by John Bemrose
“Can everybody hear me?” Bruce Mason said, his disembodied voice suddenly booming from the speakers.
“Unfortunately!” someone barked behind Alf. In the middle of the hall, a heavy woman in a T-shirt — it was Gail Phipps from Number Six sewing — rose to her feet and raised one arm in a kind of salute. She looked around defiantly, shaking her fist as if she were holding aloft a trophy, or perhaps a weapon, as others shouted for her to sit. It took a while for Bruce to get things underway.
Alf had trouble concentrating on the speeches. He kept looking at Prince, while his mind drifted in and out of the proceedings, always returning to some blank, burning space of its own. But when Bert Hatch said he thought that what Intertex was doing was shameful, he heard that and joined vigorously in the applause. The workers were not used to hearing terms such as “shameful” from their business leaders. They listened alertly, clearly hoping for more from Bert, some further echoing of their moral claim — maybe even the announcement of some action that might save the situation — but as Bert droned on it became clear his “shameful” was not leading anywhere and they soon grew restless again.
When Bruce invited questions from the floor, Jimmy Quinn popped up, demanding to know if Bannerman’s was leaving because the union had come in.
The people at the head table looked at each other, as cries erupted around the floor.
“Answer him!” several people shouted.
“Maybe Mr. Prince could handle that one,” Bruce Mason said, looking down the table.
Prince waved aside the mike Bruce pushed towards him. He leaned forward, arms folded on the table (he had taken off his suit jacket and rolled his sleeves artfully halfway up his tanned forearms).
“I’ll be as frank as I can,” he said, and his rich voice immediately established a calm that had not been in the room before. One or two workers heckled him, but they were quickly silenced. People seemed doubly alert, eager to hear the executive’s explanation. “I fought the union coming in. I had orders to fight it, and I lost. Intertex didn’t like the result, a lot of people here — probably some of them in this room — didn’t like it, but there it was, we had a union.” Prince bowed his head a little and frowned as if girding himself for even more painful acts of candour. He looked exhausted, his face pale, bluish shadows under his eyes. At least this has cost the bugger something, Alf thought, if only a few nights’ sleep. “Sure,” Prince said, “having to pay more in wages, at a time when we were making some expensive changes, that didn’t help. It was a consideration. But it wasn’t the only consideration. I mean, we’re not leaving because we’re sore losers, or to get back at anybody. This is purely a business decision.” Though Prince did not look at Bert Hatch, Alf sensed he was reprimanding the manager for that “shameful.”
This was not the simple answer Jimmy Quinn was hoping for, it seemed to cut both ways. The shipper tried again.
“Lemme put it this way, would you stay if we got rid of the union?”
Immediately, a dozen people tried to shout Jimmy down. Others shouted at the shouters. It was another minute before Prince could continue, during which time Jimmy waited patiently, his head with its crude scar hooked over the ear lifted with a kind of moral loftiness. In a life of filling boxes with sweaters, Jimmy, it occurred to Alf, had never enjoyed such public importance, probably never would again.
“No,” the executive said finally. “No, we’ve discussed this, at Intertex, and no it wouldn’t be enough.”
The silence that answered his announcement had a bruised, stunned quality. The crowd had given Prince authority. And now his authority had rebuked them: delivered a sentence from which there could be no reprieve.
Jimmy said, “What would be enough?”
Again Prince frowned before he spoke. He seemed careworn, even troubled. “Look, this wasn’t easy for any of us. We didn’t take this decision lightly. But hell, the only reason Bannerman’s is here is because John Bannerman needed the power from the rivers. Well, we don’t use that kind of power any more, we need to be closer to our markets, we need to shed departments that are losing money, we need newer buildings, ones that don’t cost so much to keep up. There’s no room for sentimentality — we’d soon be dead if we were sentimental — we just have to do it.”
Jimmy tried to speak again, but Prince continued. “We all make business decisions. That’s what you people did when you decided to ask more for your labour — just like our suppliers sometimes ask more for their wool, or their dyes. Sometimes these decisions are good ones, and sometimes they aren’t.”
