Talking at the Woodpile

by David Thompson

  “The pain and agony I went through made my problems seem small, and I forgot them as time went on. I spent another two months up on Hunker.

  “One day a D-8 Cat came up the road. Just as well! I was running out of supplies and wanted to go home. It was Henry Cougar, a placer miner, getting an early start on the gold-mining season. He was surprised to see anyone up there and stopped for coffee. Henry was the first person I spoke to in seven months. The road was now cleared, so the next day I wasted no time in getting my things loaded in the truck. The battery was dead from my using it all winter with the radio, so I coasted down the hill a bit, popped the clutch and away I went.

  “It was beautiful down in the valley. The sun was melting the snow, and water ran everywhere. The Klondike River was starting to thaw, and the roads were all muddy. Lulu, the kids and the dogs must have recognized the sound of the International Harvester coming up the drive, because all of them were out waiting for me. Lulu said later that her intuition told her I was coming home that day. The kids ran screaming and yelling. They were happy to see me.”

  Winch’s eyes were tearing over. He sniffed a couple of times, blew his nose and went on.

  “Damn, Tobias, what a person does to avoid love, eh? I hugged the kids close and couldn’t believe I was such a fool as to leave them. Lulu was standing on the porch wiping her hands on her apron. She stared at me. I knew she was looking to see how I was. I set the children aside and limped up to the porch. She was standing on the second step so we were the same height. I said, ‘Hi, Lulu.’”

  Lulu told me later, “I could see Winch was a changed man. His face was bright, and his eyes were clear. He’d lost so much weight that his clothes hung on him. The straps that cinched up his overalls, which normally hung at chest level, now fit under his chin. Not since our wedding day had he looked so thin.”

  “Lulu gave me the biggest hug and said, ‘Welcome home, Winch.’ I loved the fresh smell of her clothes and the warmth of her body. I buried my head in her shoulder and told her how sorry I was.” She said, ‘Now, now, we won’t have any of that, will we? It’s over.’ She hugged me again and we went inside.

  “We sat at the kitchen table, since the children wouldn’t let me out of their sight. They were waving every crayon drawing they’d made since I left and telling me everything that had happened in the past months. One of the dogs had pups and my lap was soon covered in puppies.

  “You know, Tobias, sitting there in the kitchen with my wife and kids, I realized then and there that when you come right down to it, all there is is love. Love is all that matters.”

  I began to understand more clearly what had changed Winch.

  “I told Lulu again that I was sorry I left, because I felt so bad. She started to cry and sat on the edge of her chair with her elbow on the table and her chin resting on her hand. I knew I had hurt and worried her. I swore I would never do it again for as long as I lived.

  “The news spread that I was home, and everyone came to the kitchen to see me. I hugged and greeted everyone individually to make sure each person knew I was happy to see them. I apologized where I had to and put other things straight when it seemed appropriate. Uncle Zak gave me the once-over a couple of times, looking to see which Winch had really returned, but I won him over. ‘I was organizing a coup d’état, Winch,’ Zak said. ‘You were lucky you left when you did, otherwise by now I’d be running this show. Clutch thought he would make his move, but if brains were dynamite, he wouldn’t have enough to blow his nose.’ Zak didn’t care that Clutch was standing next to him.

  “They all wanted to know about my toes, so we chased the younger children out of the room, and amid gasps and groans, I showed them what I’d had to do. Where the toes were, there was now a row of fresh pink stubs, cleanly healed. There was a little jog where the big toe took a second hit, but it was pretty straight overall. Holding up my leg, I couldn’t help but feel a little pride at the fine job I had done.”

  That was the end of Winch’s Hunker Creek story. It became a running joke around the house from there on in that if anyone froze their toes, they should see Doctor Winch.

  About a month later the Halloos threw a combination birthday-welcome-home barbecue for him. OP only got a birthday party, but he didn’t care. He and Clutch were glad to have their brother back, and they hugged him every chance they got.

  Winch told them, “I’m here to stay, boys. I’m not leaving physically or mentally. What you see is what you get.”

