Wintersong. The Nickel Range Trilogy • Volume 3

by Mick Lowe

  The motion carried by a narrow margin. So what happened now? The community organizer took charge, and began to issue a stream of orders: they were at the eleventh hour, and the voting would begin in the morning. If their news release was to have any impact on the outcome, it must go out to the local news media right away. Would someone please get it typed up and photocopied? Oh, and there was one other thing; they should notify Jordan Nelson of their decision before it went to the media. They owed the man that much, at least. No one was especially anxious to break the news to the fiery union leader, but Arianna Murdock, of all people, drew the short straw. She was at pains to break the news to him as gently as possible.

  “Because it just isn’t good enough after eight months, Jordy …”

  “Last fall it would have been enough …”

  “Maybe if you hadn’a called it such a great agreement in the meeting …”

  In the end they simply agreed to disagree and Arianna rang off.

  Jordan Nelson was alone when the call came in on this, quite possibly, last night of the strike. It just seemed fitting to him that he spend the evening at home, alone, away from the buzz of the second floor, the incessant ringing of the telephones.

  He hung up the phone call from the Wives, swirled the ice around in his drink, and contemplated the morrow.

  Whatever the outcome, he was certain of this much: nothing would ever be quite the same ever again.

  32

  Interlude

  At some point that night, as the city slept, fitfully, and as Jordan Nelson contemplated his drink, morosely, this also happened, unbeknownst to almost everyone: in the granite fastness and in the stopes, drifts and cross-cuts that honeycombed the rock beneath the city’s streets an unfamiliar sound was heard for the first time in many months—the cranking over of a thousand scoop tram engines, and the steady, pulsing thrum of nearly as many diesel engines idling.

  So certain was the Company of the vote’s outcome—so desperate was the thirst for a swift return to full production—that senior management ordered shift bosses to travel underground to warm up the scoops, many of which, it was assumed, would have dead batteries after ten months of inactivity.

  The Company was right about its machines, wrong about its workers. It certainly seemed a safe enough bet; how could anyone in his right mind vote against a return to a steady paycheque in the face of utter destitution? If the senior managers and directors of Inco understood anything about human nature it was the sturdiness and absolute reliability of that greatest of human motivators: greed.

  It had been deployed with fabulous success, after all, in the Sudbury mines for nearly a century. The individual mine production bonus, wherein a man’s labour was incentivized to drive him to drill, blast, and drill again without supervision, had produced billions upon billions in profits. The donkey trotted dutifully after the dangling carrot. It had always worked before. Men would drive themselves beyond the point of exhaustion, tempt the fates, cut corners on safety, venture beneath that corner of sketchy, unbolted ground, to put that extra penny in the pay packet.

  Why should tomorrow be any different? Surely, it would not.

  And so, as an entire city tossed and turned in fitful, uneasy slumber the engines of production, revived, idled steadily on, awaiting the still-absent essential, the necessary and final steady beating heart of the thing: human labour power.

  33

  Southwind on the Move

  Acting Lieutenant Curtis Southwind heaved yet another monumental sigh as he turned over yet another page from the file. The pages had been perused so often they were becoming dog-eared. The passenger manifests had yielded nothing, working backward from arrivals at YSB to the hub of the Toronto International Airport, usually, and then backwards from there to the point of origin. He was missing something, but what was it? He’d pinpointed perhaps a half-dozen potential suspects, all engineers, but they all appeared to be on legit business trips to one of the two big nickel companies in the city. They possessed all the requisite skill sets to wreak the kind of damage he’d seen at the transformer station. But why would a Company man sabotage his own property? The only reason he could think of was to discredit the union, but that was a risky gambit—committing a felony to prove a dubious point. If he cracked this case, brought a Company manager up on charges, it would be game over for the Company in the strike. No, such a clandestine strategy was too risky for Inco. Maybe it really was the union. If it walked like a duck …

  With another, even more monumental sigh Southwind heaved his not inconsiderable bulk out of his desk chair.

  “Gonna leave the building for awhile,” he informed a subordinate at an adjacent cubicle. CIB was crammed in like sardines up here on the second floor of the cop shop.

  “Oh yeah? Where ya goin’, sir?”

  “Over t’ the union hall. Think mebbe it’s time I had a little talk with them fellas.”

  34

  History Is Made at the Steel Hall

  Parking was impossible at the Steel Hall, forcing Southwind to park far down Frood Road, almost to the Moose Lodge, which forced the police lieutenant to trudge two blocks back in the surprisingly warm early spring heat. Already frustrated by his fruitless pursuit of the Mad Bomber, Southwind was badly winded, and grumpier than ever, as he ascended the cement steps leading to the main floor of the Steel Hall.

  The joint was jumping with rank-and-file union members buzzing in and out, eager to cast their vote on the proposed contract and then to get on with their day. The big man in the dark suit shouldered his way gruffly through the loosely milling throng, only to find himself confronted by yet another set of stairs.

