Some Great Thing (14 page)

“Why were the stories pulled from your second edition?”

“Ask my editors.”

“And the rumours about you being pulled from the crime beat?”

“I don’t know anything about it. Now if you don’t mind,” he said, pushing the mikes away, “I want to attend the news conference.”

Mahatma entered MacGrearicque’s office with Edward Slade following behind. “Fuck ’em, Mahatma. They’re amateurs.”

MacGrearicque excused himself for a few minutes.

“So you missed the demo?” Mahatma whispered to Slade. He wished he had squared off against Slade yesterday. Then at least one other paper would have corroborated his story.

“I was off yesterday. Last day of holidays. Too bad about your error. Cops love misquotes. Gives ’em a chance to dump all over us. Don’t worry, though. These things happen. You’ll be back after your suspension.”

“Suspension?”

“Didn’t you know?”

“No. Or that I’m to be pulled from the cop beat.”

“Well, you are.”

“Where are the rumours coming from?”

“You know Superintendent Butters? Vice squad? Short, fat little guy? He’s your boss’ brother-in-law.”

“Van Wuyss’?”

“You’ve got it. He called some journalists into his office this morning. Not me, mind you. They hate
The Star
.” He laughed a coarse, but likeable, laugh. “Almost as much as they hate
The Herald
. But I don’t care that he didn’t call me. I wouldn’t print that bullshit. I’m no goddamn flak.”

Behind him, Bob said, “Ah, shut up, Slade!”

“So Butters told them I’m getting yanked off cops?”

“And suspended.”

“How long?”

“Two weeks.”

Just then, MacGrearicque came back. He made an oblique remark about Mahatma as if he weren’t there. So this is the game, Mahatma thought. They’ve decided not to recognize my presence. He tested his theory at the end of the news conference. “Do you have something to say to me?” he asked.

MacGrearicque nodded at a buddy at the door. “Hey, Tom, do you see anybody here?”

“No, I don’t see anybody there.”

“Neither do I. Coffee?”

Heeding the summons to the managing editor’s office,

Mahatma considered his situation. He didn’t have the best job in the country. But as long as he was doing it, he may as
well do it properly. He wouldn’t back down. He had made an error. But that was no reason to throw up his arms.

Lyndon Van Wuyss laid it out for him. “Look, Mahatma, you’ve been a good reporter. And that’s why we’re not canning you over this error—only suspending you.”

“Okay. But why did you pull the stories?”

“You have admitted to a major error. The police say the story is biased and inaccurate. We have your word against theirs, but your word has been tainted. It’s been an embarrassment to
The Herald
and it would embarrass us further to play up a story that we may have already blown out of proportion.”

Mahatma, going into the office, had planned to remain silent and dignified. But, as the M.E. spoke, Mahatma felt his skin prickle. He was angry. “I saw people beaten. I have to write that.”

“It’s your word against theirs. Unless you have proof, we’re dropping the story. Also, I have no choice but to suspend you for two weeks. And when you come back, you’re off the crime beat. You’re going to ethnic affairs.”

Mahatma stormed out of the office. People stared at him as he left. They had never seen him angry before. He wondered if he had ever
been
angry before. He felt good. Clean.

Ben Grafton stood at the window of his Lipton Street bungalow, watching his son walk up the steps. “What will you cover when you go back?”

“Ethnic relations!” Mahatma said. “Can you believe it?”

“That’s not so bad,” Ben said. “Don’t think of it as a demotion. Think of it as a chance to write about something new. They’re not telling you what to write, are they?”

“They will.”

“Cross that bridge when you reach it. Worry if you’re still stuck on the beat in two years. But you won’t even be at
The Herald
in two years. Cheer up, son. I’ll treat you to a meal at Mrs. Lipton’s.”

“Okay,” Mahatma said. “And while we’re at it, why don’t you tell me that story of yours about Melvyn Hill?”

“All right.”

Mrs. Lipton’s was a health-food restaurant with four small rooms and a billboard covered with flyers pushing acupuncture, holistic medicine, yoga, feminist theory and a male awareness encounter group. Ben guided Mahatma to a table. “Here we can talk in peace.”

“Abuelo, have you ever looked at the junk on the walls here?”

“Doesn’t bother me. What’s wrong with health nuts preaching to each other? At least they don’t promote racism or warfare.”

