An American in Canada

This story contains some reminiscences, part of which are written in narrative form on the dates specified internally, and the last part being told on the present day, which is in January of 2010 in this story. I hope that won't be too jarring for the reader, but it seemed to work out best to do it that way.

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January 7, 2010:

I was minding my own business, on my own property, cutting up a tree I had felled into 18 inch pieces, to be split into firewood, when I heard the rifle shot. It was January, and as cold as a witch's tit, -18 C, with the ground covered in snow.

My land was too big for that shot to have come from beyond my property line. In these piney woods, the trees still laden with snow and ice, sound, even from a rifle, gets muffled quickly. Someone was hunting, on

my land!

Naturally, I didn't like this one bit; I lived out here for solitude, to be away from people, and the law, and there were too many jacklegs out there who had no business having a rifle, barely knowing which end the round came out of. In my time in the States, I'd seen too many 'Ready, fire, aim!' types, and the last thing I wanted was someone hanging around and perhaps sending a stray round toward my cabin. So, I did what any man would do: I got my own rifle, a Thompson 30.06 Springfield, and headed out in the direction of the shot. I already had my Model 1911 .45 Colt automatic strapped to my waist; I never left the cabin without that.

With a foot and a half of snow on the ground, I needed my snow shoes to make any time, and not tire myself out too quickly. Trudging through knee-deep snow with an ice crust on it is no fun, certainly not for my 55-year-old legs.

I had just gotten to the top of the knoll when I spotted him, about 40 meters away, with his back to me; he'd bagged a smaller moose. From the sound of the rifle report, I had expected him to be a bit further away. Man must've been a pretty good shot, because he'd killed it cleanly, with one shot, right in the head. Most hunters go for the upper body, a much bigger target, but this guy had intended a shot that would either be instantly fatal, or a complete miss.

The man was on foot, and there didn't seem to be any way he could haul a moose out of here. He'd have to dress it in the field, and carry out what he could, unless he had a snow machine that I hadn't heard not too far away. I had a round chambered, and started advancing on him. I'd announce myself before I got to him, but I still wanted to close the gap some first. It helped that he'd set his rifle down as he moved up to his game, a knife drawn to cut the moose's throat if it turned out that the head shot hadn't been instantly fatal.

That's a mistake; you never leave your weapon when you're in the woods.

I had closed to maybe 25 meters when he finally heard me, and turned.

"Don't fucking move, asshole,"

I roared.

"You're hunting on my land!"

He was smart: he knew that I had the drop on him, and just put his hands in the air. He was in a good parka, with a fur lining around the hood, and a snow cap beneath that. A hunter would have had the hood down while stalking and shooting, but up here in the woods in New Brunswick, it was cold as heck, and he'd raised his hood once he'd made his kill. His face was covered above his nose, leaving only his eyes visible, and they were hidden behind winter glasses.

"Don't shoot, I didn't know that this was anybody's land." But it wasn't a man's voice that came out through the mask, but a woman's muffled though it was, her breath condensing in the winter air.

I ignored the fact that he was a she. "How the Hell did you expect to haul 500 kilos of moose out of here by yourself? Even if you field dressed it, you're still talking 300 kilos."

"I've got my snow machine and a sled just over that rise. I was going to drag him out that way, to my cabin."

"Where's your cabin?" I was still in no friendly mood, though maybe a bit less hostile now that I found my interloper was a woman.

"Maybe a click over that way," she said, pointing northwest.

"If you're only a kilometer away, your cabin is on my property."

"Please, mister, I didn't know that this was anybody's land. There aren't any fences or roads or trails, nothing, and I just built it best I could." With that, she pulled off her glasses and pulled down her muffler, to let me get a good look at her. "I'm Linda, Linda Grant." With that, she extended her hand.

Well, Hell, at that point, I had a choice to make: be the asshole I usually am, or polite, and I chose polite, pulling off my own sunglasses - even in the woods, the sun on the snowfield can be blindingly bright - and extended my hand, now that I was close enough to shake. "Call me Claude, Claude Duvalier."

