Cursed! Blood of the Donnellys

by Keith Ross Leckie

  Inside the Donnelly farmhouse, Tom laid out Michael’s body on the big table in the summer kitchen with a gentle affection Will had never seen in him before. Patrick and Tom then carried James Jr. into the main kitchen and laid him down on the cot near the stove.

  “Good…thank you…” James whispered. He was happy to be home. His mother stayed by his side as Nora stoked the fire and lit several candles.

  James’s bandages were blood soaked but when Nora offered to change them, he did not want her to.

  “Good to be home.”

  Bridget remained silent, sitting on the wood pile staring at James with wide eyes, her mouth slightly open to breathe, as if she were preparing herself to run.

  Will called out to his brothers. “Patrick! Tom! Get your clubs. And your rifles. Tonight we’ll teach our enemies a lesson. We start with the Flanagans.”

  “I’ll c-c-c-come too.”

  “All right, John. Come then.”

  Will could see his mother in the candlelight, her beautiful face contorted by grief. Her hands were covered in James’s blood. She looked small and lost and defeated.

  Suddenly James called out, his voice a rattle, fresh blood on his lips.

  “Da! Da!”

  Their father had kept to himself, sitting brooding in a corner of the room, saying nothing, looking no one in the eye, but at James’s call he went and knelt down beside him.

  “I’m here, Jamie.”

  James took his father’s hand in his bloody one and made him look into his eyes.

  “Did I do all right?”

  “Yes, you did well, Jamie.”

  “I kept it all secret.”

  A cold realization entered Will: his father had ordered James to burn the Ryders’ barn.

  “I poured it all over the walls like you said. Got the barn going real well. They shouldn’t have talked to Ma like that after the trial, should they? We had to defend her honour, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, we did,” Jim Donnelly told him. “You did well, James. I’m very proud of you.”

  James smiled and was calmed by his father’s praise. Then he coughed more blood, grimaced from the pain and settled again. His lips moved and he began to sing just under his breath.

  Give my oil in my lamp, keep me burning.

  Give me oil in my lamp, I pray.

  Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning.

  Keep me burning till the break of day…

  His eyes and lips became still, the last breath left his body and he was gone.

  Johannah embraced James and held him tight for several moments. She growled and moaned and they all remained silent. Then she let him go and breathed an enormous sigh.

  Jim would not meet Will’s eyes.

  “Put him beside Mike in the summer kitchen,” Will told Tom.

  Tom reached down and picked up James’s body in his arms. Will followed him into the summer kitchen where their breath made clouds in the cold air. Moonlight streamed through the window as Johannah came in and knelt beside the bodies of her sons, side by side on the big harvest table they used in the summer. She placed her hands on them both and put her face against James’s still-warm chest, and began to keen. Will watched as his mother grieved, the hopeless tones of her voice chilling him even more than the sight of the bodies of his brothers. He turned and went back in to confront his father.

  In the living room, Patrick, Tom and John were loading their pistols and rifles and preparing for battle. Jim sat on a rigid chair, one eye open, checking down the barrels of his shotgun for cleanliness. Will came up to his father. The older man still would not meet his eyes. Will turned to his brothers.

  “We will not go after our enemies tonight.”

  Patrick froze and stared at him. “What? Why the hell not?”

  Will gestured to his father. “Ask him.”

  Will then turned to Tom. “Tom?” His brother turned his cold eyes to Will. “It was you who killed those two Flanagan horses in the field.” Tom remained silent. “And it was you who loosened the bolt on the Flanagan coach the day Joe was killed, wasn’t it?”

  Tom looked at their father for guidance. His silent appeal confirmed it was all true as surely as a confession.

  “The Flanagans were right,” Will said, addressing his family and making eye contact with each one that would. “We killed Joe. And that’s why they killed Michael.”

  Will confronted his father.

