by Mick Lowe
Sworski was interrupted by an outburst of cheering and applause.
And nor was that all, the long-time former president added. The new executive had not taken the news of the trusteeship at all well, and they had left together in a huff, to attend to union business elsewhere, supposedly in Port Colborne. Finally Sworski paused. “Are there any questions?”
Tommy Rafftery was on his feet at once. He was seated in the front row, and he turned now to address the gathering. Everyone knew Rafftery as a hardcore Mine Miller who led the notorious “flying squad.” Should an unwary Mine Miller wearing his union jacket stumble unwittingly into a Steelworker bar and find himself surrounded by hostile Steel goons, he needed only to reach a telephone and call Tommy Rafftery. Rafftery would do the rest, calling the Simard brothers and a couple of other scrappers, and within minutes they’d converge on the bar and rescue their beleaguered brother in a fine frenzy of broken glass and blood and beer. Tommy Rafftery was a Golden Gloves boxer, it was true, but during the raids he and his flying squad aimed to break bones and inflict grievous bodily harm. Their aim was not merely to hurt their victims, but to hospitalize them. What other way was there to fight back against a much larger, more powerful force from outside the community that seemed intent on destroying their much-loved, hard-won union?
Rafftery was also a hot-tempered speaker, and he gave full vent to the anger, frustration and elation they were all feeling, urging action now, direct action, to make good the Court’s ruling: “This is our Union Hall!” he thundered, “and no buncha blacklegged Steelworker scabby bastards is gonna take it from us! I say we occupy the cocksucker—excuse my French—and send those gutless stooges all the way back to Pittsburgh!”
The meeting roared its approval, and a handful of Rafftery’s friends vaulted suddenly onto the stage. The rest were on their feet and surging toward the stage. Rafftery’s bully boys reached down to pull another half-dozen or so members up onto the stage, and, accompanied by a colossal roar from those still down below, they rushed toward the startled Sworski, and hoisted the union leader right off his feet and onto their shoulders.
Jake tensed, and found himself instinctively watching Spike’s reaction to being manhandled, but Sworski’s initial consternation quickly gave way to a wide smile. The union leader soon relaxed, and yielded to the myriad of rough hands who were passing him feet first overhead and down off the stage. On the floor a handful of strapping rank-and-filers were waiting to hoist Sworski triumphantly onto their shoulders. They led the assembly to the door of the Hall, stopping abruptly when they realized that the door frame was much too low to allow them to pass through with Spike borne aloft on their shoulders. They put Spike down, and Jake watched as Sworski hastily straightened his suit and tie, which had gone askew in the melee. He stepped through the door and out to the foyer, where he was once again hoisted aloft at the head of the joyous, boisterous procession. He was carried to the stairs to the second floor, and steadied himself on the shoulders of his bearers as they began to climb the broad staircase.
Jake, relaxed now that he saw Spike was in no real danger, had fallen to the back of the procession as it ascended the broad steps leading to the second floor.
At that moment Foley Gilpin arrived at the Hall. Sensing the chaos at once, he turned to Jake. “What’d I miss?” What’s going on here?”
“Crazy shit!” declared Jake. “I’ve never seen anything like it! Looks like we’re gonna occupy the Mine Mill Hall!”
But the little reporter only frowned at Jake’s news. “Oh yeah? Better come look at this.” He led Jake down the stairs from the foyer to the street level entrance doors to the Hall, and gestured at something outside the glassed-in doors at the entrance. Jake glanced out towards Regent Street, and there was Henry Hoople standing at the centre of a small knot of visibly angry Steelworker supporters. Jake’s old nemesis appeared to be passing a flask of something around and giving orders, pointing towards downtown, dispatching a pair of his followers in that direction. Jake knew that Hoople’s star had risen steadily in the union since the ascendency of the new executive and his own appointment as shop steward, and now it appeared he was taking charge of a small but determined gang of union dissidents who wanted no part of what was transpiring inside the Mine Mill Hall. With the new executive out of town, it even appeared that Hoople had become the leader of the pro-Steel faction by default. Jake turned away from the door. “Hey, Dad! Come check this out!”
