The Badger Riot

by J. A. Ricketts

  Jennie told her mother-in-law about her conversation with the pastor, and asked her what she thought she was before she joined the Pentecostals, if not a Christian.

  “Was I Jewish, like the Plotskys?” Jennie asked her.

  “Shut up, Catholic whore,” the old woman hissed. “You’ve no business prying into religious subjects. You and your ignorant family, you’re all whores. Whores!” She banged her big iron frying pan on the stovetop.

  Suze was preparing to fry pork chops for her supper. It seemed to Jennie that the family lived on pork chops and bacon. She fried everything to a blackened crisp, calling it well done and saying that that was the only way to eat food. Tom and Mr. Albert ate her cooking because they were used to it, but Jennie had a hard time eating burnt meat, burnt fat pork and burnt onions. Jennie offered to cook a meal for the family once. Just once.

  Suze had turned on her like a cat, hissing and spitting. “You get your filthy dirty Roman paws off my food, my lady. You’re only here in this house because of my son. You can take no part in my kitchen, no part in my house whatsoever. And the day he gets tired of you and you walks out through that door will be a happy day for me.”

  Jennie had known then that there would never be any compromise with Suze. Three more years passed. Hard years: living with her mother-in-law, not having a baby. Tom seemed in no hurry to build them a house. He had lived with his parents all of his life and saw no reason to uproot himself and move out. Sometimes Jennie felt that all he wanted was for her to be in his bed, waiting, warm and willing when he came home. What happened to his wife outside that didn’t hold much interest for him.

  But then, sometime in those three years, Jennie’s true personality began to reassert itself. She’d had enough. Suze had pushed her to the limit and her abuse began to roll off Jennie like water off a duck’s back. She had no more tears left. Nowadays she often sauced her mother-in-law, giving as good as she got. The venom and hatred in the old lady’s eyes became worse.

  8

  Ralph’s great-grandfather Michael was half Beothuk, or so they said. They were nearly finished by the time the Mi’kmaq made their way inland. The white man had hounded them away from the ocean and into the interior and one winter the Drum family took in a Beothuk family: a man, two women and an infant. Whenever his grandfather, Peter, or his father, Louis, talked about all this, they became vague when they reached the part where the man was killed and the older woman died. Perhaps the family wasn’t proud of whatever happened. The younger woman and her baby lived, they said, and Great-great-grandfather had fathered a child with her, a boy – half Mi’kmaq and half Beothuk. It was Michael who had been given the Drum family name.

  Ralph felt all this must be true because he could feel the Beothuk blood in his veins when he stood on top of their sacred Mound overlooking the three rivers, and heard the spirits of the People speak on the wind. In the interior, he trod the paths that they trod.

  There was a legend that said, hundreds of millions of years ago, the centre of the island of Newfoundland had risen from the bottom of the ocean. Perhaps the legend was right. Who could say? Ralph only knew that he had seen some unusual things deep in the interior, many of them unexplainable.

  The Beothuk knew the places of powerful magic. Hodges Hill was one such place. The hill was sacred to the Beothuk and, later, to the Mi’kmaq as well. And that was Grandfather’s territory. He’d told Ralph that right at the top there was a small cave. In it, in a hollowed-out rock, were two large freshwater pearls, beautiful to look at and magic to hold. His grandfather Peter claimed they’d been there since the beginning of time. He said his grandfather showed him, and that he had been shown by the Beothuk woman, his mother. Never remove the pearls, she had warned him. They belong to the spirits of the high places.

  When Ralph was twenty, he decided he would go in and look at Grandfather’s pearls for himself. He asked the old man to go with him, but he said no. His time to die was almost upon him, he said, and the young man had to find them for himself. “Hold the pearls in your hand, my son. Some say it will cause you to dream of the future.”

  Hodges Hill was about two thousand feet high, the highest point in Central Newfoundland. It lay northeast of Badger, near the Mary Ann Lake and Twin Lakes area, and was a visible landmark from the towns of Badger, Windsor and Grand Falls.

