Tales of Love and Valor: Two Novellas

By David Taylor Johannesen

A Wife from Scotland

Fiona Stoute Liddell lives a quiet life as a veterinarian in rural Utahfar away from her scheming Scottish familyuntil she meets Solomon Fairchild, an American rancher from Boston, and rescues him from a life of self-exile. Their fateful love takes them to Scotland, where they marry in Aberdeen near Fionas clan that is led by legendary horse whisperers and where all members of the secretive Freemason Society. Can their carefree love survive these ancient rituals and superstitions?

Tooele to Manila

Affable Pete Skip Granger and his fervent wife, Madeleine, meet and marry in the Philippines at the end of World War II where he, a colonel under General Douglas MacArthur and a New England Quaker, develops a highly profitable ship salvage business in Manila Bay and she is a courageous wartime nurse and devout Mormon from Tooele, a small ranching town in Utah. The story follows their courageous but often contentious life together as Madeleine struggles to maintain her faith and identity as they become increasingly entangled with Solomon Fairchilds Boston Brahmin family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984519733

David Taylor Johannesen

About the Author David Taylor Johannesen was born in Salt Lake City and grew up in Boston. His earlier published literary works are: Tales of Love and Valor, Two Novellas (2018) Falcons and Seagulls, a Utah Tale (2015) Last One Close the Gate, Selected Stories (2012) Vespers East & West, Selected Poems (2011)* *Written at Oxford, 1996 Johannesen lives in Los Angeles with his life Linda and border collie Fallon. His ancestry is Scottish and Norwegian. He was educated at University of Pennsylvania, New York University and Oxford University, U.K. Johannesen has two children: a son, Christian, a media executive in New York City; and a daughter, Helen, a restaurateur and sommelier in Los Angeles.

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Copyright © 2018 by David Taylor Johannesen.

Library of Congress Control Number:               2018904167

ISBN:                  Hardcover                     978-1-9845-1975-7

                            Softcover                       978-1-9845-1974-0

                            eBook                            978-1-9845-1973-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/12/2018

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CONTENTS

Novella One

A Wife From Scotland

Part One

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter VIX

Part Two

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Part Three

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIX

Part Four

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Novella Two

Tooele to Manila

Part One

Part Two

A Wife From Scotland

Dedicated to

Robert, Stuart, Frank, Mary Ann, Bonnie Jean, Grace June

Mile fàilt dhuit le d’bhréid,

Fad do ré gun robh thu slàn.

Móran làithean dhuit is sith,

Le d’mhaitheas is le d’ni bhi fàs.

∑

Tooele to Manila

In memory of

Maxine Grimm

(1916-2017)

With gratitude to my wife and editor

Linda Sue Adelman

Novella One

A Wife From Scotland

Part One

Chapter I

W hy ever would you return there? my wife challenged me two days before I drove out to Logan and unwisely left my car in the airport parking garage, thinking I’ll be back from this little odyssey in a week, none the wiser! I can scarcely forget the humiliation you suffered when they drummed you out of the family business, out of the church you grew up in, and nearly out of your mind! I looked askance at Grace, remarried au-point yet still my protector—a chatelaine watchful under my roof—.

When I arrived at the ranch in the Uinta Mountains of Utah I first noticed the cottonwood trees, their limbs swaying like great ancient elephants standing in our midst protectively. The next sensation, immediately attending a whim of expectation I brought along the high winding road, was the roar of the river still pouring snowmelt from the mountains, and racing the trout to calmer streams below. I was to gather with many cousins and their children I could scarcely remember for an annual July Fourth reunion and rodeo which drew contestants from as far away as Alberta, Canada and Texas: one of my grand nieces would ride in the barrel races and the son of another cousin would ride a saddle bronc. Coming from Massachusetts to my tribal home, I swelled and retreated from familial anticipation and abject longings that events would not be too good to be true. Yet I expected a—fête champêtre!—forever a dream of an outsider who shows up claiming renewal!

I brought my dog—as firmly recommended by my daughter—a faithful Border collie, Fallon, who had grown up herding a neighbor’s sheep in Massachusetts. I was staying with a cousin whose wife regarded dogs with ill-concealed scorn: they were dirty and shed fur, so Fallon was relegated to the back yard of a ranch that sheltered horses, cattle and my cousin’s hunting dogs who stayed in the barn. Fallon would not accept a barn, although I thought of sleeping there with her in the hay as a means of soothing any tension arising in the household.

