Some Great Thing (12 page)

At 8:30 a.m. the same Sunday, Judge Melvyn Hill was listening to Handel’s
Water Music
. He opened his back door to test
the temperature. He felt lonely but free. Lonely for company, for somebody to admire all he had made of his life, or, at least, for somebody to like him. And free of the second Mrs. Judge Melvyn Hill, Doris, who had decamped five months ago, leaving not a word, a letter, or any furniture. Doris had hated him. In their last years together, she didn’t sleep with him. Didn’t even sleep in the same room. Didn’t allow him to touch her and, if he happened to, she would turn and level the coldest of stares, ask what exactly he wanted, and remind him that he was a pompous jackass held in contempt by every citizen of Winnipeg and by the souls of most of the dead.

But today he was lonely. So, on that gloriously sunny and springlike December morning, he set out for a lengthy walk. He had no wife and few friends, but Melvyn Hill had perfect health. He was a short, slender man with a full head of hair, normal blood pressure and a good heart. He kept in shape by walking. In all but the worst weather, Melvyn Hill walked to work, to do his shopping and to go to the cinema. He was probably the only judge in Canada who owned no car.

Today, the sun blazed. The sky took on the hue of a subzero prairie day. A couple rode by on bicycles, with a hockeyhelmetted tot perched behind each parent. A woman jogged past. “Good morning,” she sang out. Melvyn Hill felt happy to be alive. He walked parallel to the curving Assiniboine River, which rose high on its banks. Someone ahead of him threw a stick. A springer spaniel tore after it, its ears flapping like wings. The dog dropped the stick and chased a squirrel. The cold, grey river ran on, its current flexing around rocks and bends.

Melvyn came to River Avenue, proceeded east and crossed Osborne Street. He decided he would turn back at Polonia
Park, now half a mile away. Polonia Park was shaped like a cereal bowl, its low, flat surface about the size of two football fields. Old, sprawling elm trees were posted like sentries around the park’s upper perimeter. Through them passed a walking path.

Melvyn planned to rest there before returning home. He had some thinking to do. Particularly urgent was his age problem. He would be sixty-five soon. Normally, when Provincial Court judges hit sixty-five, they could choose to retire. To continue, they needed a contract renewal from the provincial attorney general’s office. This was Melvyn’s preference. He pictured retirement as sad and useless—no family, no woman and not even a job. Melvyn had written the attorney general three months ago, requesting permission to carry on past age sixty-five. But he had received no response. And his sixty-fifth birthday was less than a year away. What was the hold-up?

Shouts and cries pulled Melvyn from his thoughts. Looking down into Polonia Park, he saw a scene of madness: demonstrators screamed in anger and in agony. Melvyn Hill edged down the slope and into the hub of activity. Placards were waving in the air, falling to the ground, being swung as weapons. One slammed into the face of a man in blue who was swinging a club. Several men in blue rushed into the crowd. Policemen! Ten, twenty of them, rushing down the hill. Two young boys, no older than twelve, ran into the park, stopping near the judge. Melvyn told the boys to leave the park immediately.

One boy said, “Up yours, you old fart.” The boys ran into the fray. Melvyn sighed. He would have to talk some sense
to the hotheads who had let this thing get out of control. He edged into the melee, which involved several hundred demonstrators and a growing body of cops. Melvyn found himself sandwiched between demonstrators and cops. “Let me through,” he shouted, pushing desperately. “Let me through this instant! I am a judge! Son, let me through. Young lady, let me pass. Officer. Officer! Let me go! I’ll have you know, I am a judge! I am a—” Melvyn Hill was knocked down.

It was a pleasant walk from Lipton Street to the Department of Francophone Affairs, and, at eight on a Sunday morning, no slower than waiting for a bus. It was a fantastic, springlike day. Mahatma Grafton was happy to be outside—even though he was working.

With the lean build of an ex-swimmer, Mahatma swayed as he walked, shoulders ho-humming from left to right, flat feet slapping the ground. He passed Mrs. Lipton’s restaurant, stopped at a bakery for a hot cinnamon bun and munched on it as he walked east along Westminster Avenue past treed lawns and modest homes.

During his twenty-minute stroll, Mahatma reviewed all the kinds of people he had been mistaken for in his life. Moroccans had spoken to him in Arabic, Jamaicans had assumed he was Syrian, Peruvians thought he was Andalusian and Spaniards had taken him for a Mexican, but nobody, not even in Winnipeg, believed he was Canadian. Oh well, Mahatma thought. You can’t win ’em all.

