Born Naked

by Farley Mowat

  Mutt and I and Angus left the Gatineau in the later part of August, Helen having elected to remain amongst her own kind a while longer, eventually to return to Saskatoon by train.

  We three males drove to Oakville to spend some time with my paternal grandparents and my aunt Jean and her son Larry while Angus reconnoitred the library situation in nearby Toronto.

  Since I had last seen them, my grandmother Mary had become an irascible invalid and my grandfather Gill had withdrawn so far into his private world as to be almost unreachable. I sought relief from this gloomy situation by writing a poem in which my antipathy for the urban east, and my love of the west, came through, loud and clear.

  You come from the city, the fester spot

  Where man and nature have drifted apart,

  Where limbs decay and bodies rot

  In the smoke and the grime and the smell.

  You’ve left the noise of man and machine

  For the land and the sky where the air blows clean,

  Where the loudest sound is the eagle’s scream,

  And the coyotes’ lonely wail.

  There’s times you wish that you’d never left,

  You think of your friends and you feel bereft.

  So you swing your axe with a hand grown deft

  And forget as the city grins.

  When the meadowlark sings you sit enthralled.

  You are there when the river ice cracks and growls.

  You hear as the wolf chorus barks and howls.

  You are one with the voice of the Plains.

  I hardly need remark that I had been reading a lot of Robert Service.

  Observing how restless I was, Angus one day asked if I would like to go into Toronto with him and visit the Royal Ontario Museum. This was equivalent to being invited to visit a major temple of the gods. I was ecstatic.

  Next morning Angus dropped me off in front of the vast museum building, promising to pick me up in three hours’ time. With considerable trepidation, I climbed the long flight of entrance stairs and asked a guard where the birds were kept. I followed his directions through echoing halls filled with such fascinating objects as Egyptian mummies and ancient Graecian weapons, until I reached the galleries housing the zoological displays. One of these halls was walled with glass cases of stuffed birds, all of them looking deader than death itself.

  The bird gallery seemed totally empty of life until a fair-haired young man came striding briskly along. Seeing me contemplating a case of rigid warblers, he stopped and introduced himself as Jim Baillie, an assistant curator.

  “You’re interested in birds, eh?” he asked.

  I nodded vigorously then told him I was from Saskatoon, whereupon he invited me to come with him behind the scenes into a huge room stinking so powerfully of mothballs it almost took my breath away. It was crammed with floor-to-ceiling metal cabinets in which, Jim told me, more than a hundred thousand “study skins” of Canadian birds were stored. He opened the hermetically sealed doors of a cabinet and slid out one of its many drawers to show me row upon row of stuffed avian cadavers laid out stiffly on their backs.

  Every species of Canadian bird was to be found in this room, if not in life, at least in a form that could be closely examined and even handled. I was confronted by such a plethora of riches that I could hardly contain myself. Amused by my enthusiasm, Baillie turned me loose to explore the cabinets on my own.

  For the next two and a half hours, I wandered in a dream, unaware of anyone else, including the director of the ROM who, on August 22, 1935, wrote in his journal:

  “Today I met a fourteen-year-old boy, Farley Mowat, at the museum. He was searching the museum cabinets for birds he did not know or had not seen in Saskatchewan. Red-headed and freckled, he ought to make a name for himself in natural history. He is a grand-nephew of Frank Farley of Camrose, Alberta.”

  On September 11 Angus, Mutt, and I finally headed for Saskatchewan. Having delayed well beyond his predetermined return date in the vain hope that something acceptable would turn up in Toronto, my father was now in such a tearing hurry that we arrived in Saskatoon three and a half days later. I think he drove most of each night while Mutt and I slept. All I recall of that mad dash is that Angus bought several dozen chocolate eclairs and the three of us subsisted on these for most of the journey. It was some time before I was again able to look a chocolate eclair in the face.

