Some Great Thing

by Lawrence Hill

  Chuck emerged from the city editor’s office in tears. He ran up to Mahatma, who was staring at disbelief at The Herald. His health seminar stories hadn’t run at all, but the blurb on Lawson had hit page one.

  “They suspended me for two weeks,” Chuck howled.

  Everyone in the newsroom was watching. “Why, Chuck?”

  “Because you scooped me.”

  “I what?”

  “You double-covered me on that Lawson story. But how could you know? I fucked up and you scooped me!”

  Mahatma walked with Chuck to the coat rack, walked with him to the elevator, rode down to the first floor with him, and then took four flights of stairs, very slowly, back up to the editorial room. He walked past the city editor’s desk, ignoring Betts. He walked past Lyndon Van Wuyss’ secretary, who was talking on the telephone, and opened the managing editor’s door. “Revoke Chuck’s suspension,” Mahatma said.

  Van Wuyss stared blankly at him. Betts ran into the office.

  “It’s totally unfair,” Mahatma said. “Chuck assumed he had to finish that story before his shift ended. He had ten minutes to talk to the man. I had an hour. He didn’t have time to call other people. I did. He isn’t familiar with the issue. I am. You used me to hurt him and that is insulting to both of us. Revoke the suspension.”

  “Don told me Chuck had all afternoon to get that story,” Van Wuyss said.

  “That’s a lie,” Mahatma said. “I was talking to him at four o’clock when Betts assigned him the story.”

  “Don?” Van Wuyss asked.

  “What’s it matter?” Betts said. “He fucked up. He always fucks up.”

  “He had ten minutes to talk to the guy and ten minutes to write the story,” Mahatma said. “He lost the rest of the time in rush-hour traffic.”

  “Is that true, Don?” Van Wuyss said.

  “His copy was a mess. He’s useless, Lyndon.”

  “You could have had another reporter fill in the gaps,” Mahatma said. “I resent being manipulated, especially to hurt another reporter. Revoke the suspension or I’m quitting.” Mahatma felt a surge of freedom. Of power.

  “You don’t have to get dramatic about it,” Van Wuyss said. “I’ll revoke the suspension because Don misled me about the situation. I am, however, giving Chuck three weeks off. With pay. He needs a rest. You can get back to work now.”

  As he left the managing editor’s office, Mahatma heard Betts grumbling, then raising his voice. Mahatma passed the secretary and entered the newsroom and could still hear Betts shouting. So could several other reporters. They crowded around Mahatma, demanding details, slapping him on the back.

  “What’s Betts doing in there?” someone asked.

  “His wild man routine,” someone else answered.

  “We should phone Chuck.”

  “Yeah, let’s call Chuck. Let’s tell him about it.”

  But Chuck wasn’t home. His phone went unanswered all day.

  Mahatma broke his big story two days later. It ran across four columns over the fold on page one. It was moved by Canadian Press and picked up by The Toronto Times, The Toronto Star, the French and English dailies in Montreal, and other major newspapers across the country. It sent reporters from The Times, The Star and all the Manitoba media scrambling to match the story.

  Premier Gilford has agreed to amend the Canadian Constitution by making French an official language of Manitoba.

  In a tentative accord with the Francophone Association of Manitoba and federal officials, Gilford has agreed to translate 450 public statutes, double the number of bilingual civil servants and entrench a constitutional obligation to provide more government services in French, The Herald has learned.

  In exchange, FAM has agreed to drop plans to ask the Supreme Court of Canada to invalidate thousands of Manitoba laws that have been enacted in English only…

  Television, radio and newspapers zoomed in on the language accord. Radio talk shows were deluged with calls accusing the provincial government of “ramming French down our throats.” Anti-French graffiti reappeared in St. Boniface. The Herald was swamped with angry letters. Media coverage raged for three days and was beginning to die down when Edward Slade broke a scoop in The Star about the Princeton-St. Albert hockey riot.

  Manitoba Provincial Police have quietly charged a 17-year-old English-speaking boy with killing Gilles Baril, the francophone youth slain here last November in a bench-clearing hockey brawl.

