I think I hear someone say “Dickie.” I whip around, scanning the faces of the black coats. Richard can’t be here, can he? I’d heard Becky Abernathy, Richard’s adopted mother, call him Dickie once.Audrey told me later that it was a sore point with Richard. He hated it, but some of his fellow police officers who had grown up with him still called him Dickie.
With those black fur caps, the policemen all look alike. I don’t see anyone I recognize. There isn’t a chance that Richard would be picked to come out here. If he were, wouldn’t he have come by to see me? Or wouldn’t Ruth or Audrey have let me know? However, Richard must know these men. He works with them; likely he’s even friends with them. But I am not comfortable with approaching the uninviting group and asking.
My stomach growls and I remember that I haven’t had anything since the Jam Jams this morning. But hunger or no hunger, I’m too curious to see what’s going on. Besides, there is no point in going into the empty house. There’s no wife waiting for me, no fire going, no supper cooked.
I too head up the road until I see the intersection with the Buchans Highway. There’s a mass of loggers assembled, surrounding a taxi. They seem to be giving it a hard time, banging on the window and shaking the car. I look up on the snowbanks that are now lined with the people who have just passed by me. There’s the young Elliott girl with her friends, and over on the other side I spy the young boys scampering around the legs of the adults.
I’m standing well back, almost into the alders, on the right-hand side of the road leading to the intersection. Suddenly, the police fall into formation. I never heard anyone give the order, but right away they start their march up the road. They are quite the sight as they go past, their bodies rigid in their march, with their nightsticks on their right shoulders, all swinging their left arms in unison.
The unit goes past the Pentecostal Church and out of sight. They must have turned about, probably up by the sawdust dump, because next I see them marching back down. I don’t see what happens next, but suddenly the police are among the loggers and the loggers are among the police. Sticks are swinging on both sides. I hear screams from the women on the banks and children crying out.
Oh my Christ! Police marching the streets of Badger! If someone had told me two months ago that the loggers’ strike would come down to this, I would’ve said they were nuts. I start forward to head toward the violent scene, but then realize I have no business there. I’m a Company man. I tell myself that this is not my concern. But it is. This is my town, and my town has been invaded. The Badger loggers are my friends. Some of them work for me. I stand there, frozen, torn. I don’t know what to do.
“Ralph,” Bill Hatcher says to me as we walk up Church Road with our fellow strikers. “The men think that the A.N.D. Company is more determined than ever to carry on. We’re nothing to them, you know. Nothing. We’ve been on strike and suffering the cold picket lines all winter and they don’t give a damn. Do they?”
We’ve left Mrs. Noel’s house and are heading up to the road that goes to Millertown. Tom Hillier is up front in the lead, while I’m farther back, walking along with Bill.
I have only one response for Bill and it’s cold comfort for him. “No, Bill, they don’t give a damn. And they never did.” I have a foreboding on me that this evening will be our last stand. Since Smallwood decertified us, do we have a chance of winning anything at all?
Earlier this afternoon, about a dozen of us went down to the centre of town by the railway tracks and turned back a busload of scabs. The bus driver didn’t even attempt to push through. I figured he cared too much for his bus. Not that I blame him. Bus and taxi drivers always retreat. No one is foolhardy enough to try to get through a picket line. They don’t want to see their vehicles ruined and their livelihood gone.
When the bus was gone on back to Grand Falls, we went to Mrs. Noel’s house. The men were restless and keyed up. They were talking about getting back at Smallwood because he went and did them dirty. They felt the need to take out their frustrations on someone, something. I tried my best to calm them down, but Bill Hatcher and Tom Hillier arrived with word that more scabs would be attempting to get through to the Millertown camps.
The town is maggoty with police. Badger is a powder keg about to blow. The men are heading to the intersection of the road to Millertown, opposite the Pentecostal Church. Last night, Tom told me that he and a group of men went and cut some birch sticks and stowed them in the Church porch. “We’re going to need some protection against the police and their nightsticks,” he said. “I hope to God it doesn’t come to that, Ralph, but a man has to be prepared to do what he has to do.” This strike has changed mild-mannered, law-abiding Tom Hillier so that he seems to be another person entirely.