  It took Ralph all day to trek in. He made camp overnight on the shore of Mary Ann Lake to the west of Hodges Hill. A deep, dark, cold lake, it had a boggy shoreline and the waters were a brown peaty colour. Like most lakes and brooks in the interior, it had lots of fish.

  That evening, sitting alone by his small campfire, Ralph looked out over the smooth waters of Mary Ann. He thought of the time his father had shown him a funny little island in the upper end of the lake, about half a mile long and half a mile wide. It was actually a floating island, he said. Ralph was only thirteen then and had often gone with his father into the woods, to be taught the skills of trapping.

  According to his father, Louis Drum, the making of the island had started with the body of some animal, perhaps a caribou onto which debris had gathered over the course of fifty years, a hundred years, or longer: old stumps and sticks, moss and clumps of peat into which grass, gowiddy, and alders seeds rooted, fertilized by the animal carcass.

  Father had taken him out in canoe and said they’d climb onto the squashy mass. Ralph trusted his father. If he said it was safe that was good enough for him, but he hadn’t looked forward to standing in the middle of a deep lake on a floating island.

  Father had climbed out of the canoe at a certain spot, the only spot to attempt it, he said. Anywhere else around the perimeter, your foot would go on down through. He grabbed Ralph’s arm and hauled him up, warning him to tread only where he did. One mis-step and he’d be a goner.

  The ground was spongy, as if the lake underneath was just waiting to take this piece of earth back. Ralph could feel a slight rocking motion as the island shifted and swayed. In the centre was a hole no more than two feet wide. Father had his fishing pole. The place for trout, he said. He cast in his line and in a flash had a fat mud trout. He gave Ralph the pole then, warning him again to watch his step. Ralph caught five fish in the next few minutes. They’d have three apiece for supper. No need to take more than we need, Father always said. Louis, like his ancestors before him, had great respect for the land and for nature.

  In the morning, alone on the shore of Mary Ann, Ralph woke and looked up at the summit of Hodges Hill. It was covered in cloud, but it was a fine summer morning and he knew it would burn off before he reached the top.

  The climbing was hard going. Much of the mountain’s face was smooth granite with a crag here and there to get a foothold. Two thousand feet is no big deal when you think of the people who climbed Mount Everest, but this place spoke to something inside Ralph. He’d felt it before: his Beothuk blood. Their spirits were still there, hovering.

  He gained the top around midday. The cloud had disappeared and the view from the top was spectacular. Over to the east, near Gander Lake, Mount Peyton reared up, a beautiful blue colour high above the forest. To the west rose the prominent Topsails. Far to the west, toward Grand Lake he could see Hinds Hill – even higher than Hodges Hill, they said. To the south he could just make out the yellow top of Mount Sylvester. To the northeast was the Bay of Exploits, and farther to the northeast he could see several of the outer islands of Notre Dame Bay. Ralph felt insignificant in the great scheme of Creation and wondered if his ancestors had felt that way too.

  It was very cold at the top, even in midsummer. The bald rock was scraped smooth by the winds and harsh climate and no vegetation grew. The cave was to the side, under an overhang. A person had to be looking carefully to find it. Or maybe the spirits pointed him to it. Ralph scrabbled down carefully and crawled into a space so small that he couldn’t stand up. He lit a match and looked around. It was clean and dry and he knew that Indians had slept there at some time in the past. Ralph decide
d that he would too, even if there were no pearls.

  But there were pearls, just like Grandfather said, side by side in a cup-shaped granite hollow in the far corner – one pale, translucent pink, and the other purple, shot through with pink streaks. Ralph was there two hours before he mustered enough nerve to pick them up, one at a time. They felt warm in the middle of his palm. Magic to hold. Perhaps they weren’t pearls at all, although they looked like pearls, but were as big as marbles. Whatever they were, Ralph knew they were put there for a reason. The reason may have been lost over time, but the pearls remained. He laid them back down in their nest of rock where they could continue guarding the cave, guarding the mountain, guarding the land.

  He lit a small fire near the mouth of the cave, unrolled his sleeping bag, and prepared to spend the night. A feeling of peace and contentment came over him, more intense than ever.

