Talking at the Woodpile (12 page)

Buford shrugged his shoulders.

Craven said, “You can walk home.” He got in the truck and showered Buford with gravel and dust as he sped away.

Craven didn't speak to Buford for the next two days but insisted he meet with the DCSF at their next scheduled meeting. Buford reluctantly agreed.

The club members sat around the table and encouraged Buford to relate absolutely every single detail of his meeting with Mimosa.

“This is very serious and critical,” Hudson said.

“Yes, very serious, Buford,” said Victor. “In my village, big trouble for people who speak like you.”

Buford was intimidated by Victor. As instructed, he repeated the derogatory comments he'd made about her being a pot-stirring witch and a broom-riding crazy woman. The room went cold.

“You have to make amends, Buford, and take Mimosa a gift and stop bad-mouthing her,” Hudson said. “Even if you don't believe, even if you are blind to the forces around us, you must make amends.”

Buford wasn't going to make amends at all. In his mind he had done nothing wrong and this was just hocus-pocus. “All of you go to hell. I'm not a believer and I'm not going to do it.”

The members tried to prevent him from leaving the room by standing in his way, but he used his girth and elbowed his way through them to make his exit.

That night Buford had terrible dreams and tossed and turned in his sleep. He sensed that something was in the room with him, and sat up. A silver-grey apparition stood before him at the end of the bed. It seemed to have its own luminous source and was dressed in a wide-brimmed hat, tattered shirt and trousers held up by suspenders. Rubber boots came to its knees. It held a gold pan in one hand and a shovel in the other. It looked weary and stressed; its face was furrowed with lines and its beard was unkempt.

Buford rubbed his eyes and said out loud, “Who are you?”

The apparition set the gold pan down on the bed and tucked the shovel under one arm. It brushed dust off its sleeve, took a pouch of tobacco from its shirt pocket, rolled a cigarette with one hand, lit it, pulled the string on the pouch shut with its teeth and put the tobacco back in its pocket. Only then did it speak. Coughing and blowing clouds of smoke, it said, “Buford, I have been sent here by the Legion of Wayward Gold Miners to issue this one simple warning: Make amends! You've been given another chance!” Its voice sounded like it came from under a washtub.

The ghostly miner stood for a moment, then started to move backward, fading out. Buford watched it become smaller. Then, to his surprise, it got bigger again and came back into the room. “Forgot my gold pan. And, oh yes, beware the raven.” It then left in a flash, never to return.

Smoke hung in the air.

Buford rubbed his eyes. “What the heck was that?” He spent the rest of the night awake.

In the morning he staggered about the house, not knowing if the apparition had been his imagination or a warning from the beyond.

Craven noticed his uneasiness and asked, “What's up, Buford?”

Buford tried to explain but gave up.

Weeks went by. Buford didn't heed the miner's warning, and the fact that nothing had changed emboldened him. He wasn't afraid and continued to make slight of Mimosa, Craven and the DCSF.

A raven flew to the house one morning. The bird's claws could be heard scampering up and down the tin roof and hopping along the eavestrough. The raven cawed loudly. Buford heard it and looked up from his bowl of cereal. As he prepared for work, he couldn't find his wallet, although he tore the house apart searching high and low.

On the second day, the raven's scampering and cawing woke him an hour earlier than he was used to. After breakfast he had to walk to the Flora Dora because the truck keys were nowhere to be found. He burned the chickens for the lunch menu.

On the third day the raven woke him two hours ahead of his alarm clock. Exhausted, he got out of bed but didn't eat breakfast—his stomach was upset—and spent an hour looking for his glasses. He never found them. At the Flora Dora, his kitchen help quit.

On the fourth day the raven kept him awake by sitting over his bedroom window, cawing into the darkness. This was unusual; ravens never caw at night. The raven then woke Buford two hours before the sun rose. He couldn't find his left shoe and staggered to work in an old pair of sneakers. The power had gone off in the Flora Dora the night before, and the freezer was thawing.

