Some Great Thing (20 page)

“Oh, I don’t mind admitting it any more. You’ll see. This all has to do with Wilbur Lawson.”

“Really?” Mahatma studied her face. Her brow was pinched into intense little ridges of flesh; her eyes were brown and large. “He was my grade one teacher at the John Bell Elementary School. He made me ashamed of my language. I suspect he is still doing it to other students. And now he is
getting favourable press. Even your article legitimized him.” She described the incident.

“Did you tell your parents?” Mahatma asked.

“Are you kidding? I hated them because they were French. I wanted to be like the English kids.”

“Did Lawson ever harass you again?”

“No. But he did drone on about how French people had to live in English in Manitoba. The French had lost on the Plains of Abraham so they might as well accept the fact that Canada ran on English. That was how he said it. Canada runs on English.”

Mahatma got a phone call from Wilbur Lawson the next day. “I have a story for you,” he began. “I have a letter here from the superintendent of the Winnipeg School Division. He has suspended me for ‘activities incompatible with my role as a teacher.’”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they didn’t like me talking about English rights.”

“Does the letter actually say so?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you think this happened so quickly?” Mahatma asked.

“The French activists did it. I have information that they leaned on the minister of education, who leaned on my superintendent. This is a gag. It’s frightening and it shows how right I was about a French takeover.”

Mahatma scribbled down the quote. He was skeptical about the French activists angle, but curious enough to look
into it. In the meantime, the suspension was news in itself. Mahatma arranged for Lawson to send him the suspension letter by courier.

The story fell into place easily. The superintendent con firmed the suspension, and the head of the Francophone Association of Manitoba admitted to telling the premier that Lawson should be fired. “He shouldn’t be teaching children—some of whom are French—if he publicly promotes anti-French attitudes.”

Mahatma took a company car to the Legislature, hoping to catch somebody in the premier’s office for comment. This had the makings of a good story.

Nobody had time to see him. Mahatma Grafton was too busy. So was No Quotes Hailey. Nobody had time to see Chuck Maxwell during his three-week suspension.
The Herald
was calling it a paid vacation, but Chuck considered it a suspension. You were a nobody if you didn’t work. You felt different, walking down Portage Avenue. You wondered if people looked at you and asked themselves: Doesn’t this bum work?

They called on the last day of his suspension to say that he would now be working the 4:00 p.m. to midnight shift. He didn’t complain. He was glad to have any shift at all. He would show them. He would chase down some great stories and scoop the competition. Arriving in the newsroom, Chuck looked for Mahatma and heard he was out researching a story. Chuck shook out a newspaper and scanned it. He sat close to the police radio in case something exciting broke. He
had a feeling about himself. He was going to make it. If he kept his ears and eyes open, he would prove to
The Herald
that he still had a few tricks left.

Don Betts came in at 4:15 but assigned nothing to Chuck. Two hours passed. Chuck phoned the police and fire departments; that earned him a few news bullets. He wrote them carefully, double-checking for spelling and accuracy.

Betts stepped out for coffee at 8:00 p.m. Ten minutes later, a voice blared on the police radio. Chuck turned it up. “Provencher Boulevard,” the voice crackled. “Francophone Association of Manitoba, 348 Provencher Boulevard; there has been an explosion at the Francophone Association of Manitoba, major fire has broken out, onlookers must be kept back.”

Chuck grabbed his coat and ran to the elevator. He passed Don Betts on the way. “There’s been a big explosion at the FAM.”

Chuck started his car. While it warmed up, he pulled his rubber boots and workpants and raincoat from the trunk. He carried them in his car for situations like this. You didn’t cover a fire wearing a four-hundred dollar suit. Chuck wriggled into his clothes and sped north on Smith Street. He ran two red lights.

Chuck knew fires. You didn’t park too close. If it spread, cops and fire-fighters would need room. He parked on a side street and jogged toward the blaze, which was red and orange and grey against the bluish-black sky. He noted six police cruisers. Three fire-trucks. Now was the time to pick up information. Once the cops got organized, they would rope off the street. One cop was trying to keep people back. He was having a hell of a time. Chuck smiled. He knew the
cop. He knew half the cops in Winnipeg. “Hey, Bill,” he cried out. “How’s it hanging?”

“Bad, Chuck. Better keep back.”

“Ah, don’t try that on me, old buddy. You know I’ve got a job to do.”