Big Bill quickly descended from the now-deserted lobby to the front door. He, too, frowned as he peered through the glass door. “Hmmm. Somebody better let Spike know …”
Father and son then hastened up the two flights of stairs, first to the lobby, then around the corner up the stairs that led to the second floor offices where they discovered the jubilant crowd had deposited Spike back onto his feet just outside his old office.
“Go in, Spike!”
“Yeah, it’s where ya belong!”
Sworski appeared hesitant at first, but then he broke into a broad smile. “Very well then.” He tried the door. It was unlocked, and he went right in.
The crowd cheered. Even the secretaries, who had been flustered at first by all the rough commotion, were relaxed and smiling now.
Big Bill shouldered his way through the crowd, and Jake followed. They reached Spike’s office, tapped on the door, and entered swiftly. They found Sworski alone, still re-adjusting his desk chair.
“Spike, Henry Hoople’s organizing his goon squad out there on the street, and I don’t like the looks of it,” Bill McCool warned his old friend and comrade in arms in a low voice. “This thing could get rough … Might be a good idea to send the girls home early.”
Sworski’s good humour evaporated instantly, as he moved toward the window to see for himself.
Jake tensed once again. “Better be careful at that window, Spike—Mr. Sworski, sir …”
Sworski paused briefly to look down on the knot of protesters below, which had now grown to a small band in the gathering dusk.
The union leader returned to his desk and tilted the chair back before clasping his hands in a meditative pose. Then he turned toward Big Bill. “What were you thinking, Bill?”
“Well, Hoople’s obviously up to somethin’ out there. I’m just afraid if he gets enough troops they might try and rush the building.”
Sworski nodded gravely. “What do you suggest?”
“Well, there’s only three ways into the building from down there: the two entrances out front, and the side door … Those two doors are what worry me most, being mainly glass and all. But then they’d still have to come up the stairs into the foyer … Suppose we try to stop ’em down there? Tell some a’ the boys to go downstairs into the bar, grab as many beer bottles as they can handle, and then smash them all over those steps …”
Jake was impressed at his father’s quick thinking. Both he and Sworski knew the steps were made out of a hard, marble-like substance. Littered with jagged shards of broken glass, they would present a formidable obstacle. But Big Bill wasn’t finished.
“And we’d still be on the higher ground … Get Tommy Rafftery and his boys stationed at the top of those stairs, and tell ’em to hose the steps down with the fire hoses …”
Sworski nodded thoughtfully. It was true there were high-pressure emergency hoses in two glass-fronted cases inset into the foyer walls—manned by hardy defenders who could hose down the slippery, glass-strewn steps, the building’s most obvious weak spots might quickly become nearly impregnable. “And the side door?” he asked the elder McCool.
All three of them knew the door would admit only a single person at a time. It gave way to a long, steep flight of stairs, equally narrow, that rose to the back of the office floor, bypassing the first floor altogether.
“Simple,” answered Jake’s dad. “Get a bunch of the stacking chairs from the main hall, stand up here, and start throwin’ ’em down at that door.”
Sworski and Jake understood th
e ingenuity of this at once. Individually, each chair was a flimsy construction of tubular metal and cheap wood, barely strong enough to support the weight of a full grown man. But thrown willy-nilly down the steep stairway into a dense tangle against the crash-bar of the exterior side door, they would become a dense, immovable tangle.
“Get Tommy and his boys all set up, Spike, and they can take the early shift. Tell ’em my boy ’n me’ll relieve ’em about midnight or so … We could be in for a long night.”
Sworski nodded in agreement and rose to go back out onto the office floor to address his supporters, and to begin implementing Big Bill’s stratagems. The girls were about to get the rest of the afternoon off.
“Oh, and Spike? Wouldn’t hurt to get somebody on the blower and get as many men in here as we can as quickly as possible. But tell ’em to get a move on—once we’re barricaded in here nobody gets in—or out … Mind if I use your phone?”
