Talking at the Woodpile

by David Thompson

  “I would like to know what happened to Ed,” I said, “but only if it doesn’t upset you. I don’t want to cause you any grief,” I said.

  Lily spread her hands and sighed. “Ed was an experienced blaster, having set charges hundreds of times at the Elsa Mine. Just before the accident, Arnold and he had drilled powder holes and filled them with dynamite. Arnold walked out to secure the entrance, and Ed set the fuse. The RCMP and Arnold figured there was a mix-up—a faster-burning safety fuse somehow got mixed in with the slower ones. Ed was walking out when the blast went off.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.

  “It was years ago, but it seems like yesterday,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  “Two weeks after the funeral Arnold came over with a bit of fuse he’d found in the mine. It was the faster-burning kind. Here, I’ll show you.”

  She got up, opened the china cabinet and reached down beside the bear’s head to pick up what looked like a torn piece of short rope.

  “This is what Arnold found,” she said.

  I held it in my hand. I didn’t know much about dynamite, so it really meant nothing to me. After examining it for a polite length of time, I handed it back without saying anything.

  “Months later Bob approached Arnold and wanted their old partnership back. Arnold told him to go to hell. That’s how things were left for all these years. With Ed gone, Bob tried to bother me, but Buford and Victor stepped in and warned him. Victor told him, ‘I put curse on you, give you headache like you never believe.’ I cannot help but think that, all these years later, the tooth was part of that gypsy curse.” Lily tried to be serious, but couldn’t help smiling.

  “That Victor.” I shook my head.

  Lily went on, “Bob threatened Arnold and told him to be careful or he might just end up like his partner. So that’s how it’s been—people living side by side, jealous, hating each other and looking over their shoulders. You know how it is in these small towns, Tobias.”

  Did I ever. I nodded.

  “Ed was gone, but I still had a stake in Arnold’s property. That’s what has paid the bills all these years. I think Arnold has been more than generous,” Lily said as she poured me another cup of tea.

  “So no one ever worked out what happened?” I asked.

  “Whenever Bob got drunk, he confessed to Alice that he’d murdered Ed. She listened to it for years, never telling anyone. When he was sober, he denied it. Late one night she called Arnold and me over, and we listened in the kitchen to Bob ranting in the living room. He confessed all right. He staggered out to the kitchen and must have caught sight of us leaving, because the next day—the morning that you first met him in the store—he was crying, really upset that he’d let the cat out of the bag.”

  “What exactly did he say when drunk?” I’d filled my steno pad and was now scribbling notes on a handful of Lily’s paper table napkins.

  “He spoke of replacing the fuse with a faster-burning one.” The voice came from behind me, making me nearly jump out of my skin.

  Arnold and Alice were standing in the porch. I had been so engrossed in Lily’s story that I hadn’t noticed them. They walked in and stood on either side of Lily, facing me. For a moment they looked like their long-ago pictures, but older and timeworn. They took seats at the table. Arnold sat close to me and put his foot up on the rung on the bottom of my chair. His brow was furrowed. Alice fidgeted with the corner of the tablecloth.

  “The afternoon you met me was the same day Bob met his end,” Arnold said. “Alice and Lily were visiting me for tea that evening when Bob barged in and threw a few swings at Alice, then at me.”

  Without hesitation Lily said, “I picked up the skull and hit him across the head as hard as I could. He looked almost comical with the bear’s tooth sticking out of his forehead like a unicorn horn. Being hit on the head didn’t kill him, though. He grabbed his chest and fell to his knees, then collapsed onto his back. He was having a heart attack. Then he confessed. He said, ‘I did it. I killed Ed.’ ‘You rat,’ I said, ‘I always knew you killed my husband.’ Bob said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and lifted his arm, trying to touch my hand, but I pulled it back. He died on the floor of Arnold’s cabin.”

  “We had no proof of his confession, and the hole from the tooth would be hard to explain, so we left it in, hoping that people would think a bear attacked him,” Alice said. “We drove down to Mayo at midnight and put the body in the Stewart River. None of us felt any remorse. I was a little shaken up, but at least the long ordeal was over. He was a hard man to love.”