“You’re going in there at your own risk, Chuck.”

Chuck advanced. The heat toasted his face. Firemen were shooting water at the flames. The jets seemed useless against the fury of red and orange and yellow, and the crackling hiss of three storeys of burning wood. Sloshing through water Chuck approached a fireman aiming his hose at the east side of the building. Somebody shouted a warning at him. He kept on, using an arm to shield his forehead from the heat. He coughed but didn’t even hear the sound, which was swallowed up by the roar of flames devouring wood. He got beside the fireman. Chuck looked into the man’s face. Hell, he knew that guy! It was Keith Tysoe. They had played hockey together years ago. “Keith. What’s happening? How did it start?”

“You!” Keith Tysoe shouted. “The fuck you doing here? Get back!”

“How did it start?”

The ground erupted. Chuck landed on his back. Tysoe had also been blown off his feet. The fire hose twisted in the air, smashing Tysoe between the eyes, drawing a river of blood and snaking away.

“
Keith!
” Chuck crawled through the mud and the water. He heard screams. Light flashed high above him. A blinding swirl of heat curved outward and swooned down through the air. Something smashed his leg. Weight bore down on
him mercilessly. His clothes were burning. Chuck screamed. He pulled. He scraped and clawed and squirmed but he couldn’t move, couldn’t free himself, couldn’t help Keith Tysoe, couldn’t do anything. I’m going to die, he thought. He twisted again, gasping and choking. Even his hands were on fire. I thought I was wearing gloves. I
was
. I
was
wearing gloves. Something pulled him, lifted him, took him away. He lost consciousness.

It was a cloudless winter night. Mahatma drove away from the Manitoba Legislature. All he had to do was write the story of Lawson’s suspension. He had found out that the premier’s office had, indeed, contacted the school superintendent to complain about Lawson.

Mahatma looked forward to talking to Chuck, who was returning to work today from his suspension. Mahatma would slap Chuck on the shoulder in welcome. He felt guilty about not having had time to see Chuck recently. Mahatma stopped at a red light and flicked on the car radio. “Here is a flash news bulletin. An explosion rocked the offices of the Francophone Association of Manitoba minutes ago. Police and firemen are at the scene. The building is ablaze. The group has been the object of intense criticism recently…”

Mahatma accelerated, ran several yellow lights, motored over the Provencher Bridge and into St. Boniface. He heard sirens. An ambulance overtook him and another came behind. A fire-truck charged around a corner. Mahatma saw flames and the black, belching clouds of smoke against the
moonlit sky. He parked and ran to the scene. He pushed through the crowd until he came to a rope drawn across the sidewalk. Patrick MacGrearicque barred his way. “Superintendent! Superintendent! Let me through.”

“No way. One of your buddies has just about killed himself.”

Mahatma shouted, “I can’t hear you.”

“Chuck Maxwell just got himself fried. Got too close. Beam ripped loose, came down on him.”

“Where is he? Let me see him.”

MacGrearicque called over another officer. “This is a friend of that reporter who got burned. Get him out of here. See if that ambulance is gone. If not, send him off with the victim.” The big cop led Mahatma away. They passed inside the police lines, away from the crowds. A light swirled on an ambulance forty yards away. Mahatma saw a stretcher being loaded into it. An attendant ran to the driver’s door, jumped in and gunned the accelerator. The siren wailed. Something stuck in Mahatma’s throat.

The cop asked, “Friend of yours?” He was supporting Mahatma, whose head bobbed. “He’ll be okay. I’ve seen worse. It’s the fireman who really got it bad. I doubt he’ll make it through the night.”

“What happened?”

“Building was bombed. Blew a hole right out the east wall. That was the wall that came down on your buddy and the fireman.”

Mahatma was gathering his senses. “What’s your name?”

“Stafford. Corporal John Stafford.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Who are you, anyway?”

“Mahatma Grafton. From
The Herald
.”

“Jesus! We’re under orders not to talk to you.”

The blaze engulfed the building. Mahatma had to see Chuck. He had to contact
The Herald
. Walking to his car, he met FAM president Pierre Gratton and scribbled down his comments. Then he interviewed two bystanders who had seen the building erupt in flames. Then he worked his way back to MacGrearicque.

The cop said, “I thought I got rid of you!”

“I feel better now.”

“Yeah, right! You’re in shock.”

