Cursed! Blood of the Donnellys

by Keith Ross Leckie

  The other girls laughed. The redhead appeared amused.

  “Did the sun come out? Or was that just your smile?”

  Fanny’s eyes turned to smouldering coals. Will watched as she turned and headed for the backyard.

  Nora wanted a little respite from the cigar smoke, so Will found her wrap and they stepped out onto the long kitchen porch, where they could see their breath under the stars with other couples. John was there speaking intently to Winnifred, both studying the universe on this frosty winter night.

  “…scientists say the light from them has been t-t-t-travelling for a hundred years to get to the earth. Some of the ones you see burned out a hundred years ago but the light continues on to us! That’s how long it t-t-t-takes to get here.”

  “Goodness! How do people know that?”

  “It’s all scientific knowledge. We’ve advanced so far.”

  “Sometimes I wish we were back in the magical time when people believed angels moved the moon and stars around. I’d like to believe angels are behind everything. May not be real but it’s comforting, don’t you think?”

  Will was surprised by Winnifred Ryder’s sudden, uncharacteristic verbosity. More words than he’d ever heard her speak. She was a homely little thing—with Ryder as a last name she couldn’t help herself—but tonight John’s attention was bringing out a confidence and a luminosity, even radiance, in her.

  Nora and Will continued to examine the formations of the stars—they were truly intense that night—while standing among the others on the porch. Some low clouds parted and a half moon came out to show the gentle contours of the light snow lying on the sleeping fields.

  Nearby John continued his quiet conversation.

  “Winnifred…maybe the angels still do move the stars around. I d-d-d-don’t know. But I do know…I would like you to be my wife.”

  Winnifred looked up at him in shock, then her eyes sparkled.

  “I know your b-b-b-brothers hate us,” John continued, “but I promise we’ll m-m-m-make it work.” His voice increased in volume to the point it made the conversation public and Will and Nora could hear.

  “Winnifred Ryder, will you marry me?”

  Nora and Will looked at each other in surprise and held their breath.

  Winnifred smiled. “Oh…” And she nodded her head with enthusiasm, and even said a breathless “yes.”

  Nora and Will applauded. John and Winnifred noticed them, turning all shades of embarrassment, until Nora gave Winnifred a hug. Other couples had looked askance and Nora informed them.

  “They’re getting married!” She turned to her new soon-to-be sister-in-law.

  “Congratulations, Winnie!”

  They hugged. Three other couples offered applause. “Well done, John!” Will clapped his brother on the shoulder and embraced Winnifred. “Another Donnelly merger! Welcome.”

  * * *

  I were there at the Keefe wedding in my best shirt and coat. They had hired me to tend all the horses, making sure they was watered and had a little feed on that cold night and t’keep ’em company a bit. Some was in the barn and others were outside but I found those ones some blankets and they was good. I got to eat the cakes and had a little cider inside but I spent most of the night around the barn and that’s when I saw James Donnelly drinking whiskey with young Abbie McLaughlin in the hay loft. Those Donnellys and their girls in the hay lofts, I tell you. The horses was moving around and making sounds, so they didn’t hear me. They was in the hay both having lost a good amount of their clothes, drunk and laughing and having a gay old time.

  “Careful, James. You’ll spill,” says she.

  I were about to quietly leave when they started the argument.

  “I gotta go, Abbie. I got something to do.”

  Abbie kissed him. “Later. Not now.”

  “No. I promised.” He was pretty sure of it and started to get up and pull his clothes together. But Abbie held onto him tightly.

  “You’re staying with me!”

  “No, I gotta go.”

  James stood up then to get into his pants and Abbie was showing herself way beyond anything I shoulda seen and so I didn’t look.

  “Don’t leave me alone here. Whatever it is, it can wait.”

  “No! That’s the thing. It can’t,” James told her as he pulled away.

