The Stubborn Season

by Lauren B. Davis

  “I never was a real Communist, not like Rory,” said David, who seemed now to be speaking mostly to himself. “He believed in it all. Me, I just couldn’t stomach those camps anymore. Some things you have to take a stand on. I never thought we’d make it, not all the way to Ottawa, not to see the prime minister. But I thought: so, we’ll make something happen.

  “When we got to Calgary we were feeling pretty proud of ourselves. We had ourselves a tag day, even though the mayor said we couldn’t, and we raised over a thousand dollars, too. Some of the boys got cocky, went into the city relief office and held the chairman of the Alberta Relief Commission prisoner for a couple of hours. He said we were a ‘dangerous revolutionary army.’ “ David laughed bitterly. “I only heard about that, wasn’t in on that part. But I sort of liked the name. More men joined on after that. We heard more wanted to come, from Winnipeg and Toronto, even. Why, there were even women who wanted to come along, to provide ‘solace,’ you know? Oh … sorry.”

  “Go on,” said Irene. She was caught up in the rhythm of the trains and the travel and the hope, even knowing how it was going to end.

  “We kept going. Medicine Hat. Swift Current. Moose Jaw. Then we got word the government wasn’t gonna let us get past Regina. They called us a menace. We weren’t doing any harm. People were kind to us. They waited at the trains, fed us, gave us blankets. It was the government that was afraid of us. Bennett was afraid.

  “Don’t know how he did it, but Old Bennett, he got the railroad owners to say they needed protection all of a sudden, that we were a threat, maybe, and that we were trespassing. One day the railroads are doing everything they can to help us, the next day we’re a menace. Does that make any sense, any sense at all?”

  Irene shook her head from the shadows. Nothing made any sense.

  “We were on the road for eleven days. There were maybe two thousand of us now, and on June 14, we arrived in Regina. The province agreed we could bed down in the Exhibition Grounds and they gave us two meal tickets each a day. The people were coming out again, too, bringing us food.” David shook his head. How could he explain their dreams, the fragile blue flame of belief? How could he explain Rory’s face, the way it almost glowed, believing they were finally going to change something?

  “We had picnics. Rallies. Then Bennett tried to stall us. He took all the power away from the province, whether they liked it or not, and sent in his negotiators. Slim Evans, he gave them our demands, which everybody knew about, you understand. They’d been in the papers for months. The government negotiators said they’d never heard about them and said it with a straight face. Said Evans should head a delegation to Ottawa to see the great man himself and the men could wait there in Regina, be fed and paid twenty cents a day.

  “So, what could Slim do? He’d been asking for just such a meeting for months. Eight thousand people stood outside that night while the negotiators sorted the details. Rory and I, of course, we weren’t in the delegation, we stayed behind while they went to Ottawa, riding on the cushions, so to speak, travelling first class. They left on June 18, and four days later they came back. ‘Course, we’d heard by then. Bennett had just laughed and yelled and laughed some more. They planned to put us in a temporary camp in Lumsden.

  “Slim was a disappointed man when he got back. We all were. He called for folks to come out and drive us to Ottawa, form a convoy, but we all knew that wouldn’t happen. The roads were shit, and besides, Ottawa wasn’t going to let us move east under any means. And people were afraid to help us by then. They’d been told maybe they’d be arrested if they did.

  “But we weren’t going to be shoved back into another one of their camps. Not in Lumsden, not anywhere. Slim Evans, he was trying hard by that time to find any way out, you understand. Any way for some honour to be saved.

  “Rumours were circulating. They were coming to arrest Slim and the other leaders. Slim went to the government, trying to get amnesty for everybody but himself, trying to get them to let us disband and just go on back where we came from, to whatever homes we might have someplace, to, well … anywhere but there.”

  David’s voice trickled off to a near whisper. He hung his head and rested his arms on his knees, his fingers interlaced.

  “Go on,” Irene said.