On the fifth day his favourite Swiss Army knife that his dad had given him was gone, and the raven cawed on. Life had become perplexing and painful for Buford. He stayed home from work and Pat Henderson had to close the Flora Dora Café for the day.

In tears he went to his brother, blubbering, “Craven, you have to help me. I believe Mimosa put a spell on me and sent a raven. All my things have gone missing.”

Craven started laughing. “Sent a raven? Now that is a new one. But I thought this was all superstition and crap. Isn't that what you said?”

“Yes, but now I've changed my mind. I can't stand this any longer. I know I've had the curse of the raven. And the ghostly gold panner visited me.”

“There are no such things as a curse of the raven and a ghostly gold panner. You're imagining things,” Craven said emphatically. “But you do look like hell, so I will see what I can do.”

It was true. Buford had dark circles under both eyes. He looked and acted drunk from not sleeping and he'd lost weight in five days.

Craven advised Buford to do repairs for Mimosa, who had told him, “My house needs fixing. The roof leaks, and a little tar would help. It doesn't need much.”

Buford showed up the next Saturday on Mimosa's doorstep with a can of tar and his tool box in hand.

Mimosa opened the door and smiled. “Why, Buford, what a pleasant surprise. It's so nice of you to drop by again,” she said.

Buford set his tools and the can down and removed his hat. “I come for more than a visit, Miss Mimosa. I noticed last time there was a bit of work that needed doing around the place, don't you think?”

“Why, yes, I do. I think it needs a man.”

Buford blushed and went to work.

He spent the day tightening and adjusting the door and hinges and making repairs to the roof. Sitting near the peak with the sun warming his broad back, he scooped and spread tar where he thought a leak might be. A large raven circled overhead and landed noisily, its feet scraping the tin, a few feet from where he sat. Buford stayed perfectly still, and he and the raven eyed each other. In a few bold hops, the raven landed on Buford's leg. Its sharp claws dug into his flesh. The raven's big black beak was inches from his face. Buford was afraid it would poke his eye out. The raven cocked its head to the left and right, and shuffling closer, looked down and reached into Buford's shirt pocket. It pulled out a carpenter's pencil with its beak and gouged Buford's leg again when it pushed off. It swiftly flew away.

Buford was surprised and amused at what had happened. All this raven stuff was too much for him. He sighed and went back to work.

Mimosa made a lunch of sandwiches and tea, which he ate hungrily. He didn't mention the raven.

“That's a very interesting tooth you have there, Buford. It gives you character,” she said.

Buford was so happy at the compliment that his eyes went misty.
I'm in love
, he thought.

Mimosa sighed.
Men are so simple
, she thought.

By day's end Buford had finished the repairs and packed up. As he thanked Mimosa for lunch and coffee—for the third time—she handed him a paper bag and said, “I believe these are yours. Sometimes healing comes in different ways, Buford. Sometimes it all hinges on belief.”

Buford drove down the road, pulled the truck over and opened the bag. Inside were his wallet, keys, glasses, shoe, knife, and strangest of all, a pouch of tobacco and his pencil.

“That is so weird,” he said out loud. “I'm not even telling Craven about this.”

My name is Tobias Gandhi Godwit. I was born in 1949, and all things considered, my life has been just about perfect. Like my father, Hudson Godwit, I became a news reporter, writer and Yukon historian.

My mother, Rebecca, had travelled by train, plane and car from New England to visit her Uncle Wilfred. My father spotted her having lunch at the Flora Dora Café with Wilfred and knew in an instant he had to have an introduction. They fell in love, and my mother never went back home.

The next spring, the crew of the riverboat SS
Casca
unceremoniously dumped wooden crates of her belongings on the dock. A terse note arrived in the mail shortly afterward announcing that the family had disowned her for marrying down and without their permission. She sat in Wilfred's cabin with my father's arm around her shoulder, wiping tears from her eyes as he read the letter.

“This is exactly why I'm here and not back east. I had to get away from that interfering family,” Wilfred said.

“It's all money,” Rebecca said. “My brother Cecil had a hand in this. I know he influenced Mother and Father. This was his idea.”

