Free Talking at the Woodpile by David Thompson Page A

how long you been living here?”
    Neil breathed a sigh of relief and took a sip of the tea.
    Victor knew that the slight had sealed their relationship. From now on Neil would be someone to disrespect and insult. Gypsy insults had been honed for centuries and were always delivered with a smile.
    They visited for a while longer. Faith got up first, and when she was out of earshot, Victor politely bowed to Neil and said, “You have nice house, nice wife, you are very lucky man. Too bad people have no trust in you.”
    Neil’s eyes went wide as saucers, and he started to respond. Thinking better of it, he said nothing but scurried across the yard to catch up to Faith.
    â€œWhat an ass, that man,” Victor said to himself as he watched them walk out the gate and around the fence toward their own home. “Why do I have neighbour like that all the time?”
    Fuming, Neil went down to Cooper’s Grocery and Hardware Store and bought two keyed-alike locks. He placed them on the counter and told Richard Cooper, “Got new neighbours, got new locks.”
    Richard didn’t like Neil because he had probably stolen from the store. He’d never caught him red-handed, but after fifty years in the business, he had a sense about the people who walked in the door. Richard was nobody’s fool. He put two and two together with the locks and the new neighbour.
    â€œNeed some new security, do you?” Richard asked.
    Neil couldn’t have answered any faster than he did. “You could say that—if your new neighbour happens to be a gypsy!”
    Richard had delivered supplies over to the Elsa Mine for many years. He had met Victor and liked him. Richard was also too old to hold his tongue, so as he opened the ancient cash register and handed Neil his change, he said, “Seems like the kettle is calling the pot black these days, ever since some firewood exploded.”
    Neil absolutely hated being reminded of that event. Even more he hated anyone challenging his opinion. He slammed the door behind him when he left the store.
    Soon afterward, Richard Cooper hired Victor to make his deliveries and gave him a five percent discount at the store, where Victor immediately bought material for his new home.
    Taffy saw Victor carrying cans of paint into his house, and with a wave of his hand, Victor invited him over to see what he’d done so far. He proudly walked Taffy through the three small rooms painted in purples, greens and blues.
    â€œDamn gypsy has the place looking like a rainbow,” Taffy re-ported later to Wilfred. “I thought I was inside a Ukrainian Easter egg.”
    When he’d completed the interior, Victor painted the exterior to match. He also removed the warped and weather-worn fascia boards and with his coping saw scrolled new boards with elaborate detailed scenes of people, animals and symbols.
    â€œLegend and stories of my people. The moon, the stars and the sun,” he said.
    â€œFinest scrollwork I’ve ever seen,” Pat Henderson, the owner of the Flora Dora Café, told William Pringle. “Very detailed.”
    Victor loved his home and lavished care on it. The neighbours took some time to get used to it.
    â€œIt will grow on you,” said William, Wilfred’s friend and sometime business partner.
    Taffy scoffed. “Who does he think he is, bringing that junk onto my street? Looks like a circus, it does. The only things missing are a giant Ferris wheel and fireworks.”
    As much as Taffy was concerned about Victor being a thief, he was more concerned about Neil being a proven thief, and a wood thief at that. He told Wilfred, “That Neil, I’m sure he’s up to his old tricks. I can’t leave anything out without it going missing. I’m going to catch that rat red-handed one of these days. Then you’re going to see action, I tell you.”
    On sunny days Victor liked to work in the garden, but on rainy Saturdays