Talking at the Woodpile (15 page)

But no one was going to intimidate Richard. All five feet of him stood up on his toes, and glaring through his wire-rimmed glasses, he gave it right back to them.

“You don't get any more credit because you haven't paid your damn bill. How can I be any more clear? Do you want it in writing?” Richard's voice grew louder as he spoke.

The big man, realizing Richard wasn't going to back down, sighed and stepped back. He motioned with a jerk of his arm for the others to come over. They put their heads together and had a quick mumble. Meanwhile Richard ignored them. He grabbed the end of the wrapping twine from the dispenser above his head, pulled off a few feet and finished tying a parcel of cheese wrapped in brown paper. The big one turned back to Richard, reached into his overall pocket and pulled out a wad of bills.

“We were just trying to stretch out our funds on your credit until we found work, but we'll pay up and get going,” he said. “We always pay our bills, Mr. Cooper, maybe not on time but we do pay them.”

He laid out the money on the counter, and Richard scooped it up and counted it into the cash register.

“Okay, boys, your credit is good. Buy what you want,” Richard said, not looking up but flipping his hand at them. “I'll trust ya. If that's your word, then I'll trust ya.”

Richard did trust people. All you had to do was pay up, and it was business as usual.

The three men gathered armfuls of groceries and supplies and signed for them. The odd one, the one who wasn't a twin, winked at me as they shoved out through the door and piled into their old pickup truck.

Mrs. Byrd was still on the boardwalk outside the store waiting for her ride, and as he walked by, one of the men leaned over and went “Boo!” in her face, making her jump. I'm sure Pastor Byrd would put something in his next Sunday sermon about the evils of frightening people.

So finally I had met the Rock Creek boys, and despite what I had just seen, I liked them. They might have tried to twist Richard's arm for more credit, but they seemed genuine to me. Also, I wasn't one to take other people's opinions seriously. I was born with an insatiable curiosity and desire to know the truth, so I didn't let gossip distract me. The Halloos had my curiosity, and after meeting them, I wanted more information. The opportunity came when I got the assignment of interviewing newcomers to the Klondike for the
Whitehorse Star.
The editor was mostly interested in the new Historical Sites staff, but I broadened the story to include the Rock Creek boys. I phoned them up, and they invited me out.

The one who wasn't a twin met me in the driveway. “We saw you in the store that day, didn't we?”

“Yes,” I said, “you were asking Mr. Cooper for more credit.”

“Asking, nothing,” he said. “Winch here was ready to stick the place up if the old geezer didn't give in. The only thing that stopped us was you coming in the door.” He winked at the others.

I half believed them.

They introduced themselves. I had never heard of names like Winch, Clutch and OP.

OP spat a wad of tobacco chew at my feet as I entered the house and invited me to sit at the kitchen table, which was covered with pots, dishes and newspapers. Once they got over their suspicion of who I was and what I was there for, they were polite and helpful. I was beginning to realize that they were not what they appeared to be and were more intelligent and better mannered than they let on.

The interview went well, and this was the beginning of a symbiotic relationship. The boys accepted me because I was unthreatening, and their vanity allowed me to record the stories of their lives. Their strong sense of family made them interesting, and if you got past their toughness, they were genuinely good people.

They started by telling me they had moved from a farm near Fort Saskatchewan north of Edmonton.

“We'd had enough of those phony Klondike Days in Edmonton,” Winch said. “We wanted to come to the real North.”

“Yeah, we homesteaded where land was cheap,” Clutch said.

“Our prairie neighbours weren't sorry to see us go, and I think some of our new Rock Creek neighbours are sorry to see us arrive,” OP said with a laugh.

Clutch chuckled. “Our reputation must have preceded us.”

It sounded a little sinister to me, but they all smiled with big toothy grins, so I decided they were pulling my leg.

As I got to know them better, I could see they accepted themselves and didn't try to hide their shortcomings. This honesty was disarming and endearing. No thought of changing their behaviour ever crossed their minds. They liked themselves just the way they were.

The three brothers started life on the right foot, not with a silver spoon, but with good opportunities all the same. Their parents were well-educated professionals who taught them well and had given them solid names—names full of hope and expectation—names they changed to car parts.

