Some Great Thing

  It was a cloudless winter night. Mahatma drove away from the Manitoba Legislature. All he had to do was write the story of Lawson’s suspension. He had found out that the premier’s office had, indeed, contacted the school superintendent to complain about Lawson.

  Mahatma looked forward to talking to Chuck, who was returning to work today from his suspension. Mahatma would slap Chuck on the shoulder in welcome. He felt guilty about not having had time to see Chuck recently. Mahatma stopped at a red light and flicked on the car radio. “Here is a flash news bulletin. An explosion rocked the offices of the Francophone Association of Manitoba minutes ago. Police and firemen are at the scene. The building is ablaze. The group has been the object of intense criticism recently…”

  Mahatma accelerated, ran several yellow lights, motored over the Provencher Bridge and into St. Boniface. He heard sirens. An ambulance overtook him and another came behind. A fire-truck charged around a corner. Mahatma saw flames and the black, belching clouds of smoke against the moonlit sky. He parked and ran to the scene. He pushed through the crowd until he came to a rope drawn across the sidewalk. Patrick MacGrearicque barred his way. “Superintendent! Superintendent! Let me through.”

  “No way. One of your buddies has just about killed himself.”

  Mahatma shouted, “I can’t hear you.”

  “Chuck Maxwell just got himself fried. Got too close. Beam ripped loose, came down on him.”

  “Where is he? Let me see him.”

  MacGrearicque called over another officer. “This is a friend of that reporter who got burned. Get him out of here. See if that ambulance is gone. If not, send him off with the victim.” The big cop led Mahatma away. They passed inside the police lines, away from the crowds. A light swirled on an ambulance forty yards away. Mahatma saw a stretcher being loaded into it. An attendant ran to the driver’s door, jumped in and gunned the accelerator. The siren wailed. Something stuck in Mahatma’s throat.

  The cop asked, “Friend of yours?” He was supporting Mahatma, whose head bobbed. “He’ll be okay. I’ve seen worse. It’s the fireman who really got it bad. I doubt he’ll make it through the night.”

  “What happened?”

  “Building was bombed. Blew a hole right out the east wall. That was the wall that came down on your buddy and the fireman.”

  Mahatma was gathering his senses. “What’s your name?”

  “Stafford. Corporal John Stafford.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. Who are you, anyway?”

  “Mahatma Grafton. From The Herald.”

  “Jesus! We’re under orders not to talk to you.”

  The blaze engulfed the building. Mahatma had to see Chuck. He had to contact The Herald. Walking to his car, he met FAM president Pierre Gratton and scribbled down his comments. Then he interviewed two bystanders who had seen the building erupt in flames. Then he worked his way back to MacGrearicque.

  The cop said, “I thought I got rid of you!”

  “I feel better now.”

  “Yeah, right! You’re in shock.”

  “Just tell me how you’ll handle this investigation.”

  “We assume it’s arson. They used a bomb.”

  “They?”

  “Tell you about it sometime. Now get out of here.”

  “This was motivated by French-English tensions?”

  “We’ll look into it. Go home, Mahatma. You look like shit.”

  Mahatma drove to the hospital. While waiting to see a doctor, he called Betts. The city editor was stunned. He asked Mahatma if he had details about the fire. He wanted a story, but Mahatma was in no mood. Then a doctor came out. “You’re Chuck’s friend?”

  “Yes. Is he gonna make it?”

  “It’s touch and go. Sixty percent of his body has been burnt.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “Not today.”

  “Is he conscious?”

  “He’s in and out. We have sedated him.”

  “What happened to the fireman?”

  “He died in the ambulance. The burning beam that hit Chuck’s leg caught him on the chest. He didn’t have a chance. Look, I’ve got to go.”

  Mahatma drove to the office. He wrote the stories on the fire and on Lawson’s suspension, and took a taxi home, exhausted. He told his father about it, couldn’t sleep, called the hospital, couldn’t get any more information and fell into fitful nightmares.