  Police arrested the accused youth in his Princeton home late Tuesday afternoon. He was driven to the Winnipeg Detention Centre and held overnight.

  On Wednesday, instead of appearing in the Winnipeg Youth and Family Court—which is closely watched by reporters—the boy was returned to a smaller court in Raleigh, a town 20 kilometres southeast of Princeton.

  The case was remanded for two weeks. The accused, who by law cannot be named by the media, was granted bail on condition that he remain in Princeton in his parents’ custody.

  The hockey brawl made national headlines when…

  Every media outlet in Manitoba scrambled to match the story.

  Wilbur Lawson pushed ahead the date for the first public meeting of the League Against the French Takeover of Manitoba. He also changed the place of the meeting, calling on Manitobans to converge in Princeton in support of the town’s English community. Lawson advertised the time, place and purpose in The Herald and The Star. People showed up at his door ahead of time and volunteered to help. He had to disconnect his phone to sleep at night. In a rented church basement in Princeton, the first meeting of the League Against the French Takeover of Manitoba attracted eight hundred people.

  “Fellow citizens,” began the bearded orator. “I have a question to ask. You, undoubtedly, have a question to ask. Will anybody answer us?” He was greeted by thunderous applause. “I’m not worried for myself. I can survive. You, surely, are not worried for yourselves; you are industrious people. My question is, what is the future for my children? Where are they going to work? Why do they have to learn French? Who has the right to change the rules in the middle of their lives?” The audience roared. Media coverage was guaranteed. Mahatma had attended the meeting. So had reporters from The Winnipeg Star, The Toronto Times, CBC-TV, six radio stations and Montreal’s La Presse. To the rolling cameras and ready pens, the crowd jumped to its feet and picked up a cry from the back: “No More French. No More French.” Wilbur Lawson waved his arms in protest. After five minutes, he got the crowd to settle down. He called out for tolerance. He said that he had nothing against the French and that they had every right to live in Manitoba. He just didn’t want them taking over the province.

  “But who started the hockey riot?” shouted a voice from the crowd.

  “And who murdered the English kid, on the highway?” someone else cried out. “Why haven’t the cops nabbed his killer?”

  Applause burst out again. Lawson waited it out, told the crowd to leave criminal matters to the police, and outlined a strategy to end the French takeover. He urged LAFTOM members to write to public officials and to prepare to attend the next meeting, which would be a rally in front of the Manitoba Legislature.

  A marriage proposal by Yoyo—the second within two weeks—prompted Helen to break off their affair. The first proposal made Helen chuckle. But the second frightened her. The man was serious. “But you are my woman,” he argued. “You will have my children. You will come to Cameroon and become my mother’s daughter.”

  “No. Is that clear? No. I don’t want to see you again. And I will certainly not marry you. Ever.”

  Yoyo kept his dignity. He didn’t argue any more. And he didn’t call her again.

  One of Mahatma Grafton’s articles left Helen spellbound. It was the story about Wilbur Lawson. “I can’t believe it,” she muttered. Lawson was still at it. After all these years. She thought back to public school, to her sudden refusal to speak French as a child, to all the years she had detested all that was French in her. Helen recalled eve
rything about Lawson. For years she had tried to forget the incident; now she lingered over it.

  She had been six years old. In grade one. Betty Perry, sitting behind her, had yanked her pigtails; Hélène, as she was known then, swivelled in her chair. “Stop it Betty.” “I don’t want to.” “Stop it!” “You’re just a little brat!” Betty told her. “Et toi,” Hélène hissed back, slipping into the language in which she knew insults, “tu es la plus stupide de toute la classe!”

  Betty raised her hand. Her words rang out in the class, terrifying Hélène. “Mr. Lawson!” Betty cried out. “Mr. Lawson, Helen is saying bad things in French!”

  “Is that true, Helen?” Mr. Lawson said. She said nothing. “Come to the front of the class and repeat what you said.” Hélène shook her head from side to side. “To the front of the class!” Walking up between two columns of desks, Hélène thought she was going to die. “Tell us what you told Betty,” Mr. Lawson said.

