The Wild Girl

by Jim Fergus

  Which brings me to my trip. On the Sunday afternoon before Christmas, I had just finished working the lunch shift in the dining room at the club. It was one of those gray, gloomy winter days in Chicago, dusk already settling in at 4 P.M., the wind whipping up off the lake, carrying a load of wet, icy snow. I was just getting ready to go home when I noticed that the manager had posted a flyer on the club bulletin board.

  Well, you can just about imagine what kind of effect this notice had on me, on that gloomy winter afternoon in Chicago. Arizona, Mexico, the Sierra Madre, Apache Indians, hunting, fishing. I grew up in this city, and have spent almost my whole life here, but ever since I was a little kid I’ve been reading the outdoor magazines: Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, as well as the Western magazines and periodicals, Sunset, and Ace-High, and Wild West Weekly. I love the stories of Zane Grey and Jack London, and like all boys, I read Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Just about my whole life I’ve dreamed about lighting out for the territories, seeing the country, hunting and fishing and living off the land. But the truth is that except for a few summer vacations up to Wisconsin with my parents, and once to Minnesota where Pop took me fishing, I’ve hardly been out of Chicago, and I’ve never been to the West or the Southwest. I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone figured out that I was alone in my parents’ house, and what better time than this for me to hit the road?

  Before I went home that day, I copied every line of that flyer in one of my college notebooks. And I wrote down the address in Douglas, Arizona, where volunteers were supposed to apply. While I was doing this the club manager, a big redheaded Irishman named Frank Dulaney, stepped up beside me. None of us workers cared much for Mr. Dulaney. He treated the members with unctuous respect and took out all his secret resentments on the employees. “You might as well forget about that, Giles,” he sneered. “Can’t you read? It’s an unpaid position; they’re looking for gentlemen, men of high character. In case you don’t understand, that means members of the club, not employees.”

  “Yes, sir, I know that, Mr. Dulaney,” I answered. “But they’ll need employees to take care of the gentlemen. I’m thinking about applying for a job. How about writing me a recommendation, sir?” I knew that Mr. Dulaney would only ridicule me further if I mentioned that what I really had my heart set on was getting hired on as a photographer with the expedition.

  It was nearly dark by the time I walked home that afternoon. People were already lining up in front of the shelters, and at the Red Cross soup lines. They were huddled tight against the buildings, hunched up against the wind, trying to cover their faces with the collars of their coats. Others stood around barrel fires in the alleys, trying to warm themselves on the wind-stunted flames. I hurried down the street, ignoring these poor people. I only had one selfish thought in my mind, and that was of my own escape.

  That night the electric power went out all over the city. I kept the furnace in the basement stoked with coal, built a fire in the fireplace, and stayed up late writing a letter to the Great Apache Expedition Committee by the light of a candle. Outside the snow drifted up against the windows and the cold wind blew through the bones of my parents’ house.

  It snowed over two feet that night and the Chicago Tribune didn’t get out until late the next day. The headline read: BLIZZARD SHUTS DOWN CITY, and the paper reported that dozens of people had died on the streets during the storm. They said it was one of the worst snowstorms in the history of Chicago. I’ll never forget that there was another story on the front page that day reporting a speech President Hoover had just given in Washington. The president said that intervention by the federal government in economic affairs was contrary to “American ideals and American institutions,” and that the Depression must be left to run its course. The best way to respond to hunger and suffering, Hoover said, is for businessmen to take voluntary steps to maintain wages and keep people employed, and for all Americans to adopt a “spirit of charity and mutual self-help through voluntary giving.” I’d like to hear the president explain that to the people who had lost their homes and were freezing to death on the street that night.

  Every kid like myself who worked in every exclusive men’s club in America where this notice was posted had probably applied for a job on the Great Apache Expedition. The weeks passed and I didn’t hear back from the committee. In fact, I never did hear back from them.

