The Badger Riot (9 page)

Mrs. Plotsky gave Jennie a lovely cream-coloured evening dress. It came to mid-calf and had an organza shawl. Her sister said they'd get blue forget-me-nots from the garden for her bouquet.

Tom was in a quandary who he'd ask to be his best man, seeing as he had no brothers.

“I don't care who you gets,” his mother told him. “But get a Protestant. Don't you so much as offer to bring in that Sullivan fella, Phonse. I just knows they're dying for you to ask him.” She went off down the hallway grumbling about too many idol-worshipping Catholics in her good Christian home.

Suze told Albert to ask the pastor to get one of the young men from the Youth Group to stand for Tom. She was pleased when he did. That meant there would be one less Catholic in her house. Tom didn't care. His mind was focused entirely on Jennie.

It was 1948. The pastor married them in Suze's living room.
Even though it was summer and they were indoors, Suze still draped the ugly fox stole over her shoulders as her son and his Catholic girl said their vows. There were only Jennie and Tom, Suze and Mr. Albert, Mam and Pap, and Jennie's sister Philomena. The boy from the Youth Group, who was only fifteen, was shy and uncomfortable. As soon as the ceremony was ended he mumbled goodbye and was out the door before anyone could stop him. Mam and Pap stood strong together, but their eyes were red and watery all the way through.
My God in Heaven,
Jennie thought afterward.
It wasn't that bad! You'd think I was marrying a criminal instead of nice quiet Tom.

The women from Suze's church, at the request of the pastor, had produced tea and sandwiches and a small wedding cake. Bridey wanted to make Jennie's wedding cake herself, but Tom told Jennie that his mother wanted no wedding cake in her house that had been made with rum in it.

There was no gaiety. Suze's disapproving face and turned-down mouth put a stop to any attempt anyone might have made for a laugh or a joke. No one drank a drop because of the religion issue. No one danced, for the same reason. At one point during the long evening, Jennie thought of what fun it would be if Ralph were here with his fiddle. But there was no use thinking about that; Suze despised the Mi'kmaq people as much as she did the Catholics. Besides, the Mi'kmaq were both Indian and Catholic. According to Tom, his mother allowed that the Drum family was damned for all eternity.

When Ralph heard that Jennie and Tom had gotten married, he got into his canoe and paddled for miles up the Little Red Indian River, to organize his thoughts. He wasn't sure if it made him happy because Tom was a good man, or if it made him sad because it wasn't him that Jennie Hillier loved. Ralph's own future remained uncertain to him. That night, Jennie's wedding night, he made camp
on the bank of the Little Red Indian. As he lay back in his sleeping bag having a final smoke before going to sleep, Ralph saw a star shoot swiftly across the sky. He sent a silent wish after it, a wish that Jennie would be happy with Tom.

And then his thoughts turned to Vern Crawford, who had got himself a woman from Windsor after all, just as he said he would. Her name was Millie and Vern had married her that very same year. Whether he did it to show Jennie or not, Ralph didn't know. He and Vern weren't close buddies as they once were.

Ralph could never have guessed that two years later Vern would have a huge spot of luck, when Millie would inherit five thousand dollars from a rich uncle in the States. Before long, Vern was out of the woods and into a big Chrysler with a lit-up sign on top saying
BADGER TAXI
.

Millie Crawford was washing up the dishes and trying to ignore her excited husband as he paced about the kitchen. “Millie,” Vern said. “This is my big chance. I'm going to buy a taxi. No more lumberwoods for me, maid. Just thinking about the living conditions in those camps makes me shiver. Men housed in shelters not fit for henhouses, scroachin' all over with lice, forced to work long hours in all weathers for small pay – I can't take any more, Millie. I got a chance to get out of it, and I'm going to do it. Yessiree.”

Millie wasn't too happy about her husband taking her money like that. She tried not to show it, but this evening she was banging the dishes about a little louder than usual. After all, it was willed to her from her bachelor uncle down in the States. She thought she should get to say how the money was spent.

“Vern, that's my money too, you know. Can't I have some for myself?”

Vern, oblivious to her feelings, said, “Sure what do you need it for? Don't I keep you fed and looked after?”

So she let him go ahead. A couple times he heard her muttering to herself about new clothes. Vern squashed that. “What do you need new clothes for? You never goes anywhere except to Mass and to bingo. No one's going to notice what you got on.”

Vern's taxi became the love of his life, a '48 Chrysler 300, beige-coloured, with many miles to her credit, but a valiant and brave car
nevertheless. He'd bought her second-hand because he wasn't sure if the taxi business would pay off. She was scraped and scruffy-looking. The passenger's door handle was broken, so he had to lean across and open it when someone got in the front; inside, the brown vinyl was stained and torn. But for all her wear, Vern sometimes thought he loved her more than he did Millie.

Vern and his Chrysler worked long hours together. In winter, he attempted trips over Halls Bay Road, plowing his way through the snowdrifts when no one else would try it. He made daily runs to Grand Falls and Windsor and even a few long overnight trips to St. John's. Vern was a happy man. He was out of the woods camps, while fellows who had laughed at him, like Ralph and Tom, for instance, were still up there and working like slaves and being eaten by the flies. Well, not Ralph; flies left him alone. And Jennie's brother Phonse, who was on the drive, was stuck out in the wet and cold driving logs, while he, Vern, soaked up the warmth of his cozy taxi. Hah! That would teach them to laugh at Vern Crawford!

