Stony River (3 page)

She stepped to the only window in the room, a four-paned square above the bed, but there was nothing at all to see except an uninterrupted wall of trees marching up to meet a thin sliver of sky directly across the canyon. Feeling too displaced to unpack just then, she combed her hair without aid of a mirror, brushed the dust from her dress, and went down to see if she could help her brother with dinner.

CHAPTER 2

Sevana found Fenn cutting potatoes into a sizzling iron skillet. The cookstove was blazing, putting out heat the house didn’t need on that sunny evening—but Fenn didn’t seem to notice the temperature any more than he did his sister’s presence. He just kept slicing potatoes until the skillet bulged with them.

As Sevana stood watching him, her gaze fell to his trouser legs, which had been hacked off haphazardly at the top of his tall workboots as if he’d gone after them with his pocketknife. Wondering why he’d cut them so laughably short, she raised her eyes from their raveling edges to inspect the kitchen more closely. A nailed-together table of unvarnished pine boards was centered in the room under a hanging lantern, and a half-size icebox stood in the front corner. But there was a peculiar thing about that kitchen, and it took her a second to realize what it was: it had no sink. Instead, a water bucket sat on the rough-sawn counter. Again she was surprised, as she’d been about the lights. She hadn’t known he lived in such a backwards manner.

She blinked twice. Maybe she had fallen asleep on the
Selkirk Stage
and hadn’t arrived in Cragmont yet; and when she did, Fenn would take her to his nice, up-to-date country home, and she would tell him about this outlandish dream she’d had, and they would laugh together. But Fenn stuffed more sticks into the firebox and shut the door with a bang loud enough to convince her she wasn’t dreaming. She really was there, and would be forced to live that way all summer. Like camping. Fenn’s words came back to her:
It’s not for everybody
. She already knew it wasn’t for her. But at least it was only temporary—not like the poor blokes stuck out there all winter, too.

Fenn sliced a link of smoked sausage and piled the rounds methodically over the potatoes, while the overheated stove rattled and hissed and steam rose thick from the pan. Finally Sevana found her voice. “Can I help you?”

“You can round up some plates,” he said, without turning around. He added a spoonful of soft white fat from a can on the stove’s warming shelf, and balanced a heavy lid atop the heap—a good three inches above the pan.

Sevana found an unmatched assortment of tinware and utensils on a plank shelf above the counter, and set two places on the warped tabletop. Finished with her task and not knowing what else she could do for him, she backed away from the intense heat and escaped out the open door.

Out on the front path she stopped and faced the valley, gratefully breathing in the fresh evening air as she surveyed the immense ridge that stole so much of the sky. A velvety mantle of trees covered it uniformly, except for a few chutes where snow slides had scoured away the trees and only brush remained—the lighter-green scars scratched down its flanks like claw marks. It commanded her attention by its sheer mass as it rolled across the horizon in a complexity of form, its creases sunk in shadow and its surfaces bathed in golden light. It boxed her in, so that she wished for the open spaces of Toronto.

But Toronto was behind her now, and truthfully, she wasn’t sorry. She had things to do with her life. Her father had asked her to stay the summer here, so she would; but then she would be on her own, taking art lessons in Lethbridge and beginning her quest to become a classical artist whose work would leave a significant and lasting mark on the world.

Not a tree on that great mountain stirred, and yet far distant came a low rushing sound that only added to the wide stillness lying over the whole land. It seemed she had fallen through the cracks of the normal world into some alter-dimension set away from the rest of life—untouched by it, indifferent to it. There was nothing but silence here, and so great a silence! It touched everything, pervaded everything. It touched her, and she regarded it curiously. It was a new thing to her, this absence of manmade activity, this knowledge that she could stand there as long as she chose and still hear nothing but the wind.

Fenn came out on the porch with a bottle of beer and sat on the bench by the door, opening his book. Sevana’s face lit at the sight of him, and she hurried up the path calling in amazement: “Oh Fenn, such a place this is—the mountains, and the song of the wind!”

