The Badger Riot

by J. A. Ricketts

  “Aw, Mam, she’s me sister. I wudn’t going to lug her all the way up the track. Besides, she’s too heavy for me, sure.”

  Tom said, “It was no trouble at all for me, missus.”

  Mam looked at him and heaved a sigh. “No, I don’t suppose it was.”

  Throughout the conversation Jennie kept her eyes closed. She knew it was because Tom was Protestant that Mam was behaving like this. If Ralph or Vern had helped her home, she’d be getting a glass of syrup and a bit of cake for them. She didn’t offer Tom anything. And that wasn’t like her mother.

  “I’d better go,” Tom said. “Take care of yourself, Jennie.”

  She opened her eyes. The room was spinning a bit. “Tom, thanks for helping me.”

  He met her eyes and they looked at each other for a long moment. He smiled, and then gave her a wink and bounded out over the front step. Despite her pounding head, Jennie couldn’t help but smile too. She knew there’d be other meetings – without Mam.

  4

  Rod Anderson received a letter from his Uncle Aaron advising him to be ready to join him on the gulf ferry, the SS Caribou, on the first of July. He showed the letter to his father.

  “So Rod, my son, I’m not going to ask you if you wants to go, ’cause I know you do. All I’m going to say is you’re all I have left now. The woods contractor job is a good one and you could get used to it, you know.”

  Rod felt his heart sink at his father’s words. Ever since Melvin had died, he’d known that this day was coming. He’d just refused to believe it. Who could blame his poor father? How could he leave him? The old man was looking at him, beseeching.

  “Yes Pop, I know you need me. I’ll stay with you.”

  That night he dreamed again. He was at the seashore; the tide was going out, and out, and out. As it did, tall spruce trees grew up where the sand was. When he awoke, Rod lay still, thinking bitterly that if there was ever a dream that was significant, this was it. He could see the pattern of the days and years to come. He was dreading it. Hating it.

  That summer Rod started in the woods with his father. He had written his grade eleven exams, passed tolerably well, and his father thought it was good enough for him to manage the contracting business. It was more than he’d started with, he said. Rod was now a man, seventeen years old, and working as a full-time logger.

  As they worked side by side, Rod watched his father closely to see where he cut corners to increase his profits. The only way Rod could make sense of it was that a woods contractor was like being a private businessman in that you had some control over your expenses. But that wasn’t quite right either, because in another way, the A.N.D. Company was in command of the operation to the extent that sometimes the contractor felt as though he was no different from the loggers.

  The Anderson camp, considered a prime spot, was closest to Badger: across the River and in through the forest on a woods road about twenty-five miles up on Sandy Lake. The camp held a crew of forty men who were fed whatever was available in foodstuffs, by a cook and cookee. White navy beans were the staple food: boiled, baked or fried. This, coupled with white bread, strong tea and molasses buns, day after day, breakfast and supper, was far from being nourishing, even though it filled their bellies. All the camps were the same. The Company kept everything on a tight rein.

  The bunks were infested with bedbugs and lice. The only heat came from a converted oil drum. The men had only cold water to wash in. Most never washed at all. It was 1933 and camp life had not come forward in the almost thirty years that the A.N.D. Company had been harvesting pulpwood.

  Eli and Rod Anderson had never seen anything different. Woods camps were expected to provide only the barest essentials. The men didn’t come in to them to work as loggers expecting luxuries and fine accommodations. They never considered change, and for sure the Company didn’t.

  One evening, in early summer, Rod took his fishing pole and went over to Drum’s Pond, not far from the camp. Trout were a good supplement to the beans diet, but it was hard to get free time to sit by a pond and fish. He cast out his line and sat quietly gazing at the still pond water, so different from the ocean that was always alive with motion. Sometimes Rod even envied the River, making its way unhindered to the sea, while he was forever stuck inland among the trees. Such foolish thoughts only depressed him, but sometimes he got so caught up in his own private misery and anger that he couldn’t help himself.Rod glanced to his left and noticed a man sitting no more than three feet away. It was Peter Drum. Rod had not heard him come up, but that didn’t surprise him. He knew the Indians moved through the forest like shadows. He had grown up knowing the Mi’kmaq people. Many of them were trappers and guides; some were loggers.

