Money Doesn't Talk, It Swears
by C.W. Petersen, CUPE Local 2045

Everyone was uncomfortable, sitting in the hard "stackable" chairs of the High School gymnasium that late Spring afternoon in 1974. At one end of the gym the mill workers and their bosses sat opposite the big city judge and lawyers flown in this morning. The public crowded the rest of it.

"Yes, Mr. Santone. I know that. They only told you to ask if any of the men would be willing to come out and help dig. But the call came in around noon, shortly after the avalanche was discovered. You didn't assemble the men to ask for volunteers until a quarter past three. That's what I'm here to ask you about today. Why did it take you from noon 'til 3:15 to ask for volunteers to dig out the avalanche victims?"

Ben Rawlings was adamant that the crux of the matter lay in his last question to Joe Santone. He was certain he could lay all the blame for the deaths of those six people that day at the feet of this man and his cohorts, the mill supervisors. Certain that the only survivor would not have lost his entire family if the mill workers had just arrived a few hours earlier to help dig.

Gerry McGillen sat next to Joe Santone, his boss, twisting and fidgeting just as nervously as he was, under the glare of the TV lights at the public inquiry into those deaths last February.

His thoughts went back to the day of the avalanche, when all this had started. He had been in the coffee room around quarter to two that afternoon when Joe stopped in to say he wanted to talk to them just before the 3:30 shift change. It was only after the shift that Joe told them what happened at mile 38, and asked if any of them would be willing to help look for survivors.

It had snowed hard all day, over four feet during the shift, seven feet in less than twenty-four hours. With the avalanche, and those people driving into the yard of that abandoned diner seeking shelter, it was a day no one would forget.

Joe mentioned that buses would be in the upper parking lot, ready to take anyone willing. He realised they'd all just put in eight hours, at 20 below, with the wind whipping off the river, but if any one was willing to help, it would be appreciated; strictly volunteer, of course.

When Gerry got to the upper parking lot, there was already a long line-up, waiting for the buses. Dark was falling as two of them drove up, all chained up and full of tools, leaving room for only 30 men on each. Gerry was sixty-first to volunteer, making him the first of fifty or so who were thanked, then sent away.

He walked downtown; falling forward and then stomping enough snow down to clear a path behind him. He stopped in at his favourite pub for a few beer and a few games of pool. After a while a bunch of people came in, all covered in snow, with word of the digging. They'd found one survivor, and a couple of dead people. Everyone was glad to hear about the survivor.

These were the tiredest bunch, so they'd been consigned to bringing the survivor in to the hospital. When they found him, about 5:30, he'd been conscious, but incoherent. He was upside down, digging himself in deeper.

During the next few hours Gerry had somehow let it slip that he knew Joe had known about the avalanche by coffee, and it was eating at him. The mill managers got the call near the middle of the shift, but waited until everyone had put in their full day before asking them to help.

Back to the present. Mr. Rawlings had asked him a question and everyone was looking at him, waiting for his answer.

"Beg pardon? I'm sorry, my mind was elsewhere. Could you repeat the question?"

"I asked you, Mr. McGillen," Rawlings paused, sneering and puffed for effect, "just what time you first became aware of the avalanche."

"I couldn't exactly say, for certain, Mr. Rawlings." Rawlings took a deep breath, preparing to build to his next point. "You see, sir, I think I heard something about it some time during the second half of the shift. I don't know for sure if it was before or after the break. I do remember Joe, uh, Mr. Santone, mentioning at coffee, say, a quarter to two, that he wanted to talk to us just before we left for the day. He didn't tell us what it was about until we met at 3:15, so I remember wondering if it was going to be something serious, like a shutdown, or something."

A glint appeared in Rawlings' eye. "So we must presume, then, from what you've just said, that Mr. Santone here" (he pronounced it San-Tony) "must have known about it before 1:30. At least two hours before anyone was sent."

Gerry looked nervously at Joe. Joe wasn't meeting his eye. "Well, he obviously knew he would have something to tell us at the end of shift. Whether he knew then, just what it would be, I really couldn't say. And, at the end of coffee like that, it was more like an hour and a half before he give us the news." Damn! Foot just out of his mouth, and there it was, right back in again.

Joe Santone sat nervously in his chair, looking straight ahead. Every now and again he would raise his left hand to his forehead and worry away an errant shock of black hair that fell across his face. His right hand, in a black glove, remained in his lap. He was thinking back almost ten years ago, to when he first came to this country from the Azores. He had work at the smelter, at the head of the inlet, some forty miles from the mill. He'd been a strong man then; still had his youth, with a wife and two young sons, who, now, would never be drafted into the Portuguese army.