  Then a few days ago, a man and a lady from Social Services knocked on the door of our house. I knew I was in for it, and when they asked me who was taking care of me, I lied and said that my uncle Bill from California was living here, but that he was out at the moment. They looked real suspicious about this and asked if they could come in and have a look around the house. I said no, my uncle wouldn’t like that, and they said next time they would come back with the police and a search warrant. They left a card and said that my uncle needed to contact them right away about filing guardianship papers. And that if they didn’t hear from him in the next three days, they would come and get me and I would be sent to live in a foster home until I turned eighteen. That’s when I decided it was definitely time to leave town. In another couple of months I’ll be seventeen, and I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time now; I’m not about to go live with strangers. I’ve still got a few months before the expedition is scheduled to head down into Mexico, and I plan to take my time working my way south, see a little of the country, before presenting myself in person to the committee in Douglas, Arizona.

  Earlier tonight I said good-bye to Annie Parsons, my sweetheart. I think she’s always known that I wouldn’t stick around long after my parents died. I told her I’d write, that I’d probably be home by summer, but I knew even as I was saying this that it was a lie. And I think Annie knew it, too, because the last thing she said when I took her back to her dormitory, and we kissed at the door was, “You have a nice life, Ned Giles.”

  I’m all packed and first thing tomorrow morning I’ll load up Pop’s Roadster, lock the house, and leave the key under the mat for the people at the bank, who were going to take it away anyway. (Along with all Pop’s other debts, I’m leaving a stack of foreclosure notices on the table inside the front door.) Then I’ll drive away from Chicago, away from my parents’ house, my old life. Who knows, maybe I’ll never come back. I’m awfully excited about leaving. But I’ve got butterflies in my stomach, too.

  23 JANUARY, 1932

  Kansas City, Missouri

  Well, I guess I’m not such a great notebook keeper after all, because I’ve been almost three weeks on the road already, and I’ve been so busy that I haven’t made a single entry. I’ve only made it as far as Kansas City so far. I’m trying not to spend my savings from the club, or Pop’s small life insurance settlement (most of which I blew on my new camera), and so I stopped here to work for a couple of weeks in a feedlot owned by the Armour family, who are members of the Racquet Club. The only reason I got hired on in the first place is because I came with a letter of introduction from Mr. Armour himself, which I asked him to write for me before I left the club when I was planning out my route. Even so, the manager of the feedlot, a fat man named Earl Bimson, has given me the lowliest, lowest-paying job of all—mucking out corrals. I’ve never been afraid of hard work, and I’ve had jobs since I was a kid, but I’ve never done anything like this before. Never has my old position at the Racquet Club seemed cushier than it does after two weeks of shoveling cow manure. It’s hard, dirty work and only pays a dollar a day. Still, they turn away a dozen men every day who would love to replace me.

  I haven’t made a single friend here. Besides making Mr. Bimson hate me, my letter of introduction seems to have alienated all the other hands, who think that I’m either a relative trying to learn the business from the ground up, or a spy for the family, or both. When I tried to tell one of them that I was just a hired man, same as him, he answered: “Yeah, well, if you really needed this job, Giles, you wouldn’t be driving that fancy Studey, now would you?”


  “It was a gift from my father,” I answered. “It was all he had left.”

  Yesterday I got in a fistfight over the matter with a big Norwegian farm kid from Minnesota named Tommy Lundquist. I’m only of average size myself, but I was on the boxing squad in high school and I have a bit of a temper and a mean left hook. Tommy is a big, slow kid and I knew that the others had egged him on to give me a hard time. When he shoved me, I punched him back. He looked surprised, and then he started crying when he saw that I had bloodied his nose. I felt bad about hurting him, but I think at least the others will leave me alone now. I’m going to head out of here pretty soon, anyway.