Jimmy sagged reluctantly to his chair. People were shouting at him, telling him what he should have said, what he might still say. He held out his hands and shrugged, saying, “What? what?” Others sat in silence or talked among themselves. When Alf put his hand up, Bruce Mason pointed.
“Another question for Bob Prince,” Alf said and heard his voice travel out in the hall like the parody of a voice, nothing to do with him. He watched Prince find him, the executive’s face resolving into clarity at the distant table, the blue eyes flashing in recognition.
“When Intertex came in here last year, all the talk was of turning the company around. You said we had the people here to put Bannerman’s back on track — people second to none, you said. Well now you’re turning your back on us. I’d like to know what made us so second-rate all of a sudden.”
“The union did!” someone yelled. “You did, Walker!”
Other voices exploded around the room. Alf went on staring at Prince, who gazed down at his papers as order was restored. Finally the executive looked up, speaking with a touch of weariness. “As I said, Alf, it’s a business decision …”
“Don’t patronize us,” Alf snapped. “Like those are better decisions than other kinds of decisions. Like we wouldn’t understand them, these business decisions. Like we have to take it on faith that there’s no other way. You’re leaving us in the lurch here. We’ve had this company for a hundred years, a lot of our grandmothers and grandfathers worked for Bannerman’s, we feel like it’s ours — hell, I think it is ours — and you’re taking the whole thing out from under us. Why didn’t you ever ask us what we think should be done here? You’re just running away —”
The hall filled with applause. Even many of the anti-union people applauded, though others sat scowling. Alf, the blood pounding in his head, waited it out by staring at Prince, who stared at his papers.
Finally Prince said, “Look, the decision is made —”
Several people booed.
“I really don’t think this gets us anywhere,” Prince said, scowling around the room. Each time he tried to speak, the noise erupted.
Bruce Mason, sheltering behind a weak smile, raised his hands. “Brothers, sisters,” he said to further boos.
“I think we need to go on,” Bruce persisted, leaning into the mike. But an anarchy had been freed in the crowd. Standing up to point accusingly, or sitting in their chairs, people argued across the room while Bruce Mason’s loud, hollow, and universally ignored voice boomed overhead. The others at the table looked bleakly around, guests at a family quarrel.
Alf turned away. He no longer believed that Prince had anything for them, no longer believed the man was worth his attention. He pushed through the crowd into the parking lot, walking past the dully shining hoods of cars, until he reached the relative dark of the baseball infield behind the arena. Stopping, he fumbled for his smokes.
“Alf!”
He heard his own name with despair. The young man who slipped to his side on the bench was Lloyd Tindal. Alf had known his father, a drunk with one eye, a breeder of German shepherds, now living somewhere else. He knew everyone in town, it seemed, everyone in town knew him: he wished to God it was otherwise.
Lloyd Tindal’s intense eyes met his with the excruciating frankness of youth. “That was great, what you said in there.”
Alf went on smoking.
“Alf, look, some friends and me, we’ve got
a plan. We wanta know what you think about it. Maybe you’d help us.”
It was then he noticed the others, three or four of them, hanging around at the end of the bleachers like shadows waiting to be asked into the game.
In the Vimy House, their little table was soon crowded with glasses topped with pure, high foam. The television was shouting from its perch above the bar: a woman weeping, her Marine husband dead in a jungle across the world. To Alf, her suffering was just one more irritation. He concentrated on the beer — the loyal, simple beer — and tried to ignore the circle of expectant faces.
They explained — it was mostly Lloyd explaining, calf eyes fixed on Alf’s as if his, Lloyd’s, life hung on convincing him — that they wanted to take some action. Take over G.O. Or sabotage something, they said. “We wanta burn the place down,” Andy Morris said, his flat, smirking face suddenly red. The others looked from him to Alf: it was suddenly clear to him that this, really, was what they’d been thinking about. “Let them take that to Quebec,” Andy said.