  Mahatma hurried to a gift shop and scanned the get-well cards. Humorous or serious? A humorous card might offend Chuck. Mahatma purchased the most sober card on the rack. Helen Savoie was the first to sign it. Together, they circulated in the newsroom, getting ten reporters, the switchboard operator and all three librarians to sign the card. But then they learned the hospital wasn’t letting anybody visit Chuck.

  “Poor bastard,” Norman Hailey said. “Remember how he liked to remind us that The Herald doesn’t pay life insurance?”

  Paul Holtz held up the newspaper. “Somebody ought to show Chuck the front page. He’ll want to frame it.”

  Page one ran a two-column head about the FAM explosion that killed a fireman and critically injured a reporter. A sidebar contained a picture of Chuck and a few more inches of copy. It gave his age, said he’d joined the paper at age sixteen and described him as one of the best-liked reporters on staff.

  “He’ll be bragging for years about how he got third-degree burns covering a news story,” Hailey said. “He’ll be telling people it was the number one story of the year.”

  “Of the year?” Holtz said mockingly. “Listen! This was the biggest story of the decade and no ten-alarm fire was gonna keep him back.”

  Mahatma imitated Chuck’s deep voice. “I went after that story and I’m proud of it. As a professional journalist, you have to be committed. You have to be a man of the people. That’s what I am.” When Helen chuckled, Mahatma squeezed her shoulder.

  Chuck was placed in the hospital’s burn unit. He was kept naked on a damp, no-stick sheet resembling cheesecloth. Other sheets were suspended over him like a tent. Sedated, he was connected to an electrocardiogram, a respirator and an intravenous unit. He managed, nevertheless, to ask the name of the doctor standing over him and to flirt with the nurse. Later, he kept asking for Hat. Nobody understood what he meant. He also asked for Elizabeth. “Elizabeth who?” someone asked him urgently. “Elizabeth! The Huck Finn lady.”

  After thirty-six hours, they reduced Chuck’s heavy sedation. He asked again for Hat, and this time added, “My buddy. Mahatma. At the paper.” Someone at the hospital called Mahatma, who drove to the hospital with Betts.

  A nurse met them. “Two visitors?” Betts explained that Chuck had no family. He claimed to be Chuck’s closest friend.

  “You can see him for five minutes. Put on these gowns, masks, gloves and shoe covers. Don’t touch the patient or anything in the room.”

  It was a private room with no window. A heart monitor, built into the wall above the bed, had several wires running into the tent over Chuck’s body. Chuck’s face was covered, to protect it from airborne germs. An intravenous unit stood dripping by his bed. A urine bag was empty. Chuck lay motionless in his tent.

  “Chuck,” Mahatma whispered. “It’s Mahatma. Are you awake?”

  “Glad you came, Hat. Awful glad. Who’s with you?”

  “It’s me, Chuck. Don Betts.”

  “Jesus Christ, I don’t believe it,” Chuck said. Betts laughed loudly. “I didn’t think I was gonna make it,” Chuck said.

  “Sure you’re gonna make it,” Mahatma said. “We need you back at The Herald. You hit the front page. Chuck. Your picture and everything.” Chuck grunted. He sounded tired. “We’ve got a card for you with lots of signatures. We left it with the nurses.” Chuck grunted again.

  The nurse stepped into the room and held up a finger: they had one more minute.

  “Come here, Don,” Chuck’s voice was weak. Betts stood close to the bed. “Do me a favour.”

&n
bsp; “You name it, Chuck. Whatever you want.”

  “Have a heart, next time a reporter fucks up. Anyway, I forgive you. I forgive you for everything. Now get out of here. I want to talk to Hat.”

  Betts shrugged and stepped back. “He must be delirious,” he muttered to Mahatma.

  The nurse escorted Betts from the room. Then she came back for Mahatma. “It’s time to go.”

  “Wait a minute,” Chuck said. “C’mere, Hat.”

  “Yes, buddy?” Mahatma said.

  “I want you to fuck off.”

  “Sure, Chuck.”

  “You’re my friend, right? So I’m telling you, as a friend, to fuck off out of The Herald. Go do something better. Fuck off to the Greek islands. Crete. Go to Crete to…” Chuck gasped. Then he started up again. “Write. Write your ass off. Do some great book. Do it for me, Hat. Do it for you. Go write a novel. A great novel.”

