Boomtown Read online

  Gramma Edna left shortly after breakfast, and we spent the next hour straightening up, getting dressed, and taking turns in the only household bathroom. Following her directions, we strolled down our street past Chang Park on our left and the river beyond. The road gently curved around Boomtown Church on the right, where I’d be preaching the next day, and past the La Pierres’ house, until it crossed Bang Street. We didn’t see Matthieu, but Jonny and Sarah stopped to talk to eight or nine of his children.

  “Where you goin’?”

  “Into town.”

  “Watcha gonna do?”

  “Get haircuts.”

  “That’s boring.”

  “Yeah, I know. Maybe we’ll get ice cream.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, we got a coupon for Top’s Soda Shop.”

  “You gonna have the Family Gutbuster?”

  “Yeah, I hope so. What’s that?”

  “It’s an ice cream sundae with twenty scoops of ice cream, any flavor you want, with bananas and pineapple and nuts and chocolate sauce and whipped cream. Alonzo—that’s Mr. Top, the man who owns the soda shop—he puts it in this big silver bucket as big as your head and you eat it and eat it and eat it until your tummy wants to explode! We went in there once, me and my mom and dad and my brothers and sisters, and we tried to eat the whole thing but we couldn’t and we got sick and couldn’t eat anything else for a whole week!”

  Sarah’s eyes got as big as two dinner plates. She grabbed my hand and started yanking on it. “Can we go, Dad? Can we have a Gutbuster? I’ll bet I can eat it all by myself. Can we?”

  I rolled my eyes and answered, “Twenty scoops of ice cream and our stomachs explode and we get sick for a week—sounds like fun.”

  “You mean it?”

  “We’ll see. I’ve got to get my hair cut first. You and Ruth and your mother are heading to Gertrude’s. Jonny and I wanted to pop in at the bookstore.”

  Janice said, “We could split up and meet back at the soda shop. It’s eleven o’clock now. We could meet there at two thirty. That should give us enough time.”

  I shrugged and answered, “Bring a spoon—and some Bromo-Seltzer.”

  After that was settled, we turned right on Bang Street and walked down one of the busiest streets in town. We passed the offices of Dr. Goldberg, family physician, and Dr. Xu, the town dentist. We peeked in the windows of the Red Bird General Store on the right. We saw the music store, the book-store, and a butcher shop on the left. As we walked along, we were greeted by all kinds of folks who were out shopping on a Saturday—ladies in their hats, men in their best overalls, and children running in and out of Top’s Soda Shop, the bell ringing merrily every time the door opened and closed. We stopped long enough to look inside where we would meet up later that afternoon.

  Janice and the girls went on ahead to the beauty parlor, while Jonny and I stood at the intersection of Cave In Road with Town Square another block in front of us.

  “I think we’ve gone too far, Jon,” I said, scratching my head and trying to remember what Edna had told us. “Pretty sure Gramma Edna said the barbershop was on the left-hand side near the bookstore, but I didn’t see it.”

  “Why don’t we go in here? Maybe they know where it is.”

  Jonny was talking about the store directly in front of us. The canvas awning had the name printed boldly on its fringe: Guenther’s Gun Corral. We pushed open the door and stuck our heads inside.

  “Hello? Anybody here?”

  We looked around at the racks of hunting rifles and boots and coats and gloves and rain gear and didn’t see a soul.

  “That’s strange. I wonder if someone’s in the back room.”

  Just then a tall figure stepped out from a display of camouflaged hunter’s suits. He was dressed head to toe in sand-colored fabric. He had a large hump on his back and a hood over his head. He blended perfectly into the background.

  “Hello, dere,” he said in his thick Swedish accent. “Sorry to startle you. Der name’s Guenther. Dis here is my shop. Who vould you be?”

  “We’re new here in town,” I answered, trying not to stare. “Just moved in. I’m the new pastor at Boomtown Church, Arthur Button, and this is my son, Jonny.”

  “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. Is dere some vay I can help you?”

  “We’re looking for the barbershop. We seem to have missed it.”

  “Yah, sure, you betcha. It right over dere. You see it, next to bookstore?”