Linda looked a bit funny, as though she was surprised by my name. Yeah, I guess that she would be, since I didn't sound the least bit like a Francophone. But another question had popped into my mind. "A cabin a kilometer away, huh? As in by the small stream at the bottom of the gully, near a big rock outcropping?" Some geological event had pushed up one large outcropping, in an area that didn't have many, and if this was where her cabin was, I knew it exactly.

And Linda knew that I knew. "Yes," she said, kind of hesitantly.

"Look, I know that 'cabin,' and a cabin it ain't. To call it a shack would be to insult the real shacks of this world."

"I, uh, kind of fixed it up."

I just stood there, looking at her. Then I turned my attention to her rifle, propped up against a tree, and I was just plain stunned. No wonder she had taken a head shot! "You killed a moose with a .22?"

"It's all that I have," she explained.

Well, what could I do? She was living in a rundown shack, in the middle of a New Brunswick winter, and all that she had to find game was a small caliber rifle that, even with a .22 long rifle load, didn't have enough stopping power. The bears were in hibernation, but once spring arrived, they'd be out, and hungry, and a .22 isn't going to protect you from a bear scrounging for food. The only reason the bears hadn't completely destroyed that shack was because there were no food odors coming from it; come this spring, there would be.

"Well, Hell, Linda, go get your machine, and I'll help you load the carcass."

I love my solitude, having learned to love it the hard way, it being enforced. But despite the tasks I had to perform to keep myself alive through the winter, they couldn't keep my mind off of Linda. She was clearly near my age, and knew something about living in the woods, but she was woefully unprepared. She said that she'd fixed up the shack, but that would have taken time, and money for materials, and I hadn't heard a thing telling me that anyone was in the old shack, barely a click away from my cabin. How much could she really have done?

There had been an old pot-bellied stove in there, but the roof leaked and the door didn't really fit tightly. Naturally, there wasn't the first scrap of insulation in the place. It was board-and-batten construction, but I knew that some of the battens were gone. There was an outside shed, for keeping firewood dry, but it had been empty. Whatever she had for firewood was probably not seasoned, meaning that it would be hard to keep burning and skimpy on heat.

How long could anyone survive there? This winter had been easy, so far, with several snowfalls of only an inch or two, though they'd piled up over time to over a foot. What would happen out there if a nor'easter came up the coast and dumped a foot of heavy snow on the place at once? Hell, that might finally collapse the roof on that old place.

It gets dark early here, and the sun doesn't rise until late. I'd gotten my firewood in, stoked the wood stove, and set about cooking my supper. I had plenty of deer meat, both smoked and dried along with frozen, and I had pre-thawed a frozen steak for supper. I had plenty of raw veggies in the root cellar, because I'd had a good crop from my garden this fall. Kale stays good in the garden until the end of December, so that was still fresh, and even in the cold, my three chickens were still producing eggs.

For some reason, I fixed a bigger supper for myself than I would normally have done. It was as though I was cooking for company, as much company as I could get anyway, even though I knew I'd have none. Linda was the only human being for miles around, and she didn't know where my cabin was. Even if she had known, once the sun went down the temperature quickly dropped to -30C, and it'd be risking death to venture out, in the dark, now.

Thinking about Linda, huddled in that shack, I realized how lucky I was. Claude Duvalier, the real Claude Duvalier, had fixed this place up nicely, with a metal roof that shed the snow, plenty of insulation in the ceiling - the log walls didn't need any insulation, being almost a foot thick - and solid windows. He'd chinked the cabin well, and I maintained it following his untimely demise.

By the time I arose, my decision had been made. If Linda was out here, trying to survive in that nasty shack, she had to be running from something, and if there's one thing I can appreciate, it's having to be on the run. I fed the birds and harvested their two eggs, and made myself a good breakfast, including biscuits and bacon. Bacon was one of my few luxuries, as I didn't like going into town any more than I had to. The real Claude's Old Age Security pension came once a month, directly deposited in his account in the bank in Fredericton, and with my previously forged but now real ID, I go to cash out his pension check every month. I stock up on my luxuries, such as they are, and then head back out into the woods.

Well, if I was surviving on a dead man's pension, against the law, what was Linda doing? That thought was nagging at me. Her accent sounded as though she was a real Canadian, maybe more Ontario than New Brunswick. Yeah, she was running from something, just had to be.