  “I don’t write fiction, Chuck,” Mahatma said, stupidly.

  “Go write one anyway. You’ve got one in you, Hat. You’ve got better things in you. You’ve…” Chuck lost his breath, again.

  “You must leave now,” the nurse said.

  “Bye, Chuck,” Mahatma said. Chuck said nothing more.

  The next day, hospital staff told Mahatma that Chuck’s condition had deteriorated. The doctor advised against visiting. Mahatma called back later but couldn’t reach the doctor. The next morning he learned that Chuck had developed an infection. The day after that, the hospital didn’t return his phone calls.

  Mahatma busied himself with a story on the anti-French backlash—enraged by a Herald editorial in favour of the language accord, LAFTOM supporters had flooded The Herald’s switchboard with phone calls one day, making it impossible for regular business to get through. As soon as Mahatma finished the article, he took a taxi to the hospital.

  Mahatma was desperate to see his friend. But he didn’t want to jeopardize Chuck’s health, barging into the room without sanitized hospital garments. He stood around feeling awkward but when a nurse told him to wait downstairs, he said, “I’ll wait right here.” This meant more to him than getting any story. This was Chuck’s life. “He’s my friend. We work together. We are like family! I have a right to know how he is doing!”

  An hour later Mahatma raised his head from his palm and looked up to see a nurse conferring with a doctor. Both of them were looking at him. Mahatma got to his feet. “I’ve been trying for two days to find out about Chuck.”

  The doctor led Mahatma down the corridor. “I don’t think your friend is going to make it.”

  “He’s not?”

  “He has developed a pseudomonas bacterial infection, an overwhelming bodily infection. It is extremely hard to stop. The signs look bad. Blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, urination—”

  “Can I see him?”

  “All right. Ask for garments at the nursing station.”

  Mahatma changed into the hospital clothes and approached Chuck’s bed. “Chuck? It’s me.”

  “Mahatma!” Chuck croaked. “Mahatma!”

  “Hang in there, Chuck.” That sounded so stupid. It sounded like encouragement to a runner, or a boxer. “Everybody is asking about you.”

  “Mahatma!” Chuck cried.

  “Yes, Chuck.”

  “C’mere.”

  “I’m right here, Chuck. Can I do anything? Is there anything you want?”

  “Stay here. You’re my buddy, right? You never screwed me around, and I never screwed you around. Buddies, right?”

  “Sure.” Mahatma swallowed hard. “Sure we are.” He wondered if he should tell Chuck about the card again. The card and the flowers and his picture on the front page. Chuck grunted. He gasped. He sighed and shivered and then he slept.

  The telephone rang in the night. Mahatma jumped up, yanked it from the cradle and mumbled into it.

  “Mr. Grafton?” a voice asked. “I’m very sorry. Chuck died this morning.”

  PART FIVE

  Edward Slade hadn’t written a decent victim story in a month—no old ladies shooting purse-snatchers, nobody killed by falling icicles, no one crippled saving someone else’s life. There wasn’t even any police corruption to be found. News was so dead that Slade imagined that cops were behaving well solely to starve the tabloid business. He persuaded his editor to let him take a run at the French rights controversy. Why leave all the good stuff to Mahatma Grafton?

  Slade’s first story ran under the headline What’s All the Fuss About?

  The Manitoba government wants to make French an official language of the province. It wants the rights of Franco-Manitobans spelled out in the Constitution. Here’s what the government says about the language deal:

  •French will become an official language in Manitoba

  •the province will need 500 bilingual employees within three years to boost services in French

  •Manitoba will translate 450 statutes, or about 10,000 pages, into French

  But here’s what critics say:

  •it’s unfair to other ethnic groups to give the French language number one status (right up there with English) when Franco-Manitobans number only 50,000 and rank as the province’s fourth largest linguistic group

  •it takes jobs from those who don’t speak French

  •it paves the way for the French to dominate Manitoba

  Do YOU want French to be official here? Take part in The Star survey by filling out the questionnaire below.

