Talking at the Woodpile (10 page)

“We need a woman's touch. You should get married, Buford,” Craven said.

“Not on your life, Craven. If anyone had a chance to march down the aisle, it would be you, the more handsome of us.”

Craven never knew if Buford was kidding or not.

Neil, Faith, Taffy, Wilfred, Nat, Dot and their boys plus others showed up and brought small gifts for the house.

Dot brought tea towels and wrinkled her nose at the kitchen. “Don't use these for grease rags,” she said, opening the sink door and hanging them on the towel bar inside.

Faith baked a pie. Wilfred brought a Home Sweet Home wall hanging, and Victor had carved a plaque of the moon, stars and sun, which Craven hung over the front door.

“Bring you lots of luck, this gypsy thing. Keep bad people out,” Victor said. When he said “bad people,” he looked at Neil.

Neil got up immediately, grabbed his coat and dragged Faith out the door. Craven watched him walk down the street, still dragging Faith and waving his arm in the air, obviously upset, and said, “It's so easy to set O'Neill off on another tirade.”

Victor's eyes narrowed, and he took a draw on his cigarette as he looked out the window at their departure.

Buford didn't agree with what Victor did, but they didn't say anything. After all, it was just a friendly housewarming, and Faith's pie was delicious.

“I don't like being hard on Faith, but Neil—that's okay,” Victor said, shrugging his shoulders and waving his arm.

The men settled in and became part of the community. Buford worked as a cook at the Flora Dora Café, where a sirloin steak with all the trimmings cost sixty-five cents. With Buford's culinary skills, business picked up, and the tables and booths were packed with diners appreciating every mouthful.

“Best damn cook I ever had, that Buford,” said Pat Henderson, the owner, as he shuffled about taking orders and waiting on tables.

Craven worked part-time at the library and became a man about town who did odd jobs. He guarded at the jail, helped out at Cooper's store, cleared snow for the city and substituted for absent teachers at the school. He was never without work.

Buford liked being around people, which gave him more of a chance to show off his tooth. He would often leave his grill to visit the tables. Wiping his hands on his apron, he would ask the patrons how their meal was, joking and sharing news all the while. “Caught those salmon this morning right out front here,” he would say, pointing out the window to the river. “Dove right in and caught them, slippery beggars they were.”

If Victor was in the restaurant, he would pipe up, “It's truth. I see Buford catch fish with tooth. Looked like great whale getting dinner.”

Building on his celebrity status, Buford made a point of greeting tourists as they descended from their riverboat journey and soon had them thinking he was a gold miner off the creeks.

“My God, you have the most interesting tooth, and to think you helped discover gold on Bonanza Creek with Mr. Carmack and Mr. Skookum,” Victor heard an English tourist exclaim. The man took a picture of Buford standing at his grill with spatula in hand, flipping eggs and laughing for the folks back home.

“You should be on a postcard,” the tourist's wife said as she stood on her toes and peered into Buford's mouth for a better look. She wanted to tug at the tooth, but Buford wouldn't let her.

After work one evening Buford lay on the couch, barely able to peer over his ample stomach, polishing his tooth.

Craven stood by the sink, having pushed parts of a bicycle aside, scooping the last bits of a plate of stew into his mouth with a knife. Gravy dripped onto his shirt. He found Dot's tea towel buried in a pocket of his overalls and wiped his face and hands clean.

“Mighty delicious, that stew!” he shouted.

They had no reason to shout—they could hear each other clearly—but it was a bad habit from their days as blasters in the Elsa mine.

Then, as if he'd just had a second thought, he said, “I'll give you a poke of gold if you let me pull that tooth.”

“Where in hell are you going to get that kind of money?” Buford asked.

“I don't have that kind of money right now, but I will get it. That tooth is such an embarrassment to our family, I don't see how you can keep it. How are you ever going to get married with that damn tooth sticking out? You'll scare the girls away!”

“First of all, take a good look in the mirror and see who is an embarrassment to the family, and second, I ain't getting married no time, no place, no how! And furthermore, you're hurting my feelings, Craven.”

