Some Great Thing (16 page)

“CBC is gonna innerview me about welfare and my constitution rights and about me being subject to cruel and unusual treatment at that demonstration on Sunday.”

“Somebody take this man’s tempitcher,” Frank called out.

“When the TV people come, send ’em up.”

Before the CBC arrived, a young woman from
The Brandon Sun
came to interview Corbett. She was a student.

Jake began, “I was born with epilepsy but they took it for psychological problems and put me in Selkirk Mental and gave me electric shock treatments and kept me there seven years! It’s ’cause of all that that I’m having all those there problems with the welfare people. But my troubles began in public school, before they sent me away to the mental, when one day I…”

The student reporter scribbled wildly while Corbett skipped back and forth over time. He confused her totally. When the CBC crew arrived, Corbett tried to retell his tale.

“No no no no no,” said the CBC reporter. “I ask the questions. You answer them. First, how did it feel when the police clubbed you at Polonia Park?”

“I didn’t feel much. It knocked me out. But when I woke up, I wasn’t one bit happy.”

“Had you started the trouble? Did you hit any officer?”

“I was minding my own business, thinking about my potato—”

“What potato?”

“The baked potato I got at the Yooker-Anian reception. I was gonna eat it in the park.”

“But you initiated no trouble of any sort?”

“No. Is this going on the six o’clock news?”

“Maybe. Why were you in Polonia Park?”

“It was a nice day. I was having a banana with an African and then all these people came running in and I got hit in the head.”

“Do me a favour,” the reporter said. “Forget the Ukrainian potato and the African banana, would you? You’re just going to confuse our viewers. When we get you on camera, stick to how you were minding your own business, relaxing on a park bench, and the next thing you knew the cops had knocked you over the head and loaded you into a paddywagon. Okay?”

The six o’clock news showed Jake Corbett talking about being knocked out by a billyclub. Jake was keenly disappointed. The TV people didn’t mention his overpayment deductions. They didn’t even talk about the welfare people not giving him enough to live decently. Reporters never told it straight. They didn’t know how.

Georges Goyette’s St. Boniface bungalow had been vandalized the night before. Walking up the porch steps, Mahatma Grafton saw spray-painted on the door, “Frogs Go Home!” Goyette swept the door open. “Come in, jeune homme.” Newspapers from around the world cluttered a coffee table.
Le Monde
,
El Pais
,
The Washington Post
,
The Toronto Times
. Goyette excused himself, retreating to the kitchen.

One of Goyette’s columns in
Le Miroir
had been framed and hung on a wall. Mahatma studied the column, in which Goyette attacked the provincial government for trying to water down minority language rights.

Mahatma stopped reading. To date, he had seen no details about the government’s position on French language rights.
The Herald
had only reported that the Francophone Association and the government were negotiating a language deal whose details remained secret.

Mahatma checked the date of the column: September 20, 1983—that was three months ago. He read on, seeing Goyette’s description of Manitoba’s “first negotiating position” on the language question. How did
Le Miroir
have this information? Why didn’t
The Herald
have it?

Goyette returned with a platter of cheese and pâté. Mahatma protested. “Don’t say a thing. You’re hungry. I’m hungry. So let’s eat.” They sat by a window, looking out at children playing hockey in the street. “Ever played hockey?” Goyette asked.

“No. Never had skates. You?”

“You’re asking a French-Canadian if he’s played hockey? Sure I did. Try that Brie!” Mahatma spread the soft cheese on rye bread. It struck him as incredible that in the six months he’d been in Winnipeg, this was the first time he had slowed down enough to enjoy Goyette’s company “Beer?” Goyette asked.

“Sure.”

Goyette came back with two bottles and more food.

“To friendship,” Mahatma said.

“And to your restored honour.”

They clinked beer bottles. Mahatma tried some chicken liver pâté. And some Camembert. Then he asked Goyette about the framed column.

“You are probably the first anglo to read it.”

“You broke that story and no English media picked it up?”

“Exactly.” Goyette had acquired the provincial negotiating document, written the story and watched it remain ignored by the English press.

“How could that happen?” Mahatma asked.

“Les anglais don’t read our newspaper.”

