Cursed! Blood of the Donnellys

by Keith Ross Leckie

  The young man waited patiently until Jenny noticed him, then called out, “Hello!”

  Jenny rode over to him, revealing her perfect control of the horse, and pushed her long unruly hair back over her shoulder. “Hello, yourself. Can I help you?”

  “The name’s James Currie. Is this”—he glanced at a piece of paper—“the Doon-ley place?”

  “It’s Donn—elly. Just one ‘o.’”

  “Oh, sorry. All right. Well, I’m here with new wheels for your stagecoach.”

  “I’m Jenny.” She glanced at the lettering. “You all the way from Goderich, then?”

  “Yes, that I am, ma’am,” he said, nodding.

  “And you’ve never heard of the Donnellys?”

  “Can’t say I have.”

  Jenny flashed him a smile as she dismounted.

  “Good! Let me show you to the barn.”

  * * *

  On a side street in Lucan, Michael and Will pulled the old Donnelly stagecoach up to the boardwalk curb a couple blocks away from Main Street. It was just as good as the Flanagan coach, which was not due to leave town for twenty minutes. The passengers would not be at the stops yet for the eight a.m. stage. The idea was to get to the passengers after they arrived at the crossroads stops, but before the Flanagans, and scoop them all up.

  Michael spotted four pretty girls outside the general store on the sidewalk. They were all watching him. They had stuffed their homely bonnets into their pockets and pinched their cheeks to make them pink. He waved to them. “HELLO, LADIES!”

  Two smiled and returned the wave. As Michael climbed down from the coach, he said, “I’ll be right back, Will. We have some time.”

  “Don’t be long.”

  Michael wandered over to flirt with the girls. One girl watched him with particular attention: Fanny Carroll, from whom his mother had saved him. She had let her long black hair down, cinched up her dress and opened three buttons. She did not look away when Michael stepped up close to her, close enough to touch.

  “Hello, Fanny. I take it your brother’s not around anywhere seeing as you’re waving to me.”

  “He don’t tell me what to do. I can wave to whoever I please.”

  “I like a strong-minded girl.” He brushed a strand of black hair out of her eyes and stroked her cheek.

  Will had climbed down from the Donnelly coach and gone around to the front of the Central Hotel, where the Flanagan coach was rigged up and waiting to begin its London route. Matthew Murphy, a second-string Flanagan man, was on the driver’s bench.

  Will watched as Joe Flanagan came out of the hotel with a mailbag in tow. He helped a couple of passengers aboard and called out to others on the porch.

  “All aboard for London, folks!”

  Joe climbed up top. Murphy gave him the reins and slid over on the bench. Joe’s brother James was there to see him off.

  “Take care, Joey. Gonna be a hot one. Water the horses well in London.”

  Joe smiled at him. “Just keep my supper warm, brother.”

  Will made his limping run back up the side street to the Donnelly coach. Michael was still outside the store, flirting with Fanny Carroll and the others.

  “Come on, Mike! They’re heading out.”

  Michael left the girls and joined him, climbing up onto the driver’s bench, then threw them all a kiss and with a slap of the reins, the brothers were on their way.

  * * *

  Johannah was extricating herself from the rhubarb when Jenny practically ran through the kitchen and down the hall into her bedroom, where she struggled out of her boots, pants and shirt. She returned one minute later wearing slippers and a print dress with lace. She grabbed a jug and filled it with cold water at the sink pump. Her mother looked at her askance but Jenny avoided her eyes and said nothing as she hurried out the door with the jug and two cups. Johannah decided she’d better follow.

  Johannah wasn’t usually one to eavesdrop on private conversations, but this was her girl and she stopped outside the open door of the barn to listen. She could see the Currie boy, impressive in his undershirt and already sweating as he had jacked up the coach and was working on replacing the sabotaged wheels, taking off the old hubs, greasing down the axles. He got up to receive the cup of water from Jenny.

