The Island Walkers (68 page)

“When,” he said.

“November,” Davy said, watching him closely. “Soon as we’re finished the fall lines.”

Bruce Mason, the new president of the local, had climbed onto the loading dock of the sweater mill now, where he was conferring with two other union officials. Some people in the crowd were watching them expectantly. Others were jeering. By now, Alf understood what had probably happened. The foremen had called the workers together to announce the closing — or perhaps the news had come over the
PA
system — and the employees had stormed out spontaneously. He’d seen the same thing before, in 1949. But it was one thing to stage a walkout: the question was always what to do next. The workers seemed at a loss. They were jostling about, looking for leadership, and when Bruce finally stood forward with his hands raised to instill calm, he seemed helpless before the milling crowd.

“Brothers and sisters,” he began.

“Fuck your brothers and sisters!” someone cried out. New arguments exploded around the perpetrator of this remark. Beside Alf, Davy Clark continued to snort out his silent, bitter laughter. None of this surprised old Davy, it was what the fools deserved.

Bruce said something about “fighting this with everything we’ve got.” He would talk to management — he’d go to Toronto and talk to
the president of Intertex himself, if that’s what it took. He drew a flutter of weak applause from many, but the sniping of boos and epithets continued. In the windows overhead, a few people leaned on the sills, looking down like casual spectators at some arcane bloodsport. On the sixth floor, Kit Ford coldly observed the proceedings, his glance occasionally shifting to a clipboard on which he was apparently making notes. Across the yard, a fight broke out. Alf heard angry, surprised shouts, the desperate scuffling of feet on gravel. There was sense of a society unravelling at the seams. It seemed that no one knew what to do, or what to expect.

Just then, Alf noticed Lucille, standing with a group of her fellow workers from the sewing department. Instantly, he experienced a surge of the old hunger; she seemed a point of solace — of escape, really — in the dismal confusion of the yard. Since the union picnic, he’d been hoping they might get together again, at least to talk. He watched her tuck in her blouse, watched her hand plunge behind her wide belt, watched the deep, equine curve of her lower back.

A man was approaching the group of women: Bud Reed, from the dye department. He was a well-built fellow of about thirty, with a cockiness in his gait. A tight T-shirt showed his biceps to advantage. He leaned over to say something to Lucille and her friends, then remained beside them, standing so close to Lucille that their arms touched. Alf seemed to come awake as he watched their fingers entwine.

Arriving home at noon, he said nothing to Margaret, but washed his hands and sat at the table, staring over the array of pink Melmac, the ribbed juice glasses she put down with crisp efficiency.

When the phone rang, Margaret answered.

“It’s for you.”

The voice on the line was male, and toxic with rage. He could not quite tell who it was — half a dozen possibilities flashed through his mind, until there seemed to be not one but several persons there,
speaking with a single voice. He heard profanities, a barrage of accusations. The closing of the mills was the union’s fault, the voice said. The union had priced itself out of the market. Because of the union they had lost their jobs. “I hope you’re happy now, Walker.”

“Who is this!” he demanded, and was answered with the clatter of a fumbled hangup.

“Who was that?” Margaret said from the sink.

He barely heard her.

“Alf —”

“They’re closing the mills,” he said, distracted, the voice on the phone still seething inside him.

“Closing —”

He looked at her sharply.

“Alf, what’s going on?”

“The mills,” he said. “Intertex — they’re shutting them down.”

“Who says they are?”

“
I
say!” he cried, furious. He saw Joe standing by the door. His son had simply materialized, and now stood watching them remotely. It had been his mood for weeks, it seemed, ever since his girlfriend had left. Alf had tried to console him —
Plenty more fish in the sea
— but the boy scarcely seemed aware of his existence. Two or three times blue aerogrammes had arrived from France. Joe had hurried them to his room like a prisoner expecting a reprieve.

Margaret turned to Joe.

“Your father says they’ve closed the mills!”

“For God’s
sake
, Margaret,” Alf said. Did she trust nothing he told her any more? He stalked down the hall, pausing at the door to the living room, where Jamie and Penny were watching
TV
. Bud Reed, he thought suddenly. Bud Reed. Wasn’t the guy a bit of a jerk? In a trance, he stared at the screen. The Three Stooges were up to their usual tricks: whooping like cranes, poking fingers in each other’s eyes, driving each other’s heads into trees and parked cars and telephone poles.

61

THAT AFTERNOON
, back at work, the idea came to him that he should talk to Prince. He’d demand an explanation, cook up some deal that would keep Bannerman’s in town (he had the notion he might somehow reach into the mechanism of power, as if it were an idling car engine, and make some fine adjustment that would stop Intertex in its course). He knew it was a long shot, knew he was a fool to think
he
could change the course of events, but his relationship with Prince gave him hope. He knew he couldn’t rest till he’d tried.

After supper, he set out in the Biscayne. At G.O., the Fleetwood was not in its usual place under the willow. He drove to Johnsonville, where the clerk at the Executive told him Prince had given up his room a week ago. He went back to his car and sat behind the wheel, looking out at the wobbling glow of the pool. Children cannon-balled, sending up geysers with their cries. Prince’s disappearance seemed the final blow. He and his company had swept in out of the blue, done what they wanted to, and now had flown off with their spoils, into distances where you couldn’t get at them. And the thing was, they’d always had the power to do this, whenever they wanted. All the contortions Alf’d put himself through — they’d all put themselves through — hadn’t made a whit of difference. They might just as well as have done nothing.

Driving back into town, he kept looking for the Fleetwood, he couldn’t help himself. The hood of a large black car waited at the corner of Shade and Bridge, its body concealed by a store. He was instantly alert, but as it drew away, he saw it was Rick McArthur’s Cadillac hearse, the same vehicle Pete had made his last ride in, its long, bonneted cabin decorated with a stylized chrome S, like a baby carriage.

