Talking at the Woodpile (16 page)

Joshua was amazed at how anyone could be so dumb as to mispronounce such a simple word. He never got used to their insults. Some days he was tempted to refuse them service, but he knew they were waiting for a fight, so he didn't contend. Stella threw money in his direction, and the truck left in the same cloud of dust and gravel it had arrived in.

“Goodbye and good riddance,” he said under his breath.

Every year the Dawson City Social Club held three or four dances that were well organized and well attended. The family dinner and dance closest to September 21, the first day of autumn, was a particular highlight. The New Tones, an eight-piece orchestra hired out of Whitehorse, made the 333-mile journey north to Dawson City in their battered van. The bandleader, Hector Badham, swore there wasn't a song they didn't know and couldn't play. Dressed in red-sequined jackets and silver-trimmed pants, they set up their matching music stands and were primed to entertain.

My mom was on the committee that organized the dance.

“Remember, Tobias, don't eat the potato salad,” she said. “You remember what happened back in 1964 when Mrs. Robinson's turned, and the whole town got sick.”

How could I forget? Mom reminded me so often about the salad that I never eat potato salad at any event. On occasion I even refused to eat Mom's at home.

Men, women and children showed up in their finery and took their seats. Food was piled on tables, and while everyone ate, the band played dinner music. Huge pots of steaming corn on the cob and platters piled with roast beef, moose and fish accompanied potatoes, beets, peas, cabbage and cauliflower—all locally grown, some by my father. All of this was washed down with gallons of tea and coffee and soda for the kids.

The best was saved for last: the three tables groaned under the weight of pumpkin pie served with mounds of whipped cream, apple pie with thick slices of aged cheddar cheese and cream pie with shredded coconut. There was also blueberry, raspberry and rhubarb pie, all served with healthy scoops of vanilla ice cream. The pièce de résistance was the mile-high lemon-meringue pie, which no one could resist; every last slice was devoured. The treats were set out for everyone's dining pleasure, and people indulged themselves to the last slice and scoop.

By half past seven the men pushed themselves away from the tables and casually strolled out the back door for a smoke and a nip from a mickey. The women knew exactly where they were going and what they were doing. They complained among themselves and, trying to feel better, scolded the older children to help with the cleanup. After an hour, when the women had put away the dishes, the clatter and voices from the kitchen died down.

The New Tones were eager to start the dance and did so with a lively arrangement of fast-paced tunes. Hector's baton became a blur. Without the slightest hesitation, the Rock Creek boys, with their wives in tow, sped out onto the dance floor. They and only they commanded the space—but what a show! What graceful elegance they displayed, moving as if on clouds, twirling and waltzing in perfect time. The women wore smiles; the men wore grins. Bow ties matched dresses. Their steps grew lighter. They knew that the Halloos were showing the town.

After the first three dances, the Halloos took their seats to a smattering of applause. Other couples stepped forward onto the dance floor, and my mom and dad were among the first.

“Don't you have a girl you could ask to dance?” my mother called out as she waltzed past where I sat.

“Yeah,” I said, “but I think she's married to the actor, Richard Burton.”

“Don't get smart with your mother, young man. I was only asking,” she said the next time she danced by. My father then led her in another direction.

In the midst of the crowd, Joshua danced with Angel. Angel was pretty, blonde and lithe, and when they danced together it was as though Fred and Ginger had flowed out of a silver-screen movie and taken their place at centre stage. Round and round they went while others stood aside to watch and applaud. They soon grabbed the spotlight. The Halloos were good, but Joshua and Angel were sensational.

The Halloos watched sharply. As if a message had been telegraphed through the autumn evening air, every man, woman and child realized that something was afoot. More than anyone, the Halloos realized it and called an on-the-spot family conference in the back hall to discuss the situation. I quietly joined them to listen in. A great dance-off was shaping up.

“Why don't we just pick a fight with him now? That will be the end of it,” Winch said.

“No, no, that would be too obvious,” OP said. “We have to beat him on the dance floor. We can't let that jerk show us up. We have to do something, and quickly.”

“Let's not panic. We can do this! We're good enough!” Clutch said. “Let's go back in there and pull out all the stops and show this town who can really dance.”

