: he would soon have a fire roaring and a skillet of potatoes frying on the stove—his life returning without consequence to what it’d been before she came.

She didn’t think he would miss her. She had tried to express over breakfast at the Roadhouse that morning how much the summer had meant to her—but even though he had accepted her thanks, she could tell he didn’t care. Never had his eyes altogether lost the distance they held for her. They were no longer strangers after the summer together, but she still didn’t know his heart—and still she longed for him.

Joel was home on the mountain too, back from his trip to Cragmont. She was sure her absence on that excursion had not shattered his world to any significant degree, although it was still a source of bitter disappointment to her. She tried to envision the day if she had spent it with him. Would they have walked by the lake, eaten hand-churned ice cream, skipped a few rocks for old times’ sake? She would have to get used to the fact that he was no longer just a half-mile hike away.

And then she sank to her knees as if she’d been hit. She missed him with everything in her. It hadn’t been enough to see him one more time when he got back from the wilderness. She wanted to be with him now. That too-brief reunion felt as if it should have been just the beginning for them, not the end.

Her anguish was so devastating that she struggled to find something to sustain her. He had said she was his friend, he had promised to see her in Lethbridge. Maybe time was all he needed to get over Chantal, and something would happen during his visit to make him see that she meant more to him than he’d realized—even if she didn’t possess Chantal’s sultry, brunette beauty. But if not, through continued letters and visits, their friendship might still develop into something more.

She shifted to sit with her back against the crooked, puny tree trunk, took a few breaths, and told herself she would look at this as just another separation like the one they’d had last summer. She would pretend he was still in the high country. It was no different—he was no less accessible now, than when she had waited all those days for him to come back from Stormy Pass. She brightened at this invention as she plucked at the dry grass. She knew how to do this, she had done it before. She felt bolstered by the thought.

She returned to the apartment full of the wind and wild spaces, and as restless as the wind itself. Willy’s white sportscar was missing from the street, but he had left a note on her door. For some reason, the sight of that paper connected with the mental image she’d had of leaving Joel a goodbye note on Fenn’s door—and for a minute she felt confused, like someone who didn’t know where they were. Willy had written that he’d wanted to take her out to dinner, but hadn’t been able to find her. If she cared to join him, she could call the Roadhouse and he would gladly come get her.

She disregarded the suggestion and ate a green salad on the balcony, looking down on the street lined with small shops and office buildings. A bronzed light lay over the town. Only a few cars went by. It was the quiet time of day, a time for rest and reflection, a time for going home. It was not a good time of day for someone far from anything familiar—someone who could not go home.

Energetically she went inside and rummaged in the cupboard for a pan to heat water, thinking a cup of tea might calm her nerves. She selected the old tin coffee pot, for it made her think of the tea she’d had with Joel—that awful tea! She’d take some now, if she could have his company to go with it.

She was so preoccupied that the water was boiling before she realized she didn’t have any tea. She poured a cup of plain hot water anyway, and sat down at the table to sort through a stack of sketches and washes. Now was the time to paint the scenes she had saved up from the summer—if she could! But the sight of those roughed-in images of familiar places called forth such a kaleidoscope of memories that she sat lost in reminiscences, and painted nothing at all.

Staring unseeingly out the darkening window, she wondered what Joel was doing that moment, and was readily supplied with a vision of him seated at his desk, the lantern shining on his shaggy head as he made detailed notations in his journal. Then she saw the kitchen of Fenn’s house—could see it as plainly as if she was there—Fenn reading in a circle of light, his hard-chiseled face impassive of expression. And outside, the dusky green ridge with its wrinkled, velvety blanket of trees stood over the homestead, blocking out any world but the one that was there.

She jumped up, nearly upsetting her teacup as she went to fling open the door. Oh, where were the mountains? she agonized, as she looked and saw no looming forms against the horizon, only the buildings of the town. In a daze she closed the door and went back to the table. She buried her face in her hands, and shining peaks towered up, taunting her with their beauty. Scenes of the river and the high pasture crowded before her, so familiar they were a part of her, so far away they mocked her with their vivid closeness. Abruptly she jumped up again. She couldn’t sit there and think about all the things she’d left behind yesterday—so long ago! She would rather not think at all. She locked the door, crawled into bed, and resolutely tried to blank everything out.

But thoughts did come, in disregard of her decision…her heart would not obey her mind. And that first night away from her narrow bed where she had but to open the window to let in the river’s serenade; away from Fenn’s solid, stoical presence;—so far away from Joel’s dear, dark, beloved eyes, Sevana cried herself to sleep.

In the morning she felt no lessening of the weight crushing down on her, making it hard to breathe. Stubbornly dressing in jeans and hiking boots, she went to stand at the bedroom window facing the north prairie. It had been one thing to contemplate the move while in the security of the mountains, but another thing entirely to be on that plain in physical fact, separated from the mountains by actual miles. Staring at a landscape that held no marks of familiarity for her, it began to sink in that while she might accomplish a visit back to Stony River through enough effort, the fact was, she had lost that life the moment she had left it. She had lost the wild, uncontainable river, the road with nobody on it, the ridges you had to tip your head back to see their tops—and the luxury of knowing you could enjoy all those things on display from day to day, in the subtle differences each day brings, and take them deliciously, fearlessly, for granted. And suddenly she wanted nothing more than to run back to that life as fast as she could and never leave again—for she saw that in the simple act of driving out of the mountains one fall morning, it had slipped irretrievably out of her hand.