Riot (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage)

by Mary Casanova

  The truck’s rumbling grew faint.

  Mom stepped inside. She closed the door softly behind her and leaned against it.

  “Mom, does that mean we can watch cartoons tomorrow?” Elissa asked. Her face was eager. “All day?”

  “Yeah, can we?” Josh echoed.

  “No,” Mom said, her voice distant, as if it were coming from faraway, “certainly not.”

  Bryan’s chin twitched, his nose tingled. He looked away from Mom and stared out the window. Why would Dad come back inside to tell them to stay home tomorrow? A Saturday? It didn’t make any sense. Wasn’t Dad going to be around? And why should they stay home? On Saturdays, Mom always went grocery shopping, and when Dad couldn’t fish, Bryan and Kyle always got together. Something made him think of Chelsie at the hotel, scared, afraid to go back to her rental house. Afraid for her brother. Maybe Bryan should warn her, but about what?

  “Hi, this is Bryan Grant. My dad said to stay home tomorrow and I just thought, well, you should stay put, too.”

  Right. That would sound completely logical to Chelsie.

  Still, though he couldn’t put his finger on it, he knew it deep in his own gut. Fear. He almost considered calling the sheriff, but about what? To say he was afraid not only for Chelsie, but also for himself, for his dad—for the whole town?

  Thinking of Chelsie, he went downstairs where the twins were plopped like wet noodles in their purple beanbag-chairs.

  “Hey guys,” Bryan said, taking a video down from the shelf. “Here’s one terrific show.” He inserted it into the video player.

  “Bry!” cried Josh. “You can’t. We were here first!”

  Kyle’s voice came over the speaker, “… executed with tremendous skill…”

  Bryan watched himself on the television screen. At the edge of the diving board, arms out, glancing toward shore, he started teetering.

  Josh and Elissa laughed. Elissa pointed. “You’re gonna fall!”

  That’s okay if they laugh, Bryan thought. Chelsie came next, and he loved everything about her, especially her hair and her muscular calves and the way she entered the water with barely a splash. She was perfect, or at least pretty close.

  Who knows what she thought of him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Bryan woke to the sound of trucks rolling past his house. Dawn spilled a hazy light through his green bedroom blinds. He stretched, climbed down the bunk ladder, and threw on a T-shirt and jeans over his underwear. The air was chilly. He cranked his window shut.

  The kitchen phone rang once.

  As Josh breathed noisily on the lower bunk, Bryan slipped out.

  From the kitchen, he heard his mother.

  “I know,” she said. “Something’s up. No. He didn’t come home either.” There was a long pause. “Sure, Brenda, I’ll call if I hear anything. Thanks.”

  As Bryan walked closer, Mom hung up the phone, unaware of him, and walked into the living room. She sat next to Gretsky on the sofa, looking over her shoulder through the sheers to the street.

  “Mom?” Bryan asked. “What’s going on?”

  Without turning, she flagged Bryan closer with her right hand. He sat down next to her. Gretsky rolled onto his back, legs up. Bryan scratched him softly.

  On the street, pickup after pickup loaded with men,

  three to the front, several riding in back, rolled down the street. One truckload was singing, though Bryan didn’t catch the words.

  From a red truck, a beer can flipped from the passenger window. It rolled down the street, clunking to a stop at the gutter nearest Bryan’s driveway.

  “Where are they going?” Bryan asked. The trucks were heading south. He jumped off the couch and opened the front door.

  “Bryan!” Mom called. Her voice was a shrill whisper. “Get back here!”

  He stepped out, his bare feet absorbing the cold from the cement. The trucks were rolling right through the stop sign at the end of the street and turning right—toward the Badgett housing camp.

  Bryan’s teeth began to chatter. He stepped back inside, closed the door, and turned the brass dead bolt. He shook his head.

  “It doesn’t look good,” he said. “Is Dad out there?”

  “Let’s hope not,” Mom said, curling her feet underneath her robe like a young child. She wasn’t very convincing.

  Bryan thought of what Grandpa had said. The strike of 1934 was part of Teamster history. Maybe this was history in the making. Maybe things had to come to a full boil somehow and then the unions would regain their footing. Perhaps this was one of those times in history that others would look back on later as a good thing, something that had to happen, something inevitable. Bryan thought of the filming he’d done at the beach. “Mom?” he said.

