by Mick Lowe
“So-so how is it down there?” Jake asked finally, after the last strains of the Dylan tune had faded away.
Ben shrugged. “Oh, the hockey season was so-so. But what was really interesting was what happened off the ice … Ever hear of the SDS?”
Jake shook his head.
“SDS—that stands for the Students for a Democratic Society. I ended up joining the Ann Arbor Chapter.”
“But I thought you were down there to play hockey.”
“Sure, but I’m still a student, and some grad students from my political philosophy class invited me to a meeting, so I went.”
“So what do they believe in, this SDS?”
“The biggest thing is participatory democracy, I guess.”
Ben noticed his brother’s vacant stare.
“Participatory democracy. People should have control over the decisions that directly affect their lives, is all … And the other thing that really got to me was that at the meeting they were all talking about something they called ‘white skin privilege.’”
“Were they black?”
“No. And that’s just the thing. None of them were black, but they were very concerned about black people … I never thought of it that way, you know? That we have some kind of privilege just because we were born with white skin.”
Jake shrugged. “No, me neither. But it does make sense, kind of.”
“It was the first time I’d ever been around people who were more concerned with others, rather than with just their own futures. And that made me think.”
Jake reflected in silence on his brother’s words. He felt almost embarrassed at Ben’s new-found conviction. It was almost as if Ben had suddenly decided to convert to some new, seemingly alien, religion. He studied his older brother as he began noodling absent-mindedly on the well-travelled, mellow sounding Gibson. He was attired in a blue workshirt, with the sleeves rolled up and blue jeans over scuffed brown leather cowboy boots.
Suddenly Jake brightened, and sat up straight.
“Hey! Wanna go into town and hear some live music? Jackie Washington’s at the Coulson.”
This time it was Ben who returned a blank stare.
“Jackie Washington! Great old blues man from Hamilton!” Jake was already heading for the door.
“Sit tight. I’ll see if there’s enough gas in my car …”
10
Participatory Thuggery
Well, it was certainly the same old Coulson, Ben thought to himself as he surveyed the crowded, noisy bar. Same old reek of cigarette smoke and stale beer and piss that always seemed to overpower the deodorant placed in the urinals in the men’s john.
Same old crowd, too. Rough downtown trade, staggering unsteadily from table to table in search of the next romance, the next high, the next free beer. Raggedy ass—bad teeth, bad skin, unhealthy—the unmistakable air of poverty, the underbelly of any mining camp, lambent just over the brassy veneer of the noise, colour, motion and music. At least that was cool. Jake was right about this cat Washington. A black bluesman with an infectious smile, Jackie was of an indeterminant age, and his hundred-watt grin and sly, salacious groove lit up the room.
Ain’t no use in me workin’ so hard
Got me a gal in the rich folks’ yard
Kills me a chicken
Sends me the wing …
Thinks I’m workin’
Ain’t doin’ a goddamned thing …
… But I’m thinkin’ bout her—
Her, and a dozen other women …
It struck Ben as the kind of place where someone could get stabbed any minute. Toto, we’re not in college any more.
Jake scooped his draft glass off the table and began to wander through the big room, just checking out the action. He spotted Paul Dunn leaning against the far wall. An aspiring blues man in his own right, Dunn was intently studying Washington’s licks, grinning broadly at the lyrics of the performer’s talking blues. Paul spotted Jake and nodded. Jake nodded back, lifting his glass in mute salutation.
They stayed until closing time, and then drifted out into Durham Street with everyone else. The crowd had thinned out as Jake and Ben turned up the laneway beside the Coulson block. They were alone when he came at them from the shadows of a doorway. Jake instinctively squared up to fend off the dark-clad assailant whose face he couldn’t see in the dark alleyway. But to Jake’s surprise their attacker took a step back, turning sideways and lashing out with a kick that struck Jake in the kneecap. It felt like his knee had exploded. Jake hit the asphalt, hard, and he was still flat on his back, watching helplessly, when the guy went to work on Ben with the pipe. His brother did what he could to defend himself, but Ben was no match for the much larger attacker, who was working now with cool, murderous efficiency. The only sounds were of metal on bone, Ben’s moans, Jake’s howls of outrage and the grunts of their assailant as he put the boots to the now-prostrate and defenceless Ben. Jake himself felt faint at the suddenness and lethality of it all. Eventually, though, there was one other sound as their attacker, his work evidently done, stood over them, breathing heavily.
