Stony River (61 page)

There had never been any true doubt why she couldn’t give Willy the answer he wanted. But no one must ever know—it was a secret she must guard alone—that despite the dictation of fate and circumstance, she was in love with Joel Wilder. And she must go on through her life with that knowledge, while knowing he was lost to her…that life had set them on separate courses and swept them apart…and the days behind them were lost and could not be found again.

CHAPTER 42

Sevana felt no more rested in the morning than when she had gone to bed. She possessed no appetite for breakfast, so she sat on the couch and opened Joel’s Bible as though handling some cherished heirloom. On the frontpiece he had printed his name, Joel Damon Wilder. On the next page he had filled in what he could of a family tree—a father, Damon Wilder, and two grandparents, Joel and Emeline Wilder, who had lived in Long Prairie. He had just celebrated a birthday in early November. She calculated he was now twenty-seven. He was nine years older than her, compared to Fenn’s five and Willy’s seven.

She flipped through the pages, seeing verses that he’d underlined, but her eyes couldn’t focus on the words. When she was in a saner frame of mind, she would read every one of those marked verses to see what had caught his interest. But right now she couldn’t concentrate. If she was going to get through that day at all, she would have to throw herself into something to take her mind off circumstances beyond her control. She could start the picture for the Lindfords—if she only had the book!

She glanced at the clock and set out. She thought surely by the time she had walked all the way out to Willy’s place, he would be up—but when she reached the townhouse all was quiet, and no lights could be seen through the glass wall.

She stood indecisively in the atrium, wondering if she should go away. But it was after ten, so after a minute she softly knocked. She was turning away when the door flung open and Willy looked out in a long velour bathrobe, bleary-eyed and hair disheveled. “Sevana!” he croaked. “Hi, what’s up?”

“Willy, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” She tried not to smile at his sleepy appearance. He was usually so precise.

“You didn’t,” he said with a lopsided grin. “You just gave me an excuse to get up. Come in!”

She stepped into the entryway, where the steamy aroma of some gourmet coffee flavor met her nose. The book she’d come for was on the kitchen table.

Willy saw her glance at it. “I was going to bring it by later. What’d you do, walk over? They really do have buses here, you know.” He pulled a chair askew from the table. “Sit down—the coffee just got done.” He was already taking down two mugs.

Sevana took the chair, too glad for his company to refuse—even if that company was not wholly coherent at the moment. After a few of his disjointed statements she discerned that he and Len had returned to the Roadhouse last night, and had gotten home sometime in the early morning. His face was haggard and he lacked some of his lively air, but he made an effort to talk, for he had news: Len had moved up the date for the unveiling of his latest picture, and wanted Sevana to know she was invited to his house tomorrow night.

“I’d like to go,” said Sevana, grasping at anything to fill an existence that just now seemed stretching emptily toward forever.

Willy offered her more of his amaretto coffee and she accepted. She knew she should go home, but was reluctant to go back to the silent apartment where her own thoughts could be heard so clearly.

“Something on your mind?” Willy asked, her quietness and solemn expression finally occurring to him.

“Yes.” Her eyes rested on him candidly, and she had an irrelevant impression he looked old that morning. “Joel sold his sheep and left for the Yukon last night. He’s going to be staying in a claim shack in the middle of nowhere.” The words stuck a little in her throat.

“No kidding.” Willy seemed more awake than before. “Well, that’s something.”

“It was so unexpected. He’ll be up there all winter.”

“Too bad.” Willy looked at her shrewdly. “Sort of hard when the love of your life takes off on you like that, isn’t it?”

“He’s not—” She stopped, then decided to put his insinuations to rest. “He’s engaged to a photographer from Vancouver.”

“Wait a minute,” Willy said skeptically, “he’s engaged? How come you never mentioned it before?”

“Because I just found out last night.”

“Cripes.” Even Willy was impressed. “You never know what’s going to happen when you wake up in the morning, do you?”

“No,” she said flatly. “I’m not even sure exactly where it is he’s going. Have you heard of a town called Mammoth Creek?”

“No, but we might be able to find it on the map,” he said companionably. He brought the atlas to the table and leaned over her shoulder, studying the map with her until she spied it first and put a finger on it—a tiny settlement well north of Dawson.

Willy whistled. “Say, that really
is
in the middle of nowhere. What’s he going to do up there, herd reindeer?”

“No.” She couldn’t smile. “His father’s wasted himself on whisky, and he’s going up to take care of him.”

“Whisky!” Willy exclaimed, suddenly illuminated. “That’s what this coffee needs. Want a shot?”

She didn’t know if he was serious or not. “No, thanks. I guess I’ll get started on my picture.” She picked up the book.

“Wait a sec—I’ll take you in the Jag.”

“That’s all right, I’m looking forward to the walk.”

“Well, if you want the exercise. But I’ll be by for you tomorrow night—unless you’d rather walk to Len’s, too,” he added wickedly.

She produced an image of a smile. “No, not at night. Thanks for the book, Willy.”

“Good luck on the picture.” Even as she was leaving, he was reaching for a bottle in his cupboard.

Sevana walked home and started the new subject without delay. But even though she was counting on her work more desperately than ever to transport her to some removed inner world, it failed her: even art could not let her escape something that was inescapable. After a few unsuccessful starts, she got her coat and headed toward the city bounds. She passed the empty church lot, realizing for the first time it was Sunday and she had missed morning service.

She roamed a long way into the prairie. She was used to the flat land now, so it no longer seemed unnatural to see it stretching level to the horizon. But she wasn’t used to Joel being gone from the mountain. She hadn’t known what a security it was for her, just to know he was there. Even if she never saw him, even if he still loved Chantal, she needed him to be there in his handbuilt cabin under the bushy spruce, living his everyday life in strength and constancy, to give her own life a reference point, a frame of meaning.