  “Where?”

  He took us to the door. “You see sign over dere? The vun dat says Butcher? Vith the chicken leg and pork chop painted on der vindow? That’s Valt’s, for sure.”

  “But that’s a butcher shop.”

  “Yah, you betcha.”

  “That’s where we get haircuts?”

  “For sure, yah.”

  We opened the door, but on the way out I just had to stop and ask, “What do you call your suit? I’ve never seen anything like it—with the hump and all.”

  “Yeah,” added Jonny, “it makes you look like a camel.”

  “Oh, dis vun here? Dis is vat I call ‘Camel-flage.’ Great for hunting in dry grass. It verks vonderful, yah?”

  “Yah.”

  We waved good-bye to Guenther and crossed the street until we were standing underneath the wooden chicken leg and the pork chop. Peering through the window, we could see that it was the barbershop after all. Along its length was a white counter with a glass case and a weighing scale and meat hooks and refrigerators, but instead of beef and poultry in the glass case, it was full of hair tonics and combs and scissors.

  Jonny pointed. “Look, Dad, there’s a poster showing how to butcher a cow right next to the prices for shaves and hair-cuts. That’s weird.”

  Near the door were some men reading magazines waiting for their turn in the barber chair. They looked up and nodded to us as we came in. There were two empty spots at the end. We slipped into our seats and took a closer look around the room. That’s when we saw Walter for the very first time.

  He had to be more than seven feet tall. His head almost brushed the ceiling when he stood up straight. His arms were like tree branches, covered in a forest of hair and tattoos. Each of his legs was as big around as Jonny, and his shoulders were as wide as a bale of hay. His shaved head was bumpy, like the bark of a walnut tree. His nose was a lumpy potato, and he had tiny black eyes and a crooked mouth full of broken teeth that looked like splintered glass. His hands and fingers were as big as two bunches of bananas. They were fiercely clutching a comb and a giant pair of scissors half as long as my arm. Walter loomed over the poor man in the chair who squirmed nervously as he heard the scissors clip, clip, clip right next to his ears.

  Walter shouted and the windows rattled. “Hold still, you little runt! One slip and you’ll lose an ear! Then you’ll look like me!”

  Walter thought it was a pretty good joke and started to laugh. It sounded like a thousand marbles being sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. The man fainted in the chair.

  “Looks like you lost another one, Walt!” observed one of the waiting men.

  Walter propped the man’s head with a towel and quickly finished the haircut. He growled. “Easier that way. They don’t squirm so much.”

  He whipped off the apron, lifted the unconscious man with one hand, and plopped him in a chair off to the side.

  “Next! Who’s next? I haven’t got all day!” He glared at the shivering group of men and then pointed a huge finger at one of them. “You! You’re next. Get in the chair!”

  His next victim stumbled across the room. I heard him whispering a prayer as he went by. Ed Gamelli, our mail-man, was sitting next to us. He nudged me and whispered, “More people find religion at Walt’s than they ever will in church, eh, Preacher?”

  I didn’t know what to say other than to whisper, “So what’s the story about the butcher shop? How did he ever get to be the barber?”

  The mailman just smiled and answered, “Ol’ Walt? H
e’s not as bad as he looks—though his bite is worse than his bark, if you know what I mean.” While we waited for our turn in the chair, he told us all about Walter the Butcher.

  “You see, Walter’s ancestors, the Kravchukniaks, hail from old Russia. You can trace his lineage all the way back to the Siberian wasteland. His forefathers crossed the frozen tundra on foot and then crossed the Bering Sea by canoe. His great-great-grandfather, Vladik Kravchukniak, settled on Kodiak Island near Chiniak Bay, married a Shoonaq Eskimo, and joined a whole bunch of other Russians who were fishermen and fur trappers like him.”

  Jonny whispered, “He’s part Eskimo? He doesn’t look Eskimo.”

  “Oh, he’s Eskimo, all right—and part Russian—and part Kodiak bear, I imagine.”

  “So you were saying,” I urged, interested in the story.

