Wayne Kindall didn't know what he was in for when luck and a friend got him enough work for a job-hunting trip up to Fairbanks. Making the trip in 1933, he only dreamt of steady work. He would find work, all right, but not the kind he expected. A slip of a girl named Mattie was about to make sure of that.
Showing posts with label golddigger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label golddigger. Show all posts
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Opportunity
How do you tell someone about an incident that no-one will believe? Something that seems so ridiculous, you choke even when practicing the story? I have heard it drives men mad. Nuttiness becomes one’s only friend. That’s what a man faces when the truth seems insanity to everyone around him.
I did not want that fate to befall me, so I spent some of my dwindling cash on a small stationery book that would serve as a diary. I will grant it was an odd thing to do, as diaries are typical of vain girls. Full-grown men have no need of them. Still, I do not wish to succumb to nuttiness on account of me bottling up the truth of what happened in Fairbanks. So, if I have to follow in a track worn smooth by legions of girls, so be it. I know of one girl who should have been given one by her darling father instead of a gun. She was the girl that kidnapped and enslaved me.
I can freely concede that going up to the Fairbanks area was not prudent, but it was reflective of the kind of enterprising done in 1932. More and more people were despondent and even despairing; fewer and fewer evinced the optimism that was prevalent four years prior. What a change from 1928!
As the country changed, as more people abided by the new doom sayers, the enterprising changed too. No more was enterprise for the devil-may-care optimist who could find a sack of money in pastures anew. Gone were the days of the smooth talker that could ease his way into instant expertise on anything. Vanished were the free spending and easy money. Ever since 1930, and more so 1931, enterprising in the old way was the yesterday-love of a fool.
The new enterprising was far grittier and often futile. Many enterprisers were doing something for the sake of doing something: anything to avoid the brand of “lazy” seared on their backs. A host of chores and tasks did get done, but the work was scattered and short-term. How unlike the last decade! Job holding folk pitied the small enterpriser if they had hearts. Those without, luxuriated in the chance to say “I’ve got mine, Jack.” Long used to being looked down upon for being unadventurous, they now had the chance to get even with the look-downers albeit indirectly in most cases. Some in government employ were the worst, as they had been the ones most looked down upon. Strangely, the America-hatin’ Communists were the nice guys.
It was common currency to see “enterpriser” as a euphemism for “bum.” I must admit there was sense in doing so, as many a drifter had a scheme and many an enterpriser had to resort to the flophouse. There were even Gentlemen Jim types, some of real quality, who attracted rumors about them mooching off the flop to keep expenses low. In my years as a drifter, I met several of them and all were busted. There was not a single hoarder among them. One older gent – yes, his names was James - was one of the few men of substance to break my heart. He had said that he not put his money into stocks, and he had looked quite clever in late ’29 and ’30. By ’31, he had joined the legion of the broke because his capital had been in bonds. The funds he needed to live, let alone live stylishly, came from the interest on those bonds. By late 1931, those funds stopped.
The pittance he had gotten after selling, he had given to his children because he himself was not good for much anymore. His eldest son got his house, with a warning that it was more of a curse than a blessing nowadays. The local authorities, widely derided as havens for the lazy, were not at all lax in collecting property taxes - and sending the sheriff if said taxes were not forthcoming. That old gent was sharp: he said he had no compunctions about living in the town flop, because it was the only way he could get value for his prior taxes. Remarks like his do explain why those rumors got started.
I said he was sharp, and he was. James had kept an eye on the world, and he had said to me that gold was going up. Not because of Jay Gould’s ghost, but because devaluation was the only way to untangle a lot of mess. He said he had found out from one of his eccentric friends who enjoyed the smiles of the Fates after putting capital into Homestake Mining. Done in 1929, when he would have been called crazy by all the smart blokes chasing Radio, General Motors, General Electric and the utilities, he had doubled his capital while the smarties lost next to all of theirs. From this star-blessed fellow, James inferred that the United States would follow in Europe’s wake by devaluing. Like any red-blooded patriot, I was annoyed at the suggestion that the Republic would take marching orders from Europe. That got James softening it a little, so I lost my red blood and conceded he had made sense.
This was before President Roosevelt’s Executive Order nationalizing the gold in order to euchre out profiteers. James hadn’t seen that part coming, but it hadn’t surprised him.
He offered to put me in touch with his son Ralph. Oddly, Ralph was doing all right in a field that made something of itself during the Depression: advertising. With a stationery note from his father in my hand as a referral, Ralph offered me real, honest-to-Betsy work.
It was temporary, and part of a deal James had rigged. In return for installing a fence, I would get a ticket all the way up to Fairbanks. Once there, I would join the gold rush that was sure to be sparked by the coming devaluation.