  He lifted his face to her shadowed one again. “So, we were in Market Square, having a fundraising rally, a last-ditch attempt. Rory and I were there, in the square. You need to understand this, though, ‘cause it’s important to see how stupid it all was. There were lots of people in the square, that’s true, but only about four hundred of our boys. The rest, over a thousand others, they were just people, just ordinary people, kids and families and citizens, just curious citizens come to see us. Most of the trekkers were over watching a baseball game, see. It was Dominion Day. It was a holiday.”

  There had been the smell of cotton candy in the air, he remembered that.

  “Folks were sitting in rows of chairs, listening to the speeches. Then a note was passed up to the stage, to Slim, saying that the square’s surrounded by Mounties. There were three wagons. It was so hot they’d left the doors open so they could breathe, I guess, and we could see them, the yellow stripes on their legs. It all happened so fast. A whistle blew and then out of nowhere came the city police, swinging clubs and heading for the stage. They got to Slim Evans and hit him down and the same with George Black, and they hauled them into a wagon and off they drove. I guess they were looking for all seven leaders, but they only got two for all their trouble.”

  He remembered the look on Rory’s face, the awful pallor that had come over it, and he guessed he’d looked about the same. Their eyes had met. “We’ll stick together,” Rory had said.

  “Then out swarmed the Mounties, wearing those steel helmets they wear when they’re bringing trouble with them. It took less than a minute, maybe. Rory and I got separated.”

  David twisted and turned in the sea of bodies, trying to catch sight of his friend, feeling as if he was drowning, looking for a lifeline. He glimpsed Rory’s head, farther away with every minute, and his hand rose and then disappeared as David was swept along and he almost began to cry, and felt ashamed for it.

  “The people in the square, see, they didn’t know what was happening. They just saw these Mounties coming at them with their batons raised and they panicked. Started to run, pushing and shoving. God, the noise was terrible, like an earthquake. People went crazy, and who could blame them? They had their wives to protect, some had their children. I’ll never forget their faces. I’m telling you, they didn’t look human, they looked like animals—panicked wild animals.

  “The police, maybe they went crazy too. They flailed away at anything that moved, and it’s a terrible thing to say, but true, they hit people who were down. Women fell and were trampled. Baby carriages were knocked over.”

  There was this sound, he still heard it sometimes in his nightmares, a woman screaming and the sound of a body falling and the feel of flesh underfoot and no way to stop stepping down …

  “And there was no way to get out. Why didn’t they let those people out? What the hell did they think they’d do? A man has to protect himself, his family. They picked up stones, bricks, pieces of wood, chairs, anything they could find and flung them at the cops. ‘Course the cops came back with clubs and batons. Folks started tearing off chunks of concrete from the sidewalk and lobbing them.

  “The cops threw tear gas. Some of them were caught and tossed right back at them. But there were fellows down all over and the cops were just pummelling the hell out of them. A guy’d go down and then two or three cops’d stand over him, swinging those bats like he was a rat they’d cornered. People were yelling ‘Murderers! Murderers! Why don’t you just shoot him and be done with it?’ The crowd beat any cop unlucky enough to find himself isolated. I don’t say I blame people, but it wasn’t any better to see the beating on one side than the other. And I did my share. I had a piece of wood, torn off a bench. I swung it a
time or two.”

  David looked up and saw that Irene had covered her mouth with her hand.

  That sound, that sound of wood against skull, against bone, the sickening crunch of it, and the face of the man who fell, that puzzled, wide-eyed look just before the eyes rolled up and the knees gave out …

  “It went on for a long time,” he said. “I caught sight of Rory now and then, and he had blood on him, but so what? Everyone did.”

  Rory’s face twisted with rage, his teeth bared, his face red with blood pumping and blood spilled. He stopped and smiled and waved at David as though it was all a game and came toward him and then got hit with a billy club across the shoulder and he turned and grabbed the stick and David was hit and when he looked again there was no sight of Rory.

  “The square was clear by nine o’clock and the riot spread over to Tenth and Eleventh avenues. The Mounties moved in with horses. We kept throwing rocks and concrete and anything we could get our hands on. The cops swung clubs. Windows were smashed. Guys shimmied up poles trying to get out of the way, up onto rooftops.

