Autumn Music
Page 33
Prejudice was alive and flourishing. Evident in Bernie’s injuries. Evident in the ferocious rednecks who bore an alarmingly sinister likeness to the despised thugs who’d flaunted Hitler’s crooked cross. The core clique in the banal Uniting Church Hall in Heatherfield, mirroring universal escalation of bigotry in its many forms, was a formidable opponent.
Surrendering, she left the platform.
Passing his wheelchair, she tripped over Bernie. The wheelchair tilted, rocked and stabilised. A trickle of blood ran to the floor.
“I’m sorry…” She sought to stem the flow with her handkerchief. “Bernie! I’m sorry…”
The dead eyes did not even register pain!
Response was instinctive. Grabbing the back of the chair, she wheeled it to the foot of the stage.
“Look!” She pitched her scream high. “Look at Bernie!”
Belatedly apprehensive, she sought Harriet’s reaction. Harriet nodded mute approval.
The noise did not abate.
“Get him on the stage…” The women of the executive, helped by a couple of men of goodwill, manoeuvred the heavy chair to the stage.
Turning Bernie’s mutilated body to the churning audience, she screamed, “Look at Bernie!”
The militant buzz briefly diminished.
“Tell them, Bernie!”
The buzz wavered.
Willing herself to steady control, she pitched her practised voice to the farthest corners. “You all know what happened. Bernie can’t shout you down. Look at him.”
“Unfair!” The leader was on his feet.
Rage kicked in. Heart racing, she lifted Bernie’s broken face.
Gasps rocked the room.
“Fair! Take a good look at Bernie! Tell him about fair!”
Uneasy eyes fixed on the broken face.
“Tell Bernie what’s fair!” She was merciless. “Bernie won’t talk back! Bernie doesn’t live here any more!”
The room gasped. The leader sat down.
What was she doing!
Harriet nodded.
She couldn’t do this.
“It’s okay, Tess.” Harriet’s frail voice was clearly audible.
She couldn’t.
Esther pressed her hand. “It’s all right, Tess.”
Nothing was all right. Not what she’d just done to Bernie, not what his mother was enduring, not where this meeting was heading.
The interval lengthened. They were waiting. She’d exposed a truth so ugly no one was willing to publicly risk identification with it. Whatever their biases, their beliefs, they were fellow residents. Farmers and tradesmen and businessmen and labourers and mothers and wives, disabled and not disabled, they lived in an isolated community where survival itself depended on the perception of basic decency. She’d got this far. She had no choice but to keep going.
Purposefully acrimonious, she continued, “He made the headlines. Lucky Bernie. He’s famous. That’s how you know about him.”
Uneasy feet shuffled.
“What if he was one of yours?”
“I’d bloody sue.” A back-seat voice.
“I’d bloody sue too,” she agreed. “One problem. Bernie’s mother couldn’t. That grabbed the headlines too.”
The room was restlessly, resentfully, hushed. It wouldn’t last.
“I have a suggestion…” She directly addressed the pugnacious leader. “Why don’t you lot just go away? Leave us alone. Make your own protest somewhere else. Let us get on with what we’re here for.”
“We have rights!” The thrusting head countered.
Quickly, before further disruption won the night, she retorted, “You have the right to leave.”
He folded stubborn arms, his companions likewise.
“There’ll be no discussion while you’re here.” Turning Bernie’s chair from the spotlight, she prayed the executive would agree.
Jill whispered, “Do you know what you’ve just done? You’ve just made an enemy of Roland’s new mayor.”
Nevertheless, the executive held firm. A few small groups left the room. Families and wheelchairs did not move.
Interrupted only by silent toilet breaks, half an hour passed. She ached in every bone. Retreat was impossible. The new mayor had to be a powerful figure. A bully. If she backed away, he’d escalate attack. She must be seen to bully a bully.
“As we’ve reached a stalemate,” the president eventually ventured, “I think perhaps we should adjourn?”
The executive, concurring, prepared to leave. The audience sighed relief.
Thank you God. It was over. No violence. No resolution. No progress. Would there be a delegation to the city march? The executive would probably plan a small-scale one or two carload. No bus required.
She was returning to her seat when Roland’s new mayor triumphantly proclaimed, “March all you like, Mrs McClure. There will never be integration in our schools.”
Wrong woman. She’d never intended to march. Integration was no longer her concern. She’d reacted angrily to threatened violence. She turned away.
“I’m talking to you, bitch!”
Careful.
“Don’t turn your back on me!”
She did not turn around. She could not move. They might have been alone. He was a stranger. Yet she knew him. She did not turn around.
“The name’s Ed Wilson. We’ll meet again!” Retreating feet announced the group’s exit.
The president tiredly advised the remnants of the audience, “Anyone wanting to march – there’s information. If you’d like to, we’d appreciate phone numbers. At the back of the hall you’ll find paper and pencils.”
“Date and time.” Jill passed out printed sheets. “All the information has been written out.”
“You said there’d be time for questions.” A protest from the floor.
“We didn’t expect to be this late.” Esther pointedly consulted her watch.
“It’s what we came for.”
“You came for the march.”
“You think we can get away to march just like that?” A likely lone parent.
Esther consulted her executive, who nodded consent.
The protester had a valid argument. For some, too many, protest marches were impossible. They had more urgent problems. They’d obviously expected to air them. They still wanted to.
She edged past Harriet and Bernie, starting for the exit. Rory would be waiting.
The president called, “Thank you for your input, Mrs McClure. It was most valuable.”
A spatter of applause agreed.
“I have a suggestion,” Jill looked to the president. “We should coopt Tess.”
“I can’t possibly go to the march,” she protested.
“I don’t mean for that. Tonight has seen the beginning of something with a much wider scope than a school mothers’ club. We need to form a new group. We need guidance.”
Applause intensified.
“We need experience.”
“We need someone who knows the ropes.”
“We need someone who can do what you did tonight, Tess.”
Had they not heard? Ed Wilson, a bully with influence, had threatened her personally.
“It’s not possible.” She couldn’t do this. She’d been afraid, not only of Ed Wilson, but also of herself. The taste of power was heady.
The door at the back of the hall opened. Limned against the dark background was Rory, his face in shadow.
“You have the experience,” Jill urged. “You have the time.”
“You know what it’s like.” Another plea from a parent.
“We have to have a leader, Mrs McClure.”
“You sent Wilson packing…”
Her heart raced. Fear or exhilaration?
Rory waited in the open doorway. Their son was happy and fulfilled. Rory knew, as she did, he could well have been the tragic victim in the wheelchair at her side. But for the grace of God…
“There’s no one else, Tess.” Harriet w
as blunt. “It has to be you. You are an experienced advocate.”
“Tell me what to do.” She again mounted the steps to the platform, this time with quiet deliberation. The fight would be a long one, certainly an ugly one. She’d certainly lock horns with Mayor Ed Wilson again. Under different names, in different forms – bigoted neighbour, gang of small boys, alien professional, dogmatic bully…
The rednecks were there, waiting. She’d be making more enemies. But there’d be friends too.
“Tell me what to do,” she repeated. “I’ll try.”
Rory nodded approval, moved into the hall and sat with the parents, the families, the friends, the people with disability.
Taking her place in the central chair, she surveyed the upturned faces, the tired faces, the exhausted, the apprehensive, the patient…
“I’m going to need a lot of help…”