The Badger Riot

by J. A. Ricketts

  The silence in the room was broken only by the wind against the house. “Tell me,” Rod said.

  Eli sat in the chair across the room and spoke without looking toward him. “Well, my son, Melvin’s had a terrible accident. Terrible.”

  “Oh yes, my son. Terrible,” his mother wailed.

  “Something happened with the horse, we thinks,” Eli said. “She came back home with her traces broke off, no slide and no Melvin. We set out to look for him. We went up the track and in the little road. Not very far in, we come upon the sled, up against a tree. We could see how the horse must have gone, hooked the sled into the tree and the traces came loose.” The old man stopped. Eyes closed, Rod could hear his father’s ragged breath and knew he was crying.

  “We went farther in. Every few feet we’d see wood scattered on the ground, and then we saw a big pile of wood. Oh my . . . and then we found his body.”

  His wife’s sobbing grew worse as Eli continued. “The men pieced it together, what they think must have happened. They figure he piled too much wood on the slide, and struck a fair-sized rock covered in snow that caused the wood to come forward. This must have startled the horse and jerked Melvin off the slide. His foot caught in something, maybe the wippletree, because we could see by the smear of blood across the snow that the horse dragged him a nice ways with wood falling all over him, before his boot came off and his foot came free.”

  Rod closed his eyes. He could clearly visualize his brother’s foot caught in the wippletree, the swinging bar through which the traces were fastened. He knew that was what had happened. He heard his father get up out of the chair and come over to stand by his bed. “I thinks that every bone in his body is broke, my son. Every bone.”

  “And his poor face,” moaned his mother. “His poor face is so bad to look at.”

  Rod could hold it in no longer. He howled his grief to the ceiling, a long, drawn-out cry from deep inside him. His brother, on whom his father had pinned his hopes and dreams to succeed him, was gone. Rod knew that Melvin’s accident had changed all their lives forever.

  They buried Melvin two days before Christmas. It was so cold that the gravediggers had a fire burning on the plot for two days to thaw out the ground.

  Rod still wasn’t well enough to go. He was weak and shaky, and his fever kept coming back in the evenings, although not as high as in the beginning. His father asked Rod’s friend Bill Hatcher, who lived over the back fence, to come and sit while they went to the funeral.

  Christmas that year wasn’t celebrated at the Anderson’s house. Friends came by with kindness and support. The family received them and spoke thanks of appreciation. But when they were alone as a family, they became withdrawn and could offer each other no comfort.

  Rod went back to school in February and his father opened his camp and called in his men to get ready for the haul-off. Life started to pick up its rhythm again. But it was a different rhythm. Grief lay over the house like a blanket, smothering every bit of happiness and joy there was to be had.

  3

  When little red-haired Jennie Sullivan was old enough to go to school, her classmates were Vern Crawford and Ralph Drum. Every morning they would meet and walk to school together.

  Jennie loved school and loved the nuns. She thought that when she grew up she might be a nun. That was until one day in grade five. It was early in the school year, and one morning she was writing on her new school scribbler: “ASSUMPTA JENNIFER SULLIVAN, UP THE TRACK, BADGER, N.F.L.D.”

  Sister Augusta was walking by her desk and stopped. “Who told you that Up the Track was an address?”

  Confused, Jennie looked up at her and said, “No one, Sister.” The nun looked down her nose and tut-tutted. “Ignorant girl. There’s no such place.” She smartly rapped Jennie across the knuckles with her ruler. Jennie was devastated and never again viewed the nuns in the same light.

  Jennie, Vern and Ralph went through school together right to grades ten and eleven. Vern was sandy-haired and small, with a constantly runny nose. As he grew older, the runny nose stopped, but Vern was still small. Missus Crawford told Bridey Sullivan that she’d caught him smoking when he was five years old and she thought that was what stunted his growth. Jennie grew tall, taller than Vern, Ralph and all her classmates. In this she and her brother Phonse, who was also tall, turned after Ned, their Pap.

