Talking at the Woodpile (2 page)

“What in hell is this, Wilfred? What in hell did you dig up?”

Wilfred was amused to see William's reaction and deadpanned, “It's the mammoth I told you about, William. Did you think I was kidding?”

William held the lamp closer and ran his fingers through the mammoth's hair. It stuck to him as it had to Wilfred.

When William had seen enough, they pulled up a couple of timbers and discussed their next move. Hours later, still unsure, they headed back to the cabin.

The next morning they returned and removed a large block of frozen gravel from under the animal's trunk, exposing its chest.

What they saw caused them to push each other backward. They stared at a human face and hands reaching upward as if begging to be pulled from under the beast.

“That is the weirdest thing I have ever seen,” William said, leaning forward to get a better look. Brushing away the gravel, Wilfred saw a round face with marble-white skin accented by blue veins. Wide open, coal black eyes stared lifelessly, and bloodless lips curled back, exposing pale gums and perfect teeth.

Wilfred felt uneasy. He felt that way around bodies; he would make any excuse to get out of there. “Let's just leave this, William. Let's get a cup of coffee and think this through.”

William ignored him and continued brushing gravel.

Wilfred turned to leave. “William, I cannot stand this. I don't want to disturb a body. I hate dead things. They make me sick. I hate the smell. When I studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, I visited the catacombs and I couldn't get out soon enough. Let's just bury this end of the tunnel and forget him. He's been here for thousands of years. Let's leave him be.”

William didn't look up. “Go if you want to. I need your help, but if you can't stand it, I'll do this myself.”

“Let's contact the government. They'll know what to do,” Wilfred said.

“Those pencil-pushers? That's a pipe dream. You seem to have forgotten that I was in Flanders. I saw what bureaucrats can do, the mindless idiots.” He pointed at the frozen man. “If they get hold of him, they'll dump him in a tank of formaldehyde and prance him around the country on a CPR train like a circus freak. They don't have respect for the living, so why would they respect the dead? Not a chance, Wilf, my friend. No civil servants are getting their greedy, grubby hands on this. We'll have to figure out something else.”

Wilfred knew he was right. He sat on a timber and put his head in his hands. After a long while he broke the silence. “Okay. I will help but I'm not touching him.”

William looked up from his work. “I knew I could count on you. This is unprecedented, a huge find. We have to move this guy. Nothing else will do. Let's do the best we can.”

For the rest of the day they dug below and around the man and finally pulled him loose. He was fully clothed except for a moccasin that Wilfred retrieved later. His legs were bent up to one side, and like the mammoth, the man was flattened; bone was exposed in places. Overall the body was complete, and concealed underneath it was the link between the two. Protruding from the centre of the mammoth's chest was the broken shaft of a spear. Long ago these two had battled. Both had lost.

Carefully, respectfully, Wilfred and William laid the body on a blanket. Then, holding two corners each, they carried him to the cabin. They cleared the table, laid down a clean cloth, and brushed the gravel and debris off the body.

Wilfred closed the stove vents and opened the window. “We can't let him thaw, William,” he said. “Whatever we do, we have to do it quickly.”

William, who had studied natural science, began the examination while Wilfred took notes. First he washed the face and hands. Then he methodically described what he saw. “Amazingly well-preserved young male, perhaps twenty years old. About five foot six with a round face, a broad mouth, dark skin, and hair cut blunt over the forehead. His physique is compact and muscular.”

The man's chest was crushed. Broken ribs protruded through his skin, and the clothing was bloodstained. William concluded that death had been sudden.

The examination went on late into the night. Wrapped around the body and tied with lengths of babiche—caribou rawhide cords—were light garments of scraped caribou skin. Over these the man had worn heavier outer clothing of caribou hide trimmed with wolverine fur. The pants went to his knees and were made of heavier moosehide. Fur lined his outer garments. His belt, decorated with pieces of bone intricately carved into star shapes, held a knife sheath but no knife. His footwear was trimmed with red and blue porcupine quills and came up over his knees. The insides of his moccasins were stuffed with grass. Around his neck was a decorative leather pouch that they left unopened. The man's hands and legs were tattooed with small birds and decorative bands. On his right shoulder a tattoo showed a man and a bear standing together; the bear's upper leg was extended. Wilfred sketched the scene into his notebook.

