Talking at the Woodpile (27 page)

“And I'll have to read your newspaper articles,” Flora said.

I couldn't take my eyes off her.

She looked up and gave me the sweetest smile. “What are you staring at, writer boy?”

Joshua bent his head over his plate and laughed so hard his shoulders shook.

That Saturday Joshua and I joined the tourists at the historic theatre, paid our admission and took our seats front and centre.

The melodrama
Love and Heartbreak on Gold Bottom Creek
had its moments. The piano player pounded away enthusiastically like Schroeder from the
Peanuts
cartoon strip. The barbershop quartet was okay, though the tenor's voice cracked, and the slapstick clowns were amusing. Flora played in the melodrama and danced in the can-can chorus line. No one applauded and cheered more than Joshua and I did. Flora gave a cheery wave and blew a kiss our way as she left the stage. I didn't know if the kiss was for Joshua or me.

After the show the three of us met and went to a party. Flora and I talked all night as though we'd known each other all our lives.

Winch called eventually and invited me to hear more of the story. When I got there, he started right in as though we hadn't left off. At first I found it hard to concentrate; I was thinking about Flora.

“It took me all week to repair the cabin. I lived in the truck in the meantime. I missed my bed; it had been a long time since I slept in the cab of a truck. I repaired the plank door and broken window and put up some shelves. I chinked the logs with stuffing from an old mattress lying out back in the fireweed. Except for squirrels and the occasional hunter stopping to make a cup of coffee, no one had lived in the place for years. Firewood was plentiful on the hills, and over the next month I gathered enough for the winter. A week of hot fires in the rusted stove drove out the dampness, and once the supplies and odds and ends were moved in, it was home sweet home. It was not as nice as Rock Creek but liveable just the same.”

“Did you think the cabin was winter-ready?” I asked.

“No, it was a shack, to tell the truth, but I found the area peaceful. It was a quiet place to be. It felt good to be away from all the turmoil. I could relax. My plan was to study the Bible, meditate and become more spiritual, so that in the spring when I headed back down the valley, my family and friends would see a new reborn Winch. The old one would be gone—all my troubles would be gone—and I would be a happier, smarter man.” Then Winch let out a sigh. “That was the plan, anyway.”

“‘The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley,'” I said.

“What?”

“It's a quote from Robbie Burns, the great poet.”

“Oh,” said Winch. Then he plunged on. “It surprised me that winter came early. The temperature dropped, the ground froze, the snow stayed and windswept drifts blocked the road. I welcomed the closing, since it meant I was unreachable. For some reason it made me feel stronger.”

“You were probably happy Mother Nature was making a decision for you,” I said.

Winch didn't seem to appreciate anyone, even Mother Nature, being involved in his decision making.

Lowering his voice, he said, “Just remind me, Tobias, this is a friendly interview, right?”

I said, “You're right, this is a friendly interview.”

“Good.” He leaned back. “I wouldn't want to read something that made me look like a wuss, now, would I?”

I nodded in agreement, having just learned a lesson that would assist me for the rest of my life as a journalist: never anger your interview subject. Years later, when I lectured at the University of Victoria, I kept a framed sign posted behind my desk for my students to read: Never Anger the Winch. Some asked what it meant. The less imaginative ignored it. I favoured the inquisitive ones.

“I had a combination short- and long-range radio I'd bought at Sears. I took the battery out of the truck to run it. With a long copper-wire antenna I was able to pick up music and weather stations all over the North. Most days the reception was excellent. There was a good rock 'n' roll show out of Vancouver DJ'd by a young guy named Rockin' Red Robinson. I saw his picture later in a magazine, and he really did have red hair. After a few weeks I felt like I knew him.

“I also dialled in on Russian fishing boats off the coast and listened to ship-to-ship patter. I couldn't read Morse code, but listening to the dots and dashes was soothing and put me to sleep. How many nights I went to sleep with dots and dashes rather than Lulu, I don't know.