  The buzz in the floor above was palpable, the air thick with cigarette smoke, tension, and the incessant ringing of telephones. No, Jordan Nelson could not possibly see him, the union president was far too busy. Nonplussed, Southwind worked his way through the roster of the big Local’s Executive Board until he eventually was escorted into the office of Local 6500 Vice President Jake McCool.

  “Jake? This is Lieutenant Southwind, Sudbury Regional Police.” Angel Houle escorted the burly cop into Jake’s office.

  “Acting Lieutenant,” Southwind corrected.

  Jake looked up, intrigued, saw a big man, slow moving, eyes so heavily lidded he could have been mistaken for semi-somnolent, or even dim-witted.

  Jake motioned at the chair facing his desk. Southwind took it, gratefully, missing nothing. How many times had he done this? Sizing up a stranger who was also instantly, a suspect? Hoping that stranger would be disarmed by his appearance even as he remained alert to all the little tells of dissembling. The slightest tic, blink, eye movement, spoke volumes.

  But Southwind felt none of this from the young union man, found only an openness, and fresh curiosity. As was his wont, Southwind had come straight to the point with the Union Vice President, explaining the baffling case of the search for the Mad Bomber. McCool evinced a keen, alert interest in the matter which even Southwind, old jade, product of an ancient, ancient civilization, felt was genuine. McCool seemed to take it as a given that such blatant anti-Company sabotage was some kind of set-up intended to discredit the union. But then, what else would he say?

  “So then, you have no idea who might have done this?”

  “No. No idea at all.” He never missed a beat. Even if he hadn’t done it, the kid would have heard something. This frickin’ Union Hall was like one giant ant heap.

  The two men then slipped into an easy, apparently casual conversation when McCool suddenly stiffened, and stopped talking mid-sentence. “I uh, I—sorry, what were we talking about?” The colour had drained from McCool’s face.

  Southwind, instantly alert, paused for a beat, listening to the commotion outside the office. The walls were thin and did not extend quite all the way to the ceiling, so the adjacent, incessant hub-bub was clearly audible. There it was again, a
man’s voice, rising in barely suppressed anger, a southern twang “Look. Maybe you-all didn’t hear me straight the first time! I said Mr. Thomas Enders is here to see Jordan Nelson!”

  McCool, suddenly, looked white as a sheet. “I-I know that voice!” He spoke in a whisper. Southwind sensed that he had instantly become some kind of confidant, being beseeched by someone who was terrified of—something. Jake, still in a whisper, quickly stammered out a quick story about his brother Ben, how he’d been beaten to death in a back-alley altercation with a mysterious stranger outside the Hotel Coulson, and how the stranger had vanished. He hadn’t ever really seen the assailant, but had heard his voice more than once.

  Southwind’s skin began to crawl. “And you’re sure that’s it? That’s the voice you heard?”

  Jake nodded. His face wore a look of wide-eyed wonder, but he rose to his feet swiftly, emerged from behind his desk, headed for the door.

  To Jake’s surprise Southwind moved even faster—with a grace astonishing for such a big man—heading him off at the door. The cop laid a mitt on Jake’s shoulder and squeezed it once in what he hoped would be read as a reassuring gesture. “Now why don’t you let me handle this?” he said softly.

  They emerged from the office together, scanning the waiting area outside Jordan Nelson’s office. As usual, all the seats there were taken. Their gaze fell at once on a bearded man of indeterminate age slouching in a chair, long legs splayed out in front of him, as if he owned the place. He radiated an aura of pure, insolent arrogance.

  “Is that the man?” Southwind asked Jake.

  “He looks different, but yes, that could be him.”

  As they approached the lounging stranger, Southwind felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to rise. Creepy morning ’round the old Steel Hall. But he had learned long ago to trust the primal above all.

  At that moment another stranger emerged from inside another union office, odd looking bird wearing eyeglasses with thick lenses on an oversized, balding head. Like young McCool, he, too, looked like he’d just seen—or rather, heard—a ghost. Southwind watched in silence as he exchanged a silent, knowing, glance with McCool.

  The stranger saw them coming, and grunted a greeting of sorts at Southwind, still in the lead. “Mornin’, Chief. Somethin’ I can do for you?”

  McCool shot a quizzical glance at the bespectacled stranger, who gave a single, emphatic nod. Only much later, in the course of his subsequent investigation, would Southwind learn the significance of those knowing looks: McCool and the other man, who would identify himself as Foley Gilpin, were the only two living souls in Sudbury who could identify this suspect. The southern U.S. accent was the giveaway, the distinctive voice that had carried through a closed hotel room door on a long ago morning when Gilpin and McCool, on the trail of Ben McCool’s killer, had gone bursting in only to discover Jo Ann’s father, a high-ranking Inco executive, sitting with him, a heart-stopping revelation that had sent the stunned Jake McCool reeling backward out the hotel room door with Gilpin following in hot, bewildered pursuit. Not the strongest eyewitness ID he’d ever known, but the moment had left such an indelible impression on both men that Southwind would deem it credible, even after all these years.