  “I said…”

  “Tell us in French.”

  “J’ai dit qu’elle était la plus stupide de toute la classe.”

  “Say that again, Helen.”

  Hélène said it again.

  “Does anybody understand what Helen is saying?” Three other girls in the class were francophones. Hélène spoke with them in French in the school yard, in the school corridors and when they played at home. But Cécile, Linda and Sophie remained mute when Mr. Lawson asked the question. “Nobody understands what you said, Helen.” The teacher’s hand gripped her shoulder. “Do you think that’s fair? Would you like it if somebody talked to you in a language you couldn’t understand?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to speak in French again to Betty?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell Betty you’re sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, Betty.”

  “You may sit down now.”

  The next day, Mr. Lawson again called Hélène before the class.

  “Tell everybody how to say ‘hello, how are you?’ in French.” Hélène said nothing. “Go ahead.”

  “Bonjour, comment ça va?” she whimpered.

  “Say it again.”

  “Bonjour, comment ça va?”

  “Did everybody hear that? ‘Bonjour, comment ça va?’ means ‘hello, how are you?’ in French. Would some of you like to try saying it? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” The class mumbled the new sounds. “That’s it. Now you know how to say ‘hello, how are you?’ in French. That’s one language. It’s okay to speak in French if everybody knows what you’re saying. But English is the language we speak in class. Isn’t it, Helen?”

  “Yes, Mr. Lawson.”

  “You may be seated.”

  Around that point, Hélène started calling herself Helen.

  Helen thought about it for a week. But after Mahatma broke the scoop about the language accord, and after he continued writing about the Franco-Manitoban controversy, she decided to speak to him. She came to him in the newsroom, where he was writing a feature about French history in Manitoba. “Hat, when we were at Polonia Park, I promised to tell you about myself one day. Speaking French, and all that.” He looked at her now with interest. “How about tonight, at seven, at the Lox and Bagel?” Helen said.

  “Great.”

  That evening, they sat in a café serving hefty soups and muffins. Mahatma heard the espresso machine produce a rushing gurgle of steam; he watched the man pour frothy milk over coffee and dot it with cinnamon. A waitress brought them two mugs of café au lait. “So you speak French after all, but you don’t like to admit it,” Mahatma said.

  “Oh, I don’t mind admitting it any more. You’ll see. This all has to do with Wilbur Lawson.”

  “Really?” Mahatma studied her face. Her brow was pinched into intense little ridges of flesh; her eyes were brown and large. “He was my grade one teacher at the John Bell Elementary School. He made me ashamed of my language. I suspect he is still doing it to other students. And now he is getting favourable press. Even your article legitimized him.” She described the incident.

  “Did you tell your parents?” Mahatma asked.

  “Are you kidding? I hated them because they were French. I wanted to be like the English kids.”

  “Did Lawson ever harass you again?”

  “No. But he did drone on about how French people had to live in English in Manitoba. The French had lost on the Plains of Abraham so they might as well accept the fact that Canada ran on English. That was how he said it. Canada runs on English.”

  Mahatma got a phone call from Wilbur Lawson the next day. “I have a story for you,” he began. “I have a letter here from the superintendent of the Winnipeg School Division. He has suspended me for ‘activities incompatible with my role as a teacher.’”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means they didn’t like me talking about English rights.”

  “Does the letter actually say so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you think this happened so quickly?” Mahatma asked.

  “The French activists did it. I have information that they leaned on the minister of education, who leaned on my superintendent. This is a gag. It’s frightening and it shows how right I was about a French takeover.”

  Mahatma scribbled down the quote. He was skeptical about the French activists angle, but curious enough to look into it. In the meantime, the suspension was news in itself. Mahatma arranged for Lawson to send him the suspension letter by courier.

  The story fell into place easily. The superintendent con firmed the suspension, and the head of the Francophone Association of Manitoba admitted to telling the premier that Lawson should be fired. “He shouldn’t be teaching children—some of whom are French—if he publicly promotes anti-French attitudes.”

  Mahatma took a company car to the Legislature, hoping to catch somebody in the premier’s office for comment. This had the makings of a good story.