  They was both pretty drunk and James Jr. tried to yank his arm away and in doing so, he hit Abbie pretty hard in the eye with the back of his hand and she cried out.

  “You hit me!”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” He stood unsteadily as he buckled his belt. “I gotta go.”

  Like I say, I kept low so’s they’d never see me. It would have been some embarrassing. James sobered a little and was clothed and mounted on a Keefe horse. He had a heavy knapsack he tied to the saddle. Abbie was angry and drunk and sobbing, holding her bruised eye, as James rode off into the night.

  “You bastard!” she called out to him as one last thing and I snuck out the side door so she wouldn’t see me.

  * * *

  The drunken James Jr. arrived on the obliging Keefe horse at the Ryder farm a mile away. It was simple. After the trial back in the spring, outside the courthouse young Thomas Ryder had called his mother a witch, and now they would pay. James and his father figured they’d all be at the wedding reception. The horses would be gone from the barn. James opened the barn doors and released the cattle out into the yard. He had brought a large can of coal oil and took his happy time pouring the liquid on the walls of the main barn, singing softly to himself.

  “Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning. Give me oil in my lamp, I pray…”

  He stood back to consider his work.

  “Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning…”

  James lit the torch and stood ready to throw it.

  “Keep me burning till the break of day.”

  Holding the torch ready, James took a long, deep swallow from the whiskey bottle in his other hand. “Sing hosanna, sing hosanna, sing hosanna to the…” A shot rang out. James staggered, hit.

  James Ryder stood beside the house with his Winchester rifle. He had stayed behind from the party. He levered another shell into the breech and fired again, missing James Donnelly this time. The burning torch fell to the ground as James, slowed by the whiskey and a heavy bullet in his side, struggled to mount his horse, made skittish by the rifle shots. Ryder shot again. James rode off as Ryder fired two more times.

  Ryder ran up to where James had been standing. He picked up the flaming torch. He watched the retreating horseman, considering the situation. The cows were outside. The barn had been over-insured for five hundred dollars, they needed that money, and here was evidence that a Donnelly had done it and Ryder was a witness. He hesitated for only a moment, then he threw the torch against the wall of the barn. The coal oil ignited with a roar running along the base of the building, climbing the walls and quickly sending the barn up in flames.

  Blood Moon

  Fanny Carroll came out on the Keefe porch beside Will and Nora. She called out Michael’s name and then turned to Will.

  “Have you seen that brother of yours?”

  “Good evening, Miss Carroll,” Will said. “I hope you’re well and enjoying the evening. I suppose you mean Michael? The last time I saw him, he was in the dining room.”

  “If you see him around, tell him I want to talk to him.”

  Then she turned and went inside again.

  “Rude little thing,” Nora observed.

  In the kitchen, Fanny asked a distracted Mrs. Keefe if she had seen Michael Donnelly. The mother of the bride called back that she had not and she took two more pies out to the great room. The cellar door in the kitchen was open and as Fanny was about to leave, she heard over the music in the dining room the shush of whispered voices below. Cauti
ously, quietly, Fanny began to descend the steep steps into the cellar, where a soft glow suggested a candle was burning. At the bottom of the steps, Fanny Carroll listened. She heard urgent gasps and whispers coming from the cold room next to the stairs. She moved closer and looked through the half-open door to see by the light of one candle Michael Donnelly’s naked ass as he fornicated with the red-headed girl on top of a bin of potatoes. Fanny watched transfixed for a moment as Michael’s thrusts became more resolute. Her expression became cold and hard as she watched them pleasuring themselves and finally heard him finish, producing the same moan as the times when he had finished with her. Fanny quietly withdrew, the sound of her careful steps covered by the music from upstairs.

  * * *

  Will felt something unusual in the air that night and was trying to explain it to Nora.

  “I’m not sure, maybe the intensity of the stars or the cold winter night, but it made John propose to Winnifred and Michael’s running around like a rabbit in heat.”

