He says over and over, “Melanie, Melanie, are you okay? Are you okay?” Then he realizes who we are. “Your father is looking for you,” he says to me. “Go on down the track and you’ll meet him on the side road, I’m sure. Go on now.”
We hurry down the track. There’s Dad! My brothers race to meet him screaming, “Dad, Dad! We saw someone hit a policeman.”
28
He was choking her. The cop had her neck in the crook of his arm and he looked like he was squeezing the life out of my Jennie. Jesus, what am I saying? She’s not mine. To her I am just good old Ralph, her friend from childhood. The feelings and the frustration that I had kept carefully locked up inside of me all those years suddenly burst. A red mist came in front of my eyes.
I struck that policeman to make him let go of Jennie, but I think I struck to kill too. And when I did, my ten-year-old dream washed over me. There he was, the black-cloaked figure of death – or, in this case, a black-coated cop – and the danger to Jennie was very real.
Jennie was still alive, so that part of the dream was right. I did protect her, but perhaps I killed the policeman. Were they right? Was it natural for an Indian to kill a white man?
But I should have stayed. I deserted my friends.
I was soon over by the big hill, out of breath from running. Then I heard shouts behind me and turned around. Dozens of our men were racing over the same road, some toward the hill, and some toward the River. What was going on? Why were they all leaving? Had the police triumphed? What had happened?
I scooted across the grounds of the convent and came out by Church Road. It was full-dark now, the night air filled with strange sounds. I stood in under the tall old trees to catch my breath. I thought of the running strikers and I knew that, somehow, the picket line had been broken. Should I go back up the road? Or should I follow the men that I’d seen streaming toward the River?
Then I spied Tom, hurrying along, all by himself, with his long, loose strides. My nerves were raw, and my voice seemed unnatural, like a hiss. “Hey, Tom.”
In his haste, he wasn’t paying any attention.
“Tom,” I repeated, and this time he stopped.
“Where’d you pop from, Ralph? You’re like a ghost, always creepin’ me out, b’y.”
I grabbed hold of his arm. “Why are you running away, Tom? What’s going on? Where’s Jennie? What’s happened up the road?”
“A policeman is down, Ralph. You must’ve seen it. You were there too, though, come to think of it, I lost sight of you after the police waded in. Anyway, he was hit on the head; blood all over the snow. The men got such a fright when they saw it that they scattered. I made Jennie run away too. The police are like devils up there now, chasing our boys down, clubbing them, putting them in the wagon.” Tom shook his big head. “I’m never going back to jail, Ralph, no matter what. Come on, let’s get off the road.”
We went back across the Catholic property and over the hill to the River. There were people and police everywhere. Others were running along with us. We seemed to gravitate to the River for some reason, as if it was at the centre of all our troubles.
There were about forty of us. A couple of the organizers were there. “Boys, it would be much appreciated if any of you know places where we can hide some of our men for tonight.” From Badger there was Tom and me, Bill Hatcher and a few others. The rest were strangers from out of town. We all agreed, anxious to help our union brothers.
I stepped forward. “We’ll take ten for now. I know some places to hide them. We might be back for more later. Everyone lay low and out of sight.”
Tom and I started off down the riverbank with the men following us. Tom was using the same route that was taken by the strikers back in February, when they came down off Sandy after trashing the camp. It kept us close to the rivers and in the trees until we put some distance between the police and us.
Sometime during that dark cold night under the railway station platform, I awoke to shouts and lights.
It was the Mounties. “This is the police! Up and outta there! Up and out now!” They shone their big flashlights in, scaring me half to death. I raised my head a little and I could see the other bundled-up bodies all around me, packed in like rats.
The Mounties yelled at us to crawl out, and to do it fast. I was one of the first to be hauled up by the scruff of me collar.
“What’s your name?” a Mountie barked at me.
“Cec . . . Cecil Nippard, sir.”
