The Winter of the Strike

The wind on Portage Avenue cut through Edith’s coat like glass. To escape the cold and the city tearing itself apart, she pushed open the door to a small cafe, a place where enemies drank from the same pot of coffee.

The wind’s only purpose was to find the gaps. The one between the top of my glove and the cuff of my coat. The thin spot on my left boot where the sole was coming away from the leather. The space between the warp and weft of my wool scarf, a useless thing my mother had knitted two winters ago. It found every weakness and pushed, a bully with a thousand icy fingers.

“Paper! Read about the Citizens’ Committee!” My voice was a raw tear in my throat. The words were a lie, anyway. You weren't reading about them, you were reading *for* them. Dad said it was good, honest work, that the strikers were thugs and foreigners trying to turn Winnipeg into Russia. He said it with the same certainty he said the sun would rise, but his certainty didn’t make my toes feel any less like dead stones in my boot.

Another gust of wind hammered down Portage Avenue, carrying with it the distant clang of a streetcar bell—one of the few still running, driven by a volunteer scowling at the world from behind the glass. The stack of *Winnipeg Citizen* newspapers under my arm felt heavier than iron. Each one was a slab of frozen lies. *Strikers Lose Ground! City Returning to Normal!* Normal was my fingers being too numb to count out change for the rare customer who met my eye.

A man in a thick coat with a truncheon hanging from his belt—a ‘Special’—bought one. He didn't speak, just shoved a nickel into my raw hand and walked away, his face pinched with the same miserable cold that owned the rest of us. He probably believed the headlines. Maybe it made him feel warmer.

I had two papers left. Two. I could go home. I could face the questions from Dad about how many I sold, see the thin look on Mum’s face as she calculated the pennies against the price of bread. Or I could find five minutes of warmth. Just five minutes where the wind wasn't screaming in my ears.

The Cafe on Portage was just ahead. A single word, “CAFE,” was painted on the glass, the letters peeling at the edges. Steam ghosted the lower half of the window, promising a different world inside. It was a place I usually walked past. It wasn't for newsies. But today, the cold had scoured away all the usual rules.

My shoulder hit the door, and for a moment it wouldn't give, sealed shut by a film of ice. I pushed harder, my whole body thrown against the wood. It gave with a groan and a jingle of a small bell overhead, and I stumbled inside. The change was violent. It was like plunging into a bath. The air was hot, wet, and so thick with the smell of coffee and roasting chicory it was almost solid. My glasses instantly fogged over, blinding me. I stood there, a frozen girl in a fogbank, feeling the blood start to sting its way back into my cheeks and ears.

I pulled the glasses off, wiping them on the hem of my damp coat. The cafe swam into view. It was small, narrow, and crowded. A long wooden counter ran down one side, worn smooth by a thousand elbows. Small tables were crammed into the rest of the space. And it was full of them. Both sides. Three men in the heavy coats of strikers, their faces smudged with dirt, hunched over mugs at one end of the counter. Further down, two Specials sat stiffly, their truncheons an awkward weight on their hips, their conversation a low rumble. Nobody was looking at anyone else, but the quiet was loud. It was a room full of held breath.

Behind the counter was Cathy. She wasn't smiling. She was never smiling. She was just… there. A solid, unmovable presence in a clean white apron. Her dark hair was pinned up in a severe bun, and her hands moved with a calm economy, wiping the counter, refilling a sugar shaker, taking a man’s coin. She moved from the strikers to the Specials and back again, her expression exactly the same. She poured coffee from the same large metal pot for a man whose knuckles were bruised from a picket line and for a man who probably put him there. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen.

She glanced up and saw me shivering by the door, clutching my last two papers. I expected her to wave me out. Instead, she just nodded toward an empty stool at the very end of the counter, near the steamy window.

I slid onto the stool, the wood cool through my thin trousers. I tucked the newspapers under the counter, out of sight. It felt wrong to have them here. I fumbled in my pocket for the few cents I’d held back for myself and pushed them across the counter. “Just coffee, please.”

