“Your son, sir? And who might that be?” Here, I imagined Alfonso smiling with his thick lips, roving with beady eyes over his protruding brow, and twitching pudgy digits behind his back.
“Langston Cane the Fifth.”
“Langston! Your son? You are the Langston Cane, are you not? Dr. Cane?”
“Yes. The Fourth.”
“Certainly, certainly. This way, sir.”
My father looked well. The strands of dark hair — on the sides of his head only — were brushed back. His eyes were the color of coffee beans, and carried an impish smile that suggested, So! I found you. His fingers were still long and brown and smooth around the knuckles. He saluted me with his cane. It was made of red oak, and had squares of inlaid silver. He never went out without it, although he didn’t need it — except to point at things, or to win the attention of salespeople, receptionists, and the two or three hundred people in the city he had served at one time or another, over the last four decades, as a sort of guru.
My father tapped my shin with his cane.
“Hello, son, don’t you rise from your chair to greet an old man?”
Alfonso backed out of sight and parked a few steps away. I could tell because I heard his asthmatic breathing. And then the breathing stopped. The bastard was holding his breath so as not to miss a word. Staying in my chair, I looked up into my father’s eyes.
“Aberdeen gave me your message. I had been planning to come to visit you and Mom soon.”
“But you haven’t done it yet. What’s the matter? You ashamed of me? You trying to pass for white?”
He laughed at his own joke. It was the same laugh I’d heard as a child at countless Sunday breakfasts, when he had told stories of light-skinned blacks trying to pass as whites in the States. Stories of evasion and discovery had always been among my father’s favorites.
“Very funny. Why did you come here?”
“Do I have to have a reason to say hello? You are my son, you know. Langston Cane the Fifth, in case anybody is asking.”
“A few people may be asking, as a matter of fact. Give me two minutes to finish something here. Then we can go get a coffee.”
“Coffee. You sure love that stuff.”
“It’s just a figure of speech. It’s a generic term for having milk, or mint tea, or apricot juice, gazelle blood, what have you.”
“I, personally, have nothing against caffeinated libations. Taken in moderation, coffee is a fine thing. Stimulates the cerebellum. Rustles the digestive tract. And it falls squarely in the African American tradition of imbibing hot fluids to sustain the soul.”
“Pipe down, would you? Give me two minutes, Dad, and we’ll clear out.”
“Want to get me out of here, is that it?”
I turned away from him, flicked on my computer, and inserted a floppy disk. My final, office-closing act was to transfer personal files from the computer to a disk.
“Just wait a second,” I said. “I’d tell you to sit down, but as you can see I only have the one chair in this office.”
“Office? You call this an office? It’s a water closet. A coffin. At best, a measly nook in a rabbit warren. Son, can’t you do any better than —”
Alfonso reappeared, with a chair.
“Thank you,” my father said. “You obviously know something about the finer arts of civility and hospitality. What did you say your name was?”
“Alfonso de Altura Jr.”
“A fine name, if I do say so myself. I like polysyllables in a name. Polysyllables are a fine and distinguishing trait. So is alliteration. Alfonso de Altura Jr. Polysyllabic, alliterated — yes, it’s quite distinctive. It traces back to noble European blood, no doubt?”
“Oh, Doctor,” Alfonso sputtered, “I’m afraid that any nobility has been sadly diluted. But I must say, sir, that I find your presence here today both spectacular and riveting.”
“What, precisely, is so spectacular and riveting?”
“That you and Langston are father and son.”
“Spectacular? Does this lad not let his roots be known?”
“Well, not to me, anyway. Dr. Cane, may I ask you, is there any Algerian component to your family history?”
“Algerian? None whatsoever! Wherever would one get such an idea?”
“I really don’t know. I must have been confused. But tell me, what are you up to these days, Dr. Cane? Your name still surfaces all the time around here. The Cane report on blacks in the media; the Cane report on police and racial minorities. The organizations you founded over the years.”