Sometimes he had to wonder, though, if it was really worth it. The painfully cold winters; the wine he made each year for his family, like most of the Europeans in the community, had to be made from imported concentrate, because of the climate.

Then the accident; in one day, his life changed forever.

His company got a grant to put scrapers in the stacks, to cut air pollution. All the able bodied workers, (not that many at the smelter) worked extra shifts, putting the scrapers inside the stacks. It meant lots of overtime.

He'd slipped and fallen. At the end of the shift, his second that day, most of the guys were already gone. Only Ib, the Dane, heard his screams. It took Ib almost an hour, arguing with the bosses, to convince them not to start up, to go down and find Joe. His right arm was smashed so badly below the elbow they had to take it off.

He was grateful to Ib, without whose strong stand they surely would have started the smelter, skimming his remains off the pot before pouring the ingots. Both Joe's legs were broken, too, but they had mended, and in a year he was ready to go back to work.

They didn't want him any more. He wasn't whole, wouldn't be worth enough to them like that. Ib had been let go, too. Never mind the work they'd done for them; the scrapers they'd helped put in. The scrapers which had saved them their whole cost in fuel, every year since.

It was only after another year out of work, during which he'd been reduced to making extra wine and distilling it for a few close friends who helped him out from time to time, that one of the "big shots" had felt compelled to ask an acquaintance at the mill if there might be some "light duty" work for him there.

Joe had started at the mill the next week, almost five years ago now. He'd been quick to pick up on the way things worked there. He well understood the power of the "beeggeh shotes" as he called them. He'd been made supervisor of the dry kilns after a case of liqueur had quietly materialised in the possession of one of the "big upper muckey-mucks" as senior management were sometimes called.

More nattering from Rawlings pulled his attention back to this unpleasant inquiry. He looked over at McGillen. He studied the young man with the curious lopsided goatee. He certainly didn't have any future at the mill. Sure, he was trying to cover for Joe now. But now it was too late. He'd already opened his mouth, that was why this inquiry was happening. Joe looked now at Ben Rawlings and tuned in to his ceaseless prattling.

"I think it safe to presume, Mr. Santone, that you knew about this avalanche before you went into that coffee room at, say, twenty to two, to be fair. Is that right?" Joe just stared at him, and flicked away that annoying shock of hair.

"I notice, Mr. Santone, that you only gesture with your left hand; that your right hand is covered with a glove. Would you care to tell us why that is, Mr. Santone?"

"Aw, leave him alone, will ya?" McGillen burst in. He'd been sitting, watching, as Rawlings chipped away at his boss. But this was too much. Nobody talked about Joe's hand, his arm, actually, at work. Not even behind his back. They all knew he'd lost it in an industrial accident, but that was all anyone would say about it.

Joe's expression just kept getting darker and darker.

"As I understand it, Mr. Santone, that hand, and much of your right arm, I believe, were lost as a result of your being left, for several hours, after a fall down a smelter stack, while your bosses argued about your expendability, and one lone friend convinced them to send a crew down to rescue you." He leaned over Joe and bore down on this last, "Is that true, Mr. Santone?"

That was it. The dam blew. Joe broke down, burst into tears. He tried to cover his face with his real arm. He was blubbering. His accent thickened.

"I try. I try. I try," he said over and over.

"I try to make dem beeggeh shotes leessen. We gotto go now! We gotto send help now. Doseh people. Dey might die! Ees injuman. You can't just let dem stay in da snow ligh dat.

"They say 'hold on Joe - it take time to get da busses.' Da damn busses already dere!" He was blubbering again.

"Den dey say, 'you know Joe, you should remember how lockey you are, you have job here, ligh dat.' Dey point to this" he held up his plastic arm, took off the black glove, showing the plastic hand, like a doll's.

"They say, 'if you no know the people you know, you'd be gone, long time ago, now. But who you know, you know, dat'sa not everyt'ing.'

"What I gon' do? I don't know who's out there. But I know who's at home. I no gonna go back to maket dat 'Whiteh Light'ing.' No more!

"I don' know. Maybe somebody be saved if I can ask guys to go earlier. But I do know, for shure; four people not gonna be saved if I no do what the beeggeh shotes tell me.

"So I gotta choose." He paused, eyes darting around the room, then fixed his stare hard on the eyes of Ben Rawlings.

"You tell me, you, another big shot." He straightened to his full height, lifted his face to everyone. "What you gonna do then?"