Cursed! Blood of the Donnellys

by Keith Ross Leckie

  “You sure you’re not related to Dr. Guillotin?”

  “That just may be so, so I’d watch myself if I was you.”

  Jim and Vinnie continued pushing back the forest one tree at a time.

  Jim occasionally took the cart to town for supplies, but Johannah did not join him. Surprisingly she had not even gone to Mass yet but declared she would make up for it and God would forgive them. The weather had turned warm and sunny, and the summer flowers were in bloom, when Johannah finally declared her intention.

  “We will all dress in our finest clothes and now go to St. Patrick’s. This will be the all-important first impression that our family will make on the community. It will be the formal coming out for the Donnellys. We will all be on our best behaviour.”

  Society

  As wife and mother and mistress of the new Donnelly “estate,” when Johannah remembered the high society coming-out party her aunt had arranged in London for her sixteenth birthday, with a jealous bevy of the daughters of earls and millionaires, all she could do was laugh at her current circumstances. She was the wife of a dirt-poor farmer four miles outside a little middle of nowhere town in Canada. If only she had Raffy and Lucy to laugh with now.

  As they dressed in preparation for their first Mass, Jim shaved himself in a cracked hand mirror with Vinnie crowding in to comb his hair. Vinnie and Jim put on the good clean cotton shirts they had bought in town. Johannah had a new cotton dress that Jim said made her look very pretty. She checked the boys’ presentation with a critical eye, straightening their collars and brushing off lint.

  “You can never undo a first impression,” Johannah told them again. “There…” She finished with them, then turned and looked at herself in the hand mirror, adjusting her hair, which she had put up in a tight bun, pinching her tanned cheeks to give them more colour, revealing what she defended as a healthy streak of vanity. Jim met her eyes as he helped her into the pony cart and she could see the pride in his eyes.

  * * *

  They could see St. Patrick’s rapier-like spire two miles out of town. The new church had replaced a modest frame building that had burned down six years before. It was built much larger than the existing needs of the small Lucan community. The deacons and bishops reasoned that with the famine and troubles back in Ireland flooding the region with good, grateful Catholics, if you built a big church, the faithful would fill the pews and the offering plates.

  Across the road, on the east side of the Roman Line, Keefe’s two-storey wood frame hotel and tavern stood as if in defiance of pure Christian life and, from what Jim told Johannah and what she saw of it herself, many nights Keefe’s boasted an even larger congregation than the church. But St. Patrick’s ruled Sunday morning and as they made their way there for the ten o’clock service, people in their best clothes were approaching in carts and wagons and on foot from the road into the town and from the other concession lines that intersected there. Jim and Johannah, little Will and Vinnie arrived in their pony cart, tethered it in the shade to the whitewashed cemetery fence and entered the church, their eyes adjusting from the bright sunlight to the cool, still darkness of the sanctuary.

  The inside of the church was even more impressive, even breathtaking to them, with golden icons and high ceilings that made the St. Patrick’s back in Borrisokane seem cramped and quaint. Johannah was even tempted to refer to their new church as a “cathedral” but in truth it was not. One might even get away with calling it a basilica, for there was a certain roundness to the bay of the altar, but no, it was a church, and Johannah was happy to settle for that. And it was theirs.

  The people of St. Patrick’s welcomed the Donnelly family warmly that morning. They shook hands with many who greeted them before the service commenced, beginning with the congenial Keefes and their family members. They received nods and handshakes from the Feehleys, Kennedys, Carrolls and O’Connors, the men among them familiar faces Jim had met in Keefe’s tavern. The priest, Father O’Brien, was an ancient, frail and pious man whose lined and sallow face suddenly melted into smiles as he greeted them.

  “We were all wondering when you’d come to take the blessed sacrament with us.”

  “We’re sorry, Father. We were just getting our things in order. Won’t miss another Sunday,” Johannah told him.

  “Good, then. Welcome and we rejoice.” Jim and Johannah exchanged a smile as the service began, the Latin words sounding like old lost friends, reawakening Johannah’s spirituality, making her at home. She looked over at her husband and knew he was having the same thoughts. They had found the community they had hoped for.