  13 FEBRUARY, 1932

  Omaha, Nebraska

  I have made it as far as Omaha, where my line of work has improved considerably. The owners of the Chicago Tribune, who are also members of the Racquet Club, gave me a letter of introduction to the owners of the Omaha Daily Star, and I’ve managed to get hired on as a temporary assistant to the staff photographer, a fellow named Jerry Mackey. It’s my first real job in the business, and even though I’m just a gofer, I’m learning a lot. It sure beat the pants off shoveling cow shit all day.

  Jerry Mackey is a fast-talking, wisecracking, chain-smoking, card-carrying Communist, who is not only instructing me in the craft of photojournalism but also in the politics of Marxism. He’s already taken me to a couple of party meetings at the homes of some of his writer and artist comrades. They smoke and drink whiskey and rail against the ruling classes, arguing heatedly about the role of art, literature, and journalism in the “cause.” Although much of what they say is way over my head, some of it makes sense. Because I’m younger than everyone else present, they don’t pay much attention to me, and for my part, I keep my mouth shut and just listen. But a couple of nights ago one of Mackey’s colleagues, an editorial-page columnist named Kevin Anderson, really put me on the spot.

  “Young Mr. Giles,” he said. “You have been very quiet at our meetings. Why don’t you tell us what it is that you bring to the revolution.”

  I didn’t really understand the question. “I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I guess … I guess I bring my camera.” And everyone laughed, which only made me turn redder in the face.

  “And how does your camera serve the cause?” Anderson asked.

  “I’m not really sure, sir,” I mumbled.

  “I’m asking,” Anderson said pointedly, “what in your opinion, as an aspiring photographer, is your primary responsibility in these times of social upheaval?”

  “I don’t know …” I stammered. “To be in focus, I suppose.” And then everyone laughed again and Kevin Anderson slapped me on the back. “Good answer, boy,” he said. “Good answer!”

  19 FEBRUARY, 1932

  Omaha, Nebraska

  Well, that job sure didn’t last long. No sooner did I get settled in a boardinghouse in town than Jerry Mackey was laid off by the newspaper, along with half a dozen other reporters. Management claims that this is a cost-cutting measure due to declining circulation and advertising revenues. Mackey is convinced that he’s been canned for his Marxist sympathies, and for the fact that his photographs, not to mention his rhetoric, were becoming increasingly political.

  “The greedy capitalist bastards!” he rants. “The system is corrupt and decaying and they know it; they’re hanging on by their fingernails. They’re desperate; they’re terrified of the movement and trying to silence us. But they can’t silence Jerry Mackey; they can’t stop me from exposing the disease of capitalism in my photographs. Mark my words, kid, the workers of America—the hungry, the persecuted, the heroic millions who suffer quietly—will rise up and take this country back. And I’ll be there in the front lines to document the revolution with my camera!”

  I have a lot of respect for Jerry Mackey, and I’m grateful to him for everything he has taught me in the past few weeks. I don’t know anything about revolutions, but ever since Kevin Anderson asked me that question the other night, I’ve been stewing over it, thinking about the answer I wish I’d given. I wish I’d said that to me the photographer’s only responsibility is to tell the truth. But I guess maybe that sounds a little highfalutin’, doesn’t it?

  Anyway, with the photographer fired, the newspaper hardly needed a photographer’s assistant, and so I, too, was laid off. In a few days, I’ll be hitting the road again, headed south.

  29 FEBRUARY, 1932

  Somewhere outside Oklahoma City

  I have to admit, it’s lonelier out here than I thought it was going to be, and a lot less romantic. Of course, it’s wintertime, and the countryside looks pretty gloomy. It’s awful cold and the trees are bare, everything brown and frozen and dead. There are a lot of people on the road, many of them obviously uprooted by the hard times, but everyone seems isolated from one another, hurrying past with averted eyes as if ashamed by their circumstances. I feel strangely dislocated myself, as if I’ve been cut loose from the earth, with no anchor to hold me here. After Mom and Pop died, and I lived those months in our house, surrounded by their things and comforted by their smells, I think I began to truly believe that somehow they were coming back. And not until I actually left home and have been traveling these past weeks have I come to fully understand that my parents are gone forever, and I’m never going to see them again. About all I have left are a few photographs and this automobile of Pop’s. The truth is, I’m embarrassed to be driving such a fancy car. So I go out of my way to pick up hitchhikers, often entire families, their poor possessions and maybe a child or two crammed into the rumble seat of the Roadster. They eye me furtively, as if I might be the enemy, and nearly all of them have a kind of hollow-eyed look, tired and disoriented, oddly apologetic about being down-and-out as if somehow it is their fault that the bottom has fallen out of the economy, their lives cast so suddenly adrift. I think I know just how they feel, although for different reasons.