I won’t say that I got any special favors, over and above regular work being a favor. The boys at the flop saw me leave early, return late and look tired. Swift as white lightning, they deduced I had found w-o-r-k. That got me pestered a little, even after I gave over the details. A one man job, very temporary, to be followed by yours truly hoofing it out of the State in last-class transportation. They didn’t stop until they checked it over thoroughly, work hoarders not being unknown. At that point, they let me alone and began chasing more prospective prospects. I had the gumption to point that out when several of them lucked into some labor.
Tearing down the rickety old fence was easy; putting up the new one was hard. Yes, Ralph made me work for my ticket; the job took three weeks. Although not a farmer himself, like his father wasn’t, he had gotten his father’s farm land just outside of town. That fit with his line, it being persuading the tight-fisted and often broke farmer to open his locust-infested wallet for mail order goods. Lucky for him, not all farmers were scraped to the bone. Even luckier, he had the knack of making the back-to-the-land city folks open their wallets too. Ralph was clearly going places that I was not.
Still I was going to a place made possible by his wallet. At the end of the job, I got my tickets and a five dollar bill as a bonus. Elated, I thanked him profusely. There was no way any cent of this prize was going to the bathtub gin! Looking at the date, I thanked him again for having the perspicacity to make the departure the same day. Bus to the boat, and off to Alaska, just in time for the spring thaw. That was the ticket.
James brushed aside the thank-yous and told me in his own considerate way to “git outta here.” I did, and wasted no dream time in reminiscing about a town that exemplified the new-fangled claim that the United States was now stagnant. Having left my family out of not wanting to be a burden, I had no-one else to say goodbye to. My elder brother Jake had a job at a plant, which looked after the folks as well as him. When it became clear that his place of work was a closed shop, I took my appetite elsewhere. That was in 1931 too.
1932, I cast my vote for Roosevelt like almost everyone did. I was making my way to the great territory of Alaska at about a month after his inauguration. While the country was getting excited again, I had to face my own “excitement” thanks to an innocent-looking gal named Mattie.
I did not want that fate to befall me, so I spent some of my dwindling cash on a small stationery book that would serve as a diary. I will grant it was an odd thing to do, as diaries are typical of vain girls. Full-grown men have no need of them. Still, I do not wish to succumb to nuttiness on account of me bottling up the truth of what happened in Fairbanks. So, if I have to follow in a track worn smooth by legions of girls, so be it. I know of one girl who should have been given one by her darling father instead of a gun. She was the girl that kidnapped and enslaved me.
I can freely concede that going up to the Fairbanks area was not prudent, but it was reflective of the kind of enterprising done in 1932. More and more people were despondent and even despairing; fewer and fewer evinced the optimism that was prevalent four years prior. What a change from 1928!
As the country changed, as more people abided by the new doom sayers, the enterprising changed too. No more was enterprise for the devil-may-care optimist who could find a sack of money in pastures anew. Gone were the days of the smooth talker that could ease his way into instant expertise on anything. Vanished were the free spending and easy money. Ever since 1930, and more so 1931, enterprising in the old way was the yesterday-love of a fool.
The new enterprising was far grittier and often futile. Many enterprisers were doing something for the sake of doing something: anything to avoid the brand of “lazy” seared on their backs. A host of chores and tasks did get done, but the work was scattered and short-term. How unlike the last decade! Job holding folk pitied the small enterpriser if they had hearts. Those without, luxuriated in the chance to say “I’ve got mine, Jack.” Long used to being looked down upon for being unadventurous, they now had the chance to get even with the look-downers albeit indirectly in most cases. Some in government employ were the worst, as they had been the ones most looked down upon. Strangely, the America-hatin’ Communists were the nice guys.
It was common currency to see “enterpriser” as a euphemism for “bum.” I must admit there was sense in doing so, as many a drifter had a scheme and many an enterpriser had to resort to the flophouse. There were even Gentlemen Jim types, some of real quality, who attracted rumors about them mooching off the flop to keep expenses low. In my years as a drifter, I met several of them and all were busted. There was not a single hoarder among them. One older gent – yes, his names was James - was one of the few men of substance to break my heart. He had said that he not put his money into stocks, and he had looked quite clever in late ’29 and ’30. By ’31, he had joined the legion of the broke because his capital had been in bonds. The funds he needed to live, let alone live stylishly, came from the interest on those bonds. By late 1931, those funds stopped.
The pittance he had gotten after selling, he had given to his children because he himself was not good for much anymore. His eldest son got his house, with a warning that it was more of a curse than a blessing nowadays. The local authorities, widely derided as havens for the lazy, were not at all lax in collecting property taxes - and sending the sheriff if said taxes were not forthcoming. That old gent was sharp: he said he had no compunctions about living in the town flop, because it was the only way he could get value for his prior taxes. Remarks like his do explain why those rumors got started.