Arriving early, Mahatma sat on a curb across the street from the office and waited. He wished he had brought a
camera. Georges Goyette, who was setting up a table with flyers denouncing the English-French violence, spotted Mahatma across the street. “Hey, Mahatma, come on over here!” They chatted while FAM volunteers unfurled banners and erected effigies of bilingualism opponents.

A rented bus pulled up along Donald Street, dropping off sixty demonstrators. By 8:45, a throng of people had arrived on foot, some bearing their own signs, others chanting slogans, others watching and waiting. The demonstrators attracted a growing crowd of spectators.

Mahatma climbed up the fire escape to one side of the office. To estimate the number of people, he divided the crowd into ten equal sections and counted every head in a section. He came up with thirty people, so he multiplied by ten. “8:50 a.m.,” he wrote in his notepad, “about 300 people outside.” He descended to conduct interviews, but few people would speak to him. Many didn’t believe he was a reporter. Others were hostile: “I don’t talk to the press. You’ll fuck it up anyway…You slant everything…I don’t want my name in the paper.” The hostility troubled Mahatma. He didn’t mind antagonizing businessmen known to pollute rivers; he didn’t object to harassing politicians about lies the week before. But ordinary people sensed, perhaps rightly, that most journalists would rather highlight the crowd’s idiosyncrasies than discuss its message.

Mahatma finally found a middle-aged woman who would talk. Her name was Hanna Masson. “My teen-aged daughters think I’m crazy to come here.”

“So why’d you come?” Mahatma asked.

“Because you should stand up and be counted when you believe in something.”

Georges Goyette addressed the crowd with a megaphone. Mahatma wrote down most of what was said. Then he climbed the fire escape again, ascending three storeys. He sat on a metal platform and let his feet dangle in the air. Leaning against a horizontal bar, he counted heads again and made notes. He spotted an unmarked police cruiser with two officers fifty yards north on Donald Street. Swivelling around to look west, he saw three marked police cars in a lane parallel to Donald Street. Then he heard the shouting.

Georges Goyette, who had been winding up his speech and urging the crowd to follow him north to Polonia Park for skits and more speeches, was rushed by three young men dressed in combat fatigues. They looked like teenagers. American flags were stitched onto their shirts, swastikas etched on their sleeves. “French scum,” one spat into the megaphone, “go back to Quebec!” Two of the young men knocked Goyette off the platform; the megaphone fell down with him. The boys pushed aside a woman who had been standing with Goyette. They hurled eggs at the crowd, jumped off and escaped down a side street. Shouts erupted in the crowd. Several people—the same people Mahatma had seen earlier setting up the demonstration—supplied protestors with eggs. Mahatma made notes of that, and of the barrage of eggs and stones thrown at the office. Glass smashed. Cries grew into mayhem. Police cruisers appeared on Donald Street. Demonstrators pelted them with eggs, cheering each time a white shell exploded into yellow guts on a police car. Sirens wailed. Goyette hollered to the crowd to go to Polonia Park.

In the confusion that followed, Mahatma saw many people run the wrong way and come up against a line of
police cruisers. Some took advantage of the mayhem to kick the cruisers. Police warded them off with billyclubs. They pinned two demonstrators against a cruiser and frisked them, handcuffed them and shoved them into the car. Mahatma scrambled down the fire escape, through a back lane and over to the west end of Polonia Park. Hundreds of people ran into the park, spilling like dice down its slopes.

“Vivent les Franco-manitobains!” cried Goyette.

“Aaiieee,” screamed a woman, “you bastard! Let me
go
, tabarnac!”

The voice seemed familiar. It came from down a slope, near a bench. Mahatma located the voice; a cop was dragging a hollering woman by the arm. It was Helen! Mahatma pocketed his notebook and ran down the hill. Two young demonstrators ploughed into the cop, who released Helen and swung at the men, felling one of them with a blow to the head. The officer pursued the other, taking three furious strides after the man, who fled in the direction of a bench where Jake Corbett sat. The cop collared the man. But someone hurled a Coke can through the air; it struck the cop on the temple, thudding audibly. The cop fell on Corbett’s outstretched legs. Corbett began to scream. He screamed like a man being tortured but the big cop remained inert.

Helen tried to roll the cop off Corbett. She couldn’t budge him. She grunted, tried again, grunted. Mahatma stepped in to help, pulling the weight off Corbett and easing the officer to the ground. Another cop charged toward them, shoving through the crowd. Helen and Mahatma eluded him by pushing deep into the crowd. Helen only noticed him when they were safe.

“Mahatma! What are you doing here?”

He grinned. “Reporting.”