There was no baby for Jennie and Tom. There never had been. It had all been a lie.

Consumed with guilt about the great falsehood she had told, so she and Tom could get married and share a bed, Jennie's thoughts cast back to what had brought them to this.

No matter how much sex we had in the A.N.D. Company barns the winter before, I never became pregnant. Every twenty-eight days or so I'd see the dreaded stain on my bloomers and I'd have to tell poor Tom, “No baby, no marriage this month.”

Spring had come and the barns were busy with the men and horses, so the good times in the hay were over. Getting desperate, Tom had said that they could lie. Jennie had not been too happy about lying. Mam's old saying had kept ringing through her mind, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

“Tom, I can't. I can't lie to Mam,” she had said. “There's no way I can tell Mam I'm having a baby if I'm not. That's a great sin that will surely haunt us for the rest of our lives.”

“It will only be for a couple of months until we get married, and then we'll just tell them it was a false alarm,” Tom had urged. “It'll be all right, you'll see if it won't.”

Jennie was still reluctant, but wanting desperately to please Tom, she'd agreed.

And it did seem all right; right up to the time I told the lie to Mam and she dropped the plate and started to cry. It became worse when we had to stand in front of two sets of parents and lie again. And now is the worst of it all. I am stuck in a house with a mother-in-law who hates me.

Three months after they were safely married, Jennie and Tom told their parents that it was a mistake and she wasn't going to have a baby after all. Mam and Pap said nothing, but Jennie sensed their disappointment.

Suze nearly had a stroke. “Dirty crawling idol-worshipping Roman Catholic, you trapped my son into marriage,” she spat at her when the two were alone. The two women spent many hours alone together while Tom was up on Sandy and Mr. Albert busy with his railway duties, but they took no joy in each other's company. Jennie was too scared to carry on a conversation. Used to her easygoing Sullivan family, Jennie had never before met anyone like Suze and she didn't know how to respond to her at first. Her mother-in-law had a way of undermining her self-confidence with sly remarks. Suze had a mean and dirty mouth when there was no one around to hear her but Jennie.
And to see her,
Jennie thought,
so pious and holy, testifying in church
.

Jennie didn't want to force a confrontation and hurt her beloved Tom. As her quick temper and saucy tongue were clamped down she became withdrawn and nervous. And she was too ashamed to tell Mam about the things her mother-in-law said about Catholics.

Back when they got married, Tom had encouraged Jennie to stay working at Plotsky's. The morning after their wedding night,
which Tom had enthusiastically consummated in the bedroom where he had slept all of his life, Jennie had come downstairs. Tom had left at dawn to go back across the River to the woods camps. It was barely eight o'clock and Jennie had to be to work at nine.

“Good morning, Mrs. Hillier.”

There was no answer from her mother-in-law, who looked like she'd been up for awhile, already dressed in her severe black dress and white apron. Jennie had reached for the kettle on the stove but Suze quickly brushed her aside without as much as an “excuse me,” picked up the kettle and, walking to the back door, dumped the entire contents over the step.

“Oh, I was hoping for a cup of tea before I went to work, if that's all right,” Jennie had stammered.

Suze had slammed the empty kettle down on the back of the stove. She'd gone to the cupboard and got out her stove blackening and her brush. “Well, if you wanted tea you should have gotten up at a sensible hour like a decent Christian instead of lolling about in bed until eight o'clock.

“I've been up since six,” she'd continued. “Got my breakfast eat and am ready to work now. This is my day to blacken me stove. The fire is died down now and I'm not building it up for the likes of you.” She'd waved the blackening in Jennie's face and motioned toward the door with the black brush. “So be off with you now!”

From then on, Jennie kept a pack of biscuits in her room to munch on in the mornings. She wasn't about to try and face Suze again in her kitchen.

At first, she'd tried going back to Suze's to make a sandwich for her lunch, but her mother-in-law quickly put an end to that. “If you thinks you can come traipsin' in here in the middle of the day, dirtying up my clean kitchen, wasting my firewood to boil the kettle, you can change your mind on that.” Jennie ended up walking up the track to Mam's place where she was always welcome.

When Mr. Albert and Tom were at home, Suze Hillier was all goodness, cooking their dinner every day. Suze tolerated Jennie being there during those times; otherwise Tom would be asking questions.

The only happiness she had was when Tom came home and they were in their bedroom and in bed. They made the bedsprings creak, but they were so in love they didn't care.

In the morning Suze would say under her breath, “You two are like rabbits. Kept me awake all night with the noise, you dirty Mick. Certainly I wouldn't expect much more of you, the way you were reared. Eleven children! He must've been at her day and night.”

But to Jennie and Tom's great disappointment, no matter how much loving they did, Jennie didn't become pregnant. She longed for a little baby to hold and cuddle and call her own, but every month, like clockwork, she would get the cramps in her belly and her flow would start. She came to believe that her monstrous lie, plus the fact that she had left the Catholic Church to marry a Protestant, was God's punishment on her.

Before long, to please her new husband and her new mother-inlaw, Jennie threw herself into the Pentecostal Church. She went to all the services and became saved. They were glad to have her – another convert. The handsome new minister, Pastor Damian Genge, said to her, “You're a Christian now.”