  “That’s a pretty dress,” Currie offered as he took a long drink.

  “Cooler than pants,” Jennie told him.

  “Suppose. I wouldn’t know.”

  Jenny laughed.

  “And this is good water. Thank you.”

  “Thought you might like some. It’s getting hotter than stink.”

  “It is that.”

  “So…what’s Goderich like? You got a department store?”

  “Oh yes. And a bowling alley, and a jail and a new theatre. They’re putting on a play by William Shakespeare in the fall. It’s growing into a big town.”

  “A theatre. I’ve never been to the theatre.”

  “I’ve only been to one show so far, about the American War of Independence. All these people standing in front of you saying things. Really quick, you forget they’re just pretending and you get all caught up in the story.”

  “It would be so strange to be an actor, wouldn’t it?”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Saying things that aren’t real.”

  “I don’t know. Sounds like half the people in Goderich.”

  Jenny laughed again at this.

  “So what happened here with the wheels? That was a pretty nasty thing for someone to do.”

  “Oh, the Flanagans. We’ll have to knock their heads.”

  “A fighter, are you? You like that? Knocking heads?”

  Jenny smiled. “Got to.”

  Johannah stepped into the doorway as if from a long walk and spoke as sternly as she could.

  “Jenny. Let the man finish his work. I need you in the house.”

  Currie flashed them both a charming smile. “I’m Jim Currie, ma’am. You must be Mrs. Donnelly.”

  “Nice to meet you. You build a fine coach.”

  “We try.”

  Johannah turned and gestured for Jenny to come.

  “Nice to meet you both. I’ll be done before end of day.”

  “Good.”

  Currie appeared unsure of how to take Johannah’s comment, which pleased her. “Thanks for the drink, Miss Donnelly.”

  Jenny actually blushed. Then she made her way out of the barn toward the house and past her mother, flashing her a petulant glare.

  * * *

  Rumbling down the London line, Will and Michael were gaining on the Flanagan coach ahead. Joe began driving his fresh team hard. Murphy had turned around and was staring back at the Donnellys as they edged up behind them.

  Flanagan begin to whip the horses with his long persuader. The Donnellys had pulled out to the other side of the road and were still gaining. The Arabians were giving the edge to the Donnellys. Their lead horses were almost up to the Flanagan coach. Joe Flanagan glanced over his shoulder toward them, then rose up from his bench into a balanced racing crouch and looped the reins tightly around his wrists. He whipped his horses, staying just ahead, moving his coach back and forth in front of the Donnellys, almost like a tease, to stop them from getting ahead.

  “Flanagan knows his horses,” Michael called out to Will. “But not as good as me!”

  Michael had to hold back and wait for the right moment, for Joe Flanagan had blood in his eye and would drive the Donnellys’ lighter coach into the ditch if he could. Joe was whipping the horses again for more speed, letting the tails meet flesh, which Michael would never do. By now the passengers were starting to call out their concerns.

  “Too fast! Slow down!”

  But Joe Flanagan kept his lead, looking over and back at them, cursing. Michael was laughi
ng, urging his team forward, looking for that opportunity to pass.

  The Donnelly coach was right up behind the Flanagans’. Michael swung wildly into the left lane again to pass, barely keeping the stagecoach under control. Flanagan veered his rig over in a similar move to block him, but the lead Donnelly horses were already past Flanagan’s rear wheel and starting to gain. Flanagan used his coach to try to push Michael’s horses into the ditch.

  “You’re all right, beauties. Stay the course, darlings,” Michael murmured to the Arabians. The Arabians were worth every penny of their substantial price tag, plunging onward along the edge of the ditch, trusting their driver.

  “Fuck you, Donnelly! It’s our route!” Joe called back at them.

  “Flanagan, you shite! My grandmother can drive faster than you.”

  “You can go to hell!”

  “You first!”