  As he slept, Ralph dreamed. He could see his own face, an older version of himself, and he knew it was the future. It was winter and hundreds of people milled around him. He clearly saw Jennie, older too. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a large figure in a long black cape swooped into the scene and grabbed Jennie, wrestling her to the ground. He was choking her. Ralph could see her heels digging in the snow as she tried to get free.

  He watched as his older self moved in slow motion, brought a stick up over his head, and savagely hit the black-draped figure. He felt his other self put all his pent-up love and frustration behind the blow and the black figure let Jennie go.

  The little cave was on the eastern side of the mountain and the sun shining in his eyes woke him. Ralph lay still for a few moments, thinking of the dream, wondering what it could mean. He thought of the beautiful pearls in the little pocket of rock, a few feet away from where he had slept. Was Grandfather right? Had they caused him to dream of the future? How far into the future had he seen? Was Jennie in danger?

  There was a noise outside the cave. He peered out. Looking straight at him from five feet away was a great bald eagle. Its golden eyes held Ralph’s. It had finally happened. The Great Spirit had sent his spirit guide.

  The eagle walked away from him toward the edge of the summit. Ralph squirmed out a little farther to watch as the great bird spread its great wings and flew toward the rising sun. At the top of its spiral the eagle banked and turned toward Ralph’s home, the town of Badger, as if signalling him to go back where he belonged: to watch over Jennie and keep her from the threatening black danger.

  9

  Alf Elliott had what he called a “gammy leg.” A childhood injury had left him crippled. He’d had a good education and, unable to do heavy physical work such as logging, had trained for Morse code. In 1945, he’d gone to work for the Newfoundland Posts and Telegraphs in the town of Badger. After Confederation with Canada, postal and telegraph offices were separated and then Alf became an employee of Canadian National Telecommunications.

  When Alf and his wife, Mary, moved from Port Albert, a community in Notre Dame Bay, their oldest child, Amanda, was a small baby. His sons were born in Badger. The years passed swiftly. The children grew up in the Company town with good schools, electricity, a railway station and well-stocked shops, never knowing or thinking about the hardships of the logging industry. However, Alf, their father, knew. He conducted business with loggers every day and listened to their stories of the camps.

  There were no telephones in Badger except in the telegraph office and in the A.N.D. Company manager’s residence. Alf was often asked to go back to his office after hours for people who wanted to make private telephone calls. No money changed hands, and it was done out of courtesy, but now Alf would be owed a good turn: a meal of moose meat, a load of firewood, a ride to Grand Falls.

  Over the years, mining companies and survey crews were back and forth to Badger as the mineral-rich interior was surveyed, mapped, and sampled. Alf, outgoing and friendly, got to know them all as they sent telegrams back and forth to their offices on the mainland.

  There was a French fellow, Wilfred d’Entremont, doing mine surveys with a crew of men at Collishaw, up on the Gaff Topsails. He wired telegrams back and forth to his company in Quebec and made phone calls, after hours, to his wife.

  Even though d’Entremont’s English wasn’t very good, and Alf spoke no French, they became friends. Alf did pick up some French swear words from the crew as they worked there that summer. Gradually, he learned that merde was shit and mange la merde was eat shit, casse-toi was piss off, ferme la bouche was shut your mouth, and allez a l’enfer was go to hell. Not exactly the kind of language that a father would use around his children, but Alf was interested enough to remember it.

  He also learned that in Quebec the parts of a car all had English-sounding names: le carburateur, le moteur, la batterie. Alf thought that was the oddest thing and he wondered if it was because the car parts manufacturers were English companies and the French had had to adapt. The funniest one of all was the French word for seal – phoque, which they pronounced “fuck.” It was a great laugh among both the English-speaking and the French-speaking men to say, “What a tasty piece of phoque!”

  The crew had rented a house, and d’Entremont had a photography outfit that he’d brought with him to take pictures of the mine site, the minerals and the terrain. Alf would visit there occasionally, and somewhere during that time, he was bitten by the photography bug. It consumed his thoughts.

  When d’Entremont and his crew were leaving to go back to Quebec, he gave Alf all the gear needed to develop and print snaps. Alf offered to pay the Frenchman something for it, but he said it would only be thrown away because it was too much trouble to lug it all back to Quebec.