  The old man took out his pipe and filled it with tobacco, all the while watching Rod.

  “Good evening, sir,” Rod ventured.

  Peter struck a match, applied the flame to the tobacco, and puffed until the pipe was lit. “Do you smoke, young man?”

  “Uh . . . no, not very much.”

  “Would you like to draw on my pipe? I would be honoured if you would.”

  Rod was embarrassed. What could he say without sounding rude? He took the pipe and drew in tentatively, expecting it to be horrible tasting.

  It wasn’t. Rod felt pleasantly surprised. He took another draw, deeper into his lungs. Time slowed down. What does the old Indian have in this tobacco? He looked at Peter Drum through the haze of smoke. The old man was smiling.

  “Sleep now, young man. I am giving you a spirit guide. When you awaken, it will be the first sound you hear. Let it guide you and soothe you through rough times.”

  It seemed to Rod that it was Melvin sitting on the bank next to him. Melvin, whole and well. “Rod,” he said, “you are thinking that being in the logging camp is the worst thing that could’ve happened to you. But it’s not. In a few years the ship that you would’ve gone to sea on, the Caribou, will sink. You’re not meant to go that way, brother. Do your best with father. I’ll be around. You’ll know when you hear this sound.”

  Rod came awake suddenly. He was alone on the bank. His fishing pole had fallen over the bank into the water. There was no Indian and no pipe. The lonely, echoing call of a loon came over the pond, sounding near and far away at the same time, as loon trills do.

  Maybe the loon was his spirit guide, sent to him by his brother. When he was younger, he’d heard the Mi’kmaq boys talk about spirit guides in animal form. They said it could be the bear, otter, fox, crow, hawk or other beings in the animal world. Who was to say that the loon wasn’t there for Rod?

  He certainly would never tell anyone about this experience. Every white person he knew would laugh at him and he’d never live it down. Serious sober Rod believing in such things? Never.

  Rod kept the incident close to his heart. Whether it was all a dream or not, it comforted him, just as the Indian man had said it would. Over the years, when the going got rough, when Rod thought he couldn’t stand another minute of life in the woods camp, he would slip off alone, to a pond or to the River and listen for the call of the loon. Most times it would come, sounding lonely and lost. But Rod privately considered it a connection with his long-dead brother and it helped him continue on with his life.

  When he turned twenty, four years after Melvin died, Rod got married. Eli had been encouraging him to get a woman for the past three years. Rod’s mother had lived only a year past Melvin. One day, in high summer, she collapsed while pinning clothes on the clothesline. The doctor said that a blood vessel had burst in her brain.

  Rod and his father lived on alone, spending more and more time in the camp, and the house took on a neglected air. “Rod, me son,” said his father one day as they sat down to burnt meat and salty potatoes, “I thinks ’tis time you found a woman. Ain’t you got your eye on anyone around here?”

  Rod looked at his father. The old man was past fifty now and the hard life he had lived was catching up with him. He was constantly bothered with gou
t, arthritis and digestive problems. He kept saying he’d retire soon, any day now, but, season after season he went into the woods again.

  Rod still carried deep resentment inside him: against the old man; against Melvin his deceased brother; against every tree in the forest; against the River. He was a bitter young man whose love for the ocean had been cut off too early in his life. To his credit, he worked steadily and never once spoke out his feelings to his father. But buried emotions have a way of coming to the surface, and Rod was known among his peers as being somewhat moody and morose.

  “Yes, Pop, I dare say I do need a woman. I haven’t found one that suits me, though. There’s no one hereabouts and I never go anywhere to meet anyone else.”

  “I’m sorry that I keeps you so close to me, my son. I knows you should mix with your friends more. Bill Hatcher and them goes to the hockey games down to Grand Falls and up to Buchans. Why don’t you go along with them sometime?”

