Talking at the Woodpile

by David Thompson

  I enjoyed covering the news around town for the Whitehorse Star by sitting in on city council meetings, political party gatherings and dances organized by the Dawson City Benevolent Fund Raising Society.

  They did an excellent job of raising funds for everything from the starving children in Biafra to a new television set for the seniors at the McDonald Lodge. Brian took every opportunity at these occasions to passionately explain that aliens were not people-eating monsters but warm-hearted, intelligent beings seeking a home.

  Most people knew Brian, so they shrugged off his antics. To them, he was Brian the alien man, the friendly garage manager who gave them an amusing distraction from the rigours of daily life in the North.

  “I wish I had his optimism and conviction for a cause,” Mayor Bullard told me after a meeting, though he sometimes got impatient at Brian’s appeals to city council. “Next order of business,” the mayor would announce, exasperated, banging his gavel on the ancient town hall desk.

  Magazines and books of all sorts were stacked haphazardly on shelves around Brian’s house, giving off a smell of mildew and creating a fire hazard. He imaginatively researched in this library for what was necessary to support his theory.

  Thick manila envelopes crammed with correspondence from like-minded enthusiasts were filed into stacks of wooden fruit crates that leaned precariously as they towered toward the ceiling. Once a stack tipped over onto the kitchen stove while Brian was cooking and almost burned the place down.

  “Hot bacon grease and beans splattered everywhere. They burned my hand and ruined supper,” he said, showing me his grease-stained bandages in the grocery store the next day.

  His largest collection of information had its own battered army-surplus file cabinet and was labelled in bold red ink roswell site 51. Roswell was the ultra-secret military base in New Mexico. Brian was convinced that the military studied alien bodies recovered from a crashed spaceship. Despite numerous letters, he never heard back from anyone at Site 51.

  “I was hoping they would send me a sample of the metal that the spaceship was made of, but they wouldn’t part with any of it. I know they are keeping secrets there, Tobias. If it wasn’t for the armed guards, I would take my two-week vacation, and you and I would drive down there, crawl through the cactus and sand dunes and get right in. I’d take Polaroids of the whole operation. Maybe one of those bubble-headed aliens would be walking around. A picture like that would be nice on the front page of the Star, don’t you think?”

  I wouldn’t have gone. I knew Roswell was the most secure area on Earth, and we would be shot for sure.

  “Do you know why aliens want to be with us, Tobias?” Brian asked.

  “They got lost in space and crashed here and won’t leave because they like the Ed Sullivan Show,” I said.

  Brian looked at me as if I was trying to be funny. I was, but he was too serious to appreciate it.

  “The reason is obvious. They’re lonely. In this vast universe, is it not conceivable that someone would be lonely? For heaven’s sake, look at the distances out there! That is why aliens have every Roy Orbison record ever made. They’re lonely! They want company and they like Earthlings. Is that so very hard to understand? They want to be loved. Is that so bad?”

  I was getting gas, and Winch was checking his tires and giving Joshua a hard time in a friendly way.

  “A smooth dancer like you should be on Broadway. What are you doing pumping gas in this hick town anyway?” Winch asked.

  “Must be my good luck,” Joshua deadpanned.

  Winch stuttered. Not badly, but “th” sounds tripped him up if he got excited. When Brian heard this, he not only figured that he had an alien but tried to pinpoint exactly where in the galaxy his particular stutter came from.

  “Accents happen everywhere,” Brian said. “Barcelona, Cape Town, Moscow and outer space.”

  Brian saw Winch and came out of the garage. He went into a space greeting of bows and genuflections that resembled the courting ritual of the Wood Buffalo National Park whooping crane. Circling around and moving his head like a chicken, Brian smiled pleasantly and offered salutations. “On behalf of the United Nations and all Earthlings, I greet you, I greet you.” Then in a soft, singsong voice he sang, “Peace is to you, distant traveller, peace is to you.” This sounded very much like Brahms’ Lullaby.

  “I wish he wouldn’t do this,” Joshua muttered.