A little before eleven, I went ahead and prepared a stew for this evening. Some deer meat, potatoes, carrots, some green onions, celery and spices, all into the pot and set on top of the wood stove to slow cook. I grabbed my guns, made sure that the snow machine was full of fuel - I normally kept it that way; the emptier a tank is during the winter, the more condensation you get - and headed out.

For Linda having 'fixed up' the shack, it still looked pretty ramshackle to me. She'd stretched a bright blue tarp over the roof, and doubled it again, as her repair for the leaks. Ropes pulled as tightly as a woman her size could stretch them had the doubled tarp bound down to the eaves, but it was easy to see: a strong wind out of the north, like we can get in nor'easters, could get under that tarp and maybe rip it away. Two of the missing battens on the east side, the direction from which I approached, had been 'sealed' with what looked like canned spray foam insulation, while a new batten showed where a third was recovered. Her firewood shed was maybe a quarter filled, the wood already split to season, but that'd never last the rest of the winter. Her snow machine was surprisingly far away, maybe fifty yards from the shack, and I could see the marks in the snow where she'd dragged the moose carcass to the shack. And old chest freezer with a padlock hasp sat up on some blocks; no electricity was needed to keep meat cold during a Canadian winter! There was a beat-up Chevy pickup near the cabin, but the snow around it told me that it hadn't been moved since winter started. The outhouse faced east, away from the shack, which was good, because the door looked like it was ready to fall off.

Linda had heard my snow machine approaching, and she was out quickly, her pitiful rifle in hand. She had to have guessed that it would have been me coming, but she was clearly taking no chances. I strode up like I owned the place . . . which I did.

Or, at least Claude did. I sure wasn't going to tell her my secret.

"What do you want, Claude?" she challenged me. I could hear it: she had so very little, and she was going to defend it. She didn't know me from Adam, other than her shack was on my land, and if I tried to turn her out, she would die. That pitiful truck of hers would never make it out of these woods to the road, nearly a kilometer away, not through this snow.

"I had to see you, Linda, to see how you're surviving. Don't worry, I'm not going to try to kick you out, but I knew what condition this old shack was in, and there's a lot more winter to come. If we get a nor'easter, I'm not sure how this place is going to survive."

I could see that it was grudgingly, but Linda invited me in. It was worse than I had expected. She might have stopped the roof from leaking with the tarp fix, but there was still a musty smell from all of those past years when water had gotten in. Old, worn carpets had been dragged in, to help insulate the floor, and old newspapers and carpeting had been tacked to the walls and underside of the roof - I wouldn't dignify it with the word 'ceiling' - to minimize the draughts. Her bed, such as it was, was piled up with old blankets and her spare clothing, the better for her to keep warm at night.

There was a fire going in the old stove, the flue pipe of which had been 'repaired' with a sheet of tin held on with two band clamps. This was a set-up for carbon monoxide poisoning!

"Linda, why is your snow machine so far from the house?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"I ran out of gas," came her answer, he voice having gotten lower, embarrassed by the answer.

"Look, I don't know what you're running from, but you can't survive like this. Come on over to my cabin, I've got a much better set-up, and I have a stew already going for us for supper. I can even give you some seasoned firewood if you want, so that you can get better heat in here."

Did she trust me? Clearly she was leery, but the mention of a nice stew, and an actually warm cabin piqued her interest. "Who says that I'm running from anything?"

"Oh, good Lord, woman, even Stevie Wonder could see it. You don't have to tell me what's going on, but I don't want to think about you out here, slowly dying in this place."

"I don't have any gas for my machine."

"Do you have anything we can use for a siphon hose?"

She didn't answer, but went outside and then returned with a couple feet of old hose. Then I went outside, picked up her empty gasoline can, and siphoned about three quarters of my tank into her can. "Leave your sled hooked up, and follow me."

I waited, watching her fill up her snow machine, and then she grabbed a bit more wood, to stoke up her stove since she'd be away for a couple of hours. Then, once she got the machine running, I started mine, and headed east, to my cabin. I was tempted to check, to see if she was following me, but resisted; I could at least hear her behind me.