“That’s not the wind, that’s the river you hear,” he said, and began to read as if she wasn’t there.

She slipped away quietly to explore the homestead by herself. The clearing was circled by thick, luxuriant evergreen trees, providing a dark background for two statuesque birch trees with lime-green leaves and white-skinned trunks up the hill. Under the closest birch resided a miniature log building—which Sevana, looking in, saw was the bathhouse. Further upslope near the other birch, she found a metal spring pipe in the hillside gushing full-force into a wooden reservoir, where Fenn had stashed a generous supply of bottled beer to keep cold. The sight of the splashing water made her so thirsty that she stooped and managed to get a chilly, refreshing drink right from the pipe before she wandered on.

In the upper back corner of the clearing, a chestnut horse was grazing the high grass by the barn. Sevana liked horses. Approaching him slowly, she addressed him kindly and reached up to stroke his black mane. But when he only shook his head and continued to clip off bites of grass, ignoring her, she left him alone and took a little path down to the house, where a dwindling supply of firewood was stacked on the back porch.

A fir tree stood next to the house, so close that some of its moss-draped branches touched the extended roof of the porch. The trees were gigantic here, she realized—twice the size of any she’d seen before. Experimentally she stretched her arms around its thickset trunk, and only reached halfway.

When she went through the back door, she found Fenn in the kitchen, dishing a mound of hash onto each plate. “Dinner’s on,” he said briefly. “Milk’s in the icebox if you want it.”

Sevana opened the refrigerator. It was dark inside, and nearly empty. “I don’t think it’s running,” she said doubtfully, retrieving a glass jar that felt not quite cold.

“Running?” he echoed. “It’s got a block of ice in the freezing compartment.”

Of course, she realized foolishly—he didn’t have electricity. But even for knowing that, the thought of a refrigerator without a power source gave her a strange, unsettled feeling. She poured a conservative quantity of milk into her cup and sat down across from Fenn, who was already wolfing his food without ceremony.

“Don’t you mind living without any modern conveniences?” she asked, taking a bite of the hash.

“Wouldn’t be here if I did.”

“But don’t you feel—
queer
—living so far from everything?”

“The farther, the better,” Fenn replied, with some feeling.

Sevana couldn’t get used to him. There was no trace of the boy she remembered. There was nothing boyish about him, no light in his blue eyes. His face had an unfamiliar set to it; he seemed older than he was. Hard and independent, he appeared to need nothing, no one. She didn’t know what to think, nor how to act around him.

He noticed her staring, so she speared another piece of meat with her fork. “This is good sausage,” she said, popping it in her mouth.

“Best thing to do with bear, in my opinion,” said Fenn.

Sevana froze with the bite between her teeth, then forced herself to swallow it. “Bear?” she repeated weakly, chasing it down with a gulp of tepid powdered milk. “I didn’t know—people ate—bear.”

He smiled in sardonic amusement—the first time she’d seen him smile for any reason. “Sure. I get one every year.”

For a fraction of a second she closed her eyes. She actually felt dizzy. Then, stubbornly, she stabbed another piece. She couldn’t give Fenn the satisfaction of knowing how horrified she was, to her very soul. Besides, it was either eat what he did, or starve. There were no grocery stores or restaurants she could get to here.

Waves of isolation engulfed her. “Doesn’t anyone else live out here—besides the logging camp, I mean?”

“Only a shepherd, roaming the mountains.”

“Why aren’t there other people?”

“It’s all Crown land. Only reason this section isn’t, it was homesteaded before the Forest Act went through.” He reached for the skillet on the stove and held it up. “Want any more?”

But Sevana wasn’t sure she could even finish what she already had, so he emptied the remainder onto his plate.

She was astonished by how much he ate, and wondered how he’d worked up such an appetite. She had only a vague idea of a logger’s activities, cutting down a tree. Obviously it was dangerous, considering the storekeeper in Cragmont. She asked him what he did.

He gave a shrug. “Saw, skid, load—a little of everything.”