  “The police questioned us when Bob disappeared,” Arnold said, “but they knew he was often drunk and had heart trouble. They figured he would show up later. As time went on, they seemed glad to forget about him. Bob affected people that way. When the body turned up, they quickly closed the case.”

  “You surprised us when you came to take a picture of the bear’s skull,” Lily said. “We’d just gotten back from dumping the body. Arnold barely handled it. When he realized you’d taken a picture of crucial evidence, we could only hope the tooth fell out on Bob’s trip down the river. When I saw that you recognized the skull in the china cabinet, I knew the truth would have to come out. I should have gotten rid of it. I’m not sure why I kept it.”

  “Actually, I put some of it together before I came down here,” I said. “If I hadn’t seen the skull again, I would never have mentioned it.”

  “What are you going to do about it now that you know the truth?” Arnold asked.

  Alice and Lily sat silently staring at me. I held their future in my hands. I sat thinking for a moment.

  “Do you have any more tea, Lily?” I asked, hoping to give myself more time. I lifted my cup. “And a few more of those delicious cookies would be great.”

  Lily got up and refilled my cup from the teapot warming on the stove, then offered tea to Arnold and Alice.

  “No thanks,” Arnold said, not taking his gaze off me.

  Alice silently waved her hand in a no.

  The three of them waited politely as I added cream and sugar, took a sip and bit into a cookie. Finally I said, “Nothing. I’ll do nothing. It’s not my business. I’ll leave it to you to make your own decision.”

  They looked at each other as if to take a consensus. They seemed relieved.

  Arnold studied me for a minute. “Okay, but if you change your mind, call us first.”

  That’s how people are in the Yukon. If they trust you, they don’t quibble or question.

  “I won’t change my mind,” I said, reaching for another ginger snap.

  Lily smiled. “Ed used to eat my baking like that, cleaning up the whole plate.”

  “I wish I’d met Ed,” I said. “He sounds like a good guy.”

  “He was,” Arnold said.

  I got up to leave. As I hugged Lily, I asked her, “Do you know how I know Ed was a good guy?”

  Lily Bluebell just shook her head.

  “Because he had a sweetheart for a wife.”

  She started to cry and sat down. Alice went and put her arm around her friend.

  Arnold pointed to my notebook, stuffed with the table napkins I’d written on. “Do you need that?”

  I adjusted the collar of my coat. “No, I suppose not.” I handed him the notebook.

  “Thank you.”

  I shook hands and left without looking back.

  That evening I’d planned to get a room and stay over but I didn’t feel comfortable after hearing three people confess to assault and dumping a body in the river. The snow was still falling when I passed McQuesten River Lodge at about eight o’clock. Blossom was sitting on her haunches under the porch light by the front door, and I swear that pig lifted a front leg and waved as I drove by.

  When I arrived home my father was asleep, and my mother was reading in bed by a lamp. She was excited. I’d received a letter from the admissions department of the University of Victoria.

  “Did you f
ind any good stories over in Keno?” she asked the next morning over breakfast.

  “No, not one, Ma,” I said. “I looked, but nothing ever happens over there. It’s just a quiet little town.”

  “Yeah, right,” my father said. He looked over his newspaper and gave me a wink and a smile.

  A couple of years passed before I got back to Keno City. I held too many cards that controlled people’s lives. Bob killed Ed for the worst of reasons, I believed: jealousy and hate. Maybe he’d actually wanted to kill Arnold or maybe both of them. He’d had his own reasons to hate both men. So Lily had lived all those years broken-hearted without her husband, Alice was abused every day and Arnold lost his friend and partner, then had to watch Bob hurt Lily and Alice. No one murdered Bob; his heart gave out after a lifetime of hard living. I was glad he got this Yukon justice.

  Winch’s Meltdown

  Walter Rather was stacking shelves in his general store when he engaged Brian and me in his favourite conversation.

  “More of those damn hippies arrive every day. Where are we going to put them? We’ll have to support them, so our taxes will go up as well.”