I said he was sharp, and he was. James had kept an eye on the world, and he had said to me that gold was going up. Not because of Jay Gould’s ghost, but because devaluation was the only way to untangle a lot of mess. He said he had found out from one of his eccentric friends who enjoyed the smiles of the Fates after putting capital into Homestake Mining. Done in 1929, when he would have been called crazy by all the smart blokes chasing Radio, General Motors, General Electric and the utilities, he had doubled his capital while the smarties lost next to all of theirs. From this star-blessed fellow, James inferred that the United States would follow in Europe’s wake by devaluing. Like any red-blooded patriot, I was annoyed at the suggestion that the Republic would take marching orders from Europe. That got James softening it a little, so I lost my red blood and conceded he had made sense.
This was before President Roosevelt’s Executive Order nationalizing the gold in order to euchre out profiteers. James hadn’t seen that part coming, but it hadn’t surprised him.
He offered to put me in touch with his son Ralph. Oddly, Ralph was doing all right in a field that made something of itself during the Depression: advertising. With a stationery note from his father in my hand as a referral, Ralph offered me real, honest-to-Betsy work.
It was temporary, and part of a deal James had rigged. In return for installing a fence, I would get a ticket all the way up to Fairbanks. Once there, I would join the gold rush that was sure to be sparked by the coming devaluation.
I won’t say that I got any special favors, over and above regular work being a favor. The boys at the flop saw me leave early, return late and look tired. Swift as white lightning, they deduced I had found w-o-r-k. That got me pestered a little, even after I gave over the details. A one man job, very temporary, to be followed by yours truly hoofing it out of the State in last-class transportation. They didn’t stop until they checked it over thoroughly, work hoarders not being unknown. At that point, they let me alone and began chasing more prospective prospects. I had the gumption to point that out when several of them lucked into some labor.
Tearing down the rickety old fence was easy; putting up the new one was hard. Yes, Ralph made me work for my ticket; the job took three weeks. Although not a farmer himself, like his father wasn’t, he had gotten his father’s farm land just outside of town. That fit with his line, it being persuading the tight-fisted and often broke farmer to open his locust-infested wallet for mail order goods. Lucky for him, not all farmers were scraped to the bone. Even luckier, he had the knack of making the back-to-the-land city folks open their wallets too. Ralph was clearly going places that I was not.
Still I was going to a place made possible by his wallet. At the end of the job, I got my tickets and a five dollar bill as a bonus. Elated, I thanked him profusely. There was no way any cent of this prize was going to the bathtub gin! Looking at the date, I thanked him again for having the perspicacity to make the departure the same day. Bus to the boat, and off to Alaska, just in time for the spring thaw. That was the ticket.
James brushed aside the thank-yous and told me in his own considerate way to “git outta here.” I did, and wasted no dream time in reminiscing about a town that exemplified the new-fangled claim that the United States was now stagnant. Having left my family out of not wanting to be a burden, I had no-one else to say goodbye to. My elder brother Jake had a job at a plant, which looked after the folks as well as him. When it became clear that his place of work was a closed shop, I took my appetite elsewhere. That was in 1931 too.
1932, I cast my vote for Roosevelt like almost everyone did. I was making my way to the great territory of Alaska at about a month after his inauguration. While the country was getting excited again, I had to face my own “excitement” thanks to an innocent-looking gal named Mattie.
Knocks
She and I didn’t cross paths until I had found out the hard-scrabble truth. There were some jobs in the Fairbanks district for the gold season, but they were for skilled labor. I didn’t have the skill.
The hello-fellow in the head office of Dawn Gold, a Mr. Pippin, was good enough to warn me about placer prospecting. It was a wash-out for the same reason I wasn’t getting work. The gravel had gold, a lot of gold, but the yellow stuff was spread too thinly for a lone operator to squeeze a profit out of the land. Mining the stuff took big equipment, none of which I knew, and big equipment takes a deep pocket. Unless one was rich, it took the pooled funds of a corporation.
So it did not matter that I had bought a coat and got here early to beat the late-spring rush. There was no job for me anyway. My prospects were as cold as the air, as spotty as the dirty snow patches still lingering on the ground, as muddied as the rest of the ground.
Seeing as how I was out of luck, I hinted about a flop for my tired bones. Picking up on my distress, he smiled and said there was millions of acres’ worth of flophouse in Alaska. “Only trouble is the weather,” he ended with a grin.
