Turtle Valley (13 page)

In my late teens, walking beside the boy I loved then, I found myself stooping for soil and licking the dirt from my fingers, just as I had seen deer licking the soil on roadsides, for the salt. On the farm our cows ate dirt looking for the minerals they lacked. Lyle asked, “What are you doing?”

I said, “I don’t know,” and from then on hid this strange craving from him and everyone else. When I finally took my compulsion to the doctor I found I was anemic; I ate the red dirt of Blood Road because my blood was thin. It was horrific to find my body so driven, to find that my mind was not at the helm, to discover that an animal instinct for nourishment took precedence over will. To see my own hand reaching out, not in my control, possessed as if by another entity, even if that entity was saner than me, wiser in its fleshly understanding of my needs. Now I craved penuche, brown-sugar fudge. Just as it was when I hungered for dirt to find iron, my body was on a search. What I lacked now I could only guess at.

Across the field a light blinked, and I turned off the kitchen light so I could better see. In his kiln shed, Jude flicked his
fluorescent lights on and off. His figure was silhouetted in the open garage door, waving me over.

I switched the light back on, aware, now, that he was watching me move about the kitchen, and turned up the heat to bring the penuche to a boil. Then I waited by the stove, staring out the window at the kiln shed lighting up the night, resisting the urge to test the fudge too soon. I had ruined candy in the past by taking it from the pot too early. I had to guard against this tendency within myself to rush things, both small and large. I had rushed into Ezra, despite both Val’s and my father’s objections that we were moving too fast. I had moved in with him less than a month after I met him, and we married only five months after my affair with Jude had ended, long before my feelings for Jude had dissipated. And before Ezra I had rushed into Jude, disregarding the fact that he was another woman’s husband. I hardly knew him that evening I saw him walking a few yards past his own gate on his way to the dance, carrying his wife’s ornately carved, thickly upholstered chair over his shoulders, his body thrust forward with the weight of it. The chair was the only one Lillian could comfortably sit in, and I often saw Jude carrying it past my parents’ farm on his way to functions at the Memorial Hall; he and Lillian drove the Impala and the chair wouldn’t fit inside. He was just a neighbour then, another city artisan who’d bought himself a bit of cheap acreage in Turtle Valley, and a riddle for my young mind: a handsome man so bound to a heavy and handicapped woman that he would carry her chair nearly a mile down the road.

I stopped the Chevy and leaned across the cab to open the door after he’d hoisted the chair into the truck bed. “Should we go back for Lillian?” I asked.

“No, she’s already there. She took the Impala.”

I drove off. “Your seatbelt’s to the side,” I said.

“I don’t wear them.”

I raised my brows to him but he wouldn’t allow me to catch his eye; he stared out the windshield. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock and it was still light, though the sun had set behind the steep valley walls long before. The poplars by the road rattled as the wild valley winds blew a thunderhead toward us. Peterson’s horses, excited by the coming storm, raced along the fenceline, nearly keeping pace with the truck.

“Kat is short for Katherine, I take it.”

“No, Katrine. I don’t like being called Kat.”

“But your mom—”

“Everyone calls me Kat. I just don’t like it.” My mother had called me Katrine, I’m sure, so she could give me the pet name Kat. I hated it, but disliked the alternative—Katie—even more. And in any case it was useless to try to make my family call me anything but my childhood name. Jude was the only one who ever called me by my name. In return I never called him Jujube, as members of his family did.

“Katrine.” I looked over at Jude, expecting him to ask me something, before I realized he was rolling my name over his tongue. “Pretty,” he said. He nudged my camera bag with the toe of his work boot. “Planning on taking pictures at the dance?”

“I keep my camera in the truck in case I come across something, even on my days off. We’re always looking for photos to fill the paper on a slow week.”

“Cute kids, pretty horses, that sort of thing?”

“Yeah, I guess.” I looked back in the rearview mirror at Peterson’s horses. I had in fact considered stopping to take a photo of them.