  I talked Mom and Dad into going to the party with Flora and me. Dad was all right, but Mom balked.

  “Come on, Becky, you can meet our son’s friend.” Dad called Mom Becky when they argued.

  “Okay, but I never thought my son would date a dance hall girl.”

  “She’s not a dance hall girl, Ma. I told you that already.”

  Mom and Dad sat in the back of the Rambler, and Flora and I sat in the front. In the rear-view mirror, I saw Mom pull out her pack of cigarettes, and I said, “Mom!” She put them back in her purse.

  “When did you start smoking?” Dad asked.

  “Never you mind,” Mom said.

  Somehow a conversation got started about school. Flora was heading back to Simon Fraser University in September, and I was off to my first year at the University of Victoria.

  “What are you studying, dear?” my mom asked.

  “I’m studying education,” Flora said.

  In the mirror I saw my mom’s cheeks blush.

  Once Mom realized Flora was a hard-working student “and a very bright, pretty one at that,” the ice was broken. By the time we reached the party, they were inseparable.

  Winch and I stood together drinking punch, watching people enjoy themselves.

  “This is what it’s all about, Tobias, friends and family being together, supporting each other, giving each other confidence.”

  “I will never forget that,” I said.

  We shook hands, and Winch hugged me like a bear.

  “I love you, man, like a brother,” he said, then moved on to sit with Lulu and the children.

  I sat with Flora, my parents and Zak, who was spinning tales. I never felt so good in all my life.

  Uncle Zak took the axe and mounted it on a varnished and stained plywood plaque. It hung on the living room wall in a place of honour, over the couch among family photographs. If you looked closely, you could see a reddish stain on the handle. Winch put his condensed version of the Bible in the drawer beside his bed and read it at night before sleeping.

  “I never did feel comfortable using a holy book like that,” he told me, “but it saved my life.”

  Lulu helped out by putting things into perspective to ease his worries. “If God didn’t make things to help man, well then, what’s the use of having them?”

  Years later I helped Dad get a load of winter wood up on Hunker Creek. We drove the rattling two-ton stake truck up the winding road a few extra miles to visit Winch’s cabin. The door was open; no one had lived there since Winch had left. I stood on a stump, maybe the one Winch used, to look for the toe bones on the sod roof. I couldn’t find them. Rodents must have spirited them away to gnaw on for the minerals. Inside the cabin sat the old stove, and next to that, bolted securely to the wall, was a metal bed frame sans mattress. On the third log above the bed, carved in deep letters, I read these words:

  God’s gifts to man

  He has chosen to ignore

  So in pain he will walk

  Through reality’s door.

  – Winch

  My father went to the truck, and I took a moment to look out over the valley. Hot summer days had infused the bushes and trees with more energy than they could possibly hold, and with the approaching winter, the plants were burning out their life in surreal, vibrant colours, paying homage to the retreating sun. The wind came up and blew the grasses on the valley slope like waves on the sea. For a moment I heard something and strained to hear it again. From somewhere above, below or across th
e valley came the unmistakable sound of many drummers beating one drum.

  Dawson City’s Ditch Digging Authority

  I returned home after completing my first year at the University of Victoria, leaving daffodils in Victoria for snow in Dawson City. There was a summer job waiting for me at the Flora Dora Café—washing dishes—and I started in right away.

  It was great to be home with my parents. The first couple of days, my mom wouldn’t stop crying or feeding me.

  “You’ve lost so much weight! Did you forget to eat?” she asked.

  My dad was more interested in my marks and life on campus; we talked for hours.

  I visited the Halloos at Rock Creek as soon as I could. We had kept in touch by writing a few letters during the year. The lunch table was packed when I walked in, and I was greeted with yells of surprise and bone-crushing hugs from both the men and the women. I was seated at the head of the table; Winch gave up his spot for me.

  “Look here, you’re all grown up and educated,” Lulu said, beaming with pride. She’d hugged me repeatedly and now set a plate of boiled cabbage and beef in front of me.