Seeing something in my face that called him to the Lord’s charity, he told me less bluffly that he knew places where a man could squat without any trouble. It took building a cabin, and not raising any ruckus, but it would do for a fellow that could not afford the homesteading fee. Food would have to be the bounty of Nature, which presented a problem to a man without a gun, but the storms of life could be waited out indefinitely. There were even men who shared a cabin. “You could find someone with a gun, and he’d feed you while you were building for the two of you,” he suggested. I had refrained from telling him about the five dollars I had.
Fate did not haveth my name on her smile card. In came the man’s daughter. She was a good height, but thin. Her brown hair fell free to her shoulders and wasn’t styled. The cut was like an extended page-boy bob. Her eyes were somewhat like brown almonds; above was a featureless brow. It was hard to tell the girl’s age, as she still had a liking for one-piece dungarees under her plain but serviceable coat, but the signs of womanhood were evident. She wore no cosmetics.
Noticeably, her teeth were good and straight when she smiled. A lucky girl.
“I have a gun,” she said agreeably. “I heard guns being talked about,” she explained to her pa.
Smiling, he adroitly reminded her that she had a gosh-living placer claim too. I was a grown man; I was only four years from my twenty-first. She could have been anywhere from thirteen to sixteen. That put a gulf profound between us. So, I took his hint as meaning she was a tomboy.
Proud to be in the same line as her pa, if only titularly, she rattled on about the claim having a river running through it. There was gold galore! All it took was some fine young man to see to the work.
Looking at Mr. Pippin’s eyes, I saw what I expected to see. “Mattie,” he said gently, “don’t tease a man so hard up. Old Wayne here, he might be squatting.”
“A fine man like you,” she said, her expressionless eyes staring into mine. It may have been my imagination, but I though I saw a hint of sulk.
“A fine man with nothing to do,” she continued. “And here I am with a claim and a pan.” Poetic, the poor little thing tried to be; musical, she was not.
Turning to her father, Mattie Pippin asked if she could borrow me like a library book. I knew now why her father did not introduce us. “That’s up to him, sweetie,” Mr. Pippin replied. So she, despite appearances, was a ‘sweetie’.
How untrue that was, I was to find out.
Naturally, like a fool, I agreed. Trusting her, I broke the five-dollar bill for a week’s worth of food and supplies. Respecting my parsimony, she recommended sourdough, hardtack and salt. “No need for a gun,” she said with a butter-won’t-melt-in-my-mouth tone. “I’m bringing mine.”
Like the fool I was, I took this to mean that she’d be shooting for game. That proved to be true, but she had something else in mind too. I bought the bread and the smoke-dried meat, plus a rough tent that was used and a sleeping bag that was moldy. Matches, too; I would need them. All those and a back pack. It was all I could afford, said goods taking a lot of value from my five.
The store clerk looked sad as he handed over my silver change. My mind on my supplies, I dismissed it.
Getting to her claim was quite a hike. Like a man, I volunteered to carry her supplies along with mine. Since the capacious back pack was full with my own supplies, hers had to be hand-carried. Thank the stars, her pan fit in the back pack and her shovel's handle did too.
When we got to the river on her chilly claim, once she had located a promising eddy in which to pan, I turned to her and tried to bring her little playlet to an end.
“I do not know if your father told you so,” I declared after foolishly setting the back pack down, “but that claim you have will not be yielding gold. The gold around here is too finely spread and too thin for anything except heavy machines. I am afraid you just took us on a nice hike.”
That, she did not like at all. Her eyes flared, and not in any womanly way. Her mouth shrunk into a slit, but I could see a pout where her lower lip was.
So, being a man and a fool, I sized her up as merely petulant. “Sweetie, Prince Charming isn’t buried in that chilly gravel. It’s all frog.” I lightened it with a smile.
“Well, that’s a mighty fine way for an out-of-towner to talk.” The words were thick in her throat. I just smiled and turned around, looking idly at her vain dream.
The next thing I knew, two rings of steel were jutted into my back. “Well, we’re going to find out you and me. ‘Cos you’re now my slave.”
My planned remark about Little Miss In-Towner not knowing about Abraham Lincoln, let alone being cognizant of the fourteenth article of amendment to the United States Constitution, died in my throat. The way she had placed the shotgun said she knew about shooting. The force she used, plain through my coat, said something else about her experience. The girl knew her shotgun; that was clear enough.
What was not clear was how far she could go. Having the barrel of a shotgun in his kidney makes a man think like a roadster. She was well-liked; I saw it in the store. I was unknown, not even from the territory.
Conclusion: were I to go the law, I would be an utter laughingstock. They wouldn’t believe me a bit. A full-grown man, beaten by a girl. Worse: kidnapped by a girl. As sure as a two-headed coin flip, she’d play innocent. She pulled the wool over my blindness; that was for sure.
