Talking at the Woodpile by David Thompson Page B

dimensions, senses, affections, passions: fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons … ” He paused there.
    Wilfred knew the passage well and recited the last line with him.
    â€œPoor Jew. I’m very glad I’m not Jew,” Victor said. “They have terrible life. No justice, fairness or anything. When God made man, he made the Jew last. I feel badly for them. I’ve met them, they are good people. If you don’t like Jews, you don’t hurt because you don’t like. If a Jew comes to Dawson, we should welcome him, make him feel at home, not steal from him, not make him feel alone. Not put him in prison. That’s what I hope for Jew.” By the end of this, Victor was passionately thrusting out his arms as if begging for understanding.
    No one said anything. They were too surprised.
    â€œNever mind,” Victor said, waving an arm in the air. “It’s just words from long ago, it means nothing.” He put the book on the shelf, took off the blanket and draped it over the back of a chair. “Come and sit down. I’ll make tea. We celebrate and never speak of these things again.”
    Soon the three of them were sipping hot tea, enjoying each other’s company. Wilfred told of his mammoth find on Bonanza Creek a few years ago, and when he described how they’d been scared out of their wits, they all had a good laugh. Next door, Taffy looked out his window at the sounds of conversation and laughter coming from the brightly lit kitchen.
    The gypsy must be having one of those parties they have
, he thought. Then he went out and made sure his sheds were locked up.

Buford’s Tooth
    Born and raised in Mayo, the brothers Buford and Craven Clutterbuck followed their father and laboured in the Elsa underground silver mine. They worked as a team of blasters.
    â€œThat nitroglycerine is good for your heart but it gives you bad headaches,” Craven said, reaching for the bottle of aspirin in his locker before he walked home from work.
    After twenty years the headaches got to them. They were offered jobs as catskinners hauling the silver ore from the mine to the riverboats and barges at Mayo Landing, but they wanted to follow their bosom buddy Victor the Gypsy to Dawson, so they quit.
    â€œToo bad we weren’t here when that stealing went on. We would have stood by you, Victor,” Buford said over a cup of tea the day they arrived.
    Buford was named after the first British sailor to be devoured by a great white shark off the coast of Australia in 1770. Apparently, after so many months at sea, young Buford Gateman spotted some near-naked aboriginal girls on the beach, jumped ship and tried to swim to shore. The great white bit him neatly in two, leaving the upper torso and head floating in the water. The captain’s log recorded that the shark must have known Buford had no brains, since he took the best part.
    â€œThat is the funniest thing I ever heard,” Orville Clutterbuck said.
    Craven was named after the brand of cigarettes his mother, Claris Clutterbuck, enjoyed. She was a farmer’s daughter from Saskatchewan who’d smoked Craven A since she was sixteen years old and died of lung cancer at fifty-six.
    â€œI have to have my cigs and coffee,” she said.
    â€œI’m just thankful she didn’t add the A and name me after the place they were made. I could have been called Craven A Jamaica.”
    Claris, who had ignored her children all her life, tried to apologize on her deathbed. Craven and Buford weren’t buying it.
    â€œSometimes ‘better late than never’ is crap,” Buford said.
    â€œWe had no mom,” Craven said.
    Craven was over six feet tall and had not an ounce of fat on him. His veins were like road maps on his arms and legs. His hands and feet were long and thin, a sprout of uncombed red hair topped his narrow head and wire-rimmed glasses sat crookedly on his broken nose. He personally