Riot (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage)

by Mary Casanova

  Bryan looked at her hand, dumbly, then realized she was talking to him. He shook it gingerly.

  “I’m Nancy Benton with the Daily News. May I ask a few questions?” She flipped open a notepad and clicked her pen. “And to think I was going to take today off … happens every time,” she said to herself. “So … what happened here?” she said.

  Bryan glanced toward the shore. The three teenagers were gone. He hesitated. “Uh,” he began. “I’m not sure. I didn’t really see what happened.” He couldn’t tell her what had happened, not if it was going to be in the newspaper. Besides, he didn’t know who the teenagers were. He wasn’t lying, not really—just not telling the whole truth. “I was diving, and when I got out, I saw this boy in the water … crying for help.”

  “What made you dive in after him?”

  Bryan shrugged. He looked over at Chelsie, who was wrapping a faded yellow towel around her brother’s thin shoulders. “I don’t know,” he answered. “Can I go now?”

  “Just a few more quick questions …”

  After the interview, Bryan spotted Chelsie sitting on the edge of the dock, shoulder to shoulder with her brother. She was dangling her feet in the water, her head down. Cam was bundled in a towel, shaking.

  “Wait up,” Bryan whispered to Kyle. He walked up behind her. Water dripped from her ponytail down the peachy skin of her back.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Bryan asked.

  Chelsie flinched, then looked up, her eyes wide. “Oh good, it’s you.” She nodded. “Yeah, I think he’ll be fine.”

  Bryan hesitated, his feet turning to lead weights. He didn’t move his arms. He certainly couldn’t look her in the eyes. “I’m sorry it happened.”

  “They … hate … us,” said Cam, without raising his head.

  Chelsie lifted her chin and forced a smile at Bryan. “It wasn’t your fault. I guess some folks have a strange sense of humor, that’s all.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Well …” Bryan said, and glanced from Chelsie toward Kyle. “Well …”

  “That’s a deep subject,” said Kyle.

  Bryan rolled his eyes. He’d kill Kyle later. “Umm … I better go.”

  Bryan and Kyle walked across the beach and grabbed their bikes from the rack.

  “Why’d they throw him in, anyway?” Kyle asked. “Just because he’s a ‘rat’?”

  Bryan leaned down and unsnapped his black plastic water bottle from his bike. He took a long drink. “I don’t know. Adults who work for Badgett are rats, but I don’t know about their kids.”

  Halfway to town, as they biked side by side over a bridge-covered stream, Bryan’s eyes began to burn. He rubbed them with the back of his hand. He tried not to breathe. A ripe stench hung in the air.

  The mill’s dumping ground had been the source of editorial complaints all summer from people who lived near it. They complained of not being able to sleep at night, of coughing and getting sick to their stomachs, of not being able to sell their houses. Why hadn’t Bryan noticed this smell on his way to the beach? Maybe the wind had shifted.

  “That’s what money smells like,” Bryan said.

  “Yeah,” said Kyle, scrunching his nose and pedaling faster. “It stinks!”

  Leaning his bike against the inside wall of his garage, Bryan stepped toward the door leading to the kitchen. He heard the raised voices of his parents. The whole summer, it seemed his parents did nothing but fight. It hadn’t always been that way. He turned the handle slowly and walked inside.

  Still in her workout suit, Mom squared her hands on her hips. Even the twins knew not to mess with her when she stood like that. “Is it really worth it—all this tension over jobs?”

  Bryan took off his Nike tennis shoes and lined them up neatly next to Dad’s. They were nearly the same size. He pretended not to hear his parents’ argument.

  “Worth it? Worth it?!” Dad shouted, his face dark with anger. He slammed his fist down on the counter, something Bryan had never seen him do before.

  Bryan pressed his back against the corner counter, hoping to escape notice.

  “You want me to work as an electrician on the road,” Dad asked, “leaving home for a month or two at a time? Is that what you want? Tell me, what kind of life is that?”

  As much as Bryan hated their fighting, he couldn’t move. He wanted to know what was going on around town, too. If his world was going to unravel, he at least wanted to know when it was going to happen.

