Talking at the Woodpile

by David Thompson

  In 1940 twelve young men were conscripted into the army, and Dot and Nat’s eldest son Ziggy left, never to return. He was blown up in a bombardment near Bastogne, and his body was unrecognizable. His grave in France says “Known unto God.” Years later Nat and Dot visited the cemetery and brought back a picture of one of the graves with that inscription on it.

  “It was hard not knowing where he really was buried,” Dot said, her face red and tear-streaked, “but it was some comfort to be there.”

  Buford and Craven, who were like uncles to me, organized a service on behalf of Ziggy’s parents, who were overcome with grief and bore the burden of their loss the rest of their days.

  William Pringle cursed when he heard the news. “I’ve seen this before. The young always pay the price,” William said. “If I had my life to live over, I would never have gone to war. It was such a horror, I might have even left for South America.” He turned out to the service with his medals pinned on his uniform and saluted smartly when Mr. Cooper, a veteran himself, lifted his bugle and played the last post.

  William spent his life as a businessman and passed away in 1975. His old war wounds gave him trouble till the end, becoming red and sore in the middle of winter if he didn’t take enough vitamin C. I was a pallbearer at his funeral; it was the first time I had done such a thing. I stood in for Uncle Wilfred, who was too frail to carry a coffin.

  Neil O’Neill had answered the call to arms by volunteering as a seaman. He took a boat to Whitehorse, and my dad told me he’d stood on the dock next to Faith, who clutched two small children, one at her breast, and waved a tearful goodbye to the boat disappearing around the bend. They wouldn’t see each other for four years.

  Neil caught the next train to Skaguay, then a boat to Vancouver, arriving there in late June 1940. From there he was shipped to the east coast, where he was trained and assigned to a destroyer escorting convoys of supply ships across the North Atlantic. He saw action against German U-boats and rose in rank by proving himself as an able seaman. He wrote home as often as he could, professing his undying love for Faith and the children.

  “Looks like something changed him, because he was never this responsible before,” Faith said. “I wonder if he met another woman.”

  “No, don’t you worry,” Uncle Wilfred said, “the navy has made a man out of him.”

  Neil came home after the war as a decorated hero. The town was proud of him, and he worked hard and became a town councillor. He was thinking of running for mayor in 1962 when he was arrested for graft. It had something to do with the city’s purchase of a tractor and road grader. He resigned from city council and the charges were dropped. After that he started to drink heavily.

  “I risked my life. I’m a veteran, a decorated veteran, damn it. I should be treated with respect,” I heard him say drunkenly as he sprawled on the couch on his front porch.

  Faith kicked him out of the house anyway. “Go live in the Sunrise Hotel with the rest of the bums,” she said.

  “I wish you knew my life, Faith,” he said and packed his bags, never to return.

  Their marriage breakup and the thought of Neil taking up residence in the hotel deeply saddened me. Their eldest child Rob was my friend all through school and became a lawyer who defended the downtrodden throughout the North. He was appointed a judge in Iqaluit on Baffin Island in 2001.

  Victor tried to enlist, my dad told me. “I go shoot those damn Germans, teach them a lesson they don’t believe.” But our army didn’t trust gypsies any more than the Germans did. Victor was deferred and told to contribute by going back to Elsa and working in the essential mining service. Instead he worked on the gold dredges in the Klondike River Valley.

  One bright spring morning, Victor had the first and only epiphany of his life. He put on his suit, picked a bunch of flowers, walked up to Mimosa’s house, knocked on the door and invited her to have coffee with him at the Flora Dora Café. They married three months later. Their boy Adam looked like Mimosa, and their girl Shawna looked like Victor.

  My parents and I attended the wedding, a wild happy event, with summer flowers and gypsy music and dancing.

  “I’ve never been so happy,” Victor said.

  “Neither have I,” Mimosa said.

  My mom asked, “Was that you who left Mimosa at the altar years back?”

  “You cannot unlove,” was all Victor said.

