“ARE YOU FREE?”
The driver nodded. He didn’t speak; he just sat like a lump, a large lump, one who after a long career of professional sitting barely squeezed behind the steering wheel. He was over sixty and unshaven, and he stared at Daniel from the rear-view mirror. Apparently, his eyes did all the talking that was necessary.
Daniel ignored the eyes and gave the police station address. The cabbie shifted into drive and accelerated with a jolt. On the radio, an annoying, know-it-all all-news-channel host ranted about politics, immigration, and unemployment in quick succession.
Once they turned onto South Park, the cabbie spoke. “There’s something going on ahead. Looks like something big.”
“Can’t you get around it?”
The driver shook his head. “I don’t know if I can get you to the station. That’s a big crowd. Where did they all come from?”
Daniel slid the window down and stuck his head into the frosty air. Hundreds of people spilled out from the Public Gardens to occupy the street. A few cops were scattered around and trying to corral the crowd away from Victoria Park and onto Spring Garden Road, but they seemed outnumbered and overwhelmed. Cars were jammed between the crowd ahead and the traffic behind. The cab lurched to a stop at the curb.
Daniel grabbed his backpack and opened the door. “I’ll get out here and get another cab on the other side.” He paid the fare in cash. The eyes in the mirror did not approve of the modest tip.
Daniel stepped out into the low sunlight and sighed at the swarm of humanity not fifty metres ahead. Drums banging. A cacophony of a hundred simultaneous conversations, each trying to be heard over the others. A bright red sign proclaiming “We love you, Alberta!” caught his eye. Beside it, smaller ones: “Keep my Canada together,” and “Vote No!”
Parts of the crowd chanted something with a bunch of vowels that rhymed after a few beats, but Daniel couldn’t make out the words. He walked through snow and slush, approaching the crush that flowed between him and his urgent appointment with MacKinnon.
The crowd was still thin where Daniel walked. Where the mass of people surged down Spring Garden, the road seemed impenetrable. But there was plenty of room in front of the café where he stopped. At first, he didn’t notice the man to his right, as he was lost in his own thoughts about how he was going to navigate the horde ahead. Then he spotted him. The man was around thirty, at least six foot five. Two hundred pounds of death, wrapped in a leather jacket, black jeans, and black boots. Daniel imagined dense, dark tattoos on both arms, commemorating each kill. He could easily pass for a biker gang member. Yet his arms seemed oddly too short for his frame. A massive amoeba of a man, used to getting his way.
The man threw a rock at the café window, and it shattered, spraying pieces of glass onto the sidewalk. “Mind your own fuckin’ business,” he said to no one in particular.
Another man approached. “What are you doing?” He was in his late thirties, holding a “We love you Alberta!” sign high on a flimsy stick. His head only reached the shoulders of the first man.
Amoeba Man walked right up to him, pushing his finger into the other man’s arm. “Keep your fuckin’ nose out of my business.” He jumped, ripped the sign from the stick, and stomped it into the ground. “Alberta is for Albertans to decide.”
The second man turned around. “Stop. You can’t do this.” A woman standing nearby, with her own “Vote No!” sign explaining which side she was on, joined the fracas, shouting a surprisingly loud “Hey, fuck off” at Mr. Amoeba.
He didn’t take it well. He grabbed the stick from the hands of Small Man, held it high, and glared at the woman, who was not intimidated and glared back at him. The small man hip-checked the massive brute, trying to retrieve his stick, but Amoeba just thwacked him on the head with it.
The woman reacted immediately. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Daniel didn’t care about the referendum. He did know that Alberta wanted to secede from Confederation — it was the news headline for the past few weeks — but he no longer took sides. He had his own problems to deal with. On the other hand, the man represented an immediate threat.
Daniel sensed that the aggressor would be within his defensive circle in a few more strides. Daniel could move to the right, off the sidewalk, and into a low pile of dirty snow to allow them to argue unhindered. Tempers were sure to flare. Any fight would be short and would end only with the shorter one getting a broken nose or, worse, splayed unconscious on the road. He kept walking straight ahead. The other man would have to move to his right to avoid the collision with Daniel and his backpack.
The smaller man froze in fear. Daniel sized up the situation in a second. Should he interfere or keep on walking?