That thought led to another that got my ears ringing and froze me beyond the cold. I’d heard tales from the South about slips of girls so good with the innocent act they could get a man hanged.
My mind backing away from that trail, I came to the grim decision that she would only get her just deserts if her pa or someone else - like her mother - caught her red-handed. They might go looking for her if she got gold-hungry and stayed a while. The weather, albeit sunny, was not pleasant.
I held up my hands and asked her what she wanted me to do.
And so, there I was sloshing through cold dirt and soil like a washer-woman. Break up clots, shake, discard the coarser gravel, wash, rinse, repeat, freeze, resuscitate hands by riverside fire. By the time I had blundered to the end, under her watchful eye and ready gun, there was little more than black sand left. For the life of me, literally, I could not see any gold in the pan.
Informing her, I handed over the pan as her unarmed hand commanded. Yes, she knew her shotgun. I don’t know how she got the patience or poise to stand over me, watching, ready to shoot.
“Where’d you steal it?” she barked.
Using her eyes as a gauge of her nuttiness, I informed her that there was none to steal. Hearing no lip in my soft slow speech, she told me to get in the river and leave the pan. Like a townie, I had no idea how to use the river to advantage. Besides that, it was darn near freezing!
The girl now traded her shotgun for a six-gun pointed in my direction. Deftly, using her free hand, she went though the remains about four times faster than I. I was too far away to jump her, and I would not try if I could. Unlike some men, I don’t fancy myself as stepping out of a moving picture. Real bullets hurt.
At the end of her inspection, she looked as if she were about to spit in the pan. Rather than save the concentrates, she threw them into the river. “Get back here and do it again. I’ve got all day and so do you.” The cold seemed to not affect the Ice Princess a bit.
All day was what I spent, with the same result. Like the girl she was, she had no interest in keeping the concentrates to sift for the small stuff. It was nuggets or nothing. And I was the one that kept the fire going.
By the time my aching arms and legs greeted the sunset, it was still nothing. She ordered me to hitch up another fire, set up the tent, and put the two sleeping bags therein.
Yes, she was a girl of a certain sort. Seeing my awkwardness, she saw advantage. Her shotgun went in with her in her bag, and the six-gun was deployed on hazard of any funny ideas I might have. Meaning, escape.
I will raise no eyebrows by admitting I took my time nodding off. Mulling over escape, I bumped into the quandary of where I would go. I was and am no man of the woods; she thrived in them. It was the pan differential all over again. Had I ran, to where I knew not, she would likely track and find me like I was a runaway beef steer. Although the season had become grudgingly co-operative before high noon, there was still the matter of the night freeze.
My musings were only that, as I found out while shifting my nerves quiet. Instantly awake, she warned me not to try anything funny. No frog in her throat while doing it, either.
The next day, and the next, was spent panning after relocating to other promising beds on the convex sides of the river. Same results.
The hello-fellow in the head office of Dawn Gold, a Mr. Pippin, was good enough to warn me about placer prospecting. It was a wash-out for the same reason I wasn’t getting work. The gravel had gold, a lot of gold, but the yellow stuff was spread too thinly for a lone operator to squeeze a profit out of the land. Mining the stuff took big equipment, none of which I knew, and big equipment takes a deep pocket. Unless one was rich, it took the pooled funds of a corporation.
So it did not matter that I had bought a coat and got here early to beat the late-spring rush. There was no job for me anyway. My prospects were as cold as the air, as spotty as the dirty snow patches still lingering on the ground, as muddied as the rest of the ground.
Seeing as how I was out of luck, I hinted about a flop for my tired bones. Picking up on my distress, he smiled and said there was millions of acres’ worth of flophouse in Alaska. “Only trouble is the weather,” he ended with a grin.
Seeing something in my face that called him to the Lord’s charity, he told me less bluffly that he knew places where a man could squat without any trouble. It took building a cabin, and not raising any ruckus, but it would do for a fellow that could not afford the homesteading fee. Food would have to be the bounty of Nature, which presented a problem to a man without a gun, but the storms of life could be waited out indefinitely. There were even men who shared a cabin. “You could find someone with a gun, and he’d feed you while you were building for the two of you,” he suggested. I had refrained from telling him about the five dollars I had.
Fate did not haveth my name on her smile card. In came the man’s daughter. She was a good height, but thin. Her brown hair fell free to her shoulders and wasn’t styled. The cut was like an extended page-boy bob. Her eyes were somewhat like brown almonds; above was a featureless brow. It was hard to tell the girl’s age, as she still had a liking for one-piece dungarees under her plain but serviceable coat, but the signs of womanhood were evident. She wore no cosmetics.
Noticeably, her teeth were good and straight when she smiled. A lucky girl.
“I have a gun,” she said agreeably. “I heard guns being talked about,” she explained to her pa.