  “I feel it too. It’s like…anticipation.”

  Michael came out onto the porch beside Will and Nora with rouge on his face, adjusting his clothes.

  “You having a good night, Michael?”

  “It’s splendid, so far,” Michael told him, fastening his belt.

  “You know, little brother,” Will told him quietly, “you might want to exercise some caution these days. We have enemies. Maybe keep it in your pants.”

  Michael shrugged and smiled at him. “I could.”

  Then Michael looked up and noticed Fanny Carroll was standing at the corner of the barn, as if waiting for him. She gave him a smile and Michael waved back to her. She withdrew around the corner of the barn.

  “Or then again…” Michael left Will and Nora and went to join Fanny.

  * * *

  James Donnelly Jr. arrived back at the Keefe house and walked unsteadily into the living room. He had failed. In his hasty escape, he hadn’t burned the barn. He had dropped the torch. And he had a bullet in his side. He knew it was bad. He had messed up. Just like so many things in his life. He saw his father in the living room with Keefe. He would have to tell him and face his disappointment. He took a drink of whiskey and staggered. Drops of blood hit the floor from his jacket hem, which had absorbed the blood from the bullet wound in his side. He coughed up a little, touched his lips with his fingers and saw the red. The wound was worse than he first thought. No one noticed. The whiskey washed down the blood and eased the jagged pain in his side.

  James turned as a Feehley boy looked out the window and pointed to a distant glow through the trees.

  “LOOK! FIRE! IT’S THE RYDER PLACE!”

  James shuffled to the window and stared at the horizon in amazement. It was true. Distant flames consumed the Ryder barn a mile away. He had done it after all!

  * * *

  Michael Donnelly came around the corner of the barn and made out Fanny, who had withdrawn and was standing under some trees watching him with her compelling smile. He headed toward her.

  “There she is, my Madonna in the moonlight!”

  She was strangely silent as he approached her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked and her eyes glittered.

  Then Michael found himself surrounded by three men. Jim Carroll and Matthew Thompson, Maggie’s brother, grabbed Michael as Fanny watched.

  “Fanny?” Michael looked at her.

  He then recognized James Flanagan, whose stage had overturned and whose brother Joe had been killed. Flanagan had a knife in his hand. As the others held him, James stepped behind Michael and whispered in his ear.

  “This is for Joe.”

  Flanagan quickly applied the knife blade under Michael’s chin, cut deep and right across his throat. The others let Michael go and he fell to the snowy ground, his eyes wide, both hands trying to stem the blood flowing from his jugular. The assailants all disappeared except for Fanny, who remained a moment longer staring at Michael, his heels kicking weakly against the white snow as the lifeblood drained from his body. Her brother returned and grabbed her arm and they headed for their horses.

  * * *

  Laughing lightly to himself over the unexpected success of his barn burning, James stumbled out on the porch near Will and Nora to watch the distant growing inferno. It was a well-made barn and in fact Will, Michael and James had been at the barn-raising to help a few years before when the Donnellys and Ryders were on friendlier terms.

  Tom Ryder and his father, Grouchy, and their friends raced to their horses and wagons to get to the fire and save anything they could. Other men followed. More wedding guests came outside to better see the flames in the distance. Will was about to go to his horse, to join the other men and see if anything could be done, when his brother James came up and took his arm.

  “Willy, my brother. How you doing?”

  “James, you see this fire?”

  “Oh yes. Lovely isn’t it? “

  “No, it’s not. No good’s going to come out of this. Probably try to blame us.”

  James went to take a long pull to finish the mickey in his pocket. In sudden impatience Will took hold of James’s wrist.

  “Look, put that away. We have to be smart tonight.”

  James staggered and fell against him. Will’s hand went under James’ jacket to steady him and found his ribs were warm and sticky. He withdrew his hand and stared at the red on his fingers.

  “What’s this? You’re bleeding!”

