Heinlein, Robert A – Friday

Best boy says to me, “What are you doing here this early?”

His tone was aggressive; I answered it to match: “I was working, until you interrupted me.”

“The hell you say. You don’t go on until eight hundred hours.”

I answered, “Get the news, big man. That was last week. Two shifts now. First shift comes on at ‘can.’ Shifts change at noon; second shift goes off at ‘can’t.’

“Nobody notified us.”

“You want the Superintendent to write you a personal letter? Give me your badge number and I’ll tell him you said so.”

“None of your lip, slitch. I’d as lief run you in as look at you.”

“Go ahead. A day’s rest for me . . . while you explain why this stretch was not maintained.”

“Stow it.” They started climbing back in.

“Either of you turkeys got a toke?” I asked.

The driver said, “We don’t hit on duty and neither should you.”

“Brown nose,” I answered politely.

The driver started to reply, but best boy slammed the lid, and they took off-right over my head, forcing me to duck. I don’t think they liked me.

I went back to the fence while concluding that Hannah Jensen was not a lady. She had no excuse to be rude to the Greenies merely because they are unspeakably vile. Even black widows, body lice, and hyenas have to make a living although I could never see why.

I decided that my plans were not well thought out; Boss would not approve. Cutting that fence in broad daylight was too conspidu

ous. Better to pick a spot, then hide until dark, and return to it. Or spend the night on plan number two: Check the possibility of going under the fence at Roseau River.

I wasn’t too crazy about plan number two. The lower reach of the Mississippi had been warm enough but these northern streams would chill a corpse. I had checked the Pembina late the day before yesterday. Brrr! A last resort.

So pick a piece of fence, decide exactly how you are going to cut it, then try to find some trees, wrap yourself in some nice warm leaves, and wait for dark. Rehearse every move, so that you go through that fence like pee through snow.

At this point I topped a slight rise and came face to face with another maintenance man, male type.

When in doubt, attack. “What the hell are you doing, buster?”

“I’m walking the fence. My stretch of the fence. What are you doing, sister?”

“Oh, fer Gossake! I’m not your sister. And you are either on the wrong stretch or the wrong shift.” I noticed with unease that the well-dressed fence-walker carries a walkie-talkie. Well, I had not been one very long; I was still learning the job.

“Like hell,” he answered. “Under the new schedule I come on at dawn; I’m relieved at noon. Maybe by you, huh? Yeah, that’s probably it; you read the roster wrong. I had better call in.”

“You do that,” I said, moving toward him.

He hesitated. “On the other hand, maybe-” I did not hesitate.

I do not kill everyone with whom I have a difference of opinion and I would not want anyone reading this memoir to think that I do. I didn’t even hurt him other than temporarily and not much; I merely put him to sleep rather suddenly.

From a roll on my belt I taped his hands behind him and fastened his ankles together. If! had had some wide surgical tape, I would have gagged him but all I had was two-centimeter mechanics friction tape, and I was far more anxious to cut fence than I was to keep him horn yelling for help to the coyotes and jackrabbits. I got busy.

A torch good enough to repair fence will cut fence-but my torch was a bit better than that; I had bought it out the back door of Fargo’s leading fence (the other sort offence). It was a steel-cutting laser

rather than the oxyacetylene job it appeared to be. In moments I had a hole big enough, barely, for Friday. I stooped to leave.

“Hey, take me with you!”