“Just tell me how you’ll handle this investigation.”

“We assume it’s arson. They used a bomb.”

“They?”

“Tell you about it sometime. Now get out of here.”

“This was motivated by French-English tensions?”

“We’ll look into it. Go home, Mahatma. You look like shit.”

Mahatma drove to the hospital. While waiting to see a doctor, he called Betts. The city editor was stunned. He asked Mahatma if he had details about the fire. He wanted a story, but Mahatma was in no mood. Then a doctor came out. “You’re Chuck’s friend?”

“Yes. Is he gonna make it?”

“It’s touch and go. Sixty percent of his body has been burnt.”

“Can I see him?”

“Not today.”

“Is he conscious?”

“He’s in and out. We have sedated him.”

“What happened to the fireman?”

“He died in the ambulance. The burning beam that hit Chuck’s leg caught him on the chest. He didn’t have a chance. Look, I’ve got to go.”

Mahatma drove to the office. He wrote the stories on the fire and on Lawson’s suspension, and took a taxi home, exhausted. He told his father about it, couldn’t sleep, called the hospital, couldn’t get any more information and fell into fitful nightmares.

Mahatma hurried to a gift shop and scanned the get-well cards. Humorous or serious? A humorous card might offend Chuck. Mahatma purchased the most sober card on the rack. Helen Savoie was the first to sign it. Together, they circulated in the newsroom, getting ten reporters, the switchboard operator and all three librarians to sign the card. But then they learned the hospital wasn’t letting anybody visit Chuck.

“Poor bastard,” Norman Hailey said. “Remember how he liked to remind us that
The Herald
doesn’t pay life insurance?”

Paul Holtz held up the newspaper. “Somebody ought to show Chuck the front page. He’ll want to frame it.”

Page one ran a two-column head about the FAM explosion that killed a fireman and critically injured a reporter. A sidebar contained a picture of Chuck and a few more inches of copy. It gave his age, said he’d joined the paper at age sixteen and described him as one of the best-liked reporters on staff.

“He’ll be bragging for years about how he got third-degree burns covering a news story,” Hailey said. “He’ll be telling people it was the number one story of the year.”

“Of the
year?
” Holtz said mockingly. “Listen! This was the biggest story of the decade and no ten-alarm fire was gonna keep him back.”

Mahatma imitated Chuck’s deep voice. “I went after that story and I’m proud of it. As a professional journalist, you have to be committed. You have to be a man of the people. That’s what I am.” When Helen chuckled, Mahatma squeezed her shoulder.

Chuck was placed in the hospital’s burn unit. He was kept naked on a damp, no-stick sheet resembling cheesecloth. Other sheets were suspended over him like a tent. Sedated, he was connected to an electrocardiogram, a respirator and an intravenous unit. He managed, nevertheless, to ask the name of the doctor standing over him and to flirt with the nurse. Later, he kept asking for Hat. Nobody understood what he meant. He also asked for Elizabeth. “Elizabeth who?” someone asked him urgently. “Elizabeth! The Huck Finn lady.”

After thirty-six hours, they reduced Chuck’s heavy sedation. He asked again for Hat, and this time added, “My buddy. Mahatma. At the paper.” Someone at the hospital called Mahatma, who drove to the hospital with Betts.

A nurse met them. “Two visitors?” Betts explained that Chuck had no family. He claimed to be Chuck’s closest friend.

“You can see him for five minutes. Put on these gowns, masks, gloves and shoe covers. Don’t touch the patient or anything in the room.”

It was a private room with no window. A heart monitor, built into the wall above the bed, had several wires running
into the tent over Chuck’s body. Chuck’s face was covered, to protect it from airborne germs. An intravenous unit stood dripping by his bed. A urine bag was empty. Chuck lay motionless in his tent.

“Chuck,” Mahatma whispered. “It’s Mahatma. Are you awake?”

“Glad you came, Hat. Awful glad. Who’s with you?”

“It’s me, Chuck. Don Betts.”

“Jesus Christ, I don’t believe it,” Chuck said. Betts laughed loudly. “I didn’t think I was gonna make it,” Chuck said.

“Sure you’re gonna make it,” Mahatma said. “We need you back at
The Herald
. You hit the front page. Chuck. Your picture and everything.” Chuck grunted. He sounded tired. “We’ve got a card for you with lots of signatures. We left it with the nurses.” Chuck grunted again.