Some Great Thing

by Lawrence Hill

  Slade continued to chase the story. One day, he cited police sources claiming the killer was one of the few anglos on Baril’s team. The next day, he wrote that a source revealed the killer was an anglo from the other team. On a third day, he penned an article under the headline Mystery Killer Eludes Cops. Slade was interviewed on national television and quoted by reporters across the country. But his wave of popularity subsided. His predictions about retributive violence didn’t materialize. And the people of St. Albert and Princeton began to dislike him.

  They grew tired of his interviewing every hockey player in town. They found it offensive that he attended all subsequent games in the arena, hoping to witness fresh violence. Mostly, they resented his depiction of the townspeople as hockey fanatics steeped in language hatred.

  And Slade, for his part, grew bored with the story. Nothing was happening. Nobody was arrested, nobody charged. After four days, the story had fallen off the front page. Slade felt he was wasting his time hanging around St. Albert-Princeton, living out of a motel room. Moreover, his stay was growing unpleasant. Somebody slashed two of his tires. Someone else jostled him as he entered the hockey arena. Even the waitress in the café where he took his breakfast grew sullen after he asked her a question, wrote down the answer and asked her name. His editor made him stay put a little longer—“just in case, Slade, you understand, just in case.”

  Seven days after the brawl, on the night Edward Slade intended to return to Winnipeg, something did happen in St. Albert. It was what Slade had been waiting for. It happened around midnight, on an icy road eight miles out of town. Slade heard about it on his police radio scanner, which he had been monitoring in his hotel room. He heard the name of the victim: Peter Griffiths. Slade raced to the scene, arriving minutes after ambulance workers had carted away the body.

  Peter Griffiths, the sixteen-year-old Princeton Hawks player, had lost control of his car on the highway leading out of town. His vehicle shot over a guard rail and down a ravine. The boy’s body was found in the front seat. His head and chest were crushed. Slade had a way with cops. He had learned, long ago, how to talk like them. Edging down the slope toward the officers, he said, “Hey Sarge, what’s it look like?” He sounded casual. Vaguely interested. Slade had met this cop. They had spoken after the hockey riot.

  Standing on the hill in the darkness, with his back to Slade, Sergeant James Hetler grunted, “Some prick forced the kid off the road.”

  “Oh yeah,” Slade said.

  “The rear left bumper and rear left side of his car are smashed. Paint from another vehicle on them.”

  Slade asked, “Homicide?”

  “Damn right.”

  “You giving this to the press?” the other officer asked Sgt. Hetler.

  “No way. Not yet. We’ll just report a highway fatality and release no names until we reach the Griffiths family.”

  “Who do we go after?” asked the officer.

  “The frogs. The kid knocked the shit out of a few of them in that fight last week.”

  Slade memorized every word. He climbed back up the hill. “Gotta make a call.”

  Sgt. Hetler grunted. He was still looking over the car.

  Slade drove into town. There was only one Griffiths listed in the Princeton telephone directory. Slade drove to the house, saw a police cruiser in the driveway and parked down the street. He waited and watched. The door opened. An officer stepped out and drove away. Slade rang the doorbell three minutes later. “Mr. Griffiths? I’m Slade, from Winnipeg. I was just speaking with Sergeant Hetler.” Bill Griffiths invited Slade in without any questions. Slade asked a few general questions, noting the boy’s age, his hockey background and details on the family. Continuing to write and glancing occasionally at Griffiths’ face, Slade noted the man’s appearance from close up: “His eyes, wrinkled and sleepy, light blue, struggling to grasp the fate of his son,” Slade scribbled. Colour was what he needed, more colour: “Six feet, easily 180, Bill Griffiths says his son was already bigger. ‘Just this evening, he took me in an arm wrestle,’ the man said.”

  “Where was he going?” Slade asked.

  “He had a girlfriend.”

  “Who do you suspect?”

  “Some French kid.”

  “You sure of that?”

  “Who else? Peter hammered half a dozen of ’em in that fight last week. But my son did his fighting on the rink. Off the ice, he was a gentleman.”

