Free Talking at the Woodpile by David Thompson Page B

he sat inside the doorway sipping tea and smoking aromatic pipe tobacco rolled in Zig-Zag cigarette papers. He had an old gramophone and played scratchy records of Django Reinhardt, the famed jazz guitarist. In the dim room, where light struggled through the drawn curtains, he would drift off to another place in another time. After a while he would sit up and say, “This is true gypsy music by a true gypsy,” and pretend to strum a guitar.
    Victor liked Faith. She was smart and kind, but more than that, he liked her because she beat up Neil.
    â€œYou’re good woman, Faith. Neil is very lucky man to have you for his wife.”
    Sitting on his porch, they talked for hours.
    â€œI started work in Elsa Mine as slop man,” Victor explained. “I carried buckets of toilet slop out of the mine all day every day. Then they let me be driller’s helper, then I become a driller. If I had not been gypsy, I would be top boss manager. I would sit in office, drink coffee, sleep with feet on table and have nice secretary.” He traced the outline of a shapely woman with his hands.
    Faith wasn’t convinced he would have made “top boss manager,” but he had the ability to pull more tonnage out of the mine than any other single person in its history. Banking a small fortune even after paying for his house, he was able to live simply but comfortably.
    Victor met Faith’s sister and took an interest in her. “Lily is not gypsy woman but she is good person. I think she likes me.”
    â€œI’m sure she does, Victor,” Faith said.
    â€œI think I take her to baseball game this Saturday. She told me, ‘I like good sports.’”
    Faith tried to explain what Lily meant, but Victor didn’t seem to understand. Finally she said, “That would be nice.”
    Victor did date Lily for the better part of the summer, but come fall, she took up with the new dredge master at Bear Creek. He was widowed and needed a mother for his four children. Lily wasn’t really keen on becoming a mother overnight, but the status of being a dredge master’s wife was too attractive. They had a whirlwind romance, and quicker than you could say “Bonanza Creek,” Lily and the dredge master were married.
    â€œThat okay,” Victor said, “I never like her anyway. She lied. I took her to baseball game and tennis game, but she didn’t like, she told me so.”
    Late one night, about two o’clock in the morning, Victor was awakened by scraping and clinking sounds in the back of his house. He sat up and waited to hear more. Sure enough, something was out back in the shed attached to his house.
    â€œCould be bear,” he said as he pulled on his pants and slipped his feet into his slippers.
    Through the kitchen window he could see a person bent over his tool bench. Victor went out the front door, picked up a piece of scrap copper plumbing pipe that he’d left on the porch and silently walked around back.
    Neil O’Neill was too busy pocketing tools to notice Victor coming up behind him. Victor stuck the copper pipe in the nape of Neil’s neck and said, “Don’t move, gangster, or your brains make spaghetti.” Neil froze, raised his hands and dropped the tools clattering back onto the bench. He was dressed in his bathrobe, pyjamas and slippers. His thievery was so casual that he didn’t even dress for the occasion.
    â€œBend over bench,” Victor commanded.
    Neil hesitated, so Victor said, “Or your head get one big hole for chicken to fly through.”
    Neil bent over the bench.
    â€œDrop pants,” Victor snarled, jabbing the pipe more forcefully into Neil’s neck.
    Neil let out a shrill, girlish scream, but hooked a thumb on each side of his pyjamas and pushed them down below his buttocks.
    â€œDon’t move,” Victor said, then tipped the lid off a paint can that held brushes soaking in turpentine. He selected the