“But we’ve spent months trying to find out the government’s position.” Goyette nodded. Mahatma asked, “How come you never told me about this?”

“Do you run to me with scoops that I can read in your paper?” For a moment, they ate in silence. “What do you think of the language negotiations?” Goyette asked.

“I’m no expert,” Mahatma said. “I don’t really have an opinion on it. I’m just an ordinary person. Just a reporter.”

“Just a reporter! What does that mean?”

“It means my job is to report facts, not to editorialize.”

“Editorialize? I’m asking you to
think
! And don’t tell me you’re not an expert. You are. You are a news expert. You are paid to stay abreast of the news. You attend demonstrations, you watch people get beaten up and you grill police superintendents. Don’t bullshit me about being an ordinary person. If you can’t think for yourself, who the hell can?”

Mahatma made a sad, inward smile. He had nothing to say. Spewing out daily news had deadened his thinking. If he had to write an editorial on any subject, he wouldn’t know where to start or what to say.

The day after his suspension was revoked, Mahatma was handed a scrap of paper that said 205 Killarney Avenue, Apt. 4. “A murder just came over the radio,” Betts said. “Our new crime reporter is doing another story. Better get down there fast.”

A cop opened the victim’s door. He wouldn’t speak to Mahatma. Wouldn’t tell him anything. Mahatma didn’t fight it, didn’t argue.

Standing alone in the green-painted corridor of an apartment where a young woman had lived until a few hours ago, Mahatma felt weary. He didn’t remember murder stories bothering him so much before. He remembered the thrill of beating Slade to the home of the French hockey player killed in St. Albert. He remembered how keenly he took quotes from the mother. It seemed like another era. Another life.

Mahatma rang a neighbour’s buzzer. The lady who answered the door named the victim—Katie Bonner—and said she was in her early twenties and had lived alone. “She had men coming in every night! Different ones!”

Mahatma started, mindlessly, to jot that quote down, then stopped himself. He was fighting the story. But that wouldn’t get the job done.

Another neighbour said he had heard the shot and called the police and seen the ambulance attendants carry the body from the apartment. Mahatma forced himself through uninspired questions: What time had the shot rung out? How many police officers had come? Mahatma did not want to
pursue the story. Nor did he want to lose his job. He concluded that the minimum effort required to avoid another suspension would be to try to talk to Katie Bonner’s family. He looked up the name in the phone book and found a P. Bonner on McAdam Avenue. Mahatma drove there. A woman opened the door. “Are you Katie’s mother?”

“Do we have to do this again?” she said. “That other man made us talk. He was from
The Star
. He said they would fire him if we didn’t talk about Katie.”

“You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” Mahatma told her.

She didn’t want to. Mahatma checked the woman’s name and her husband’s name, and then he left her. He collected his thoughts in the car. What was he doing? Searching for people to speculate publicly about the murder of someone they loved. He tracked down another Bonner in the phone book. Katie’s aunt. This woman gave a few details of the victim’s life. Mahatma didn’t push her. What purpose would it serve? At most, entertainment. Mahatma asked the police a few questions and let his investigation end there.

“What’d you get?” Betts asked before Mahatma had his coat off.

“Neighbours didn’t know much. Family wouldn’t talk. I’ve just got a few inches.” Betts scowled. Mahatma ignored it and wrote what he had. Two hours later, the phone rang on his desk. It was Helen Savoie and she was speaking rapid French. Mahatma listened, astonished.

“I can’t explain now, but you’re in trouble and I’m going to help. Tell me who you interviewed on the murder story and what they said. Talk to me in French.” Mahatma complied.

“Don’t tell anyone we were talking,” she said. “I’ll be fired if you do.” She hung up. Mahatma shrugged and wrote a five-inch story on the murder. The next morning, Helen called him at home. She told him to meet her after work at the bar Pantages, but not to approach her in the newsroom.