“In early December the weather stations reported that an Arctic front was extending down from Old Crow into northern British Columbia, plunging the entire Yukon into sub-zero temperatures. There were no animals to be seen, and nothing ventured out except the ravens. The cold went on for weeks. I figured there was a seventy-degree separation between the cabin's temperature and the temperature outdoors.”

Winch told me that he read the Bible. He liked the Gospel of Matthew but had difficulty understanding a lot of things. The basic Christian teachings were clear—love one another and so on—but he didn't know if he had that kind of commitment and discipline. He just wanted to be enlightened.

“Isn't the purpose of enlightenment to find love and knowledge?” I asked.

“I don't know. That's it for today, Tobias.” When Winch stopped rubbing his knee, he looked tired. I'm sure that recounting some of those times was painful. He got up and limped stiffly into the kitchen, holding the top of his leg.

At home I had barely gotten in the door when my mother called out, “Tobias, come here this instant!”

It sounded like trouble. Ma was sitting in the living room smoking a cigarette. She didn't smoke, so whatever it was had to be serious. She appeared agitated.

As casually as I could, I sat on the arm of her chair and asked, “What's up, Ma?”

She didn't look at me but touched her thumb and forefinger nails together and looked at that. Her legs were crossed, and she bobbed her foot up and down. “What's this I hear about you going out with a dance hall girl? The whole town is talking.”

I almost fell off the chair, so I moved to the couch where it felt safer.

“Who told you that, Ma?”

“Is it true?”

“No, it's not true. She isn't a dance hall girl, she works in the Follies for the summer and goes back to school in the fall. We're friends.”

“I knew it! Wait until I tell your father.” Without further words she ground out the cigarette, stood up, straightened her apron and marched into the kitchen. She never looked at me once.

Oh my
, I thought.

Mom and I didn't speak for the next few days. I heard her and Dad arguing in the kitchen after I went to bed. It might have been about Flora, but my dad never said a word.

Although Flora asked to see me, I had to get Winch's story. I spent the next weekend at the Halloos' place.

“How is your leg feeling, Winch?”

“My foot still hurts. I get a pain across where the toes used to be, then it goes right up my spine. My friend cut his foot in a pond where a family of swans lived, and every time he saw a swan, his foot hurt. Go figure.” Then he asked, “Where did we stop the last time?”

I wanted to say, when you were beginning to show the first signs of cabin fever, but I didn't.

“Yeah, yeah, right, I remember now. I exercised to keep busy. When the temperature dropped, I walked in circles around the table for hours and read the Bible. I dragged my thumb around the tabletop until I developed a callous and the paint on the table wore down to bare oak. I calculated that each time around was twenty-five feet. From that I figured out the mileage from Rock Creek to the Dempster Highway, then on to Gravel Lake, McQuesten River, Moose Creek and finally Stewart Crossing. I was halfway to Mayo when disaster struck.”

“Disaster? What sort of disaster?” I asked, my interest picking up.

“People get all sorts of cravings in the winter. I've known some to hunger for oranges, tomatoes, pickle juice and other things. I knew one guy who lived thirty miles up the Yukon River who wanted pork. He hiked into Dawson at forty below, took the best room in the Eldorado Hotel and had the cook fry him up twenty chops. He ate them in one sitting, pork chops and nothing else. It took him two hours—scraped his plate clean. He then instructed the cook to make gravy from the pan drippings and pour it over a loaf of bread. It worked for him. He was a lot happier the next day when he left.

“I had plenty of food and vitamins, but my craving was for clear, cold water. I had been melting snow, but snow tasted flat and dusty. I wanted fresh water, but the creek was at the bottom of the valley. I thought it over for a few days and made up my mind I was going anyway.”

The trip down to the creek from the Hunker Valley rim was steep and long; I'd seen it on a wood-cutting trip. I couldn't imagine anyone hiking it in the middle of winter through four feet of snow.

Winch waited for it to warm up. When the thermometer read thirty-six degrees below, fifteen degrees warmer than it had been, he bundled up and set out. He took a small axe and slung six plastic milk jugs, tied together, over his shoulder. It was a tough slide through the snow, and when he reached the creek, he was exhausted.

