Somewhere In-Between
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Authors: Donna Milner
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Literary, #Literary Fiction, #Fiction
Somewhere In-Between
Donna Milner
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Copyright © 2014 Donna Milner
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. 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.
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-somethingâshe can't remember his last nameâcontinue 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 briefcaseâa gift from Ian after she passed her real estate examâshe 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 âhis 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. âIt'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 âY' 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.