Somewhere In-Between (19 page)

Still, as they approach the turnoff up to the landing she catches herself slowing down, delaying, just as she had dragged her heels leaving the house after breakfast.

Without the music blaring from her backpack—
chalk up one advantage to having a dog
—she can hear the distant whine of a chainsaw. She gives the leash a gentle tug and starts up the rutted trail. At the same moment Virgil's dog suddenly appears at the top of the hill. He stands motionless, his tail curled into a question mark, the hair on the ridge of his back standing up. “It's okay,” Julie calls out. She has no idea what the dog's name is and can only hope he remembers her. On guard, he watches them approach. The puppy yips and leaps forward tugging at the leash, wanting nothing more than to play. The older dog starts moving stealthily toward them, looking for all the world like a wolf ready to spring. Julie stops and pulls the pup to her side. Suddenly a whistle sounds from above and Virgil's dog stops in his tracks. He remains where he is as his master joins him.

“Thanks,” Julie calls out continuing up the hill, “I wasn't sure what his reaction would be to us.”

As if expecting them and there's no need for acknowledgement, Virgil points to her hand and then at the puppy's collar.

Julie stops and looks down at the leash. “Really?” she asks. “Let him go?”

Virgil nods.

“Okay,” she says slowly. Fighting her reluctance, and she realizes, her protectiveness, she does as he asks.

The moment the pup is free, he crouches down, submissive, allowing the older dog to check him out with his nose. Virgil watches for a few moments, then turns back up the hill. Finished sniffing and apparently satisfied, his dog follows. The puppy bounds after them. Julie rolls up the leash and shoves it in her pocket. All the way up to the landing the older dog struts beside his master ignoring, or tolerating—Julie is not sure which—the exuberant puppy.

When they enter the clearing, the Clydesdales, more concerned with their noon meal, don't bother to lift their massive heads from their feed bucket. Julie follows Virgil to the far side of the landing, where the remnants of his lunch sit on a stump. As they approach, a crow lifts from a chair-high log bolt next to the stump and wings clumsily away, a bread crust clasped firmly in its ebony beak.

Motioning Julie to the log bolt, Virgil sits on the edge of the stump and removes a Thermos and a blue tin cup from his lunch bucket. While she shrugs the backpack from her shoulders and takes a seat, he fills the cup and the Thermos lid with coffee. With neither offer, nor acceptance, the tin cup passes from his gnarled fingers to hers.

She wonders if he would like to hear the music again—is about to ask when he rests his elbows on his knees, and with steam rising from the Thermos lid cupped in his hands, he watches the puppy. At his side his dog sits at attention, also keeping an eye on the pup, who has tired of trying to entice him to play and has now turned his attention to the horses.

The pup circles them cautiously, snapping and retreating with a yelp when a hind leg suddenly kicks out the moment he gets too close. Julie restrains the impulse to call out a warning. If Virgil is unconcerned, why should she be?

She settles back and sips her coffee, while the lulling sounds of autumn surround her: dried aspen leaves clicking in the breeze; the
chick-a-dee-dee-dee
call of the tiny migrating birds flittering through the branches; pine cones thudding to the ground nearby. Lazy autumn insects add a background drone to the music of the forest. Finally the puppy tires of being ignored by the horses and scurries around investigating his surroundings.

Beside her, Virgil takes a final gulp of his coffee, rises and throws the dregs in an arc across the ground. From the top branches of a nearby spruce tree a crow barks impatient orders. Virgil packs his Thermos away, and fishes out an unfinished sandwich. Tearing it apart he tosses pieces into the air and the demanding bird swoops down to claim his due. As if waiting in the wings, a squirrel races across the landing for his share.

Without ceremony, Virgil pulls on his work gloves and walks away, leaving Julie sitting on the stump as he returns to his horses. Without wasted movement, he removes their feed buckets, adjusts leather harnesses and collars, then takes up the reins and turns the team around. Dismembered boughs and branches crunch and snap beneath their hooves, filling the air with a renewed evergreen scent. Feeling dismissed, Julie watches Virgil drive the team toward a logging trail on the north end of the landing. A moment later the puppy plunks his head onto her lap.