“Oh, nothing much. Just my family practice in Oakville — and I’ve scaled it down considerably. I’m in partial retirement now.”
I finished with my computer, retrieved the disk, and swung around to face the two of them.
Alfonso started up again. “Dr. Cane, I have one of your publications in my office. Would you be good enough to autograph it for me?”
“Certainly.”
“Be right back.” Alfonso stepped out.
I slung my bag over my shoulder, turned off the computer, and took my father by the arm. “Let’s go.”
“But that portly gentleman has requested my autograph.” “You can give it to him on your next visit here.”
We got as far as the elevator, but were still waiting for it when Alfonso caught up to us.
“Here you are, good sir. If you could just sign here on the title page. You can make it out to Alfonso. That’s A-L …”
“I can manage the spelling, thanks very much.” My father signed the book, handed it back, and stepped into the elevator. Alfonso held the elevator door with one hand and shook my hand with the other. He leaned close to me. “Kick some butt out there, Langston. You can do it.” He let go of my hand and the door.
The elevator door closed. My father asked: “Is it common practice for you to leave the office before five?”
“Alfonso is my boss, and he knows I’m leaving. At any rate, leaving early is a minor infraction. Last week, I took a two-hour lunch to catch a movie.”
My father guffawed. “Very good, son. That’s funny.”
Just before we left the building, a black man entered through the revolving doors. He looked as if he was in a big hurry, but he stopped when he saw my father.
“Dr. Cane.”
My father was used to being stopped by people he didn’t recognize. He loved it.
“Yes. What can I do for you?”
“I’m Mahatma Grafton. The Toronto Times.”
“Oh yes, I remember you now. How goes the battle?”
“Fine,” the reporter said, with a quick grin. He was focused entirely on my father — I felt confident that he wouldn’t notice me. “I’m in a rush, but can I ask one quick question?”
“Fire away.”
“I’ve just learned that the government plans to scrap human rights legislation and the human rights commission. What do you think of that?”
“I think that would be an abomination,” my father said. “It’s hard to believe that even this government would stoop so low in its craven desire to please business.”
I watched Mahatma whip a small notepad out of his jacket pocket and scribble madly. He was slender and tall and about my age. He had a brown complexion.
“That good enough for you?” my father said.
“That’s great, Dr. Cane. You always come through with a good quote. By the way, are you any relation to the Langston Cane in the government phone directory?”
“Sure am. He’s my son. Right here. Langston — meet Mahatma Grafton, an upstanding journalist for the Toronto Times.”
We shook hands.
“I left a message on your machine,” he said.
“Actually, I don’t work for the ministry any longer.”
“That’s bizarre. They haven’t even got rid of your voice-mail message. Anyway, do you know about this speech the minister gave, or who wrote it?”
I managed a sympathetic smile. “Afraid I can’t help
you with that.”
“Well, thanks anyway. Gotta run.”
Mahatma ran to catch an elevator, and my father and I moved toward the door.
“Son, you should never lie to the media. Once your credibility’s gone, it’s gone for good.”
“When did I lie?”
“You told that brother you didn’t work for the ministry.”
“I don’t.”
“As of when?” “As of today.”
My father shook his head in confusion. “You’re telling me that was your last day at the office?”
We stepped outside. It was a cold, windy March day. It seemed that all the buildings on Bloor Street were sucking down the wind and aiming it at us. Three cars had collided in the middle of the intersection at Bay and Bloor. Cars were jammed in all four directions. People honked and shouted.
“This place is insane. Now you see why I raised you in Oakville.”
“Let’s go to a café. I’ll tell you why this was my last day on the job.”
“No time, son.” My father took in a measured breath and expelled it slowly. “I am going to visit Dr. Norville Watson.”
I grabbed his arm. “Dr. Watson? The Dr. Watson?” The news made me forget my own problems. “What for?”
