Talking at the Woodpile

by David Thompson

  Talking at the Woodpile

  Stories

  David Thompson

  Caitlin Press

  Copyright ©2011 David Thompson

  First print edition ©2011 by Caitlin Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, info@accesscopyright.ca.

  Caitlin Press Inc.

  8100 Alderwood Road

  Halfmoon Bay, BC V0N 1Y1

  www.caitlin-press.com

  Text design and epub by Kathleen Fraser.

  Cover design by Pamela Cambiazo.

  Caitlin Press Inc. acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishers Tax Credit.

  Library and Archives Cataloguing in Publication

  Thompson, David (David William)

  Talking at the woodpile / David Thompson.

  ISBN 978-1-894759-57-1

  I. Title.

  PS8639.H625T35 2011 C813’.6 C2011-900469-0

  For my wife, Wendy.

  Frozen in Time

  Bear Man

  Talking at the Woodpile

  Yukon Justice

  Piedoe

  Victor the Gypsy

  Buford's Tooth

  Mimosa Nightingale

  Time of Change

  The Rock Creek Boys

  The Man Who Thought His Wife Was an Alien

  Joseph Copper and the Small People

  Rambling in the Rambler

  Brian's Epiphany

  Jealousy Among Friends

  Winch's Meltdown

  Hunker Creek Hideout

  Dawson City Ditch Digging Authority

  Acknowledgements

  Frozen in Time

  In a cramped tunnel deep in permafrost on top of bedrock—fifty-nine claims above Discovery, where Adam’s Creek meets Bonanza Creek—Wilfred Durant worked late into a sub-zero Yukon night.

  Candles in tarnished tin holders cast shadows of his toil as he stooped in the low headroom. His breath rose in wavering columns to blanket the ceiling in a field of white crystals. The tunnel was bridged with rough timbers oozing amber sap that stuck to Wilfred’s clothing and tools. He preferred to cut the sap out of his hair rather than wash it out.

  The barber will straighten it once I’m in town, he thought.

  The dank air smelled of wet wool, pine lumber and lately—barn animals.

  Wilfred had an idea what the smell was. Parts of ancient horses, camels and a giant sloth—all well known to placer miners—had washed out in his sluice box over the years. He reached into his waistcoat pocket to take another look at the stained ivory carving he’d found a week ago. He planned to show it to Chief Daniel and the Han elders.

  Wilfred shovelled tons of overburden and pay dirt into a wooden cart balanced on rickety lodgepole pine tracks that led to a vertical entrance. There the Arctic air dropped like an anvil onto his shoulders and back. He scooped the ore into beaten metal buckets and hand-cranked them forty feet to the valley floor above. His palms were sore from the manila ropes, and working back and forth from the relative warmth of the tunnel to the outside air inflamed his arthritis. He had just turned forty but at times felt ninety-five.

  At two o’clock in the morning Wilfred put down his tools. He was played out; he could barely raise his arms. He trudged up the hill to the comfort of his cabin. The sparsely furnished single room was dim, since its rough log walls absorbed much of the oil lamp’s light. A table and two chairs stood between two lumber-framed beds and the stove, and rough plank shelves supported cans of butter, sacks of dry goods and other groceries. Dog-eared magazines and newspapers lay stacked everywhere. A pastel doll-faced 1931 calendar girl invitingly held out a can of evaporated milk next to where Wilfred sat. He crossed off the days with a pencil hanging from a string he’d tied to a nail in the wall.

  In the middle of the floor sat a galvanized washtub half full of silt-grey water. When Wilfred needed money, he thawed a bucket of frozen pay dirt and panned out the gold. Working by the light of the wood stove’s open door, he would sort nuggets from the gravel—the wheat from the chaff.

  Wilfred cooked his meals to last a week and scooped them from a cast-iron Dutch oven. He washed down his pork and beans with the blackest of coffee, then he boiled dried fruit and topped it with crushed arrowroot cookies and milk. Life on the creek was hard, but Wilfred had come to work and work he did. Comfort would come later. After stoking the stove, he climbed into bed and fell asleep. His mother said that Wilfred slept the sleep of the just.