Altitude is the first blessing encountered: rising from 5,000 feet in Salt Lake to 8,000 one meets a drop in temperature of nearly twenty degrees. At moments, the sky surrounded by clouds seemed a vast oculus—as at the Parthenon through which the naked eye searches for the gods—; I am not trying to invoke some Charles V—Father of Europe—moment to inspire my vision but to be alert to the perils of altitude when one comes from sea level and sets out on a strenuous hike: I must ask my doctor/cousin about perils of oxygen depletion and imbalance of white and red blood cells when climbing…

After the first surprise of my arrival with a dog, soon all greetings fell into a bon accord among cousins whom I, an only child, counted as siblings. And I, long considered their transcontinental curiosity growing up in Boston boarding schools, always longed to be seen as a western boy kicking at the blistered summer sage with dusty boots. I wore my summer Stetson, turquoise and silver bolo and well-crenelated belt buckle as chevrons of a returned prodigal son eager for Mormon acceptance.

Wow, you’re sure decked out for the rodeo, Solly! my cousin Franklin smiled slyly—he wearing shorts and an ordinary shirt proclaiming Haddler & Son, the name of a local feed store. I am called ‘Solly’ by nearly everyone except my ex-wife, who calls me by my given biblical name Solomon, and my twin sister Leah, named after some notion our father, a Quaker, savored about antiquity: we may as well have been named Isis and Osiris for all we cared as soul mates since age ten after our parents were lost in the sinking of Andrea Doria in 1956 off the coast of Nantucket. Leah, not wanting our Mormon family to get their hooks into her, never comes to visit Utah from her home in Back Bay, where she owns a contemporary art gallery on Newbury Street nurturing emerging artists; I am ambivalent if not accommodating to this distant flavor of religious stimulation as our mother came from an old Mormon family whose ancestor became prophet and president of the church in 1877 after Brigham Young who, I remind Leah, Walt Whitman called the American Moses…. to which she sings Moses supposes….! She stays pledged to The Society of Friends—favoring attraction over promotion—waiting in the silence for the Light rather than listening to imprecations from the Mountaintop.

As I walked into Franklin’s spacious ranch house I saw that another cousin, Robert, had brought cases of pinot noir from Oregon where he and fellow doctors owned a vineyard, which yielded grapes called ‘med-red’. He was pouring himself and his wife their first glasses in a long evening of repetition. I no longer drink, but that’s another story. I sometimes think the color and aroma of fine wine must be alluring, but eventually these effects grow wan and sadly stale. I drink lots of Darjeeling tea, loose, and brought my own pot for brewing forever eschewing tea bags, I don’t take my tea with a rag tied about it—one of our father’s reverse snobbery aphorisms—rung as often as his definition of Puritanism: the sneaking suspicion that somewhere, someone is happy.

You’ve made it, old traveller! Robert gleamed over the rim of his glass. How is ‘bean-town’? The Red Sox—

—will not win the series this year, I assured him.

We watched the moon rise slowly above us as if a pendant hung deliberately from the cosmos: mere mortal conversation seemed to subside as Robert mused upon his wine and I awaited the arrival of a cousin, Amy, with whom I had been in love long ago. Our grandfather forbade a marriage we longed for and hapless plans we made to attend the same college in the East withered in days of lament I have never again felt.

F ranklin’s wife Vrinda, a dazzling Hindu woman he had met while on a State Department mission to Delhi, swept onto the terrace with a tray of sliced avocado and grapefruit surrounding minced eggplant tinged with spices none could identify—: she had quickly become the chatelaine of a household of three children which spanned a thousand acres and sheltered cattle, horses, and suddenly my dog, who approached a corral and made a nose-nuzzling friendship with a roan mare, Joy. Fallon accommodated herself a member of the family, a visitor yet a sentinel ever alert in the shifting pine hills.

"Do you ever think of what actually measures the speed of light?" Robert asked, almost askance, as he opened a second bottle of his Oregon pinot. "I’ll tell you: one second, 186,000 miles; eight minutes, Sun to Earth. From there, empty space—measured in distances, not time—before we, We!!! reach the nebulae, eight billion light years away. Sorry, I’m bending your ear—"

—the way gravity bends light? I offered a long, dim memory from my university physics classes, whose elegance I loved but took amphetamines to pass exams. I was an English major in Boston who went on to Oxford and fell in love and rowed—the best tuition dollar my father ever spent—and could never leave behind the fantasies of black holes and time travel and vast oblate spaces outside spaces revealed by Stephen Hawking!

Tell us about your novel, Franklin broke in, as a newly discovered moon of Jupiter bearing tequila in small cups garnished with lime. It’s very controversial in Mormon land! Franklin smiled in a lassitude accepting all faiths. "But they’ll stop short at calling it apostasy! Besides, you as a direct descendent of a Prophet would never be ex-communicated! Although, being considered for a movie is a different matter: mass media is where the adversary takes hold. I’ve heard a few alarums rising from some of our more orthodox cousins and your may find yourself an outlier again!" Franklin—himself an outlier—loved a perch of the passive, amused contrarian throughout.