She jumps up and hollers, “Wait!”

Without breaking stride, Virgil glances back over his shoulder.

Pulling the leash from her pocket, Julie rushes forward, waving it in the air. Halfway across the landing, with a will of its own, her arm drops to her side. She stops. The pup halts beside her. She hesitates for a moment, and glances down at it. When she looks up again Virgil has turned his attention back to his horses.

She shoves the leash back into her jacket pocket. “Thanks for the dog,” she says to his retreating back.

Within days there's no longer any need for the leash. During their walks, the puppy bounds here and there, giving fruitless chase to teasing squirrels and chipmunks, flushing out flared-neck willow grouse. Yet the moment she calls him, he always stops mid-bound and races back to her for his ear-scratching reward.

Ian accepts his presence without questions or an I-told-you-so, for which Julie is grateful.

They both laugh out loud the first time they catch themselves speaking to each other through the animal.

“You need to tell Julie she's feeding you too much, Pup.”

“Tell him that's because that's just what you are, a growing puppy.”

And yet, even in their awareness, before long, this using the dog as a conduit between them becomes habit.

“What do you think, Pup? Should you and Ian fill the woodbox?”

“We'll go do that little thing for her right after lunch then, eh, Pup.”

Pup. Unoriginal at best, but she can come up with no other name that seems fitting. And so Pup it is.

His exuberant company adds a dimension to her daily hikes that is comforting, reassuring. He's an excuse to talk out loud, to raise her voice in hopes of warning any larger animals that may be nearby. She turns the iPod backpack speakers on less and less.

Each morning arrives a little darker, a little cooler, yet by afternoon the temperature can often rise to a summer high. Stiff winds come out of nowhere—patiently undressing the leaf-bearing trees—and then disappear just as quickly. Hoping to record the beauty of this Chilcotin autumn before the aspen, cottonwoods and willows are naked skeletons, Julie brings along her camera whenever she's outside. Snapping pictures wildly during her hikes, she returns home and downloads them every evening, only to be disappointed not to have captured the true colours of the day. Still, she tries again and again, hoping to find the right light, the perfect shot, before those golden hues are stripped away.

And, at the end of each hike, before heading home, it is now her daily ritual to visit the landing.

If the clearing is empty, and often it is so, she climbs up on the knoll above and waits while Pup plays below. The moment he lets out an excited yelp and takes off onto one of the many logging trails leading into the landing, she knows it won't be long before he and Virgil's dog—who has accepted Pup's right to be there and even sometimes lowers himself to play with him—come racing back together. And close behind will be the team of Clydesdales, their harnesses rattling and leather creaking as they drag newly felled timber to the landing.

Sometimes she turns the music on before they arrive, welcoming Virgil into the clearing with the strains of a Vivaldi or Mozart violin concerto. Each day, his body language portrays nothing more than the rote movement of his chores, as he unchains the logs and loosens harnesses. Yet, each day he brings his Thermos and joins her on the knoll. Often, now, she brings muffins with her in her backpack or other baked goodies to share with their coffee. A silent ritual, for even she does not speak during these encounters, as if speaking would somehow diminish the moment. She is not certain if Virgil's unacknowledged acceptance of her presence is shyness, or politeness, on his part, and does not want to know. It is enough to be here.

Then one afternoon in early October no lunch bucket sits on the stump at the edge of the clearing, and she knows without question that Virgil is not working that day. On the way home she sees that his pickup truck is not parked at the back of his cabin. The next morning it's the same.

A dusting of snow covers the ground on Friday, the third day of his absence. Wrapping herself up to take the dog for a quick walk in the early morning darkness, Julie follows Ian outside to his idling truck.

“You look after Julie while I'm in town, Pup,” Ian says, opening the door.

She glances down at the anxiously waiting dog. “Who's looking after whom, eh?” she asks, shivering in the cold. She's still not ready to let him go off alone for his morning constitution, wonders if she ever will be. Pulling her jacket tighter she turns her attention back to Ian, who is still standing by the open truck door, staring at somewhere beyond her.