Smiling, he adroitly reminded her that she had a gosh-living placer claim too. I was a grown man; I was only four years from my twenty-first. She could have been anywhere from thirteen to sixteen. That put a gulf profound between us. So, I took his hint as meaning she was a tomboy.
Proud to be in the same line as her pa, if only titularly, she rattled on about the claim having a river running through it. There was gold galore! All it took was some fine young man to see to the work.
Looking at Mr. Pippin’s eyes, I saw what I expected to see. “Mattie,” he said gently, “don’t tease a man so hard up. Old Wayne here, he might be squatting.”
“A fine man like you,” she said, her expressionless eyes staring into mine. It may have been my imagination, but I though I saw a hint of sulk.
“A fine man with nothing to do,” she continued. “And here I am with a claim and a pan.” Poetic, the poor little thing tried to be; musical, she was not.
Turning to her father, Mattie Pippin asked if she could borrow me like a library book. I knew now why her father did not introduce us. “That’s up to him, sweetie,” Mr. Pippin replied. So she, despite appearances, was a ‘sweetie’.
How untrue that was, I was to find out.
Naturally, like a fool, I agreed. Trusting her, I broke the five-dollar bill for a week’s worth of food and supplies. Respecting my parsimony, she recommended sourdough, hardtack and salt. “No need for a gun,” she said with a butter-won’t-melt-in-my-mouth tone. “I’m bringing mine.”
Like the fool I was, I took this to mean that she’d be shooting for game. That proved to be true, but she had something else in mind too. I bought the bread and the smoke-dried meat, plus a rough tent that was used and a sleeping bag that was moldy. Matches, too; I would need them. All those and a back pack. It was all I could afford, said goods taking a lot of value from my five.
The store clerk looked sad as he handed over my silver change. My mind on my supplies, I dismissed it.
Getting to her claim was quite a hike. Like a man, I volunteered to carry her supplies along with mine. Since the capacious back pack was full with my own supplies, hers had to be hand-carried. Thank the stars, her pan fit in the back pack and her shovel's handle did too.
When we got to the river on her chilly claim, once she had located a promising eddy in which to pan, I turned to her and tried to bring her little playlet to an end.
“I do not know if your father told you so,” I declared after foolishly setting the back pack down, “but that claim you have will not be yielding gold. The gold around here is too finely spread and too thin for anything except heavy machines. I am afraid you just took us on a nice hike.”
That, she did not like at all. Her eyes flared, and not in any womanly way. Her mouth shrunk into a slit, but I could see a pout where her lower lip was.
So, being a man and a fool, I sized her up as merely petulant. “Sweetie, Prince Charming isn’t buried in that chilly gravel. It’s all frog.” I lightened it with a smile.
“Well, that’s a mighty fine way for an out-of-towner to talk.” The words were thick in her throat. I just smiled and turned around, looking idly at her vain dream.
The next thing I knew, two rings of steel were jutted into my back. “Well, we’re going to find out you and me. ‘Cos you’re now my slave.”
My planned remark about Little Miss In-Towner not knowing about Abraham Lincoln, let alone being cognizant of the fourteenth article of amendment to the United States Constitution, died in my throat. The way she had placed the shotgun said she knew about shooting. The force she used, plain through my coat, said something else about her experience. The girl knew her shotgun; that was clear enough.
What was not clear was how far she could go. Having the barrel of a shotgun in his kidney makes a man think like a roadster. She was well-liked; I saw it in the store. I was unknown, not even from the territory.
Conclusion: were I to go the law, I would be an utter laughingstock. They wouldn’t believe me a bit. A full-grown man, beaten by a girl. Worse: kidnapped by a girl. As sure as a two-headed coin flip, she’d play innocent. She pulled the wool over my blindness; that was for sure.
That thought led to another that got my ears ringing and froze me beyond the cold. I’d heard tales from the South about slips of girls so good with the innocent act they could get a man hanged.
My mind backing away from that trail, I came to the grim decision that she would only get her just deserts if her pa or someone else - like her mother - caught her red-handed. They might go looking for her if she got gold-hungry and stayed a while. The weather, albeit sunny, was not pleasant.
I held up my hands and asked her what she wanted me to do.
And so, there I was sloshing through cold dirt and soil like a washer-woman. Break up clots, shake, discard the coarser gravel, wash, rinse, repeat, freeze, resuscitate hands by riverside fire. By the time I had blundered to the end, under her watchful eye and ready gun, there was little more than black sand left. For the life of me, literally, I could not see any gold in the pan.
Informing her, I handed over the pan as her unarmed hand commanded. Yes, she knew her shotgun. I don’t know how she got the patience or poise to stand over me, watching, ready to shoot.