“Bear Man, that's what we should call him,” Wilfred said, and William agreed.

The late-morning winter sun was rising when they finished and sat exhausted. Carefully they washed and dressed the body. Then they wrapped a Hudson's Bay Company blanket around him and tied it with twine. Wilfred inexplicably felt an urge to place the small ivory carving he'd recently found within the wrappings. Then they returned the body to the icebox of a tunnel for safekeeping.

“What's next?” William asked, drinking coffee as he sat with his back to the stove. He was trying not to yawn.

“I still think we should tell the government,” Wilfred said. “We could go into Dawson and bring out the mining recorder. We could explain things and ask his opinion.”

“We can't, Wilf, we've gone too far. We have disturbed an archaeological site. I'm afraid we'll have to cover our asses from here on in.”

Wilfred reluctantly agreed. “It wouldn't look good if they declared this guy a national treasure or something after we dug him up and moved him.”

Without another word, both men turned in to get some welcome rest.

About an hour later, Wilfred awoke. He wasn't in his cabin. He stood on the tundra, looking down at the Blackstone River. Wind blew the snow across the landscape in silence. A figure walked toward him; it was Bear Man. Wilfred saw that he was distressed and tired, and frost covered his beard and hood. Bear Man walked up to and past Wilfred without showing any sign of having seen him. Wilfred turned and watched him disappear into the wall of whirling snow.

Suddenly Wilfred was back on Bonanza—he recognized Adam's Creek near his claim—but it was fall, and the leaves had turned. A group of men walked toward him in single file with frost marking their breath. Slung on their backs were light packs suspended from a single, wide band around their foreheads. They carried spears and bows. Wilfred recognized the last one in line: Bear Man. The group filed past silently toward a willow thicket.

The leader turned abruptly, raised his clenched fist and appeared to shout something. The men in the front of the column ran in all directions, dropping their packs. Others quickly pulled arrows and fitted them into their bows. Bear Man dropped his pack with a dip of his head and faced the moving mass of brown willows before him. Out of the splintering wall blasted a mammoth, its trunk held high, mouth wide open and eyes blazing. Travelling faster than a man could run, the animal charged straight into the midst of the scattering group. Bodies tumbled and were thrown wildly about until Bear Man stood alone. The mammoth rushed forward.

Bear Man jammed the base of his heavy spear into the ground. He turned and for a moment met Wilfred's eye. Then he turned back to face the charging beast. The long, broad, razor flint sliced deep, tearing skin, flesh, cartilage and bone until it found its destined home in the massive heart. Bear Man and the mammoth crashed together and slid into a deep pool in the creek. The whole scene had taken but seconds.

Wilfred sat bolt upright in bed, soaked in sweat. William snored peacefully on the other side of the cabin, unaware of the drama that had just unfolded in his friend's dream. Wilfred threw off his covers and shook William awake.

“William, wake up! I know what we have to do. I had a dream. I saw Bear Man, the mammoth, everything.”

With hot coffee cups in their hands, Wilfred recounted his dream and his plan. “We can ask Chief Daniel and the Han elders to take the body. Bear Man is one of theirs, an ancestor. We'll explain everything to them. With their help, we can get ourselves off the hook.”

“Wilf, you're a genius. That dream was God-sent,” William said.

One month later, on a spring afternoon, Wilfred and William stood high on the hills across the valley from the mouth of Bonanza Creek, once called Rabbit Creek, near the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike rivers. A sombre spectacle was taking place. A multitude of people stood in a silence so complete that distant sounds carried clearly. They had gathered to honour Bear Man. His oak casket, inlaid with copper wolves, was suspended over an open grave. Wilfred and William stood, hats in hand, at a place of honour. They had helped to carry the casket. Both shed tears unabashedly.

From across the clearing, within the fringe of trees, came the single rap of a drum. A high-pitched, plaintive woman's voice sang the first verse of the “Goodbye Song,” followed by a loud chorus. Wilfred had heard this song many times before at funerals, and both he and William joined in.