  Ralph was Mi’kmaq. One time Phonse told Jennie that white people were afraid of the Mi’kmaq. As she grew up, she’d hear phrases like “never trust an Indian” and “never turn your back on an Indian.” Jennie couldn’t understand why the Mi’kmaq were treated badly by many white people. Her own family didn’t seem to share that view. Maybe it was because of the relationship Mam had with Ralph’s mother, Missus Annie, who had delivered all of Mam’s children. After ten years of baring her private parts to the Mi’kmaq woman, Mam probably felt a kinship with her. Little Ralph had often followed along behind his mother, playing out around the door with the Sullivan children while Annie Drum went and busied herself with the birthings. Ralph and Phonse were buddies. Phonse was a bit younger than Ralph and seemed to hero-worship him. The two boys were in and out of the house all the time.

  One time Missus Crawford had a birthday party for Vern. Jennie told Vern that he should ask Ralph. Vern was somewhat in awe of Jennie’s bossy ways, and he agreed without question. Poor Missus Crawford: she hadn’t realized that some parents would take it as an insult to have an Indian in the room. So, to please the grown-ups, she told Ralph to sit in a corner and wouldn’t let him play any games. It cut into Jennie’s heart to see it. When the time came to eat, she took her food and some for Ralph and went and sat by him.

  As a member of a small Mi’kmaq community, Ralph’s life, growing up among the white, race-conscious people of Badger in the 1930s and ’40s wasn’t easy. There were the A.N.D. Company personnel and their families – the contractors, scalers, drivers – and then there were the Mi’kmaq. Somewhere in between were the merchants, the doctor, the postmaster, the Newfoundland Ranger, the telegraph operator, and the Newfoundland Railway workers. Two or three of the merchants were Jewish who, while friendly to everyone because of their businesses, usually socialized among themselves.

  Ralph recognized at an early age that the high-toned A.N.D. Company families were only too glad to get him to saw up firewood,cleave splits, shovel snow and pay him a quarter for it, but never invite him into their houses. “Here, young fella, have a glass of syrup and a sweet biscuit. No, no, don’t come in. I’ll pass it out to you.” Just as though I was a dog, thought Ralph.

  Then he was invited to Vern’s birthday party. He knew Vern never saw any difference in himself and Ralph, but the grown-ups certainly did. Ralph was made to feel like an outcast because he was Mi’kmaq.

  Ralph never forgot what young Jennie Sullivan did that day. They had known each other since they were about four years old when they played in the mud together. To him she was just another silly girl, but after Vern’s birthday party he saw her differently.

  Jennie was the same age as the two boys, and even at eleven she was tall and beautiful. Ralph, on the edge of puberty and full of his grandfather’s stories, thought she looked as a Beothuk woman would look. Her skin was light with a sprinkling of freckles, but he imagined a Beothuk’s to be darker. Or maybe it wasn’t. Grandfather said the Beothuks smeared so much red ochre on themselves that no one really knew how light or how dark their skin was anyway.

  At the party, Jennie got two plates of potted meat sandwiches and snowballs and two glasses of Purity syrup and came to sit beside him. She passed him one of the plates and a glass. “Here, Ralph. What odds about that crowd over at the table. Let’s eat over here.”

  As they ate, she chatted to him about school. Ralph was awestruck by her. She wore a green dress that showed off her long red hair. He was afraid to look at her straight-on, but, out of the corner of his eye he could see that she had bumps where her breasts would be one day. She smelled good too. Clean an
d sunshiny, like the wind in summer.

  Vern had to stay at the table where the parents and the other kids were. Ralph saw Vern looking at them and knew he was wondering what they were saying to each other. People said Jennie and Vern Crawford would marry when they grew up. Both families were Catholic and the parents were friends. But Ralph thought that Jennie deserved a manlier fellow than Vern.

  Not long after the party, Vern came across some comic books. He and Ralph went up back of the big hill to have a read. There was this great one called Wonder Woman and her friend Marya, an eight-foot-tall Mexican mountain girl whom Wonder Woman called little Marya. They were from a tribe of women known as the Amazons. Ralph liked the shape of the comic book women. They had nice rounded thighs and great breasts. He told Vern that Wonder Woman and Marya reminded him of Jennie.

  Vern looked at Ralph as if he were crazy. “Ya think so? Jennie’s awful fat, ya know.” Vern obviously didn’t see Jennie as Ralph saw her. She wasn’t fat; she was an Amazon, his Amazon Beothuk Woman.