  “The crowd was crazy-gone now too, and they looked for things to tear up. They were so mad, see, so scared about it all, and we’d been on the road, cooped up in camps, for so long. But no excuses.” He clenched his fists until the knuckles cracked. “I’m not making excuses for anyone. The cops made it happen, but I don’t excuse us either.

  “So, it was a riot, a full-fledged riot by ten o’clock. Cars dragged into the intersection at Eleventh and Cornwall, tear gas everywhere, windows smashed. Then somebody yelled, ‘They’ve got the guns out!’ The cops were outnumbered, but hell, we didn’t have any guns. They shot into the crowd and people started falling. Horses were screaming. This guy, I saw him get shot and crawl under a streetcar, but the cops dragged him out. Another guy was gut-shot and screaming like hell.”

  A horse fell on the street and struggled to get up but its leg was broken and a cop stopped as though he was going to shoot it in the head and then didn’t and David wished he had because the sound of a screaming horse is an awful demon-bred sound. And the sound of the horse mingled with the sound of the man who’d been shot … David felt urine run down his leg then, warm as blood. He knew what terror was and how you only felt it when you understood how paper-thin was the membrane of skin that covered you.

  “By the time it was over, seventeen people were shot, five of them just plain citizens. The cops had gone in trying to arrest seven men and ended up with more than a hundred in jail and one plainclothes cop beaten to death.

  “We were pushed back into the Exhibition Grounds and it was then, as we moved back, that I found Rory. Your uncle was sitting in an alley off Scarth. I nearly missed him. Just happened to glance over and there he was, looking like he was resting, leaning up against the wall. I called him but he didn’t answer. I went over, afraid then, for I could see the blood all over him and I thought he’d been shot. But it was weird. I walked up to him and called out, and he just looked over at me and said, ‘Hey.’ Like nothing at all was wrong, see?”

  How to describe the look on Rory’s face, puzzled and sad and something more than sad, as if he’d just seen the truth of things and the truth meant something hopeless, something loved and lost.

  “His face was swollen and his nose looked busted. I said maybe he should go to a hospital, but he said there was no need. I asked him if he was dizzy, and he said no, but he sort of stumbled as I helped him up and he leaned on me. The cops pushed us back into the Exhibition Grounds and kept the place sealed off, so we couldn’t get in or out.

  “Rory curled himself up in his bedroll, saying he had a powerful headache but it wasn’t anything that a little sleep wouldn’t sort out. I let him sleep.” If only he could take that back now. Go back and do more than just put a blanket under his head. “Lots of guys nursed wounds, and those of us who weren’t badly hurt were trying to keep things as calm as possible. We figured they were going to try and starve us out, maybe, and force us to the camp at Lumsden.

  “I guess the premier, Jimmy Gardiner, was pretty mad by then, what with Bennett pushing his weight around and taking his power away, and he blamed Ottawa for causing the riot. He finally convinced Bennett that he could get us to disperse peacefully and demanded the government throw out their ideas about sending us to the Lumsden camp. Imagine that. The same thing Slim Evans had been saying how long back? I guess if I saw Bennett on the street, I’d … well, I don’t know what I’d do and that’s the truth.

  “So, we got some food, no thanks to Bennett, and we started working on getting everybody out of the city in an orderly manner. People were frightened that maybe another riot would break out. I didn’t think there was much real chance of that. We were plain tuckered out by then, and hungry and hurt. We were all in a state of shock, maybe. We knew we couldn’t trust the government. But still, you don’t expect a thing like that, them using guns. There’s no way to prepare for it.

  “I’m getting tangled up here. I’ve never told this story before. Not all of it. Sorry.”

  He met her eyes, shrugged, and then looked down again. It was the only way he could continue making what felt like a confession, and it made him feel like a coward.