Oh my, I was some scared. I was shivering and shaking with the cold and fright. There were thirty-six of us. I had them counted as they came out, one by one. I always like to count things, even people. It helps to make me calm. Earlier in the evening, when we were up there by the church in the taxi and the strikers were all around us, I counted two hundred and thirty-six men. Then I pissed in me pants and lost count. I hated to lose count.
Many of the guys under the station stand were tramps or hobos or something, living on the rails. There was this one man, especially. They said he had no legs. He was in the war, what my father called World War Two, a veteran whose legs had been shot off and who was shell-shocked. He walked around with stilts under his pants legs, making him about seven feet tall. I had seen him around many times. He used to be at the Windsor station too. His height, and the creaking sound from his stilts, hidden under his long pants legs, scared me so much that I couldn’t look at him full-on, only from the corners of my eyes.
They hauled him out too, poor feller. Two cops sat him up on the platform. He looked some pitiful without his stilts. Watching him, I realized that he didn’t scare me anymore. He wasn’t some strange giant at all, just a man with no legs. And he certainly wasn’t a logger. Everyone knew that, even the police. They even seemed to treat him with some respect. More than they did any of us, that’s for sure.
At the pool hall, the men used to discuss World War Two and I would listen. Someone said that it had ended in Europe on May 8, 1945. They called it VE Day and I knew, right away, that was five thousand and fifty-seven days, almost fourteen years ago. I didn’t have to pause and think about leap years, because somehow I always counted them in, even though I didn’t know I had until someone told me. Stuff like that has always stayed in my mind. Dates are important things. And they’d talk about the war veterans that had become hobos. They lived on the rails, from boxcar to boxcar, place to place. Many of them suffered war trauma, were shell-shocked and were lost in their minds, where the battles of the war went on forever. I never forgot what they said, maybe because, sometimes, I felt that I was lost in my mind too.
Some of the men tried to make a run for it, but the police weren’t having that. They gave chase, knocked the men down in the snow, clubbed them with their big ugly sticks. I was shit-baked; afraid to even blink, let alone move. The Mountie who had hauled me out from under the station came back to me again. “Well, buddy, what are you at tonight? Hiding from the law, are you? Are you a striker or what?”
“No . . . no, sir.” I could hardly get the words out of me mouth, I was so cold and scared. “I works for the A.N.D. Company.”
“Yeah?” he sneered. “A likely story. Who you think is going to believe that?”
Another Mountie came over. “I know him. He’s that foolish young fellow from Windsor. One of them skeets that hangs around the pool hall. He’d sell his mother for money to play a game of pool. They say he’s real good at it too. No one can beat him.”
“Whatever he is, champion or not, get him into the truck.” The Mounties all laughed.
Oh my, oh my. I wanted to speak up, to say that I had no mother, and, if I did, I certainly wouldn’t sell her for any amount of money. I wanted to say I’d love her and stay with her and be her good boy forever. But I couldn’t form the words; I couldn’t get them past my lips. I wanted to cry so bad, but only sissies cried.
The ones that the Mounties knew by sight as hobos were left to go back to sleep in under the station. They even helped the legless man off
the platform so that he could scrabble in under, pulling his stilts in after him.
But twenty of us were herded aboard an open stake-bodied truck and off down over the road to Grand Falls. The dark night was freezing cold. In the open truck, even though we were strangers to each other, we huddled together for warmth. And no one tried to kick or punch me or call me stupid Cecil.
The guy huddled down next to me really was a striker. “What a fuckin’ night this turned out to be. We’re guilty of nothing, nothing, I tell you, except standing on a picket line for our rights, and now they’re hauling us off to jail.” Two or three others mumbled in agreement.
I didn’t know much about that part of the goings-on, not being a member of the IWA union and having never stood on a picket line.
When we arrived in Grand Falls the strikers were sent off to jail. The rest of us were let go and some were ordered to leave town. Coming on toward daylight one of the Mounties dropped me off at me father’s house.