Clutch was the youngest and the smallest, weighing 310 pounds. I discovered he caused no end of trouble with his ambitions. His greatest aim was to become a Member of Parliament.

Winch and OP were the older twins and together weighed seven hundred pounds, though the amount wasn't equally divided. Winch was the leader. He was a bit of a bully and he ran things his way. Most of the family troubles resulted from his pride and anger. If the RCMP came to the house, it was Winch they were looking for.

I was there once when the police called.

“Honestly, officer, I was only defending my honour. That man had no business calling my malamute, Stalin, a mongrel,” he said.

OP was a yes-man, forthright and a perfect gentleman but sometimes a fool. OP was short for Oil Pan, though some Dawson folk thought it was short for “other people's,” the brand of cigarettes he liked to smoke.

The brothers had handsome features; their wavy brown hair grew as far down their backs as their beards grew down their chests, just to the top of their GWG bib overalls. Their wives thought they were the best-looking men they had ever seen and loved them dearly.

When they were together, it was difficult to be in the same room with them, but if they were alone they were totally different. Sizing them up, I thought,
Let's see what the Yukon makes of the Halloos
.

The extended family—brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins—had purchased a sprawling, rundown house that sat above the flood mark on the banks of the Klondike River near its confluence with Rock Creek. They eventually added onto the hipped-roof log building from the gold-rush era as they needed space. The original skilfully scribed logs had aged to a silvery grey, but the new, framed additions were amateurishly built and poorly maintained. Rain and snow water ran off the metal roof, staining the walls and rotting the boards. Numerous rusty nails left dark comet-like tails on the unpainted siding. The wood on the porch was rotting, and the screen door hung listlessly from one hinge. Fat dogs lounged outside on sun-faded couches that had lost their stuffing. Scruffy, self-absorbed cats sashayed in and out of the open door along with insects.

The buildings had a charm of their own. The mismatched levels made it impossible for people not to bump their heads when moving from room to room. It was a fine example of bush architecture that provided warmth and shelter for an ever-growing family.

On my visits I discovered the Halloos were accomplished musicians and graceful dancers. They took out violins and guitars and played and danced in the spacious kitchen. For such big men they were amazingly light on their feet. At a town dance I watched them waltz with their wives to the “Blue Danube” under the moonlight and patio lanterns. It was inspiring.

The wives complemented their husbands in size, appearance and character. Three sisters—Lulu, Olive and Stella—were married to the three brothers. The women wore simple homemade frocks of bright paisley cotton. They'd made the men's shirts of the same material. On my birthday they presented me with a shirt the same size as their men's; it was huge on me, but I wore it anyway, all tucked in. The women never stopped complimenting me on how good I looked in that shirt. Whatever the season, the women wore practical red-soled rubber boots with thick grey woollen socks pulled up to their knees. The boys dressed like their dads, the girls dressed like their moms, and their clothes were spotlessly clean.

It wasn't completely by chance that in a universe of diversity and in a small town like Dawson City, the Rock Creek family chose someone to collectively dislike. No dinner conversation or daily small talk was complete without a vile or slanderous reference to their chosen victim, Joshua Shackelton. The talk was vicious, and they missed no chance to make his life miserable. Any attempt of mine to mitigate this derision met with blank stares.

“We hates who we hates, Tobias, and we hates things that are not true,” Clutch said.

“Sure,” I said. “But look at it this way—what could Joshua possibly have done to deserve this?”

“He didn't fight when his country asked him; he dodged the draft,” OP said. “That's what we heard. What's an American doing here, anyway?”

“He is a yellow-bellied sapsucker, that's what he is,” Clutch chimed in.

Winch looked at me across the table while he cut a piece from an apple with a knife too large for the job. “You heard what my brothers said, we hates who we hates, and that's the end of the story—unless you want to join Joshua in Halloo hell?” He looked down his nose at me as he ate the apple off the knife and laughed.

I didn't answer and turned my head away. Of course I didn't want the Halloos' wrath, but I sure as hell felt sorry for Joshua.