Cathy slid a thick, heavy mug in front of me without a word and filled it from the big pot. The steam rose up and hit my face, a warm, damp blessing. I wrapped my frozen hands around the ceramic. It was a small, solid heat. A small piece of proof that the world wasn't entirely made of ice. The pain of the returning circulation was excruciating, a thousand hot needles jabbing into my fingers, but it was a good pain. It was the pain of coming back to life.

I took a sip. It was bitter, dark, and strong enough to stand a spoon in. It was perfect. I hunched over the mug, letting the steam and the heat and the quiet do their work. The bell on the door jingled again, but I didn’t look up. Just focused on the feeling of the mug in my hands. That was my whole world. The hot ceramic. The bitter taste. The low murmur of voices that never quite became a conversation.

“Selling the boss’s truth today, are we?”

The voice was low, right beside me. I flinched, turning my head. A young man sat on the next stool over, though I hadn't noticed him before. He couldn’t have been much older than me, maybe seventeen or eighteen. He was thin, with a smudge of something dark on his cheekbone and eyes that were startlingly clear and blue. He wore a threadbare jacket and no gloves. He nodded toward the papers I’d hidden.

My first instinct was my father’s voice in my head. *Don’t talk to them. They’re dangerous.* I felt a hot prickle of defensiveness. “It’s a newspaper.”

“Is it?” he asked. He had a small, teasing smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. His own mug was nearly empty. “Looks like a fish wrapper to me. Good for keeping the draft out of a broken window, maybe. Not much for reading.”

“It’s honest work,” I mumbled, the words tasting like ash. I’d said them a hundred times, but they felt flimsy here, in this room where honesty was just a word.

“Honest to who?” He leaned an elbow on the counter, his expression curious, not aggressive. “Honest to the men who own the presses? Honest to the Committee of 1000 who want us all back in the factories for pennies an hour? Doesn’t feel very honest to my father. He worked thirty years for the railway. Broke two fingers. Got a cough that won’t go away. When he asked for a decent wage, they called him a Bolshevik and hired a man with a club to replace him. What does your paper say about that?”

I didn't know what to say. I just stared into my coffee. I could feel my face burning. I was a traitor for selling the papers, and now I was a traitor for listening to him. There was no safe ground. “I just sell them.”

“I know,” he said, and his voice softened. “Everyone’s just doing a job. That’s the problem, isn’t it? The man driving the streetcar is just doing a job. The Special cracking heads is just doing a job. You’re just doing a job. And we’re all so busy doing our jobs we forget to ask if the job is right.” He paused, then gave that small smile again. “My name’s Thomas.”

“Edith,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

“Well, Edith Who Sells the Papers,” he said, his tone light again. “Don’t let me stop you from enjoying your coffee. A good cup of coffee is a truce with the world.” He gestured to Cathy’s pot. “This might be the only place in the whole city where that’s still true.”

He was right. I looked around the cafe again, really looked this time. The air was thick with unspoken things, with anger and fear and resentment. But it was also thick with the simple, human need for warmth. A man was a striker or a Special outside. In here, he was just a cold man who wanted a hot drink. Cathy’s neutrality wasn’t weakness; it was a kind of strength. She wasn't ignoring the conflict; she was refusing to let it inside her four walls. She was enforcing a peace armed with nothing but a coffee pot.

The bell on the door clanged violently. Three big men stomped in, bringing a blast of frigid air with them. They were all Specials, their armbands stark white against their dark coats. Their leader, a heavy-set man with a florid face, scanned the room, his eyes lingering on the strikers at the other end of the counter before landing on Thomas. His gaze narrowed.

“Well, look what we have here,” the man boomed, his voice filling the small space, shattering the quiet. “One of the little Bolsheviks, trying to warm his revolutionary blood.”

Thomas didn't move. He just took a slow sip of his coffee. “It’s a free country, Bill,” he said calmly. “Or so they say.”