“Not any more you’re not,” she said. “You’re involved now. I have a friend over there who is hurt.” She led him in another direction. The crowd was scattering as more cops and cop cars raced onto the scene. A paddywagon had driven onto the field. Mahatma reached for his back pocket, but his notepad was gone. Shit! It must have been knocked out down below, near Corbett. What was that crazy bastard doing at the demo, anyway?

Helen knelt by a black man. His eyes bulged. He made no noise. Spittle clung to his lips. He lay on his side, head bleeding on the grass. “Ça va Yoyo, ça va?” Helen patted his shoulder desperately. She clasped his hand and spoke rapidly. Seconds passed before Mahatma grasped the fact that Helen was speaking French. Perfectly “N’aies pas peur, Yoyo,” she said, “on t’amène à l’hôpital.” Mahatma knelt to help. He pressed a handkerchief against the man’s bleeding scalp.

“Courage, frère,” Mahatma told the man, who moved his lips but made no sound. Mahatma bent closer.

“Enchanté de te connaître,” Yoyo whispered before he lost consciousness. With Helen’s help, Mahatma carried the African up the hill. They stopped at the first house. Mahatma called an ambulance. After it took Yoyo and Helen away, he returned to the field to search for his notepad. By this time a television crew had arrived, but the demonstrators had fled and all that was left to film was debris on the ground. Mahatma couldn’t find his notepad. He used a spare one and tried to interview a cop, who told him to screw off. Mahatma asked where his superior was. The cop wouldn’t talk to him; he merely pointed across the
field. There was a clutch of police cars on the far side. Mahatma found MacGrearicque in a cruiser and asked whether the police had used unreasonable force.

“Unreasonable force? We did what was necessary to stop that violence. Try being a cop in a mob of thugs. It’s no tea party. There were people throwing rocks, swinging sticks, ganging up on officers; now let me ask you, what do
you
do, tuck in your tail or defend yourself?”

“How many people have you arrested?”

“Don’t know.”

“Fifty? A hundred?”

“You think we had an army down here? Thirty—maybe.”

“I saw one officer…”

“I don’t care! You fucking reporters just see what you want to.” MacGrearicque rolled up his car window and drove off. There was nobody left to interview. Goyette had disappeared. So had Corbett. A police officer inspected a few sheets of paper in the mud. He found a megaphone at the base of a tumbled stepladder and carried them both to his vehicle. Mahatma climbed the northwest bank of the park, passing a muddied figure on a bench.

“Stop! Call me a taxi! Please! I need help!” Mahatma whirled around and stared into the bloodied face of Provincial Court Judge Melvyn Hill. The judge was filthy. Swollen lips slurred his speech. Blood dribbled from his cheek.

Mahatma asked, “Should I take you to the hospital?”

“No. Call me a cab.”

When the driver came, he looked at Melvyn Hill and shook his head. “Uhn-uh,” the cabbie told Mahatma. “I don’t take drunks.”

“He’s not a drunk. He’s injured.”

“This ain’t the Good Samaritan service.”

“He can pay,” Mahatma said.

“Someone stole my wallet,” the judge said.

The driver started rolling up his window. Mahatma said, “I’m your fare and I’m bringing him along. Where do you live, Judge?” Mahatma helped Melvyn Hill into the back seat of the cab, then got in beside him and sighed, recalling everything he had seen: the cop falling on Jake Corbett, the whiteness of bone breaking Yoyo’s skin, Hanna Masson saying her daughters thought she was crazy, demonstrators egging the building, cops flailing at demonstrators, people swinging placards at cops, cops swinging billysticks, protestors kicking free. He felt tired of it all. To date, reporting had involved mirroring events and repeating what others had said. This time he had to be analytic and draw conclusions. And without his notepad.

“What’s the matter, son? Aren’t you going to ask me anything?”

The voice startled Mahatma. “I didn’t think you recognized me.”

“What do you take me for, Mahatma Grafton? A fool? What are you going to write this time? That a taxi driver mistook me for a drunk?”

“I won’t write anything about you.”

“Well, you can quote me on this: the police really lost their cool, and there is no excuse for that.” Mahatma wrote down the quote, drew a line across the page and set down his pen. He wouldn’t push the judge into an interview. But the judge said, “Quote me on this too—” Under the line he had
just drawn, Mahatma wrote “Melvyn Hill” in his notepad and began scribbling as the judge spoke. “My Sunday stroll was interrupted by gross mayhem at Polonia Park. The demonstrators were ruffians and fools, but I have never seen police behave so badly in all my life.”