  After Mass they all piled aboard their little pony cart for an easy Sunday drive west into town, sightseeing the closed shops on Main Street and the stately Protestant homes in the tree-lined west end of Lucan. Jim gestured ahead toward a fine big white house with green trim and a large veranda and coach house behind.

  “That’s his place there, I think. Your Dr. Davis. That’s how Porte described it. He said he might be back by now.”

  “It’s beautiful. Let’s go in, Jim. I’d love to see him again.”

  “I know he was good to you, Johannah, but I do worry…”

  “I think I owe him my life, Jim. Please, let’s say hello and thank him.”

  Just as Jim was about to turn in the driveway, three men came riding down the street toward them on horseback. Jim looked straight ahead and kept going past the Davis driveway.

  “Aren’t we going in?”

  Jim did not answer. The three men rode past them, giving them a stern nod.

  “Who is that?” Johannah asked him.

  “John Carroll.”

  “I’d like to see Dr. Davis.”

  “Another time.”

  Johannah could see how wary, even intimidated, Jim felt.

  “He’s our friend. They may as well know. We have to show our colours, Jim.”

  “Not today,” Jim told her and they turned north to make the loop back toward the Roman Line.

  * * *

  Jim finally felt there was great headway being made on their lot the morning Keefe brought his oxen to help him and Vinnie clear the stumps and logs. They truly were magnificent beasts, accomplishing more in two hours than two men would manage in two weeks. Their cloven hooves on stocky legs tromped and pawed and found firm footing below the slippery mud. A heavy chain was looped around one massive stump, wider than a man’s arm is long, and the beasts strained to pull it from the ground. Keefe encouraged the animals, snapping a little whip over their heads, just to get their attention as never once did Jim see the lash fall on their dusty hides. Keefe had a deep affection for the lumbering behemoths.

  “Hiyah! Hiyah! Haaaaaa!”

  As it lifted, Jim and Vinnie chopped at the roots underneath to free the broad stump from its grip on the fertile ground. Both were aware there was a danger the big stump could fall back on them when they were underneath; there were stories of it happening more than once. Slowly the bulk of it was coming away, turning over and pulling free. Keefe eased off for a minute to rest himself and the big animals.

  “I don’t suppose we could just plant around the stumps?” Vinnie suggested.

  “That’d be far too sensible,” Jim concluded.

  “You know what the dumb Irishman said when he was given free land?” Keefe asked them, wiping his sweaty neck with a sodden checkered handkerchief.

  “What?”

  “All this land…and the trees too!”

  The three men laughed together. Jim took the moment in the hot sun to gaze around at his slowly growing muddy patch of cleared field.

  “Another week and we’ll have close to five acres to plant for next year.”

  “Aye. But I’ll need you both after we’re done for a week, putting up my barn.”

  “Done. Vinnie, why don’t you stay the winter? Help with the planting in the
spring.”

  “Well, I still have the mountains to see, but maybe they’re best seen in summer.”

  “Good then.”

  Jim offered Johannah a wave as she arrived in the cart with lunch in a basket. She had driven across the cleared field and carried the young sleeping Will on her back.

  “Just a few minutes, Jo. One last stump.”

  “Haaaa! Come on! Hiyah!”

  Keefe snapped the whip over the oxen’s heads. They strained their massive bodies against the chain again. The big stump came up a little more and Jim and Vinnie went under again to chop at the thick roots. Vinnie took a few more swings to cut them through or pull them free, but the roots were slow to submit.

  Johannah sat watching them work. She had set up a generous lunch of sandwiches for the three of them on a split log, with bread made in her new clay and stone baking oven Jim had built, lettuce from the garden and a boiled chicken she had killed that morning.

  “This damn stump’s holding on for dear life! Maybe if we… tickle it,” Vinnie made a goofy face and wiggled his fingers as if to do so and they laughed at Vinnie and the idea of a ticklish tree stump.

  “Hiyah! Come on!”