  So Rod did. He went up to Buchans with a group of Badger boys. They caught the train to Millertown Junction and then took the branch into Buchans. The Grand Falls team was on the same train. It was mid-winter, but snow and cold didn’t bother hot-blooded young men. As the rum bottle was passed around, it didn’t take long for Rod to enter into the spirit of the trip and have a good time.

  That was the night he met Ruth Ricketts. It was the foolishest thing, but fate can be like that.

  The Buchans hockey rink was a converted ore shed with balconies built around for people to sit on. All of Buchans seemed to be there, plus many Grand Falls, Millertown and Badger fans. That night Buchans beat Grand Falls. The Buchans fans went wild. The Badger boys were naturally rooting for Buchans as there was always a certain animosity between Grand Falls and Badger. Many Badger people thought that the mill workers of Grand Falls considered themselves a cut above the loggers of Badger who cut the pulpwood that gave the mill workers their jobs.

  After the game, two young men got into a scrap. Rod never found out what it was about, but next thing he knew, guys were punching guys. Women were squealing. The Badger boys were in the thick of it, loving a good fight. Rod was holding his own until someone hit him in the head and knocked him down. Other bodies piled up on top of him and Rod was almost squashed.

  Just then, the police came. They broke up the fight and sent everyone in different directions. A Buchans fellow helped Rod up on his feet. “Jeez, b’y, you don’t look too good!”

  Rod had a cut over his eye and blood was running down the side of his face.

  “Come on over with me. I’ll get someone to put a bandage on it for you.” He headed off out on the road with Rod in tow. Bill Hatcher and the Badger boys were nowhere to be seen.

  “So, you’re from Badger are you? Do you know the Sullivans? Yeah? Well, Ned Sullivan is my father’s cousin. I’m Will Ricketts.”

  “Oh, pleased to meet you,” Rod answered. “I’m Rod Anderson.”

  Will took Rod home and introduced him to his family. “Well folks, look what I found under a heap of Grand Falls fighters – a feller from Badger. Rod, meet my Mom, Dad and my sister Ruth.”

  During the year of 1934, the trains between Buchans and Badger became old friends to Rod and Ruth as they courted. Being male and thus having more freedom, Rod could grab a freight train whenever he chose and get dropped off at Millertown Junction, where he was guaranteed to hitch a ride to Buchans. But Ruth, being female, could only come down to Badger on the passenger train. While there, she would stay with the Sullivans, who promised to see that she was properly chaperoned.

  Eli Anderson was somewhat bothered that the Ricketts were Catholics, but Rod, hot-to-trot for this young woman, didn’t let religion get in his way. Ruth, in love and starry-eyed for Rod, didn’t care either. Her parents said that as long as she got married in her own church they would allow the marriage.

  They were married in 1935 at the Catholic Church in Buchans. Bill Hatcher was Rod’s best man. They all trundled up on the train: Eli, a couple of his contractor friends and their wives, the Sullivans and the Elliotts. Rod had invited the Drum family with their accordions, guitars and fiddles. The Crawfords came along as well. They were originally from Buchans Junction, and dropped off their son, six-year-old Vern, to stay the night with relatives.

  The newlyweds settled down in the old Anderson house that soon took on a brighter air as Ruth began to set the stamp of her laughing, cheerful personality on it. Her father’s house in Buchans had a proper bathroom, so Rod installed one for her, on the ground floor off the kitchen where the old pantry used to be.

  Ruth cared for Eli as if he were her own father. The old man was a bit gruff with her at first, but you couldn’t stay gruff around Ruth for long and, after a couple of months, he warmed to her good cooking, her cleanliness and her comforting ways. This was probably due in large part to her successful treating of his gout. In autumn, Ruth would pick gallons of wild cherries that grew in profusion along the banks of the Little Red Indian River. These she would steep, strain through cheesecloth, and bottle. Eli drank the result three times a day all through the winter and spring. When Rod asked her how she’d come upon that cure, she said that she’d gone to Annie Drum for advice. How come Pop and me never thought of that? Rod wondered.

