“Good to see some new faces,” he said, holding out a pint jar of a murky pinkish substance. “Here. Housewarming. Smoked salmon. I smoke it myself, process it too.” He turned down Miss Overton’s rhubarb pie with a snort, and then started his own commentary on the inhabitants of Soda Creek.
“This used to be a fine place to live, back ‘till some of them folks moved in. I ain’t set foot in another house in Soda Creek in years. That Overton woman, she’s a sneak and a gossip. Wouldn’t be surprised if it weren’t her that reported me to Fish and Wildlife. Nothing wrong with a man making a bit extra on the side. Why, the Indians from the Soda Creek reserve, just down the road, why they sell those turkeys all summer long, and they ain’t supposed to. ‘Course, when a white man does it, it’s worse, somehow. Oh, I still dip me a couple or so, like that jar I gave you, but there ain’t no percentage in taking any to town to sell, now that the wardens keep their eyes open for me.”
It was Ed Crinchley who had explained to Kelly and her father about Soda Creek’s name. “It’s a real creek around here,” the old man said. “The water in it comes out fizzy, sort of like soda water. It’s the soil or limestone rocks or something that causes it. There’s supposed to be a ‘whiskey creek’ nearby, too—whiskey to go with the soda, you know—but I ain’t ever heard of anyone finding it, though I bet there’s many who have gone looking!”
Before he left, Mr. Crinchley, like Miss Overton, had complained about everyone else in the small townsite of Soda Creek. There were the Terpens, Mr. and Mrs., and their twins, Tommy and Trisha. According to Ed Crinchley, the twins were ‘hellions’. (Clara Overton had called them ‘DISRUPTIVE children’.)
“Up and down the street all hours of the day and night,” explained the old man. “Sneaking about in them empty houses, screeching and running that dirt bike past my windows so loud my eardrums are like to burst.” He had muttered something about some people not being allowed to have children, then turned his attention to the remaining inhabited house in the neighbourhood. “That little brown place at the end of the road, the one with all the flowers and the big vegetable garden, there’s two fellas live there. Alone, if you get my meaning.”
Alan quickly discovered that he had to start another pot of coffee, turning his back on the old man’s commentary.
Shortly after Mr. Crinchley had left, muttering something about cows and a bunch of ‘hippies’ down at the old ranch, the two ‘fellas’ he had spoken of arrived at the Lindens’ front door, smiling shyly when Alan opened it. Ben was very thin, with wiry, strong arms and long hair that waved gently around his neck. Bob had thick, curly dark hair, shorter than Ben’s, and without actually being plump, gave an impression of ‘roundness’. They were both about Alan Linden’s age, in their forties, and they spoke together.
“We just wanted to say ‘hi’, and welcome to Soda Creek. I’m Ben Gibson and. . .”
“I’m Bob Lalonde. We’re so pleased that you have. . .”
“Go ahead, Bob, you were first.”
“It’s okay, Ben, I interrupted you.” They smiled at each other, and then again at Kelly and her father.
“I’ve brought you a housewarming gift,” said Ben. “Fresh butter lettuce, and a special variety of white radish that I’m trying this year. Gardening’s my hobby.”
“And I brought a wall hanging, done in yarn, you know, crewel work. I do some pottery too, but I thought you might prefer something bright to hang on the wall.”
They had stood there, side by side on the front porch, holding their gifts out in front of them, tentatively, almost as if they were unsure of their welcome.
“Thanks, that’s very thoughtful. . .” began Alan, but Kelly had caught sight of Bob’s gift and she interrupted. “Can I see that please?” she asked, taking the wall hanging as her father ushered Ben and Bob into the house. The hanging Bob had brought showed a sunflower, glowing with shades of thick yellow yarn, reaching across the canvas as if it were stretching for the sun. “This is great,” she said. “I tried this embroidery, crewel work once, but I’m terrible at it, at the embroidery part anyway. I can get the patterns, and I know how I want the finished thing to look, but I can’t make the stitches behave.”
“Kelly wants to be an artist,” said her father, proudly. “She’s planning on going to art school one of these days.”
“Bob paints too,” said Ben. “He has his own studio in Williams Lake where he sells his pottery and crewel work and paintings.”
Over coffee and what was left of Clara Overton’s rhubarb pie, Kelly, at Bob’s request, had brought out her sketch book and her few finished watercolours. Ben had gone immediately for a pile of seed catalogues on the coffee table, grinning at Alan as he said, “Another gardener! Great.”
Ben and Bob had stayed for an hour that first day, Bob, his head bent over Kelly’s sketch book, suggesting a small change in line here, showing her where to darken a shadow somewhere else, while Ben and Alan spent the visit deep in discussions of soil acidity, hydroponic gardening and the new hybrid plants featured in the seed catalogues.
“Soda Creek has a gentle growing climate, the best growing climate anywhere in the Cariboo,” Ben explained proudly, almost as if he were personally responsible for that phenomena. “It’s a sort of micro-climate, caused by the protection of those hills behind us and the moisture and warmth of the Fraser River.”
Kelly had looked up from her sketch book, surprised. “The first time I saw Soda Creek, with the hills so close and so steep, I felt that, that ‘protection’, I mean. I thought somehow of the hills being a large animal like a lion, with the town nestled right beside it as if it were being protected, like a lion cub. I hadn’t thought about Soda Creek being really protected so that things grow better. I just saw it that way and thought I would like to paint it sometime.”
“Ben complains about that hill starting practically in his greenhouse,” said Bob, “but he doesn’t complain a bit when he wins all those prizes for his vegetables and flowers at the Fall Fair every year. And just look at the crabapple trees in your orchard. No one has pruned them or sprayed them or even watered them for years, but they produce a huge crop every season just the same.”
As their new neighbours were leaving, Kelly had been surprised to hear Ben tell her father that he would have to put a good, strong fence around his garden if he wanted it to survive. “Dogs?” asked Alan.
“I wish it were just dogs. Cows. And the twins. There’s a ‘commune’ place on the old homestead at the end of the road, city people, only been here a few years. Sort of aging hippies.”
Bob laughed, “They’re okay, Ben, but they’re just learning how to run a farm.”
“They don’t know the first thing about handling livestock. That fence is always down somewhere, and the cows wander through the town and into our gardens. And they’re much more difficult to clean up after than dogs!”
“And what about the twins?” asked Kelly, remembering both Ed Crinchley’s and Miss Overton’s horror stories about those children.
“Oh, they’re not too bad, really,” said Bob, again laughing. “It’s just that one year they took the heads off every one of Ben’s tulips, just as they were about to bloom. He has never forgiven them.”
“They ate them!” added Ben, horrified. “Ate every single bud.”
Kelly and her father had looked at each other when Ben and Bob left. “Well, Kelly?” asked Alan. “Are we going to like living in Soda Creek?”
“I don’t know, Dad. It looks as if our home is the only neutral zone in a community war. It could be interesting, but. . .”
Two and a half years later, Kelly lay in bed on a Sunday morning and thought about how some things had changed since her first day in Soda Creek, but how most things had stayed exactly