  “Look at me, Da!” Slowly his father’s defiant eyes found Will’s. “You put Tom up to it, didn’t you?”

  Again, silence told the truth. Will was furious with his father, and with himself for not seeing it sooner.

  “You brought this all on us. You put James up to burning the Ryder barn. You put Tom up to fixing the Flanagan coach and killing the horses. You’ve been carrying on your goddamn feuds and now two of my brothers are dead! God damn you. I wish to Christ you’d never come home!”

  His father remained silent. Will turned and went out into the summer kitchen and kissed his mother and put a heavy blanket around her.

  “Ma?” She looked up at him slowly. “Nora and I are going to go home. We’ll come back in the morning and make some decisions. Will you be all right?” She nodded. “You’ve got Patrick and Tom. There are loaded rifles at the door. I’ve asked Johnny O’Connor to come stay here tonight so he can do the chores in the morning. You need anything? Anything I can do?”

  She looked up at him, considering his question, her face a mask of grief and defiance. “Yes. There is. You can let me die before you. I don’t care what you do, but give me that.”

  Will put a hand on her shoulder and she reached across her chest to grip his hand tight, then she let go. The image of her kneeling beside the bodies of her sons in the moonlight, her breath forming small white clouds of sorrow, seared through him.

  Will returned to the kitchen and took Nora by the hand and she stood up. Patrick was surprised.

  “Where the hell are you going?”

  “We’re going home, Pat. You and Tom stay here and look after things. Keep an eye open. One of you come and get me if you need anything. We’ll take John.”

  Will turned to his quiet brother. “You coming?”

  John nodded and they left.

  Devil’s Work

  Johannah remained out in the summer kitchen beside her boys for a long time, until the cold crept under the blanket Will had given her and she was trembling, even disoriented by exhaustion and the very idea that they were gone. For truly the spirits that were Michael and James had departed, these bodies mere flesh and bone, dead husks that no longer housed any real portion of her sons, who only hours before had laughed and loved, felt heat and cold, pain and pleasure. Anything here was only a memory to touch, a cruel metaphor for what had been lost. And yet she could not leave them and go inside to him. She did not know how she could return to the presence of the man who had caused their deaths.

  It was late when Jim came to her. He looked at the boys and knelt beside her. Her husband had knelt with her before, but this time she did not believe it, and his presence betrayed the sanctity of their deaths.

  When she spoke, her breath was visible. “Two of my sons are dead.” Johannah turned on Jim, her voice rising. “It’s true, isn’t it? You told James to burn the Ryders’ barn?”

  “They insulted you,” he said quietly.

  “Don’t you dare use me in this. I should have known. You had Tom fix the Flanagan stage and kill those horses, didn’t you?”

  “The Flanagans had it coming,” his tone defensive, weak.

  Johannah was dizzy and nauseous at the realization that Jim was behind it all. She touched the faces of her dead sons.

  “Don’t you understand? I gave them life, I nursed them, taught them and saw them grow into men. And now they are dead! And the only one to blame is you.”<
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  It was then she began to cry, the tears finally coming. And she felt Jim’s tentative hands on her shoulders, the hands she had once loved. He rubbed her shoulders to comfort her as he had done long before and she turned to him, the tears flowing freely now.

  “Do you remember your promise to me years ago? No more violence. No more fighting. Then Farrell. Now this. How fine our life could have been together. Well, you’re a liar, aren’t you? And you’ve destroyed it all…again!”

  “Johannah…”

  “LIAR!”

  She could see that the icy plume of her word affected him. For Jim, grief was overcoming pride and deep loss was smothering the passion for revenge. He began to speak. “As long as I remember, in my life I have been guided and sustained and enslaved by an overwhelming desire for…revenge. It was revenge…even with you.”

  She turned in surprise and studied him as he continued quietly.