“It’s still propaganda!”

“No more than those Block Parents signs on street lamps and in house windows.”

“Block Parents?”

“Yes. If two of these Block Parents saw a black stranger talking to their kid in the street, they’d panic. But if it were some white stranger, they’d think he was some fellow needing directions. There’s a kernel of racism in that Block Parents business. If they want to call themselves Black Parents, that’s another thing!”

Mahatma laughed. “You’re crazy!” They ordered and their soup came soon after.

“Do you have everything you need?” Ben asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. Because this is going to take a while. I’m about to take you way back in time.”

“Right, right,” Mahatma said. “You were born here in 1908 and your parents came from Alberta one year earlier.”

“Who’s telling this story?”

Ben began, “In 1937, there were so few coloured people in Winnipeg that most knew each other. Many roomed off Main Street, near the Canadian Transcontinental Railway station, and everyone noticed a new man when he showed up looking for work.

“One Friday afternoon in June, Harry Carson, another railway porter, showed up at my room and asked, ‘You hear about that Grenadian kid?’

“He was talking about an island boy who’d had the audacity to ask for the manager of a bank that morning, seeking employment as a clerk. Harry and I shook our heads.

“All through the next week, Harry kept bringing me news. The upstart, whose name was Melvyn Hill, tried two more banks, the City Hall, two mining companies and
The Winnipeg Herald
, spreading word of his high school diploma.

“Finally, Harry asked me, ‘Who does this boy think he is, Ben?’

“I said I didn’t know, but I wished him luck.

“‘Ain’t no luck gonna get that boy a white man’s job.’

“I left town on a run down east and back. Two nights on the train plus one in Toronto, shining shoes, carrying luggage, making beds, mopping floors, dusting windows, keeping out of trouble, you know. Trouble, in those days, meant instant dismissal. There was an old porter used to say, ‘Trouble’s like air coming tru the winda. You can’t shut the winda and you can’t stop the draught; you just step aside so you don’t catch cold.’

“In Toronto, I spent the night with a cousin to avoid the bunk-bed flophouse the company ran on Huron Street. When I got back I learned from the inspector that the company had just trained Melvyn Hill.

“‘We’ll put him in your car on the next trip to Toronto,’ the inspector told me. ‘Show him the ropes. Let me know how he does.’

“Melvyn Hill had piano fingers. That was the first thing I noticed: no blisters, no calluses. He was short and had little meat on him and was neither photo handsome nor fighting ugly. Small eyes that hardly blinked. Chin that stuck out. And dark skin. Not high yellow. Not brown, like mine. This baby was black.

“Though I didn’t speak to Hill except when necessary, I was glad when the trip ended. He hardly spoke during the entire trip, made a fuss about cleaning toilets, refused to eat with other porters and went out alone on his night off in Toronto.”

Ben had eaten his soup and he was fussing with a glass of water.

“Hill was made a full-time porter at a salary of eighty-seven dollars a month, plus tips. They put him on the spare board, meaning that he didn’t work a regular train run, but filled in for
others here and there. Weeks passed before I saw him again. But I heard Harry muttering about him from time to time. ‘He acts like he knows it all. He thinks he’s better than us.’

“Almost a year passed. One day while Harry and I were sitting on a window ledge upstairs in the Porters’ Club, I saw a middle-aged coloured man with a serious, dignified face walking our way. Pressed grey suit. Polished shoes. With him, a woman who was also well dressed. A white woman, one hundred percent white. And that wasn’t all. Two boys toddled behind them. They had straight, dark hair. The younger one’s skin was very light. Almost white. The boys wore yarmulkes, which I saw as the family crossed Main at Sutherland, walking north.

“Harry and I thought they were quite a sight. Neither of us heard the footsteps on the stairs, and suddenly I found myself face to face with the coloured man in the suit. For a moment I didn’t know what to say. The man stood tall and with perfect posture. His eyes were light brown and his greying hair, curled and cropped close to his head, was clipped above his large ears. He was in his mid-forties. Behind us, the room had fallen silent. The man said he was looking for me. Said he had recently been to porters’ training school, and was supposed to start Monday in my car. He introduced himself as Alvin James.”

Mahatma tapped his fork on the table. “Alvin James? Aren’t we getting off track here, abuelo?”