  Buford and Craven were both in their fifties when they got hitched. I attended both weddings. Craven married Faith’s divorced mother Harriet. She was a stern, humourless woman who pulled her hair too tight in a bun. Her former husband Robert, a good man by all accounts, had taken the boat to Whitehorse for business and kept on going. The last they’d heard of him was a postcard from Vancouver instructing Harriet on which lawyer she should contact.

  “Good riddance to that fool,” she said, with more anger than one man could have ever borne.

  Harriet didn’t grieve too long. She married Craven within a year.

  Craven’s marriage was a small private affair with my dad as a witness and Buford as best man. Buford, overcome with happiness, cried through the whole ceremony. His girlfriend Beth kept tugging at his arm and telling him, “Shut up, you big baby.” Harriet cast him a dirty look.

  From the start Harriet badgered and controlled Craven relentlessly. Craven was inexperienced with women and buckled to her demands. Even I could see that he went from a talkative, happy man to a whipped husband and grew old and grey. He thought this was all part of marriage, so he didn’t complain and always answered, “Yes, dear.”

  “Sad,” Victor told me. “Marriage should not be this way. Fifty-fifty, not one person telling all the time.”

  Harriet brought out melancholy in Craven, and I avoided her whenever possible.

  Buford’s wedding was a big public affair. It was uneventful until a drunk miner asked his new wife Beth for a dance too many times, and Buford decided to teach him some manners. Before doing that, he removed his tooth and told me to “hold this while I take care of business.” Buford waded into the crowd. There was a smack, then a dog-pile. My father helped pull them apart.

  Beth was a cousin of Chief Daniel and was as round as Buford and half his age. She already had four children from a previous marriage and she didn’t want any more. “I’m too old to have more kids. If Buford wants them, he can have them himself.”

  In 1968 Buford, having put on weight from Beth’s biscuits and gravy, died of a heart attack while hauling a hindquarter of moose that Beth had shot out of the bush to a truck waiting on the Dempster Highway. Craven was crushed. “Best damn brother anyone ever had,” he cried.

  I helped Craven and Victor make an impressive wooden monument for his grave with the moon, the sun, stars and one tooth carved and scrolled on the top.

  “We all shine on,” Victor told me.

  Craven carefully lettered in black paint, “Here lies Diamond Tooth Buford, the best brother anyone could hope for.” It didn’t quite rhyme, but it was the best Craven could do under the distressing circumstances.

  The funeral was a surprisingly happy affair, due in part to the many friends who came to see Buford off and the potlatch that Beth organized. “He is my husband. He gets a potlatch,” she told her family, and everyone agreed. Even the fellow Buford punched out at his wedding was there and praised “the big guy with the big heart.”

  Uncle Wilfred grew more dignified and respected with age. He took to wearing a suit and tie everywhere he went and seemed to walk straighter.

  In 1964 a black 1958 Lincoln Continental Mark III with suicide doors—back doors that swung open toward the rear of the car—drove across Canada and headed north on the Alaska Highway. The car turned right outside of Whitehorse and completed the 333 dusty miles to Dawson City in two long days. After a night at the Stewart Crossing Lodge, its occupants arrived in the early morning when the grass was thick with dew, and stopped at Hughie Ford’s Chevrolet Automotive Garage for directions. They arrived unannou
nced and woke Wilfred from his sleep. It took him a moment to realize who they were. Overcome with emotion, he cried as he welcomed them in.

  “Surprise!” said his sister Joyce. “We just had to come and see for ourselves where you’ve been hiding all these years.”

  They hauled in their many suitcases, delighted at the idea of camping out in Wilfred’s cramped cabin.

  Taking a draw on his ever-present pipe, Jacob said, “Very enjoyable, this roughing it in the Klondike.”

  They acted like two kids at summer camp.

  No one had ever seen such a luxury car in Dawson before, and it was the buzz of the town. School kids went out of their way to see it and were late for class. “What a beauty,” they said.

  I was introduced to my relatives and missed school for the entire day.

  Wilfred’s sister Joyce and her husband Jacob Wertheimer, a Wall Street financier, had come to make amends, saying their part of the family hadn’t treated my dad or mom the way they should have. Jacob, as the executor of his niece Rebecca’s parents’ estate, had brought a bundle of legal papers for her to sign. “With your parents’ passing, you were entitled to some of the property and moneys, but it has been a battle. Cecil fought your inheritance every inch of the way, the dirty bastard.”

