Cursed! Blood of the Donnellys

by Keith Ross Leckie

  “Jean? This your cow?”

  “Uh, yes. That’s my cow!” She went to the cow and patted the brown head. “It must have got away from the Donnellys.”

  “No, she’s been in my woodlot all night.”

  Donovan put the cow’s rope lead in Jean Thompson’s hand. Will tried to control his laughter. All the Donnellys were trying not to laugh, until they did.

  “You are the biggest fool I’ve ever seen,” Will told Carroll.

  Carroll hesitated, the pistol still levelled. He was clearly thinking about how he could come out of this situation with dignity.

  “I’ll have at least one of you. Will Donnelly. You’re under arrest. Get into this wagon.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Carroll.” Will picked up his fiddle, checked the tuning and began to play “Bony over the Alps” in merry jig time. He sang along with the music:

  Thank you, Mr. Carroll, for your kind visit.

  The law is surely on your side, or is it?

  Here is my ass and I invite you to kiss it.

  Thank you, Mr. Carroll, for your kind visit!

  When the laughter died it was Johannah who warned him again: “You come around here threatening us with guns and trumped-up charges? Get back on your wagon, Carroll, if you know what’s good for you. It’s your only choice.”

  Will began to count. “One…two…”

  At this point, Carroll lost heart. He looked at the roughed-up McLaughlin and Flanagan, still being held by Tom, James and Michael.

  “Get on your horses.” The Donnelly boys helped them do so.

  Carroll backed away from the Donnellys, made it to the wagon and climbed up into the seat. Then he put his pistol away, picked up the reins and, along with McLaughlin and Flanagan, all now in total disgrace, set off back to town with Will’s fiddle music and Donnelly laughter playing in their ears. Alone now, Jean Thompson looked at Johannah for a moment.

  “Care for a cup of tea, Jean?”

  Without a word, Thompson turned around and walked home with her cow.

  * * *

  The Donnellys didn’t show up for church that Sunday when Father Connolly had an important message for the people, but I were there with my ma and da.

  “O God, whose blessed Son was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil, and make us heirs to eternal life, grant us, we beseech Thee, that we may purify ourselves, even as He is pure.”

  Father Connolly stops then and looked out at all us poor sinners.

  “It is a grave sin to disrespect the Church and her priests and it is a sin to disrespect the laws of the land. Yet there are those among us who do. And I say unto them, may balls of fire fall upon your house!”

  Father Connolly’s face gets all red and he gets louder as he looks out over everybody.

  “I have taken it upon myself to form an association called the St. Patrick’s Peace Society. There is an oath book at the back for all good Roman Catholics to sign. And any who decline to join this society I will consider backsliders and sympathizers of those who cause the violent depredations in this parish. And if you or yours take sick, or need last rites, do not send for me. You are either with us or against us.”

  In the vestibule at the back of the church, like Father Connolly told us, the Peace Society book was lying open on a small table. After the service the men lines up, including my da, to sign it. I got a look at it and it said: “We, the undersigned, do solemnly pledge to aid in every way our priest in the putting down of crime in our parish.”

  I were never accused of being the brightest light but even I knowed this were directed at the Donnellys.

  Queen Victoria Day

  Even though the annual event was only four years old, the Lucan Victoria Day Fair on the 24th of May weekend were a thing of great pride to our community and my second favourite holiday after Christmas, what with spring here and a long lazy summer stretching out. Well, not so lazy for me that year ’cause Da were on the sauce again and Ma needed all the chore money I could bring in, but you know what I mean. When he wasn’t drunk and beating us, my da were a nice enough man, given to regret after and as kind as can be while sober.

  The fair in Lucan were a chance after the long winter for most of the good citizens to air out all the feuds and jealousies and petty grievances that had festered in their little minds through a long, dark winter. Then in spring come the purifying sunshine of heaven. The fair showed the best side of the town. And them Donnellys loved a public gathering, which could often bring trouble, and you know for some of them, that was probably the draw.

