River City

by John Farrow

  Each line took steps towards the other, then stopped and traded invective.

  “Hang on,” Roger called out. “Hang on.”

  “Let him speak!” a voice from the sidelines shouted. A journalist.

  “Fuck him! We’re here to kick police ass!” This voice also came from the sidelines. Roger recognized it. Reggie Chartrand. You little bugger.

  “Listen to what he has to say!” the unknown voice from the side called out. “I’m a journalist. You know how angry the public is. Any more cop violence and heads will start to roll. You cops will be the scapegoats. Listen to him, or we’ll report you in the papers.” Pelletier was pleading for peace, although he had no clue how Roger could finagle his way out of this one.

  The presence of journalists gave the cops something to think about, something more than a miner’s fist to fear. Like air from a balloon, a portion of the fight went out of them.

  “I was saying,” Roger called out to the cops. “You must think a lot of these miners if you think this is all who showed up. Think they’ll fight fair? Get the upper hand, and the rest will come out of the shadows, ten to a man. And you, miners!” He turned. “Do you really think their buddies with submachine guns aren’t far away? I’ve already seen them on the move. This is not going to work, guys. It’s a nice idea, but you guys don’t trust each other enough. So it’s not going to work.”

  “I’ve seen them, too,” Trudeau called out. He’d been in the homes of many of these men and knew their families. “More cops are coming down the hill.”

  “There’s just us!” one cop called out, but he didn’t sound convincing. “You’re a liar!” another insisted, shouting at Trudeau. “They got their backups, we got ours,” a miner admitted. “Keeps it fair. Us against them.”

  “It’ll be a bloodbath. And that won’t be the end of it, either. Think about your wives, your babies. How many of you do they need dead? You think it won’t happen? Think again—think! This is a bad situation. It won’t work.”

  “Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

  “I represent the Catholic Church,” Roger called out at the top of his lungs, which took both gangs by surprise. “I’m here talking for Monsignor Charbonneau. You’re all Catholics. Now go home, or I’m telling you, you’ll all be sent to hell!”

  His trump card, and he should have known that Carole was right. They only laughed at him for that. Times had certainly changed in the province of Quebec. At least, the saving grace, both sides were chuckling now, totally amused.

  Then Chartrand called out, “Let’s get on with it. Beat the crap out of them. Remember what they did to our boys.”

  In shouting out again, Roger knew he was taking words right out of the mouth of his wife, who often had exhorted strikers and cops to behave. “You’re all Quebecers! You’re all brothers. All of you, you draw paycheques to feed your kids. You’re not fighting the bosses here. You’re not fighting the system or the English. You’re fighting each other, and that makes no damn sense. Now cut it out!”

  “First, we’ll beat the crap out of him!” Chartrand suggested.

  “All right! Do that!” Roger agreed. “If you’re man enough!” His voice was powerful in the still night, and the idea sufficiently absurd, that both sides fell silent to await his explanation. “I’ll take you both on,” he challenged. “I’ll take on whatever cop they want to send up against me. Then I’ll take you on, Reggie. You’re small, but you’re a boxer. We’ll see how tough you are. Show me how tough you are. You want to fight each other? Prove it. Prove you deserve it. One guy out of two beats me, you’ll have your brawl. Okay? The journalists here, they’ll keep their mouths shut, they’ll close their eyes, they’ll walk away. You can fight in peace. But if I beat whatever cop the police send up against me, then if I beat Reggie, or whatever miner the miners send up, if I’m the last one standing, then you all go back to wherever the fuck you’re supposed to be right now.”

  Every man was pumped with adrenaline, looking for trouble. The offer was a good one, for they couldn’t step away from the challenge, nor could either side expect to lose. A miner, though, voiced an objection.

  “You can beat up a cop, I don’t see no problem. They’re lazy, fat fucks. But you want to take on Reggie—he’s smaller than you. That’s one-sided.”

  “I can take him,” Chartrand sneered, but his tone sounded more like bravado than confidence.

  “Like I said, if you want to send somebody else out, that’s fine with me. I’ll take him on. But he’s the one doing most of the talking. I just wanted to shut his yap for an hour or two.”

  “How about if I take on Reggie instead?” a voice from the sidelines inquired.