Helen Savoie’s first contact with
The Winnipeg Herald
came in 1964. She was thirteen. As a grade seven student, she had won a prize for her history essay. She and eight other top students—all boys—were escorted through
The Herald
newsroom, which Helen concluded was a secretarial pool. A strange one. With men, instead of women. Talking on the phone, listening to radios, shouting, typing very fast with two fingers, walking around with their shoes off. Helen studied the clattering machines and decomposing telephone books and ringing telephones and paper clicking out of wire machines, but could make no sense of the chaos. She and the other students were hurried into the office of the managing editor where they were awarded plaques and doughnuts and fruit juice. Their names and pictures were to run in the Saturday paper. The managing editor gave a short, boring speech. He spoke like a military officer. “Society has its hopes pinned on young men like you.” A ruddy hand clasped Helen’s shoulder as if it were a doorknob. “Your name?”

Helen gave her first name only.

“Helen,” thundered the managing editor, “is a fine British cognomen.”

“No it’s not, sir,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Helen is not a cognomen. A cognomen is a surname, sir. And Helen is my Christian name.”

“Very good, Miss. Very good. Have a doughnut!” The managing editor disappeared.

A young man about eighteen years old came up with a fresh tray of doughnuts. “Take one,” he said. “Take two.” He winked at Helen. “So you’re pretty smart, eh? That’s good. Don’t drop out of school like I did.”

Helen was scandalized. “You dropped out of school?”

“Had to. I needed a job.”

“My dad had to do that too, but I didn’t know it was still going on.”

“It sure is. But you stay in school, okay?”

“Don’t patronize me,” Helen said.

The doughnut man’s brow furrowed. He obviously didn’t know the word ‘patronize.’

“What do you do?” she asked.

“I’m the copy boy.”

“Coffee boy?”

“
Copy
boy! I handle news copy from all over the world. I sort it out, take it to editors. I get to read it too.”

“So you know the news before the rest of us?” Helen asked.

“You bet.”

“So what happened in Europe today?”

The copy boy’s mouth fell open.

Helen decided the young man wasn’t too bright. But out of politeness, she asked his name.

“Chuck Maxwell. Look for my byline. I’m gonna be a reporter soon.”

“A reporter?” Helen said. “Don’t you have to be real old for that?”

“Nope. Reporting takes energy. Lots of it. It’s a young man’s game.”

That, as far as Helen was concerned, was the only credible thing Chuck Maxwell had said.

Helen Savoie became a news addict. She read
The Herald
daily. She read
The Toronto Times
. She read American papers and, studying languages at university, began reading Spanish and French newspapers. She read magazines in all three languages. She developed an extraordinary knowledge of world affairs. She wanted to become a journalist. She felt that writing for a newspaper would allow her to speak her thoughts, to participate in public life and to exercise influence. She would have liked to have started at a top newspaper such as
The Washington Post
, or at least at a prestigious Canadian paper such as
The Toronto Times
, but they never responded to her letters and resumés. So, in 1975, at age twenty-four, after finishing an undergraduate degree in modern languages and travelling for two years in Europe, Helen Savoie lowered her professional sights to take a job at a starting salary of $170 a week at
The Winnipeg Herald
.

“Oh yeah, hi kid,” Chuck Maxwell said when Helen identified herself. But she could see that Chuck didn’t remember meeting her years earlier. Helen quickly learned that Chuck couldn’t spell or write. He also knew very little about the news.

The Pantages bar was underground on the north side of Portage Avenue. Arriving before Helen Savoie, Mahatma Grafton ordered a tonic water and crushed the lime slice between his fingers, stirring the pulpy citrus bits into the drink. He hadn’t spoken to Helen today. He’d been busy and Helen had been out of the office. But he was curious about Helen’s secretive phone call. This morning, Mahatma had looked at the murder story he’d written the day before. It carried everything he wrote and one other small detail. He wondered where the extra detail had come from. No byline. That meant something was wrong. Somebody was unhappy with him.

“Hi!” Helen Savoie slid into a seat opposite Mahatma. “Did you see the extra detail in your murder story? The age of the victim’s mother?” When Mahatma nodded, she added, “I put that in. I got the whole story, more or less what you got, with the age being about the only detail you didn’t have.”

Mahatma put down his drink. “They sent you out to do the story?”

“That’s right.”

“After I did it?”

“That’s right. It’s called double coverage. If I had come back with stuff you missed, then they could have said you weren’t doing your job.”