  In January of 1952, Jennie felt a slight shift in the air in the Hillier house. If anything, it felt heavier, like a storm brewing. Suze had a satisfied smirk on her thin lips and she would occasionally nod and smile to herself, as though she had come to a decision.

  The storms were bad again that winter. The woods camp was closed down for a couple of weeks, which meant that Tom was at home. Suze picked a night when Mr. Albert was away, Jennie was working at the store until nine o’clock, and she had Tom to herself.

  Not realizing how bad it was outside, Jennie had left Plotsky’s to walk in on Halls Bay Road, but Abe Miller, who worked for the A.N.D. Company as a truck driver, happened along and offered her a lift. “Thanks for stopping, Mr. Miller.”

  “Well, Jennie my child, I wouldn’t leave me dog out in this, let alone a person.” Abe hauled his Company pickup down in gear and pushed through the snow that was accumulating on the road. “This storm blew up all of a sudden, didn’t it?”

  Abe dropped Jennie off at the Hillier house and continued on through the storm to his own place farther down the road.

  When Jennie came into the kitchen there was no sign of Tom, just his mother standing by the stove with her arms folded across her chest.

  “Where’s Tom?” she asked. Tom always waited up for her.

  “Gone to bed,” Suze said. Her lips were pursed and her eyes gleamed with something. Was it the glow of satisfaction?

  Jennie climbed the stairs to the bedroom. Tom wasn’t in bed. He was sitting on it, fully clothed, and his face was white as a sheet.

  “Jennie,” he said, “are you going out with Vern behind my back?” She thought she would faint. Her throat closed off and she couldn’t get a breath into her lungs. Spots danced in front of her eyes.

  “Tom! How can you say something like that?”

  “Mother told me that you and him rides around in his taxi together and that you’re right chummy with him.” Tom had his elbows on his knees and his head was bowed into his hands, the pose of a man crying. “She also said you and Ralph Drum are pretty thick, and that everyone says that last summer you and him went up on the back of the hill together.”

  In truth, Jennie hardly ever laid eyes on Vern or Ralph. She knew that Vern had gotten out of the woods camps and had somehow acquired a taxicab. She knew he’d married
a girl from Windsor and that their little girl, Melanie, had been born in 1950. Missus Crawford went on and on about her grandchild to Mam, as if she were the only person ever to have one. As for Ralph, he came and went. No one ever knew where he was, although Phonse said he was likely in the deep country among the forests and lakes. Jennie hadn’t seen him in quite a while.

  “Tom, did your mother call me a whore? Do you really believe that I would sink that low?”

  “My mother wouldn’t tell me that if it was a lie, Jennie.”

  Well, my God, she thought, how dumb are men? He actually does not know the stuff that old woman has been up to. Something inside of Jennie snapped. Suze’s lying and meanness had gone too far this time. Jennie was still wearing her coat; she whirled around and dashed down over the stairs and to the porch door. Suze was standing by the stove. “Goodbye, you Roman whore,” she whispered, with a smirk on her face.

  Jennie turned around and spotted Suze’s precious fox stole lying on the chair, the stole that was lovingly combed every evening. The glass eyes of the dead fox looked at Jennie; its tiny teeth seemed to be laughing and echoing its mistress’s words: “Whore.”

  Jennie grabbed the stole, lifted the cover off the stove, and stuffed it down in the fire headfirst. Suze screamed and hauled on her, but Jennie was bigger and stronger and very, very angry. The stole caught fire immediately, and the last thing Jennie remembered as she went through the door was the stink of scorched fur.

  Tom came thumping down the stairs to see what the racket was about, but his wife had gone and his mother was hysterical.

  Jennie slammed the door behind her and ran into the darkness of the snowy night. The wind swirled the snow around her nylon-stockinged legs. Too late she realized that she had forgotten her bandana. It was back on the bed where she had taken it off as Tom accused her of adultery. Anger surged up inside her again and gave her the strength to plow through snowdrifts that reached to her knees. All the way from the Hillier house in on Halls Bay Road and to her father’s house up the track she went. It was more than a mile, perhaps two miles.