The Badger Riot (17 page)

“Pastor . . .” she said in her forthright way.

“Damian, my dear,” he murmured. “Call me Damian, please.

” She nodded. “Damian, many people are asking me if you and I are going to marry. I merely think of you as my friend. I am wondering how you think of me.”

“I think of you in the same way, of course,” he said. “It's too soon to tell if it would be more.”
How will I ever force myself to take this step?
he wondered to himself.

Soon it was all over town that the pastor and Virtue were an
item. Damian let the rumours continue, since it made him look good, although, so far, he had not so much as held her hand.

The year 1952 had been tumultuous for Jennie. She had nearly died from pneumonia, become estranged from her husband, went to St. John's to work, her twin siblings had become ill with polio and died, and now she was home in Badger caring for the family. It was a hard time for them all, but worse for Mam. She could not get herself past it. Her mother wouldn't eat, couldn't sleep, walked the floor or rocked in the rocking chair all night long. It became Jennie's turn to care for Mam as she had cared for Jennie. Pap was beside himself, grieving for his children so much that he didn't know how to go about comforting his wife.

Autumn set in. Days were shorter, and Mam seemed to fade as the light faded. She took to her bed early in November. The girls tried to tempt her to eat with bowls of custard and jelly. They would wash her face and braid her long hair, which had not been cut in her fifty-nine years in the world.

Nothing worked. When the sun dragged itself over the horizon on the first of December, Mam left the world behind.

The leather hinges on Mam's old brown trunk creaked as Jennie opened the cover. The sharp odour of mothballs stung her nostrils. This was where her mother kept what she called the “good” clothes for her family. There was the christening dress worn by Jennie, Phonse and their sisters, her father's good suit, the First Holy Communion dress and veil that all the girls had worn, and the white muslin dress in which her Mam had been married.

On top of the good clothes was her mother's prized and sacred possession, a personal burial shroud or “habit.” Made from five yards of broadcloth, it was dark brown in colour, and long enough
to cover the whole body, from neck to feet. Over the heart were the letters IHS embroidered by Mam's own hands.

Mam's people, from Stock Cove, Bonavista Bay, were of Irish descent, and good Catholics all. Carrying on an old tradition, the women of the community took great pride in making themselves habits to be worn only when they were dead and resting in their coffins.

Throughout the years, Bridey would occasionally show it to her daughters and she would quote a little rhyme:

I'll sew five yards of cloth,
To have and to keep,
I'll need it where I'm going to lie,
To warm me in my sleep.

The young girls, who thought that their Mam would go on living forever, didn't show much interest in either the shroud or the rhyme. But now the time had come for poor Mam to wear it and suddenly the rhyme and the habit took on a different meaning.

Her coffin was made by hand. Phonse was friends with the man who worked in the A.N.D. Company carpenter shop. He told Phonse to get the pine together and, yes, they would make her a coffin. Phonse told Jennie later that the carpenter did the oddest thing: he saved all the shavings that came off when they planed the sides and the cover. When the box was finished, he put them in the bottom. He told Phonse that was from the old ways, when people believed that if any stray shavings from a coffin were accidentally carried into anyone's home on their boots, someone else was bound to die soon after.

Jennie bought some nice white satin to line the box. Her sister sewed a lace pillow for Mam's head to rest on. The Catholic women of Badger washed her and dressed her in a long, snow-white night-dress. Pap himself lifted her in his arms and gently laid her in the pine box. Then the women put the habit on her, from front to back, tucking the open part in behind her body, and tied the hood under
her chin. One of her daughters threaded her prayer beads through her folded hands.

Pap's house had the usual front room or parlour, which wasn't used much. One thing that parlours were used for was to lay out the dead and that was where they put Mam's coffin.

So Jennie and her sisters readied the room for the wake. Phonse borrowed three benches on which to rest the coffin and got the kneeling pad from the priest. They put two candles at the head of the coffin and two at the foot. These would burn until poor Mam was taken to the church the next day. By the door of the parlour, where people could dip their fingers in it, Jennie put Mam's holy water font. It had belonged to her grandmother and had been brought all the way over from Ireland. Mam always kept holy water in the house and Jennie poured it into the font.

Straight-backed chairs were placed around the room for people to sit. Phonse scrounged up some rum and some moonshine, but people would bring their own flasks too. The sisters cooked a pot of moose soup and made tea buns. Friends and neighbours would also bring food. All was ready.

That night, the Catholic population of Badger and many Protestant friends came by to pay their final respects to Mam and to mourn with the Sullivan family. A couple of Pap's cousins came down from Buchans. They were put up for the night at Rod Anderson's house, as they were also relatives of his wife, Ruth.

Jennie was pleased to see Pastor Genge come by. With him was Albert Hillier, but without his wife, Suze. Mr. Albert shook hands with Pap and sat on a chair beside him. Watching them, Jennie thought once again of how Mam used to say that the two men, across the vast gulf of religious differences, had a kind of friendship.

Pastor Genge didn't stay long. Perhaps the smoking and drinking bothered him, Jennie thought as he said good night to her. Pap and Phonse, in the Irish tradition, loved to sit with friends and relatives and have a drink and a smoke.