  This sort of thing was characteristic of Angus. He believed that, if one was going to indulge oneself, one should do it in a big way. Soon after we got home he decided to indulge our mutual craving for fried onions. He bought a thirty-pound bag and five pounds of fat bacon, and we had fried bacon and onions for dinner every night for a week. Apart from making us both bilious, this diet induced flatulence of such potency that I was a virtual pariah during my first few days as a high-school student at Nutana Collegiate Institute. I could only thank my lucky stars that I had had the foresight to change my name to William. As it was, I had to bear with “Stinky” for some months.

  Because some of the teachers at Nutana were interested in the same things I was, I now began to take an interest in school. Frank Wilson, called Monkey Wilson because of his gnarled little face, taught biology and taught it well. He was also a neophyte wildlife photographer with a passable knowledge of birds. Jelly Belly (I can’t recall his proper name) taught mathematics but clearly was not enamoured of his subject and was tolerant of those of us who loathed it. On the other hand, he loved Indian lore and was an expert on the Plains tribes. He could sometimes be sidetracked from geometry into telling us tales about the Blackfeet and others such. Then there was Miss Edwards, my English teacher, who not only refrained from forcing us to memorize poetry we couldn’t stomach, but allowed us to write essays on topics of our own choosing. She was most encouraging of my own literary bent—besides which she was young, nubile, and not averse to flirting a little, even with the likes of me.

  This was something of considerable moment for, at long last, my male juices were beginning to flow. “I think the little bugger’s balls are finally coming down,” was how my father described the change in me to Don Chisholm who, it may be remembered, was a close family friend and my mother’s most devoted admirer. I overheard the comment and was not amused. My testicles had been down for a long time; it was just that they had not received any call to action.

  I had (as noted) discovered masturbation as early as 1933 but since it hadn’t pleasured me much then I had lost interest in it. Now my interest was vividly revived, something which did not escape Angus’s attention and which doubtless inspired his comment to Don Chisholm. However, he sensibly did not forbid it. Nor did he refer to it in the bleak, guilt-inducing sexual terminology of the times as “self-abuse.” In fact, so far as I can recall, he only once referred to it at all. One morning over breakfast (still oatmeal porridge and honey), he looked me squarely in the eye and without any preamble said, “In the army, we used to call it pulling the pud. Everybody did it. Nothing wrong with it either. Nothing wrong with you playing with yourself, Bunje, so long as you don’t get caught by a minister, or any of the other old women whose idea of pleasure is attending a good hanging. So carry on until you can try something better.”

  I was speechless with embarrassment and, after this outburst, I think he was too. We said not another word to each other until we met again for dinner that evening. Then: “Your mother won’t be home until the end of the month,” he told me, “so I’ve gone ahead and hired a girl to look after us before we get knee-deep in dirty dishes and soiled socks. Her name’s Louise.”

  To this day I don’t know whether Angus hired Louise because he thought I was in need, or because he was in need, or genuinely as someone to clean the house and wash and cook. Maybe all three.

  Louise was a knock-out. Nineteen years old, she was, in my father’s eyes, the epitome of western femininity: “a buxom, big-b
oned prairie woman.” She had a luscious, husky voice, gleaming black hair and eyes, and couldn’t have cooked anything more elaborate than a pancake had you paid her double wages. She couldn’t actually do anything much in a housewifely way except make and consume vast quantities of chocolate fudge and, of course, do the washing.

  Alas, she did not long remain with us. My mother arrived home early in October and a week later Louise departed. I never knew the rights of her dismissal but many years later Helen responded to an inquiry of mine with these enigmatic words: “It wasn’t so much what Louise couldn’t do. It was what she could.”

  I was sorry to see her go for I had become fond of her and for a long time thereafter she was central to many of my more satisfying dreams. Yet I always had the sneaking suspicion that I was somehow in competition with my father for her. If so, I never had a chance.