I had no doubt whom the town was going to root for—everyone but the Halloos liked Joshua—but I stayed out of it and privately wished both sides good luck.

The Halloos moved back onto the dance floor. This time their lips were pursed and their faces more serious and tense. With complete concentration they twirled, whirled and quick-stepped. Caught up in the intensity of a tango, Stella clasped a celery stick in her mouth. As they dipped, Clutch gently removed it with his teeth and dropped it down the front of his overalls. The onlookers laughed and applauded.

Half an hour later, after giving it their best, they sat exhausted, breathing heavily and sweating. The women made fans out of placemats and wafted them in the faces of the men.

Then Joshua and Angel, fresh as spring flowers and full of energy, got up to a warm round of applause and followed the Halloos' sequence of dances. They executed each step flawlessly with flair and precision and with even more beauty and grace. The Halloos looked on with their mouths gaping, muttering among themselves and probably writing Joshua's epitaph.

But the night belonged to Joshua and Angel. The Halloos knew it, and the appreciative crowd knew it. The New Tones switched rhythms and tunes so that the samba, the mamba, the bomba and the tango, along with the cha-cha-cha and the bossa nova, challenged everyone's abilities. The Halloos grew exhausted and stumbled during the bossa nova. Joshua and Angel demonstrated the dance with such flair that the audience burst into more thunderous applause.

“They're wonderful, those two,” my mother said. “And to think those big men were so dainty but such bad sports, booing like that.”

Two days later Joshua was back at work. His legs were sore from dancing. Before he heard or saw the truck, the hair on the back of his head stood up. He turned to face his tormentors, but to his surprise, this time Clutch was sitting behind the wheel. Stella sat by the window, and wedged between them was their round and rosy unmarried young niece Missy. Clutch pulled up so that Joshua and he were at eye level.

“Morning, Joshua,” everyone in the truck said in unison.

Joshua must have looked a little taken aback, because Stella immediately started introducing Missy. “Joshua, honey, I want you to meet our Missy. Missy, I want you to meet our friend Joshua. Go on, shake his hand.”

Missy, who was all smiles, held out a plump, soft hand for Joshua to shake.

“Pleasure to meet you, Joshua,” she said breathlessly in her sweetest voice.

Joshua was totally bewildered and stuttered, “Likewise.” A stirring filled his body with a strange combination of physical attraction and fear. Was he attracted to Missy? Was this the forbidden fruit he had heard about?

The Halloos sat talking quietly in the cab while Joshua filled the gas tank. The dogs in the back tried to lick his face, and the kids offered him a bite of a chewed, gooey chocolate bar. Joshua politely refused and walked back to the cab, where Stella offered a wad of bills to bring their account up to date. Missy leaned over Stella to reach the window, showing her ample cleavage, and in the same breathless voice told Joshua, “Come up to the house and see me sometime.”

As Clutch pulled out, Missy smiled and waved twinkly goodbyes with her chubby red fingers.

Long after they were out of sight, Joshua stood by the pumps deep in thought, unconsciously wiping his hands on a greasy cloth. Slowly he came back to the present. Suddenly he was enjoying the cool morning breeze, the pristine air and the sun's heat on his shoulders.

Brian and Joshua worked together at Hughie Ford's Chevrolet Automotive Garage in downtown Dawson City. Hughie and his brother Mordechai were more interested in placer mining on Dominion Creek and winters in Florida than running a garage. They left the running of the business to Brian, whom they trusted but supervised closely. People thought Mordechai was a silent business partner, but it was just that he rarely spoke.

“Show Joshua the ropes, Brian. Maybe he'll be a mechanic someday,” Hughie yelled as he left the dim garage bay for the morning sunshine. Mordechai followed behind him and gave Brian the nod.

“You don't have to tell me twice,” Brian yelled out after them. He turned to Joshua, who wore the same green coveralls as Brian, but two sizes taller. “I hate that nod Mordechai gives after everything Hughie says.”

I walked in on the tail end of the conversation, and Brian's anger turned to a cheery, “Good morning, Tobias. How are you doing?”

