Free The Badger Riot by J.A. Ricketts Page A

to say how the money was spent.
    â€œVern, that’s my money too, you know. Can’t I have some for myself?”
    Vern, oblivious to her feelings, said, “Sure what do you need it for? Don’t I keep you fed and looked after?”
    So she let him go ahead. A couple times he heard her muttering to herself about new clothes. Vern squashed that. “What do you need new clothes for? You never goes anywhere except to Mass and to bingo. No one’s going to notice what you got on.”
    Vern’s taxi became the love of his life, a ’48 Chrysler 300, beige-coloured, with many miles to her credit, but a valiant and brave carnevertheless. He’d bought her second-hand because he wasn’t sure if the taxi business would pay off. She was scraped and scruffy-looking. The passenger’s door handle was broken, so he had to lean across and open it when someone got in the front; inside, the brown vinyl was stained and torn. But for all her wear, Vern sometimes thought he loved her more than he did Millie.
    Vern and his Chrysler worked long hours together. In winter, he attempted trips over Halls Bay Road, plowing his way through the snowdrifts when no one else would try it. He made daily runs to Grand Falls and Windsor and even a few long overnight trips to St. John’s. Vern was a happy man. He was out of the woods camps, while fellows who had laughed at him, like Ralph and Tom, for instance, were still up there and working like slaves and being eaten by the flies. Well, not Ralph; flies left him alone. And Jennie’s brother Phonse, who was on the drive, was stuck out in the wet and cold driving logs, while he, Vern, soaked up the warmth of his cozy taxi. Hah! That would teach them to laugh at Vern Crawford!

    There was no baby for Jennie and Tom. There never had been. It had all been a lie.
    Consumed with guilt about the great falsehood she had told, so she and Tom could get married and share a bed, Jennie’s thoughts cast back to what had brought them to this.
    No matter how much sex we had in the A.N.D. Company barns the winter before, I never became pregnant. Every twenty-eight days or so I’d see the dreaded stain on my bloomers and I’d have to tell poor Tom, “No baby, no marriage this month.”
    Spring had come and the barns were busy with the men and horses, so the good times in the hay were over. Getting desperate, Tom had said that they could lie. Jennie had not been too happy about lying. Mam’s old saying had kept ringing through her mind, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”
    â€œTom, I can’t. I can’t lie to Mam,” she had said. “There’s no way I can tell Mam I’m having a baby if I’m not. That’s a great sin that will surely haunt us for the rest of our lives.”
    â€œIt will only be for a couple of months until we get married, and then we’ll just tell them it was a false alarm,” Tom had urged. “It’ll be all right, you’ll see if it won’t.”
    Jennie was still reluctant, but wanting desperately to please Tom, she’d agreed.
    And it did seem all right; right up to the time I told the lie to Mam and she dropped the plate and started to cry. It became worse when we had to stand in front of two sets of parents and lie again. And now is the worst of it all. I am stuck in a house with a mother-in-law who hates me.
    Three months after they were safely married, Jennie and Tom told their parents that it was a mistake and she wasn’t going to have a baby after all. Mam and Pap said nothing, but Jennie sensed their disappointment.
    Suze nearly had a stroke. “Dirty crawling idol-worshipping Roman Catholic, you trapped my son into marriage,” she spat at her when the two were alone. The two women spent many hours alone together while Tom was up on Sandy and Mr. Albert busy with his railway duties, but they took no joy in each other’s