  Well, there would be other maids—though not for some time to come. After Louise’s departure, my mother announced with unusual firmness that we were better off without a maid at all and that henceforward she would do the housework even if, she could not resist adding, “it quite wears me out.”

  I lost out on two accounts. Louise was gone from my life. And I found myself spending a lot of time washing dishes, peeling potatoes, sweeping, and even dusting, while Helen was confined to bed or to the living-room couch because of her “poor face.” Since I knew my mother actually was suffering I did not much resent having to do housework, but I did resent having to assume another of a maid’s duties.

  Helen and Angus had planned a large cocktail party for mid-December. I was told I would be expected to distribute the hors-d’oeuvres and drinks. Not so bad, except that I was to be accoutred in a maid’s uniform and expected to pass myself off as a genuine female servitor.

  I was appalled. The thought of dressing up like a girl was enough to chill the blood of any boy of my age. On the other hand, Christmas was approaching and I had some faint hope it might bring me a real camera so I could stop wasting time and film trying to photograph wildlife with my mother’s Brownie. In the end, I allowed myself to be persuaded by my parents’ argument that my imposture was intended to be a practical joke, and therefore would be fun.

  It didn’t feel like fun but I nevertheless did my duty so well that nobody recognized me. I also did it in such a way as to ensure that I would never again be forced into such ignominy.

  What I did was to be so assiduous with the cocktail shakers that I got all the heavy drinkers squiffed out of their minds, and did almost as much damage to the light and moderate imbibers. The guests, in turn, did some minor damage to Professor Morton’s house and rather more serious damage to my parents’ status in the neighbourhood which, though by no means staid, drew the line at parties attended by Saskatoon’s finest, in uniform, with sirens blaring.

  This was not really my fault. My father had recently bought a double-barrelled, twelve-gauge shotgun made by the prestigious English firm of Fox. This had been an extremely expensive purchase (“Darn him, he’s spent a month’s salary on it,” my mother noted sadly in her diary) and he was inordinately proud of it. As the party gained momentum, nothing would do but that he and some of his sportsmen friends step out onto the front lawn and test his Fox. The targets were some presumably obsolete plates which the Mortons had left in a dusty carton in the cellar.16 Several of these were sent spinning into the air over the river bank while Angus and one or two others took turns blazing away at them.

  Soon thereafter the police arrived. However, Angus had already established himself in Saskatoon as a character of some stature so, after enjoining him to keep the peace, the policemen departed. I think they went with some reluctance for the party was continuing with unabated zeal. Although I went to bed not long after, my duty done, I was sleepily aware of “noises off” until dawn next day.

  No. I did not get a camera, but then Angus had not the wherewithal to buy me one, his purchase of the shotgun having temporarily depleted his finances. On the other hand, I never again had to imitate a maid, and a month or two later Helen relented and engaged a real one.

  16They were antique but not obsolete, as my father discovered to his cost when the Mortons resumed possession of their home.

  13

  ANGUS HAD BEEN A POT hunter since his early youth, shooting ducks primarily for food, as Bay of Quinte men had been doing since European settlement began. He was not a killer by inclination and never relished taking the life of any living thing until we moved to Saskatoon. There he became infected by the pathological dysfunction which is called “sport” hunting. Those afflicted by this disease derive pleasure from slaughtering “game” animals ranging from moose to squirrels, from doves to geese, together with all kinds of “vermin” from wolves to crows.17

  Many of Saskatoon’s so-called sportsmen seemed still to be in the grip of the killing frenzy which, within human memory, had led to the extermination of the buffalo and the prairie wolf, together with the virtual extinction or massive decimation of dozens of other species of prairie animals.