  I took a picture.

  As much as Brian pleaded, Winch would not return the welcome but angrily responded with the vilest of words. This increased his stuttering and convinced Brian that he was indeed dealing with an alien. Winch sped away in an angry cloud of dust. At coffee break Brian announced, “I have determined Winch’s origins and hope he will eventually see me as a friend and embrace me as a brother.”

  “You don’t want to embarrass a guy like Winch in front of other people,” Joshua said. “He might turn on you.”

  Why Winch and his brothers did not pound Brian into the ground was a bit of a mystery to Dawson City folks. People speculated that maybe the Halloos really were aliens. It was a joke and a good way to get back at the Rock Creek boys, who were becoming more of a problem each day with their surliness and disregard for the town.

  The annual summer solstice celebration on the Dome above Dawson City attracted tourists and townsfolk alike. On the longest day, when the sun is farthest north and communication with outer space is at its best, Brian would join in the festivities. Dressed head to toe in his extraterrestrial costume of tinfoil, with red whip-licorice antennas glued to a silver-sprayed hard hat and his face painted bright blue, he would weave and dance through the crowd, holding his hands shovel-like in front of him. While dancing, he sang an alien-greeting song, which sounded much like the Hawaiian aloha greeting. His quivering voice bleated, “Welcome to you, welcome to you. I paint my face blue to say welcome to you!”

  I followed him up the Dome one year, taking pictures and keeping notes. A German film crew took an interest and followed him throughout the night. Brian loved the attention and hammed it up, making up alien poems on the spot. “Saturn has its rings, Mars is red, the aliens are here, let’s celebrate.”

  Brian thought aliens greeted each other by flashing their bright blue faces. It was akin to humans having red faces when embarrassed, but the aliens had more control. He was certain he had picked up blue-face greetings from people in the crowd, but unable to respond in kind, he waved back instead.

  What no one knew was that Brian paid equal attention to the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, around December twenty-first. I drove him up to the Dome one grey and windy afternoon to record the event. Bundled in my parka, I shivered and held his coat as he prepared. His celebration costume was a pair of tie-dyed, one-piece wool Stanfield’s long johns with the rear flap sewn shut. Dressing to represent life and growth in the universe, Brian painted his entire body bright red and his hair green, draped a bright yellow flowing cape over his shoulders and wore aviation goggles and knee-high snow boots. The dazzling display of colour was in sharp contrast to the frozen, grey-brown, snow-covered landscape.

  “You look really cool,” I told him. A lot of the newcomers to Dawson City that I’d befriended liked brightly coloured and tie-dyed clothes too.

  “I know,” Brian yelled over the howling wind. “Hold on to your hat. If this doesn’t bring those aliens in, nothing will.”

  Then, like the male lead in a bizarre ballet, he held a flashlight in each hand and ran around the top of the Dome, screaming, “M92! M92! M92!” at the top of his lungs. Brian thought our aliens originated in M92, a globular cluster in the constellation Hercules that was billions of years old.

  He was a sight to behold and would have continued longer if it wasn’t for the cape wrapping around his feet and making him fall repeatedly on the icy rocks. Bruised and covered in snow, he staggered back to the comfort of the truck.

  “Wow! That was absolutely incredible, I feel that contact was reall
y made this time. I’m sure of it,” Brian said, shivering as we drove back down the steep, icy Dome road.

  In fact he’d attracted no one, not a person or an alien or a dog. Even the ravens stayed away, which isn’t a good sign, because ravens will attend anything.

  I wish other people had seen him; it was an amazing sight. I was glad I took pictures, because no one believed me when I described Brian’s performance. Sadly the Whitehorse Star turned down the opportunity to print the story and pictures.

  “We have our standards,” the editor told me. “Try the Whole Moose Catalogue. They like stuff like that.”

  My mom looked at my pictures and said, “That man is not normal. You shouldn’t be around him, Tobias. I might have to speak to your father. Don’t let that man influence you with all his alien spaceperson talk.”

