Therefore, I thought it only right and proper to jump in and stake my claim before a pretty northern girl picked and pinched him clean. ‘A wonderful opportunity,’ thought I, ‘I belong at this man’s side.’
It was appropriate I pass myself off as a backwoodsman of the northern lands, a skilled and proficient guide, who reverently guarded and protected and knew of every secret location, where the most dangerous and ferocious and wiliest of wildlife could be found waiting for a keen and sharp challenge, one such as my American friend clearly possessed and offered.
Actually, I did look the part, a week’s growth of whiskers, a face set deep with inquiring and intelligent eyes, patched and faded shirt and jeans, a standard hermit appearance, a man who had left his shack in the outback, after a hiatus of several years and returned to civilization to write the Great Canadian Novel. Ho! Ho!
It was a good cover and the man bought it hook, line and sinker and together we became a competent and capable team and nothing moving in the bush was safe for the next 2 weeks.
The man was pleased and thought me a wizard and gave me leave to sleep on his hotel carpet. No way he wanted to be rid of my accomplished services, not for a spell.
Captured all the prizes and told all the stories, did all the sights and drank all the beer, the only safe and sanitary beverage fit for human consumption in those healthy northern climes, so I told the man and was constantly insistent and on about. I cost the man a small fortune before I was discretely cut loose. Hello America!
Owing to my American friend’s generosity, I led an easy and carefree life of affluence for a week but then had no recourse other than to become a gentleman of the streets of Y.K. and had been reduced to the status of beggar before managing to connect with a band of relaxed and at large inhabitants of Old Town. I had plugged into this group of sundowners with my usual flair and the accommodating nature of the Gold Range Hotel. “Hi there. Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you a story. How do you like me so far?” I needed a place to sleep once more.
Now, while these folks couldn’t quarter and shelter me themselves, they claimed to know people in O.T. who could, a speculation roundly acclaimed and applauded at the 20 beer mark, a point at which everything was serious and made perfect sense and was sane and even if I thought their batty allusions to knowing people alive and well in O.T. as being so much hokum, I was trapped and desperately needed to believe there was a place for me in Y.K.
Which in itself became a curious item. The people of O.T., Y.K., were naturally cautious and my next 2 nights were done in a glass building, a plantation, surrounded as I was by 50 – 60 mature marijuana plants. This was the resting place my northern friends had found for my spent and weary body. It was a safe place to bed down until my further and soon to be told adventures with alternative living and lifestyles.
Immediately upon viewing my lush and luxuriant shelter from the storm, I was seized by the greenhouse effect and temptation came over me, to tug those bushy pot plants up by their scraggly roots and run away but a power stronger than me declared, “Don’t do it! Don’t steal from these folks! They’re helping you!” While being an admitted scoundrel and even though I was encircled with solutions to my problems, there are certain things a man can’t do and robbing a friend is one of them.
I backed off but not before selecting an ounce of choice buds, for personal use and that oz. of sly appropriation may have been a prime and contributing factor in exiling me to a barge, a low - slung craft, adrift and slumbering on the waters of the Great Slave Lake. Which never bothered me much, considering as I had the Northern Lights for dancing and my Mary Jane for dreaming.
After and odder still, I found myself being constantly shunted to stranger and more remote locations. Those northern folk and their keenly – honed senses were aroused and they were carefully suspicious of the hazards and dangers of wandering gypsies like me. I had begun to feel like Carlos.
I am a lazy man. Always was. Always will be. As mentioned at the beginning of ‘the book’, these very words seem shyly like forced labor. To be correct and factual, the tally of my life’s drudge and toil can be measured and recorded and contained within an uncommonly diminutive time – frame.
I have forever had a fixed and rigid aversion against work of any persuasion and labor especially, even the thought of it, I generally consider to be a figment of my imagination or an unreasonable delusion. For me to actually perceive and approve of my being an element of the work force is beyond my powers of definition to accept and explain. The image of me moiling and toiling and getting dirty makes me giddy and faint. I cannot comprehend the idea of me having to work. The concept does not belong and has no significance in my world. Physical labor and the circumstances which would force it upon me, would have to be bizarre indeed.
Many has been the time when I have been in dire straits regarding rent, food, booze and other issues yet I would near die and trust in merciful providence to deliver me, rather than plug away and punch a clock. At certain drastic and catastrophic moments in my life, the work had been there, had been available but I had never been wise and humbled enough to waste my precious time and talents on such unreasonableness. An example? Fine.
It was the year of ’73 and I was living in a hovel, a basement, one room, a door, a bed, a table and 2 chairs, a high window a thin cat might have squeezed thru and a 3 burner open – flame gas stove, a firefighter’s worst case scenario. The only sure way out was to die. Wretched burrow though it was, the place reeked character. The residents were as different as the house. The junkies lived on the top floor, the speeders were on the main and us juiceheads controlled the basement. It was a comfortable and congenial arrangement. No one living there had ever been anxious to talk to a lawman or an authority figure of any description. Everyone abided and adhered to a basic policy, a natural order and design which advised each and every individual to keep his mouth shut and do his own time. It was a practical and sensible scheme and approach and it worked well and everyone was content.
Best of all, for me, was the convenience and close proximity of a liquor store. I had only to bump and grind a half block thru the alley, to purchase my daily ration of bargain – counter wine. A good thing.
Rent was $35 / month and I was 3 mos. down and behind and hadn’t eaten a morsel in 5 days and was confined to bed with the early stages of starvation and in walked the Rock. Rocky was the landlord and a serious as a judge sot and drunkard. Rocky had himself a slow look around my room, glanced briefly at my sickly condition and he understood and he knew the answer to my plight. The remedy to my infirmity was a short bottle of vodka which had been discretely hanging from his back pocket. He offered me the bottle. I took a hit. It was the ticket and a vulgar guarantee and amidst curses and cautions, gags and chokes, I shakily dressed myself. “Look at me Rocky! I’m dying!”
“Before you do, you owe me 3 months back rent. Come along.”
“Go away Rocky!”
“You’ll do fine. Let’s go.” Rocky needed me. To be his nigger. To work for him. And to convince himself and prove to the Interdenominational Association of Slumlords that his 4 – star tenant wasn’t a total dead – beat and no – account bum.
An hour later and I was splashing cheap paint on another of Rocky’s claptrap tenement rooms. Somehow, between the squalor of tawdry surroundings and the delirium tremens, I managed to slap a token coat of pink wash on the ceiling and walls of that damned room. It was a struggle and a contest.
Then Rocky fed me, bacon and eggs, toast and coffee and 3 more shots of miserable vodka. After this restorative nostrum, it was the street, a 5-dollar bill tucked neatly and deeply inside my blue – jeans pocket, enough for 2 bottles of rotten wine and a dollar to spare.
“And I’ll be seeing you next month. Have money.”
“Right.” I waved and