“I'm doing fine,” I said, giving Joshua a nod.

I liked both men. Joshua was level-headed. He had a friendly smile and a calmness about him, but his dealings with the Rock Creek boys had proved he also had a resolve of steel for what was right.

Brian was a helpful, pleasant person—customers and friends agreed on that—but he also believed that aliens lived amongst us. Every day he made a clandestine scrutiny of Joshua's features for any sign of alienness. As they talked, Brian scribbled notes in a grease-covered memo pad that he kept in his left shirt pocket. In his right shirt pocket he kept his memo pad for the garage, but it stayed fairly clean.

When Brian thought he'd discovered an alien, he gave a wink and a nod as an attempt to communicate, but a wink was as good as a nod to a blind horse.

Joshua failed the test.

“You're not an alien,” Brian said, stuffing his notebook in his shirt pocket. He was disappointed; he was hoping to work with an alien.

“What?” Joshua asked.

“You're not an alien. Go pump some gas,” Brian yelled over his shoulder as he walked into the dark, cluttered tool room to look for parts. Outside, a customer was honking impatiently.

“Okay, okay, thanks for letting me know that,” Joshua called after him. He had no clue that he had been struck off the alien list and saved from further annoying scrutiny.

Brian was a writer's dream, since his wild imagination and scientific knowledge gave me fodder for enhancing the Yukon's mystique. He was a great talker, and at times I pulled myself back from the brink of belief in his tales.

“Tobias, there are a few things you have to know about identifying and catching aliens. The first is that they have pointy ears.” Having said that, he froze slack-jawed and fixed his gaze on me. Seeing that this priceless bit of information had sunk in, he snapped his mouth shut and continued, “And they have different-coloured eyes, like malamutes, sometimes stutter and prefer colourful hair.”

He pointed out that, due to a bureaucratic bungle in their administration, they all had the same cover story of an Aunt Maggie and Uncle Sidney living in New Mexico with their two children, Roberto and Roberta.

I enjoyed covering the news around town for the
Whitehorse Star
by sitting in on city council meetings, political party gatherings and dances organized by the Dawson City Benevolent Fund Raising Society.

They did an excellent job of raising funds for everything from the starving children in Biafra to a new television set for the seniors at the McDonald Lodge. Brian took every opportunity at these occasions to passionately explain that aliens were not people-eating monsters but warm-hearted, intelligent beings seeking a home.

Most people knew Brian, so they shrugged off his antics. To them, he was Brian the alien man, the friendly garage manager who gave them an amusing distraction from the rigours of daily life in the North.

“I wish I had his optimism and conviction for a cause,” Mayor Bullard told me after a meeting, though he sometimes got impatient at Brian's appeals to city council. “Next order of business,” the mayor would announce, exasperated, banging his gavel on the ancient town hall desk.

Magazines and books of all sorts were stacked haphazardly on shelves around Brian's house, giving off a smell of mildew and creating a fire hazard. He imaginatively researched in this library for what was necessary to support his theory.

Thick manila envelopes crammed with correspondence from like-minded enthusiasts were filed into stacks of wooden fruit crates that leaned precariously as they towered toward the ceiling. Once a stack tipped over onto the kitchen stove while Brian was cooking and almost burned the place down.

“Hot bacon grease and beans splattered everywhere. They burned my hand and ruined supper,” he said, showing me his grease-stained bandages in the grocery store the next day.

His largest collection of information had its own battered army-surplus file cabinet and was labelled in bold red ink roswell site 51. Roswell was the ultra-secret military base in New Mexico. Brian was convinced that the military studied alien bodies recovered from a crashed spaceship. Despite numerous letters, he never heard back from anyone at Site 51.

“I was hoping they would send me a sample of the metal that the spaceship was made of, but they wouldn't part with any of it. I know they are keeping secrets there, Tobias. If it wasn't for the armed guards, I would take my two-week vacation, and you and I would drive down there, crawl through the cactus and sand dunes and get right in. I'd take Polaroids of the whole operation. Maybe one of those bubble-headed aliens would be walking around. A picture like that would be nice on the front page of the
Star,
don't you think?”