“Not for your kind, it isn’t,” Bill shot back. He and his two friends moved to stand behind Thomas’s stool. The whole cafe went silent. The clink of a spoon stopped mid-stir. I could feel the tension coil in my stomach. My world shrank to the back of Thomas’s neck, the worn collar of his jacket. I wanted to disappear. I was just thinking about the loose thread on my glove, how it was unraveling, stitch by stitch.

“You got a lot of nerve showing your face,” Bill snarled, his hand resting on his truncheon. “After what your mob did down at the Vulcan Iron Works yesterday.”

“You mean after we stood in a line and asked not to starve?” Thomas said, his voice still even, but tight. He placed his mug carefully on the counter.

This is it, I thought. This is where it happens. The fight from the street was coming inside. I could feel the heat of the man standing behind me. I could smell the stale sweat on his coat.

Then, a sound. A solid, clean *thump*. Everyone looked. Cathy had placed a fresh, steaming pot of coffee on the warmer. She picked up the old one, her movements unhurried, deliberate. She looked at Bill, her expression completely flat. “More coffee?” she asked, her voice calm and clear.

It was so simple. So absurd. A question about coffee in the face of a brawl. Bill stared at her, his mouth half-open to deliver another threat. The words died on his lips. He looked from her to Thomas, then around the quiet, watching room. He was a man with a club, a man with authority granted by the city, but in here, he was just a customer. And he had been offered a refill. To continue the fight would be to break a different kind of law, an older one. The law of the shared fire, the communal well.

His face darkened with frustration. He was being made to look foolish. He grunted, a sound of pure defeat. “Forget it,” he muttered, turning away from Thomas. He and his men stomped over to a vacant table, scraping the chairs loudly against the floor. They were beaten. Beaten by a pot of coffee.

The room slowly exhaled. The murmur started up again, tentative at first, then stronger. Thomas turned back to the counter and pushed his empty mug forward. “I think I will have a little more, Cathy,” he said, his voice just a little shaky. “Thank you.”

She filled his mug without a word. He looked at me, and his blue eyes were wide with what looked like amazement. He saw it too. The magic of the place.

I sat there long after he’d finished his second cup and left, dropping a coin on the counter and giving me a small, conspiratorial nod. I watched Bill and his men drink their coffee in sullen silence and leave. I watched the strikers pay up and head back out into the cold. I was the last one left. The cafe was quiet now, save for the hiss of the coffee pot and the sound of Cathy washing mugs in the back.

I looked out the window. It had started to snow again. Big, slow, fat flakes drifted down, coating the dirty street in a layer of clean white. They swirled in the wind, catching the light from the streetlamp that had just flickered on. I watched them, mesmerized. The steam from my cooling coffee fogged the glass in front of me, blurring the flakes into soft, pulsing lights. And in the steam, in the swirling snow, I saw it. Not a vision, not really. Just a thought that felt as real and solid as the mug in my hands. A city. Not of strikers and Specials. Not of us and them. Just… people. People trying to stay warm. People sharing a pot of coffee while a storm raged outside. It was a foolish, impossible idea.

My father’s words. My newspaper’s headlines. They were all part of the storm. They were the wind that found the gaps and pushed, trying to freeze everyone solid. Thomas was right. Everyone was just doing their job. But what if my job could be different? What if I could deliver something else? Not the *Citizen*, but the circulars and pamphlets the strikers printed on their secret presses. The ones I saw crumpled in the gutters, full of desperate, hopeful words about a different kind of world.

I had access. I walked every street. No one looked twice at a newsie. They just saw a uniform, a role. They didn’t see the person inside. I could carry more than just the boss’s truth.

A feeling of clarity, sharp and sudden as an intake of clean, cold air, settled over me. It wasn't about Russia, or Bolsheviks, or any of the big, scary words people threw around. It was about the moment of quiet in the cafe. It was about Cathy holding a coffee pot against the violence of the world. It was about making a little bit of warmth where there was only cold.

I pulled on my damp gloves. My fingers were stiff, but they weren't numb anymore. I could feel them. I could feel everything. I left my two remaining newspapers on the stool, a silent offering. I had something new to deliver.