Joshua was the only person I'd ever thought was cool. He tried to be spiritual, and in the Age of Aquarius, he was interested in peace and love. I never saw him angry, and he had the ability to remain calm no matter what the situation. He quoted Kahlil Gibran and listened to Ravi Shankar in a town of Merle Haggard and
Real Romance
magazines. Slight of build and of medium height, he had dark skin and a full head of thick brown hair. In summer he kept himself clean-shaven; in winter he grew a beard. He had “Mystic” embroidered above the pocket of his green GWG work shirt. The number “1548” was tattooed over his heart as a reminder of a special place and time. He worked at Hughie Ford's Chevrolet Automotive Garage pumping 'tane, as he called it.

At the time Dawson City was still locked in a post-gold-rush era of boom and bust. Crooked boardwalks lined the dirt streets, where more houses and buildings were boarded up and abandoned than occupied. It was a slow, seasonal, dusty town with a melancholy aura. Joshua felt at home here and rarely mentioned his past. Until I told him what the Halloos thought, Joshua never knew why they'd chosen him as a target for their anger.

“I didn't dodge the draft, I was 4F. I'm colour-blind,” he said, pointing to his eyes. “The draft board said I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a Viet Cong and an American and I would end up shooting the wrong person. I was glad to get out of the draft, but I was only colour-blind, not blind.”

“All draft dodgers are liars,” Winch said when I explained Joshua's 4F, “and he's a lying chicken-livered draft dodger.”

“Yeah, they're all chicken livers,” OP said.

I didn't try to reason with them but told Joshua, “My best advice is to run if you have to.” I was confident that Joshua's skinny legs could outdistance those behemoths.

In the hot summer, when winds lifted great columns of dust off the sandbars at the junction of the Klondike and Yukon rivers, old men—relics of another age and adventure—sat outside the Occidental Hotel on well-worn benches, retelling stories and reinventing history. The story of how Piedoe bit off Neil O'Neill's nose never stopped drawing guffaws of laughter. Joshua showed the old men respect, and they allowed him to sit in and contribute; others who were less polite were not welcome. Occasionally the Rock Creek boys would walk past, but the old-timers would go silent until they left, giving them no acknowledgment. This irked Winch the bully to no end, but what was he going to do, beat up a sourdough?

There were two gas pumps within thirty-five miles of Rock Creek. One was at the Dempster Highway corner, and the other was in town at Hughie Ford's Chevrolet Automotive Garage. The next-closest pump was at Stewart Crossing, one hundred miles west. The Halloo men didn't like having to deal with Joshua, so they drove out to the Dempster Corner, but that proved costly and impractical. Their solution was to send the women to fill the truck's gas tank. While the men didn't like Joshua, the women despised him. When they met, they spared him no slight or insult.

“I would rather deal with the men than the women,” Joshua told me. “The men are predictable.”

One ideally warm afternoon the Rock Creek women drove a one-ton primer-painted International Harvester truck to town, bringing a plume of dust and noise along with it. Winch's wife Lulu was driving, and OP's wife Olive sat on the passenger side. Neatly wedged between them was Clutch's wife Stella, who was the youngest. The three women wore matching bright-orange paisley dresses that together looked like a blanket thrown over the front seat of the pickup.

On Olive's lap was a large brown wicker picnic basket lined with the same cloth as their dresses. Olive unwrapped the waxed paper from thick egg salad sandwiches and distributed them in the cab and through the rear window to the kids in the back. They were out for a pleasant afternoon of driving, eating, shopping and listening to CBC music on the radio. In the box of the pickup sprawled an assortment of kids, dogs, laundry, bales of hay, spare tires and cordwood. Every once in a while, Olive would glance at the side-view mirror and yell a sharp warning at the kids, “Sit down!” Then she would flail her arm backward out the window in a feeble attempt to land a corrective smack.

Drifting around the last corner, Lulu made a beeline for the garage. Joshua stood still at the pumps. He fought the urge to dive for cover, but at the same time was convinced that if Lulu had the chance, she would drive over him, back up and do it again. The truck came to a sliding, screeching, gravel-showering stop. The dogs leaned out and barked in his face while the kids threw clumps of straw that stuck on his hair and clothes. The three women looked back and glared at Joshua. Stella leaned out the window and made the sign of the cross that people used on vampires and other evil beings. She looked at the “Mystic” embroidered on his shirt, and in her most disdainful voice, ordered, “Fill it up, mistake.”