It was true. Buford had soft feelings, and they were hurt easily. But Craven couldn't keep his mouth shut, the tooth bothered him so much.

Summer left with the last riverboat, and an early winter howled across the land, bringing deep snow and metal-snapping cold. The drafty house held little heat, and not having brought in winter wood, the brothers tore down the backyard shed to feed the hungry stove.

As they crowbarred boards from the walls, their teeth chattered, and they hunched their shoulders to draw their arms close to their bodies. Craven couldn't look at Buford. The tooth was moving up and down like a needle on a sewing machine and beating out a staccato rhythm on the bottom gum.

“Why don't you send Morse code greetings to all our friends in Elsa while you're at it?” Craven yelled.

Buford stood for a moment with his arms piled high with wood and his nose running. Then he threw the boards at Craven's feet and stomped off to the house, yelling over his shoulder, “Go to hell! Pack the wood yourself.”

In the next few days their driveway piled high with snow, and the battery froze solid in their battered blue Ford Model T truck. By early January the cold and dark were straining relationships throughout the Yukon.

One night, Craven woke from a restless sleep. He thought he'd heard someone calling his name. He looked across the room. Buford lay on his back with his mouth wide open, snoring noisily. The gold cap flickered in the oil lamp's light like a one-ounce nugget. Craven knew the tooth had called him.

“I'm coming,” he whispered and reached under his bed for his tool box.

Silently Craven rummaged until he found an ancient pair of pliers. He walked across the room on his toes in his sleeping robe, poised himself over Buford and brought the pliers closer to the tooth. Just as the metal jaws were about to snap shut, the tassel on his nightcap brushed Buford's face and woke him. Buford opened his eyes and screamed horrifically. Craven jumped up and ran madly around the room in circles.

“You monster!” Buford yelled. “If Pa was here, he would kick your ass, you idiot.”

“If Pa was here, he would smack you until that tooth dropped out,” Craven shouted back, waving the pliers at him.

“Don't ever try to murder Mabeleine again,” Buford cried. He pulled the pillow tightly over his head and rolled over muttering to himself.

Craven was puzzled. Mabeleine? She must be an old girlfriend he'd never known about.

At breakfast the next morning, Craven lied, “I did that because I had a vision in my dreams. I've found that poke of gold to pay you for your tooth.”

Buford was skeptical. “A vision? A poke of gold? You tried to rip a tooth out of my head. Make no excuses.”

“I did have a vision,” Craven said, “and it told me that this year's Yukon River ice breakup is going to be exactly as it was thirty-eight years ago in 1896, on May 19 at 2:35 in the afternoon.”

Buford shook his head and snorted a laugh. “This is all too crazy,” he said. “You're crazy.”

“Furthermore, with this information we're not only going to win the gold, but you, my brother, are going to be remembered forever and go down in Dawson's history. People will never forget how your tooth was pulled, and you will have all the attention you want.”

“How's that?” Buford asked.

“You know how the tripod on the river ice is wired to a clock? When the ice breaks up, it trips the time. Well, because we know the time, we'll attach your tooth to the tripod with fishing line. When the river goes out, so does your tooth. It's a sure thing. Remember, I had a vision. You have to do this for history and the gold, Buford,” Craven said, pointing his finger in Buford's face.

Buford wanted to grab it and break the end of it off.
Vision smishion
, he thought. But he said, “I'll think about it. But the thing is, once the tooth is pulled, it's gone.”

“But the story will live forever,” Craven said.

“I don't know.” Buford shook his head.

Life around the cabin deteriorated after that. Buford was extra protective of his tooth and went to bed wearing an old baseball catcher's mask that hardly fit his large, round face. Craven didn't help matters by carrying the pliers around and snapping them open and closed. The sound sent chills up Buford's spine, and he feared for his Mabeleine.

At the dinner table one evening, Craven and Buford were peeling fruit for dessert.

“Did you really have a vision, Craven?” Buford asked quietly as he reached for an apple.

“Yep,” Craven said.

“And do you think the river will pull my tooth and we will win the gold?”

