The Badger Riot (11 page)

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.

The storm was fierce, and as she turned west on the railway track the wind blew directly into her face, threatening to take her breath away. Her hair was matted with snow and had frozen onto her head like a cap. Jennie kept in the front of her mind the picture of her mother-in-law's face when she realized that her precious fox stole was burning. The satisfaction of that was fuel enough to keep her from falling into a snowbank and freezing to death.

Finally, she reached her parents' house and fell against the door. Pap opened it and Jennie collapsed into his arms. Mam and her sisters came rushing to her aid. They stripped off her frozen clothes, sat her by the stove so her hair could thaw out, and got her some hot tea. Her legs showed white spots of frostbite and her sister had to massage them to bring back the blood flow.

Tom was up the track to the Sullivan house at first light. “I would've been here before,” he said to Mam, “but my mother had pains in her chest and I went to get the doctor for her.” He was beside himself with shame from the realization that he had acted in a dishonourable way toward his wife.
And so he should be,
was Mam's opinion.

She gave him short shrift. “Jennie's too ill to be bothered right now, Tom. Go on back home and look after your mother. And think about this: a husband's first duty is to his wife, not his mother.” And with that she slammed the door in Tom's face.

Jennie developed pneumonia and burned with fever for two days. In her delirium, Suze was chasing her, and right along at her heels ran the stole, a live fox again and not some dead thing with glass eyes. She cried out and kept running, but tripped over the fox and fell.

It was several days before Jennie could manage to keep her eyes
open long enough to speak and to drink some broth. Mam nursed her tenderly, glad to have her daughter home again instead of in there on Halls Bay Road with the Protestant heathens.

Three weeks went by before Mam would let Tom in to see Jennie. He'd come every day, knocking on the door, cap in hand, inquiring about his wife, but Mam was firm. “She's still very sick, Tom. If there's any change for the worse, someone will come and let you know.”

Eventually, Jennie was able to sit up in bed with the pillows propped behind her. Mam told her that Tom had been wanting to see her. “'Tis time to make a decision, Jennie. I knows you never want to live in with that old Suze again, but you and Tom have a marriage together. Tell me when you're well enough to speak to him.”

Jennie fretted about her hair, lanky and sweaty from the fever. Her sister washed it for her, tied it back with a green ribbon, and produced a frilly bed jacket to cover her nightdress. Bed jackets were considered the proper bedwear for accepting visitors.

When Tom came again, Jennie told Mam to let him in.

His big form stood by the bed. No one offered him a chair as he shifted from foot to foot. “Ah . . . ahem,” he cleared his throat. “Jennie, I don't know what to say. I am so sorry, so sorry I couldn't come after you that night. My mother had chest pains. You knows she has a bad heart. I had to walk to the doctor's house and get the doctor. I figured you'd be all right to get home, you being a big strong woman and all. I never thought you'd get so sick. I'm sorry.”

Jennie listened to what he had to say. She could see that Tom had not changed in regard to his mother and waited for him to say that he didn't believe his mother's lies.

But he said nothing.

Jennie looked at him, the man she had married for better or for worse. Her eyes filled with tears.

“I still love you, Tom, and I guess I always will. Your mother treated me badly from the first day I went to live with her.” He started to speak, but Jennie held up her hand. “Let me finish,
please. I know you don't believe me, but hear this. I'll only come back to you on one condition: when you get a home for us away from your mother.” She closed her eyes. “Please go now.”

Whenever he came to see her after that, she would get Mam to say she was in bed, resting. At first he would knock on the door a couple of times a day. Then, in a week or so, it was only once every few days. Then he stopped coming altogether.

Father Kevin Murphy was parish priest of the Roman Catholic Church of Badger. His parishioners made up half the population of the town. The rest was made up of Protestant religions – United, Anglican and Pentecostal.

Father Murphy considered that he ran a pretty tight ship. The school was well-built and clean. The convent housed eight black-robed nuns who answered to him. He liked to think of his church as a jewel. It was small, not like the big one down in Grand Falls. The altar and the pews were of warm, hand-carved wood and seemed to glow from inside with their own light. When the sunlight came through the stained glass windows, it was as if God was saying, “This is a beautiful thing.”

He remembered coming to Badger in 1952. It was his first posting in Newfoundland. He had arrived in St. John's from Ireland the year before and had applied for a parish with the archdiocese. Father Murphy never knew what chips fell into place for him to be sent to Badger, but he was a firm believer in the Hand of God guiding him wherever he was supposed to go.

His first task was to set up church, school and convent, all in one area. The Church had just purchased a block of land on Church Road, prime real estate for Badger. It included a lovely big house that had belonged to one of Badger's first merchants. It made a perfect convent for the Presentation Sisters.

The church, with the small school attached to it, had originally
stood across the railway tracks on the other side of Badger. When the church officials decided to bring it across to the new property, they left the little school where it was, as they were building a larger one on the new site. The little school eventually became Alf Elliott's telegraph office.

Every able-bodied man in the town helped, and religion, always a hot subject, was put aside. The men put big logs under the church and poled them along. The church moved, inch by inch, foot by foot. When they came to the railway tracks, the Canadian National Railway helped by stopping train traffic and taking up a stretch of the rails in the path of the rolling church. Linesmen had to see to the overhead wires on the poles that ran along by the track. When the church passed over, the sectionmen worked frantically to replace the length of rails for train traffic to continue.

Once across the tracks, more logs had to be put across the railway's big drainage ditch. Then, to get the church to its new location, it had to come across Herb Day's garden to Church Road. Down came the back fence and the front fence. The church was eased through backward, so that when it arrived across the road at its final resting place, the entrance would be facing the road.