  Slade took that down, word for word. He rose from his chair, mumbled something about how he might be in touch again, wished the father good luck, expressed his condolences, and opened the front door. “Oh, can you lend me a photo of your son?” Slade said. Bill Griffiths gave him one. Slade thanked the man and left.

  A girl in pyjamas ran to her father. “How come you talked to that reporter, Daddy?” said the girl, who had seen Slade all over town. “Everybody hates him.” Walking down the street with friends three days ago, she had been stopped by Slade, who wanted information about the hockey fight. Did they know who had killed Gilles Baril? he asked. He tried to interview her and every one of her friends. They jeered at him and ran off.

  Edward Slade incinerated his competition. The Star splashed Peter Griffiths’ picture all over page one. No other paper had a word of the story. Slade outraged police, the Griffiths family and the Princeton community so thoroughly that it was impossible for other journalists to match the story. Nobody would speak to the media.

  Mahatma Grafton was taking two extra days off when Slade got his scoop. Mahatma immediately unplugged his phone. He wasn’t getting roped into anything by any editor! He couldn’t stop thinking that he had taken advantage of a woman in shock to get his hockey brawl story. He couldn’t stop thinking of Gisèle Baril offering tea and pie and the photo album. Mahatma had vowed never to interview the family of a dead victim again unless there was a compelling reason to do so.

  Nobody was arrested for the murder of Peter Griffiths, or for the slaying of Gilles Baril.

  Edward Slade flew to the Caribbean for a vacation.

  On a Saturday in late November, the Francophone Association of Manitoba held a demonstration outside the Donald Street office of the Department of Francophone Affairs, a government agency responsible for the rights of French-speaking citizens. Mahatma attended. Reporters from every news outlet in town attended. But only a few hundred demonstrators turned up. They listened to some speeches urging the provincial government to proceed with its plan to recognize the constitutional rights of Franco-Manitobans. Nothing of interest happened and no reporter found anything new to write about.

  Then in early December, FAM announced it would stage another demonstration on the following Sunday, again outside the Department of Francophone Affairs. FAM promoted the event vigorously, plastering posters all over the city. It struck out with reporters, who remembered the last demonstration and declined, for the most part, to attend. But FAM pushed ahead anyway. Media or no media, FAM organizers believed they would attract a good crowd this time. Maybe four hundred people. Maybe more.

  Mahatma decided to attend. His editors had refused to agree to pay him to work on Sunday, but Mahatma planned to do it anyway. He wanted to hear the people speak, see how they felt; see how many came out. He had a feeling that something was going to happen.

  They met in the Renaissance Café on Portage Avenue. Yoyo came to eat and to talk. In that order. He had accepted Helen Savoie’s offer to purchase lunch for two, and he ate unreservedly. He ate minestrone soup, bagels with cream cheese, quiche Lorraine and a side dish of perogies. He drank tea before the soup and coffee after the salad, loading both drinks with cream and sugar. He ate carrot cake for dessert. Throughout it all, he kept up a conversation. “People here in Canada love democracy,” he noted. “They ask the name of my country’s leader, then they look sad when I explain that our leaders are not elected by popular vote. But I have read that not all people vote in elections here, Helen. Is that true?”

  Helen leaned back in her c
hair. “In federal elections, we get a seventy-five percent turnout. In local elections, a lot less.”

  “Exactly,” Yoyo said. “So if so many people don’t vote, why do they care about democracy? It’s like religion: you don’t go to church, but you believe in God.” Helen laughed long and loud. “May I ask you a personal question?” Yoyo said. “Why do you have no children?”

  “I’ve never really wanted them. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to do it on my own, and there’s no man I’m serious about.”

  “Very interesting! I suppose you want no babies because you work? In Africa, we have heard much of North American women who like work more than babies.”

  “Plenty of women still like to have babies,” Helen said. “The world won’t fall apart without my contribution.”

  “The world needs babies! It needs your babies too! Helen! Marry me! Marry me and have my child!”

  “Nice try,” Helen scoffed. She thought he was kidding. When she realized he wasn’t, she told him, “No man tells me how to run my life.” He stared at her, perplexed. “I have to go now,” Helen said. “But do you want to meet next Sunday?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you know Polonia Park?”