  “It’s union bashing!” Dad continued loudly. A deep shade of red climbed from above his T-shirt collar. “That’s what Gold Portage’s up to. If guys like me aren’t willing to stand up, then pretty soon all us locals will be locked right out of here.”

  When Dad had first used the phrase “locked out,” Bryan had stupidly pictured a fence going up around the whole town, locking out all union workers. But Dad had explained it meant not getting the work, not getting a chance at it because it was already given to a nonunion-hiring construction company.

  “Pretty soon it will spread beyond this expansion project to the paper mill itself, and everybody will be working for peanuts! The biggest, multimillion-dollar project in Minnesota, and we’re not getting a piece of it! We’re not going to let them take away our jobs without putting up a fight. This is a battle, one that big business and unions all across America are keeping their eyes on! If we don’t take a stand …”

  “Dad?” Bryan asked, his voice a squeak next to Dad’s baritone.

  Dad ignored him.

  “You think I could have built this house on peanuts?!” Dad demanded, his arms stretched wide.

  “I’m working now, too, remember?” Mom said.

  A sharp smell filled the air. Smoke curled from the edges of the oven door and swirled upward.

  Mom spun toward the oven. “Oh, shoot!”

  Bryan grabbed hot pads from the drawer behind him and yanked the pan from the oven. What should have been broiled salmon steaks looked more like slabs of black moon rock.

  “All this tension—I can’t even concentrate anymore!” Mom wailed as she opened the door to the garage. Bryan carried out the sizzling pan and set it on Dad’s tool bench.

  “Thanks, Bry,” Mom said. “I’m glad you know how to keep your head when some of us are losing ours.” She glared at Dad.

  “Yeah, well, maybe,” Dad said, “Bryan and everybody else around here needs to lift their heads out of the sand!”

  Mom raised her hands like a traffic cop. “Enough, Stan,” she said. “Enough! Dinner’s already ruined. Let’s drop the whole labor dispute and go out to eat like we used to, okay? Let’s try to have a nice evening for a change.” She paused, letting out a deep breath, then touched Dad’s elbow. “Please?”

  Dad shrugged. His anger was already subsiding.

  “I’ll get the twins,” she said. She turned away and headed out the sliding screen door.

  “Dad,” Bryan whispered, stepping closer. “I don’t want you to work out of town either.” Bryan didn’t like it when Dad took one- and two-month jobs away from home. When Dad was gone, home was a blanket with a giant hole cut out of its center. “I want to help,” he said.

  “Thanks.” Dad reached over and tousled Bryan’s hair. “I’m sorry I’m taking it out on the family. It’s just that… ah, I don’t know.” He walked to the kitchen window and gazed out. With his back to Bryan, he slowly rubbed the back of his neck. He seemed to have forgotten Bryan was there. Under his breath he said, “Tonight we’ll show ’em.”

  Tonight.

  The word stuck in Bryan’s mind. He couldn’t get it out of his mind all through dinner at Jim’s Cafe, or when he snuck downstairs to watch the tape, replaying Chelsie’s back dive over and over. He couldn’t help thinking about it as he fell asleep on his top bunk. What was Dad going to do tonight?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Bryan forced his eyes open in the darkness and lifted his watch from the shelf behind his head. The numbers glowed in the dark: 2:20. He�
��d heard something. Below, Josh’s slow breathing came in soft waves. Maybe he’d imagined it.

  Click. The kitchen door leading to the garage opened and closed softly.

  Easing back the covers, Bryan swung his legs over the sideboard and searched for the steps of the ladder. When he gained secure footing, he climbed down, careful not to wake Josh. He pulled on his jeans and hooded sweatshirt, then slipped out to the empty kitchen. Slowly, he turned the handle to the garage, stepped into the smell of oil and stacked wood, and closed the door silently behind him. He crouched by the minivan and didn’t move.

  Dad was pushing against the front of his pickup, inching the truck silently out of the garage. Bryan almost called out, but stopped himself. He ducked down and peered through the windows of the van. Clearly, Dad didn’t want the family to know what he was doing. When the truck was halfway out, Dad hurried to the driver’s seat and jumped in.

  Bryan shuffled quietly toward the van’s tailpipe and watched from the edge of the open garage door.