  Brian and I did our best to ignore him. Then Winch walked into our aisle, lifting cans of food off the shelves and placing them in a shopping basket. On his big arm it looked like a child’s toy.

  “Picking up a few things for Lulu?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, and greeted each of us in turn. He seemed a little distracted.

  “How are things at the creek?” Brian asked.

  “Well, everything is fine, except that place is a madhouse at times. It’s best if I get away for a few hours.” He lifted the basket to show us that shopping was one way to get away.

  Walter finished stocking, and still muttering, moved off to help a customer who was too short to reach a top shelf.

  Brian had been telling me all week that he thought he owed Winch an apology for abandoning him during the alien fiasco. This was as good a time as any to put things square.

  “What are you doing these days?” Brian asked.

  “Working,” Winch said. “I’m doing body work on Mrs. Godwit’s Rambler. Next I’ll repaint it.”

  “Blue,” I said.

  Leaning against a shelf, Brian said, “Did you hear I gave up on all that alien stuff and threw everything out? Tobias helped me.”

  “It was a ton of stuff we had to haul out too,” I said.

  “I heard about that,” Winch said.

  “I’m reading religious stuff right now,” Brian said, pretending to read the label on a tin; he looked like Hamlet studying a skull.

  Winch didn’t appear happy to hear about religion. He said goodbye and turned to leave.

  Brian caught his shirt sleeve. “It’s not what you think.”

  Winch looked interested, as though he wanted to hear more and was sort of glad Brian had stopped him.

  “Let me explain,” Brian said. “I had an epiphany. Now I believe we are alone, there are no aliens, and the universe is a gift to us from the Creator. Religion is the guidance we need to build the future. That’s why I’m interested in spiritual things.”

  “What’s an epiphany?”

  “A sudden understanding,” Brian and I said in unison.

  Winch’s eyes widened—it was obvious that Brian had caught his attention—and he leaned against the shelves, absent-mindedly peeling the label off a tin of peaches with his thumbnail. “You know, Brian, the first thing that comes to my mind is, here we go again.”

  Bingo! I thought.

  “I was taken in by your alien conviction; you made it all sound so real. How do I know this isn’t another phase you’re going through, and I’ll be left high and dry again like a fool?”

  “I apologize for the last time. It was wrong that I didn’t support you, but it won’t happen again, I promise,” Brian said, placing both hands on Winch’s grocery basket.

  Winch sighed and patted Brian’s shoulder with a huge hand.

  After that, Winch and Brian started to rebuild their partnership and met at the Flora Dora or Brian’s house for coffee in the evenings. They mostly discussed religion. I joined them once in a while.

  “Tobias, Winch, what do you think the purpose of life is?” Brian would ask.

  Winch had never considered religion before—it was organized and had rules—but independent study sparked an interest in him. Quickly he started developing his own interpretations and theories, and some of them went beyond moderation. He was already opinionated enough, but now that he had religion and God, he thought he was right on everything. Brian was patient with him, but Winch became increasingly more insistent and argumentative.

  “That’s it! No more coffee meetings,” Brian said one night, getting up abruptly. “I’m not arguing over religion.”

  “You just won’t listen,” Winch said, and stormed off to his truck.

  It wasn’t long before OP and Clutch realized they’d lost their brother again, since he was becoming totally absorbed in religion. This time they were determined to do something about it. They blamed Brian and took their complaints directly to him. One evening he and I were sitting at the kitchen table having a cup of coffee and going over notes I had written about his epiphany. OP and Clutch stomped up to his kitchen door, knocked and entered before being invited in.

  Ignoring their bad manners, Brian picked up his cup and pointed it in the direction of the coffee pot. “Want a cup? It’s fresh.”

  “No, we don’t,” Clutch said, without trying to hide the agitation in his voice. “Look, here we go again, but now you have Winch all involved in this here stupid, dumb religion stuff.”

  “Yeah, why do you have to go and do this again?” OP chimed in. “He’s our brother, not yours!” OP had never had an original thought in his pointed head; he usually just repeated Clutch’s opinions.