“What's this?” he asks. “Another gift from Virgil?”

Julie follows his gaze back to the house until she sees what he's referring to—a tall, narrow cardboard box leaning against the siding near the back door with a life-sized picture of a camera tripod visible on the front.

“Strange,” Ian says. “What makes him think we need one of those?”

“He must have noticed me taking photographs.”

“Must have,” Ian agrees, but he doesn't sound convinced. He studies her face, then shrugs, and climbs into the truck. She waves goodbye, hoping he hasn't noticed the flush she feels rise to her cheeks. She is surprised by her own reaction—relief that Virgil is back.

Beside her Pup whines at the truck driving away in a whirl of dry snow. “Okay, let's go,” Julie tells him, and he runs ahead of her searching for a spot to relieve himself. Once he's completed his business, he begins to examine the changed landscape, pushing his snout and blowing in the fresh snow, growling at every new suspect shape under the thin blanket of white. Only as they head back to the house does it occur to Julie that there's no other tracks, except their own—no evidence that Virgil or the horses have passed this way. Perhaps he went to work much earlier, before the morning snowfall. But later, when she and the dog go for their daily hike, the snow lays clean, undisturbed on Virgil's driveway, even though the pickup truck is parked behind the cabin. On the logging trail, and up on the landing, the carpet of snow is unmarked. Virgil is not here. The following day he does not show either. Neither is he there the next day, nor the next.

It snowed the night they came and smashed his hands. Weightless flakes fell in hushed silence into the footprints leading across the campus grounds. No roommate or neighbours—all either hiding behind dormitory doors or conveniently out late on that distant night—warned of their coming.

Jarred awake by his door exploding inward, he saw the first surge of bodies lodged in the doorway, momentarily stuck, struggling against each other in their haste to get at him, before bursting through. He knew right away that this was not some sophomoric prank, not some rite-of-passage ritual. Naked, except for jockey shorts, he leapt out of bed, his first thought only to protect his violin from the ball-peen hammer gripped in one of the intruder's hands. On any given day he could have taken any one of them, perhaps two, but there were too many. They, with their muscled necks and wrestler's shoulders, overpowered him before he took a single step. They body-slammed him onto the floor; a tooth cut into the inside of his cheek as his face ground into the linoleum. Two football players—he recognized the popular line-backers, who had never made an attempt to hide their animosity toward him whenever their paths crossed on campus—yarded his arms above his head then pinned them to the floor with their knees. Another three heavyweights sat on his back and legs. No hoods or masks hid their faces, so certain were they of their righteous indignation, so blinded with a rage fuelled by alcohol. He fought, knowing it was futile, yet refused to beg for mercy.

Out of one eye he saw the violin snatched from the stand on his desk. The instrument slowly turned over in menacing hands. A voice crooned, “Daddy's fiddle, hmmm?”

His struggling stopped, and a moan rose in his throat.
Fiddle
. He had called it a fiddle.

“What do you think of your music scholarship now, boy?”

“This is what we do to niggers around here who mess with our girls.”

Even before the violin came slamming down on his splayed fingers, like a dull axe blade, again and again, even before the hammer gave the parting blow, he knew it was over—less than a year and his university days were done. And he knew why. The badly mended bones would forever-after remind him of his foolish infatuation and his even more foolish giving in to it.

She had looked so much like Margie Smith. The Margie of his childhood who had never become anything more than a friend. He liked to believe that was because he, unwilling to jeopardize that friendship, had remained silent about his feelings. After high school, Margie had headed north to university, and he, east on a musical scholarship.

Alice Edwards, who even dressed like Margie, in her leather-fringed vests, miniskirts and knee-high leather boots, had caught his eye during his first lonely week on campus, and never let go until she had satisfied her curiosity. Blinded by the blonde hair hanging straight and silky to her shoulders, the blue eyes, inviting him into her world, he had entered without caution.

But, unlike the girl she no longer reminded him of, every thought that popped into not-Margie's head, popped out of her mouth, uncensored and unedited, a trait that had become tiresome even before they made scratching, clawing, animal love, for the first, and last, time on his dorm room cot.