“Patience. Alvin James was the first black man to graduate from the University of Manitoba with a Master’s degree in sciences. Also, he had converted to Judaism because his wife was a Ukrainian Jew. That’s why we called him ‘the Rabbi.’

It wasn’t meant to be derogatory. Quite the contrary. Even though he was educated and had tried to get other jobs, all he could find was porter.

“Of course, the other porters held him in awe. Some went to him with questions. One asked him to help fill out an income tax form. Alvin James complied. Another two porters had him settle a dispute. All this time, Melvyn Hill was running to Toronto and back. So for more than a year, Melvyn, Harry, Alvin and I worked the same train down east and back.

“Melvyn pestered Alvin James all the time with questions about books and university. He even started dressing like the man, always in a jacket and tie.

“Hill was so enamoured that he told us a story about Alvin James. Apparently, the Rabbi had found twenty dollars in the bedding of a passenger and had jumped off the train at White River, Ontario, to give it back. Harry Carson said the Rabbi was a plain fool, giving up good money. But Melvyn said it showed that Alvin James had class. And that Negroes would never get ahead by dishonest means.

“A couple of weeks later, the passenger wrote a letter to the superintendent, praising Jamesand enclosing a hundred-dollar bill. Here’s the stinger. Alvin James refused that too. Though he did suggest the hundred be used to buy new mattresses for the company’s flophouse on Huron Street in Toronto. The superintendent lost his temper when he heard that. Alvin didn’t get the hundred, and the flophouse stayed the way it was.”

Ben Grafton was starting on his meal now, an omelette with mushrooms and tomatoes. “Now we jump to 1940 when everyone was talking about enlisting. Well, just about everyone. Alvin was too old to go to war. And Harry wanted
nothing to do with it. He said, ‘White people wanna kill each other, they don’t need my help. Anyway, I got myself a good job.’

“Melvyn applied to the Air Force, did not hear back, tried again three months later, and was told the Air Force was filled up. He applied once more and was contacted shortly thereafter for testing. Melvyn became an Air Force man. They wouldn’t let him fly a plane, navigate, operate guns or aim bombs, but they let him do tarmac duty for two years. Then they taught him how to service aircraft. He stayed on ground crews in Canada until 1944 and finally made it overseas.

“I became an Army private, went overseas in ’44. You know all this. When we got back in ’46, we found that job doors didn’t swing any wider than before the war. We got our old jobs back. Before we had a chance to see any of our old buddies, the Rabbi died. You should understand that I had just come back from a war that I was sure would kill me. Melvyn, ten years younger than me, was exhausted from the war. Neither of us could accept the news of the Rabbi’s death. We’d seen all kinds survive in Europe. Why that man, of all people? He was a good man.

“Harry Carson was too upset to work the trip back to Winnipeg. In Sudbury, a doctor had to shoot tranks into his butt. He was a mess all the way home. When the train carrying the Rabbi’s body got back to Winnipeg, we learned that he’d died in a fire at that flophouse. The worst part was that the company blamed him for the fire.”

Ben stopped and fingered the napkin beside his plate. His omelette was only half eaten. When Mahatma coughed into his hand, Ben roused himself and went on.

“We went to a shiva, a Jewish wake that lasts seven days, in the Rabbi’s home. I had my only suit pressed. We passed a hat and in two hours collected one hundred dollars. That was a lot of money in those days. Later, we heard the Canadian Transcontinental had offered the Rabbi’s widow only fifty. At her house on Bannerman, we met John Novak and the Rabbi’s widow, Deanna, and her two boys, now about ten and twelve years old. I was fascinated by their pigmentation. Peter, the older one, was brown-skinned, but I might not have guessed that Alvin, the ten-year-old, was born of a Negro father. Alvin Jr. seemed almost as light as his mother.

“I gave John Novak the envelope from the porters. He was impressed. He steered me toward two chairs in a corner and told me, ‘The company says the porters had been drinking and partying and that Alvin had been smoking in bed.’

“He knew, like I did, that Alvin didn’t smoke. He wanted to know why, if there was a party going on, only Alvin got killed. How come he was the only person in the house?

“I told him what I could. That the flophouse had two rooms upstairs, each with six bunk-beds, but that the company never filled the place. Porters resented staying in bunk-beds while white train crews slept in hotels. I hated the place and usually stayed with my cousin. Most porters avoided the place. Slept with relatives, girlfriends, whatever.