  Next, Slade published a report card on the players in the French language crisis. He had used this device on the cop beat once, ranking police inspectors by performance. His readers loved it. And nothing infuriated a police inspector more than seeing the mark “C minus” next to his photo in The Star.

  Jake Corbett’s leg hurt. His foot was swelling. Sometimes, it felt like somebody was hitting his leg with a hammer. The skin was rotting on his lower right calf. The blood wasn’t circulating well. His skin there had turned into a charcoal black broken only by the pinkish, coin-sized ulcers of cracked and open flesh. On top of that, his room was too hot. Downstairs in the Accidental Dog and Grill, Frank cranked up the heat too high. His clients liked coming in off Main Street to sit in the warm and steamy café. But all the heat went upstairs, pouring out the air vent in the wall near his bed.

  Jake began spending a lot of time in the Flapjack Café, on Main Street just north of the railway underpass. The cook didn’t mind Jake spreading his welfare documents all over the table. One day, the cook, whose name was Harry Carson, said, “Hey Jake, how do you feel about eating with black folks all the time?”

  Jake looked him in the eye and said, “I don’t mind black people, so long as they keep their pamphlets to themselves and don’t go putting them on my table.” Harry doubled over at that one.

  Jake told Harry that his lawyer, a lady named Brenda, was helping him fight the welfare people. She was working on getting Jake a vacation. Everybody else got to take holidays. Why not people on welfare? Jake wanted welfare to pay for a three-week vacation in Toronto and Montreal.

  Harry Carson thought, this fellow doesn’t have it all together. There was nothing sadder than the sight of a poor white man. Harry couldn’t understand it. If he were white, he would have made train conductor. Hell, he would have made engineer.

  Jake Corbett got lucky. Two days after he read in The Herald that some group called the League Against French something was to demonstrate outside the Legislature, the police returned his confiscated loud hailer. Jake took it to the demonstration and wandered through the crowd, looking for a good place to speak.

  Edward Slade tapped his shoulder. “Hey Jake, what you doing here?”

  “I got something to tell the people.”

  Slade started scribbling in a notepad that seemed to drop out of his sleeve. “You agree with the league?”

  “Sure.”

  “You think it’s wrong to make French official?”

  “Sure.”

  “You oppose constit
utional changes, translation costs, et cetera?”

  “Right on.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money,” Jake said. He meant to tell Slade that what the government ought to do is scrap welfare and bring in a new idea: Guarantee Annual Income. This was the last hope for poor people in Canada. Jake was going to explain all this but Edward Slade ran off to interview a politician.

  Jake pushed through the crowd and reached a platform. There, between columns by the entrance to the building, men and women were arranging microphones and electric cables and chairs and documents. Six men and two women stood on the platform looking down at a thousand people who had surrounded a statue of Queen Victoria and filled a circular driveway abutting the steps of the Legislature. A man with a beard and a deep voice said a few words into a microphone. Everybody cheered and clapped. A second man spoke for a minute. A woman took her turn. When she finished, the speakers took a break. They were caught by surprise when Jake limped up the steps and onto the platform.

  Mahatma Grafton arrived shortly after the speeches began. He hadn’t had time to talk to Lawson. He hadn’t even had time to estimate the crowd size. He only had time to ask himself what Corbett was doing on stage.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Corbett said into the microphone, “I’m gonna tell you straight and true: WE’RE GETTING SCREWED!” The crowd cheered. “The government isn’t minding our Charter of Rights. What about poor people? We aren’t getting any security like it says in Section Seven! We got to mind our Charter from the roots to the top! We…”

  Mahatma smiled broadly. Give it to ’em, Jake! People in the crowd began to mutter. Complaining to their neighbours, they drifted off. A man on stage approached Corbett. “Just a minute, I’m still talking,” Corbett said. The man persisted. “I SAID JUST A MINUTE!” The microphone belched a chalkboard screech. Hundreds of people were leaving the demonstration. “THE PROBLEM WITH THE WELFARE PEOPLE IS…”