  Joyce looked shocked. “Why, Jacob, in all our forty years I’ve never known you to use such language.”

  Jacob’s cheeks went red as if he were a schoolboy caught smoking. “Well, maybe it’s about time and the right occasion,” he said.

  Regardless of the small inheritance, Jacob and Joyce’s visit took a burden off my mother’s shoulders, and I will always be grateful to the Wertheimers for that. Sometimes I thought that my sadness as a boy was the result of my mother’s treatment by her family, which I know gave her great sorrow.

  Wilfred and I spent the next week shuttling Jacob and Joyce around town and the goldfields to show them the people and the sights. They were a wonderful couple, and I learned to love them dearly. I also developed an affinity for yacht-sized classic cars and owned many in my lifetime.

  Joyce would hug me, call me her angel and tell me, “You must come and stay with us. We’ll visit the museums, take a carriage ride in Central Park and visit the opera. Would you like that, Tobias?”

  I would like it, I told her, and I kept her invitation close to my heart. It was years later that I discovered it was Chanel perfume she was wearing.

  Wilfred entranced Jacob and Joyce with the many stories of his life.

  “My good God, Wilfred, I should write all this down,” Jacob said. “It would make a fabulous book, don’t you think, Joyce, darling?”

  I told him, “I have already written a lot of this, Uncle Jacob.”

  “Then send it to me, my boy, and we will publish a book together,” he said.

  The thought of being a published author really interested me, and I started writing history in earnest. I sent copies off to Uncle Jacob, but apart from a thank-you note, nothing ever came of it.

  We would sit at a booth in the Flora Dora Café, Joyce in her fox stole and Jacob in his ascot, receiving the many well-wishers who came by the table. I introduced them, having known practically everyone in town since my birth. In a way Joyce and Jacob were something like royalty, thanks to the Lincoln. I was so proud of them.

  On an afternoon when Wilfred stayed home, Craven, Buford, Victor and I piled into the back seat, with Buford taking up half the room. We drove around town with Buford and Victor at the windows waving for everyone to see.

  “How much you want for this beautiful car?” Victor asked. He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. “One thousand? Maybe two thousand? How much? Five? I pay you cash money on the barrel, no worry.”

  Jacob looked in the rear-view mirror at Victor, who wasn’t looking his way. “How would we get home?” Jacob asked.

  “You fly big plane,” Victor said.

  “I don’t think so. We drove here because Joyce can’t fly. She gets nervous and airsick.”

  “Aww, too bad. I love this car,” Victor said, rubbing the red leather armrest and waving to more people passing on the street.

  Victor could very well have bought the car and paid cash, since he’d made a small fortune working at the Elsa Mine years ago, but I don’t think Uncle Jacob took him seriously. He probably thought a gypsy wouldn’t have money.

  Joyce got gold fever panning Wilfred’s claim on Bonanza Creek. She found a few colours in the bottom of her pan and couldn’t stop digging. As she crouched on the side of the creek, the nose of her stole dipped into the water so the fox seemed to be thirsty and gratefully drinking. The bottom of her dress, bought at Saks on Fifth Avenue, floated on the surface.

  I said, “Aunty, your dress is getting wet,” but in her excitement she didn’t hear me.

  “Come along, sis, it’s getting dark,” Wilfred said. “The gold will still be here tomorrow when we come back.”

  “The bottom of my dress is wet,” she said as she got into the car.

  Jacob was an admirer of Robert Service, and he and I visited the poet’s cabin a number of times. He stood in front of the porch looking up at the door as if Robert would walk out and greet him. He found it fascinating that Wilfred lived a stone’s throw from the cabin.

  “Greatest poet that ever lived, Tobias. This man is a hundred times more romantic than Byron and a million times more adventuresome than Tennyson. And Keats, ha! Keats doesn’t hold a candle to any of them, never mind Robert Service. If I lived here, I would visit this shrine every day,” Jacob said.

  Wilfred introduced Jacob to an ancient Norwegian, Roald, who’d known Robert well.