“Where’d you steal it?” she barked.
Using her eyes as a gauge of her nuttiness, I informed her that there was none to steal. Hearing no lip in my soft slow speech, she told me to get in the river and leave the pan. Like a townie, I had no idea how to use the river to advantage. Besides that, it was darn near freezing!
The girl now traded her shotgun for a six-gun pointed in my direction. Deftly, using her free hand, she went though the remains about four times faster than I. I was too far away to jump her, and I would not try if I could. Unlike some men, I don’t fancy myself as stepping out of a moving picture. Real bullets hurt.
At the end of her inspection, she looked as if she were about to spit in the pan. Rather than save the concentrates, she threw them into the river. “Get back here and do it again. I’ve got all day and so do you.” The cold seemed to not affect the Ice Princess a bit.
All day was what I spent, with the same result. Like the girl she was, she had no interest in keeping the concentrates to sift for the small stuff. It was nuggets or nothing. And I was the one that kept the fire going.
By the time my aching arms and legs greeted the sunset, it was still nothing. She ordered me to hitch up another fire, set up the tent, and put the two sleeping bags therein.
Yes, she was a girl of a certain sort. Seeing my awkwardness, she saw advantage. Her shotgun went in with her in her bag, and the six-gun was deployed on hazard of any funny ideas I might have. Meaning, escape.
I will raise no eyebrows by admitting I took my time nodding off. Mulling over escape, I bumped into the quandary of where I would go. I was and am no man of the woods; she thrived in them. It was the pan differential all over again. Had I ran, to where I knew not, she would likely track and find me like I was a runaway beef steer. Although the season had become grudgingly co-operative before high noon, there was still the matter of the night freeze.
My musings were only that, as I found out while shifting my nerves quiet. Instantly awake, she warned me not to try anything funny. No frog in her throat while doing it, either.
The next day, and the next, was spent panning after relocating to other promising beds on the convex sides of the river. Same results.
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.
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.
Epilogue - 1965
Those words, I wrote as a young man. No-one, as far as I know, saw them but me.
In retrospect, it was clear as Alaskan sky that Mattie and I would get married. She grew into a fine woman; I am proud to say that Mrs. Wayne Kindall has conducted herself with great maturity. Her early life in the woods gave her a natural poise that made women’s girlishness look inane. For that, she has been nicknamed “the Alaska pill,” but she only grew in my esteem.
The whole truth never spilled out, but she composed a pastiche that made me look like a local hero for standing up to a Roosevelt-hater. Intentionally leaving the identity of my assailant unknown, her story and airbrushing of the truth introduced me to government society. I soon became a Roosevelt man of some renown, a progressive man attacked by a wild-eyed reactionary as the tale grew in the telling.
Yes, I got that government job. At first a clerk in the Civilian Conservation Corps, I became an administrator in the Social Security Administration at its start. My income had grown to the point where I could take in my parents, thus liberating Jake to provide for descendents instead of ancestors. My renown plus my fidelity to my own folks got me the plum job in Social Security. Unfortunately, my father did not pay any Social Security taxes so he didn’t qualify. I could have fixed it, but I took my responsibilities as a public trustee seriously.
My duties at Social Security, forcing me to learn about basic financial and actuarial matters, put me in good stead when I met Ralph again. As a good ad man does, he bent with the times and was tickled pink to be known as a “parlor pink.” He had set up his own shop, with a line that only grew when the farmer finally got his. Having sacrificed his country place, to his genuine sorrow, he had moved to New York and was looking at what were then white elephants in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Ralph had heard my legend, and was enthused to reconnect with me. He could truthfully claim to have known me ‘way back when, as could his father. I was tickled to find out that James had decided the bum’s life was no longer for him when President Roosevelt did something for the unemployed. When faced with the choice of a steady Civilian Conservation Corps job or a soft chair in a small stock brokerage firm, Willington & Farnsworth, he swiftly picked the latter. At first, he found it hard, hard luck not being a cause for esteem of a stock broker. With the good offices of his son, he floated above water by recommending Homestake to all and sundry. It was the company that made him. His few clients bragged about doubling and even tripling their capital by ‘37, and the few became many. Now, James’ hard-luck story, with lessons he had learned from his travail, became listened to.
I mention old James because it was he that brought me into the field myself. I had a story that ticked off many of my colleagues, but the managing partner could not argue with the accounts I brought in. Becoming known as “Red Wayne” did me some good, as there were Communists and “limousine liberals” with capital. They delighted in the story of me, the valiant agent of progress, being kidnapped and terrorized by a crazed and spiteful reactionary in wild Alaska. Mattie, now Matilda, wisely kept her own counsel. Having discovered the word “disinterested,” she used it as if it were her own.