By the time we arrive, townspeople have gathered and the high snowbanks are already starting to crowd with women and children. I don’t know how word gets around so fast. The wives of the Badger loggers – the women of the picket lines – are there as well. I look for Jennie and spy her standing high on a snowbank. Her red hair, poking out of her bandana, is bright against the snow. I catch her eye for a moment and she gives me a brave smile. Our men amass in the open area where the street turns onto the highway to Millertown. By sheer numbers we effectively bar the road.
I look for Tom among the men. I push my way through to him. “Come on, Tom,” I say. “Fellas like you and me need to be up front.”
It’s close to four o’clock. We wait for the scabs we know are coming.
Not much happens for half an hour or so. We see police gathering farther down the road, but no one heeds them. They’ve been around for days, not interfering, merely watching. I think how people have become immune to the police presence in so short a time.
The townspeople drift up and down the street: women, many walking arm in arm, identical-looking with bandanas on their heads; townsmen, serious and intent as they avoid the eyes of police and logger friends alike. Young boys run through the gardens. Young girls squeal when someone pushes them off the snowbanks. The only ones standing tense are the loggers.
Around half past four I spy a vehicle making its way up through the crowd. The police, farther down the street, are clearing a path for it. I can see a taxi sign on top of the car. Are the police nuts? Where do they expect a taxi to go at this hour of the evening? To Millertown? Do they expect us to step aside?
Next to me, Tom sucks in his breath, and for the first time in my life, I hear him swear. “Well, I’ll be goddamned! It’s that fucking Vern Crawford’s taxi and he got a load of scabs aboard too.” Tom raises his stick over his head and shouts, “Get ready boys, he’s coming through!”
I can’t believe my eyes! Sure enough, there is Vern’s beige Chrysler heading right for us. Vern is either the bravest son of a bitch alive or else the biggest fool on two legs, coming up here to face this crowd this evening. From the men behind me I feel anger rise to match my own. I grip the birch billet and get ready.
I’m standing on a snowbank with other strikers’ wives. I look down and see my husband, Tom, and Ralph standing side by side out in front of the rest of the men. It’s the first I’ve seen of Tom since early this morning.
He left our house around eight o’clock. I’d cleaned up the dishes and then mixed up my bread dough. Standing in the kitchen, I punched the dough extra hard. I’d been expecting my period this morning, but there’s still no show. Dare I hope, after all these years, that I’m pregnant? I cursed myself a fool. I felt like a bloated whale as I pounded the dough. Foolish, foolish, foolish. I tried instead to think about Tom, who loves homemade bread. He likes it with a cup of tea, and I pictured him slathering up a slice with butter and molasses later this afternoon when he got home.
While waiting for the bread to rise, I made up the bed and swept the floors. It was a nice mild day outside and I would’ve loved to open a few windows and air the place out, but then I thought of Mam always protecting her bread from drafts. No, it would just have to stay a bit stuffy
in the house today, and I added another couple of junks of wood to the stove.
Around one o’clock the bread was out of the oven and the buttered loaves were cooling on the table. I got ready to go up the road to see what was going on, when a knock came to the door. It was Bill Hatcher’s wife, Flora. I invited her in.
“No thanks, no time, Jennie. Come on, all the women are going up to the road. There’s a lot going on today. Where have ya been all day?”
“I wasn’t feeling too well; that time of the month, you know. Besides, I had to make some bread and clean up around the house. Strike or no strike, we still got women’s work to do,” I grumbled at her.
“Well come on, get on your coat, we needs you, Jennie.”
“Just let me cover up my bread and grab my bandana.”
As we trudged out Halls Bay Road, Flora told me about how the men had turned back a bus in the centre of town earlier. “Bill thinks there’s something gonna blow. He said that the strikers have had enough of this shittin’ around. They’re expecting more scabs through, and all the men are going up by the Pentecostal Church. We figure we’ll turn out in force and show the A.N.D. Company once and for all that we are not putting up with this.”