  “Sure.” They agreed to meet there at 9:00 a.m.

  It had seemed a perfect day to eat a potato outside. He had the potato carefully wrapped in his pocket, a leftover from a reception for the Ukrainian community. Jake Corbett sometimes went to such receptions, looking for free snacks. Last night he had eaten three sausages on the spot and pocketed the potato for later. Jake didn’t mind eating cold potatoes. They were filling and, he had heard, healthful. He thought it might be nice to eat his potato in a park. His room was damp and smelly, but outside, it was a stunning December day: on this first Sunday of the month warmth was calling out to every Winnipeg resident. Even the papers were talking about it. On Friday, when Winnipeggers were prepared for Arctic winds and snowstorms, the temperature had risen to 12 degrees Cel-sius. On Saturday, it went to 15 degrees—an all-time record. Today it was sunny and going up to 18 degrees. All the snow had melted. Everyone was out in the streets.

  Jake took the Main Street bus south to River Avenue. There he got out and, with his right hand balled around the potato in his pocket, walked west to Polonia Park. A young woman wearing a T-shirt and track shorts rode by on a bicycle. Jake smiled, watching her round a corner. The girl on the bike made Jake think of Eva, his barber. Eva was the only woman who had ever touched him. She touched him every month. She worked at a Greek barbershop and she cut Jake’s hair, and she didn’t seem to mind that his face looked like the potato in his pocket. Jake often went to see Eva. Once he had his hair cut twice within seven days. Eva didn’t mind. She didn’t grimace and stay at arm’s length and treat his head roughly, as if it were rotten. Eva was eighteen. She wore safety pins for earrings. Jake was happy about that. He didn’t feel so ugly, going to a young lady who had pins for earrings and her hair up in spikes. So Jake closed his eyes when she cut his hair. He liked it when she shaved the back of his neck. He smiled when she shampooed his hair and rubbed it with a towel. Sometimes, alone at night, he imagined her shampooing his hair and it made him long to see her again. She gave him little shivers when she whisked the hairs off his cheeks and forehead. Eva was a wonderful barber.

  Jake entered Polonia Park on the south bank of the Assiniboine River and found a bench free of bird shit. He sat down.

  It was like a spring day. He barely even needed his jacket, which held his potato, but he kept it on, feeling the sun against his face and thinking it would be sad to die and never feel the sun again, or have a potato in his pocket, or watch a girl in shorts ride her bicycle in December, or feel Eva’s hands on his scalp.

  Walking along Provencher Boulevard with two bananas in his hand, Yoyo wondered if white storekeepers in Canada raised prices for black customers. Whites paid more than blacks in Cameroonian markets; Yoyo wondered if the opposite were true in this country. He was hungry, having eaten little the night before. Heading toward Polonia Park, he could have devoured the bananas in seconds. But in Cameroon, it is uncivil to eat in the street. Though Yoyo had frequently seen Canadians snacking in public, he had his dignity to uphold. He ignored his stomach cramps, walking upright so that no one could detect his pain. Canadians liked to put benches in their parks; there would surely be a bench in Polonia Park. There he would sit and eat his fruit in peace.

  Yoyo had never experienced such hunger. Before coming to Canada, he had been told that his billet in St. Boniface would provide him daily with breakfast, lunch and dinner, and that he would require only a small sum of pocket money to meet expenses. Twenty Canadian dollars a week, amounting to $840 for his ten-month stay in the country, had seemed, while he was still in Cameroon, a generous stipend.

  Yoyo found himself on Portage Avenue on his first full day in Canada with $840 in his pocket, face to face with signs outside a department store announcing Super Sale, Prices Never Lower and Bargain of the Century. Remembering his expectant relatives, and concerned that he might never encounter such sales again, Yoyo purchased several pairs of shoes and slacks, as well as three sports bags, two soccer balls, two pairs of ladies’ slippers, four transistor radios, two ghetto blasters, six cartons of radio batteries, one Sony Walkman, twelve blank cassettes and three wristwatches, thus spending three-quarters of his cash.