  Michael suddenly pulled back, slowing slightly, and veered across to the other side of the road behind him, making a surge up the open lane to pass him on the right. He was gaining, coming almost abreast on the other side before Joe Flanagan could react. He hauled right on the reins, trying to block him.

  At that moment the coupling in the Flanagan rig let go, separating the coach from the horses. Without the weight of the coach, the horses surged forward as the carriage fell back. Joe Flanagan, the reins wrapped tightly around his wrists, flew forward off the seat of the slowing stagecoach, dragged by his galloping horses. He hit the road behind them on his chest.

  “Jesus Christ…” Michael called out. “Let go, Flanagan!”

  But the reins were as tight as shackles on the driver’s wrists and the excited horses dragged Joe Flanagan behind them on the gravel road, not slowing down for what seemed an eternity. The driverless stagecoach, with the passengers screaming, careened off the road and through the ditch, with Murphy flying high through the air, then it bounced off one tree and hit another dead on. It remained miraculously upright but smashed and broken like a child’s toy.

  Michael brought his coach to a dust-engulfed stop only thirty yards in front of the crashed Flanagan rig, jumped down onto the road and ran back. Will was right behind him. They looked into the coach full of moaning, sobbing passengers but could see that they were all alive, hopefully with nothing worse than cuts and bruises. Michael opened the door.

  “Everyone all right?”

  Will found Murphy sitting up in the ditch, looking dazed but mostly unhurt after his flight through the air into a grove of soft bullrushes. Will looked up the road sixty yards ahead to where the Flanagan horses had finally stopped and behind them the figure of Joe was lying face down in the dirt, his hands still caught in the reins, the nervous prancing of the standing horses lifting his hands up and down as if Joe himself was articulating. Will stared at the flat, distant figure on the road, anxious to see movement, urging him to stand up and shake a fist, curse them, anything, but the body lay very still.

  The battered passengers started crawling out of the wreckage.

  “Help the passengers,” Will told Michael as he began his loping run toward Joe.

  The Flanagan horses were skittish. Will knelt down on one knee beside Joe, lying still in the dust at the end of the reins. He put his fingers on Joe’s neck and he bowed his head when there was no life left there. He began to unwrap from Joe’s wrists the cruel reins that had been his undoing.

  Murphy came limping over.

  “Is he…?”

  “He’s gone, Murphy. What happened?”

  “Don’t know. All of a sudden the coupling just let go.”

  As the horses calmed, they inspected the heavy harness ring where a thick bolt had held the rig together. There was no sign of the bolt.

  “I checked that bolt myself first thing this morning when we hitched up. Nothing wrong with it.”

  “Let’s get Joe and the passengers back to town.”

  * * *

  Michael brought the stage to a stop in front of the Central Hotel and Will helped the injured passengers stumble out. A couple had expressed their unhappiness that they had to travel beside the dead man. Will had covered the ravaged face with his handkerchief, but that was all he could do. Will gestured for Michael to follow and then lifted Joe’s body from inside the coach up in his arms and carried him to the boardwalk to face James and Pat, Joe’s other brother, who was the bartender at the Central. They both stared in shock at their brother’s broken body.

  “Give him to us.”

  Will put Joe into the arms of his brothers.

  “I’m sorry, Flanagan. I…”

  James Flanagan and his brother, Pat, turned away from Will and Michael and carried Joe’s body into the hotel.

  * * *

  At the end of the day, done with the rhubarb and laundry and having decided on a fat chicken for dinner, which Jenny had killed and was plucking, Johannah looked out the kitchen door to the yard to check on their visitor. Jim Currie had packed up his tools and put the broken wheels into his wagon and was slowly driving past the house out the lane. Jenny wiped the blood from her hands, took off her apron, pushed back her hair and slid by her mother and out the kitchen door into the yard and waved to the Goderich boy with enthusiasm.

  “Good-bye!”

  Currie stopped the rig a moment, smiled and returned the wave, hesitated as he took in Johannah’s frown, then kept going. Good teeth, Johannah was thinking.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Currie!”