  When he awoke, the sun blazed in a clear sky, and its reflection off the snow hurt his eyes. Exposed rock absorbed the heat, causing wisps of moisture to rise into the air. The only sound in the valley was the throaty crackle-croak of a raven calling its mates, and the distant sound—five claims up—of an axe splitting firewood into kindling.

  Leaning in the shelter of the doorway in his shirt sleeves, Wilfred soaked up the sunshine. He felt rested and relaxed after his breakfast. He’d used his last two eggs and the butt end of the back bacon, so he’d pencilled “3 doz eggs” and “4 lbs bacon” on the shopping list tacked next to the calendar. He lingered, reluctant to leave the light of day for the dark, damp tunnel. Finally he went in to finish dressing.

  Walking stooped under the low roof and banging the scabs on his spine—like buttons down his back—Wilfred headed for the tunnel face. A large clump of gravel had sloughed off during the night, exposing a mound of hair.

  “What the hell!” He stood up suddenly and banged his head on the ceiling. He barely felt the gravel and ice trickling down his back.

  A few scrapes of his shovel, and a massive head started to emerge. Wilfred resisted the overwhelming primeval urge to flee. He stood his ground, reached out his trembling arm and ran his fingers through the long strands of hair until he touched the frozen, granite-like body beneath. It was truly dead. He withdrew his hand; it was wet and covered in hair that was difficult to remove.

  His brow was dripping with sweat, and he felt giddy from the fright. He stood up straight, took a step back and relaxed his shoulders. He said quietly, “It’s a mammoth, it’s a damn mammoth.”

  Gold could wait. A mammoth was much more interesting. Wilfred spent the day chipping around the carcass. In places the skin and flesh were missing and white bone shone through. The crushing permafrost had deformed the body grotesquely, but it was remarkably well preserved. Scattered throughout the thick coat were blades of grass, willow leaves and alpine flowers that still held their colour.

  The animal was sitting up, suspended in the wall like a trophy. Wilfred could dig above and below the mammoth, which was resting on its knees with its trunk folded back along one side. He exposed the domed skull and the ends of the curved tusks. The eyes were sunken into black slits, and the mouth was slightly open to show a pale tongue clenched between gigantic molars. Every shovelful uncovered more. Even in death, the behemoth’s might was impressive. Wilfred had never seen anything like it. Finally he had to stop; there wasn’t enough food in his cabin to scrape together another meal, and he needed help.

  It was twenty-five below when he walked to Dawson along Bonanza Creek Road. He pulled a sled piled with firewood and a tent, stove and sleeping bag, his survival gear in case things went awry. He stopped once to boil water from snow and eat bread that he thawed by dippin
g it in hot sugary tea. He completed the five-hour journey between the rising and the setting of the winter sun.

  It took half the night to warm his cabin on Eighth Avenue with a blazing fire before he could turn in. In the morning his first order of business was to call on William Pringle, an old soldier and friend. They had been business partners from time to time, and Wilfred knew he could count on William’s advice.

  “Mammuthus primigenius,” William said after listening intently. “Wilf, my man, you’ve found an ancient elephant named after an old Russian word, mammut. More closely related to the Asian elephant than the African elephant. And a mature one, by the sound of it, maybe eleven feet tall at shoulder height and weighing sixteen thousand pounds. A rare find. This will be interesting. Could be ten thousand years old.”

  It was a scramble to pick up supplies, check the mail, hire Windy Sale with his horse and sleigh and take care of other small business. They got out of town by noon the following day, with perishables tucked under buffalo robes to survive the cold. The steady pull of the sleigh and the rhythmic clop of horses’ hooves had Wilfred nodding off. He slept until the sleigh came to a sliding stop in front of the cabin. Windy dumped off men and supplies, turned around, and with a “Goodbye!” he was down the road and out of sight.