Well, I stumbled, still loitering at the fringe of Robert’s insinuations of the Universe, It’s in the hands of a Hollywood producer. Far from certain: they’ve only done a ‘treatment’, not even a screenplay yet, but I’ve suggested Mariel Hemingway to play the main gal—

Superstition is cowardice in the face of the divine, I assured Robert. We made our peace some time ago.

"Theophrastus—if I recall my classics? Franklin grinned, drawing on his long dispensed education. He lived during the founding of the Library at Alexandria."

To Theophrastus! we all cheered, raising glasses.

ξ

A s I sipped Vrinda’s tea against the evening chill, Robert set aside his wine glass and accepted Franklin’s beloved tequila—he had been a Mormon missionary in Mexico as a very young man before a countervailing stimulation arose during his California sojourn—and in his later years had returned to an arroyo carved into his senses best suiting him. Yet I always found his vision spacious, able to gaze equally across his ranch and the mountains beyond and see a future unfold for his young children. His dear wife had an accepting temperament towards the boys , but watched over me carefully as if I needed saving: her very spirit covered me like a counterpane and I had the thought, if Franklin should die, I would ask her to wed—her father in India had two wives—and in my foregone polygamist dreams take Amy as a sister wife. Yet I feared Amy’s arrival: she would be deep in mourning for her husband and very likely an avid LDS adherent: what would she do with a retro-Quaker like me? She has forgotten me entirely—

Did you say something, Solly? Shall I make more tea for you? Vrinda whispered as the others laughed. "I thought I heard you say save me! From what would that be? We are upstanding beside you—no stranger to us—not to worry, not to worry," she seemed to chant.

Old Solomon has always shared his dreams aloud, Robert nodded to his much younger wife Elisabeth, who had just appeared for the morning. Their children—her stepchildren—were still asleep. I won’t offer you a wake-me-up, he smiled parting her early swelling belly.

"I’ve always admired his dreams—especially when they’re identical to Lee’s." She accepted a cup of tea just brewed by Vrinda for me.

Yes, it may be that fraternal twins do share innate facilities such as intuition, reflection—as soul mates they be closer even than husband and wife—

Like Isis and Osiris, Franklin mused in an aside all but inaudible to the rest of us yet leaving a fateful quiet.

Chapter II

N ext morning, the day of the rodeo, I set out with Fallon. We sought even a higher altitude, as pilgrims might find themselves bending towards prophecy—stranded in a shallow compromise between reason and imagination—as my own judgment faded from the dangers of such elevation: She looks away uncertainly as we hike, then searches me for an explanation; scouts ahead and circles behind me as her breed does—always fixed to a present, fixed and brimming deed. But the concern in Fallon’s eyes goes beyond, am I doing my job? to a frank concern that I am not doing mine: she will not stand for it, and stand she does, facing me and blocking the logging trail ahead: Border collies unite!

Driving back down the road to the ranch, I noticed a smaller Border collie limping along with a stranded look. I pulled over and examined him, dusty and foot-sore but alert, and found a collar with no tag to identify his home. I picked him up and settled him into the car alongside Fallon who straightaway accepted him. Their black and white markings were alike and both dogs now looked up at me with shared expectancy in paired fealty to a changed alpha. I promised myself to keep the new dog as soon as I had asked around town and posted notices of a found dog in public places. Appearing at Franklin’s ranch with a second dog sent shockwaves across the fenced compound around the house: heads shaking, Vrinda rushed at me in an outcry. I stumbled to defend my action: Never leave a herding dog in the field which fell mutely across a glare of opprobrium.

What can you be thinking? she shrieked, waving her hands in the air. "You have carelessly betrayed us! One dog outside the kennel is too much, but two—and this one looks mangy and sick! You will have to take it away! Back to where you found it or to the…pound." As Vrinda punched this word I felt the dread of death coming upon me and picked up the dog and stepped back from Vrinda’s wrath as she backed me against a corral fence. I moved off to my car yelling, no one will kill this dog!

Franklin’s thirteen-year-old daughter Anjali rushed forward with a solution: Let me take the dog along the road to town and see if anyone claims him. He must belong to someone, he’s so well behaved and friendly. I turned away holding the new dog fast as Anjali moved off to find Fallon’s leash. Her tall, lithe figure shadowed the gathering dusk and her eyes flashed in beams of understanding—a rendering of peace between her mother’s rage and my defiance—so that I pulled back. I gave her the dog, still longing to keep him for Fallon, who scanned the enclosure between the house and the corral where the horses watched in drooping attention. It seemed a coming together of all creatures great and small now that Vrinda had accepted a truce and took her storm into the house and firmly shut the door. It’s dark, I told Anjali. "Let’s check the neighbors in the morning. I took the dogs into the barn for the night.

