River City

by John Farrow

  “You should stay—see how the other side lives.”

  “What other side?” “Mine.”

  “I’ve got a job to do.” “For the monsignor.” “For him, and for Duplessis, and—”

  She tucked her hands under the lapels of his coat and pulled him in closer to her. “I know about those guys, but don’t forget the monsignor. You’re working for him, too. Which means, if you think about it, that you’re working for me.”

  “I am?”

  “Miners won’t take orders from a woman or from a priest. They need a tough guy to be in charge. The young ones are a wild bunch. We can’t have them taking potshots at cops with their hunting rifles. They need to know that if they screw up, they will answer to you.”

  “Tell them they’ll get sent straight to hell,” Roger suggested, “since we’re working for Father Joe.”

  “You should know. You’re going there yourself,” Carole teased. “But only for what you do in bed with me.”

  That made him grin, and he felt better about many things, even as he returned to his room alone.

  Journalists and out-of-town union guys were staying at the hotel. Not many sightseers were visiting Asbestos. Roger enlisted the help of the hotel night manager, who for five bucks put a name to the face of each man standing around the downstairs bar. Pierre Trudeau and Gérard Pelletier, Jean Marchand, René Lévesque, and Father François, who was billeted with the miners but who’d come over to the hotel for cocktail hour, were part of the mix. Roger took the boisterous, pugilistic-looking man in the corner to be Reggie Chartrand, the union guy. Among the barflies, only Chartrand and Marchand had chins that could take a punch. Marchand looked too distinguished to beat up, and anyway Roger liked the guy right off the bat—he didn’t put on airs. Chartrand seemed overly full of himself, and when he and Trudeau began playfully sparring, Roger was surprised that the skinny rich kid did okay against the former prizefighter. The union boss was even embarrassed by the rich kid, who was a little too quick for him, and tried to laugh him off. But Trudeau’s narrow chin—Roger clucked his tongue. He figured if he unloaded a haymaker on him, the fellow might never be called an intellectual again. In his battles, Roger preferred to minimize the damage done, so for this job that would mean a punch-up with Chartrand, the ex-middleweight. He’d meet him alone in an alley to satisfy Duplessis’s desire for carnage.

  Assessing his foes, Roger quaffed a beer in a corner by himself. He noticed another gentleman glance into the room. The night manager had left, so couldn’t help him with the identification, but judging by the way the others had stopped talking to glare at him, he presumed that he had found his count.

  The spiffily attired gentleman walked out of the hotel bar, and the hotel, onto the street. Roger padded after him. He could not allow a count to wander these treacherous streets alone at night, not when his safety constituted one of his jobs.

  They had trundled into the archiepiscopal palace as chatty bishops, but as the meeting progressed, they turned sullen. They asked Monsignor Charbonneau to provide his rationale for supporting Jews and communists. The archbishop of Montreal asked if they knew what happened to men who breathed asbestos into their lungs day after day. Yes, one remarked. They provided for their families.

  Unanimously, the bishops informed Charbonneau that, due to his support for the strike, the fabric of the Holy Church was being rent asunder. Perhaps never to be repaired. The people expected guidance, they maintained, not revolution.

  “I support the just cause of the miners,” Charbonneau maintained. “Not revolution. But I support their right to a fair wage and to choose their own unions.”

  “Your Grace, we have a Catholic Union.”

  “The miners are free to associate with it, or not. They will choose, not the bishops.”

  “What about Quebec?” he was asked. Charbonneau was distrusted for being a francophone from Ontario.

  He answered, “What about Quebec?” The bishops left unhappy.

  Monsignor Charbonneau—Father Joe to some—despaired. He felt himself alone against the world.