  People turned, trying to see in the dark. The cops aimed their flashlights, and discovered the determined face of Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

  “I’m about the same size,” the young man pointed out.

  Leaner, though, and he did not possess a pugilist’s bulky physique.

  “You’ve been working out, sir?” Roger asked him. He’d seen that he was quick enough, he was probably smart enough, but that didn’t make him a likely victor.

  “Canoed all summer.”

  Miners laughed, but to Roger his response sounded promising.

  “I’ll take on the rich kid,” Chartrand declared, suddenly more keen.

  Neither the cops nor the miners could turn down the deal. The big guy in the middle might be able to take whomever the police put forward, nobody knew, but the prospects for Chartrand to beat up the upper-class city intellectual who’d been talking to the miners about economics and discipline within the ranks—that was pretty much a foregone conclusion. The cops liked those odds as well. As soon as Chartrand disposed of Trudeau, they could all go at it, kill each other even, while the journalists would be bound to secrecy.

  “Do it your way,” a cop agreed, “as long as the newspaper rats take a hike.”

  “We got no problem with that,” the miners concurred.

  “Me first,” Roger announced. He took off his jacket and brought it over to the sidelines to hand to Trudeau. “Don’t fuck this up for me. We got a lot at stake here.”

  “I think I can take him.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “I’ve got a lot at stake, too. To do my job properly, I need these people to respect me.”

  “Wanting to win, that’s not good enough, either.” “I can box. My dad taught me. All through school I beat bigger guys.” “Okay. Good. But Chartrand fights dirty. I been on picket lines with him.” “Then I’ll fight dirty. Hey, I’m impressed with what you’ve done tonight. But watch your back,” Trudeau advised. “Look who they sent out.” A giant.

  The shadow he cast from the glow of police flashlights made him look like Goliath and put Roger in darkness. Roger couldn’t distinguish his face, which made him seem particularly menacing, but he tried not to overestimate the challenge. He put the man at six-four, maybe an inch more, weighing two-fifty, maybe up to twenty pounds more. Roger was shorter, a fit two hundred and ten, barrel-chested, compact in his muscularity, with iron fists. As they drew closer and the circle of miners with torches and cops closed in around them, he saw that the man did not have a muscled neck, which suggested that the rest of him might be soft as well. The man’s first left jab glanced off Roger’s forehead. He could hit, he had big hands and power—Clément would have to stay beyond the lengthy range of those fists. But did he have a stomach? Roger feinted a left hook, then went in low to the belly to find that out.

  Hearing his opponent’s telltale grunt, Roger knew he had him. And in the cop’s eyes, he saw that he knew it, too.

  Roger walked into a right hand, though, and the shock of it, as much as the blow, drove him to the ground. Then he had to dart around on all fours, fending the man off as he tried to mount him and wrestle in the dirt. Roger panicked—he didn’t want that. He scooted around and twisted and kicked and got clear. Back on his feet again, the throng roaring for its favourite, both s
ides wanting to see him clobbered, he circled warily and waited for an opening.

  He had to watch out for shadows in the firelight. A fist could swing at him unseen. He circled. Then he attacked before the cop gained too much confidence. He took short punches to the chin and cheek, but the man didn’t have short-punch power, he needed a full swing. Inside on him, Roger worked the body, the tummy, the heart, the gut again, then once more up and down the ladder, and finally that right uppercut across the jaw that drove him back on his heels. The cop almost toppled right there. In on him quickly, Roger again landed half a dozen blows to the head. The guy could take a punch! Then back to the stomach, where he was less able to endure solid blows. When his opponent’s guard dropped—and they looked at one another in the light of flame and both men knew that these were the final moments of their contest—Roger came back to the chin three times and the man was down.

  The cop had little interest in rising up again.

  If this were an alley, Roger would jump him. Boot-fuck him. Bang his head against the pavement. Smash his balls. Finish him. See that he regretted being alive. You had to rupture a man’s spirit or he might come back at you. Such conduct would not work here. The giant’s fellow officers would enter the fray and his strategy for the evening would fail. So Roger let him paw about on the ground, and when it was obvious to everybody that he was done, that he had no fight left in him, Roger moved back to the sidelines to retrieve his jacket from Trudeau.

