The Badger Riot (43 page)

My heart was pounding in my chest. I got up, walked outside the pew and stood by the Sacred Heart niche. Jesus, in His red robe, His head bowed, His hand pointing to His bleeding heart, was no more sorrowful than I was at that moment. If I stayed in the seat, I was going to put my arms around her, I knew it. By God, when this was over, I was going deep in the country, perhaps to Hodges Hill, and live like a hermit.

Jennie wiped the tears from her eyes. “I knelt down by the policeman to see how bad he was. He was groaning a bit, so I knew he wasn't dead. I kind of cradled him in my arms – I even had a bit of blood on my blouse afterward – and then, another policeman came along yelling at me, until he saw I was a woman. Then Tom got clear and came over too. It was all a big tangle. But the important thing is that he got up and walked away on his own. Actually, he swung back into the fracas, as strong as ever.”

Jennie sighed and stood up too.

“Well, thank God,” I said. “You've taken some load off my mind, Jennie. None of us ever set out to kill anyone. Or I don't s'pose we did. I never did, anyway.” Now I needed a smoke after all that. “Let's go.”

“No, you go on. I have to stay for a bit. I think I am going to return to my own church, you know. Tom won't mind. Missus Suze will be furious and go on and on, but I don't care. Perhaps the pastor and the priest will let me alternate. Anyway, I need to sit and think for awhile.”

I started down the aisle, toward the door.

“Ralph.”

“What?”

“I hope we'll always be friends. I hope this doesn't change anything.”

“Never, Jennie. Always friends.”

Then I was outside in the cold evening air, hauling the cigarettes out of my jacket pocket as I walked.

My sister, Emily, was gone before the week was out. She just disappeared one night while everyone was asleep. She didn't own much clothes or even a suitcase to put them in. I supposed that she used a paper bag.

One morning, when I rolled out of the bunk under the stairs, Stepmother was in the kitchen with the five little boys and she was going crazy. The boys were whining for breakfast. The smell of shitty diapers was strong, and she was cursing and screaming at them.

“Hey, Cecil. Idiot!” she yelled at me. “Where's your stupid lazy sister gone? She's supposed to be here to feed them youngsters. That's her job, what pays for her room and board in this house. No good to check the bedroom,” she said, as I headed toward her room. “Her clothes is gone too.”

That night, when I crawled into my bunk in the little cubbyhole under the stairs, I felt a lump under my pillow. It was a bit of brown paper tied with string. I opened it. Emily had left me our mother's blue handkerchief. It was the only thing that we had left from her. When I was ten and Emily eight and our mother died, Father had passed it to us, saying, “Here's something to remember her by.” It had smelled so nice then. Emily said it was lavender. But the smell had left it over the years. I remembered that Emily and I would take turns holding onto it when Stepmother barred us up in the dark attic. Now, my sister had left it for me.

If Father cared about Emily's leaving, he didn't show it. He told Stepmother to get off her lazy arse and wash the diapers herself, and if she didn't stop complaining he'd give her the back of his
hand. I secretly enjoyed the scared look on her face when he said that.

Turning to me, he shook his finger in my face. “Now, me laddie-o, since they had the fuss up there in Badger, the strike is over. I'm signing on with Joey's new union. I'm signing you up too. When the summer cutting starts, you're going back in the woods and I'll learn you to be a logger if 'tis the last thing I ever does.”

With Emily out of the way, Stepmother stepped up her cruelty. She wouldn't allow me any food. I lived on scraps from the garbage cans of the Cozy Chat and the Brown Derby restaurants. Then she locked me out of the house.

It was the last straw. My sister was gone, my father wanted me to go in the woods again, there was no one who cared if I lived or died. I couldn't take anymore. I walked back down toward the pool hall, wondering vaguely where to spend the night. A westbound freight train was pulling into the railway station across the street. I remembered the hobos that I'd seen in Badger who lived their life on the rails. Without thinking much about what I was doing, I sprinted across the street and hoisted myself up into an empty boxcar. Next stop: Port aux Basques.

The riot happened on a Tuesday. I heard nothing from Ruth and Audrey. I didn't know what had happened to Richard and his police unit. Ruth never wired or phoned, but arrived late on Thursday night and walked up the road with her suitcase.

It wasn't a long walk, but it was winter and it was nighttime. Also, being such a small town, with everyone living in everyone else's backyard, so to speak, by now they all knew that my son-in-law had clunked me, and they all knew that Ruth was in St. John's. Therefore, if anyone saw her plodding up Church Road all by herself with her suitcase in the night, they were sure to say, “Ah, Rod Anderson never met his wife at the train. What's going on with them since his son-in-law nearly killed him?”

I was asleep. I hadn't used the bedroom at all since Ruth left. Too much trouble to undress. I'd been crashing on the daybed by the stove. The house was messy, especially the kitchen, where I'd been living practically full-time. Jesus, I had a sore shoulder, sure. You couldn't expect me to do housework.

I woke to her standing over me.

“Rod. Wake up. Wake up.”

I was a bit stunned and, I suppose, a bit drunk too. I'd taken to having a few shots of rum to ease the pain. The glass and the bottle were still on the table, plus the supper dishes. Over in the sink was a week's worth of dirty dishes.

“Ruth. How'd you get here? You never sent a message. I would have met you.”
“There was no time to let you know. Besides, I'm capable of looking after myself, Rod.” She surveyed her filthy kitchen that she took so much pride in. “That's more than I can say for you.”

Because of my shoulder, I couldn't hoist myself up off the daybed as I normally would. Daybeds are not very high, and all I could do was roll over onto the floor and get to my knees, and from there, with the aid of a chair, I would get to a standing position.