So here I stand a little while later. Looks like almost all the town is here this evening. The snowbanks are high and there are women and children everywhere. I think that little children shouldn’t be here. Supposing something happens. Little children . . . I wonder about whether I’ll start my period.
I hear Tom shout, “Get ready, boys!” and look down the road. Oh oh, too late now, here comes a taxi, full of scabs for sure. It’s Vern Crawford’s taxi! I can’t believe it. The man must be off his head! Everyone starts shouting all at once.
“Get the hell off the road, Vern,” I shout. He has the windows rolled up, but I can see by the look on his face that he’s seen and heard me. I can see him hunched over the steering wheel of the car and, by golly, he looks scared. There are three men in with him and they look like they’re about to die. But does that stop Vern? No siree! He keeps inching along, bit by bit, still hoping to break through. What a nerve!
Tom and some of his bigger buddies grab the taxi by the under-carriage, pick it up, turn it around, and let it thunk back down on the frozen road.
Well, what a bang! Vern’s pinched little face is as white as a sheet. And Ralph looks some angry with him. The men are hitting the bonnet with their sticks. Someone cracks the windshield. Oh God, Vern’s face is priceless to behold! Serves him right.
Someone shouts, “The police are coming!” I turn around and there they are, a long line of black-coated Constabulary marching up the road.
27
“Help me up, Madeline.” I grab her coat sleeve. It’s brown, with brown fur on the collar. The air is damp and her coat feels damp.
“Amanda,” she says, as she assists me up the high snowbank. “What were you thinking not to put on your slacks?”
When I’d gone home after school let out, I was in such a hurry to get back outside that I had forgotten to change from my skirt into my snow pants. As I stand there with Madeline and students from my school, I can feel the cold on my legs. My fur-tops are filled with snow and I dig it out as best I can.
I look around at the scene, trying to spot my brothers. There are so many youngsters racing around that it’s hard to pick out who is who. The loggers are gathered at the intersection, maybe a couple of hundred of them. Almost all the people of the town are here, up on the snowbanks with me. When Madeline and I were coming up the road, we passed a group of policemen. They’ve been around for days. They’ve pretty much ignored us and this evening was no different.
The men have stretched out their line now, and the road going up to Buchans and Millertown is blocked. The strikers are waving hockey sticks, baseball bats and regular sticks. They’re shouting and swearing. Madeline’s Aunt Jennie and the other women who have helped out on the picket lines this winter are there too, yelling to the men to stand firm.
Now I see a taxi that has somehow driven up the road among the people. The strikers are banging on it with their sticks. Oh the noise! There’s Madeline’s Dad; he’s right there too, banging on the windshield. Oh my God! The men have grabbed the taxi and lifted it in the air! How could they lift a car? They have turned it around! Madeline and I hold onto each other. The shock of what we are seeing goes through us and I can feel her trembling. The younger kids are crying. I can see my brothers now, farther up the snow-bank. Like the other boys, they’ve been pretending they’re strikers too.
As I stand there with the other women, my eye catches sight of a little child falling off the bank of snow. She lands under the feet of a running striker. The man is so intent on joining the crowd of men who are blocking the road that he doesn’t even see her.
I hear her cry of terror. I spring forward and grab the little girl. It’s Vern’s daughter, I realize now. What cruel irony, I think. She must be trying to catch her daddy. The poor little thing is crying.
“Jennie,” yells one of the women. “Come back up this way. Get ready. The police are coming.”
I pick up the little girl’s green mitten and give it to her, wishing I had something to give her to wipe away her tears, but I have nothing. I turn to hail Vern, but I see his car has slipped off down the back road and away from the scene. I can see my niece, Madeline, up on the bank. With her is Amanda Elliott. I hoist little Melanie Crawford up to them. “Keep her with you! Don’t let her go!” I shout to them.