  The cabin was dark and frozen. It had retained none of the heat from a few days ago. Wilfred lit the lamps and built a blazing fire with precut wood. Wilfred always played this game when he went to town: he would stoke the wood stove and set the air vents just right, thinking he’d get back before the fire went out and the cabin froze. But he never made it. This time a jar of blueberry preserves had frozen and cracked, oozing a sticky puddle on the table.

  Wilfred muttered, “That’s my favourite jam. And my best tablecloth.”

  William was barely able to contain his impatience. “I want to see this thing right away.”

  They made their way down the trail to the ladder extending above the shaft, gripped its icy rails and climbed down. An eerie silence beckoned them as they hurried along the tunnel with William leading the way. He stopped dead when the lamplight picked up the head hanging out of the wall. He stumbled, caught his balance and gasped for breath. Nothing had prepared him for this.

  “What in hell is this, Wilfred? What in hell did you dig up?”

  Wilfred was amused to see William’s reaction and deadpanned, “It’s the mammoth I told you about, William. Did you think I was kidding?”

  William held the lamp closer and ran his fingers through the mammoth’s hair. It stuck to him as it had to Wilfred.

  When William had seen enough, they pulled up a couple of timbers and discussed their next move. Hours later, still unsure, they headed back to the cabin.

  The next morning they returned and removed a large block of frozen gravel from under the animal’s trunk, exposing its chest.

  What they saw caused them to push each other backward. They stared at a human face and hands reaching upward as if begging to be pulled from under the beast.

  “That is the weirdest thing I have ever seen,” William said, leaning forward to get a better look. Brushing away the gravel, Wilfred saw a round face with marble-white skin accented by blue veins. Wide open, coal black eyes stared lifelessly, and bloodless lips curled back, exposing pale gums and perfect teeth.

  Wilfred felt uneasy. He felt that way around bodies; he would make any excuse to get out of there. “Let’s just leave this, William. Let’s get a cup of coffee and think this through.”

  William ignored him and continued brushing gravel.

  Wilfred turned to leave. “William, I cannot stand this. I don’t want to disturb a body. I hate dead things. They make me sick. I hate the smell. When I studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, I visited the catacombs and I couldn’t get out soon enough. Let’s just bury this end of the tunnel and forget him. He’s been here for thousands of years. Let’s leave him be.”

  William didn’t look up. “Go if you want to. I need your help, but if you can’t stand it, I’ll do this myself.”

  “Let’s contact the government. They’ll know what to do,” Wilfred said.

  “Those pencil-pushers? That’s a pipe dream. You seem to have forgotten that I was in Flanders. I saw what bureaucrats can do, the mindless idiots.” He pointed at the frozen man. “If they get hold of him, they’ll dump him in a tank of formaldehyde and prance him around the country on a CPR train like a circus freak. They don’t have respect for the living, so why would they respect the dead? Not a chance, Wilf, my friend. No civil servants are getting their greedy, grubby hands on this. We’ll have to figure out something else.”

  Wilfred knew he was right. He sat on a timber and put his head in his hands. After a long while he broke the silence. “Okay. I will help but I’m not touching him.”

  William looked up from his work. “I knew I could count on you. This is unprecedented, a huge find. We have to move this guy. Nothing else will do. Let’s do the best we can.”

  For the rest of the day they dug below and around the man and finally pulled him loose. He was fully clothed except for a moccasin that Wilfred retrieved later. His legs were bent up to one side, and like the mammoth, the man was flattened; bone was exposed in places. Overall the body was complete, and concealed underneath it was the link between the two. Protruding from the centre of the mammoth’s chest was the broken shaft of a spear. Long ago these two had battled. Both had lost.

  Carefully, respectfully, Wilfred and William laid the body on a blanket. Then, holding two corners each, they carried him to the cabin. They cleared the table, laid down a clean cloth, and brushed the gravel and debris off the body.