“What the hell?” Jude said, and pointed.

A moose and its calf launched through the bushes beside us, leapt onto the gravel road, and galloped in their ungainly way in front of us, nearly matching, then exceeding the speed of the truck. “Grab my camera,” I said. He pulled it from the bag and I took it from him. “Here, take the wheel.”

“What?” he said.

“Take the wheel!”

I accelerated to catch up to the animals and snapped a couple of photos through the windshield before unwinding the side window. “Put your foot on the gas for me, will you?” I said. “This is great!”

He pressed his foot on the gas against mine and leaned into me in order to drive as I hung out the window to get my shots. “Look at them go!” I let out a whoop.

“There’s a truck coming,” Jude said.

“Huh?”

“Truck coming! Behind us!”

I took the wheel and handed him the camera, and he slid back across the seat as the truck passed us. The moose charged through an open gate and fled across a field, disappearing into a patch of bush.

Jude shook his head. “You’re one crazy mama, aren’t you?”

“Why?”

He laughed.

I turned into the Memorial Hall driveway and parked next to my father’s Ford, but when I unfastened my seatbelt, Jude didn’t immediately get out of the truck. He put his arm over the back of the seat, filling the air with the smell of Ivory soap and cumin. “I didn’t mean to offend you earlier,” he said. “You do some good work for the paper.”

“I’d take more care with the photos if I had the time, but when you’re a reporter on a small paper like the
Observer,
you’ve got to do everything. Tomorrow morning I cover a baseball tournament. Tuesday I sit in court. Wednesday afternoon I’ve got to take photos up at the pool. I’d like to see
you
get a good shot of seniors’ aquatic square dancing.”

Jude laughed and I watched his mouth as his smile faded. “Well,” he said. “I guess I’d better get this chair inside and head back home before it gets dark.”

“You’re not staying?”

“Lillian can’t dance, and I don’t like sitting around, shouting over the music. That’s her thing.”

“I won’t be staying long either, but I promised my father a polka or two. Mom never goes to these dances.”

“Maybe I’ll have a beer then, and drive back with you. Unless I’m taking you away … unless you’re meeting someone.”

“No, no.”

Tables filled with people lined each side of the old hall. The place smelled of cedar and cigarette smoke and its hardwood floorboards were deeply scarred by decades of dancing. After repairing damage from countless acts of vandalism, the hall committee, of which my dad was a member, had elected to remove the glass and board up the windows permanently. There was a small stage at one end where a band played: a drummer, a guitarist, and a singer on a keyboard. They were all young men about my age, but I didn’t recognize any of them. On this stage many years before, my father had played the fiddle and harmonica and my Uncle Valentine had played the banjo. I had read all about it in the Turtle Valley community notes my mother had written for the Promise paper and collected as clippings in her scrapbooks. My
father had rarely played the fiddle after I was born—arthritis was already knotting the bones of his hands by then—but he played his harmonica for my mother most nights to help her sleep, and so until I left home I very often fell asleep to his harmonica serenades of “Down in the Valley” or “Good Night Irene.”

Jude set the chair down at the head of a table, beside his wife, and Lillian took her place in it like a queen about to hold court. Her hair already contained streaks of grey, and the extra weight she carried made her look much older than Jude, though likely she wasn’t more than five years his senior. She had suffered from multiple sclerosis since I had known her, and her limp accentuated the impression of age to the point that I had assumed they were mother and son when I had first seen them together. They had not elected to have a child up to this point; I assumed her illness was the reason.

“You know Katrine,” Jude shouted over the music.

Lillian nodded and smiled. “Of course I do.” She took my hand. “You’ve grown into such a beautiful young woman.” She turned to Jude but didn’t let go of my hand. “You should ask her to sit for you, don’t you think? She’d make a wonderful model.”

Jude crossed his arms and glanced away, at the dance floor. “Yes, I suppose she would.”