  PROUD TO BE AMERICAN, PROUD TO BE UNION, read a sticker on the front bumper. The truck rolled backward down the sloping driveway to the road. What in the world? It was strange to watch Dad sneaking around. Something about it made the hair on the back of Bryan’s neck bristle.

  On the street, the truck rolled to a stop. Dad jumped out and began pushing the truck from behind.

  Bryan had to know what was going on. He grabbed his ten-speed from the corner, swung his leg over the center bar, and hid in the shadows. A cricket chirped, its song echoing in the still air.

  Gliding out slowly on his bike, Bryan stopped behind the lilac bushes. Yesterday Dad had told him that the lilacs had already set their buds for spring. In the buds, everything they would become was already predetermined. Lavender lilacs again, no choice about it. And Bryan had thought it was pretty much the same way with people. Bryan and his dad were so much alike. He was his father’s son, for better or for worse.

  When the truck had rolled about twenty feet beyond the driveway, the engine rumbled into gear.

  Bryan biked down the freshly mowed lawn, past the silver mailbox, and followed at a distance. Cool night air rushed through his hair and against his face, slapping him fully awake.

  The truck moved slowly through the neighborhood of new, large houses, past the Grinkos’, Sheenans’, and Kalowskis’. A small light glimmered at Kyle’s house, but Bryan knew from overnights there that the Kalowskis always kept a light on.

  The truck rumbled so loudly that Bryan was sure all of Cedar Ridge Addition would wake up. He held his breath and watched the houses. What if someone saw them? Wouldn’t they think it looked strange? Would they call the police?

  Bryan swallowed hard. And what would Dad do if he saw him in the rearview mirror? He tried to hang back, to not get too close. The truck moved slowly enough for Bryan to keep up. He waited for his dad to turn on the lights, but the truck remained a dark shadow.

  Then it began to move faster. Bryan pedaled harder. He shivered—partly from the chilly, early September air, but mostly from excitement. For the first time in a long while, he felt like he was part of what his dad was doing. Not the same closeness they had on their fishing trips—which, until this summer, had happened every free weekend—but still something important. Bryan was pretty sure it had to do with the rats.

  The truck wound through backstreets, avoiding the city’s well-lit main streets. At an approaching intersection, a white police car with two officers inside crossed and headed north. If they noticed Dad’s truck without lights, they’d stop him. Bryan held his breath. The police car moved on.

  Bryan followed the truck through the intersection, careful to lag farther behind under the lights. He pumped his legs hard to catch up again and, three blocks farther, followed the truck down an alley. The truck slowed, then pulled up behind a small house with a white picket fence. The motor cut.

  Bryan skidded to a stop behind a wide spruce tree, only ten yards away. Whose house was this? He glanced around, hoping some mad watchdog wasn’t going to pounce on his leg. He waited, the sound of his own breathing and heartbeat cranked to full volume.

  Dad sat in the truck, not moving.

  The door of a small house opened. In the shadows, a bulky, short man glanced up and down the alley, then lumbered toward the truck. It was the man with caterpillar eyebrows.

  Dad climbed out, stepped to the back of the truck, and lifted his toolbox onto the edge. He opened the lid and pulled out a mallet.

  He lifted up a brown bag, too. Suddenly the sound of metal against metal filled the air. He dropped it.

  “Shoot. The bottom of the bag got wet.”

  He huffed, looked around, then waved his hand at the man. They disappeared down the alley.

  Bryan waited a few seconds, then put down his kick-stand, and inched toward the truck. From the open rear window came the smell of worn vinyl and sweat. Bryan reached into the bed of the pickup. Something sharp pricked his finger. Again he reached, more carefully. This time, he picked up a handful of long, sharp tacks. He’d heard about tacks being tossed in the streets over the summer. So this is what Dad had dropped. He scooped three handfuls of tacks onto the torn paper bag, gathered the paper edges together and twisted it closed, like a big Hershey’s Kiss. Then he slipped quietly down the alley after his father.

  When he reached the corner, he spotted two silhouettes halfway down the block. Quickly he walked toward them, his footsteps muffled in the damp grass along the sidewalks.