Ruth watched me do this. I was still somewhat drunk and perhaps I overdid the groaning just to get a bit of pity from her. If I did, no one will ever know that but me. When I was up and facing her I said, unnecessarily I suppose, “Maid, my shoulder is some bad.”

She didn't answer, but turned away and busied herself at the dishes. She planked the rum bottle down in the bottom cupboard and slammed the door.

“Have you been sleeping in your clothes on that daybed since I left?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“And you saw the doctor about your shoulder?”

“Well, no. The doctor left town when things got too rough, they say. It's a long story, but Father Murphy got Missus Annie Drum to look at it.”

She was wiping off the table. She stopped in mid-wipe, cloth in hand. “Who? Father Murphy? Why Father Murphy? What's been going on?”

“Never mind. I'll tell you tomorrow. 'Tis one o'clock in the morning.”

She came close to me. I thought we would hug and have a kiss, seeing she'd been away for more than a week. But no. She sidestepped me and sniffed at my underarms.

“Phew. You smells some bad, my son. Booze, dirt, sweat. First thing is get the bathwater running and then off comes those dirty clothes. Come on.” She bustled off toward the bathroom just off the kitchen. It used to be a pantry in Father's day.

“Ruth, no one has a bath at one o'clock in the morning.”

“You got two choices, Rod. Have a bath and get in our bed with me, or have no bath and sleep in your dirty nest on the daybed.”

Name of God! She stripped me off and got me into the water. By that time my manhood and my pride were a lost cause.

I wouldn't give in and say it to her, but the warm water felt some good on my shoulder. I should've thought of it before and had my own bath. All I had thought of was a drop of rum to dull the pain, and I'm not even much of a drinker at the best of times.

Afterwards, Ruth rubbed my shoulder with liniment and we got into bed. B'y, 'twas some good to have a wife, even if she was an angry one. The atmosphere was so chilly between us that there was no chance of me turning to her in the bed for a hug. There was a barbwire fence running up and down through the middle of the mattress, and I dared not cross it.

I slept later than usual and woke to the smell of bacon cooking. My God, I don't think I'll ever let Ruth go away again. Bachelor life isn't for me. I got up, dressed and went downstairs.

“Good morning, my duckie.” The kitchen was back to the spotless condition that it'd enjoyed before Ruth went to St. John's. “You must've been up early.”

“I was.” She firmly placed the bacon and eggs in front of me. I wouldn't say she banged it down, but not far from it. Uh, oh, still mad.

Well, whether she was mad or not, I enjoyed my breakfast. I think I'd lost ten pounds the past week. I even had to take my belt in a notch.

When I finished, and was having a smoke with my cup of tea, she sat down at the table so we were eye to eye. “All right now, Rod, let us talk. You're clean, rested and have a good breakfast into you. I know your shoulder is hurting, but it's not broken. I couldn't believe the mess you were in last night. How can a man let himself go like that?”

What could I say back to her? Nothing. Guilty as charged. So I stayed silent and hid my eyes behind the cigarette smoke.

Ruth is a sensible woman. I should have remembered that. She didn't rant on about poor Audrey, poor Richard, poor little girls and bad old Rod. No sir. She said, looking at me with her steadfast blue
eyes, “First, let me tell you this. Coming through on the train last night, when we stopped in Gander someone got on board and told everyone the news. The young constable that was struck down, struck down right here in Badger not a hundred yards up the road from this house, has died, Rod. How could something like that happen in a small town like this?”

The news jolted me. I'd been so immersed in my own affairs that I had given no thought to the policeman who had been hit. “Well, I am sorry to hear that, Ruth. I'm really sorry. What a terrible thing to lose his life over. Poor young lad should never have been out here in the first place.”

“You're right, of course. I listened to people talk on the train. They all seem to be blaming Joey Smallwood and his government. But, still and all, the name of Badger was mentioned in every conversation. I think that it's going to end up being a black mark on us all.” She pulled her chair closer to the table and leaned forward. “Now then, Rod, if you don't mind, I'd like to hear what on earth happened between you and our son-in-law. Richard was beside himself with remorse because he claimed that he'd accidentally hit you. Is that true?”

Well, yes. Blood of a bitch of a townie. But I never said it out loud. Instead I told her what happened after I had put her on the train.

I told her how the A.N.D. Company locked up their premises and the personnel left. How I was walking home and saw all the action on the road leading up to the intersection by the Pentecostal Church. I stood on the sidelines, I said, like everyone else, and watched the police force form a line, and I told her how Richard flashed through my mind. I told her of the women crowded on the snowbanks, and of young children, some of them no more than six or seven years old, running about over fences, along by the police, and mixing with loggers amassed at the intersection. As I recounted it to her, I realized that it was a hard scene to imagine if one hadn't been there.

Ruth said nothing as I went on to describe the formidable police
unit marching up the road. When I reached the part of police among strikers, and strikers among police, she held up her hand to stop me.

“What caused that to happen? Didn't you say it looked non-threatening enough for kids to be playing around?”

“Yes, my dear, it seemed that way at first. I don't know what actually caused the clash. I was too far down the road to see and there was a big crowd of onlookers.”

I hesitated then, unsure how to describe my meeting with Richard. “I look like a logger, Ruth, you know I do. I wear much the same clothes. This policeman mistook me for a striker and wouldn't listen when I tried to explain. We roughed each other up a bit and he called his friend to help him get me aboard the van.” Christ, this was hard to tell. It brought the sweat out on me. “The other cop was Richard.”

Well, I wasn't getting any pity from Ruth. I could see that. She's just sitting there, watching me sweat. It never occurred to me until much later that maybe she was too shocked to speak. Once again, I was too immersed in my own self.