  “When I was a boy we raised two little ponies your father wanted as a gift for you. My father wouldn’t sell them to him. Your father was going to take them anyway, so to stop him, my father killed them—these things he loved—and then he killed himself. I could not stand the sorrow and the shame of his madness. First I thought of murdering your father, but what I wanted more was to make him feel pain as I had. So as vengeance against him, I made plans to kill you. But then I had a better idea. I would steal you from him and let him know it was me.”

  She stared at him. “Our life together, for you…was nothing but an act of revenge?”

  “At the beginning. But then I…I fell in love with you, Jo.”

  His grizzled chin quivered with emotion.

  “And the deeper I fell in love, the weaker became my desire for revenge. You and love almost cured me of my curse. Almost. But then Farrell came with the face of your father and it all came out again. And now this. I have inherited the madness of my own father.”

  She looked up at him, studying his tortured face.

  “We have lost two of us. Two of our beautiful sons, Jim. You must make their sacrifice mean something. Tomorrow we will go openly to our enemies, house to house, and ask them all, each one of them, in the names of our dead sons for…a truce…for forgiveness…for peace.”

  Jim looked at Michael and James and slowly nodded.

  “We’ll go to each one of them,” she repeated. “First thing you’ll have Johnny rig up the wagon and we’ll go. Now swear it to me.”

  “I swear.”

  “Say it!”

  “I swear we will go and make peace with our enemies in the name of our sons.”

  “Yes,” she said, closing her eyes.

  Jim straightened the blanket carefully around her shoulders and stood up unsteadily, his joints creaking, gaining purchase on the table that held the bodies of his sons. He reached down and gently took her hands in his to help her to her feet.

  “Come inside now, Jo. You’ll catch your death.”

  * * *

  The meeting of the St. Patrick’s Peace Society took place just about the hour of James’s passing, as they gathered at the burning ruins of the Ryder barn. Among them were Father Connolly, the Ryder brothers, Jim Carroll, a couple of Kennedys, James Flanagan, a fairly new but enthusiastic adherent named Purtell and several other interested parties. Martin McLaughlin had brought his still-inebriated daughter Abbie there, her face bruised now, and McLaughlin held her arm and made her repeat to them the entire story.

  “Tell them.”

  “It was James Donnelly. He made me drink from his bottle and got me all drunk so’s my head was swimming and then he took me out to the barn and I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “Go on, Abbie.”

  “He made advances on me in the hay and grabbed me in private places and I pushed him away and said no—I’m a good Catholic girl—and then he hit me. He hit me and threatened to hurt me again. Then he had his way with me anyway. It’s all a nightmare.”

  “He had his way with you?” Father Connolly asked, watching her intently.

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Tell them what you saw then.” Martin McLaughlin stood over her, urging her on.

  “I seen James Donnelly ride off toward the Ryders’ with a can of coal oil.”

  “Do you swear to that?” Jim Carroll asked her.

  “I do, sir.”

  After Abbie’s confessions, it was Father Connolly’s turn to speak to the vigilantes.

  “You have heard the girl. The Donnellys, led by that crippled devil and the evil woman, defy all peaceful and law-abiding citizens. I have concluded that Johannah Donnelly must practice the black arts. How else have they escaped justice for so long? This night they have burned a barn and raped one of your daughters, only the last of so many crimes against the community. The law has failed you,” Connolly told them. “The members of the St. Patrick’s Peace Society have done everything reasonable to stop the outrages. Desperate times require desperate actions.” He turned to Jim Carroll. “You have to do whatever you think best to put an end to it and bring them all to justice. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost…I give you my blessing.”