  “One down,” he said.

  “Heavy jacket,” Trudeau mentioned. The gun. “You never know what you might be up against.” “Apparently.”

  Trudeau took his own jacket off and left it with Roger. They moved to the centre of the field. The cops were still attending to their fallen hero, the miners pitching in to enliven the festivities with snide remarks. But in this environment, the police weren’t taking any backtalk and the moment was precarious. On the picket lines, they’d been prevented by superior officers from retaliating. Not here. Not now.

  “Wait’ll this city boy goes down. See what you say then.”

  Chartrand was cocky and excited, Roger saw. Not a good sign. He was itching for a piece of the intellectual. For him, strikes were for workers—he didn’t need any rich kids butting in. Roger came up behind Trudeau and gave him a word of advice.

  “Be careful when he’s in the dark. You can’t see. But when you’re in the dark, unload on him. He won’t see what’s coming.”

  Trudeau didn’t see what was coming, and was down on his knees in seconds. The quality of his chin would now be tested. Chartrand moved in quickly and kicked him in the side of the ribs, and Trudeau, wisely, rolled with the blows and used that momentum to regain his footing. Chartrand moved in on him, but the skinnier man skipped loose, stumbled, then danced away again. He was on the run.

  Between the two of them, he was probably the fitter. Backpedalling was not a bad strategy for a minute or two, to tire his opponent.

  The miners and cops were swearing for blood, and they shoved Trudeau back into Chartrand’s path whenever he ventured too near the circle’s rim. Roger was about to warn him that he was going into the crowd again, but the imp had planned it that way. When miners pushed him towards his foe, he put his head down and came up swinging, landing a few and taking the other guy by surprise. Mad now, Chartrand chased him erratically, but the more adept Trudeau skipped free and hit from the side. The pugilist turned even angrier, then stopped briefly, and it was apparent to all that he needed to breathe. He wasn’t accustomed to a ring this large.

  Then Trudeau stopped leading him. He moved in tighter. He circled. He worked himself into the shadows, and as Chartrand bobbed, he belted him two good ones and the stout boxer backed off. Observing him, Roger had already decided that Chartrand’s life in the ring had mainly been mythology. If he’d defeated anyone, the other guys had been stooges. You could do that during a war, when the good fighters were overseas. Yet when Trudeau snapped a couple of good left hooks to the eye, he also left himself open to a right cross that knocked the rich kid to the ground.

  He got up in a twinkling. Chartrand knocked him down again, and this time kicked him. Trudeau managed to grab a boot and give him a yank, causing him to tumble. With both men on the ground, a cop helped the union guy up.

  Roger stepped in and gave Trudeau a hand up.

  “I’m all right,” the city boy said.

  “You are now,” Roger told him. He slipped a knuckle duster over the fingers of his right hand.

  Trudeau turned back to his opponent and moved towards the shadows again.

  As Chartrand moved in, Trudeau hit him, and the man’s head jerked back. The expression on his face in the flickering light showed alarm. Trudeau hit him again, a knee buckled, and the young man moved in and landed a flurry of blows. Chartrand was bleeding now above the eyes, and another shot smashed his nose. Blood gushed. Another blow sent Chartrand back on his heels, fighting for balance, and the so-called intellectual from the city showed that he had great instincts, working in tight and setting up the man’s head with a left hook, then coming back with that heavy right hand across the chin. Chartrand snapped like a jack pine.

  Trudeau was shaking his fist as though he’d hurt himself against the other man’s jaw, but he was slipping the dusters off, secreting them into a pants pocket. He was the victor, yet only his confederates from the hotel were congratulating him.

  “We had a deal,” Roger Clément spoke up loudly. “I expect you men to honour it. No more fights tonight. If there is, it’ll be in the papers tomorrow. You cops know your bosses don’t want more shit to flush down on the police. All that does is raise more money for the strikers.”

  The gangs moved off, and, aside from parting invective, they were done for the night, to meet again on the barricades in the morning. Reggie Chartrand made it up to his knees. He fought off a miner trying to help him and pointed a finger at Pelletier and other reporters who’d been witnesses to his demise. “You’re not writing about this. Not ever! We have an agreement.”