“There, you little Commie motherfuck. Participate that!” The pipe made a hollow metallic clang as he threw it down on the pavement of the alley.
And then he was gone.
The events that followed were a terrible blur. Jake finally gathered himself enough to roll over and check on Ben, who was already going into convulsions, his legs and eyelids twitching. He didn’t respond either as Jake shook him, screaming his name into the dark night. Finally Jake composed himself enough to hobble back out onto Durham Street, where he beseeched the last of the Coulson crowd to call for help.
Jake hurried back to Ben, and cradled his brother’s head in his lap. Ben was no longer convulsing, but he was still unconscious, with frothy bubbles of something—Jake couldn’t tell in the dark, but he hoped it wasn’t blood—forming on his lips, and then the police arrived, a pair of detectives in shapeless, ill-fitting suits, skinny ties, both wearing fedoras. The dicks were next to useless, all but yawning and scratching their asses as they plied Jake with questions about yet another back-alley mugging of low-lifes at Coulson closing time. They hadn’t either the sensitivity or the suppleness to even crouch beside Jake as he sat on the greasy asphalt attempting to comfort his brother. Instead they loomed overhead and spoke down to him. No, they weren’t robbed and no, he hadn’t seen their assailant’s face well enough to make an ID. He had no idea what had provoked the attack. Yeah, he would meet them back at the cop shop later to make a full statement.
The ambulance attendants arrived next. They searched for a pulse in Ben’s neck, found none and pronounced Ben McCool, his head still in Jake’s lap, dead at the scene. Ben was twenty-one.
Next they turned their attention to Jake who was beginning to shiver in the steamy night air. They bundled him into a woolly blanket, helped him onto the stretcher, loaded him into the back of the ambulance where there was, at last, just enough light to allow Jake to see clearly that his long, waking nightmare had just begun.
11
Burden to Bear
The funeral was held at Christ the King, a venerable, dark-brown bastion of Catholicism overlooking downtown Sudbury. Jake was surprised to see Spike Sworski among the mourners. He hadn’t seen the union leader since the night of Ben’s murder. This bum knee was really putting a crimp in his income. The thought shamed him immediately. Here Ben wasn’t even in the ground, and Jake was thinking money.
Jake was even more surprised when the priest yielded his pulpit to Sworski. He was his usual dapper self in a three-piece summer-weight suit with a matching pocket puff and tie. Sworski’s gaze swept over the crowded church, and then lingered over the McCool clan, sitting shoulder to shoulder in the front pew.
He nodded slightly at them and cleared his throat before extracting a pair of reading glasses from his vest pocket. “I know Ben McCool was not formally a member of our union,” he began. “But in his honour, and in honou
r of his family, I think it only fitting that I read the following from the Mine Mill Union Burial Service Ritual. These words, I believe, date back to the Western Federation of Miners, the union of legendary leaders like Big Bill Haywood and Joe Hill. They were the first to organize hard rock miners in western North America, fighting successfully for the eight-hour day and many other amenities and rights we now take for granted. The Western Fed was formed in 1893, and was the predecessor union to the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers.”
Sworski paused, and then began to read from his notes:
“We are now to pay our last tribute of friendship and brotherly love to one of our members who has laid down the burdens and responsibilities of life.”
Alice McCool dabbed at her eyes.
“No more will his voice be heard in our councils; no more will he feel the gentle touch of love for kindred and friends, or tender pity for the unfortunate and afflicted, for his heart has ceased to beat; no more will he experience the beauties of nature or experience the joy, the pleasures or the sorrows and distress of this life. He sleeps his last long sleep in the grave. We yet have a burden to bear; we can yet find enjoyment in this life; but to him these have passed forever. He has gone to ‘that land from whose bourne no traveller e’er returns.’
