he’d read about it in the paper. Arvel hadn’tmentioned a word to him. He hadn’t even known his son was involved in the union drive. His heart had soared with pride when he’d read Arvel’s name in the paper and saw that the reporter had asked Arvel to comment from the union’s side.
He went into the front room and switched on the reading lamp. In the midst of his falling-apart life, the life in which his relationship to every member of his family was in shambles, evidence of another life abounded in this small room. It was propped in frames on top of the coffee table. It hung collecting dust against the knotty pine panelling on the walls. The life depicted here was one at which Ennis had excelled. Plaques of service and congratulations, certificates of appreciation and achievement, dating right back to the fifties. “Presented to Ennis Burrows in thanks upon the signing of our first collective agreement. Allied Food and Restaurant Workers local 324. January, 1958.” “Ennis Burrows, in recognition of 10 years’ service, United Steelworkers of America.” “Ennis Burrows, in recognition of 20 years’ service, United Steelworkers of America.” “Ennis Burrows, in recognition of 30 years’ service, United Steelworkers of America.” “Organizer Award. National Day of Protest. October 14, 1973. The largest organized demonstration in Canadian history.” Photographs showed Ennis shaking hands with provincial New Democratic Party leaders, handing out Labor Council Scholarships at high-school graduations. He’d run for the federal seat himself in 1968, and the most prized photo of all, the only one professionally mounted and framed in polished brass, showed Ennis with former Saskatchewan Premier Tommy Douglas, leader of the first democratic socialist government in North America.
Ennis had met Douglas briefly at a rally in Halifax during the campaign of 1968. New Democratic Party candidates from across the province were lined up backstage after Douglas’s speech that afternoon. Ennis had just enough time with Douglas to snap a photo for inclusion in his campaign literature. The actual physical moment itself had been brief, but its memory had been immortalized with a permanent place on the wall here in the front room. The photo had come down twice before while they’d been re-papering that room, and once while he and Arvel had been tacking up the panelling from which it now hung, but each time it had come down, the photo had gone right back up to its original spot, directly above the only light source in the room, in the centre of the wall you faced as you entered.
Beside Ennis, the Prairie firebrand looked like a prematurely aging child. Ennis’s big hand gripped Douglas at the upper arm, and standing so close to Ennis’s side, Douglas’s head barely came up to Ennis’s shoulder. But Ennis was looking at Douglas in the photo, and the awe and admiration on Ennis’s face, the pride in standing next to his hero, made it clear who was the bigger man.
He was waiting for Ziv to come home. He wanted to have a conversation with his son. He didn’t care what they talked about, hockey, cars, work, it didn’t matter. He just wanted to say something to one of his sons that would not get turned in the wrong direction. He wanted someone to speak to him without anger. He knew from experience that this was unlikely to happen, but he had an image in his mind of himself and the boy, sitting at the table in the kitchen, drinking tea with sugar until they both sobered up, until the light crept back into the sky, until Arvel came home from the pit and the three of them would sit there,two guys hungover, one exhausted from work. Dunya would come downstairs and they’d all eat a big breakfast together.
He paced back and forth, kitchen to living room, fridge to TV , table to chair to couch. Ziv would be drunk when he got home, Ennis knew that. He and the boy had fought before over this issue. Each fight with Ziv, it seemed,