  “Oh, yeah. Was going to mention that. Got shot.”

  “Shot! Who shot you? Where?”

  James looked out toward the flaming Ryder barn with satisfaction, his words slurred.

  “Oh…I don’t know. Didn’t see him. Guess it’s open season on Donnellys.”

  James coughed and his lips were red again. He wiped it off with the back of his hand.

  “Who did this, Jimmy? Who shot you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Will stared at him as the realization became all too clear.

  “You torched the Ryder barn!”

  James gave a weak smile. “Yeah.”

  “But why? For Chrissake! Why did you do that, James?”

  “Had it coming.”

  James stumbled as if he would fall.

  Will whistled and called out, “TOM! PAT! MICHAEL! I NEED HELP!”

  James’s knees buckled. Will caught him as he collapsed. He put his coat down and laid James on the cold planks of the porch.

  “We’ll get you to a doctor. We’ll get this fixed.”

  “No! Listen, Will,” James stared intently into his eyes, now surprisingly sober. “Don’t take me to a doctor. Please. It can’t be fixed.”

  “There’s a good surgeon in London.”

  “No. I want to be at home with the family. Just take me home, Will. Please.”

  “Lie still.”

  Will was trying to think. He gently examined the bleeding bullet hole in his brother’s back. It was from a rifle and would have torn him up badly inside. James coughed blood again. His lips were crimson and Will suddenly realized James Jr. was not going to make it.

  “I want to go home, Will.”

  “All right. We’ll take you home. Rest now. We’ll get you out of here.”

  James grabbed his shoulder and drew him close.

  “Will? I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right, James.”

  Patrick and Tom arrived on the porch. Patrick went down on his knee.

  “James? What’s wrong, buddy, one drink too many?”

  “He’s been shot.”

  Both brothers stared at Will in shock.

  “We’ll need bandages and water. Make a bed for him in the wagon. We all have to get out of here, now.”

  Patrick ran inside. Tom lifted James up in his arms and c
arried him to the wagon.

  Where was Michael? Will had seen him go out toward the barn to see Fanny Carroll. They were probably just up in the hay. He called out.

  “MIKE? MICHAEL?”

  A fear gripped him as he began to walk toward the barn. His brother’s phrase rang in his head: “Open season on Donnellys.” He began to run.

  Inside the barn he called out to Michael, his voice betraying the beginnings of panic, but the barn was empty. Will came out again. There were tracks in the snow that went around the corner of the barn. He went around the structure to the side yard and there he stopped. The night sky was clear, the starlight strong, and he could see that a short distance away, lying on the snowy ground in the moon shadow from a big oak, was Michael. He lay on his back, his eyes open as if pondering the stars, one hand at the gaping wound at his throat, his warm blood still pooling in the snow.

  “Michael! No!” Will fell to his knees, took Michael in his arms and held him.

  “No, no, no…!” he said, rocking him. His brother’s blood smeared the front of his good shirt and the palms of his hands. “Oh, Michael.”

  In Retreat

  They moved as quick as they could in the buckboard on the hard Roman Line, the Donnellys taking home their dead and dying, the body of Michael covered by a blanket and the wounded James beside him. The remaining guests at the Keefe party had watched them leave. They had taken off their hats and a few gave their condolences, but no one helped. Never had Will felt his family so threatened and isolated. Now he rode behind the wagon, wheeling his horse around periodically to see if anyone followed. They were not well armed, a couple of pistols, sitting ducks for their enemies.

  His mother held James’s head on her lap, stroking his temple. James was still alive but very weak. Patrick and Tom had bandaged him up to slow the bleeding. Cousin Bridget was shaking, her mouth clamped shut, her eyes like a startled deer’s as she stared at Michael’s covered form. Nora held a blanket around her to warm and comfort her. Johannah and Jim were both very quiet and Will knew them to be in anguish, as they all were. Patrick was too angry and emotional to speak.