Born Naked by Farley Mowat

Author:Farley Mowat
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: D & M Publishers
Published: 2013-06-20T04:00:00+00:00

Indeed, I was something of a loner but by no means a misanthrope. It was just that I could not find many people my own age who interested me or shared my interests. Those I did find tended, like the Marsh Boy, to be unusual.

One such was Fred. His father was a locksmith who spent what little he earned on booze for himself and his wife, and used to beat his son on any or no provocation. I first met Fred one autumn Saturday when he was snaring gophers in a stubble field north of the city. I saw him before he saw me and, being a prudent soul, stopped to study him from a safe distance through my old field glasses. He was not a reassuring sight. He was clad in tattered bib overalls, had tangled hair hanging to his shoulders, and a truly fearsome face which, I later learned, had been disfigured at birth. I would have made a strategic retreat had he not looked up, seen me, and waved a friendly arm. Somewhat apprehensively, I approached.

“Hi ya, kid! Wanna make some money? Farmer owns this half section is gonna pay a cent a tail for all the gophers I can catch. There’s plenty for both of us, an’ I got lots of binder twine to snare ’em with.”

This was a truly generous offer and I did not refuse. Fred and I became good friends. He did not have many such. He was called Frankenstein at school, where he was generally treated with aversion, yet he was a kindly and harmless boy, avid for whatever I could teach him about prairie creatures. In return he taught me how to open locks and gave me a beautifully made set of picklocks with which I could have set myself up as a housebreaker if I had had the urge or, as it may be, the courage.

Fred introduced me to a girl of our age who was almost an albino and so was nicknamed Whitey. Whitey’s mother was a single parent. How she made a living was no concern of ours, but we knew how Whitey earned her disposable income. For five cents, or a chocolate bar, she would accompany a boy down into the jungle of the river bank and show him her “private parts.” For five cents and a chocolate bar, she would allow the youth to attempt a fumbling kind of coitus—standing up. Whitey had her standards. She would not lie down with a boy, claiming indignantly that this was “dirty stuff.” Whether she meant this literally or figuratively I never knew, but I do know that her favourite brand of chocolate bar was Sweet Marie.

My last meeting with Fred was a shattering experience. In the summer of 1935 a circus came to town. My father took me to it and I insisted on seeing the freaks on display in the midway. These included the inevitable fat woman, a three-legged goat, the World’s Skinniest Man—and the Wild Boy from Borneo.

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