“A time comes for everything. I’m not getting any younger. It’s time to make peace with the man.”
“I have to hear how your meeting goes.”
“Of course. That’s why I came to see you. Come out to Oakville this evening. I’ll invite Sean, too. I’ll tell the two of you and your mother all at the same time. And you can tell me what’s going on at the office.”
I did not want to go to my parents’ home. I had avoided the place for a year and a half, and that wasn’t long enough for me. My father, under his own roof, was intolerable.
“How about if I wait in a café? You can come tell me what happened. It’ll save me the trip to Oakville.”
“Can’t do it, son. After I see Watson, I’m meeting your mother. We want to beat the traffic home.”
“Well, I’ll see about coming out tonight.”
“Good. I’ll see you there.” My father tapped a fire hydrant with his cane and said, “Keep your chin up, son. The Canes come from a special mold.”
He headed west on Bloor Street. Norville Watson’s office, I knew from countless family stories, was in a distinguished low-rise fronted with stone pillars. Norville Watson had opened a medical practice there shortly after he had denied my parents rental accommodation in 1954.
Chapter 3
I TOOK A TABLE at the back of the Old Petersburg Café, nursed a mint tea, snapped a bowl of taco chips into a heap of crumbs, and decided that if one had to lose a job, childless and divorced was the best way to go. It had felt strangely comforting to be escorted from the Ontario Ministry of Wellness by my own father. He had an unnerving way of dropping in on people. According to my mother, since going into semi-retirement he had begun traveling downtown with her. When she drove to Toronto to work as a volunteer at Amnesty International, he would often come along — usually with nothing planned. Usually that meant grabbing an espresso and dropping in on somebody who owed him something.
His latest target, according to my mother, had been Winston Carruthers, a household name during my childhood. Some twenty-five years ago, when he was a second-rate boxer from Nova Scotia who had never been anywhere and — as my father said — would never get there, Carruthers elevated himself to celebrity by kayoing a six-foot-three bouncer at the Venus Club. The Venus was a private club that required all its patrons to be members — and proceeded to waive that requirement for all but black people. It did let in famous blacks. Any black well known in sports or entertainment was considered an asset to the establishment and was plied with free drinks. But, as my father put it, if you happened to be a run-of-the-mill nigger without a cup to drink from or a pot to piss in, then you had no place at the Venus. The job of intimidating blacks without halos fell to Jack Adams, the bouncer. If you rounded off Adams’ weight to three hundred pounds, you’d be rounding down. Adams had a reputation for going hard on black men who tried to come in with white women. A week before the incident that got Carruthers on the front page of the Toronto Times, Adams had shoved a black man. Knocked him to the floor as he walked in with his date. “Sorry, little fella, didn’t see you there,” Adams said. Carruthers got the same treatment on the famed night. He took one step inside with his white date, and found himself kissing the floor. He picked himself up, turned back to Adams, and ordered him to apologize. “For what? For not seeing you?”
Carruthers kicked Adams in the groin. Adams gasped and bent over. Carruthers hit him in the eye with a left hook, the jaw with a right, the same eye with another hook, and the same jaw with a final right. Carruthers broke two fingers in the process. But he damaged the retina in Adams’ right eye and broke his jaw.
He was arrested, charged with aggravated assault with a weapon — his fists were judged to be a weapon, since he’d been a professional, although a lousy, boxer — and handed an eighteen-month jail term.
The black community was outraged, and the media had a field day. My father was quoted countless times about the incident. “Jack Adams is known to bait and bully black men. He abused his size and his position to humiliate and intimidate them. He admitted in court to having shoved Carruthers. Yet he becomes the only victim in this incident.”
My father’s quotes must have made it into a news clip sent by the wire services to American newspapers. My Aunt Mill, whom I had never met and whom my father refused to discuss, read about it in the Afro-American. And she took it upon herself to scribble an angry missive to my father: “Why’d you get your shorts in a knot over that no-account boxer? Serves him right for tomcatting with white women.”