Spike paused at the door to take in Bill McCool’s parting words, and then he nodded. “No, of course not, Bill. Go right ahead.”
Jake and his father were alone then, and Jake listened as his dad called his brothers—Jake’s uncles—Bud and Walt. The conversations with each were basically the same: cursory descriptions of the crisis unfolding at the Hall, admonitions to act quickly, and to park well away from the Hall, on the side streets up in the West End in behind the Hall, and then to slip in through the back of the building, use the side entrance to come in. And plan to spend the night.
Outside meanwhile, Hoople’s minions were loping swiftly down Elm Street. They paused impatiently at Lorne Street just long enough for the light to change and then resumed their urgent ramble toward downtown Sudbury. The pair separated at Durham Street, one man turning right, heading up Durham toward the Coulson, while the other continued down Elm, on his way to the Frontenac Hotel and the other dive bars that studded the old Borgia district like so many rotten teeth in an ailing jaw.
Hoople’s orders to the pair had been simple enough: roust as many rubbies and rounders as possible and recruit them to swell the ranks of the dissident, though still small, throng he was assembling outside the Mine Mill Hall. Both his minions were dubious about their prospects; it would be difficult, after all, to lure a bunch of alkies away from a sure, steady supply of drinks in their familiar saloons out to the uncertain future of this impromptu event on the street outside the Union Hall blocks away up the Elm Street hill. Besides, Hoople’s little hip flask was already running low. But Hoople had brushed these objections aside, with assurances that soon his troops would enjoy as much booze as they could handle—and free booze at that—once they had stormed the Hall and commandeered the basement bar. “Tell ’em that!” Hoople sputtered. “Tell ’em soon they’ll have all the free drinks they could ever want if they’ll just get their asses up here! Just get as many men up here as soon as you can! And while you’re downtown use the pay phones to call as many of our guys as you can think of, tell ’em what’s happening, and to get their asses back down here soon’s they can! Got plenty a’ dimes, you two? Well, get goin’ then!”
It was a difficult chore—many of their would-be recruits had already spent a long afternoon in the downtown saloons, and greeted the entreaties of their would-be recruiters only with bleary eyes and stupefaction. But Hoople was proved right. The phrase “free booze” quickly captured universal attention, and soon it was on every man’s lips, spreading from table to table like a sacred mantra. One by one the rubbies rose unsteadily to their feet and began straggling toward the exits.
Hoople was heartened to see that now his troops completely filled the sidewalk in front of the Hall and that the dense, milling throng would soon begin spilling out over the curb, and into the street itself. But so what if they caused a traffic jam? That was not his concern. So much the better if they snarled traffic. It would simply add to the chaos. Mischief was afoot, and, from Henry Hoople’s standpoint, the more of it the merrier.
But as the hours passed by and it was growing dark, Hoople and his henchmen were becoming worried. The early, adrenal excitement of what they were doing was wearing off, and the crowd in front of the Mine Mill Hall was growing restive—and thirsty. Where was all this free booze they’d been promised? Maybe it was time to make their move? Hoople quietly summoned one of his chief lieutenants, Bill “Shakey” Akerley, a utility labourer in and around the Copper Cliff smelter complex. Akerley had earned his nickname as the result of the pronounced tremor in his hands, from one too many benders. Shakey probably no longer had a tooth left in his head and Hoople doubted if he could even read or write, which barely mattered in his job of sweeping the dusty smelter floors or shovelling up conveyor belt spills in the baghouse and sintering plant, and mattered not a damn to Henry Hoople right now, as he stood between his restless crowd and the inviting, mainly glass, front doors of the Mine Mill Hall.
“Listen, Bill,” Hoople spoke softly into Akerley’s ear. He couldn’t help it, but the man invariably reminded him of the actor Walter Brennan, only Akerley was taller, and skinny. Akerley squinted at Hoople intently, “Yeah?” Hoople wished he’d never thought of the Brennan angle. “Bill, I want you to go up to the doors over there and look in. Then tell me what you see.”
Akerley, hunched over as always, shuffled dutifully over to the doors.