Lillian dropped my hand.

“Katrine won’t be staying long,” Jude said, “so I’ll get a ride back home with her.”

“Oh?” said Lillian.

“As long as that’s all right with you,” I said.

“Of course.”

“Evidently she has to have a dance with Gus first, though it seems he’s already engaged.”

My father was on the dance floor with Mrs. Simms, bounding out a polka to the band’s rendition of Blondie’s “Call Me.” The younger dancers boogied listlessly around them, stepping out of the way as my father and his dance partner swung through the room.

“We saw a moose and her calf on the way here,” I said.

“I’ve never seen moose in this valley,” said Lillian.

“Katrine got some photos of them, for the paper.”

“At least now I’ve got something for the front page.”

“You should do a story on Jude,” said Lillian. “He’s got a show coming up in a couple of weeks. You could get some photos of him during the next raku firing. High drama. Lots of smoke and fire.”

“I can’t work with people watching me.”

“You are trying to sell these pots, aren’t you?”

“I’ll do a story,” I said. “When are you firing next?”

“You said Sunday, right?” said Lillian.

“I usually drive out from Salmon Arm on Sunday nights to have supper with Mom and Dad,” I said. “I could stop in at your place on my way by.”

Jude made a face.

Lillian reached up to pat his cheek. “Think publicity. Think mortgage payments. You’d think with a gorgeous mug like that he wouldn’t mind having his picture taken.”

Jude put his hands up. “Okay! Okay! But not until late in the day, when I’m in the flow. When distraction is less of an issue.”

We all watched the dancers for a moment.

“So, you want a beer?” Jude asked me. “Or may I have the honour of this dance?”

“Is that all right?” I asked Lillian.

“Go! Dance! God knows I can’t.”

Jude gave an exaggerated bow and held out his arm to escort me to the floor, and, following my father’s lead, he charged me around the room in a polka, forcing other dancers to jump out of the way. When the song ended, the band began to play the Red River Waltz, a tune I knew my father must have requested. Jude and I stood facing each other for a few moments, breathless, with our hands hanging at our sides, watching my father and Mrs. Simms dance. Then Jude held out his arms for a waltzer’s embrace. “Shall we?” he said.

I glanced over at Lillian. She was turned the other way, chatting with Ruth Samuels, who ran the organic carrot farm near the reserve. “Lillian won’t mind?”

He shrugged and placed a hand on my waist to guide me around the floor. As we circled, I looked over his shoulder at the neighbours I had known all my life, drinking beer from cans and wine from plastic cups and shouting at each other across the tables. Mr. Simms, who could no longer dance comfortably because of his arthritis. Sandra Henderson, who had once taped a note on my back that read
Wide Load
when we were in grade five. Uncle Dan, my mother’s brother, red-faced and tipsy on Kokanee, flirting over a table with Mrs. Randalls. He winked a conspirator’s wink at me when he caught me looking his way.

Jude’s cheek brushed against mine. “You smell like cookies,” he said. “Vanilla.”

The back of his shoulder where I held him was damp from sweat. His hand was hot in mine. I felt him begin to grow against my thigh before he stepped back to put a space between us.

THIS WAS WHAT I MADE FUDGE FOR:
the feel of the little ball between my fingers in the cold water as I tested it, the chewy texture of it between my teeth. That first sweet taste. When I was sure it was ready, I set the pan into a sink partly filled with cold water, then added the butter and vanilla before stirring it. When it suddenly thickened, became lighter in colour and lost its sheen, I poured the penuche into a greased pan.

I checked Jeremy, and then Ezra, to make sure they were both sleeping soundly, then I picked up Jude’s box, the tray of penuche, and the manila envelope containing my grandfather’s files, and slipped outside to follow the path across
the field. A water bomber that had just been put on night duty droned low overhead. But still the fire marched on, breaking through the fire guards that ground crews had built, advancing ever farther across the top of the range.