  “Mhhm …”

  “Can I go to Kyle’s?” he lied. He’d repent later. “We were going to film each other, if that’s okay … and I’ll take care of the camera. Promise.”

  She looked at him. Beneath her eyes, circles had formed. Maybe she’d make him stay home, like Dad had warned. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She was more tired than Bryan had realized.

  “Oh, okay,” she agreed. “Cut across the backyards. I don’t want you out there.” She nodded toward the street. “Call me or come back soon, okay?”

  “Right.” He leaned over and hugged her, feeling the softness of her terrycloth robe against his cheek. “Everything will be fine, Mom. Don’t worry.”

  “Thanks, Bry.”

  He hurried to his room, pulled on his hooded sweatshirt and sneakers, and hurried downstairs to the family room. He didn’t really believe everything would be fine, but somehow it had slipped out, the way his mom used to say it when she kissed a bruised knee. He wasn’t just his father’s son—he was his mother’s son, too.

  From the VCR, he pulled the videotape of Chelsie and inserted it into the video camera, figuring he had enough film to shoot another hour or more of footage. Then he headed back upstairs with the case’s strap across his shoulder.

  Before Mom could change her mind, he opened the sliding glass door to the backyard and stepped out. Nonchalantly, he wove around the yard to the front edge of the garage and looked out toward the street. A rusty light-blue truck rolled past. Two men, one with a belly that didn’t fit inside his black jacket, sat on the tailgate. Bryan didn’t recognize them.

  An inner alarm went off, blaring a message to his brain. Hurry. Run. But he sauntered, taking slow, deliberate steps. He walked into the garage, got his bike, and pushed it over the dewy grass past Josh and Elissa’s playset. If Mom glanced his way, he wanted to look as casual as he did every other Saturday morning. Only difference was it was 7 A.M., instead of 9 or 10. He pushed across his backyard, past the sprinkler at the Grinkos’, the ripe tomatoes in the Sheenans’ vegetable garden, and the neatly trimmed hedge of the Andersons’ yard. Bryan looked straight ahead, hoping no one would stop him and say hello, and pushed his bike onto the small dirt path that wound through the aspen woods toward the field where he and Kyle played. He knew that that was where the truckloads of men were heading.

  A canopy of aspen leaves, some turning golden, flicked in the soft breeze. Aspen, the lifeblood of the paper industry, had replaced nearly all the virgin pine forests. Bryan had seen old black-and-white photos at the historical museum that showed Rainy River clogged with logs during the nation’s building boom. But that was in the past. Now Blue Ash was a paper town. More than once, Bryan had wondered what it would be like to step back to when voyageurs paddled the lake country between huge pine trees that made aspen look like toothpicks.

  That’s what money smells like.

  He thought of the mill tour he’d taken in June. Giant mixing bowls stirred wood pulp into something like Cream of Wheat and, with massive rolling pins, reshaped it into endless sheets of paper. Trees became reams of paper, stacks and stacks ready for shipping. After the tour, Bryan received his own ream of paper. He’d picked canary yellow.

  The woods
smelled of late summer, sweet with tall patches of lavender asters and goldenrod. A fallen aspen blocked his path. Bryan hopped off his bike, lifted it over the trunk, then hopped back on and sped down the trail.

  He remembered the bald eagle. Fishing on Rainy Lake with Dad one day, a bald eagle had dropped from its perch in a huge pine and bulleted toward the water, only yards from the bow of their boat. It swooped so close, Bryan had seen its yellow eyes. In one smooth movement, with wings wide, it hit the water with its outstretched talons and soared up to the top of another pine with a good-size walleye. Perched over its prey, it tore at the fish with its hooked beak. Dad shook his head and laughed. “He’s doing better than we are.” Then, for a long time, they floated on the glittering water, watching the eagle. Dad whispered, “Isn’t he a beauty?”

  Heading down a slope, Bryan neared the ramp that he and Kyle had built. He flew over the wood sheeting, both tires off the ground for an instant, and landed beyond the wood block marking their furthest jump.