  The fair were centred on Main Street and spilled out down to the public lands and the racetrack south of the town. From the Central Hotel, red, white and blue bunting had been stretched out along the fronts of them buildings, and banners was paraded from a dozen societies, from the Oddfellows to the Loyal Order of Calithumpians on horseback with plumes and ribbons and all. Booths of food and wares was set up and hawkers lured the gawking crowds to their offerings, and always music was going on, whether a lone polka clarinet or a full brass band. Clowns, jugglers, fire-eaters and acrobats strolled through the streets of our town like they did this every day and the good folk of Lucan town, me included, spent the weekend in a state of “mesmerization.” Like that word? It’s Miss Johannah’s. There was mind-readers and ventriloquists and bell-ringers and cartoonists who could draw a picture of you real funny.

  The Donnelly family would never miss the Victoria Day Fair. In fairs before, Johannah entered pies in the pastry contest and twice she won a prize in the quilting competitions. Jenny’s calf got a red ribbon two years before.

  I seen the Donnellys arrive in their buckboard and three on horseback. I ties up the horses for them and gives them water. Will tells the family to stay within shouting distance. You never knows what could happen. Johannah smiled and greeted me, and Will and Robert did too. There was a number of booths demonstrating new inventions. I had been through them all and told different Donnellys about things that might interest them. A man was cranking a generator to make this glass bulb glow like a candle. Johannah touched the bulb when it came on, went bright and then faded away. She smiled, all delighted, at me and at Old Jim.

  “Imagine that.”

  John was trying out a slick new “typewriter” with one finger. He liked the clear letters that went onto the paper. Will listened to a “phonograph” with the sound of a woman singing coming out. He looked into the horn, around the moving pipe thing and underneath. I suppose he were expecting a tiny woman to be there. Ha, ha.

  Patrick sat in a booth and listened into the ear phone at the end of a wire. Then he spoke into the mouthpiece of a telephone.

  “…hello…hello…Robert! Can you hear me? Robert? Can you hear me?”

  At another booth close by, Robert waved to Patrick, all excited. He spoke into the ear phone and then listened, all disappointed, at the mouthpiece.

  “No. I can’t hear a thing.”

  The Temperance League had tables and displays. I seen James smiling at the frowning temperance people and he held up his flask and drank to their health.

  On my say so, Johannah invested a nickel and looked in the viewer of an animation machine I showed her. She invited Jim to take a look, their faces pushed together. I had spent that whole nickel to see the show already. The machine showed a jumpy picture of a cute little girl spraying a fat man with a water hose. He tries to grab her but slips and falls. It was real funny. Jim and Johannah both laughed and that made me happy.

  “How do they do that? That’s amazing!” Johannah asked, but it were beyond me.

  I let Jim and Johannah Donnelly go ahead. I’d tag along well behind. I were pleased they liked the moving picture machine. But as they walked on, looking at the displays, I seen that they was being watched. Jim Carroll followed them at a distance through the crowd. He had with him four men in normal
suits but they all had the stiff look like the law. Three was good-sized, sturdy men—not one I recognized—but the fourth was something else. They called him Joe and I learnt later his last name was Berryman. He were nothing short of a giant. He coulda been one of the attractions at the freak show there beside the fat woman and the rubber man. He had a shaved head like a barrel and were at least a head taller than anyone else in the crowd, had a chest like a bull with massive arms, yet he moved with this quickness, not like a fat man, and his eyes was watchful and smart as Carroll pointed out the members of the Donnelly family to this Joe fellow and his other new pals.

  The Donnelly stagecoach comes down Main Street all dressed in bows and ribbons with Michael at the reins in his Sunday suit and four or five young women inside. Jim and Johannah and Will cheered and waved to Michael. I tells Will about Jim Carroll and the four men with him and Will thanks me and tells me not to worry.