  “I’m only first year,” I said.

  “Nonsense,” Stella said. “You’re probably smarter than all the other students.”

  I went along with her and said, “Well, I am pretty smart.”

  That brought about a chorus of laughter. OP, in his exuberance, put a headlock on me and gave me a knuckle rub. “That’s our boy!”

  It hurt, but I’d learned to laugh these things off.

  I straightened my hair and enjoyed the rest of my lunch. I was happy to be back with the Halloos; they were truly my brothers and sisters, and I’d missed them. Sitting there, I admired how uncomplicated their life was compared to Victoria and university.

  Lulu was pregnant with a boy. The baby’s gender had been determined by the tried-and-true method of needle-and-thread dowsing. Her pregnancy must have influenced fertility in the other women, because Olive, Stella and Missy were all due about the same time.

  “It’s going to look like spring lambing around here in a few months,” Uncle Zak said. “Better line up the midwives, hot water and clean towels.”

  “It’s doctors, nurses and hospitals these days, Zak, but thanks for the advice anyway,” Stella said.

  Winch had gotten over his obsessions with aliens and religion, and this lack of a cause allowed the brothers to pay more attention to their music. They pulled guitars, amps, and a drum kit out from under tarps and dusted them off.

  An assortment of colourful electrical cords was stretched from the barn to the house, and the music began. The electrical circuits soon overloaded, so the children were trained to run up the hill and reset the breakers when they tripped.

  Late at night, when the house slept, the men themselves had to reset the breakers. No one volunteered, so the brothers developed an elaborate contest of paper, rock and scissors combined with straw-drawing and coin-flipping. It took more time to come up with a loser than it did to reset the breaker. Through some sleight of hand, Zak’s turn never came up. The men would run up the hill, bending over to rest a number of times with their hands on their knees, and arrive back at the barn out of breath and too tired to immediately pick up their instruments.

  I sat in on one of these midnight practices, when the shouts from the house were changing from “Knock it off!” to pleas of “We are trying to sleep here.”

  One night, very late, all three sisters—Lulu, Olive and Stella—marched down to the barn with their nightgowns flowing out behind them and pushed over the amplifiers, forcing the brothers to quit.

  “Why don’t you ever learn who is boss around here?” Stella yelled, as the chastened brothers clutched their instruments and bit their tongues so as to not make matters worse.

  The band needed a new name. With their father in mind, they called themselves the Dawson City Ditch Digging Authority.

  “Why that name?” I asked after a practice one evening in the barn.

  Clutch started to explain, and his brothers joined in. All three pulled up paint-splattered sawhorses.

  “It’s like this,” OP said. “Our names are not our real names.”

  No kidding, I thought.

  “We changed them to change our lives,” Clutch said.

  “OP’s name is Leonard, Clutch’s is Bernstein and mine is Chopin,” Winch said.

  “I never would have guessed.” I was now mystified, especially because of Chopin.

  “Our parents were amateur musicians and played a bunch of instruments,” Winch went on. “It was an unusual day when the radio or the record player wasn’t crooning out Armstrong, Sinatra, Holiday and others. They were both big people like us, and Mom was always cooking and baking.”

  “They met at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. Ma was studying nursing, and Dad was studying architectural technology,” OP said. “It was love at first sight, they told us. Soon after graduation they married, bought a house and started a family.”

  “Winch and OP arrived first; my parents didn’t expect twins, and neither did the doctors, so that was a big surprise. I was born a year later, but I’ve always been ahead of my brothers in school because I skipped a few grades,” Clutch said. “From the start they encouraged us toward music. When the Bolshoi Ballet performed Swan Lake in Winnipeg, Dad took us out of school, and we made the three-day journey in our ’58 Cadillac. During the summer holidays, we practically lived at Banff National Park where the School of Fine Arts produced plays and concerts. We attended so many of these that the people of Banff thought we lived there. We were easy to spot because we wore suits with white shirts and ties, and our brown Oxfords shone. Ma always made sure we were spotlessly clean. We used to play around the stages and meet the stagehands. This was more interesting than the performances themselves.”

