The Stubborn Season. Lauren B. Davis
for Tim Buck, eh? All of us. Ain’t gonna put up with this no more. Not no more.”
Douglas’s head began to clear. There had been newspaper reports of this Tim Buck, a Communist. A rabble-rouser. A threat to the Dominion.
“Let’s hear it for Tim, friends! Tim Buck!”
“Excuse me,” said Douglas, starting to push through the cheering crowd. He did not want to be among Communists. Methodists were bad enough. He was too hot now and didn’t feel well. He stuck out his elbows.
“Hey, watch who you’re poking!” someone snapped.
“Sorry,” said Douglas and tried to move forward.
“Oh, Jesus,” said someone else. “It’s the cops!” The crowd became very quiet, everyone looking this way and that. The police had come off a side street and were upon the group before they knew it.
“We’ll fix you sons of bitches.” Several policemen shouldered their way through the crowd with far more success than Douglas, who was hemmed in on all sides. Over the top of people’s heads he could see uniformed riders on horses.
“We have every right to be here. You have no legal reason to stop this meeting,” said McEwen. Tim Buck stood at his side, his arms folded across his chest.
People began to mutter about their rights, but there was a hum of fear. A man grabbed a woman’s arm and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
More blue uniforms pushed through, their batons held out in front of them. The horses pranced nervously, their chests thrust out, driven forward by their riders, and people in front of them held their hands up, trying to quiet the animals and keep out of their way.
“This is a lawful street meeting!” McEwen called out.
“Shut that bastard’s mouth!” yelled a policeman, and with that, another cop, thick-limbed and stocky, raised his elbow and used it to abruptly close McEwen’s mouth.
In that instant people started running and truncheons began to fly. The man who had asked Douglas for a drink cowered in front of a mounted cop. He threw his hands up over his head and screamed, “Don’t hit me, I’m an anti-Communist!” The cop cracked him on the back with his baton and said, “I don’t care what kind of Communist ya are.”
Douglas turned to his left and his right, pushing people who were backing into him. He found his path cut off in every direction and he pushed backwards, only to feel hands roughly upon him.
“Right then, Mac. Into the van with you,” said the cop.
And although he protested that he was not a Communist, he was an Anglican, this only made the beefy man laugh. Douglas found himself in the back of a urine-rank paddy wagon with McEwen and Buck and several others. Three men bled from wounds to the head or face. One man’s nose was broken and he cupped his hands against it gingerly as blood dripped onto his shirt.
“I’m not a Communist,” said Douglas, looking from one man to the other.
“You are now, friend,” came a voice from the corner. “Tom McEwen’s the name,” he said, extending his hand. “Welcome to the Great Repression.”
Where the hell was Douglas?
Margaret smoked one cigarette after another and practised sending smoke rings into the sticky air. She got up now and again to check whether the telephone was working. She fiddled with the radio dial, listened to Chick Webb and his orchestra live from the Savoy Ballroom. At ten she turned to CPRY to hear Fred Culley and his Dance Orchestra. When that was over and the newscast began, she turned the radio off with a snap.
Where the hell was Douglas?
A month ago he had been brought home by Mr. Steedman, a soft-spoken church-going man who lived with his wife and two small sons three doors down. Mr. Steedman had had to prop Douglas up in the doorway to make sure he didn’t fall while he rang the bell.
“Just about made it home, Mrs. MacNeil. Found him asleep in his car at the end of the block. I thought for a moment he might be hurt, but, well, looks like he’ll be fine.” Mr. Steedman smiled. He had a wide, handsome face, clean and honest. He looked sorry to be embarrassing her this way.
“You’re very kind to bring him home.” Margaret threw Douglas’s arm around her shoulder and began to wrestle him through the door.
“Hello, there,” Douglas had slurred. “It’s the little lady. Ain’t she pretty? Prettiest girl . . .”
“I can’t tell you how embarrassing this is.”
“No need to say anything,” Mr. Steedman said. “I’ve been known to tie one on myself. Do you need any help? I could help you get him to bed.”
“Thank you, you’ve done enough. I can handle it from here. Thank you.” She closed the door.
“You idiot! Out there for all the neighbours to see. You’re a disgrace.” She had plopped him in a chair and left him. The next morning he woke with a neck so stiff he could barely lift his throbbing head.
“Serves you right,” she said, and she hid his car keys.
She had wanted him to ask about the keys, wanted him to beg her forgiveness. But he only said, “Margaret, have you seen my keys? I have to get the car.”
“I’ll be getting the car, Douglas. And keeping it until you can prove you’re fit to drive it.”
“Suit yourself,” he’d said. “Gas is too expensive anyway.”
A week later he brought a man home after work. Douglas sold their Ford to him for $200. Walked into the kitchen smug as a feudal lord, riffling the money in the air like a fan. What he had done with the money she had no idea. She certainly never saw a penny.
If he was out squandering what little money they had left, she’d bash his brains in with the marble pastry pin. They’d never again brought up the subject of the credit he was giving out. She thought her silence might have pried some words from him, but there had been none.
She climbed the stairs and went into her daughter’s bedroom. A path of light fell across Irene’s sleeping form. Margaret reached into the pocket of her housecoat and pulled out her tin of cigarettes and her silver lighter. She lit one, and then snapped the Zippo shut. Irene didn’t stir at the sound.
“Sleeping, baby?”
Irene did not respond.
Margaret was about to sit down on the edge of the bed when she heard footsteps on the porch. She whirled toward the sound and rushed from the room.
As soon as Irene heard her mother’s footsteps clattering down the stairs, she opened her eyes, just peeking through half-closed lids at first and then opening fully, staring fixedly at the point where her mother had been.
Douglas climbed the porch steps slowly. His feet felt encased in shoes of cement. He had spent the past several hours in a cell at the police station on College Street. It was a malodorous concrete space, crowded with men. Some smoked cigarettes and two played cards. One of these card players was a red-skinned Indian man. He was huge, at least 300 pounds, with jet black hair cut so close to his head that Douglas could see the multitude of scars on his scalp. He played some game that Douglas didn’t understand and every time he snapped a card down on the pile in front of him, yelled “Shoot the dog!” and his partner laughed. Others hunkered against the wall, their eyes as flat as tin plates, giving away nothing. One man, the front of his pants stained dark with what Douglas’s nose told him was urine, slept in a corner, his snores phlegm-filled.
Douglas sat primly on the edge of a bench near the bars where the air, he imagined, was slightly fresher. He remained very still, careful not to draw attention to himself, for who knew what these men would do if they knew just how little he belonged to their tribe. Only the conviction that they could turn on him at any moment, like