The Badger Riot (4 page)

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.

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 and 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.