I was never to know what would have happened if I had gone out into the fray that evening, because at that moment the church door opened. It was a police officer in his greatcoat and fur cap. And I knew him. Oh my God, did You keep me here for him?
He took off his cap. “Father Murphy, I have to talk to you.” His dark hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat and his skin was pale. His eyes were frightened and glassy. “Can we go in back where I can’t be seen?”
I sized him up. What had happened? “All right, then. Let’s go this way,” I said, as I led the way in behind the altar.
He was Richard Fagan, married to Rod Anderson’s daughter. He’d been coming back and forth to Badger for two or three years now. Even though Rod was a Protestant, his son-in-law was a Catholic. We’d chatted together a couple of times. I had even seen him at Mass once.
In the sacristy, his legs seemed to give out under him and he sat down abruptly. “Father, you know me, right? You know that Rod Anderson is my father-in-law, right?”
“Yes.”
He drew in a deep shaking breath. “Father, I think I have ruined my life. I hit my father-in-law with my nightstick, and I think he might be injured.”
I didn’t know what to say. I looked at him and he looked at me.
“My son, start at the beginning. What has happened up the road? How did this come about? Did you and Mr. Anderson have a disagreement?”
“No, no, Father. He didn’t even know I was here. I . . .” He hung his head and started to sob.
I pulled up a chair and sat down next to him. Laying my hand upon his shoulder I told him, “Take a deep breath now. Start from the beginning.”
Tom had said, “Run, Jennie,” and I ran. My feet had a mind of their own, and I was heading for Pap’s house – up the track.
You might wonder why I didn’t go on to my place and wait for my Tom, but we live in on Halls Bay Road, a long walk in a community gone insane with violence. Pap’s house was no more than five minutes from the scene of the clash between loggers and police.
Then I met that friggin’ Vern again. He’d scooted over the back road, got rid of his scabs somewhere and ditched his taxi too, all in the past half-hour. Now, here he was, standing innocently on the side of the road alongside of Alf Elliott, the telegraph operator.
The anger erupted out of me. I grabbed him, shook him and screamed in his face. I don’t know what I was saying, but the shock on Alf’s face was enough to sober me a bit. I let him go and, instead of turning toward the track and Pap’s house, I continued running down Church Road.
I don’t know where I would have ended up. Perhaps I would have kept running until I reached Halls Bay Road. I just don’t know. It was dark. There were people everywhere crying out in fear and shock.
Then I saw the Catholic Church, lit up like a beacon in the cruel night. I thought of its warm, smooth pews, the smell of incense, the statue of the Blessed Mother. Perhaps I’ll drop in and rest a minute, I thought.
I cautiously opened the door. I hadn’t been inside in years. Nothing had changed. As I crept to a seat and knelt down, I could still see myself up at the altar as a little girl making my first Holy Communion, so innocent in my white dress and veil.
And now here I was looking up at the same altar almost twenty-five years later, a thirty-year-old woman whose coat had the buttons gone where a cop had hauled me around. My blouse was undone too. There was blood on my bosom. Whose blood? Then I remembered it was the cop that Ralph had struck to keep me from being choked. As he was regaining consciousness I had held his head in my arms.
My hair was across my eyes and I had snot and tears on my face. I scrabbled in my pocket for a tissue. A hand held out a handkerchief. I looked up into Father Murphy’s eyes, then back at the hanky. It was lovely and white and so nicely embroidered. I suppose the nuns did that; funny how irrelevant little things skitter across your mind at the strangest times.
“Father Murphy, I’m sorry. I should go on out. Were you locking up?”
“No, no Jennie. Stay, my child. Compose yourself. Pause a moment. Talk to God about whatever has happened to you.”