“Yep,” Craven said again.

“Do you really think me and my tooth will be famous?”

“Are you thinking of doing this?” Craven asked.

“I'm thinking,” Buford said, and bit into an apple. He always wolfed his food, and in one gulp he swallowed most of the apple.

Craven stared in amazement. Where the tooth had once stood, there was nothing but an empty field. Buford hadn't noticed that anything had changed. He got up from the table and went to nap on the couch.

That night Craven woke with a great weight on his chest. Buford was perched on him like a gargoyle on a flying buttress with a pair of pliers clamped firmly onto his front tooth. Buford leaned closer, looking crazier than Craven had ever seen anyone looking before, and quietly said, “I too had a vision, Craven. It said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” For one second Craven was distracted and wondered when Buford had gotten religious. Then Buford gave a solid tug, and the tooth came out like a sink plug on a chain.

He waved the tooth in front of Craven's face. Craven went white and his eyes bulged. He screamed in pain, threw Buford off and ran with his hand over his mouth to find water and a towel. The pliers had axle grease on them and tasted terrible.

“You idiot!” Craven screamed, spitting blood. “You crazy, out-of-your-mind idiot!”

Neither of them slept for the rest of the night, each now being afraid of the other, and in the morning they silently turned their backs. They maintained monastic silence for months, which they both admitted was difficult in the small house. Craven didn't even try to explain; he knew Buford believed with all his heart that he had somehow stolen Mabeleine.

“Where is she?” he would ask in the dark of the night, causing Craven to rise up on one elbow and squint to see that his brother was still in bed. He wasn't sure if Buford was awake or talking in his sleep. It gave him reason to be afraid.

When the river ice broke up, the relationship thawed. Even Victor could see Buford was becoming depressed. One day Craven said, “I can't see us going on like this, Buford. Either we settle this or we should sell and get separate cabins.”

Buford didn't respond for a few days, but then he agreed. “I can forgive you for losing us the poke of gold, since now we can't pull my tooth on the trip wire, but I cannot forgive you for taking my tooth. Not just now, anyway.”

“I didn't touch your damn tooth. You ate it,” Craven said.

Buford got tears in his eyes and turned his head away. “Yeah, sure,” he said.

Craven could see that he had to make up with Buford even though he was not guilty.

“You should get new tooth for Buford,” Victor said. “His tooth was like friend, made him happy. People liked Buford with tooth.”

Dr. Gillis was back for the summer, so Craven had him make a front-tooth bridge and encouraged Buford to get a full set of dentures.

“I hate dentists,” Buford said, but he eventually gave in to Victor and Craven's encouragement and had the work done. Once it was done, though, he refused to smile. “Makes me look like an idiot,” he said.

A week after the dental work was finished, Craven noticed that teeth were disappearing from Buford's head. He mentioned it to Victor.

“Just wait,” Victor said with a wink. “I know what Buford is doing. Not happy.”

Months later there was only one tooth left, and Mabeleine was back in her spot. Buford looked like his old self; people wanted to see the tooth, and his happy celebrity status returned.

“I would like to go see Dr. Gillis again,” he said.

Craven made an appointment.

“You're lucky you caught me,” Dr. Gillis said. “I'm leaving tomorrow, going back to Seattle. You're the last patient this summer.”

When Buford emerged four hours later from the dentist's office, he had a gold-capped tooth with a diamond insert. He was so happy he couldn't stop smiling, and everyone got a good look at the new Buford. He walked around the restaurant like a peacock in love.

He called the tooth Gertie after a gold-rush dance hall girl and kept a picture of her in his wallet.

Townspeople called him Diamond Tooth Buford, or Diamond for short.

“I love my name and I love my tooth and I love my brother who got me Gertie to replace Mabeleine,” Buford told everybody.

After all the trouble, Craven now left Buford's tooth alone and never found fault with him for anything ever again. Well, not for a while, anyway. He realized that a person's happiness is much more important than a person's appearance and that a quest for fame has to run its course.

“And that's a law of the Yukon, Victor,” he said.