  “I’ve done nothing,” Brian said, raising his palms in protest. “In fact, Winch has taken off entirely in his own religious direction. I’ve stopped discussing it with him altogether.”

  “He’s on his own?”

  “Yes, all on his own, as I said. I have nothing to do with his involvement in religion.”

  They fidgeted for a moment, then Clutch turned and pushed OP toward the door, and both of them blustered out. I heard them arguing all the way out to their truck.

  “Why didn’t you know that?” Clutch shouted at OP.

  “Assuming makes an ass out of you and me,” OP yelled back.

  They climbed into their truck, gunned the engine and tore off down the street, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.

  About a month later I was visiting the garage to see about Mom’s Rambler getting an oil change.

  “This is one weird-looking car,” Brian said when he lifted the hood. “But nice paint job. Have you seen Winch lately?”

  I shook my head just as Winch walked in. His face looked flushed. He didn’t bother to say hello but just started talking. “I had an epiphany!”

  No, you didn’t, I thought.

  “An old dust-covered gold miner in a wide-brimmed hat, tattered shirt and carrying a gold pan. Said he belonged to some committee of miners or something. He came to me in a dream and said I was special. He said, ‘You’re a real piece of work.’”

  Brian caught my eye, then said, “That’s not an epiphany, Winch, that’s a nightmare.”

  I remained silent but studied Winch’s face to see his reaction.

  His face went red, then redder, and he blew the words out of his mouth like a tornado. “It wasn’t a dream, it was my epiphany! You’re not the only person to have them.”

  “You were asleep, and it was probably Lulu snoring in your ear,” Brian laughed.

  I cringed. Winch was in no mood for Brian’s kidding. He wanted his own epiphany so badly that he was willing to accept anything and call it that. When he wheeled around and left without another word, I felt as if an angry bear had left the room.

  Joshua came out of the back of the
garage, wiping his hands on a grease rag, to watch Winch drive away. “Uncle Zak was in town the other day and stopped by the house. He told me the family thinks Winch has gone zealot. He wants the adults to gather in the living room while he stands and preaches. He tells everyone the world was created in six days, all of creation died in a flood and only a fixed number of people are going to heaven. He’s gone real kooky. Where’s the seven-sixteenths-inch wrench?”

  “Keep your pen and paper handy, Tobias,” Brian said with a chuckle. “If he keeps this up, he’s going to give you plenty to write about. When I tried to talk sense into him, he got angry and pounded the kitchen table with his fat fist until the cups jumped out of their saucers. Maude grabbed his ear and told him, ‘Thump my table one more time, and you’ll find out what a real thumping is about.’”

  “He’s a big guy. When he gets physical, it’s intimidating,” I said.

  “To us maybe, but not to Maude. She would pile-drive him.”

  Joshua wiped the grease off the wrench. “I don’t like to analyze people, but I’m guessing he thinks an epiphany means leadership or something.”

  With his zeal to be special, Winch continued to spread his message. He cornered me a few times, and I listened politely.

  One time he was explaining his theory of “the return” when I asked him, “How could a person descend on clouds when clouds float up?” It seemed like a simple and logical question to me.

  “Everyone knows that’s how it will happen. The Lord will be standing on a cloud coming down to earth.” He then pulled up his hand like a six-gun quick draw, squinted like Robert Newton playing Long John Silver and stuck a cracked and grease-stained finger in my face. I expected him to say “Aargh, matey!” like Long John, but instead he said, “Don’t be a heathen unbeliever, Tobias. The wages of sin is death.”

  I had to cross my eyes to see his finger, he held it so close. “Winch, it’s me, Tobias, your friend. Why are you getting so worked up? There’s no call for this.”

  He growled and walked away.

  Winch had become a different person. I believed in the good of religion, but his type of religion had ruined him. He had slid past zealot to become Mr. Fire and Brimstone. It made me uncomfortable to hear him talk about sin, especially my sin. I always thought sin was supposed to be private, between you and God. It also saddened me to realize that there was nothing but trouble down the road for Winch and his family, but I felt powerless to help.