  Probably, nobody cared. Roger surmised that no one in Asbestos had any reason to hurt the count. Miners had their own troubles—what did it matter to them that the guy was an old Nazi? No Jews were around. The cops were working for Duplessis, and the premier didn’t mind if ex-Nazis drifted through his province looking for a home. So no one cared that the count was checking out the strike, perhaps taking note of police tactics or evaluating the conviction of communist sympathizers. Although Roger wondered why. He deduced after only a few minutes that his own purpose here was different than what Mayor Houde had suggested. He wasn’t the man’s bodyguard—he’d been sent along to keep the count company, to see that he wasn’t lonely, to be his friend.

  That first night, he and de Bernonville walked all over that little town.

  “Your name’s in the papers,” Roger mentioned.

  “Journalists,” the man scoffed. “They have nothing better to do to occupy their pickled brains. A miner is bruised, they make it sound as though the sky has fallen. Miners live tough lives—of course they’re bruised. Besides, they beat each other up, for sport.”

  “The government wants to deport you, they say,” Roger persisted.

  “Journalists are the problem,” de Bernonville maintained. “I will have to persuade them to think differently. If they can understand my presence here, they will give me some peace. Governments never look for problems. If the problem about me goes away in the press, I won’t be deported.”

  They had reached an edge of town and gazed across a rocky terrain. The moon was nearly full above them, which was good to see, or they might have mistaken the land stretching away from them as being a moonscape, stark and uninhabitable.

  “That’s why you’re here,” Roger noted.

  “I’m here because I’m here,” de Bernonville told him. The man was slightly above average in height, with excellent square shoulders but a plump face that might have foretold future girth. Perhaps he’d not been eating well, and had taken off weight below the neck only. An ascot camouflaged his neck, and a handkerchief was tucked into the breast pocket of his pinstriped suit. The count strolled along with the aid of a stick that had a heavy knob at one end and a pointed brass tip. A weapon, Roger considered. He carried himself as though cinched up, strapped in by a girdle.

  “You want to make friends,” Roger supposed.

  “I would like journalists to receive me more graciously into my new homeland than they have done to date. Where besides right here can I find so many of them in one place? If I can have a word with them, share a drink, a few laughs, they might be persuaded to gaze more kindly upon my stay. If they stop writing about me, or change what they say, I can resolve this situation.”

  Roger didn’t know how he was going to influence men so set against him. “Are you asking me to introduce you? I don’t know them myself.”

  “Sooner or later, they’ll stop glowering at me and invite me to debate. When they do, I’ll shift the ground beneath their feet. I’ll charm them. If that doesn’t work, then you can do your job.”

  “My job?”

  “Smash their faces in.”

  “Whoa—journalists? Wait a minute. I didn’t sign on for that.”

  De Bernonville patted him on the back. “I’m having fun with you, Roger. It won’t be necessary. The mere sight of you walking with me sends a message. That, together with my famous charm. I know how to handle these people. Before we’re done, we’ll be sharing our meals with them.”

  Roger was skeptical of that. The bunch he’d seen at the bar were known to be a feisty breed, and not well disposed towards Nazis. De Bernonville had confidence that he could charm the birds out of the trees, but a journalist out of his convictions might be a more difficult task.

  “Now, lead me back to the hotel, Roger. I’m lost in the dark out here. Tomorrow, we’ll work on this.”

  Of his three tasks, two would seem to be a snap
. Sooner or later, he could segregate an inebriated Reggie Chartrand from the pack and give him a quick going-over. As long as the man bled, he could exaggerate the damage to Duplessis, keeping him content. Guarding de Bernonville would seem to be easy, as well, as the count had not come here to berate miners or forestall a revolution. Given that his mission was to make friends and influence the province’s fifth estate, Roger could keep him safe. He doubted that the man could overcome the animosity among the intellectuals at the hotel bar, but they were unlikely to do more than sneer at him, and perhaps raise their voices in debate. The exception might be Chartrand, who was sufficiently volatile to resort to his fists, but if he did so Roger could kill two birds with a single counterpunch. Overall, his most difficult task would be to do his duty for his wife and the Catholic Church. How could he marshal two thousand striking miners into a disciplined corps when each man, by dint of his labour, probably could match his physical prowess?