  * * *

  I got to the Donnellys’ late that night. It were near the end of the Keefe party, Will Donnelly finds me and tells me that James and Mike have been hurt and asks me to come and help out at the farmhouse. But I got no rides so I walked and when I got there my toes was frozen. I noticed a lantern in the barn and some goings on there and I went in to find Patrick saddling a horse. He was talking to himself kind of low and crazy, or maybe to the angels, when I got there. Was saying, “…not going to do something…? Let ’em get away…? Sit on our arses…? Well, I’M going to do something…”

  He had a shotgun, and a rifle and two pistols in his belt. He were a strange one, I knew, given to tempers, but I asked him politely what was up and he told me they had killed Michael and James. I were pole-axed by this certain information. So then Patrick mounts his horse with all his armaments, told me again he was going to do something about it and rode out of the barn, heading for town. I didn’t like the sound of that or of his chances, but he was gone before I could speak an opinion and anyway I were only a kid.

  I went down to the house real quiet to see if I could help. I went in through the summer kitchen where the door was open and by God there they was, the two laid out on the table. And I’m not shy to say I had tears in my eyes. Then I went around to the front door where big Tom let me in. And Old Jim was staring at the floor and I could hear Johannah crying softly in the living room. I told them I was so sorry for their loss. It were such a sad place that house that night and I tried to be small and quiet.

  There were a cot in the kitchen where I usually slept if I was staying over and I put my coat there. Someone had throwed a blanket over the cot and when I pulled it back, there was fresh dark stains that came away on my fingers and I knowed it was blood. Poor James, I guessed. I put some split wood in the stove and boiled water for tea to give the Irish girl Bridget, ’cause she was in bad shape, crying and trembling, any loud voices shaking her. Old Jim came into the kitchen and sat near the stove and he had a basket of sweet apples from their tree and Tom came in and we all ate a couple in silence. Old Jim told me to remember tomorrow to get the rig ready early and to feed the pigs and chickens early and not too much oats for the horses and I promised I would.

  While we was sitting there, there come a knock on the door. Old Jim let the steel lock slide and in comes Jim Feehley to give his condolences. I’d never much cared for the man and Old Jim didn’t want him disturbing Johannah and Feehley said that was fine. When the condolences offering was done he talked about walking up the road to Will’s house to do the same.

  “The night’s clearer than I thought,” he told Old Jim. “D’you mind if I leave my rain slicker here to pick up on my way back?”

  “We’re going to
bed soon.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t want to disturb anyone. I’ll just hang it here and if you leave the door unlocked, I can grab it when I come by on my way back and I won’t wake you.”

  Old Jim agreed to this. Just as Feehley left, Johannah comes into the kitchen. I could not look into her sad eyes and when I tried to give my sympathies they stuck in my throat. So Old Jim said we might as well all go to bed. I could see they was all exhausted and so was I. Bridget had been terrified by the killings of Michael and James, and Johannah put a kind arm around her shoulders. “It’s all right now. D’you want to sleep with me?” Johannah asked her and Bridget nodded she did. That time of year in February, the Donnellys often closed off the upstairs attic bedrooms with a door that kept the warm air downstairs.

  “All right, we’ll sleep in the north bedroom and Johnny, you sleep with Jim in the big bed.”

  So after filling the stove to stay hot we all undressed for bed down to our long underwear. Tom took the bed in the first small room off the kitchen. I settled in with Jim in the bigger bedroom on the wall side of the bed under the window. It were a fine and wide mattress and I’d never slept on it before. You know, some people said it must have felt strange sleeping next to a convicted murderer but it never crossed my mind. He was warm and didn’t move much, nor snore too bad. There was worse things I could be sleeping beside. Old Jim gave me his heavy wool coat for a pillow.

  “All right Johnny, you’ll get up at first light and light the fire. When she’s going real good, go out and harness the horses, feed ’em like I said, and slop the pigs. Give extra to the sow, she’s in the family way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He blew out the lantern and we settled down.

  * * *

  Patrick had ridden all the way into Lucan, but not by way of the public roads. He had made a short cut across the fields and swamps and because of this, did not encounter the Peace Society, in fact just missed them coming north. Patrick came out on the road west of McLaughlin’s farm and rode up the deserted Main Street in front of the Central Hotel, then he began to yell.