“Will his eyes open on a better and happier land, a land where there will be no sorrow and no weeping, but a place of eternal happiness? Our reason says perhaps, while the hope and loving of our hearts says yes. And now, as we deposit the sprig of evergreen and consign the remains of our brother to their last resting place let each one resolve ‘to so live, that when thy time comes to join that innumerable caravan, which movest to that mysterious realm where each shall take his chamber in the silent hall of death, thou go not like the quarry slave at night, scourged to his dungeon; but soothed and sustained by an unfaltering trust. Approach thy grave like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant dreams.’
“Goodbye, Benjamin.”
Jake’s mom was weeping silently but openly now, as Sworski descended from the pulpit and gently laid a cedar tip on top of Ben’s closed casket.
Jake was surprised how moved he felt at the union leader’s words and demeanour, which lent so much dignity to the service. But then, he had never heard the man speak in public when he wasn’t being heckled, hounded, badgered and otherwise vilified.
Sworski then stepped to the front pew where he paused to console each of the McCools in turn, bending slightly to shake hands with each of the men, and to whisper a few words.
“I’m truly sorry about your brother, Jake … Come see me at the Hall next week. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Jake nodded.
12
Gilpin
Jake sat in his accustomed chair in the anteroom on the second floor of the Hall. Or at least he started to, before rising to his feet and beginning to pace the floor. He’d found it nearly impossible to sit still since the night of Ben’s murder. Whenever he was alone and idle lately, like when he was trying to fall asleep, all the torments and self-doubts returned. The truth was, he blamed himself for Ben’s death; how could he not? It had been his idea, after all, that they go into town to that ratty old Coulson.
Sworski’s approach interrupted Jake’s torrent of self-recrimination.
Jake expected to once again be ushered in to the president’s office, but instead he was led down an unfamiliar hallway and shown into a large room filled by a long table. A single man sat at the table, a pen and notebook in front of him.
“Jake McCool, Foley Gilpin,” Sworski began. Jake shook hands with Gilpin who, he thought, might just have been the ugliest man he’d ever seen. His head seemed too large for his body. And it was shaved bald—or nearly so. It was fringed with a short, fuzzy growth that served mainly to call attention to Gilpin’s egg-shaped head. The man struck Jake as a true egghead.
“Foley’s a newspaperman—and an old friend—from Chicago,” Sworski hastened to add, perhaps sensing Jake’s immediate ambivalence about Gilpin. “He’s come up to help us fight off the Steelworkers.” The trio sat down at the boardroom table.
“Now, Jake, we just have a few questions about what happened that night—that night with Ben …”
It was Gilpin who led the way, questioning Jake closely about that terrible night. The newsman recorded Jake’s answers meticulously in his notebook. Here, at last, was the kind of debrief Jake had expected from the police. Finally Jake reached the point where the pipe clattered to the ground.
“And you’re quite sure that’s exactly what he said? ‘Participate that, you little Commie motherfuck?’” Gilpin frowned at the words.
“I’m sure, yes sir.”
“What do you think he meant by that?”
“I-I’m not sure. But just before that Ben had been telling me about this new club, or something, at his university that he’d joined, Students for Democracy or something, and how they believed in participatory democracy as a way to make things better … I’ve wondered ever since if there was some connection …”
Gilpin nodded. “Yes, Students for a Democratic Society. I’ve heard of them … And you say he turned sideways and took a step backwards instead of attacking you head on? And then he lashed out with a kick?”
Jake nodded, and Gilpin’s frown deepened.
The newspaperman took a deep breath, shook his head, and then threw his pen down onto his notebook. The interview was over. Sworski stood up.
“Well Jake, thanks for coming in today.”
Jake took his leave of Gilpin, and Sworski walked him back down the hall.