“It’s hard work, isn’t it?”

“Wouldn’t mind the work, if I didn’t have to put up with such a bunch of halfwits,” he said, with a look that made her hastily decide not to pursue the matter.

As she worked to finish her hash, she noticed the room was cooling down. The very mountain on which the cabin sat was blocking the sinking northwest sun, its own shadow falling back over on itself. The only sounds were a few snaps from the dying fire and the distant whisper of the river drifting in the open door. She sensed again—sharply—the open-ended, almost lost, feeling of the far-ranging wildlands stretching around her.

She got up and began collecting the dishes, only to realize she didn’t know how to wash them without a sink. She had to watch as Fenn unhooked two washbasins from the wall and filled them with hot water from the teakettle and cold water from the bucket. Then she took over the washing, while he rinsed the dishes and set them on a floursack towel to drain. Last of all he set the wet skillet hissing on the stovetop, and vanished outside.

Sevana dried the dishes with another piece of toweling and returned them to their roughcut shelves. After wiping down the splintery table and countertop as well as she could, she went out to see where Fenn had gone—and spied him leading the horse to the barn. “That’s a pretty horse,” she said, hurrying to catch up. “What’s his name?”

“Trapper.”

She stood in the doorway while Fenn put oats in the feedbox and pitched fresh hay into the stall. When he picked up the water pail and headed for the spring, she tagged along. “Would you care if I rode him sometimes?” she asked hopefully.

“You know how to ride?” he countered.

“I took riding for one of my afternoon recreation classes. I like to ride.”

“He’s not a pony in a park,” was the only answer he’d give her. He filled the bucket under the pipe and lugged it back to the watering trough, the sinews in his arm flexing strong.

Back in the house Sevana stood hesitantly in the kitchen, unsure what was called for next. But Fenn showed no similar indecision as he poured the leftover rinse water into a hand basin, and bent over it to wash his face. Drying in the dishtowel, he emerged with a countenance several shades fairer. “I’m going to bed,” he announced, crossing to lock the front door. “I have to get up at the crack of dawn. Don’t know what you’re going to do around here all summer,” he added, on his way to the stairs.

“I brought my paints.” But she, too, wondered if even with painting, she could fill up so many empty hours on that remote homestead by herself.

One foot on the bottom step, Fenn paused. “I’m not going to entertain you, you know,” he said, meeting her eyes levelly. “Bryce may have intended for me to keep an eye on you, but I don’t plan to do any such thing. As far as I’m concerned, you’re on your own.”

She carefully brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I
mean
,” he said, with sarcastic emphasis, “I’m not going to treat you as if you were a child. You’re only one year younger than I was when I came out here. I expect you to do as you please, and I will do the same.” He mounted the stairs, his heavy lug soles thudding against each wooden step loudly in the silence.

Sevana looked after him with a feeling of increasing confusion. She found it hard to admit that her own brother cared nothing for her—maybe even resented her; but he hadn’t yet given her any reason to believe otherwise. Then her eyes narrowed as she stood staring up the empty stairway. If she did nothing else that summer, she promised herself, she was going to find a way past those hard eyes to his heart.

With that thought to bolster her, she turned to the matter of washing up—intending to imitate everything Fenn had done, since that way of life was so new to her. But she didn’t want to use the washwater he’d left on the counter. She could find another pan and start over with her own. Maybe, though, it would be easier just to wash up at the spring. It was still light outside, the sun tarrying on the higher ridgetops, even though in the house it was already almost as dark as night.

She was on her way uphill when the bathhouse reminded her of its presence. For the first time since her arrival, she brightened. Perhaps she could take a real bath before bed.

Leaving the cedar-bark door open for light, she went in to investigate the minuscule building—finding on its stone floor a squat woodstove, several metal pails, and even a rock pit for a sauna, but nothing to serve as a bathtub. There was, however, a black rubber hose strung up the wall; and when she turned the nozzle tentatively, it produced a convincing spray of warm water. There was even a large towel hung there, and a bar of soap in a saucer.