  That same afternoon, entering the St. Boniface home where he’d been given a room, he asked about the supper hour.

  “Jeune homme,” said his landlady, “I fed you last night from the goodness of my heart, but don’t expect more such favours from me!” Yoyo was baffled. “That’s correct, jeune homme! You will receive a continental breakfast here between the hours of seven and seven-thirty, and lunch at half-past noon, but you are not to have supper here. I have been paid only to provide you with breakfast and lunch, and I shall not be taken advantage of!”

  Yoyo nodded and went upstairs. He entered his room in a state of shock, not at the prospect of eating only two meals a day—which was standard fare for many of his countrymen—but at how the woman had spoken to him. He, a guest in her home, subjected to such verbal abuse! The shame! Had he offended her by his dress, or his manners? Why did she dislike him so? Yoyo was too upset to join the woman for breakfast the next morning. He met her for lunch and received one cold cheese sandwich with a pickle, a glass of milk and a cupcake, which he liked very much. He skipped the next day’s breakfast as well, and began eating one light lunch a day at the home of his host. Sometimes he would buy bananas and Joe Louis chocolate discs. They went well together.

  On this first Sunday in December, Yoyo felt hungrier and weaker than usual. Arriving in Polonia Park, he sat exhausted on a bench, oblivious to the man beside him. Yoyo felt a brittleness in his chest. There, with his feet on the ground, he felt rooted to the universe and distinctly mortal. Listening to a bird peep, he looked up at a branch.

  “A chickadee!” muttered Yoyo, who had read two books about Canadian wildlife before leaving Cameroon. “I believe that’s a black-capped chickadee!”

  Jake Corbett said, “Goddamn nice day, isn’t it?”

  “Very nice,” Yoyo agreed. Someone would have to explain this English word to him. Yoyo heard it everywhere. “God” meant Dieu, and “dam” meant réservoir. Could this mean un réservoir de Dieu? God’s reservoir? By calling warm winter temperatures “Goddam” weather, were Canadians suggesting that it was issued from God’s love for the universe?

  Corbett said, “Nice to see birds out, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Very nice Goddam birds,” Yoyo said.

  Corbett began laughing. “You say that real funny.”

  Yoyo turned to look again at the man on the bench. “I know you! You are the famous Jake Corbett. We met in your room! I was researching an article for my newspaper in Cameroon.”

  “Right,” Corbett said. “I knew you but I forgot your name.”

  “It’s Yoyo. Would you like a banana? I have tw
o.”

  Corbett accepted and ate his banana in three bites. “Do you got people on pogey in Africa?” Yoyo didn’t understand the question. He smiled uncomfortably and nodded. “They treat them better over there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Goddamn!”

  “Goddam,” Yoyo repeated shyly. Looking up, he saw Helen approaching. “I must go now.”

  “That your lady friend?” Corbett asked, admiringly.

  “Yes.”

  “Goddamn,” Corbett said.

  “Yes, Goddam and goodbye.”

  Helen Savoie made up her mind as she walked to Polonia Park. Her relationship with Yoyo had to end. He was taking this fling the wrong way. Talking about babies and marriage. Helen put off her decision when she saw her lover in the northwest quadrant of the park. He was so beautiful! He sat on a bench, back straight, feet properly planted on damp grass, posture fine enough to balance a book on his head. Dressed immaculately, he was eating a banana. So was the man slouched next to him, who tossed his peel behind the bench. Yoyo followed suit. Then he saw her. He jumped up to greet her! When was the last time someone had done that for her? She threw her arms around him. “Kiss me!” Yoyo hesitated. Helen cupped his head in her hands and devoured his lips.

  “I needed that,” she said.

  “I was going to give you a banana,” Yoyo said, “but the gentleman beside me wished to eat it. Say, what’s that noise?”

  “I don’t hear any noise.”

  “Listen!”

  Helen turned to see a dozen people sprinting down a slope into the park. They were yelling and pursued by others, including a cop who ran with a club in his hand.

  “A fight?” Yoyo asked.

  “There’s a demonstration outside Francophone Affairs,” Helen said. “Must be that.”

  “A demonstration? I can cover it for my newspaper.”