  As they grew into teenagers Ralph gradually noticed himself thinking of Jennie more and more, especially when he was up on the hill, lying back, puffing on a cigarette and gazing at the clouds. Or down by the River watching the cable boat spinning across, or in bed, before he went to sleep and, then, in his dreams. Everywhere. But Jennie never knew. And Ralph never wanted her to know.

  Vern and Jennie went out together every now and then. There would sometimes be a dance in the town hall for the young people. At the dance, the guys would stand around the sides watching the girls, trying to get up nerve enough to ask for a dance. Ralph would not let his eyes drift too often to Jennie. He thought she looked some nice. Her dress was green, again, but more grown-up now. It was straight and tight, showing the shape of her. The wide collar went right over her shoulders.

  The gramophone was playing a song by Hank Snow, Vern’s favourite singer. Vern asked Jennie to dance. They looked somewhat odd together, with Vern barely coming up to her shoulder. Ralph stood on the sidelines watching them, listening to Hank Snow singing through his nose, “Now and then there’s a fool such as I am over you,” wishing it was he holding Jennie in his arms, thinking that the song suited him perfectly and that he really was a fool for loving this young white woman.

  Suddenly, Jennie hauled off and gave Vern a big smack in the side of his head and stalked away.

  Vern made for the door. Ralph looked back to check on Jennie but a gaggle of girls had encircled her. He followed after Vern and found him outside leaning against the side of the building. In the cool night air he lit up a cigarette. Ralph did too. He’d been smoking since he was ten; Vern always bragged that he’d smoked at five.

  “Lord Jesus Christ! What’d she do that for? I was being as nice as I could be to her!” He nursed the side of his face.

  “C’mon, Vern, you had to say something she didn’t like.” Ralph flicked the ash off his cigarette as he saw the men do. He thought he was getting pretty good at doing it too. At sixteen, with his hair slicked back with the Brylcreem and a cigarette in his lips, Ralph thought himself pretty cool.

  “Well, I was trying to help her, see.”

  “Help Jennie? Vern, b’y, if there was ever a girl that didn’t need any help, it’s Jennie.”

  “Yes she do. She’s too big. I couldn’t get my arms around her. I told her that she should go on a diet.”

  His words made Ralph suck in a lungful of smoke the wrong way and he started to cough. Before he could recover some more boys piled out of the hall. They spied him and Vern. Walt Hatcher, loudest mouth in town, jeered, “Haw haw, Vernie got smacked by a gir-ril. Haw haw, Vernie.”

  That was the breaking point for Vern. He rammed into Walt, knocking him down. Walt was bigger and stronger and he quickly took control by flipping Vern onto his back in the mud and straddling him. He pinned his two arms up over his head. “Whassamatter, Vernie? Trying to fight a man and you can’t fight a girl? No good, Vernie. Go home to mommy.”

  As if adding an exclamation point, Walt punched Vern in the stomach. He got up and looked over at Ralph. “Better look after Vernie, Ralph. He can’t look after hisself.” Hooting with laughter, Walt and his buddies humped on up the road.

  Ralph went over and offered an arm to Vern to haul him up out of the muck. He was too pissed off to accept help at this point and climbed to his feet on his own. “Mind yer own fuckin’ business, Ralph,” he said as he hauled his coat around him and stumbled off.

  Jennie, Vern and Ralph attended the Catholic school, while Tom Hillier went to the Protestant. Consequently, although she’d known Tom all her life, Jennie didn’t really know him. The Hilliers lived at least a mile or two from the Sullivans, in on Halls Bay Road, the highway going toward Springdale. Tom’s father was the station master, while Jennie’s Pap was drive boss. Although they lived in the same small town and the Sullivans and the Hilliers said hello if they passed each other on the street, they never mixed or visited each other, or had anything in common. Religion dominated all social events, friendships, courtships, and business. Catholic youngsters tended to play with Catholics and Protestant youngsters with Protestants.

  Tom’s family was Pentecostal. The Pentecostals had built a big church, the biggest one in Badger, at the end of Church Road. Many Anglicans had converted and Tom’s parents were among them. Later, when the highway went through to Millertown and Buchans, this church would sit at a crossroads, a crossroads that would come to bear the stamp of history.