Sworski returned to the boardroom immediately, and sat down next to Gilpin. “Well Foley, what do you make of this?”
The newsman grimaced, and shook his head. “Nothing good I’m afraid.”
“Why?”
“Start with the way they were attacked. Clearly this was no run-of-the-mill mugger if young McCool’s description is accurate. The assailant fought like someone specially trained in hand-to-hand combat. That tells me he’s ex-military. Former Airborne, maybe. They’re trained to kill like this, by hand, using stealth, and at close quarters. So are the Green Berets, Marine Corps, Rangers, the SAS in England. These are elite outfits, their members are few and far between, and to be here, in the streets of Sudbury?
“It makes no sense, unless …”
“Unless?”
“Unless the Agency has started to take a special interest in the raiding of your union.”
“The Agency? You can’t mean the CIA! Interfering in the affairs of a friendly nation? Surely even they wouldn’t dare!”
“Don’t kid yourself, Spike. They’ve been operating behind the doctrine of plausible deniability for at least the past ten years. They’ll cover their tracks so well that no one will ever be able to prove they were even here—not you, not anyone else. Not now. Not ever.”
Sworski listened in silent, stubborn disbelief, but Gilpin noticed that the colour was beginning to drain from his friend’s face.
“And that means you have a problem, my friend. You’re up against not only the Steelworkers’ Union, but also an outfit with the resources of the U.S. government … I don’t put it past them to run a covert operation right here, right under our nose—after all, they overthrew the Arbenz government in Guatemala back in ’54 … Popular, democratically elected government out on its ear. They used the local press to discredit him, the Catholic clergy got into the act, and Bob’s-your-uncle the world’s once again safe for the United Fruit Company.”
“But, but how did you learn this, if it was all so clandestine as you say?”
Gilpin answered with a shrug and rueful grin. “Because I was there. Paper sent me down to cover it. Turns out Chicago has an inordinate number of shareholders in United Fruit, along with the Dulles boys. You’ve heard of them. Brother Allan ran the CIA and big brother John Foster runs the Sta—”
Sworski cut him o
ff with an impatient wave of his hand. “Yes, yes I know who they are.”
“The government of Jacobo Arbenz Gutman was elected with a mandate to implement land reform—to take land from the huge landowners, like United Fruit, and distribute it to poor, landless peasants, many of them Maya Indians. But this threatened the profits and dividends of United Fruit, and was construed as Communist influence in the region. A paramilitary force was trained and equipped by the CIA, they invaded and, combined with a robust black ops campaign that included setting up a special radio station with a powerful signal beamed straight into Guatemala—the Voice of Liberation, don’t you know—Arbenz was gone in a matter of weeks. Soviet influence in Uncle Sam’s backyard was ended, and the Monroe Doctrine was restored. No outside powers allowed into the Western Hemisphere, which still includes Canada, last time I checked. And not only that, didn’t you tell me the brothers Dulles are on the board of the big company here, International Nickel?”
Sworski could only nod glumly. There was no doubt about it—he was definitely looking pale.
Gilpin let out a short, sarcastic laugh. “Not the kind of fellas to sit idly by and watch a ‘Commie outfit’ like Mine Mill gain a chokehold at the company that produces eighty to ninety percent of the free world’s nickel, their company, after all. Without nickel as a steel alloy there’d be no B-52s, no Bomarc missiles, no nuclear warheads.”
“Yes, yes, I know all that,” Sworski agreed impatiently. “But even if what you’re saying is true and they went so far as to send an assassin up here, why target Benjamin McCool? Why not his brother, who was my bodyguard, after all? That I could understand, at least. That would make some sense.”
Gilpin pondered for a moment, and shrugged. “Maybe that would have seemed too obvious. The trick here is to get in and get out without arousing suspicion … Plausible deniability. This way they deal a body blow to one of your foremost families, send a message, without raising undue alarm among the local authorities. My guess is they’re not done yet … They’ll drag a red herring across the trail to divert all attention away from the murder of Ben McCool …”
