Some Great Thing by Lawrence Hill

Author:Lawrence Hill [Hill, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 9781443400435
Publisher: Turnstone Press
Published: 1992-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Mahatma Grafton was bombarded with attention after the morning news. It started with his father, who wandered into Mahatma’s bedroom. “Good work, son. I knew you didn’t mess up.”

Then the phone rang. CBC wanted to interview him. Had he been surprised to find the photos? What did he think would happen now? Mahatma said he wasn’t surprised because he knew the pictures existed and that they would be uncovered in time. He called for an inquiry into police behaviour at the riot. Mahatma hung up. The phone rang again. It was CRFL Radio, with similar questions. He answered them. Six other radio stations called, and two TV stations, and The Toronto Times and The Brandon Advance. After that, Ben unplugged the telephone.

Jake Corbett hung up the phone in Frank’s Accidental Dog and Grill. “They’re gonna put me on TV.”

“Right,” Frank said. “And they’re gonna put me on the moon.”

“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?”

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