After the pastor left, Jennie, busy with seeing people were
looked after, noticed that Mr. Albert had stayed. She saw him accept a glass of rum from Phonse. Jennie was glad he was there beside her father. It seemed right, somehow. She thought about the telegram that had arrived, among many others, during the day. It was from Tom. He had addressed it to Pap.

BUCHANS DECEMBER
2, 1952
MR. NED SULLIVAN BADGER, N.F.L.D

SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS STOP

THOMAS HILLIER

She had only given the telegram one glance and passed it back to Pap. Her tears were close to the surface and she hadn't wanted her father to see.
He never even mentioned me – his own wife. I'm sure now that he doesn't love me anymore.

Jennie pulled herself back to the present and to the task of caring for her Mam's mourners. She felt bad for thinking about her own marital problems when her poor father was trying to deal with his wife's death.

The Catholic visitors flicked a drop of holy water on their fingers and blessed themselves. Everyone, Catholic or Protestant, knelt by the coffin, looked at Mam's face, and said a prayer. Most everyone left a Mass card, a black-edged card stating that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass would be offered for the soul of Bridey Sullivan. But they didn't write Bridey. They wrote Bridget. Mam's name was Bridget Sullivan.

There was lots of food in the kitchen. It seemed that everyone had brought a covered dish of something.
People can be some good, you know,
Jennie thought. The men would sit and smoke and drink with Pap and Phonse, then drift out to the kitchen and have a bite to eat and a cup of tea. Then they would go back in the parlour to sit again. It was a long night, made bearable by the presence of friends.

Pap held up well during Mam's wake, seemingly relieved to see his poor wife resting so peacefully at last. He had shown Jennie the death certificate, signed by the doctor. It said “heart failure.” It should have read “broken heart” because Mam never got over the death of her twins. Jennie wondered if her spirit was joined with them now. Were the twins on hand to welcome Mam to the other side?
My Scared Heart of Jesus
, she thought,
it's all some big mystery
.

By two in the morning, most people had gone home except for family and close friends. Ralph was there, as was his mother and a sister. His other brothers and cousins had been in earlier, but had left as well.

Ralph could play wonderful music on the fiddle. All night he kept low-key background music going as people sat around the room, talking, drinking a drop of rum and smoking. Some of the tunes he played would break the heart of a grindstone. Many a tear was shed as he played
Nearer My God to Thee
. People associated that with the
Titanic
disaster, which was still fresh in people's minds after forty years. It was somehow appropriate for a wake as well.

The candles guttered low at the head and foot of the coffin. Conversation had pretty much run out. In the quiet of the night, Ralph pulled his chair close to Mam's coffin and, slowly and sweetly, played
A Mother's Love is a Blessing
. He played it for Jennie, Phonse and the girls, but he looked straight at Jennie as he played, the dim candlelight reflected in his dark brown eyes. The notes fell and lingered on the air in the shadowy smoky room where Jennie and her sisters, even Pap and Phonse, wept softly.

Mam was buried next to the twins. Her favourite flowers were lupins, with their tall purple spikes. Within two years, there were lupins growing on Mam's grave where none had ever been planted, the only grave in the cemetery that had them.
Things like that,
Jennie thought,
makes you believe in life after death.

Mr. Anderson insisted Richard use his first name and call him Rod. On the second morning of their visit, Rod said he had some work to do up at the camp and asked Richard if he would like to come along. Interested to see first-hand what life was like for men who cut trees to make paper, Richard readily agreed.

Soon after breakfast they bid farewell to the women, set off and walked down to the River. The large flat-bottomed scow was tied up, attached to a cable. On the same cable was a small boat with an outboard motor. Rod explained that the scow, often loaded with horses, tractors, equipment and supplies, was slow and ponderous. The little boat was there to give a hand to nudge the scow out into the eight-knot current. The small boat could also go across on its own, for quick trips across the River to Sandy. They both climbed aboard and Richard noted that Rod was very adept at using it, a skill most Badger men learned from boyhood.

Rod angled the boat slightly upriver and the power of the current whipped them across to the other side. The two men got out of the boat and climbed onto a small wharf and sent the boat back along the cable for the next person to come along. When Richard asked how they would get back again, Rod pointed to a large bell attached to a pole on the side of the dock. Richard thought the cable boat and scow setup was ingenious and commented so to the older man. Rod told him that some engineer had invented it back in 1910

A dusty red pickup truck was parked on the other side and they climbed aboard. Rod's camp was about twenty miles in on a narrow woods road. As the truck bounced along in the ruts, Richard looked out the window, his city eyes taking in the dense forest that stretched for miles and miles.

Finally, they pulled up to the Anderson camp in a clearing. Getting out of the truck, Richard looked at the low log building in front of him. He could see no one about and figured all the men were out working in the woods nearby. He followed Rod into the building and entered what appeared to be the office, known to the loggers as the forepeak. A table built into the wall served as a desk. It was littered with papers and tools, tin cans used as storage containers, and old enamel mugs with blackened bottoms. Rod walked over to the desk and started rifling through some of the papers. Richard looked around the room to see a small cot on the opposite wall where he supposed Rod slept when he came up to work.