Flat

By the third day, my shock and cold had hardened into grit. I was a kidnapped slave, the work was leg-aching and back-breaking, and my captor was a girl. A girl whose frustration was turning into something else.

At the end of the third day, instead of her usual saucy “Goodnight,” she changed the terms on me.

“What we have is nothin’ for somethin’,” she declared. “So from now on, I’m makin’ you a partner. It’s now 50/50.

“Deal?”

We had stopped early, I knew not why. Instead of agreeing like a slave, I forgot her gun and belted back: “Partner? More like a sharecropper!” In retrospect, more like an East European peasant.

Now, she being worn down too, she only looked miffed. “I said: ‘Deal’?”

Overcome by grogginess, I assented. Putting away her six-gun, she announced her plans to go shoot us dinner.

She was of the woods, she was. Within an hour, I was tiredly dragging a fine-looking caribou to the tent. I found out the six-gun was not the only weapon she had concealed. When I finally drug the doe back to camp, she revealed her hunting knife. A knife, I realized, that could have slit my throat while we were in tent together.

Instead, she slit the fur off the caribou and began carving out haunches. Not expecting to eat real meat, I hadn’t brought anything that could cook with it. Nor had she. So, we both ate it raw with our fingers. The doe being newly dead, the warmth was bountiful. Uncharacteristically for a woodsman, she left the rest for the wolves once we had eaten our fill. The frustration must have been getting to her.

*

Nothing changed on our expedition except her demeanor. Having made me a partner, she obliged to treat me as a human being. I was still mindful of what she was capable of, but the checkmating of me said I had to keep it to myself. Out in the wilderness, it was easy to put aside civility and rules.

So, I told her my story. How old James put me up to coming here, and how his son Ralph expedited my arrival with a scarce and much-needed piecework job. The dollar was devalued, so where better to go than gold country?

I didn’t want to turn my tale into a political discussion, but I suppose it was inevitable. Life in the Republic is such that even talk of the weather eventually turns to politics. There may even be a law describing the process.

So she turning to politics, women now having the vote, was foreseeable. What she claimed was not. I have to say that she turning to her peculiar opinion got the thought of her guns right out of my head. It is funny how politics ends up equalizing.

“That Roosevelt, he stole the people’s gold. Mark my word; I know,” she stated. Her brown eyes, now calm, thoughtfully turned to her gun.

“Now that’s crazy,” I replied with a little heat. “The man’s ending Prohibition, which is a darn sight better than anyone since Taft. Not only that, he pledged – he promised! – to get rid of those extravagances Hoover placed on the back of the nation. That man had the nerve to say Roosevelt is socialist! Coming from him, that’s rich. Really rich. What is the Reconstruction Finance Corporation except socialism? For the well-connected rich folks?”

I knew I might be taking my life in my hands, but I couldn’t resist. “It was done to prevent anti-social profiteering. The idea that President Roosevelt would steal the people’s gold is so silly, only a girl could come up with it.”

That got her riled, but in a different way. Braying herself, she held my purported stupidity as evidence why it was a mistake to give men the vote. She had the nerve to claim that voting for Roosevelt might as well have been voting for Hoover “because they’re obviously the same!” Lord, what disrespect!

I have to admit I pegged her wrong. Thinking she was one of those Communist-haters, I said with a little belligerence that the Communists I met were nice. Snippily, she retorted that they were all fools. Anyone with any sense knew that both Hoover and Roosevelt aspired to be Mussolini. I hesitate to quote her from searing memory, as all the Italians I knew were friendly. Lord, what a mouth she had!

At the end of the squabble, she decided we were going back. “We can’t get any gold because you’re too plain stupid!”

*

Back we went, back to the warmth of men and the norms of civility. The first person she went to was her father, good old Mr. Pippin. She launching her spiel about how stubborn-stupid I was, I didn’t have a chance to blurt out what his darling daughter was really like. As she rattled on, my earlier reasoning kicked in. I did not want to test it.

When she concluded that I was such a Roosevelt flack I could get a government job, she stopped and looked thoughtful. His friendliness gone, he eyed me coldly and asked how things went in the woods.

I didn’t know what my eyes showed, but my mouth didn’t move. Torn between the opening to tell the honest truth and his uninviting eyes, I reckon I glared indignantly.

Whatever my eyes portrayed, it got his own glare gone. Instead, he looked to his daughter and around the office. “So it’s time,” he stated.

Looking back at me, eyes now placid, he asked me to take a hike. Glad to avail myself of the opportunity, I did.

Seeing the civilization of Fairbanks – and no, I do not impute irony with that word – made me realize what I had been put through. That little girl was dangerous! She had not only flouted politeness, but the law of the land and even the United States Constitution. A little menace, that’s what she was.

But the question weighed heavily on me: who could I tell? Who would believe me? A girl, known by all in this town, acting like a hell-cat? A girl who could not only best but enslave a full-grown man? I could hear it now: any manly man would have taken her gun with a steely eye. Like any normal girl, she would have swooned and handed it over. Even if I had had the persuasive magnetism to get the truth believed, I could not end up looking anything other than as a failure as a man. Beaten by a girl!

In my quandary, wondering if bottling up the honest truth would drive me loco, I bought this here book to write down my experience. Having the need to hide from civilization while doing so, I availed myself of a rock in the nearby woods while I wrote down the truth. The rock was sunny, and I comforted myself with the thought that I and my pencil could stand up to the cold.

Nevertheless, I was like a vain girl with her diary of fantasies: such had been my fate. I need hardly say that I did not care to be found while transcribing.