  That Angus, a man capable of deep compassion, could ever have brought himself to join in this butchery of the innocents for pleasure’s sake remains a puzzle to me, despite something he told me in later years:

  “It was the hunt, you understand. Getting up shivering in the dark for bacon and eggs and a mug of tea, and then the sounds and smells of an autumn dawn. Sheer ecstasy! Though there was this terrible paradox about it because when you pressed the trigger and death leapt forth, the mood of almost unbearable ecstasy was shattered. Smashed. Turned into bloody slush, just like the birds we killed. The hunting was right. The killing was an abomination because it wasn’t done out of need.”

  Those words were spoken a long time afterwards.

  Not only did he become an avid sport killer in Saskatoon, he made it his business to turn me into one too. This wasn’t too difficult. Nothing could have been more attractive than the opportunity to be buddy-buddy with my father in a shared enterprise. Besides which, Angus was right: the desire to hunt, if not to kill, comes naturally to most young males.

  Our first sally was on a crisp November day only a few weeks after our arrival in Saskatoon. We were in search of upland birds, and we were both tyros in a new land. Angus was equipped with a borrowed shotgun and I with a .22 rifle.

  WE WERE UP long before first light (I never really went to sleep that night) and having piled all our paraphernalia into Eardlie’s rumble seat, we drove through the grave silence of the sleeping city into the open plains beyond. In the making of the day as we drove along the straight-ruled country roads, the dust boiled and heaved in Eardlie’s wake, glowing rosily in the diffused reflection of the tail-light. Occasional jack rabbits startled us by making gargantuan leaps into the cones of the headlights, or raced along beside us like ghostly outriders.

  The fields on either side had long since been reaped and the grain threshed. First frosts had turned the stubble pallid as an old man’s beard. Tenuous, almost invisible lines of barbed-wire fences drew to a horizon unbroken except for the shadowy outlines of grain elevators in unseen villages at the world’s edge. Occasionally we passed a poplar bluff, already naked save for a few doomed clusters of yellow leaves. Rarely, there was a farmhouse, slab-sided and worn by dust and winter gales.

  I suppose it was a bleak landscape, yet it evoked in me a feeling of untrammelled freedom that may be incomprehensible to those who live out their lives in the well-tamed confines of the east. In a state of exaltation, we watched the sun leap from the horizon while a haze of high-flying clouds flared overhead in a splendid flow of flame—the very signature of a prairie dawn.

  We drove on with the sun in our eyes, and little Eardlie scattered the dust under his prancing wheels. It was morning and my impatience could no longer be contained.

  “When do we find the birds?” I asked.

  “Depends on what birds you’re aft
er,” Angus explained authoritatively. “Today we’re looking for Huns”—he used the colloquial name for Hungarian partridge with assured familiarity—“and Huns like to come out on the roads at dawn to gravel-up.”

  I mulled this over. “But there isn’t any gravel on these roads—only dust,” I said dubiously.

  “Well, so there isn’t any gravel,” my father replied shortly. “Gravel-up is just an expression sportsmen use. In this case, it must mean taking a dust bath. Now keep your eyes skinned and don’t talk so much.”

  There was no time to pursue the matter. He trod hard on the brakes and Eardlie squealed to a halt.

  “There they are!” Angus whispered fiercely. “Stay in the car! I’ll sneak along the ditch and flush them up.”

  Although the light was brilliant now, I had seen no more than a blurry glimpse of some greyish forms scurrying across the road forty or fifty yards ahead of us. Angus disappeared into the ditch and for a while nothing moved except a solitary gopher, who stood on his hind legs and stared beadily at me while whistling derisively.

  Angus was having difficulties. There had been a bumper crop of Russian thistles that year and the ditch was choked with their thorny, wind-blown skeletons. It was my father’s first experience with these demonic plants. “Rather like crawling through the Jerry barbed wire in front of Ypres,” he told me afterwards.

  But he persevered and suddenly was on his feet levelling his gun at a whirring cluster of rocketing birds. In his excitement, he fired both barrels at once—and immediately disappeared into the ditch again, the double recoil of a twelve-gauge shotgun being quite as formidable as a right to the jaw.