  “Right. Among other talents natural to men of their size and strength, Walt’s family had a reputation for cold weather endurance. I heard tell about a snowstorm in the dead of winter—forty degrees below zero and snow blowing sideways. Vladik and his son got out to get firewood and they got lost in the blizzard. Three months go by and every-body figured they’re long dead until the spring thaw when they came marching back into camp without so much as a how-do-you-do, like nothing ever happened.”

  Another man leaned over and chimed in. “I heard it was more like four months.”

  “Four? I heard it was five,” said a third man.

  The mailman huffed. “It was three.”

  The second man said, “And it was twenty below, not forty.”

  “Listen here, George, this is my story. Let me tell it my way.”

  “That’s fine. You go ahead. Just get it right, that’s all I’m saying.”

  Jonny listened to their good-natured arguing for a minute or two and then pulled on the mailman’s sleeve. “S’cuse me, Mr. Gamelli, what happened? How did they make it through the blizzard?”

  “Well, son, I was trying to tell you that before these old codgers butted in. Here’s the way it was. They wander around in the pitch dark and the blinding snow for about three days until they fall into this cave, you see? Vladik has his flint, so they dig around in the dark and find some dry wood. They build this fire and dry out all their clothes. ’Course, there’s no going back by then, with the snow drifting twenty feet high and forty feet deep, besides having no idea of where they are. So they decide to hunker down and ride out the winter in the cave. They survived by catching sea otters and eating seaweed and oysters.”

  “I heard it was beavers and pine cones.”

  “I heard it was moose meat and tree bark.”

  “Don’t start that again!”

  “I’m just saying what I heard.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “It makes a huge difference. Ever eat a sea otter?”

  “No, I haven’t, not that it matters a hill of beans. I’m saying it was seaweed and oysters. That’s what they ate until the weather cleared up. As soon as it did, they got up out of that cave, climbed a hill, and headed for home. That’s how it happened.”

  Jonny was enthralled by the story and wanted to hear more. “But how did Walter end up here in Boomtown?”

  “Good question, son. Soon after that long winter, the Kravchukniaks decided to work their way down the coast of Alaska and find a more hospitable climate. They kept moving until they arrived here in the Northwest. At the time, it was an untamed place quite suitable for folks of their wild and giantish nature. They’ve been here ever since.”

  “So that’s when he became a barber?”

  “No. Not right away. Just look at him. Seven and a half feet tall, three hundred pounds of pure muscle, as ugly as a flowered couch and as angry as a bee up your sleeve. Nah, he followed in his pappy’s footsteps and took up logging, just like his grandpappy ’fore that. I figure Walt’s spent his whole life cutting things up or cutting ’em down, one way or another. He has what you’d call a natural talent when it comes to sharp objects.”

  Jonny glanced over as Walt used the giant scissors to snip away at his cringing customer’s hair. “I don’t think I want a haircut, not from him.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry none,” the mailman grinned. “He’s been cuttin’ my hair for years. I still got both my ears and my nose. You just got to keep your mouth shut while you’re in the chair.”

  Ed continued. “As I was saying, Walt was a whiz when it came to cutting down trees. You see other men wrestling with one of them two-handed saws, but not old Walt. He’d pick up an ax about as big as your head and chop down a tree with a single swipe! I seen him do it! Trees falling one after another like dominoes. I seen him clear an entire hillside in a single afternoon.

  “But then we started running out of trees on account of the fact that he’d already cut most of them down. That’s when Walt got himself a job working at the mill. He’d strip the bark off the logs with his bare teeth, then wrap his big old arms around the logs and put them into the saw all by himself. After the wood was cut, he’d stack up the boards and haul them out to the yard for sorting, ’bout forty boards at a time. Didn’t even break a sweat.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure thing. But when the logs started to run out, the mill shut down and Walt was out of a job. That’s when he decided to open up the butcher shop.”

  The other fellow piped in. “You forgot about the bear.”

  “I didn’t forget about the bear. I was about to say some-thing about the bear until you stuck your big fat nose in.

  Who’s telling this story, anyway?”

  “You are. Just not very well.”

