Schadenfreude

Of course, she was gorgeous, she had to be. I mean, when the law says you must hire them, why not the best? Why pick a mutt when you can have Best of Breed? She was blonde-haired and blue-eyed and all of eighteen; her blue jeans were still blue and her tiny pumpkins – her rawhide work boots – were still bright and clean; untouched by hot asphalt nor splattered by oily kerosene, and showed no other signs of soiling – no hint of wear. In passing, she flashed me a great smile as bright as the sun. But I’ll get back to her later.

Vainly I’d sought to escape the deadly oppressions of Affirmative Action. I thought perhaps the disease, this plague upon mankind, hadn’t yet spread to all the small towns and remote areas of rural America. I overstuffed my backpack with camping gear and such things I thought I would need if indeed I found work and chose from a map a destination grimly appropriate to my situation, namely: Starvation Lake. Don’t look for it on a map, the name has been changed. I stuck out my thumb.

It wasn’t long before this, America was a much friendlier place, where one might hitchhike coast-to-coast in under four days. But these were different times. It took me that long just to travel a few hundred miles to even approach my destination. On the road there, at one point I was escorted to the town line by a local, overly cautious constable; at another, I nearly got into a fistfight with a drunk who claimed he’d been robbed by some hitchhikers he’d picked up – as though all hitchhikers were a discrete class of criminals.

At yet another point on The Road of Life I found myself standing at a Cornfield County crossroads; yes, without any signage, a crossroads of intersecting two-lane blacktop highways with nothing for miles in any direction except vast fields of corn. It was hot, I was overloaded; been walking for miles; sweating and exhausted, and best of all, no traffic – no traffic whatsoever. Forlorn, I sat on my pack and just waited. A long and hot, windless silence fell upon the scene. After a time I detected the faint sound of a vehicle approaching. At first a mere dot on the horizon, it dipped down behind the rolling hill and came up larger. I doubted my thumb but put it out anyway and the pickup truck came to a halt. It was driven by an old lady. I put my pack in the back and climbed into the cab; introduced myself and thanked her. I told her my woes and the difficulty I’d had just getting a ride of a few hundred miles. It seemed a dark cloud of fear and distrust had descended over the whole country. I asked her why, she, of all people, would still pick up a stranger. “I still believe in God” was her reply.

Not yet reaching Starvation Lake, my proposed destination, I’d pitched my tent and stowed my gear near the shore of a different lake and walked several miles into the nearest town, inquiring as I went, about work. I’d seen some idle equipment from a highway construction project on the way in and a bartender said the foreman would be stopping by later. It was well after dark when the boss finally showed up. He turned me down of course and offered no help looking elsewhere, and for all my troubles worse was yet to come as I’d left my encampment in daylight and now it was dark but I didn’t think to bring my flashlight, and thus, had to walk the many miles back through the unfamiliar, pitch-black forest.

Did I say black? Part of my return journey was first along Highway 2 then down a narrow asphalt side road. The darkness closed in to such an extent I had to bend over at the waist just to detect but a short portion of the yellow center line at my feet. It was so far north, and so late in the year that, although the sky was clear, the moon never rose above the horizon. Traveling on through row upon row of the neatly replanted forest of already tall pines I got off the pavement too soon and followed a rutted dirt logging road that I thought led back to my camp. The heavily rutted road beneath my feet was not much wider than that between the rows of replanted trees. The pine trees stood in rows and formed a backdrop so black I felt I was walking in an infinite void or wearing a blindfold. The darkness was horrific. It was nearly total, so black that, for a time, I used a night-walking technique I’d learned in the Army (boobytraps) to avoid being poked in the face with a random tree branch. In the darkness, I’d gotten off the paved road too soon and after a mile or two of groping about, I found myself standing in a small empty clearing. I realized I had to retrace my steps to find the right road. I searched the dark, moonless sky made pale by a few stars.

The rough logging trail I’d just traveled led visually to a vanishing point just as all roads do. I discovered that, Because the pine trees were tapered, by looking straight up, I could just barely discriminate between the absolute black of the trees and the only slightly lighter sky. I could just see an inverted V-shaped gap in the tapering of the treetops. The arrow thus formed overhead of mere skyglow pointed my way.

I doubled back to the paved road and took the next logging trail that slowly pitched toward the lake and my encampment; once again waving my arms before me to feel my way through the darkness.

I’d been camping there three weeks into November, warming myself before a smoky belly warmer fire; the smoke always following the contour of my body like a chimney and tearing my eyes. Some days it rained and I spent the entire day in my little tent just to stay dry. One day at dawn I was awakened by a noise just outside the tent. Something was sniffing and snuffing just the other side of the fabric of the tent. My first thought was it was a farmer’s dog – so I rolled over and went back to sleep. Later that morning I went down to the lake to fill my coffee pot. The muddy shore was littered with scraps of crayfish and the footprints of a bear.

Through the utter, windless silence and absolute darkness of the pines, I made my way back to camp. I’m not normally afraid of the dark, but stumbling along over uneven ground, feeling my way like a blind man to protect my face, and having bears (and wolves) on my mind; I finally dove headfirst into my tent. I felt like I was starving for light. I grabbed my flashlight and clicked it on. It was like an explosion. The burst of light was palpable and warm. The tension that had built up in my body during my miles-long journey through the dark forest left me in an instant and was replaced by utter and complete exhaustion. I went right to sleep.

The very next morning, since I was down to my last dime and completely out of food and bait for fishing, I packed up my gear, burning most of it to lighten my load, and headed back up to the highway from whence I first came.

As I said, I was overloaded; and I burned much of it in my campfire before leaving. I burned three sets of bib overalls, t-shirts, socks, underwear, and even a briefcase. To my surprise, the briefcase’s frame was made of magnesium it seems; and gave off a blinding white light; hissing as it was consumed.

As I made my way back to the nearby town, I once again came upon the asphalt repairing machines. This time the crew was present and the men were hard at work. The blue smoke and sweet smell of hot asphalt and kerosene mixed with the smell of the pines and the chill November air filled my nostrils as I hiked by.

Still carrying my backpack; I made my way along the otherwise empty highway. There was no traffic at all in either direction that morning as I leaned forward beneath my burden and walked silently past the work crew. At the end of the construction area stood the aforementioned female; idly holding a little stop sign.

I glanced in her direction; quickly looking her up and down, but I gave no cause for her to flash me that brilliant smile. Schadenfreude.

Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. It is a loan word from German. The literal English translation is ‘Harm-Joy’. It is the feeling of joy or pleasure when one sees another fail or suffer misfortune.

It is only rarely that a Feminist woman would be granted the schadenfreude pleasure of meeting, however briefly, face-to-face, with the man she displaced in the labor force; hence the beaming grin.

If a government contract stipulates the mandatory hiring of a woman; then why not hire the captain of the Cheer-leading Squad? Why hire a mutt when you can have the Best of Breed? Who knows? Perhaps the boss was hoping he might ‘get lucky’ with her, but wound up with two kids and divorce?

Because the Feminist Cult was propagandized via television; there was no escape from Affirmative Action.

Reality does not change – only the labels change to protect the guilty. I bear witness to the historic transition of the signage on road construction sites from “Men Working” to “Flagman Ahead” to “Flagger Ahead”; or even the illiterate, sexually ambiguous ‘symbol’ of a flagger.

To this very day, I still wonder if that young woman ever did pick up a shovel, got dirty, and put in her thirty years. Laugh while ye may. Enjoy your Pyrrhic victory.