Some Great Thing by Lawrence Hill Page B

calls from the house. Ma- hat -ma! Ma- hat -ma! He deserts the playmate and climbs into Daddy’s car. “We’re going to see how the men are making out,” Ben says.
    “What men?”
    “You’ll see.” They swing up to Portage Avenue, seem to drive miles east, then north on Main Street. They enter a world of trains, train yards, train tracks, the train station. Ben gives his horn two friendly taps. “Every time I come up here I see more coloured people on the street,” he says, waving out the window. They arrive at a house on Annabella Street. The house has peeling pink paint, two storeys and steps leading up to a wide porch. Several big, dark men get up from chairs to clap Mahatma’s father on the back.
    “I want to go back to the car, Daddy,” Mahatma says.
    “Don’t be afraid, son. These men ride the trains with Daddy.”
    Mahatma clings to his father’s pant leg. The men tousle Mahatma’s hair. Someone lifts him high onto a pair of shoulders. “Look Daddy!” Ben smiles, shakes several hands, disappears into the house. Mahatma pleads to be let down and runs after his father. In the kitchen, food-covered dishes cover the counter. A garbage bag overflows. Down the hall, a television blares and somebody is showering with the door open. Mahatma enters the bathroom, pulls the curtain back and asks the tall, fat, dark man what his name is.
    The man says, “Harry Carson.”
    “Hey son, you bothering Fat Harry in the shower?” Ben scoops up the boy and removes him from the bathroom. Mahatma protests; it was warm and misty and pleasant in there. He also protests when it is time to go; he likes the noisy home, with its smells, its misty shower, its men. One has given Mahatma juice, another has offered him beer.
    Later, back home, Mahatma says, “Can we go back to the house with the misty shower?”
    “The misty shower?”
    “The misty shower on Annabella Street.” For years, Mahatma will refer in this way to the home his father rents out to railroad porters.
    “Soon, son.”
    “Today?”
    “Soon.”
    Mahatma whines. Ben tells a story. At first, Mahatma absorbs every word. In later years, he tires of these stories. And he grows conscious of his mother objecting, “Ben, stop lecturing. You sound like a church minister!” Ben, who refuses to give up, turns Mahatma completely off the subject.
    By the time he is a teenager, Mahatma tunes Ben out. Despite the lectures about discrimination on the railway, the struggle to unionize porters, black pride, Martin Luther King and Mohandas K. Gandhi, Mahatma learns little more of these things than how to shut them out.
    Mahatma came home at 9:00 p.m., after a twelve-hour day. Ben, who had been looking out the window, waiting for his son, had already eaten. But he had also prepared a meal for his son. Now he reheated it. “You go rest on the sofa, I’m plenty used to working this kitchen solo,” Ben told him. Mahatma smiled, looking into his father’s brown eyes and his deeply wrinkled face, which was the colour of roasted almonds. This was the old man’s way of saying that he bore his son no hard feelings, despite their argument about Melvyn Hill. Mahatma felt a sudden tenderness toward Ben. It didn’t matter about the argument. Mahatma had thought it over and decided that his father had been right, in large part. Melvyn Hill had been an easy target. And Mahatma had taken advantage of that. The old man sang a spiritual as he banged around in the kitchen. This made Mahatma smile, lying on an old sofa and following his father’s gravelly melody. Ben was the only atheist in the world who hummed spirituals. And he only sang when he was happy. When he wanted somebody to hear. Mahatma was there, listening. And thinking.
    “Say, son,” Ben said, “how long do you plan to stay here?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “No hurry about finding an apartment,” the old man said. “No hurry at all. You comfortable here?”
    “Sure.”
    “Good.” Ben brought out the food.