The Stubborn Season. Lauren B. Davis
from the man beside him and thereby betray the intensity of his disgust. He sat still and silent and hoped this passed for assured self-containment.
He wanted to tell the police that it was a mistake, that he was not a Communist, but no one seemed to care. When he had been brought into the station, herded up to the desk and told to empty his pockets, he had tried to explain but was told to shut up and do as he was instructed. A hand had grabbed him roughly by the upper arm, and Douglas had been shamed by how scrawny his own arm must feel under such strong fingers. It made him aware of how weak he was and how vulnerable and he then became afraid not only of the men with whom he was arrested but also of the police themselves.
After they had clanged shut the heavy, barred cell door, the police brought in McEwen and began to taunt him, telling him they would take care of his kind. That they knew what he was up to. That he should go back to where he came from. McEwen said he was born right here in Canada and had a right to his beliefs. That he was a member of a legally recognized political party and that the police had no right!
A policeman had silenced him with a punch to the stomach. Douglas watched, horrified, as they beat him to a bloody pulp. McEwen kept his hands over his ears, his elbows shielding his face, until he became unconscious. Douglas thought they would stop the beating then, but they did not. They kept right on kicking him in the ribs and the back and the legs. What shocked Douglas almost as much as the beating was the fact that the police did not even try to hide what they were doing.
All the muttering, all the shouting, even the snoring in the cell had stopped.
When they were finished, they threw McEwen, nothing more now than a sack of sharp bones and lumpy, multicoloured flesh, into the cell.
And now he had to face his wife. He wondered which would be worse, but then shivered this thought away, because to joke about it, even to himself, was a betrayal to McEwen, a man he didn’t know, didn’t want to know, but to whom he felt he owed something.
Douglas drew a deep breath, ran his hand along the top of his shiny head and opened the door to his house.
“Where have you been?” Margaret was disgusted at the sight of him. “You’ve been drinking!”
Douglas moved past her, not quite pushing her but coming close enough to give her a heart-hiccupping start. She opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it again when she found no words ready. Douglas hauled himself up the stairs and disappeared into the bathroom. Margaret heard water running.
As she approached the bathroom door she made her hands into claws. She’d go right through the door if she had to.
Inside the clean space of the bathroom, Douglas looked at himself in the mirror over the sink, his face framed within the ivy pattern of the wallpaper. Behold the conquering hero, he scoffed at himself. Shock provided a window of weird objectivity, and it was through this portal that the sagging lines and pouches and rabbity eyes told the truth of who he was. Before this night he had believed himself to be no more or less brave than the average man. But now the truth was revealed. He was a coward.
The scene played over in his head like a newsreel.
He couldn’t tear his eyes off the terrible spectacle of the man lying on the cold concrete floor, his face swollen and bloody, his left eye so puffed up it looked as though some parasitic creature had attached itself to his face. His shirt was hiked up, and Douglas saw the evidence of the beating: marks quickly going from red to purple, blood drying on boot-shredded skin. The men gathered close.
“Leave him alone,” said one.
“See if you can wake him,” said another.
“Should we try and get him on his feet?”
“Bastards did him in but good.”
McEwen moaned and stirred, his arms and legs twitched. His eyes flickered open and then closed. A trickle of blood leaked from his mouth.
“Looks like he’s lost a tooth or two,” said a man with no more than three teeth in his head himself.
“Shoot the dog,” said the big Indian, quietly, although what he meant was unclear.
McEwen made a wet sucking noise in his throat. He tried to push himself up on his elbows.
“Get him sittin’ up,” someone said.
“Perhaps we could lean him against the wall,” Douglas said, and when eyes turned toward him, he pointed. “That wall, maybe.”
Pairs of hands heaved the limp body into a seated posture against the wall. McEwen’s head sagged on his breast and a string of pink-tinged drool stained his already filthy shirt.
With the injured man settled, the rest went back to their conversations, their pacing back and forth, their smoking, their cards, although now and then they glanced discreetly in McEwen’s direction, as though to make sure he was not about to leap on them, or fall, or die. They acted as though the violence might be contagious, and Douglas was not so sure they were wrong.
Douglas resumed his post near the bars. He didn’t like to think about what was happening to the other man, Tim Buck, who along with McEwen, had been culled from their lot upon arrival.
It was very hot in the cell and sweat trickled between his shoulder blades and between the cheeks of his buttocks, places where he could not reach. The lining of his stomach felt ragged. He vowed that should he get out of this unharmed, he would never drink again. His muscles, cramped from tension, began to tremble. His shoulders began to shiver. He crossed his arms and tucked his hands beneath his soggy armpits, praying that the shaking would stop and that no one would see his fear.
He heard a terrible retching. McEwen, clutching his stomach, was going to be sick. His head lurched, and men scattered. He tried to get up on all fours, then gave up and leaned over on one arm. He vomited blood.
The men in the cell stepped over each other trying to get out of the way.
“Guard! Guard!”
“Get a doctor!”
“Jesus H. Christ!”
Douglas was pinned against the bars. He turned his face away. A young cop approached the cell.
“What the hell’s the racket in here?”
“I think that man is going to die,” said Douglas in a voice that he did not completely register was his.
“Goddamn it!” said the policeman. “Dan! Jack! Get over here!” Other policemen came running and the door was opened. Men were pushed out of the way. Douglas saw McEwen, held under the arms and knees, being carried out of the cell. His head was tilted back. Douglas thought, He’ll choke. The man will choke.
“His head,” he said. “Be careful of his head.”
“Mr. MacNeil? Is that you?” A hand touched his shoulder. “What are you doing with this bunch? How did you get here?” said a dark-haired young cop. “Are you okay?” The young man waved his hand in front of Douglas’s eyes.
“I’m not a Communist,” said Douglas.
“What the hell are you doing in here?”
“I know you,” he said.
“Of course you do. I’m Bobbie Patterson.”
Yes, that was it. He was little Bobbie Patterson. One of the boys who stole candy from the counter and mussed up his magazines. One of the neighbourhood boys Douglas had chased out of the store for years. He reached up and put his hands on Bobbie’s shoulders. He was afraid he might cry.
“I was walking. There were all these people. I wasn’t one of them. I was just walking.”
Bobbie Patterson pulled back and Douglas knew the whisky must be on his breath.
“Course you were, Mr. MacNeil. Course you were. Let’s see what can be done about