Once old James retired, he handed over his accounts to yours truly. Ralph’s was one of them. After service in the OPA during wartime, not valiant but fitting for a desk-minding husband and father, I went from a moderate success to a big one, and eventually became a partner.
But I never lost the name “Red Wayne.” It would have gotten me in trouble during the day when McCarthy stalked the land, but Mattie saved me by unveiling some of her opinions she had kept to herself all those years. I had to agree that being jeered at was better than courting real trouble. I did defend myself with the term “broad-minded.” It fit the time when Alaska became a state, to my delight and her muted sorrow.
Ever since my own hard times, Fate has indeed smiled on me. Mattie and I were even blessed with five wonderful children.
But Priscilla, she’s beginning to bother me. Having discovered some half-crazy writer with a name like a broken typewriter, and having those strange opinions reinforced by a more acceptable lady playing the tune of a battle-axe, she’s been enthusing about following in my footsteps by becoming a research analyst!
And Mattie hasn’t helped at all! She’s gone “disinterested” again!
In retrospect, it was clear as Alaskan sky that Mattie and I would get married. She grew into a fine woman; I am proud to say that Mrs. Wayne Kindall has conducted herself with great maturity. Her early life in the woods gave her a natural poise that made women’s girlishness look inane. For that, she has been nicknamed “the Alaska pill,” but she only grew in my esteem.
The whole truth never spilled out, but she composed a pastiche that made me look like a local hero for standing up to a Roosevelt-hater. Intentionally leaving the identity of my assailant unknown, her story and airbrushing of the truth introduced me to government society. I soon became a Roosevelt man of some renown, a progressive man attacked by a wild-eyed reactionary as the tale grew in the telling.
Yes, I got that government job. At first a clerk in the Civilian Conservation Corps, I became an administrator in the Social Security Administration at its start. My income had grown to the point where I could take in my parents, thus liberating Jake to provide for descendents instead of ancestors. My renown plus my fidelity to my own folks got me the plum job in Social Security. Unfortunately, my father did not pay any Social Security taxes so he didn’t qualify. I could have fixed it, but I took my responsibilities as a public trustee seriously.
My duties at Social Security, forcing me to learn about basic financial and actuarial matters, put me in good stead when I met Ralph again. As a good ad man does, he bent with the times and was tickled pink to be known as a “parlor pink.” He had set up his own shop, with a line that only grew when the farmer finally got his. Having sacrificed his country place, to his genuine sorrow, he had moved to New York and was looking at what were then white elephants in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Ralph had heard my legend, and was enthused to reconnect with me. He could truthfully claim to have known me ‘way back when, as could his father. I was tickled to find out that James had decided the bum’s life was no longer for him when President Roosevelt did something for the unemployed. When faced with the choice of a steady Civilian Conservation Corps job or a soft chair in a small stock brokerage firm, Willington & Farnsworth, he swiftly picked the latter. At first, he found it hard, hard luck not being a cause for esteem of a stock broker. With the good offices of his son, he floated above water by recommending Homestake to all and sundry. It was the company that made him. His few clients bragged about doubling and even tripling their capital by ‘37, and the few became many. Now, James’ hard-luck story, with lessons he had learned from his travail, became listened to.
I mention old James because it was he that brought me into the field myself. I had a story that ticked off many of my colleagues, but the managing partner could not argue with the accounts I brought in. Becoming known as “Red Wayne” did me some good, as there were Communists and “limousine liberals” with capital. They delighted in the story of me, the valiant agent of progress, being kidnapped and terrorized by a crazed and spiteful reactionary in wild Alaska. Mattie, now Matilda, wisely kept her own counsel. Having discovered the word “disinterested,” she used it as if it were her own.
Once old James retired, he handed over his accounts to yours truly. Ralph’s was one of them. After service in the OPA during wartime, not valiant but fitting for a desk-minding husband and father, I went from a moderate success to a big one, and eventually became a partner.
But I never lost the name “Red Wayne.” It would have gotten me in trouble during the day when McCarthy stalked the land, but Mattie saved me by unveiling some of her opinions she had kept to herself all those years. I had to agree that being jeered at was better than courting real trouble. I did defend myself with the term “broad-minded.” It fit the time when Alaska became a state, to my delight and her muted sorrow.
Ever since my own hard times, Fate has indeed smiled on me. Mattie and I were even blessed with five wonderful children.
But Priscilla, she’s beginning to bother me. Having discovered some half-crazy writer with a name like a broken typewriter, and having those strange opinions reinforced by a more acceptable lady playing the tune of a battle-axe, she’s been enthusing about following in my footsteps by becoming a research analyst!
And Mattie hasn’t helped at all! She’s gone “disinterested” again!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)