A procession of dancers appeared, led by Tlingits in black and red button blankets; other dancers wore the full-feathered bonnets of the Plains people. Some were in Inuit garb, and many wore brightly decorated buckskin and headdresses. Han, Gwich'in, Iroquois, Cherokee, Dakota, Micmac, Paiute, Apache, Cree, Winnebago, Stoney, Hopi, Arapaho, Navajo, Haida and Blackfoot had all travelled far to be here today to honour the ancestor of them all. The unity of their diversity wove a flowing tapestry of colour and grandeur toward the burial site.

Commissioners, Members of Parliament, chiefs and people of many backgrounds were present. The elders spoke first, thanking William and Wilfred for their wisdom and help in bringing Bear Man to where he was today. Sweetgrass smouldered, and elders dabbed attar of rose on foreheads. The great gathering sang, chanted and recited prayers. Then Bear Man was laid to rest.

A four-day potlatch followed. Friends were made, and many generous gifts changed hands. William and Wilfred had to call on Windy with his horse and cart to carry everything home.

After the potlatch, Wilfred and William returned to the claim to finish removing the mammoth. They had plenty of help. Federal civil servants, enraged that they didn't get their hands on Bear Man—but unwilling to challenge the elders—jumped in and took over. Wilfred and William didn't stop them but charged a hefty rent for the use of Wilfred's cabin. The bureaucrats took their prize, bundled it up and stored it in Richard Cooper's ice house to wait for the next boat back to Whitehorse. The narrow-gauge White Pass & Yukon Route railway carried it—packed in a thousand pounds of ice—to Skaguay; a ship ferried it to Vancouver. The Canadian Pacific Railway carried it in a freezer car to Ottawa.

Wilfred never heard from any of the bureaucrats again. “Ungrateful louts,” he said whenever they were mentioned.

The mammoth remained in Ottawa until the 1980s, when the government shipped its bones and tusks to the Beringia Interpretive Centre in Whitehorse to be assembled for display.

If you visit the centre, walk past the sabre-toothed tiger and look to the left. There you will see William and Wilfred's mammoth. The display text doesn't say anything about them, but Wilfred and William could have told you the real story. If you look closely at the chest bones, you will see the deep, serrated spear cut inflicted by Bear Man so very long ago on that day on Rabbit Creek.

Angunatchiuk heard laughter as he awoke. Rolling onto his side, he propped himself up on one elbow. His wife Ayauniq sat with their two children Saluk and Qalu. They were laughing over a game; Ayauniq was keeping a feather aloft by fanning it with another feather. Every time the feather approached the floor, Ayauniq would pretend to panic and frantically wave her feather until it floated up again. The children fell over, limp with laughter, and Angunatchiuk laughed along with them. When Ayauniq saw that Angunatchiuk was awake, she put away the toys and laid the children down for a rest, covering them with a blanket made from feathery duck skins.

Their dome-shaped tent was made of caribou hide stretched over a birch-pole frame. The walls had windows of caribou intestine sewn into them and an opening in the roof to let smoke escape. Soft light filtered into the warmth of the interior, and clean-smelling fresh-cut pine boughs covered the floor.

Angunatchiuk and Ayauniq were married when Ayauniq was fourteen and Angunatchiuk was fifteen. Ayauniq was a member of the Crow clan, Angunatchiuk a member of the Wolf. The children would take their mother's clan. Their parents had arranged the marriage at a large gathering held at the junction of the Whitestone and Porcupine rivers. Angunatchiuk delighted in Ayauniq. Her kindness and beauty pleased him, and their two children were healthy and happy.

Their winter camp on the Blackstone River was situated in the middle of the caribou winter range. Since early morning a caribou head hanging by a braided rope had been roasting over the fire. Smooth rocks shoved into its nostrils would keep it cooking evenly. Every so often someone nudged it to keep it spinning. When the skin cracked, it would be done.

The door flap was pulled back, allowing a gust of cold air to flow in. Angunatchiuk's father-in-law Yugunvaq had come to visit. He closed the flap behind him and stomped his feet to remove the snow. He took a seat by the fire.

“How are you, Angunatchiuk? And how are my favourite daughter and my grandchildren?” he asked.

The children threw the blanket off and ran to sit with their grandfather. Yugunvaq hugged them both while Ayauniq fetched dried caribou meat and a bowl of bear fat. Dipping the meat into the fat, they ate and talked.