  “Jenny. Stop it,” Johannah told her quietly.

  “Stop what?”

  “Don’t you be getting any ideas.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why. His name is Currie. He’s a Protestant.”

  Jenny dropped her hand to her side, surprised by the obvious.

  “But we have Protestant friends! You do business with them all the time.”

  “Yes, it is true, but no daughter of mine will be romancing a Protestant. That is where I draw the line.”

  “He was nice.”

  At the gate, Currie gave a final wave and handsome smile as he turned north on the Roman Line, back to the big town of Goderich.

  “Good teeth,” Jenny remarked wistfully as she watched him. She glanced at her mother and didn’t return his gesture.

  * * *

  On the night of Joe Flanagan’s burial at St. Patrick’s, which the Donnellys attended in full, there had been whispered talk at Stanley’s store of a midnight meeting at the Cedar Swamp School. The grieving Flanagans and Maggie Thompson’s husband, Pat Carroll, and his brother, Jim, arrived there, along with a dozen others—Ryders, Kennedys, McLaughlins—their faces now lit by low candlelight. They had secured their horses around the back in the trees behind so passersby on the Roman Line would not notice the gathering.

  James Flanagan barely controlled his emotions.

  “I put that bolt and nut and the pin in myself. A nut doesn’t just fall off. It was murder. It was them did it.”

  Pat Carroll was with him. “They have to be stopped. It can’t go on like this.”

  “They get bolder every day,” Martin McLaughlin agreed. He checked the gold pocket watch in his waistcoat. “We should act tonight.”

  “But we should act within the law.” It was the elder Grouchy Ryder, father of the three Ryder boys, who spoke.

  “When has the law ever served us?” McLaughlin asked. “It only serves the Prots against us.”

  “It did put Jim Donnelly away for fifteen years,” the senior Ryder reminded them.

  “Not long enough,” said Carroll.

  “Not deep enough,” said Flanagan.

  “What does Father Connolly say?”

  “He’s away in Woodbridge.”

  “All right. Do we act tonight?” McLaughlin challenged. “Let’s put it to a vote.”

  The vote was two to nine, with two abste
ntions. The results were sealed with whiskey, and the oath of secrecy was taken by all. They would ride tonight. Jim Carroll blew out the candles.

  * * *

  Jim and Johannah woke up to the sound of horses in the yard.

  “Who’s that?”

  The glow of firelight could be seen through the windows. Will, Michael and Patrick were in the hallway.

  “The barn!” Will shouted as his brothers in nightshirts and long johns ran outside. Jim and Will were the first out the door and Will called to his brothers behind him.

  “Buckets! Get the buckets going!”

  Five of the six masked riders had escaped past them when Jim ran out in front of the last. The man wore a woman’s dress and bonnet. Jim tried to grab the horse’s halter. The man swung a club that glanced sickeningly off Jim’s head and he fell to the ground. The rider made his escape.

  Will ran and knelt beside his father. Jim sat up, hurt but conscious.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Jim got up on his feet a little unsteadily and went to help his sons. The boys were passing buckets from the large water trough to throw on the fire, but the barn was already a hopeless inferno against the black sky. Will, James and Tom charged into the flaming mouth of the barn to pull out and save the new stagecoach. Michael opened the stalls closer to the front and drove out three of the Arabians before the smoke and heat forced him back. There were two or three horses screaming, trapped deep in the barn. Will had to grab Michael around the chest to hold him back.

  “It’s too late!”

  “No!”

  Will held on, arms locked around him. The screams of the terrified horses continued as flames engulfed the building. Michael put his hands over his ears until finally the noise died out. They had lost one Arabian and two of the old horses and the old coach.

  For several moments Johannah stood very still, staring at the burning barn, the crackling sparks like stars ascending into the universe above her. The bitter feelings had remained at a distance but now came back and were so familiar: anger, frustration, helplessness.