  Mom never said spaceman; she was reading up on gender equality. I wondered for a brief moment if my mother was an alien.

  People as far east as Keno City and as far south as Carmacks knew Brian and never gave his alien interest a second thought. In the Yukon, the cold and distance defeated formality and the conventional standards of the south. The North is a place where people can be themselves and excel at it, at least until they come to their senses.

  Brian was a good worker, always on time and honest, but he was driven to look for aliens among those who filled up at the pumps. Hughie cautioned him, and Mordechai confirmed it with a nod. “I don’t want those alien shenanigans on the job. And don’t be a blue face either! Just work.”

  “Winch must have complained,” Brian confided to Joshua and me.

  None of us could have guessed that his first friendly alien was already heading this way. Brian’s destiny was approaching from many thousands of miles away.

  I was checking the oil on Mom’s Rambler when a dusty Winnebago pulled up. We didn’t see many of those in Dawson City this early in the year. The door swung open, and a big woman daintily stepped out. She was wearing hot pink stretch pants, sparkly slippers and a white frilly blouse. Her eyeglasses matched her pants and had wings on them like the fins of a 1956 Cadillac. At her heels jumped a small white poodle with a green head.

  Brian looked stunned. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a greasy cloth, smearing black on his forehead. “A sure sign, a sure sign,” he muttered excitedly. “Green hair, green hair!”

  Then he stared in amazement. The women’s ears came to a perfect point. Brian slowly folded to his knees, completely forgetting to dance and sing his alien greeting. He asked, “Are you an alien?”

  She thought he had tripped and offered her hands to help him up. Having just left a job that dealt mostly with aliens, illegal or otherwise, she thought he wanted to know if she was from out of country. “Why yes, I am. I just arrived five days ago,” she said.

  Brian released one of her hands and bit his other forefinger; the pain probably helped him to concentrate. Tears flooded his eyes. “Thank God. You’ve come. And you’re willing to communicate,” he said breathlessly. He would have wrapped his arms around her knees but he had on his greasy coveralls.

  She dropped his hand and stood there thinking, surely he doesn’t think I’m a space alien? Never one to beat around the bush, she asked, “Alien? What kind of alien do you think I am, you pencil-necked geek? A Martian?”

  The dog barked in support.

  Brian snapped back to reality at her forcefulness. He had overstepped his manners and embarrassed himself. If he was going to meet this interesting woman, he had to do better.

  “I was just wondering where you came from,” he muttered as he got up from his knees.

  “Miami! Where the hell do you think I come from, the Belgian Congo or the planet Neptune? Can’t you read licence plates?”

  Brian apologized furiously, half out of respect for her aggressive demeanour and half out of fear of being fired by the garage owners.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “Let’s start over. I’m Maude Montgomery from Miami, and this here is my dog Miami.”

  In ten minutes Maude had a tank of gas and an invitation.

  “Let me make it up to you, please. Come for dinner at my place,” Brian pleaded.

  Cautiously Maude accepted.

  I was so surprised that I forgot to take a picture for the Star.

  Maude was talkative, and as Brian prepared dinner she told him her life story. She was an African American widow who had just cashed in her deceased husband’s insurance policy, sold her belongings, bought a second-hand Winnebago and loaded up everything she owned.

  “Good riddance to all that,” she told Brian, who told me all about it the next day. “I’m sorry that runaway cement truck ran over him, but that man was mean, mean, mean! I put up with him far too long. I took my twenty-year pension and resigned from the Department of Immigration.

  “As I drove away, my family and friends stood in my parents’ driveway wailing and waving handkerchiefs. None of us had ever moved away from home before.

  “But I had to go. Something was calling, maybe the spirit of the Yukon. I never thought it would be the Great White North. Why do they call it the Great White North? Is it because there are no African Americans here?” But she didn’t wait for Brian to answer.

  “I took Miami, my poodle, whose head I dyed green, and drove off in the direction that my heart told me to follow. A green-headed dog is hard to lose,” she said.