  “Don’t worry, Reggie,” Pelletier promised. “We have an agreement.”

  “Not ever.”

  “Your sterling reputation is safe with us.” A reputation that would lie in tatters if the public knew he’d gone down to the womanizing lawyer from Montreal.

  Trudeau took back his jacket from Roger. “Thanks,” he said. “For what?” he asked him. “You beat him.”

  “I cheated.”

  “In a fight? No such thing.”

  “I figured that.” Trudeau slipped his jacket on. “I’ve got something that belongs to you,” he said. “Now might not be the best time.”

  “I know what you mean,” Roger said, and tapped him on the shoulder. “Clean it up. Wash the blood off. I don’t want it back dirty.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Pelletier asked. Marchand was right beside him, and gave his friend a big hug.

  Trudeau looked at Roger. Who turned to Pelletier and told him, “Nothing.” He knew better than to tell a journalist that his good friend had cheated. The man could probably use a little mythology in his life. He had a story to tell now, of the night he dropped Reggie Chartrand to his knees. Nobody would believe it, had so many not seen it with their own eyes.

  “Do you think we can get the hotelkeeper to open up the bar again?”

  “With all these cops around? With the curfew?”

  “I know a man with whiskey in his room,” Roger piped up.

  “Who?”

  “A guy I know. You don’t like him much. But whiskey’s whiskey.”

  “De Bernonville?” Marchand charged. “I won’t drink with him.”

  “How come you hang around with that guy?” Pelletier inquired. “Don’t you know who he is?”

  Roger shrugged. “I’m paid to. Mayor Houde was worried that one of you guys might beat him up. I thought that was crazy. After tonight, I’m not so sure.”

  They laughed. They were so happy. They were young and
fighting the war of their lives and glad to be alive, and they were amazed by the evening’s progress. Sure, why not, they’d wake up the count and drink his liquor. Talk to the bastard and tell him to go fuck himself, and if he didn’t like it, they’d beat the crap out of him. But before that happened, they’d drink his whiskey.

  One of the reporters who had joined them on the sidelines, the smallest man among them, moved forward in the procession to walk alongside Trudeau. He said, “Sometimes you surprise me, Pierre.”

  “I surprise myself sometimes, René.”

  They went up to the hotel, woke up de Bernonville and piled into his room. Chartrand was the last in, all bloody and in good spirits. He was tough. Holding out a paper cup for whiskey, he kept his hand outstretched until the glass was filled to the rim, then drank it down and let out a holler.

  “Woo boy! Didn’t we have ourselves a time.”

  They were laughing, enjoying themselves, only going quiet when Pelletier scratched the back of his head, then turned to de Bernonville and said, “Hey there, Count. I hear you’re looking for a new home. You kill Jews for a living. What makes you think we’ll let you do that here?”

  The night ascended from there.

  The striking miners packed it in. They signed a new contract of no particular benefit to them, cutting their extensive losses. Lobbied by Maurice Duplessis and fed a full quota of lies, the pope banished Monsignor Charbonneau to the hinterland of British Columbia, never to be heard from again. As the prelate was on his way out of town, the premier sent him a note of fond farewell. The intellectuals returned to their cities, knowing that le Chef had again defeated them and would redouble his dedication to their future demise. The mine bosses praised the premier, and the premier praised himself. Normality returned, and with it a sense of impending gloom, of darkness. Ottawa chose to deport de Bernonville to face war crimes charges in France, but, aided and abetted by associates in Quebec, he fled to the Caribbean. And from there, to Brazil. Carole Clément came away from the Asbestos strike bitter and angry, haunted by defeat. Still in his late twenties, Father François Legault resolved to be more selective in choosing his confrontations in the future—he had to win a few, but he also had to protect himself within a Church no longer orchestrated by Monsignor Charbonneau. He was to be dispatched to serve as a pastor among northern Indians, but a heart attack caused his foes to fear him less, and he was offered the respite of clerical duty while he recuperated. Camillien Houde made peace with Duplessis, vowing to work only for his perpetual re-election. Finally satisfied with his fidelity, Duplessis, having previously denuded the mayor’s office of any real power, returned a modicum of responsibility to the position.