  He glanced at the tree house, painted camouflage green and brown, its platform eight feet off the ground and supported by three aspen trees. Dad had helped Kyle and Bryan build it two years ago, when Dad had more time. Before everything had changed.

  Bryan zipped past the tree house.

  Why did everything have to mean choosing? Why did it have to be all one way or all another? Someone’s loss, another’s gain. Union or nonunion. Win or lose. Wasn’t there a middle ground?

  The sun was chasing away the night chill, scattering golden carpets on the forest floor.

  Bryan hunched toward his handlebars. Ahead, beyond the edge of aspen, trucks lined the road next to the housing camp.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Over a hundred men were gathered on the street outside the housing camp. Bryan walked his bike off the path and into dewy goldenrod and grass, soaking his jeans. He tried to make his motions casual, natural. He didn’t want anyone to notice him, especially his father.

  Twenty, maybe thirty yards from the road, he put down his kickstand and squatted in the weeds, watching.

  Some men sipped from white Styrofoam cups. Most looked edgy, glancing back and forth, milling about, as though they needed a leader.

  Bryan took a breath. This wasn’t frightening, not the way the passing trucks of men had made him feel. He’d overreacted. He took the video camera from its case, removed the lens cap, and lifted the camera to his shoulder like a news reporter.

  A van with a camera on top and KBLH NEWS painted in rainbow colors across its side drove slowly from the west, from the direction of the Border Mall and Pizza Hut, toward the crowd. It wove around the men on the street. Bryan had the right idea. This was “history in the making.” He pressed the “on” button. The camera buzzed next to his ear.

  He spoke. “September ninth … history in the making …”

  He stopped talking. He’d rather watch and film. Kyle could do it better, he’d find some way to make it all sound funny.

  Inside the housing camp, two men stood by the guardhouse. Bryan recognized the wide-shouldered man—the hired bulldog—taking shelter behind the closed steel gate. Beyond him, two blue charter buses were parked. The housing camp looked strangely quiet. Saturday morning. Were all the Badgett workers still sleeping?

  A dozen law enforcement officers paced back and forth inside, all wearing protective helmets. All, except one. Sheriff Hunter. The sheriff talked with the police officers on his side of the fence, then with the protesters on the other side. It was good to see the sheriff out there. He’d keep things under control. He hadn’t needed Bryan’s warning after all.

  Minutes passed slowly. More pickup trucks pulled up alongside the curb. More men joined the growing crowd. Bryan shuddered. The sheriff’s force looked smaller by the moment. If things got out of control, how could the sheriff and the small police force possibly hold back so many men?

  The back of Bryan’s throat burned.

  The news truck edged down the street and stopped. A lean, long-legged man with wire glasses hopped out, springing ahead, his camera on his shoulder.

  “Get that blasted camera out of here!” a man shouted.

  Two burly men grabbed the newsman by either arm and dragged him back to his van. The camera crashed to the ground.

  “Hey!” the newsman shouted as they shoved him toward the van. “You can’t …”

  Bryan’s heart beat faster. He wiped his wet palms on his jeans, then tried to zoom closer to find the reporter’s camera beneath the shuffling feet. It was gone. Why were they so uptight about cameras? Wasn’t this a free country?

  For a few more minutes, men milled about, as if at a friendly social. Then, as if responding to an unseen signal, they picked up gravel, just as Bryan had done, and pelted it over the fence at the mobile home windows.

  Crack! Ka-ping! Crack!

  Glass shattered. A mobile home window fell in shards to the ground.

  “Stupid rats!” someone yelled.

  Suddenly, a young mustached man from the group shouted, “Well, are we going to do it or are we just going to talk?”

  He walked into the crowd, raising his arms into the air as if he were preaching a sermon. “Let’s do what we came here to do!”

  The crowd divided into two, one group pushing toward the fence, the other hanging back in the street.

  “C’mon!” the man with the mustache yelled. “Let’s get this job done once and for all! Are you a bunch of chickens?!”

  Get what done? What were they going to do? Bryan bit down hard on his inner lip. He pressed the camera against his face.

  One man, well over six feet tall, towered above the others. Bryan had seen him at the strike site once. He shouted in a deep voice, “It doesn’t look like anybody’s here, guys! We may as well go home.”

