The Badger Riot Read Online Free PDF Page B

can’t fight a girl? No good, Vernie. Go home to mommy.”
    As if adding an exclamation point, Walt punched Vern in the stomach. He got up and looked over at Ralph. “Better look after Vernie, Ralph. He can’t look after hisself.” Hooting with laughter, Walt and his buddies humped on up the road.
    Ralph went over and offered an arm to Vern to haul him up out of the muck. He was too pissed off to accept help at this point andclimbed to his feet on his own. “Mind yer own fuckin’ business, Ralph,” he said as he hauled his coat around him and stumbled off.

    Jennie, Vern and Ralph attended the Catholic school, while Tom Hillier went to the Protestant. Consequently, although she’d known Tom all her life, Jennie didn’t really
know
him. The Hilliers lived at least a mile or two from the Sullivans, in on Halls Bay Road, the highway going toward Springdale. Tom’s father was the station master, while Jennie’s Pap was drive boss. Although they lived in the same small town and the Sullivans and the Hilliers said hello if they passed each other on the street, they never mixed or visited each other, or had anything in common. Religion dominated all social events, friendships, courtships, and business. Catholic youngsters tended to play with Catholics and Protestant youngsters with Protestants.
    Tom’s family was Pentecostal. The Pentecostals had built a big church, the biggest one in Badger, at the end of Church Road. Many Anglicans had converted and Tom’s parents were among them. Later, when the highway went through to Millertown and Buchans, this church would sit at a crossroads, a crossroads that would come to bear the stamp of history.
    As teenagers, Tom and Jennie used to see each other around and she always felt drawn toward him, perhaps because he was so big and tall, perhaps because of the way he loped around in those big black boots, or perhaps because of his kind grey eyes, that seemed to stray to Jennie whenever they were near each other. Jennie told herself there was no use in pining after a Protestant who lived in on Halls Bay Road, and Tom thought there was no use of him wanting a Catholic girl who lived Up the Track.
    All along, the Sullivans and the Crawfords kept hoping that Jennie and Vern would marry when they grew up. Two Catholics, no cross-religion marriage; the families loved the thought of it.
    Well, I tried
, Jennie thought.
God knows I really tried to like Vern, but there was something shifty and slick about him. The first time he
tried to kiss me his lips were so wet and his mouth so full of spit that I nearly threw up
.
    And another time, at a teenage dance when she was sixteen, growing tall and large and Vern staying short and small, he had the friggin’ nerve to say, “You’re getting too big to put my arms around, Jennie. You needs to go on diet.”
    She had smacked him hard for that remark and wouldn’t speak to him for months.
Dumb-arse
, she thought savagely.
He didn’t even have a clue why I smacked him. Sacred Heart! Some guys are some stunned!
    But it was hard for her not to keep noticing Tom Hillier. First of all, as he grew tall Jennie had to look up at him. Sometimes she made a point of “accidentally” standing near him if they were hanging out by the train station or standing in line at the chip stand where a paper cone of hot chips cost ten cents. One evening he bought one for her.
    â€œHere,” he said shyly, “have one on me.”
    It made Jennie’s heart do a flip when he looked down at her. She took it. She would’ve taken a cone full of coal at that moment, so glad was she that it had come from Tom’s hands.
    But besides his height, Jennie saw that Tom was a good-hearted person. He’d go out of his way for anyone. Jennie used to stray over to the field by the River to see him play a game of rounders with the boys. She knew that Tom noticed her, but she pretended not to see