When we got back to my cabin, I told her to pull up by my woodshed, which she did, and then I started loading split firewood onto her sled. I had maybe eight cords split and seasoned, and she obviously needed help. We loaded up the sled - the exercise helping to keep us warm - and then I threw a tarp over the stacked wood, in case it started snowing again. I refueled my snow machine to resist condensation overnight.

I could tell: she really loved my cabin, even from the outside. The front porch faced south, and it was a real porch, eight feet deep to keep the snow away from the door. The exhaust from the wood stove flue was almost clear, indicating a hot, clean burn, which meant that the cabin was warm inside. Linda said nothing, but once she peeled the covering from her face I could see her smiling.

The interior was everything that she could have hoped for! Oh, it wasn't a big cabin, not by any means, because it had never been meant for a family. Still, it had a separate kitchen area, plus a sofa - which had seen better days, I have to admit - and a big bed, piled up with blankets. The outhouse, I told her, was about fifty feet away, off to the north side.

I had oil lamps going for light, but she quickly took note of the electric lights wired up. I could see the question in her eyes, and answered without her asking. "I have a hydroelectric generator in the creek, but the creek is frozen up now. There's a gasoline generator in the shed if I have to have electricity, but most of the time I don't need it. I get enough light to read by" - there were a lot of paperback books in the cabin - "and I have propane for the stove. I even have water stored in a cistern, so I don't have to melt ice and snow."

"This is really nice, Claude," she told me, her eyes big with wonder. Then I saw it: she was starting to at least half-trust me, as indicated by her shedding her parka and hat.

I checked on the stew, gave it a few stirs to make sure it wasn't scorching on the bottom, and then sat down on the couch. "Let me tell you a story," I said, "about an all-American boy named Jack Armstrong."

September 27, 1973:

Damn, things were going great! Somehow I'd just stumbled into this cute girl, a lot better looking girl than I ever thought I'd have a chance with, and here we were, making out in my 1962 Ford Fairlane, in a grass parking area near Waynesboro, Virginia. I was 19 years old, and still a virgin, but things were looking so good I thought that status might just end tonight. Jodie was tall and soft in my arms, an eager kisser, and when I nervously moved my hand from her waist to lower on her hips, nearly onto her butt, she didn't stop me, didn't put up the least resistance. When my hand finally made it onto her ass, she simply pulled herself even closer to me. When I started to tug her shirt out from where it had been tucked into her pants, she smiled and simply said, "Here, let me."

With that, she pulled away for a bit, unfastened the button holding her jeans waistband and unzipped the fly. Still, it wasn't going to go that fast, because she pulled herself back into my arms and we started making out again. I'd been stupid, and hadn't undone my own jeans, mesmerized by seeing her undo her pants, but as we were making out again, I felt her hands tugging at my own shirt.

I guess that my inexperience showed, because it wasn't too much longer that Jodie smiled at me and asked, "You've never done this before, have you?" I'm pretty sure that she knew the answer already.

"No, I haven't," I managed to get out, embarrassed by the answer.

But I guess I shouldn't have been embarrassed, because that answer got a huge smile from her. "Then I get to be your first." It was clear: that thought really turned her on! "Too bad we don't have a real bed."

"There's a quilt in the trunk of the car," I managed to get out.

"Great!" she said, "Get it."

It was a bit of a downer to have to get out of the car and open the trunk, but Jodie quickly got things going again, spreading the quilt on the grass and then laying down on it. "Come here, big boy," she encouraged me, and we got right back into the mood we'd had in the back seat of the car.

Still, even though she'd said that I was going to get to fuck her, I was still kind of fumbling around, not really knowing the next 'step' to take. Finally, Jodie took the lead, pulling her pants and underwear off in one motion; she'd already kicked off her sandals. It took me a second before I realized that I needed to do the same thing. Then she gently pushed me down onto the quilt.

"Looks like I get to be your teacher," she said, "so just listen to me. Lay down, and let me do the work. Hold yourself back, and I'll take care of you, but don't cum too soon, OK?"

With that, Jodie straddled me, took me in hand to guide me, and slowly set herself down on my cock, taking me into her warmth. "Don't tense up, relax your muscles a bit," she told me, as she started gently rocking away.