My mother never got over the hurt the family caused her.

When I was three, my mother would take me to the
Dawson Daily News
building on Second Avenue, where she worked five afternoons a week. I sat near the office and watched as the deadline-driven staff hurried to get the paper out. The smell of ink, molten lead and newsprint, combined with the rhythmic clatter and smooth swoosh of the printing press, fascinated me. By the time I was five, I knew I wanted to be a newspaperman.

I used to make my own newspapers by cutting foolscap into pages, punching holes in their edges and tying them together with pieces of brightly coloured knitting wool. I still have some of them today. One front-page headline blared “Man Bites Dog,” and inside, a full story related this tragic event. The details included the punishment meted out by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the dog's convalescence in the Dawson City Animal Shelter. I also had a
Letters to the Editor
column; I made up comments and names for it. These imaginary writers were just as outraged as the editor when the dog was bitten.

I made up ads and coloured them brightly with crayons to advertise fresh produce with prices way below anything the Dawson City merchants would offer. I did this for my mother's sake and pointed these out to her as she complained about the high prices at the grocery store.

My father was tall and wiry. His thin arms bulged at the biceps, and he cinched his belt tightly to the last hole to hold up his pants. He worked part-time as a reporter for the
Whitehorse Star
and at the Bear Creek Machine Shop as a machinist, repairing and rebuilding gold dredges. He was a talented writer and an expert at the metal lathe, turning out pieces that would otherwise have taken months to ship in. I remember the sweet smell of oil and grease when he came home after work and picked me up.

His temper surfaced when he drank, but he reserved it for fights outside the Occidental Hotel, never fighting inside an establishment because “that would be unmannerly.” He would call out his opponent, and over the years there were a number of them. The bar crowd came to expect and appreciate them. Some became legend, like the Friday payday when the Swedish Arvid twins, Olof and Harald, both strapping six-footers, went out one after the other and my dad dispatched each of them with one punch. They soon made up—no hard feelings—and my dad got so drunk that night that Olof and Harald carried him home through the town, singing “The Maple Leaf Forever” and bringing lights on in every home along the way.

That Saturday morning he slept on the living room couch, where he had fallen the night before, his knuckles red and sore-looking. Buford proudly told me, “I never saw your father lose a fight, and some lasted barely a minute.” Buford used to be a well-known scrapper, so I took that as a compliment.

My parents were lovers and friends. My father would sit in a kitchen chair and sweep his arm around my mother's waist as she went by. He would look up and say something charming; she would become soft and delicate in his arms and place her hands on his shoulders. Even as they grew older, she still blushed when this happened. I loved them both dearly.

Later, when I started to write a history of the Klondike, I realized that for decades Dawson seemed to have been frozen in time. It was as if the end of the gold rush of 1896 had traumatized whole generations into complacency and apathy. The glory days would never return. The Great Depression of 1929 to 1939 had little effect on the Yukon; it survived better than most other places. The Territory was situated in a remote corner of the world, which insulated it from the influences of a troubled global economy. In most cases people were unaware of the turmoil outside.

My friends and I loved the CBC news reports. It was surreal to sit on my bed twisting dials on the brown Bakelite radio and hearing the news of the world come over the airwaves. We were so far from the stories that it seemed we might be on another planet. People didn't know about us, but we knew about them; the radio told us.

World War II was different. Its darkness had influenced even the fairest regions of the planet. I interviewed Wilfred, Taffy and William extensively, and they provided reams of information and corroborated each other's stories.

In 1940 twelve young men were conscripted into the army, and Dot and Nat's eldest son Ziggy left, never to return. He was blown up in a bombardment near Bastogne, and his body was unrecognizable. His grave in France says “Known unto God.” Years later Nat and Dot visited the cemetery and brought back a picture of one of the graves with that inscription on it.

“It was hard not knowing where he really was buried,” Dot said, her face red and tear-streaked, “but it was some comfort to be there.”

Buford and Craven, who were like uncles to me, organized a service on behalf of Ziggy's parents, who were overcome with grief and bore the burden of their loss the rest of their days.