  “Hey, stupid! If you’re not with us, then you go home! We don’t need bystanders! Let’s finish this job!”

  Bryan bit too hard on his inner lip and tasted blood. His whole body tightened, as though it were a clam closing in on itself. He shrunk lower in the grass, dropping to his elbows and stomach. He crawled to a slope where he could look on, his zoom lens poking through the weeds.

  One group of men stretched a line across a portion of the fence. “C’mon! Push!” The high metal fence bent slowly, as easily as an aluminum can. The men cheered, raising their fists high. “Rats go home! Rats go home!” The air was littered with four-letter words.

  With war whoops, the men swarmed over the portion of downed fence that stretched twenty yards from the empty guardhouse.

  On the edge of the street, yards away from the crowd, Nancy Benton, in a brown leather jacket and jeans, held a camera to her face. One of the strikers turned and pointed. Bryan wished he could warn her.

  Three men strode toward her.

  She lowered her camera and stepped backwards.

  “No cameras!” one man yelled, tearing the camera from her neck and throwing it to the ground. He put his boot on it and glared at her. Nancy Benton spun away. She dashed to a silver car, scrambled in, and sped east, wheels squealing.

  Trembling, Bryan reached over to his bike, yanked at the kickstand, and let it fall in the grass beside him. Kathunk. What would happen if someone found him filming? He eyed the woods. If he left now …

  When he returned to his lens, the crowd looked like a giant amoeba—the kind he’d watched under a microscope in Mr. Crawford’s science class last year—a single-cell organism that changed shape as it moved, flowing forward. Two men straggled behind and ran to catch up with the group. They looked over their shoulders nervously, as if someone might see them alone, knowing the group meant safety. In moments, the individuals blended in and disappeared.

  Sheriff Hunter held a radio to his mouth as his handful of officers clustered together at the edge of the fence, like shy children on the edge of the schoolyard.

  “Hey, Sheriff!” someone yelled. “Where’s your National Guard, huh?”

  National Guard?
Were they supposed to help the sheriff?

  Suddenly, the men swarmed around the mobile homes, wielding baseball bats that must have been hidden under their jackets. Bryan focused on the moving mass, a blur of legs and arms, relieved not to see his father among them.

  For a few moments, the men moved out of sight, behind the first row of mobile homes. One yellow mobile home leaned slowly, rocking on its brick foundation, then crashed to its side. Dust and shouting filled the air. “We’ll show those suckers!”

  Bryan shook his head slowly, his mouth sour.

  A group of men emerged from behind a mobile home and encircled a blue bus.

  “Rock it!” From either side, they pushed, rocking the groaning bus back and forth. “There she goes!” On its side wheels, the bus hung for a moment, then creaked and fell to the ground with a slam. Men were laughing, slapping each other on the back and high-fiving.

  Grass and weeds brushed against Bryan’s camera lens as trucks rolled past, momentarily blocking his shot. A hornet hovered above his hand, buzzing, then flew on. How could grown men—fathers and grandfathers—do this?

  Sitting up to a crouch, Bryan was determined to film as much as he could.

  Men, increasingly jubilant, swarmed in and out of the mobile homes. One man, with a black cap and a red bandanna pulled over his face, swung a baseball bat at a glass window. It shattered to the ground, leaving a gaping hole. The man tugged at the rose curtains hanging there and pulled them outside. Then he reached down to the ground.

  Bryan zoomed his focus closer. The man lifted a flaming rag to the curtains, lit them, and tossed the rag through the window. Within seconds, smoke seeped out the window. In less than a minute, smoke poured from the mobile home. As the man glanced toward the street, the bandanna fell from his face. Bryan focused right on the face.

  It was Dad.

  Bryan dropped the camera. He covered his open mouth with his hand and shut his eyes. His chest heaved with a silent cry. How could he? Was Dad crazy, too? He was the same as all the other men—hornets defending their hive, stinging their intruders, and killing themselves in the process. Bryan rose to his knees, grabbed a clump of weeds, and ripped it out by the roots. He flung it toward the street. So what if his father or anyone saw him! If his father could be part of this, then maybe nothing mattered anymore.