He knelt in the seat across from me and closed his eyes to pray. I prayed too. I asked God to look after my Tom, still out there somewhere; to protect Ralph, wherever he might be; to help the loggers whose government had declared them criminals and sent the black-coats to break their spirits by breaking their heads. I prayed to God that the policeman wouldn’t die. If he did die, whose fault was it? Was it ours? Or was it the A.N.D. Company’s and the Government’s? Oh the poor man, to die out here in an unknown place. Somewhere he had a mother who was keeping vigil this night, waiting for word of her son.
I blessed myself and looked at Father. “If you wouldn’t mind, Father, I’d like to make a confession and tell you what happened.”
“Dad, Dad!” The high-pitched voice of my son David was music to my ears. Thank God, the three of them were safe. Amanda looked at me with round frightened eyes. She didn’t speak as she grabbed hold of my arm. The boys were talking a mile a minute. One more camera snap of the scared shocked townspeople and we were away and down the road to home.
My children were traumatized by what they had witnessed. I realized that they should never have been there, but who knew that they’d be in the midst of a riot and see bloodshed? Badger had been a small, safe town where children could run freely. Had this changed forever?
We were eating our supper and trying to behave like it was a normal evening. Amanda’s face was white and strained as she picked at her food. The boys were naming names: So-and-so said he saw who did it, Dad. He said he saw this fellow hit the cop with a birch stick.
This was going to lead to trouble. Poor little youngsters. They didn’t know the difference. I was stern and forceful with them. “Say nothing. Understand? Say nothing. You’ll only bring trouble upon us by repeating rumours. Keep quiet, no matter what someone asks you. Let the loggers and the police settle this.”
A knock sounded on the door. I opened it warily, half expecting it to be the Mounties. It was the reporter from the Toronto Star. He needed to file his story. Would I go with him to the telegraph office so he could telephone with some privacy?
He had a car and we drove down. The riot had happened two hours ago, but people were still on the move – Badger residents making their way home, and police prowling around, looking for loggers. No one in this town had ever experienced such a time. It was a wild night.
The reporter needed light to read his report into the phone. I didn’t want to turn on the light, the tumult outside was such that police or strikers were sure to investigate. We used my big flashlight which I shone on his notebook as he read. His voice was urgent as he communicated to colleagues in Toronto the horror of what had taken place in faraway Central Newfoundland.
The police sergeant wanted to come inside the church. “It would be better if I could take your statement inside, Pastor Genge,” he said. “Perhaps you could show me where you were standing at the time
of the altercation.”
I moved away from the blood splotch on the snow and slowly climbed the steps to the church. I felt the weight of grief upon me; grief for a lost cause, perhaps a lost life. I opened the door. It was dark inside and I reached to turn on the lights.
“No lights, Pastor, if you don’t mind. First I want us to look out through the window.”
In the gloom I led the way over to the window overlooking the road. He stood beside me and we gazed out at the scene, visible because of the white snow. Most people had moved farther on down the road, encouraged to do so by the RCMP. The strikers, those who had escaped, were long gone. The blood patch was visible even up here through the window. But now it looked black in the night. As we watched, an officer came by with a shovel, scooped it up and went off down the road carrying the stained snow. It was a hard thing to look at. The sergeant was affected, I could see. He turned away.
“Turn on the lights now, Pastor,” he said. He nodded to the other policeman who had accompanied him. “The constable here will write down your statement. So tell me what you saw.”
We sat in the back pew. I told no lies. I didn’t paint the strikers as victims. I didn’t paint the police as aggressors. They knew what had happened as well as I did.
He listened and the constable wrote in his black notebook.
“So, Pastor Genge, tell me. Did you see Constable Moss struck down?”
“Yes sir, I did. I saw him when he fell. That was when I ran into my house to get the towels. I felt that God had been preparing me for that moment all my life.”
“Hmm. Are you getting all of this, Constable?”
“Yes sir. I have it all down, sir.”
“Good. Now then, Pastor, I need you to tell me the name of the person who struck the blow, if you know it.”
The Badger Riot Page 24