I sprint back to the women. The police are almost abreast of us. I look at the strikers; my eyes search for Tom. He’s ready, him and Ralph. They’ve formed a line across the road. Most of them are armed with sticks of various kinds. “Stand firm, men,” shouts a logger.
The bystanders – children and all – are silent. We are silent too. This is it; this is what’s been in the pit of my stomach for a month. It is as if the air holds its breath. Onward the police march, hup, hup, hup.
I wipe the moisture of my breath from the inside of the church windowpane. My hand is shaking. Oh Lord God, they’re right below the window. Maybe I should run back to my house behind the church and bar the door. But I can’t move.
Jennie Hillier looks up and sees me peering out. She holds up her hand to me. I can see her lips moving. “It’s the pastor,” she is saying. Others have seen me too. I want to draw back but I cannot. I feel riveted to the glass.
The perfect line of black fur caps marches past the church and goes farther up the road. The strikers are standing in their own line, watching the police pass by not five feet away. No one moves. Not the men. Not the people on the snowbank.
As I watch, the police unit turns around and comes back down. It’s abreast of the loggers now. Everything is dead quiet. An officer shouts: “Right wheel!” The constables turn right and face the strikers. Even from my God’s-eye view, high above the crowd in the church window, I can feel how tense they are – tightly coiled like a spring.
Someone, deep in the crowd, throws something. I can’t see what it is, but I see it glance off the shoulder of a policeman, who whips around. His nightstick connects with the arm of a striker, who hits back.
And that is all it takes to start a riot.
The police wade into the crowd, raining down blows left and right. I am horrified. Merciful Lord, those men are no match for trained police. They’ll beat the daylights out of them. I am so terrified that I forget to pray. My hands grip fistfuls of my hair in anguish – hair which never has a strand out of place. I rub my face and realize I am crying, crying for the cruel, brutal injustice being meted out below.
Jennie, no! Stop! Of course she can’t hear me as she jumps from the snowbank and onto the back of a policeman who’s grappling with her husband. All three go down together, swallowed up in the legs and bodies around them.
In slow motion it seems, below – slightly to the right and a little apart from the main body of the fighting – I see a striker and a cop stru
ggling against each other. A stick is raised; the policeman ducks, but the vicious blow connects with the left side of his skull.
Even through the window, I can hear the crack. Lord, oh Lord, in my whole lifetime I never expected to hear a human skull break open. The crowd has heard the peculiar broken-flowerpot kind of sound too. Everything stops and the crowd parts. There, in the snow, lies a police officer. Blood pools around his head and seeps into the snow, making a pillow of red.
God’s voice, inside my head, galvanizes me into action. It’s as if my whole life has been building for this moment. I am a man of God, and God is telling me to run. I race up through the church, out through the side door, and into the parsonage. I grab some towels and, with God’s voice still upon me and the wings of angels on my feet, I tear around the end of the church and onto the road.
“Look, Madeline, the Mounties are coming. No, not Mounties. The Constabulary!”
“Should we go, Amanda? No, we can’t go.” Madeline’s voice is high-pitched as though she’s almost crying. “We can’t go down on the road. The police are coming up it. If we go down the other side of the snowbank and get inside that fence, we’ll get soaked. There’s water under the snow.” We both know, from living in Badger all our lives, that the River has a way of creeping slowly in under the snow at this time of the year.
“Wow, look at those police, Madeline. Those heavy long, coats! Must be hard to march in them.” I’m still clutching her damp coat sleeve.
The policemen are staring straight ahead as they march, three abreast, up the road. Every one of them has a nightstick on his shoulder. Black fur caps. They are some grim. This is serious. Something is going to happen. The crowd is silent. The air crackles with tension.
The taxi has gone down a side road toward the River. The men seem to have forgotten it as they turn to cope with a bigger problem. They’re watching the threatening line of police coming toward them, three abreast. The strikers stand aside and the formation marches on up the road, past the church, toward Mrs. Sharpe’s house on the left. As they pass, the men mutter among themselves, not sure which way to turn. I think they’re relying on the ringleaders out in front to show them what to do.
The Badger Riot Page 22