It seemed he hardly slept that night; the next day, punchdrunk, he dragged himself through his eight hours at Bannerman’s. Then after
supper, feeling a little better, he walked over to the Flats for a special union meeting about the closings. Arriving at the prefab barn near the mills — it had been built by the Lions as a clubhouse — he stood at the back in a press of heat-dampened bodies. Set up in front of the seated, noisily gabbing crowd was a long table where Bruce Mason, the union president, was leaning forward to tap experimentally at a mike. Bert Hatch, an old Bannerman’s executive who had grown up in Attawan, sat beside him, his face with its dark jowls looking exaggeratedly mournful. Beside him, Linda Connaught, the secretary of the local, was bent over a three-ring notebook, writing, with her wide face close to the paper, like a schoolgirl.

Just then Bob Prince slipped in from a door at the rear of the stage and took the chair beside Bert Hatch. He was wearing a light-tan summer suit, but no tie. Instantly alert, Alf watched him closely: the slight, superior tilt of his head as he leaned to murmur something to Bert Hatch; the casual rubbing with one finger of a place under his right ear as he gazed coolly over the rows of faces.

“Can everybody hear me?” Bruce Mason said, his disembodied voice suddenly booming from the speakers.

“Unfortunately!” someone barked behind Alf. In the middle of the hall, a heavy woman in a T-shirt — it was Gail Phipps from Number Six sewing — rose to her feet and raised one arm in a kind of salute. She looked around defiantly, shaking her fist as if she were holding aloft a trophy, or perhaps a weapon, as others shouted for her to sit. It took a while for Bruce to get things underway.

Alf had trouble concentrating on the speeches. He kept looking at Prince, while his mind drifted in and out of the proceedings, always returning to some blank, burning space of its own. But when Bert Hatch said he thought that what Intertex was doing was shameful, he heard
that
and joined vigorously in the applause. The workers were not used to hearing terms such as “shameful” from their business leaders. They listened alertly, clearly hoping for more from Bert, some further echoing of their moral claim — maybe even the announcement of some action that might save the situation — but as
Bert droned on it became clear his “shameful” was not leading anywhere and they soon grew restless again.

When Bruce invited questions from the floor, Jimmy Quinn popped up, demanding to know if Bannerman’s was leaving because the union had come in.

The people at the head table looked at each other, as cries erupted around the floor.

“Answer him!” several people shouted.

“Maybe Mr. Prince could handle that one,” Bruce Mason said, looking down the table.

Prince waved aside the mike Bruce pushed towards him. He leaned forward, arms folded on the table (he had taken off his suit jacket and rolled his sleeves artfully halfway up his tanned forearms).

“I’ll be as frank as I can,” he said, and his rich voice immediately established a calm that had not been in the room before. One or two workers heckled him, but they were quickly silenced. People seemed doubly alert, eager to hear the executive’s explanation. “I fought the union coming in. I had orders to fight it, and I lost. Intertex didn’t like the result, a lot of people here — probably some of them in this room — didn’t like it, but there it was, we had a union.” Prince bowed his head a little and frowned as if girding himself for even more painful acts of candour. He looked exhausted, his face pale, bluish shadows under his eyes. At least this has cost the bugger something, Alf thought, if only a few nights’ sleep. “Sure,” Prince said, “having to pay more in wages, at a time when we were making some expensive changes, that didn’t help. It was a consideration. But it wasn’t the only consideration. I mean, we’re not leaving because we’re sore losers, or to get back at anybody. This is purely a business decision.” Though Prince did not look at Bert Hatch, Alf sensed he was reprimanding the manager for that “shameful.”

This was not the simple answer Jimmy Quinn was hoping for, it seemed to cut both ways. The shipper tried again.

“Lemme put it this way, would you stay if we got rid of the union?”

Immediately, a dozen people tried to shout Jimmy down. Others shouted at the shouters. It was another minute before Prince could continue, during which time Jimmy waited patiently, his head with its crude scar hooked over the ear lifted with a kind of moral loftiness. In a life of filling boxes with sweaters, Jimmy, it occurred to Alf, had never enjoyed such public importance, probably never would again.

“No,” the executive said finally. “No, we’ve discussed this, at Intertex, and no it wouldn’t be enough.”

The silence that answered his announcement had a bruised, stunned quality. The crowd had given Prince authority. And now his authority had rebuked them: delivered a sentence from which there could be no reprieve.

Jimmy said, “What
would
be enough?”

Again Prince frowned before he spoke. He seemed careworn, even troubled. “Look, this wasn’t easy for any of us. We didn’t take this decision lightly. But hell, the only reason Bannerman’s is here is because John Bannerman needed the power from the rivers. Well, we don’t use that kind of power any more, we need to be closer to our markets, we need to shed departments that are losing money, we need newer buildings, ones that don’t cost so much to keep up. There’s no room for sentimentality — we’d soon be dead if we were sentimental — we just have to do it.”

Jimmy tried to speak again, but Prince continued. “We all make business decisions. That’s what you people did when you decided to ask more for your labour — just like our suppliers sometimes ask more for their wool, or their dyes. Sometimes these decisions are good ones, and sometimes they aren’t.”

Jimmy sagged reluctantly to his chair. People were shouting at him, telling him what he should have said, what he might still say. He held out his hands and shrugged, saying, “What? what?” Others sat in silence or talked among themselves. When Alf put his hand up, Bruce Mason pointed.

“Another question for Bob Prince,” Alf said and heard his voice travel out in the hall like the parody of a voice, nothing to do with
him. He watched Prince find him, the executive’s face resolving into clarity at the distant table, the blue eyes flashing in recognition.