Alf stubbed out another cigarette. “All you’ll do is ruin your lives,” he said. “Look at you, you’re all young, you can do a hundred other things. You know you’ll get caught. It’s certain you’ll get caught.” As he spoke his warnings, their gazes kept meeting his with sudden courage, then dove shyly for the beer. On the TV, Dinah Shore was seeing the U.S.A. in her Chevrolet.
He worried after they’d left. Maybe he should have said more. He lit another cigarette, and wished he was with them, at the beginning of his life. “Yai, yai, yai,” the TV cried harshly, and he looked up to see black-eyed dancers whirling: see Spain!
Later, in the street, he stood uncertain as to what he should do next. Distantly, cars were gunning into life: he supposed the meeting was just breaking up. Shouts floated across the river from the Flats.
Walking home, he turned the corner onto Water and saw Jamie — Jamie, in his striped pyjama top and jeans, slowly riding his bike along the sidewalk. It was like something from a dream, scarcely credible. Trotting along ahead of him was Red.
“Jamie!”
Startled, his son stopped abruptly by a street light, hopping on one foot to keep his balance.
“For God’s sake, what are you doing out here?”
His head down, the boy said something Alf couldn’t make out — said it in that queer, flat voice he’d had for several weeks now. Alf supposed he’d snuck out past Margaret, who must have gone to bed early.
“Speak up. I can’t hear you.”
“You were at Billy’s house?”
Taken aback, Alf could only stare. When the boy glanced up, what Alf saw in his face pierced him. “No, no,” he said. “No, it’s all right. Come on, let’s get you home.”
They went through the still summer night, with Red trotting beside them in the road, his tail high, past the house where Alf had grown up, under the dim cloud of the maple his father had planted, past other, darkened houses, into the cul-de-sac.
When they got home, Alf made chocolate milk for Jamie, tea for himself. “You can stay up just for a bit,” Alf told him. In truth, he felt an urgent need to keep the boy near him. They carried their drinks into the living room, where Alf turned on the TV, flipping the dial and stopping when he recognized an old movie from the Fifties, Moby Dick. They sat together on the couch while Alf explained the plot. The great whale swam towards the tiny distant ship (so obviously a model) like a cruising low mound of snow. Then Ahab’s peg leg stamped down the decks, while his men crouched below, listening in hatred and fear.
“How big is a whale?” Jamie said.
“Oh, the biggest ones might be over a hundred feet. From here all the way to Olmsteads’ over there.” His son watched the porch light across the road, where it flickered among leaves.
Something in the boy’s expression, the curiosity and trust, moved Alf, and he reached out to squeeze Jamie’s knee, feeling with gratitude the little bony knob under the denim. He wanted to be here: that was the realization he kept glimpsing. He wanted to be here, in this house. But he didn’t feel he was here, not entirely: a faint panic was unsettling him. He looked at the stairs in the hall, the white rails leading up into darkness.
Standing up, he went to the kitchen and cut some bread for toast. Billy’s house, he thought suddenly. My God, how much did the boy know? From behind came a quiet tap at the door and, turning, he saw a large moth fluttering outside the screen. He watched in a kind of stupor as the insect, so frail and yet so tenacious, banged repeatedly at the mesh, banged out its life, it seemed, with no idea it was harming itself.
When he heard the shattering of glass, he thought immediately it was the television tube. Then came the peel of tires, Red’s howling lament from the yard. Racing down the hall, Alf turned the corner and saw Jamie just where he had left him, sitting on the couch in his jeans and pyjama top. The television was still working — in a long shot, Moby Dick was pounding and lifting the little ship with its toothpick masts — but pieces of the shattered window littered the rug like the leavings of an ice storm.
Jamie’s face was pale, his eyes glassy, filled with the faraway look of someone listening to the meander of his own thoughts. To the side of his forehead, just starting to bleed, was a rising lump. On the couch beside him, as if he had been playing with it, was a dark, smooth chunk of rock about the size of a lopsided baseball. Bound to it with masking tape was a piece of paper.
It was not until the next morning, returning from the hospital with the police, that Alf read the crudely lettered note. HOPE YOUR HAPPY NOW WALKER THIS IS YOUR DOING FUCK YOU DIE.