“I stood among the willows beside the creek to catch my breath. It's hard to breathe when you're sucking in cold air. I rested a moment, then walked out on the ice. I could see the creek running about a foot below where I stood. It took a few smashes with the axe to make an opening big enough to dip a jug in. I removed one glove and kneeled down to reach the water.”

“I would never go on creek ice like that,” I said.

“Yeah, well, you were home in your nice, snug bed, and I was on Hunker,” Winch snapped.

Never anger the Winch! Any kind of criticism made him testy. I thought he was going to get up and leave, but he continued on. I was feeling testy myself. I didn't appreciate Ma's interference with the friends I chose.

“I filled three jugs and set them in a row. I was dipping the fourth when the ice cracked and I felt it drop a few inches. That was a weird feeling. I should have gotten off the ice then but I wanted to fill the rest of the jugs just in case I never got back down there.

“I was getting used to that scare when there was a louder crack and bang! I dropped into the water. I cracked my forehead on the way down and went right under, dropping my axe. The shock caused me to suck in mouthfuls of water. I jumped up and banged my head on the bottom of the ice. I was coughing and spitting when I slipped and fell under again. I got to my feet and steadied myself. I was stunned, and my eyes burned. It was actually warmer in the water than in the frigid air, but I knew I had to get out as soon as I could. I was bleeding badly and heavy drops of blood dripped into the water, diluted and flowed downstream.

“I waded toward the opening and reached up to grab a handful of willows. It took all of my strength to swing my legs up and pull myself onto the ice. I barrelled up the hill. My coat and pants began to freeze and stiffen, making it hard to move. In minutes my beard and hair were covered in ice. I must have been quite a sight, with frozen ice and blood covering my face and the mist rising off me as if I was on fire.

“Both of my gloves had floated away, so I tried climbing by alternating one hand in a pocket at a time, but I needed both hands for balance. My scarf froze around my neck, making it hard to look down. I panicked and started to pray, ‘Please God, save me, help me! Please help me!' My hands and face stung. For every two steps I took forward, I slipped back one. It took forever to reach the crest of the hill. By then I was completely exhausted. I crashed into the cabin and threw myself down on the floor, kicking the door shut behind me.”

“Wow, you were lucky,” I said.

“I crawled to the stove, packed the firebox with wood and left the flue wide open to get as much heat as possible. I struggled to remove my clothes. My frozen pants stood by themselves in the middle of the room until they thawed and slowly tipped over. I climbed into bed shivering uncontrollably, pulled the sleeping bag over my head and fell into a deep sleep.

“When I woke up, the fire was almost out, and the cabin was cooling. In the next instant a pain like a thousand needles shot up through my limbs. My fingers and toes had frozen. They burned so badly it felt like they were on fire. When I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, it hurt so much I threw up. My first instinct was to beat my hands on the headboard to shake off the feeling that they were asleep. When I did that, it felt a hundred times worse, because they weren't asleep. I wished I had a bottle of whisky.”

“I've never seen you drink,” I said.

“I don't drink. None of the Halloos do. It was for medicinal purposes, Tobias, purely medicinal. For several days all I could drink was hot tea with milk and sugar. I walked on my heels and carried things with the palms of my hands. My pants and shirt hung undone because I couldn't fasten buttons or pull a zipper. If it wasn't for suspenders, my pants would be at my ankles. I had to crawl outside on my knees and elbows, pushing a few pieces of wood ahead of me. I tried to stand, but my head spun, and I became nauseous. There was no relief. I actually cried and groaned in pain. I wished I was back at home with Lulu looking after me. My fingers grew fat like cocktail sausages and then slowly returned to normal. The skin peeled off, but I could see they would recover.”

His toes were another matter. Every morning he pulled back the covers to inspect them and each day he dreaded it more. His left foot was recovering, but the toes on his right foot continued to swell until a tinge of bluish black ringed the nails. He could smell almonds.

“I'd seen this before on a fellow at Pelly Crossing who froze his feet working on his trapline. It was gangrene!”

“Did the fellow at Pelly survive?” I asked.