  As expected, Carole had plenty of suggestions, none of which inspired him.

  “I don’t see why I can’t just go out and have a beer with a bunch of the guys and ask them to behave themselves. If not, I’ll say, the monsignor will ship them to hell in a limo.”

  “Because they’ll get drunk and forget about the monsignor and forget about hell. Not everyone’s as worried about hell as you are. They’ll only laugh.”

  “They’ll get drunk no matter what I say. Why do I have to make a speech? That’ll be an excuse to get drunk, if they’re forced to listen to me.”

  “Not a speech. A kitchen chat, we call it. Go into the miners’ homes. Don’t only talk to the men, but to their wives and kids. Get everybody in the community behind the strategy. Then if the men get drunk, they’ll have to answer to their wives and neighbours. They’ll think about that first.”

  “Bloody hell,” he said, an English phrase he’d picked up in the internment camp. Once in a while, the English knew how to express themselves.

  “You can do it,” she encouraged him.

  “This is starting to sound like real work to me,” he said with a sigh.

  When she spun around to chastise him, she discovered him smiling brightly in full tease. They kissed, and let it linger.

  “Babysitter?” he asked, as they stepped away from their embrace.

  “Anik’s coming with us this morning. She’s a great icebreaker. Gets everybody gabbing. She’s a union girl, our child, right from the get-go.”

  “Bloody hell,” he repeated. Anik was going to be a union girl because she wouldn’t have a choice. Her mother would see to that. Someday, he might have to face the two of them across a picket line, and wouldn’t that be a picnic.

  He awoke thirsty in the night. From the hotel window, Roger Clément spotted fires. He got dressed. Pistol, knife and knuckle dusters were thrust into his jacket pockets and zippered securely. He laced up his boots, for this was no battle for a man in shoes. Leaving his room, he slammed the door behind him. The thin walls of the shabby hotel shook.

  He hollered in the corridor and pounded his fists on doors. “Wake up, you intellectual shitheads! Wake up! You wanna be part of this? Wake up!”

  He heard men stirring, but no one dared open a door to investigate. He continued to lumber down the corridor, pounding doors, yelling.

  Pelletier was the first to emerge, tall and imposing, holding a towel around his waist, sleepily scowling. “What the hell’s going on?”

  The door opposite his opened. Trudeau poked his sleepy head out.

  Another door yawned ajar, so Marchand was also awake, and across from him, Chartrand, who’d lit up a smoke first, stood forth in speckled shorts.

  “A battle’s starting up. Unless we stop it.”

  “What battle? Don’t stop it. Join in!” chirped Chartrand. He jumped back into his room to dress.

  “Who’re you?” Pelletier asked.

  “Don’t give me that shit. You know who I am by now. A battle’s forming. Whether you’re a journalist or union, you don’t want to miss it. I need your help.”

  “What kind of help?” Trudeau asked. To him, the thug in the hall didn’t sound crazy, he just behaved that way.

  “If the union fights the cops, it’ll be a slaughter. Is that what you want?”

  Chartrand had looked out his window and seen the parade of torches, the miners and cops heading for a confrontation. “He’s right. They’re gonna brawl. We’ll see about who gets slaughtered!” Still pulling on his clothes and carrying his boots, he was off, hobbling down the stairs with his stuff.

  “Help me,” Roger demanded. “It might start out as fists, but it’ll end up as guns against bricks. Is that what you want?”

  “Whose side are you on?” Marchand asked, still skeptical. Roger was right—they’d checked him out. His long record as a Duplessis and Houde henchman, as a union buster, wasn’t hard to dig up, but he had also done time in an interment camp as a communist sympathizer, and he was hanging out with a known fascist. No one knew what to make of his presence here.

  “Monsignor Charbonneau hired me to preserve the peace. That man’s faith is in God, but it’s also in me. How can I do this by myself?”