  Nobody had time to see him. Mahatma Grafton was too busy. So was No Quotes Hailey. Nobody had time to see Chuck Maxwell during his three-week suspension. The Herald was calling it a paid vacation, but Chuck considered it a suspension. You were a nobody if you didn’t work. You felt different, walking down Portage Avenue. You wondered if people looked at you and asked themselves: Doesn’t this bum work?

  They called on the last day of his suspension to say that he would now be working the 4:00 p.m. to midnight shift. He didn’t complain. He was glad to have any shift at all. He would show them. He would chase down some great stories and scoop the competition. Arriving in the newsroom, Chuck looked for Mahatma and heard he was out researching a story. Chuck shook out a newspaper and scanned it. He sat close to the police radio in case something exciting broke. He had a feeling about himself. He was going to make it. If he kept his ears and eyes open, he would prove to The Herald that he still had a few tricks left.

  Don Betts came in at 4:15 but assigned nothing to Chuck. Two hours passed. Chuck phoned the police and fire departments; that earned him a few news bullets. He wrote them carefully, double-checking for spelling and accuracy.

  Betts stepped out for coffee at 8:00 p.m. Ten minutes later, a voice blared on the police radio. Chuck turned it up. “Provencher Boulevard,” the voice crackled. “Francophone Association of Manitoba, 348 Provencher Boulevard; there has been an explosion at the Francophone Association of Manitoba, major fire has broken out, onlookers must be kept back.”

  Chuck grabbed his coat and ran to the elevator. He passed Don Betts on the way. “There’s been a big explosion at the FAM.”

  Chuck started his car. While it warmed up, he pulled his rubber boots and workpants and raincoat from the trunk. He carried them in his car for situations like this. You didn’t cover a fire wearing a four-hundred dollar suit. Chuck wriggled into his clothes and sped north on Smith Street. He ran two red lights.

  Chuck knew fires. You didn’t park too close. If it spread, cops and fire-fighters would need room. He pa
rked on a side street and jogged toward the blaze, which was red and orange and grey against the bluish-black sky. He noted six police cruisers. Three fire-trucks. Now was the time to pick up information. Once the cops got organized, they would rope off the street. One cop was trying to keep people back. He was having a hell of a time. Chuck smiled. He knew the cop. He knew half the cops in Winnipeg. “Hey, Bill,” he cried out. “How’s it hanging?”

  “Bad, Chuck. Better keep back.”

  “Ah, don’t try that on me, old buddy. You know I’ve got a job to do.”

  “You’re going in there at your own risk, Chuck.”

  Chuck advanced. The heat toasted his face. Firemen were shooting water at the flames. The jets seemed useless against the fury of red and orange and yellow, and the crackling hiss of three storeys of burning wood. Sloshing through water Chuck approached a fireman aiming his hose at the east side of the building. Somebody shouted a warning at him. He kept on, using an arm to shield his forehead from the heat. He coughed but didn’t even hear the sound, which was swallowed up by the roar of flames devouring wood. He got beside the fireman. Chuck looked into the man’s face. Hell, he knew that guy! It was Keith Tysoe. They had played hockey together years ago. “Keith. What’s happening? How did it start?”

  “You!” Keith Tysoe shouted. “The fuck you doing here? Get back!”

  “How did it start?”

  The ground erupted. Chuck landed on his back. Tysoe had also been blown off his feet. The fire hose twisted in the air, smashing Tysoe between the eyes, drawing a river of blood and snaking away.

  “Keith!” Chuck crawled through the mud and the water. He heard screams. Light flashed high above him. A blinding swirl of heat curved outward and swooned down through the air. Something smashed his leg. Weight bore down on him mercilessly. His clothes were burning. Chuck screamed. He pulled. He scraped and clawed and squirmed but he couldn’t move, couldn’t free himself, couldn’t help Keith Tysoe, couldn’t do anything. I’m going to die, he thought. He twisted again, gasping and choking. Even his hands were on fire. I thought I was wearing gloves. I was. I was wearing gloves. Something pulled him, lifted him, took him away. He lost consciousness.