  Yesterday, outside Wichita, Kansas, I stopped to give a ride to a woman traveling alone with a little girl. It was a cold, windy afternoon, and a fine dust of snow blew across the fallow winter fields. The girl was bundled in her mother’s worn woolen overcoat, which was far too big for her. The woman herself was inadequately dressed in a thin cotton print dress and gray cardigan sweater with holes at the elbows. They stood on the side of the road with a single battered suitcase and two paper bags full of possessions. I got them situated in the front seat of the Roadster, gave the mother a blanket to wrap around them, and turned the heater up high. As we got under way, the little girl looked up at me with a solemn, dirt-streaked face. “Mister, we live on a farm,” she said. “I have my own room. My daddy has a truck but he had to go away.” Maybe they were on their way to join the little girl’s father, or maybe they were going to live with relatives. I didn’t ask. I’ve learned not to ask such questions on the road.

  “Quiet, dear,” her mother said. “The nice young man isn’t interested in that.”

  “Sure I am, kid,” I said. And I put the back of my hand against the little girl’s ice-cold cheek. “What color is your daddy’s truck?”

  Then the mother leaned over her daughter on the car seat between us and whispered something in my ear that made me flush with embarrassment. Even in the privacy of my own notebooks, I cannot repeat what she said, and I saw that she was weeping herself from the shame of having to propose such a thing in order to put food in her daughter’s mouth. “Oh, no, thank you, ma’am,” I stammered. “But I’ve got a few extra dollars I could let you have. And if you and your little girl are hungry, we’ll stop when we come to a café and get a bite to eat. It’ll be my treat. Maybe you’d just let me take your photograph in return.”

  That’s how it is on the road these days. It’s enough to turn a young fellow into a Communist.

  12 MARCH, 1932

  Goodnight, Texas

  I have made it all the way to Texas, where for the past two weeks I’ve been working on the Circle J Ranch outside Amarillo. The ranch is owned by a wealthy Scotsman na
med Monty McGillivray, who is in the cattle business and has a home in Chicago and is yet another member of the Racquet Club, which institution has served me so well in my travels. I saw Mr. McGillivray at the club over the holidays and he told me to stop in on my way south and he would give me a job. He’s one of my favorites of the club members, a stocky, hearty fellow who dresses in tweed jackets and plus fours, sports a thick, black mustache, and wears his dark hair combed straight back. He’s always cheerful, always has a kind word for the employees, one of the few members who seems genuinely interested in our lives.

  I don’t have much experience with horses but I figured it would help my chances to get on the Great Apache Expedition if I at least knew how to ride. So I’ve been trying to learn since I’ve been here. Knowing that I’m interested in photography, Mr. McGillivray has also had me take portraits of his family and his guests.

  I like this West Texas country, the hills and plains, the striated rock canyons and vistas of grasslands. The ranch contains one of the last remnant wild herds of American bison. During the winter, wealthy sporting friends of the McGillivrays are invited to come here to hunt these animals, although the term hunt might be a slight overstatement. The guests are driven to the herd in well-appointed ranch vehicles, their rifles and rifle stands readied for them by gun bearers. They sight down on a buffalo bull grazing placidly in the meadow and shoot it where it stands. It seems to me about like shooting cows and I can’t see a great deal of sport in it, but the herd needs to be thinned and the rich people seem to enjoy this diversion.