Inside was Tommy Rafftery, who was poised and relaxed and had been waiting for just such a moment.
Rafftery had prepared by removing his upper, which concealed the loss of his front teeth in some now long-forgotten scrap. Tommy sat at the top of the front stairs, holding the nozzle of a fire hose over his shoulder like a bazooka that could be brought into play at a moment’s notice. As soon as he sensed a movement outside the door he broke into a wide, malevolent toothless smile.
“Yeah, that’s right, you potlickin’ Pittsburgh pissant,” he yelled. “Ya want some a’ this? C’mon then, ya sleazy buncha gutless bastards, come right on in!”
Akerley couldn’t hear Rafftery’s words through the heavy plate glass of the doors, but the sight of it all—the toothless, leering smile below a pug’s nose that had been broken countless times—the dark, glistening shards of broken glass on the slippery wet steps leading up to the fearsome Rafftery—was all Akerley needed to see. He hastily retreated back to the crowd.
“Rafftery ’n his goons is in there, Henry, all set up ’n waitin’ for us to try ’n rush the place! They got the fire hoses out, and broken beer bottles all over them stairs!” he wheezed out excitedly, in a voice much louder than Hoople would have liked.
“Shhh! Lower your voice, Bill,” Hoople tried to calm his hyperventilating confederate, who was now shaking in earnest. “We ain’t going in that way!” Akerley declared, still loud enough to be overheard by the knot of protestors who, sensing something important was happening, had now huddled closely around to hear Akerley’s report. “Leastways I sure ain’t.”
“There, there now, Bill,” Hoople tried to soothe Akerley with a confidence he did not entirely feel inwardly.
“That Tommy Rafftery’s crazier’n a shithouse rat, Henry, ’n I ain’t goin’ in there!” Akerley’s voice rose to a high whine of protest.
“All right, all right Bill,” Hoople replied, redoubling the tone of reassurance. Damn! But the damage was done, Hoople sensed, as news of Akerley’s reconnaissance rippled through the crowd behind him. Clearly a frontal assault was out of the question. That left the side door.
Hoople turned to face the crowd, searching for a handful of faces he knew—and trusted. There weren’t many. He certainly was thin on the ground if Shakey Akerley was one of his best men. But the newly arriving recruits from downtown were likely even less reliable.
Reluctantly Hoople pointed at Akerley once again. “All right, Bill, you and you and you and you” —he picked out faces almost at random—“you all come with me.”
He led them, well away from the front door where he knew Tommy Rafftery awaited, around the corner of the hall and down t
he narrow passage that led to the side door. Soon, away from the street lights that illuminated the sidewalks in front of the Hall, they were enveloped in gloom, which gave the little expedition a spooky, surreptitious feel. Without being told, each man lowered his voice to a loud whisper. In about fifty yards they reached the side door. Hoople fully expected to find it locked, but to his surprise and delight he felt the solid wooden door give when he pushed on it. But then it jammed against something inside.
“It’s not locked!” Hoople proclaimed in triumph. “But it’s jammed on something just inside there …”
“All right, you four men, push hard against it with your shoulders!” Hoople ordered in a stage whisper.
They did so, and once again the door gave way, momentarily sending hopes soaring among Hoople’s little band. But after it was opened only a few inches, the door again encountered a rather spongy, mysterious resistance.
“Okay, now! Everybody push now! Aaaand hard! Harder! Aaand now! One more time, boys! Give ’er shit like nice!” But it was no use. The harder they pushed, the stouter the resistance became. Just as Big Bill had foreseen, the jumble of stacking chairs tangled against the door at the bottom of the staircase inside settled into a solid mass the more force was applied against them from outside.
Again and again the foursome strained against the door, to less and less effect. Hoople sighed. Clearly they would never gain access to the Hall this way. The front doors seemed equally difficult. But the Mine Millers were all trapped inside. Very well then. They’d just have to wait them out.
“Okay, okay boys, that’s enough,” Hoople whispered loudly, at last. “C’mon, let’s go back around front.”
Hoople and his little party headed back down the passageway toward Regent Street.