  As teenagers, Tom and Jennie used to see each other around and she always felt drawn toward him, perhaps because he was so big and tall, perhaps because of the way he loped around in those big black boots, or perhaps because of his kind grey eyes, that seemed to stray to Jennie whenever they were near each other. Jennie told herself there was no use in pining after a Protestant who lived in on Halls Bay Road, and Tom thought there was no use of him wanting a Catholic girl who lived Up the Track.

  All along, the Sullivans and the Crawfords kept hoping that Jennie and Vern would marry when they grew up. Two Catholics, no cross-religion marriage; the families loved the thought of it.

  Well, I tried, Jennie thought. God knows I really tried to like Vern, but there was something shifty and slick about him. The first time he tried to kiss me his lips were so wet and his mouth so full of spit that I nearly threw up.

  And another time, at a teenage dance when she was sixteen, growing tall and large and Vern staying short and small, he had the friggin’ nerve to say, “You’re getting too big to put my arms around, Jennie. You needs to go on diet.”

  She had smacked him hard for that remark and wouldn’t speak to him for months. Dumb-arse, she thought savagely. He didn’t even have a clue why I smacked him. Sacred Heart! Some guys are some stunned!

  But it was hard for her not to keep noticing Tom Hillier. First of all, as he grew tall Jennie had to look up at him. Sometimes she made a point of “accidentally” standing near him if they were hanging out by the train station or standing in line at the chip stand where a paper cone of hot chips cost ten cents. One evening he bought one for her.

  “Here,” he said shyly, “have one on me.”

  It made Jennie’s heart do a flip when he looked down at her. She took it. She would’ve taken a cone full of coal at that moment, so glad was she that it had come from Tom’s hands.

  But besides his height, Jennie saw that Tom was a good-hearted person. He’d go out of his way for anyone. Jennie used to stray over to the field by the River to see him play a game of rounders with the boys. She knew that Tom noticed her, but she pretended not to see him, in the fashion of girls and women when they are attracted to someone, but not being too forward about it.

  One evening, as she stood on the sidelines, Jennie was concentrating on Tom as he loped across the field when, not paying attention to who was hitting the ball, something smacked her in the head. Jennie knew no more.

  When she came around, the first thing she saw was a pair of grey
eyes looking into hers. They were Tom Hillier’s and he had his arm under her shoulders. The crowd had gathered around, everyone offering their advice.

  “Geez, Jennie maid, you coulda been killed.”

  “Didn’t you see the friggin’ ball?”

  “Keep her still, don’t move her.”

  “Here’s my handkerchief. I wetted it in the River. Put it on her forehead.”

  Tom told them all to move back a bit and asked Jennie if she could stand up. Oooh, she was so dizzy. She fell against him, discovering, even in her dizziness, that her head just fit into the curve of his chest. “I’m going to take her home, guys. Go on back to your game without me,” he yelled. With that he lifted Jennie effortlessly into his arms and walked across the road.

  The players drifted back to the field, all except Phonse, who tagged along saying, “If Jennie arrives home in that state without me, Mam will give me the sharp edge of her tongue for not looking after me sister.”

  Jennie, whose head was swimming from the crack of the heavy leather ball, thought she had died and gone to heaven. Nestled in Tom’s strong arms, leaning against his chest, she could hear the thudding of his heart as he walked. Every now and then he would look down at her and she could feel his breath on her cheek. When they arrived, Mam was in a fuss. She settled Jennie on the daybed and got a cold face cloth for the bump on her temple. Tom and Phonse stood by uncertainly.

  “Well, young Tom Hillier,” said Mam, as she surveyed him, “you’ve grown into quite a big boy.” Bridey was no fool. She’d seen the way Tom had been looking at Jennie as he walked in the door with her, and the way her daughter’s eyes were looking up into his. But Tom was a Protestant. This would not do, not do at all.

  “I’m almost seventeen now, Mrs. Sullivan,” Tom answered.

  “Well, thanks for helping Jennie home today, but it weren’t necessary.” She turned to her son. “I s’pose you could’ve done it yourself, Phonse, and not have taken Tom away from his game.”