  Southwind flashed his badge wallet. “You can stand up when I’m talking to you, for starters.”

  The stranger smirked, but did as he was told.

  “Okay, pal, now put your hands behind your back, turn around, and spread ’em.”

  Once again the stranger complied, but now the smirk was gone.

  Southwind had nearly completed his pat-down when he felt something around the right ankle. Pulling up the pant leg, he found a leather holster, well worn but clearly top grain cowhide, obviously custom made. Strapped inside was a small knife, a lovely lethal little piece with a finely balanced heft in Southwind’s hand. He flipped it open. The blade had been worn down by repeated sharpenings over the years, but there was no doubting it was honed to a razor’s edge. Southwind flipped it closed, returned it to the holster, and stood up with a heavy grunt.

  “Well, my friend, I’m arresting you for carrying a concealed weapon, and much else, including suspicion of murder.”

  At these words a tall man in an expensively tailored suit accosted Southwind. He towered over the rest of them, and he was sputtering a protest as he approached.

  “What is going on here? This man has committed no crime! I demand you release him at once!”

  Southwind turned. “And you are?”

  “Enders. Ambassador Thomas Enders. I am the Ambassador of the United States to this country, and this man is assigned to my security detail. And, as such, I am certain he enjoys diplomatic immunity in your country.”

  “Not for murder, he doesn’t,” Southwind replied grimly.

  “Murder! Why, that’s preposterous! And just when … You’ve never even been in this city before, have you, McCallister?”

  Southwind, who had kept the perp’s wrists tightly pinioned in one hand, turned him around so they could all see his face. He only shrugged in answer to the question, hesitated, and looked at the floor. Although it lasted only a split second, the pause was all any of them needed to know.

  “And not only that, Mr. Ambassador, your man is carrying an illegally-concealed weapon in my jurisdiction. Now I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume you knew nothing about it …”

  Enders, clearly flustered, threw his hands in the air, and turned away.

  The mini-drama that played out on the second floor of the Steel Hall that day would pass largely unnoticed, subsumed by the much larger drama that would play out one floor below a few hours later, when the results of the ratification vote were announced: in a stunning decision that would make front page headlines across the nation, the members of Local 6500 had voted fifty-six per cent against the proposed agreement.

  As news of the results spread across the Sudbury Basin, dozens of strikers converged on 92 Frood Road for a joyous victory celebration in the downstairs taproom, Jake and Jo Ann McCool, Molly Carruth, and Foley Gilpin among them.

  Also sitting at the long table, fairly groaning beneath the weight of so many brimming draft beer glasses, sat Jordan Nelson’s many enemies within the union, grim-faced. They had never really approved of the brash young union leader, had counted on an acceptance vote to be his death knell. Now, it was the union militants’ turn to exult, and, on this one night at least, it felt as if the earth had opened up beneath the feet of the old, Cold Warrior guard. “Oh, mama, could this really be the end? To be stuck outside of Hanmer with the Sudb’ry blues again …”

  35

  Thirty and Out

  Despite the fact they were both nursing mild hangovers and it was a Sunday, both Jordan Nelson and Jake McCool showed up at the deserted union hall the day after the big vote. Nelson, to clear up some last-minute paperwork before his departure back down to Toronto, Jake to check in with his picket captains to assess the mood out on the lines. (The response: morale was high, everyone excited to see what would come next.)

  But what would come next? The question was top-of-mind with Nelson, who dropped into Jake’s office for a casual chat.

  “Hey, Jake, you were at Frood after me, right?”

  Jake shrugged in assent.

  “Was Charley Burrell still there?”

  “Old guy who’d be so tired at the end of his shift he had to sit down in the shower above the drain? Yeah, sure, everyone knew Charley.” And every Frood miner had known his story, which had become a legend: how Charley had begun his career at Frood Mine in the Dirty Thirties with a spectacular year of bonus earnings, amassing a small fortune in the process. Hoping to become richer still, Charley had invested heavily in the local real estate market, which had collapsed shortly after, along with the world nickel price, wiping Charley out. But Charley, certain that his luck would turn, refused to bow to
fate. For years—decades, even—Charley busted his butt to earn big bonus, long after his youth, and his strength, were spent. But the magic was gone, and Charley’s glory days never returned. Most of his peers had long since retired, but Charley soldiered stubbornly on, afflicted by the deafness, arthritis, and White Hand Syndrome so common among old jackleg miners. By Jake and Jordan’s time, Charley had become an old, old man, haunted by a dream of one more year of fabulous bonus earnings. Just one. And so Charley had become a familiar, pathetic sight, sitting on the floor of the shower in the Frood Mine dry, sluicing himself in the grey water running off the filthy bodies of a hundred of his compatriots.