62
AT THE HOSPITAL, they had covered Jamie’s eyes with gauze, to keep them from drying out, and held the pads in place with strips of tape that masked much of his upper face, giving him the appearance of a bug with bulging eyes — an insect boy, resting against the huge pillow. Three days after the rock had come through the window, he was still unconscious.
Alf sat in a leatherette chair by the bed. It was nearly eleven o’clock. He had been in the room since seven. He watched in a kind of trance, adrift on his own thoughts, at the same time sensitive to every sign — or at least to the possibility of a sign — from the bed. Jamie’s mouth was open a little. Alf couldn’t hear him breathe in, but the exhalations came in huffs, too brief to be sighs, yet suggesting to Alf a dangerous weariness, as if the boy were close to giving up. Alf had the impression that Jamie was doing some work — some vast labour, alone, in the dark. He wanted to help, would have given his right arm to go down into that darkness and put his shoulder to the immense weight Jamie was lifting by himself, whatever that weight was, but all he could do was watch helplessly from the sidelines, not even sure what was going on. He thought of a time in the arena, years ago, when Joe had got knocked out during a hockey game. Joe’s coach had vaulted over the boards and run slipping across the ice, while the other players had milled around the motionless little body in its purple jersey. Watching from the stands, Alf had not joined them. He didn’t want to appear hysterical, didn’t want to embarrass Joe, didn’t want to break the unspoken masculine code that forbade overreacting to physical danger. And after a minute, Joe had got up, slowly, and skated to the bench grinning at the applause from the other parents while Alf watched in relief and pride. The boy had proved he could take it. Alf tried to wrap himself in the same spirit of resilience now — his boys could take it — but Jamie had been unconscious for so long. It was true, the doctors had reassured them that though it might take time, the chances were good that Jamie would recover. Yet Alf was experiencing a dread unlike anything in his life. He was alert to every movement in the vast bed. If Jamie’s breathing paused, he was up in a flash, worrying. If the flow of IV seemed to stop, he was in the hall, looking for a nurse. Everything in his body craved action, the leap over the boards, the slipping run across the ice, but this time he had no choice: all he could do was watch.
Alf smoothed the blanket and touched his son’s forehead, which was
warm. The bump itself, mostly hidden by the eye patches, had begun to subside, a yellow-purplish swell no worse than many Jamie had sustained before, and yet worse, the doctor said, because the rock had caught him on the temple. The word had turned odd, traitorous, in Alf’s mind. A temple was a place where people prayed (he thought of fluted pillars, like the ones outside the post office in Johnsonville), and at the same time it was part of the forehead, a mysterious, fragile, small spot: an inch either way and Jamie might have been spared. Above the bandages, Jamie’s hair flamed in wild tufts.
He smoothed his son’s hair and bent to him, whispering for perhaps the hundredth time. “It’s Daddy, Jamie. I’m right here.” For a moment the breathing paused. It seemed to him that Jamie might be listening. Perhaps he was considering the word “Daddy,” down there in the dark. Alf imagined him wandering in a labyrinth, trying to feel his way out. Hearing the word, he might turn in the direction it had come from, and so start up the long passage that slanted towards the light. Then the breathing resumed: perhaps he was coming on the right path now, and perhaps he was heading the other way, confused, into a deeper darkness.
Alf threw himself back in the leatherette chair. Bastards, he thought. Who had done this thing? Someone who blamed him for bringing the union in — for driving Intertex out. Someone with a grudge going back years, who knew? The police, so far, had come up with nothing.
He lurched forward again, thinking he caught a movement from the bed. But the bandaged face lay as still as before. A bubble rose brightly through the throat of the intravenous bottle.
Then Margaret was there, crossing the floor with swift steps.
Alf came awake, sitting upright in his chair. Her gaze had already fixed on the bed. In her arm was a paper bag, which he knew contained things she would need for the night. The hospital was willing to supply an orderly to sit overnight with Jamie, but Margaret insisted on doing it herself. Alf had offered to spell her off, but she’d refused.