  By this time I’d gone back to my favourite thing of all: the elephant ride. Oh my gosh, what a strange and bizarre creature she were. I talked to her owner, a dark-skinned man with a turban on his head, who said he come all the way from Timbuktu in Africa, but he spoke pretty good English. The elephant’s name was Daisy and you could take her for a ride around a little corral. He said all the money goes to an orphanage in Toronto. I touched her hide and grabs her tail and I couldn’t believe anything so unusual existed in our whole world, let alone Lucan. I didn’t have the ten cents to ride, but after I’d been there awhile and asking questions the owner finally let me ride once for free! I were in heaven. So high up! Like riding a Clydesdale only even bigger. Anyway, I remember thinking, them people from Timbuktu, Africa, are real nice.

  It was after my elephant ride I seen Jenny Donnelly walking in the crowd, so pretty. She had two girlfriends with her and were joking and chatting away about the displays. They were almost hit by a man on a penny farthing bicycle advertising a miracle tonic from Dr. Crystal. I think he had had a bit too much. But when Jenny seed Daisy the elephant, she couldn’t keep her eyes off the beast. I knewed she’d like her. She said a nice hello to me and then went on to talk to the owner with the turban. All at once Jenny started to laugh. She put up her hands to the man’s turban and raised it up and everyone could see Daisy’s owner were a white man with some dye on his face. Jenny introduced him to her girlfriends as Jim Currie, a wagon builder from Goderich. He weren’t from Timbuktu at all, but he had me going! Anyway it were all in fun until he explained he were raising money for the orphanage through the Protestant Orange Order.

  You could see Jenny’s friends was shocked they was even talking to a Protestant, which is kind of silly. Mr. Currie wanted Jenny to ride the elephant, but she decided not to, even though I could see she wanted to. She continued on with her friends and I could see Mr. Currie was disappointed too.

  There were a thing that happened, big in my mind, on the Saturday noon of the fair that I’m embarrassed to tell. My father had been drinking and he found me with some of my friends and he had something against me. I don’t honestly remember, maybe something about chores undone, or him not liking how I was behaving, but anyways he comes at me and grabs me and first he yells, which was shameful in front of my friends, and then he slaps and then punches me, closed fist. He’d done this before but not with others watching. He hits my eye and hits my nose and there’s blood and then one hard in the head ’til I seed stars and couldn’t stand. A small crowd stopped and I thought with all the fire-eaters and jugglers, why are they looking at me and my da. This ain’t no show. I’m so embarrassed. Now I were eleven and strong, almost strong enough to fight him back but not quite, and he were my da, so I couldn’t do that yet.

  He’s winding up and about to hit me again when I hears a voice say, “Enough, Seamus.” And I felt Da pulled back from me by strong arms and when I looked up, there was Old Jim Donnelly who had ahold of him. Da took a poke at him and Mr. Jim slapped him across the face to sober him a little. Oh my God, what now? I think. Mr. Jim held him firm.

  “You have to stop hitting the boy, Seamus. He’s a good lad and if you ever beat him again, I’ll come after you and you’ll answer to me.”

  And Da listened! He listened and then he nodded and then he walks away. My face was hot and I were blushing at Mr. Jim’s kind words. No one ever said that about me being good before. And in truth my da never hit me again after that day, so you can see I owed a lot to Mr. Jim. And any shame I felt among my friends was more than made up for that day by the fact that Old Jim Donnelly, the murderer and ex-convict, stood up for me.

  Toward the end of Saturday afternoon come an event that were always a crowd pleaser at the fair, the six o’clock freestyle horse race. Everyone with a four-legged beast of any sort had tried out earlier in the week but by the time of the big race there would only be the best horses and riders in the field. There was fourteen and I loved to watch them prepare, fixing their saddles, tightening up the bridles and taking sidelong glances at the competition. And one was a female! Nora Kennedy had made the cut and prepared to ride a tawny gelding. This were a rough race for a woman but some liked to say she was more a man, which ain’t fair ’cause I thought she was real pretty. I were standing closest to Michael Donnelly, who was riding his favourite, a black Arabian by the name of Tipperary Tiger, and nearby him were none other than Jim Carroll on a big bay named Lightning. You could feel the tension between ’em ’cause they never once looked at each other.