  Wilfred closed the stove vents and opened the window. “We can’t let him thaw, William,” he said. “Whatever we do, we have to do it quickly.”

  William, who had studied natural science, began the examination while Wilfred took notes. First he washed the face and hands. Then he methodically described what he saw. “Amazingly well-preserved young male, perhaps twenty years old. About five foot six with a round face, a broad mouth, dark skin, and hair cut blunt over the forehead. His physique is compact and muscular.”

  The man’s chest was crushed. Broken ribs protruded through his skin, and the clothing was bloodstained. William concluded that death had been sudden.

  The examination went on late into the night. Wrapped around the body and tied with lengths of babiche—caribou rawhide cords—were light garments of scraped caribou skin. Over these the man had worn heavier outer clothing of caribou hide trimmed with wolverine fur. The pants went to his knees and were made of heavier moosehide. Fur lined his outer garments. His belt, decorated with pieces of bone intricately carved into star shapes, held a knife sheath but no knife. His footwear was trimmed with red and blue porcupine quills and came up over his knees. The insides of his moccasins were stuffed with grass. Around his neck was a decorative leather pouch that they left unopened. The man’s hands and legs were tattooed with small birds and decorative bands. On his right shoulder a tattoo showed a man and a bear standing together; the bear’s upper leg was extended. Wilfred sketched the scene into his notebook.

  “Bear Man, that’s what we should call him,” Wilfred said, and William agreed.

  The late-morning winter sun was rising when they finished and sat exhausted. Carefully they washed and dressed the body. Then they wrapped a Hudson’s Bay Company blanket around him and tied it with twine. Wilfred inexplicably felt an urge to place the small ivory carving he’d recently found within the wrappings. Then they returned the body to the icebox of a tunnel for safekeeping.

  “What’s next?” William asked, drinking coffee as he sat with his back to the stove. He was trying not to yawn.

  “I still think we should tell the government,” Wilfred said. “We could go into Dawson and bring out the mining recorder. We could explain things and ask his opinion.”

  “We can’t, Wilf, we’ve gone too far. We have disturbed an archaeological site. I’m
afraid we’ll have to cover our asses from here on in.”

  Wilfred reluctantly agreed. “It wouldn’t look good if they declared this guy a national treasure or something after we dug him up and moved him.”

  Without another word, both men turned in to get some welcome rest.

  About an hour later, Wilfred awoke. He wasn’t in his cabin. He stood on the tundra, looking down at the Blackstone River. Wind blew the snow across the landscape in silence. A figure walked toward him; it was Bear Man. Wilfred saw that he was distressed and tired, and frost covered his beard and hood. Bear Man walked up to and past Wilfred without showing any sign of having seen him. Wilfred turned and watched him disappear into the wall of whirling snow.

  Suddenly Wilfred was back on Bonanza—he recognized Adam’s Creek near his claim—but it was fall, and the leaves had turned. A group of men walked toward him in single file with frost marking their breath. Slung on their backs were light packs suspended from a single, wide band around their foreheads. They carried spears and bows. Wilfred recognized the last one in line: Bear Man. The group filed past silently toward a willow thicket.

  The leader turned abruptly, raised his clenched fist and appeared to shout something. The men in the front of the column ran in all directions, dropping their packs. Others quickly pulled arrows and fitted them into their bows. Bear Man dropped his pack with a dip of his head and faced the moving mass of brown willows before him. Out of the splintering wall blasted a mammoth, its trunk held high, mouth wide open and eyes blazing. Travelling faster than a man could run, the animal charged straight into the midst of the scattering group. Bodies tumbled and were thrown wildly about until Bear Man stood alone. The mammoth rushed forward.

  Bear Man jammed the base of his heavy spear into the ground. He turned and for a moment met Wilfred’s eye. Then he turned back to face the charging beast. The long, broad, razor flint sliced deep, tearing skin, flesh, cartilage and bone until it found its destined home in the massive heart. Bear Man and the mammoth crashed together and slid into a deep pool in the creek. The whole scene had taken but seconds.