  “My God, Robert Service actually cashed this old guy’s cheques when he worked at the Canadian Bank of Commerce on Front Street,” Jacob exclaimed. “Just wait until I tell the boys at the firm about this.”

  He went out and took pictures of the bank, Roald and Robert’s house.

  Victor and Jacob were becoming friends. They visited the cabin, where Victor recited “The Cremation of Sam McGee” flawlessly in his heavy accent.

  “Well, that was an unusual rendition,” Jacob said as we sat at the dinner table that evening.

  Joyce told me that Jacob borrowed a pair of Wilfred’s woollen one-piece long johns and took to wearing them and a bush hat around the cabin. He was an early riser. One morning he was standing by the sink, making coffee and flipping flapjacks, when Wilfred walked in from the bedroom donning his bathrobe.

  “Is that where you made the bomb?” Jacob asked, pointing to the table.

  “The very spot,” Wilfred said, yawning.

  “I had a curious dream about Mr. Service last night, Wilfred,” he said. “He was sitting on his porch in his suit and tie, spats on and all that, and he said, ‘This was the only home I was ever truly happy in.’”

  “Interesting,” said Wilfred.

  “I think I can understand what he meant,” Jacob said.

  Joyce had woken up and was listening in on the conversation. She had the heavy covers over her head—the wood stove had gone out in the night—and she pulled them down to show her tousled blonde curls.

  “Bring me a cup of that, please, Jacob dear,” she said, yawning.

  Jacob crossed the room and gave her a cup. She took a sip. “Ah, just how I like it,” she said. Joyce and Jacob seemed to be very affectionate, like my parents, and I was sorry they didn’t have children.

  “Wilfred, I just remembered—we brought your diploma with us.” Waving a hand, she instructed Jacob, “Get it out of the suitcase, darling.”

  Jacob dug through the clothing and pulled out a framed sheepskin certificate. In Latin written in scrawling calligraphy, Harvard had bestowed upon Wilfred David Durant an Artium Magister, a Master of Arts degree, in 1912.

  When I saw it that afternoon, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. “Wow, Uncle Wilfred, you really went to Harvard. Wait until the kids at school hear about this.”

  Wilfred held it at arm’s
length and studied it for a moment. “Funny, I thought this was so important at one time, but my life went in a completely different direction. I’m not sorry. You have only one life to live and you have to make your own choices and be true to yourself.” He then hung it on the wall. “Wait until Taffy sees this. I don’t think he ever believed I had it.”

  Two days later my mom and dad, Wilfred, Joyce, Jacob and I had a weepy farewell. Even Taffy, who’d only met our visitors briefly at the Flora Dora Café, came out and got teary-eyed.

  “You must come and live with us in the Hamptons,” Joyce said. “You’ll love it there. But I can see why you live here. You have so many friends, and this is your home. It’s a lovely country. I hope we have made some amends for the family trouble.”

  Taffy thought the invitation included him and said with a sigh, “I’ll try to make it, but on my pension, I’ll probably only get as far as Winnipeg.”

  My mother gave Joyce a long hug and told her, “Don’t ever think of the family trouble again. That is all done with. We appreciate everything you and Jacob have done for us.”

  We all waved until the Lincoln was out of sight. I went home and sat in my room and cried a little as I listened to the radio. My mother called me for dinner. I hoped my eyes weren’t red, but both my parents glanced at my face, and by the slight pause of scrutiny, I knew they’d noticed. They said nothing.

  I grieved when Wilfred passed on in 1977. Windy Sale attended the graveside service, and because he was becoming forgetful and forgot he was at a funeral, he went into a long explanation of the mammoth discovery on Bonanza Creek some forty-five years earlier. Sitting in his wheelchair, he ended his narrative with, “Damn civil servants. They should have minded their own damn business!” The service went on longer than expected, but it was interesting, and no one seemed to mind. I loved it, because it was just more fodder for my writing and convinced me all the more of the uniqueness of this land and its people.

  I wrote a two-column description of the event, and it made the front page of the Whitehorse Star under the banner “Harvard Sourdough Who Discovered Mammoth Dies.”