  Now I heared men say that women are hard to understand but it were at this point that Fanny Carroll came to flirt with Michael, so bold right in front of her older brother.

  “Hi, Michael. Going to win for me?” says she.

  “I race for the family. If Tip wins, we can double our studding fees.”

  Fanny had on her playful look. “How much are your studding fees?”

  “You better watch out for your brother, Fanny. You’re talking to a Donnelly.”

  “He can’t tell me what to do.”

  “Don’t expect any man can. You’re a beautiful force unto yourself.”

  This seemed to please her. There were no doubt, as he got ready for the race, Jim Carroll was aware his little sister was talking to Michael.

  Fanny took off her scarf. “Wear my colours. ’Less you’re scared to.”

  “You troublemaker.”

  She ties the light yellow scarf around the right shoulder strap of Michael’s ranger shirt. Now Jim Carroll were looking directly at her. As she sent Michael on his way, I saw her turn and give her brother a look of “so there.” And he looked right back at her, his eyes staring as some say like two piss holes in the snow. And I remembers saying to myself, “Johnny, this horse race are going to be some interesting.”

  * * *

  There were few things Will Donnelly would have loved more than to join the Victoria Day horse race as he had done in past years, even winning it the second year, but his little brother Michael was the artist with the horses and it was a tougher field these days. Will was surprised to see Nora Kennedy in the mix but why not? He knew she was a fine rider. She had a plaid shirt and studded chaps that fit her hips well and a big Stetson hat she’d be bound to lose at any decent speed. Will was satisfied to watch with his father and mother and two of his brothers. He was also being vigilant against the forces that opposed his family, waiting to see what they might do. The presence of Carroll’s men concerned him more than he revealed. At least with Jim Carroll in the race their leader was occupied, but you never know, and so he studied the faces—both strange and familiar—of the men in the crowd that pressed around them.

  Today, as they stood at the track rail near where the horses were gathering, his mother seemed her old self: happily chatting with her friends, showing off her family, waiting to cheer on Michael in his horse race. Will was pleased to see the excited anticipation in her face. His father was arm in arm with her, just savouring her presence, his freedom and the fresh ai
r.

  Will’s brother John, in a fine checked suit and bowler hat, was beside him as they waited for the race to begin. John had found a place for himself near the timid Winnifred Ryder, sister of Tom and James, daughter of Grouchy, watching the horses with interest. It was rare that Winnifred’s eyes were not lowered in public, but today as she studied the horses in competition, they were luminous and appraising.

  John lost himself for a moment in their hazel splendour. “Beautiful animals, aren’t they, Winnie? That bay and the b-b-b-b-black gelding.”

  “Oh…yes.” She nodded her head and lowered her eyes again.

  “I wonder if they see b-b-b-beauty in each other, as people do. Do horses recognize aesthetics? I think so. I hope so.”

  Will was amused to overhear a little flirtatious chat coming out of John.

  “They must,” she said quietly.

  “Yes, and then of course it’s all about smell,” John continued. “Each with their own aroma. Maybe humans should p-p-p-put more importance in smell. I think yours is l-l-l-lilac, am I right?”

  Winnifred giggled. Will was surprised at his brother’s banter but had to turn away as the horses had been called up to the line and the race was about to begin.

  The Victoria Day race was a little different from the normal weekend horse races in that there was a cross-country element to it. Three times around the track and then a quarter-mile out across the public lands to a heavy pole, there for the purpose, and then back, three final circuits of the track and across the finish line.

  The horses were lined up abreast at the starting line, with two tiers behind the starters. They had plenty of time to come from behind. There was that moment of stillness before the pistol cracked, then it did so and the race was on.

  The first three circuits were chaotic, with several riders desperately vying for the lead. The Donnellys and Winnifred were all cheering loudly for Michael and urging speed. But they knew what he was doing: staying back from the fray, biding his time, letting the others wear themselves out on the track.