  “Leonard and Bernstein took piano lessons, while I practised the violin,” Winch said. “Dad invested in a violin—not a Stradivarius, but an expensive one just the same. From the start we showed talent. Day after day, mornings and afternoons, we practised Beethoven, Vivaldi, Mozart and Bach. We were the best in the school band. The teacher featured us as an ensemble at concerts, and our parents would sit in the front row beaming with pride. I showed enough promise that Dad said I was a prodigy.

  “But we got older and went through puberty, and everything changed. We started to get interested in girls and cars. We skipped school and failed our grades. Dad shook his finger in our faces and warned us over and over, ‘You’ll be the kings of the ditchdiggers if you don’t take your education seriously.’”

  Now I knew where they got the name for the band.

  “We grew our hair and beards and developed this badass attitude. It’s just a show! We aren’t really as bad as we seem, we’re just actors,” Winch said with a smile.

  “I don’t believe you’re acting,” I said.

  “We’ll get you for that later,” Winch said.

  “So did you dig ditches?”

  “We got part-time jobs pumping gas, changing tires and pulling wrenches at Mike’s One-Stop Auto Garage on Main Street. That was far more interesting than school or concerts! We were good mechanics and we could fix anything. ‘Bunch of professionals,’ Mike told his customers. We doubled his business.”

  “We pooled our $1.25 an hour earnings and bought a ’52 Buick, which we had running perfectly. Cruising around town and the surrounding countryside, we became popular with the girls. We started playing rock ’n’ roll and called ourselves the El Caminos.”

  “Our neighbour Taffy has a green 1959 Chevrolet El Camino parked in his backyard under a tarp,” I said.

  “Yeah, we know,” said OP. “We tried to buy it so we could relive the good old days, but he wouldn’t sell.”

  “We asked him to put it in his will for us, but he told us to go to hell,” Clutch said. “Apparently his gypsy neighbour is going to get it.”

  “Life was good back then,” OP said. “We were free
. We had money, friends, rock ’n’ roll and each other. We quit school and were rarely home. Ma was upset, and Dad was angry when he saw us throwing everything away.”

  “It was sad,” Clutch said. “We loved them, but things went sour. Dad was a control freak.”

  “The thing that hurt most was the name calling,” Winch said. “He called us stupid, idiots and punks. We moved out and rented a farmhouse on the outskirts of town. Our friends moved in, and it was one big party. We went home to see Ma, and on one occasion we told Dad, ‘The only reason we visit is to see Mom.’”

  “That hurt him badly,” Winch added.

  “In the meantime we met the Robinson sisters—Lulu, Stella and Olive—and got married together on the same afternoon,” Clutch said. “We thought we were the luckiest men in the world to land such beauties. Mom came to the weddings. Dad didn’t.”

  “You should have seen that wedding,” OP said with a grin. “It went on for four days and almost wrecked the house. The cops were called twice to shut us down. That’s when Winch spent his wedding night in jail. Lulu was not impressed.”

  “Yeah, that’s the first time I realized I married someone with a temper,” Winch said. “We bought Mike’s garage and ran it for a few years, but it seemed we were always in some sort of trouble with the townsfolk and our neighbours. A friend living in the Yukon spent some time with us and convinced us to move here. We packed and left, bringing with us whoever wanted to come along. When we left Alberta, there were grandchildren our dad had never seen. I think he lost the thing he loved the most, but he was unable to accept the lifestyle we had chosen.”

  “We were musicians, but not the type Dad wanted us to be,” OP said. “We played rock ’n’ roll and knew its history from front to back. We knew that the guitarist of Stone the Crows was electrocuted on stage, that Deep Purple’s original drummer Harvey Shields was replaced by John Kerrison in 1967 and that Mott the Hoople was named after Willard Manus’s novel by the same name. We made up our own version of Trivial Pursuit. We could play thousands of songs by heart and harmonize as well as anyone.”