  5

  It took a few days for the goose egg on Jennie Sullivan’s head to disappear and then she was out and about once more, looking for any excuse to meet up with Tom. It was easy to find him in the small town. She would often walk down to the chip stand or to Coleman’s Restaurant, and if he wasn’t in either of those places she would find him over by the town hall. There were always friends about, and she could usually find some reason to stand close to him.

  “How you feeling Jennie?” he asked when she joined them that first evening.

  “Oh don’t you worry about me, Tom Hillier,” Jennie laughed up at him. “Sure it was only a little ball and I am made of sterner stuff than that!”

  Ralph and Vern were standing nearby and Ralph knew that Jennie was right: it would take more than a ball to hurt his Amazon Beothuk Woman. All the same, he wasn’t too sure about the way Jennie was looking up at Tom. Maybe a lot more had come of that accident than he wished.

  Vern knew right away that it was a sure thing between Jennie and Tom, especially with them bantering back and forth all the time. Jennie loved to tease Tom and, when she flirted, her quick tongue and saucy manner were at their best. Tom danced around her like a young rooster until both Vern and Ralph were fair sick of them.

  Jennie was dying for Tom to ask her to go for a walk down by the River in the dark of a summer evening as other couples did. But he didn’t. Religion again, she supposed.

  That fall, they returned to school for their last year. Jennie, Ralph and Vern went back with the nuns while Tom attended the amalgamated school. Although his school was only up the road, it was a sad fact for Jennie that the two religions kept all their activities apart.

  In the spring of 1946, before he finished his grade eleven, Tom up and quit school. When Jennie heard this, she just had to talk to him. That Friday night was cold and raining and she figured the best place to find him would be up to Coleman’s Restaurant. Sure enough, when she went in he was sitting at one of the tables eating chips with a few of the boys.

  With Jennie Sullivan there were no back doors. She marched up to the table and tapped Tom on the shoulder. “I heard from Phonse that you up and quit school. What’d you do a thing like that for, Tom? Sure, you know how important education is, especially in this day and age.”

  Tom stood up and took her by the arm and walked away from the table.

  “Yes, Jennie, and it’s nice to see you again too.” He smiled into her eyes and she realized how abrupt she’d been. “Listen, I’ve learned all I need to know,” he continued, “and besides, them seats are just too small for me. I asked the principal if I could use a table and chair, but he asked me if I thought I was the teacher, because students have to sit in desks and only teachers got
tables and chairs.” Tom laughed. “Don’t worry about me. I am going to work and start making some money. I already got meself a job!”

  “What do you mean, a job? Are you going away?” Jennie felt her stomach knot and Tom saw her eyes open wide with alarm.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Tom repeated. “I got a job up in the woods camps. Rod Anderson has hired me on. He says I have to start as a helper to the cook, but if I work hard – and I will – he’ll promote me to cutter. I’m leaving first thing tomorrow morning to go across the River.”

  Jennie told him she wished he’d stay in school, but, before she had a chance to say much more, Ralph and Vern came in. Tom disappeared out the door with his Protestant buddies. Jennie sighed as she sat in a booth with Ralph and Vern, who were both talking excitedly about all the men that were being hired. It wasn’t long before she excused herself, saying she had to be getting home. In truth, she was feeling more than a little depressed. As she dashed home in the rain she realized she wasn’t as upset over Tom’s quitting school as she was over the fact that she wouldn’t see him as often. He was stepping from the world of a schoolboy into a man’s world up in the lumberwoods, away from Badger.

  Next week at school there were more than a few empty desks as she looked around the room. This was a familiar scene in Badger. Every spring, when the camps started hiring, a lot of the boys got itchy feet. Among the empty seats were Ralph’s and Vern’s. That evening at home, Phonse was onto Mam and Pap to let him go too, but Pap told him to wait for another year or so and he’d get him a job on the drive. Phonse was somewhat pacified, especially when Pap started talking about how the men who were trained to be river drivers were a notch above the cutters. They spent the whole evening, and many after that, talking about how Phonse would start off as an oarsman. Pap emphasized all the time the importance of working hard, just as he had done himself. Especially in the beginning, when you wanted to get promoted.