A clear, alpine cold filled the barn. I wrapped myself in a saddle blanket and broke a bale of hay to sleep on. When I woke both dogs had spread themselves along my legs and had exchanged their warmth with mine such that I could not imagine sleeping apart from them or even in the house. Horses studied us from a stall, their patient indifference masking a tender recognition that we were there as part of their lives, presenting no disturbance to their superb equanimity. The dogs stood, bowing and stretching beside me as I pulled taut strips of beef jerky from my pants to give them. I went to a bag of Omaline™ and gave each horse a handful, their soft lips browsing my palm like a priest placing the Host.

Are you here? Vrinda called from the doorway. "Oh my, you didn’t have to sleep here with the dogs! Oh—"

I was very comfortable. My assurance was fixed.

See, your tea is ready: I brought it to you. She held out a mug of Assam. You’d better take a shower before breakfast. Anjali will take the other dog afterward. Her dark eyes flashed with a glint of mignonette growing from each iris, reflected in the folds of her green and gold sari covering a pair of purple corduroy trousers. Her beauty was fierce and absolute, and I thought of Blake’s poem, Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry….Could twist the sinews of thy heart.?

φ

S howered, shaved and again! shining in my rodeo and reunion clothes—plaid Western shirt with silver and turquoise bolo; well-worn boots and my grandfather’s fine-tooled belt buckle; sweat-rimmed white Stetson—I appeared on the broad veranda facing a distant ochre mountain which would fade to coral as the sun rose. All present scanned me with disbelief as if I were some newly arrived contestant to perform a fleet fandango distracting the rodeo that evening. From what?

Hang up your spurs, Franklin laughed. Robert smirked from the same kitchen stool where he had perched with his pinot late the night before. The dogcatcher returns!

Vrinda swung around sharply. Your yoghurt as usual? I have nice fresh apricots from the orchard.

"Please—nimbupanni!" I replied in a long-standing wail for her, which meant lemonade. I called Anjali after the flower frangipani as often she wandered with garlands gathered in her hair in which I imagined the famed scented blossom from her mother’s native land: How could I dream I would marry her fifteen years later, when she was twenty-eight and I forty-eight? You should not yell at my mother, she said from her perch.

"I didn’t yell at her: she yelled at me! I’ve been in the dog house since yesterday! I pleaded. She took my hand and guided me to the barn, You foolish man! Can’t you see how much she loves you? How her eyes follow you everywhere? How she brings your tea, when daddy asks for beer? Anjali threw herself against the barn door in a lovely, adamantine certainty and brought the lost dog forward. We’ll fine his home. She led the dog away, down a dusty road where the ranches grew smaller, from her father’s one thousand acres to one hundred. It turned out that he, Buddy" had a home just a mile along. Buddy? Why not Bartholomew? Bartelby?

λ

I n a fleeting vision I drove away early the next morning, out across the salt flats and across Nevada’s Great Basin. Fallon seemed to mourn in pallid withdrawal from her friend Buddy. We’d speed west at nearly one hundred miles an hour into a fading light, which waited ahead an hour earlier in California. I, too, would withdraw into a carapace of longing which I had not known for years of wandering in a sleeve of exile, a garment I had worn loosely but begged myself to throw aside. Vrinda’s words and then Anjali’s came up to me: What can you be thinking? and You foolish man! These loving calls, it seems, have made all the difference and have provided a rampart against my wandering. I held my ground and pledged a vague fidelity to an awakening I could not imagine: The dogs and I returned to the barn in a newly found sympathy, a surrender of our refusal!

Chapter III

I cannot say how long I slept in the barn: my mornings and evenings were alike—adumbrated shadows of a far larger life lost somewhere between remembrance and longing—whose idle companions waited in shame. My psychiatrist in Boston told me many times, shame is way over-rated. So is nostalgia! I fed myself from a table dressed for common seating: always spread with the provender of Vrinda’s gardens for those who came and went each day according to their sleeping and wandering. The dogs enjoyed an abundance of jerky and kibble—abundance, not scarcity, Amy used to preach—and I found a similar serenity in being absently content.

Why are you here? Fiona, the vet, asked standing over me one morning when Franklin had brought her to look at a horse. I stiffened and then relaxed into the charm of her asking ‘why’ instead of ‘what’ are you doing here? It was a moment and a lifetime when every impulse met a restraint. Do you prefer animals? she pondered and in an offhanded gesture reached to take my pulse. Your heart is very low, and I must say your color is sallow. I’ll take your temperature if you don’t mind. Are you a kin of Franklin? Her voice and hands moved in swift unity, and the Scottish accent, while at some distance, flowed evenly with the clarity, which testifies its supremacy among English speaking peoples. I believe I fell asleep. I woke unknown hours later to find the dogs gone and Vrinda bending over me with a mug of tea. Vet has taken dogs to her place in Kamas. She said you may—

She lives in Kamas? I stammered, embarrassed, proud, and aware that Fiona