  The mailman shook his head and continued. “After he lost his job, Walt went way up into the hills to try and figure out what to do next, when all of a sudden a bear as big as a house fell down out of a tree right in front of him. Walt looked at the bear. The bear looked at Walt. They were the same size and had almost the same amount of hair. They circled each other—round and round—until all of a sudden the bear charged old Walt, and they got each other in a bear hug! Can you imagine?”

  “What happened?” Jonny asked, perched on the edge of his seat.

  “It was pretty much an even match, that bear and Walt being similar in size and strength and generally of the same peevish disposition. They wrestled day and night until finally that old bear up and died from sheer disappointment. Soon as it was dead, Walt took his hunting knife and had the bear-skin off in five minutes flat! Chopped him up and had enough bear steaks to feed half of Boomtown. He figured it was a sign from heaven, so the next day he opened up a butcher shop right here in this very spot.”

  The mailman leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, proud of the effect his story was having on Jonny.

  Jonny’s brow furrowed with a next question. “So when the trees started running out, Walt worked in the mill. And when the logs ran out, he opened the butcher shop. I get all of that. But where did the barbershop come from?”

  Ed smiled. “You are quite the clever boy—you noticed, huh? Let me tell you what happened next. After Walt had his butcher shop for a while, a new supermarket opened over in Stickville. Up until then we got all our groceries here in town, including our meat from Walt’s Butcher Shop. But when they put up the supermarket only ten miles away, some of the folks here in Boomtown started shopping over there. It wasn’t a problem at first, but after a while, enough folks stopped coming into Walt’s. That didn’t make him a bit happy, no sir.

  “After losing two careers already, Walt was madder’n that old bear. He ran the whole ten miles over to Stickville and busted into the supermarket. He was still wearing his red-stained apron and he had two butcher knives—one in each hand. He charged up and down the aisles until he found the owner of the store and cornered him back by the milk and eggs. By the time Walt got done yellin’, all the hair on that poor young feller’s head had fallen out.

  “Walt figured it was another sign from heaven. He closed up the butcher shop and put
in a barber chair. He’s been cutting hair ever since.”

  “Wow! Isn’t that something?” Jonny exclaimed.

  I had listened quietly to the tall tale, not believing most of it. But I was concerned about Walt’s temper. “That’s a very interesting story—rather hard to believe, if you ask me—but here’s what I’m wondering about.”

  “What’s that, preacher?”

  “Walt’s temper. The man’s a hothead; he might even be dangerous.”

  “Dangerous? Walt? Nah, he’d never hurt a fly.”

  “He killed a bear!”

  “Not on purpose. It was mostly the bear’s fault.”

  “But what about all of you? You haven’t done anything wrong. Why do you all put up with him? I don’t understand.”

  The three men stared at me like I had two heads. “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean, why keep getting haircuts from a man who’s so hard to deal with? Why not go someplace else?”

  The mailman answered, “We can’t turn our backs on Walter. He’s one of us! He’s part of the town—like the fire-works factory. You think we should get rid of the fireworks? Just because they’re loud and every now and then some-thing burns down? Is that what you think—get rid of any-thing that’s difficult? We can’t live without fireworks! Why would we want to live without Walt?”

  Before I could answer, we suddenly had something more urgent to deal with. We overheard the man in the barber chair make some sort of offhanded comment about the haircut he was getting.

  “Oh no!” hissed the mailman.

  Everyone in the room stopped breathing. Walt’s face turned white and then bright red. His beady eyes swelled up as big as two silver dollars and change. His hands began to shake. The tiger tattooed on his arm started pacing back and forth. The top button of Walt’s shirt popped off and put a hole in the wall. His body began to shake like a train coming into the station. I could almost see steam coming out of his ears.

  Ed jumped up and shouted, “It’s quittin’ time! Everybody out! Right now! Walt’s about to blow! ”

  We all made a mad dash for the door. The man from the barber chair pushed past us and ran down the street with the cape flapping from his neck like a flag in a storm. Jonny and I dashed across the street and watched the rest of the men scatter left and right and duck behind telephone poles and mailboxes. Everyone else who was outside realized what was happening. They ran inside and slammed the doors and pulled down the shades. It only took another few seconds before we heard the explosion.