  “Your uncle ate a little that night. I saw him. I asked him how he was doing, and he said he was all right. Just tired, he said. I think, looking back on it, that something was maybe wrong with his hand then. He had his plate balanced on his knee and was eating with his fork in his left hand, his right hand in his lap. I must have noticed it at the time, but I didn’t pay much attention.”

  The look on Rory’s face a kind of peace, a kind of hopeless peace.

  “The next morning he was sick to his stomach. Said he couldn’t see right. I said we needed a doctor, and he finally agreed that maybe that was a good idea, but his speech was funny, he couldn’t move one side of his mouth.

  “He was lying on the ground and I tried to get him to sit up because he’d been sick.” David looked up at Irene suddenly, as though he’d just remembered she was there. “Do you want to hear this? Maybe I should skip over this part.”

  “I want to hear it all,” said Irene. “I want you to tell me everything.”

  He didn’t have to tell her everything. Rory vomiting blood, his eyes rolled up in his head. Rory’s body stiff in a seizure. Rory biting the end off his own tongue. She didn’t need to know.

  “All right, then. So, I got him sitting up. But I could see maybe he couldn’t walk. Big Jim Walburn and Steve Welch stayed with him while I ran to get a doctor. Those cops, they didn’t want to let me out of the Exhibition Grounds, but they said they’d send for somebody, and I said how serious it was, that we needed an ambulance quick. I didn’t trust them at first, but I guess they were all right, because a doctor came not long after. But it was too late. There wasn’t nothing they could do. Maybe if he’d been treated right when he got hit, maybe he would have been all right. But it was just too late. The doctor took one look at him and called for an ambulance right away, and I could see how mad he was, the doctor, and he yelled some pretty foul things. And the ambulance came and they wrapped Rory up in blankets, even though the day was so hot, and they put him on a stretcher. I wanted to go to the hospital with him but they wouldn’t let me. They pushed me back.

  “They wouldn’t let us out to go see him and we thought, maybe, you know, maybe when they got him to the hospital and operated, or gave him medication or something, that maybe he’d be all right.

  “The doctor came back the next day. He told us Rory had passed. He said the blow to the head caused bleeding inside the brain. There was nothing he could do. And he said he had your family’s name and a photo, even, said he’d write your mother and tell her. He said they’d probably ship the body back to you. I remember that clearly. I would have done it myself. I should have.” He pressed his thumbs into the hollow above his eyes. “He was my friend.”

  “You had no way of knowing.”

  “They shipped us ou
t the next day. Back on the trains the way we came. Going west again. And we marched in good order, because we felt like we were soldiers in a way, see. Guess maybe that sounds foolish. But it’s how we felt. I ended up back in Vancouver for a couple of weeks and then crossed the border, going east. Drifted. No one place seemed any better than any other. But that doesn’t matter. I’m rambling again.”

  “What would have happened to his body, do you think?”

  “I’m not sure. I guess maybe the city buried him.”

  “In a pauper’s grave.” And she found that hurt as much as anything, that he would lie unnamed and untended when he had been so well loved. “How did he get hurt?” she said. “Do you know?”

  “Yeah. Jim Walburn told me he saw it. There was a fellow, a civilian, mind you, just some guy who happened to be around, maybe he lived nearby. I guess he and his wife lost their baby carriage in the commotion. The guy was running around frantic, yelling and screaming had anyone seen his baby, because they were using tear gas then, and he was yelling there was poison in the air, going to kill his baby. Maybe he was from the war and thought it was the mustard gas. I guess they found the carriage overturned and the wife went crazy, thinking the baby had been trampled. The guy grabbed a cop by the lapels, not going to hurt him, just trying to get him to help, you know, like folks think a cop will help them when something bad happens.

  “Maybe the cop thought the guy was attacking him, but he started beating on him with his baton, and the guy fell. Rory saw what was going on and came up behind the cop and grabbed the baton away from him. He pushed the cop away and went to help the guy up. That’s when it happened. The Mounties saw Rory push the cop. Saw the baton in his hand and misunderstood, maybe.”

  “And the baby? Did they find the baby?” That was important, it made the difference somehow.