  “We’ll get killed if we’re in the middle,” Trudeau pointed out. He sounded neither afraid nor reluctant, only prudent. Through the varied contours of his intellectual life he had persevered as a man of faith himself. He respected Monsignor Charbonneau, which might have dictated one course of action, but logic countermanded that response. “What do you expect us to do?”

  “Get dressed,” Roger suggested, then ran after Chartrand to intersect the brawl.

  Fires in empty oil drums delineated a scruffy vacant lot, which yielded to a sloping hillside where the two gangs were intent on hostilities. Miners carried torches to light their way. The cops had lit a couple themselves, which cast long and wavering shadows as they walked down a curving, descending dirt road, but most of them carried flashlights. They were out of uniform. This was a private brawl, supposedly, instigated by the hotheads on both sides jawing at each other all day. No badges, no guns, that was the deal—men against men, twenty to a side. Young men all, looking to settle scores and insults and enjoy a rowdy fight. Roger was no dope, and he guessed that not everyone on both sides was a dope, either. Whatever anyone had agreed to, this would not be a battle in good faith. Both sides made sure that covert reinforcements were ready and nearby. If the fight was fair, they might never be called in, but let one side break the contract, or even lose badly, and the night could succumb to disaster.

  He thought he detected a shadow spread out and move along a higher ridge. More cops, snaking down. Towards the gentle valley where the miners lived, he could see nothing, but this was their turf. They knew how to move through this town undetected.

  A couple of boys, miners’ sons, were responsible for lighting the barrels, and as the two groups moved onto the field Roger jogged there on his own. Only Chartrand had reached the battleground ahead of him.

  “We don’t want this to happen,” Roger told him, hoping the man possessed a modicum of sense. “I do. Send twenty cops to the hospital and this strike takes a different turn.”

  “Or twenty dead miners.”

  “A fight’s a fight,” Chartrand warned him. “Anyway, it’s too late to stop it.” He feared the man was right.

  The men from the hotel arrived just as the miners were forming at one end of the square field, their numbers lit by the smoky, flaring barrels. As they lifted their torches, their faces shone as if disembodied, their clothes dark, their forms indistinguishable. A bank of cloud cover eclipsed the moon. At the opposite end, cops spread out into a single line, flashlights held low around their waists, beams daring the darkness. Except for the nervous lamps, they could scarcely be seen.

  The so-called intellectuals joined Roger at the edge of the field between the two groups. They stood still as the warring factions moved closer in makeshift battle formation, each of the combatants assuming a stride and, when he stood s
till, a stance meant to show no fear, to intimidate.

  Moving alone to the centre of the field between them, Roger Clément stood as a darkened figure, a stout form, and soon, a voice. Just by standing between them, he secured the brawler’s attention and stalled their advance.

  “You cannot do this,” he called out in the dark.

  A cop answered. “Out of the way, whoever the fuck you are.”

  He turned to face the police. “How come you think so much of these guys, the miners?”

  A few scornful laughs. A cop said, “They insulted my mother, the bastards. They insulted my sister, my wife. They insulted my dog, my cat and my nose. Tonight, they pay for that, the cocksuckers.”

  “Buddy, I can’t see your nose in the dark, so I can’t say if that was justified, but the rest of it, that’s what men say on a picket line. Cops have to live with that.”

  “I remember that nose,” a miner shouted out. “It’s an obscene nose! It needs to be flattened against his ugly face!”

  “Who are you, anyways?” a cop demanded. “You’re one of them, only chicken-livered.”

  “You think I’m chicken-livered?” Roger shot back.

  “And yellow-bellied.”

  “You think I’m yellow-bellied?”

  “Probably. Why not? Is that a yellow line or chicken feathers running up your spine? It’s hard to tell in the dark.”

  Even a few miners laughed at the comment, and a number of cops clucked like chickens.

  “You don’t want to fight? You’re a coward.”

  “Out of the way, fucker, or both sides will stomp you into the ground!” That was a miner talking. Inwardly, Roger smiled. At least he had gotten both sides to agree on something.