Carruthers served half his time, got paroled early, did a few media interviews, and faded quickly from the public light. He couldn’t get a job. His boxing career was over and he had no other skills. He came out to Oakville one night to see my father.
I sat by the television, pretending to watch Gunsmoke, while my father poured coffee for Carruthers.
“What do you take in your coffee, Winston?”
“Whatever you got, Doc.”
“What exactly do you mean by that?”
“I meant rum or whiskey, but I was just fooling.”
I heard my father scrape a chair back from the table. “Have you been drinking?”
“Not too much. I have a beer at lunch, and maybe bum something off somebody in the afternoon, and I like my glass of wine or two with dinner, and I won’t say no to rum or brandy in my coffee at night, but I never overdo it.”
“Why’d you come to Oakville?” my father asked.
“I need a job.”
“I can get you a job. But you have to promise me you won’t touch another drink.”
“I will never drink again, Doc.”
“I want you to become my chauffeur. And I won’t have any man driving me if he’s got a drop of alcohol in his blood.”
My father didn’t need a chauffeur. But for the entire summer of 1964, he paid Winston Carruthers a hundred dollars a week to drive him around Oakville and Toronto. Winston became a competent chauffeur. He dressed in a suit and tie every day. “He drives with confidence and maturity. He knows all the rules of the road, and prides himself on his punctuality. I would recommend him most highly for a position with the Ontario government.” This is what my father wrote to the Ontario government’s first black deputy minister, who let it be known in September of 1964 that he was looking for a chauffeur. Carruthers’ new career was launched. He kept that job until the deputy was fired for fudging his travel expenses. Carruthers picked up a new job driving a minister, and held on to it for several years. He drove other government ministers and deputies until he became the chief hiring officer and trainer for government drivers — a position he holds to this day.
Oddly, my father never rejoiced in the news of Carruthers’s successe
s over the years. One time, I heard him mumble: “I gave that man his first break. But do I ever hear from him? A thank-you note, or even a Christmas card? Nothing!”
My father holds approximately two hundred Torontonians in a similar kind of debt. Younger doctors whom he helped get into med school, receptionists who got their first job working in Dad’s office, human rights activists whom he advised over the years — and he drops in on at least one unlucky debtor every week. I heard later that after escorting me from my job and visiting the office of Dr. Norville Watson, Dad picked on Winston Carruthers.
Carruthers, who is now in his mid-fifties, has an office in the Manulife Centre on Bloor Street. He earns $54,000 a year. He wears a suit and tie to work.
“Mr. Carruthers, please,” my father said to the receptionist.
“He has a meeting in five minutes. Is he expecting you?” “Please inform him that Dr. Cane is here to see him.” “I’ll take down your name and number and have him call you back.”
My old man leaned forward. He lowered his voice, obliging the receptionist to strain to hear him. “The name is Cane. Dr. Langston Cane. That is C-A-N-E. Mr. Carruthers would want you to let him know I’m here.”
She rolled her eyes and picked up the telephone and spoke briefly into the receiver. According to my father, Winston Carruthers was out of his door in three seconds flat.
“What a pleasure, what a surprise, please come in. Coffee? As I remember, you like good coffee.”
They sat around for ten minutes in Winston Carruthers’ office, drinking good coffee that somebody had to run out to buy. Meanwhile, the receptionist had to stall three new drivers who had come for a meeting with their boss. My father saw them waiting in the lobby and smiled.
“You’ve done well, Winston.”
“Couldn’t have done it without your help.”
“How many drivers work for you now?”
“Eight.”
“Did you train ‘em yourself?” “Sure did. And what have you been up to lately?” “Oh, not much. Not much at all. Just enjoying my semiretirement.”
Winston Carruthers shifted in his chair. He glanced at his watch. He looked at my father expectantly. What did the old bastard want?