  The stump turned up further still and they continued to chop away at the last of the roots underneath, now in earnest. The oxen heaved. The big root moved up even more and almost surrendered its grip. They stepped back to safety from under the stump, but then in a split second, the chain snapped like a gunshot. Jim shouted a warning and ducked down as the stump settled and the long, freed chain sliced horizontally through the air back toward them. It missed Jim, but Vinnie was not so quick. The chain struck him across the head, knocking him off his feet, and he fell to the ground onto his back.

  “Vinnie!” Johannah stood up.

  Johannah and Jim both raced to him. The boy lay unconscious, his body inert, his head bloody and deeply dented and damaged by the iron chain.

  “Vinnie?”

  Jim wrapped Vinnie’s head in his shirt, lifted him into the pony cart and he and Johannah, still carrying Will on her back, rushed him down the long Roman Line into town at a fast trot. The four miles into town seemed interminable with Vinnie moaning and writhing and Jim shouted at the pony in frustration. On the main street of Lucan, they arrived outside Dr. Davis’s house.

  “Doctor!” Jim shouted out to the house.

  He picked Vinnie up—he felt as light as a child in his arms—and climbed the stairs to the veranda.

  “Dr. Davis!”

  Davis opened the door and there was a moment of surprise and pleasure.

  “Johannah…Jim!”

  “There’s been an accident…”

  Davis took one look at Vinnie’s injuries, held the door open and gestured Jim inside.

  “Through here. Easy now. Be gentle with him.”

  Jim entered the coolness of Dr. Davis’s house and into his office and examining room. Johannah followed them in with Will now in her arms. Jim laid Vinnie’s trembling body on the table and stood back beside Johannah. Vinnie’s eyes flickered open as Davis inspected the wounds. The damage to his head was substantial, his skull fractured, and he was losing blood, limbs shaking involuntarily. Davis applied a gauze bandage to stop the blood flow.

  “Talk to him. Keep him responding.”

  “Vinnie? Can you hear me? Wake up, Vinnie!”

  Suddenly Vinnie’s eyes became clear for a moment.

  “Lost my boot. Where’s my boot, Jim? Dog musta got it.”

  “Vinnie? You’ll be all right. Can you hear me?”

  His eyes remained clear.

  “Yes. S’alright. I can feel the rain now.”

  Vinnie’s shaking slowly calmed. He sighed. His body relaxed. His eyes became fixed. Jim looked at Dr. Davis, who felt for a pulse. His expression confirmed their fears. Vinnie was dead.

  Jim put his arms around a trembling Johannah, who now began to cry, and Jim with her. They stared down at Vinnie’s face, normally so animated and expressive, now so chilling in its stillness, and they could not speak to comfort each other.

  Later Dr. Davis’s housekeeper brought them tea in the cool, darkened dining room and they spoke about Vinnie as they waited for the undertaker.

  “He was like a little brother or even a son,” Jim said.

  “So many dreams,” Johannah remembered.

  In the midst of this grief, Davis expressed his pleasure to see them again. He asked about their travels and they described the homestead they had built so close and apologized for not having come to see him. He did a quick examination of young baby Will, finding him to be in very good health. Jim was going to ask the doctor about the level of conflict between Catholics and Protestants in the town, struggling to find a polite way into the issue, but was interrupted by the arrival of the mortician.

  They buried Vincent Matthew O’Toole in St. Patrick’s cemetery two days later. Jim, along with two Keefes, two Kennedys and Dr. Davis, was a pallbearer at the funeral. His jaw set, his eyes brimming, Jim lifted and carried the rough coffin to take the boy to the open grave and his final resting place. Johannah walked directly behind holding baby Will, and behind her followed two dozen members of the congregation, and they all gathered around the grave. Before Father O’Brien began, John Carroll came up to Jim to ask about Dr. Davis. Johannah and Davis overheard the question.

  “What is that Protestant doing here on consecrated ground?”

  “We invited him,” Jim told Carroll. “He did all he could for Vinnie.”

  “He is not welcome here.”