  Brian seemed friendly enough, Maude told me when I interviewed her a few weeks later, and being twice his size, she could handle him if he got fresh. If worst came to worst, she would sic Miami on him. She had done it before, and the poodle seemed to enjoy sinking her sharp little teeth into a trouser leg and getting whisked around in the air. Maude was a full-figured single woman, and men found her attractive. Why wouldn’t she accept a dinner invitation?

  Miami yipped in agreement.

  It wasn’t love at first sight for Maude, but for Brian it was. He was head over heels and worshipped Maude.

  “Tobias, usually I hold my cards to my chest when it comes to personal feelings, but I love that women. I love her dearly,” he told me.

  He knew from the very first moment that she had to be his. She agreed to marry him, but only after settling in her own place and only if she could think it over for the next few months.

  “I don’t want to make the same mistake twice, Brian. I don’t want to have to fight with you like I did my first husband to get any affection out of his cheating heart,” she said with anger in her voice.

  Finally she agreed to set a date. “You seem like a real nice man, Brian, and I believe we could be happy together. Miami likes you, and her I trust.”

  Maude went to work for the City of Dawson as the Clerk of Works. Their relationship had captured Brian’s complete attention, and he stopped annoying Winch and others with alien accusations. After all, he had a full-time alien with him and he was playing his cards close to his chest.

  Maude met the Halloo women during a battle over a building permit, which Maude helped settle in favour of the Halloos. Lulu was grateful that they’d been treated fairly, and because they admired Maude’s honesty, she became a favourite of the sisters.

  “If anyone ever troubles you, just let us know,” Lulu told Maude. This was a sure sign their friendship was sealed.

  Maude, who’d grown up in the toughest part of Miami, laughed. Shaking her finger in the air, she said, “No, no, if anyone needs talking to, you just let me know!”

  The families visited back and forth, and over time, Winch decided that Brian wasn’t totally crazy, just interestingly eccentric, almost like a Halloo. They even became friends.

  Then meddling Howard Bungle got wind of the engagement. He called up Maude at the city works office and rudely told her to forget about marrying Brian. Lulu Halloo told me all about it later.

  “He is a real nutcase. He thinks people are aliens,” Howard told Maude. “He should have been shipped out of here in a straightjacket a long time ago.” Then with distrac
ting casualness, he added, “And besides, it’s not proper for a white person to marry a black person. It’s not done in this town, and you should know better. What about your kids? What colour will they be and how will they fit in?”

  Maude was almost struck speechless, but she said, “I can’t have kids.” Then she came to her senses and said angrily, “You mind your own business, Mr. Bungle. This has nothing to do with you,” and slammed down the phone.

  The heated conversation drew the attention of the other workers in the office, and when Maude put her head on the desk and cried, they came over to comfort her and ask what had happened.

  “I have to go home. I’m not feeling well,” she said.

  “I never thought I would find such racism in Canada,” she said to Brian, “I’m going back home. I need my family.”

  “Honey baby,” Brian said, “Howard Bungle is nothing but trouble. Everyone knows that. Pay no attention to him.”

  Howard voiced his opinions around town and was doing so in Cooper’s store where he was told, “Shut the hell up. Get out and don’t come back.” Mr. Cooper would have thrown an orange from the crate on the counter, but they were just out of his reach.

  As Howard left, he stood at the door and angrily shook a finger back at the people standing by the till. “I remember when it all started,” he said. “It was when that damned gypsy Victor married Mimosa. That Mimosa was a beautiful woman. She had no business going with a gypsy.”

  Lulu heard from Maude about Howard’s hurtful words and would have gone after him herself, but Winch and his brothers said, “We’ll handle this.”

  Brian had also put in a phone call to Rock Creek and asked the brothers for their help. The three of them drove into town crammed into the front of the pickup so tightly that Winch couldn’t reach the stick shift, and their beards looked like one big hairy blanket. OP, who sat in the middle, shifted the gears on Winch’s instruction.

  “First gear, OP. Second gear, OP. Third gear, OP.”