  This neighborhood had some of the rattier houses in town. Then he caught his own joke. Rattier. Rats. Though most of the workers lived at the housing camp southwest of his neighborhood, he’d heard that workers with families rented here. Unlike his neighborhood—where new two-story houses, complete with decks and two-stall garages, sprouted up as quickly as dandelions after a rain—the houses here were small and old. To his right, a shutter hung limply on broken hinges. The lower entry step was broken. A tire filled with flowers decorated the overgrown lawn. Maybe this was all rats could afford to live in. Is this what it meant to work for Badgett—to live on a lot less money? If unions helped people to earn better wages so they could live better, then unions were a good thing.

  He heard his dad’s low whisper, which never was very quiet, even at church, but he couldn’t hear what he was saying. The two men moved between cars parked on the west side of the street. What were they doing?

  His father, a dark shadow, squatted next to the rear tire of a dark-colored station wagon.

  Pfffft. It was a squeaky puff of air. Dad moved to the front tire. Pfffft. Bryan’s stomach turned. He suddenly understood. Dad was slitting the car’s tires.

  Tonight. So this was what Dad meant.

  Kyle had said his dad’s insurance office was overloaded with claims this summer from vandalism, and Bryan had told him that rats were probably responsible. He stared at his dad’s shadow, bent over. Was this any different than tossing stones at the guardhouse? Probably not. It was simply proving a point. It was voicing an opinion.

  If Dad saw him on the curb, just standing by, watching, he’d be mad. It was time to act. Either turn around and head home, or help.

  Hand shaking, Bryan untwisted the wad of paper and grabbed a handful of one-inch tacks. Their sharp points pricked his palm. “He’s a hero!” The words pierced his conscience, sharper than the tacks. He looked around the street at the small houses. He didn’t know anyone who lived here—their names, their children’s names. For all he knew, Chelsie and her brother could live in this neighborhood. His body twitched. He took two slow steps backwards, then turned. The tacks fell from his hand, back into the paper.

  A shattering of glass broke the night air. Ca-crash!

  Bryan jumped, his heart pounding. He dropped the paper pouch and tacks spilled all around him.

  He watched as the short man moved away from a sports car, its window caved in. With the mallet raised high, the man ran to the next car, slammed the mallet into t
he windshield, and took off.

  “Let’s go!” he whispered hoarsely to Bryan’s father. The two men raced toward Bryan.

  Bryan froze, only yards away.

  Dad spotted him. “What?!”

  Picking a path through the tacks, he ran to his dad. “I tossed those tacks,” he lied.

  “Oh no,” Dad groaned, shaking his head. “This isn’t for kids, Bry. Follow me!”

  Somewhere behind them, a door slammed open.

  A man swore. Bang!! A single shot of gunfire rang out in the black night and set off a chorus of barking dogs.

  Bryan tore down the street alongside his dad, the short man at their heels. His heartbeat thundered in his ears like a kettledrum. They raced down the alley and threw Bryan’s bike into the pickup. Maybe this wasn’t for kids, but Bryan was in deep now.

  Then they sped away, headlights off.

  CHAPTER SIX

  With night dew still clinging to his skin, Bryan climbed back under his quilt, chilled. He fell into a fitful sleep, dreaming once of getting caught with a mallet in his hand and once of standing next to Chelsie in the grocery store—of all places—leaning forward to actually kiss her, his lips just about to touch hers, but then her face turning into a wet nose and a hairy snout. Gretsky. Gross!

  “C’mon sleepy,” came Mom’s voice from next to his bunk. She pushed Bryan’s hair away from his forehead. “Time to get up.”

  “What … what time is it?” he asked groggily, his mouth rancid as old potatoes.

  “Nearly eleven o’clock. You know how fidgety Grandma Effie gets if we’re late. She said noon, but she’s sure to be pacing by now.”

  From his great-grandparents’ compact living room, Bryan could see Elissa and Josh sitting at the glass-topped kitchen table, drinking milk and eating cookies. Being older had its privileges; at least Bryan could eat in the living room. As the adults drank coffee, he dunked another sugar-sprinkled gingersnap in his glass of milk, let it soak for three seconds, then popped it in his mouth.