  Dr. Davis made a move as if to leave but Jim gently took the doctor’s arm to stop him.

  “He’s as welcome as you, Carroll. It is right that he should be here.”

  “He is our friend, Mr. Carroll,” Johannah added.

  “Your friend?” Carroll turned to Johannah, amused, his little eyes excited.

  Johannah’s anger at this man rose to match her grief. “It’s hardly the time for this, Mr. Carroll. We’re at this moment putting a fine young lad in the ground.”

  “So clear off,” Jim told him, loud enough for many of the people gathered to hear, and Johannah touched his arm to calm him and keep his hands from turning into fists. Carroll studied both Jim and Johannah in silence for a moment with that unsettling look of amusement, then turned and walked away before the priest began.

  Vinnie’s casket was lowered into the grave and Jim and Johannah, Dr. Davis and others of the parish listened to the old priest’s voice, which though sincere, shook with age, saying the words that would send Vinnie’s young soul to heaven. Johannah couldn’t control her tears and Jim would not look up at her for the same reason.

  “…we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust…in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.”

  Johannah thought of all that they had been through, all the words spoken at so many funerals. And now Vinnie had been so suddenly and brutally taken away from them by cruel happenstance. Death could come from a thousand places, at a moment’s notice, without reason or sense, with cruel, inexplicable intent. But human life came from only one source: a woman’s body. This was Johannah’s power, she only fully realized then, a power over life, and she made the resolution, in the face of death, to wield that power to its full extent. To wage war against death by creating life and creating life abundantly.

  Seven Young Devils

  Jim crimped over the final nail in the final shoe of his three-year-old mare, let the hoof of the congenial beast go back down onto the ground and straightened his sore back. It had been six, almost seven years since they had found the land and claimed it. Years of prosperity and babies. Jim watched with affection as his four-year-old son, Robert, fifth born among the Donnelly boys, gathered eggs in the hen house. He was crouched unmoving in the straw, staring inte
ntly at a hen on her nest. The bird stared back at him. Jim and Johannah knew Robert, fair haired with eyes as blue as the sea, was not the brightest child—in fact, Johannah admitted he was “slow”—but he was well liked and defended by his mother and brothers. No classmate would have dared say a negative word about him and expect to go unbeaten. Robert’s pleasure was to bring in the eggs, unbroken, to his mother. And at this, he was skilled. The hen finally gave her squawk and Jim watched as his son pushed the bird gently off the new egg. Robert laughed with success and picked up the final warm, wet egg, placing it gently in the basket with several more. He left the chicken coop with his basket and walked with great care and no mishap up to the farmhouse to receive his kiss from Johannah.

  Jim took a moment to look around at his lively kingdom. Their farm had expanded substantially in the years they’d lived here, the old sod hut replaced by a large log house well back from the road, much of it built in one day by friends and neighbours, and a small barn with animals—six hungry pigs, two horses and a cow, in addition to the twelve chickens in the hen house—with full fifteen acres cleared. Johannah had produced seven young rough-and-tumble Donnelly boys who, except for the two very youngest, all tended the animals and did chores. The boys made for a future of good hands on the farm and Jim knew Johannah loved them all more than life itself. But he also knew Johannah hungered for a daughter. He felt her need and was willing to keep trying his best.

  Dr. William Davis had overseen Johannah’s pregnancies and delivered four of the boys, two local midwives handling the others. The disagreement with John Carroll over the Donnellys’ friendship with Dr. Davis had not amounted to much. They had good friends now in the community, the Keefes and the Whalens and some of the Kennedys, the Portes and O’Connors and Feehleys. Jim had been quietly asked to join certain political groups of far different stripes—the Conservative Tories or the Liberal Grits, the Catholic League or the Protestant Orange Order, the Tipperary Brotherhood or the Irish Benevolent Society—and had with Johannah’s approval politely, but firmly, refused each one, and had so far been left alone. He and Johannah had witnessed several brutal fights outside the bars in Lucan while passing by but Jim had not raised a fist in anger in more than seven years and Johannah was proud of him.