She stopped at the scraggly tree that had shed all but a few curled brown leaves, and leaned against its blighted trunk. The equilibrium she had achieved in her life had been built on the sure knowledge that Joel was coming to visit her, on the probability they would stay in touch beyond that time,—even on the possibility he might someday see her instead of the picture of Chantal he carried in his mind. And to lose it all now—to take away everything she’d been counting on in one blow—was to leave her without anything to hold onto. She cast about for some stability, some anchor in a tossing sea, but there was nothing. Her future stretched ahead open-ended, blank; her dreams wandered aimlessly, without meaning; and her hope, like Noah’s dove from one of David’s recent sermons, could find nothing at all on which to rest.

She began walking again, too hard-pressed to stand still in one place any longer. Art had always defined who she was, but she still had art—and she was totally lost. Somewhere along the way, subtly and without conscious realization, Joel had become the delineation point from which all other directions of her life were determined. With him gone from her life, so, too, had vanished her other goals and dreams—once so all-inclusive—no longer finding any reason to exist. The void she felt was terrifying, for it seemed she would just keep falling down and down, and never come to the bottom of it.

In the hollow silence of her soul she returned home and lit a candle, for already the short November day was fleeing. Dinner was uninteresting and hard to swallow, and she ended up tearing her toasted cheese sandwich into bits and tossing it off the balcony into the grass for whatever little creatures might find it. She stayed out in the cold, gazing north. Somewhere in that frozen blue night, Joel was still driving. She wondered what he was feeling as he navigated those long, lonely stretches by himself. A persistent breeze blew through her shirt, but she didn’t move out of its way as she kept her eyes fixed in the direction Joel was steadfastly traveling away from her. She had the sensation of standing in one place while everything else was going past her. Time was rushing by, reality flashing past, and she had not the power to stay the one or grasp the other.

She had loved him from the start—it was so easy to see, looking back. All summer she had been in love with him without calling it what it was. But she could no longer avoid the truth. Why, nobody else came close to him! He was like the strength of the mountains to her, like the beauty of the river. And like those things, she had lost him, too.

The idea came back to her that in this transitory life you might lose what you loved, but your love for it was never-ending. Emotions, not seen or touched, were more enduring than the physical world. So here she was, having lost the things that meant the most to her, and yet her love for them lived on unchanged. Whether that was a comfort or a torment, she couldn’t decide.

She cast about for some kind of help or assurance. When people were in trouble, they turned to something higher than themselves. David, always confident of the goodness and provision of God, encouraged his congregation to ask Him for whatever they needed. She struggled to recall that glimpse of One standing present behind His creation—but despite her best intentions she had forgotten it somehow, there in her life on the plain. Not forgotten Him entirely, for David prayed to Him every service as if He was right in the room; but not able to find Him, either.

When she thought about it now, it seemed she had left Him behind in the mountains where He had high places to walk, and woodland cathedrals to inhabit, and rushing waters to give Him a voice. Yes, He must still be there, among the antiquated cedar trees by Avalanche Creek, or up in the stars at Stormy Pass. Maybe His voice was in the prairie wind, but she couldn’t hear it; it was an empty-sounding wind to her. She felt as far from Him as she did that whole unreachable land of Stony River.

Too cold to ignore the temperature any longer she went inside. In a volatile fit of energy she sat down to the botched canvas and began to paint over it with no subject before her. A barren ridge, a rugged skyline, a flock of sheep, a distant shepherd—it had been in her mind so long she didn’t have to think about it.

While the breeze outside increased to a harsh north gale, she was far away from that second-story apartment on the prairie. She was in a highland meadow and another wind was blowing. The wild mountains surrounded her; she was roaming their sunlit summits, relishing the wonder of being high and free. She painted in the whitebark snags, gnarled and wind-carved, and the alpine fir spires, so densely green they looked almost black. She formed the masses of rose-red and crisp-white heathers in glorious profusion, the yellow-eyed daisies all facing the same direction, the ragged clumps of red-lavender asters crowded into ready-made bouquets, the scarlet paintbrush spikes scattered down the cliffs. She painted in the lake that took on the color of the sky—blue-green just now, but black by night or a smoky-rose under a sunset sky, or sometimes a gleaming saffron after a storm had passed and the sun shone clean in the clearing skies of early evening. She brushed in the sheep, and it was not hard! One by one they came to life under her strokes. There was shy little Goldthread and gregarious Hawthorn, there was faithful Thistle. There was Gyrfalcon shrewdly assessing every situation, and Blazingstar with never a care. It wasn’t until she was painting the lone shepherd beyond the flock that her hand wavered and fell still. The figure had blurred before her, and she couldn’t see to work.

What she would give to see him again, she thought, washing out her brush. What she would give to go back to the way they were before, without this knowledge of how their lives would ultimately break apart. Unable to fight the desolation anymore, she sat head-in-hands for a time—in pain as real as any wound—while the candleflame danced in the drafty air and the wind scoured the night plain outside.

When she slept, the wind blew on ceaselessly in her dreams like the strains of a mercurial violin. It cried through a forgotten pass as she lay on the hard earth beside a low-burning campfire. The night was cold, and the rough blanket too thin; she wrapped it around her more tightly. Suddenly she sat up with a start. Joel was on the log playing his fiddle, its dissonant notes mingling with the eerie wail of the wind until one could not be distinguished one from the other.

“Why are you up?” she asked him.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he replied.

“Play something else,” she begged. “I can’t bear to hear the wind’s restless cry.”

“It’s because you are like it.” His eyes were dark as the night and bright as the stars. “You are restless as the wind, Sevana.” And then the music was beginning again, the strange, terrifying music that followed only the disharmony of the gale.