Killing Down the Roman Line

by McGregor, Tim

  The stranger was gnashing his teeth, nigh foaming at the mouth, and Emma pulled Travis away, hissing at Jim to follow. The Murdys and the Connellys turned and hurried back up the path, away from the leering man and his blasphemous sideshow. The others cursed and followed.

  Corrigan waved at the departing crowd like some demented carnival barker. “Come again, folks! And bring your friends!”

  Jim lingered as the bodies migrated past him, cursing and growling. He closed the distance between himself and Corrigan. “What the hell is this? Some sick joke?”

  Corrigan smiled. “Just celebrating local history, Jim.” His bloodshot eyes were feral and burning. “Come on up to the house and have a drink. Bring the family.”

  Too apoplectic to respond, Jim turned and walked off with all the others, shooing his wife and son before him.

  8

  “THAT WAS AWESOME!” Travis let the screen door bang shut again as he raced into the house. “I can’t believe nobody ever told me that story.”

  Jim and Emma were silent on the walk home, too shocked and confused to articulate anything they were feeling. The boy prattled, kicking stones and the sun midway through the sky hurrying them home. They hurried for the shade of the house.

  Travis snatched a can of root beer from the fridge without asking. “Working for that guy’s gonna be cool.” He popped the can and scurried up to his room.

  Jim listened to the boy pound the steps as if trying to smash them and looked at his wife. “No way in hell is he working for that man.”

  “We already said he could.”

  He scrounged two bottles of beer from the icebox and threw down into a chair. Twisted the caps and slid one across to her. “Didn’t you hear that bullshit back there?”

  “His family was killed.” Emma took a pull, felt the bottle sweat in her hand. “He’s angry.”

  “It was a hundred years ago for Chrissakes.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s still wrong. The man has every right to be angry.”

  “You believe that story? Emm, he accused everyone in town.”

  “Do you think it’s true?”

  Jim tilted his beer, then dismissed it all with a wave. “He’s just trying to stir up trouble.”

  “That’s not what I asked. Is his story true?”

  “It’s complete nonsense. Those people were killed by a gang of escaped convicts and that’s the end of it.” He shook his head again. “Hell, even if it was true, what does he think he’s gonna do? Lay charges against folks already in the ground?”

  “Still,” she said. “It’s an awful thing.”

  “It’s ancient history. Got nothing to do with us.”

  Emma leaned back and fanned her face with yesterday’s newspaper. The peak of the midday heat blowing in through the open window and it not even high summer yet. The knock at the screen door startled them both.

  Will Corrigan stood on the other side of the torn screen. A bottle of wine clutched by the neck. “You must be Emma.” He pulled the door open and thrust out a hand. “Will Corrigan. Pleased to meet you.”

  ~

  Emma didn’t know what to make of their guest. For someone who had just offended twenty people and taken a hard right to the jaw, he was remarkably chipper. All smiles and warmth, complimenting Emma on their lovely home and asking about the flowers she had blooming all around the yard.

  He took a seat at the kitchen table but refused a drink or even coffee. Jim had withdrawn to the sink, watching the man with mute hostility. Emma scolded her husband with a look and joined their guest at the table.

  “I’m sorry I had to bushwack you back there.” Corrigan placed the bottle on the table. “I didn’t want anyone spoiling the surprise, you see.”

  “We were surprised,” she said. “Everyone was.”

  “Then you’ll forgive me.”

  Jim levelled a finger at him. “That’s one nasty accusation you threw down.”

  “That was a history lesson. One that seems to have been conveniently forgotten about.”

  “You expect everyone to believe that story?”

  “It’s no story. God’s truth.”

  Emma looked at him. “How do you know it’s true?”

  “From my father, who was told the story by his father. The sole survivor of the Corrigan massacre, Robert Patrick Corrigan.”

  “It’s a helluva story, I’ll give you that.” Jim, not buying any of it. “But that’s not what happened. Your family was attacked by a bunch of lunatics who busted out of the jailhouse in Garrisontown.”

  Corrigan laughed. “Aye, I’ve heard that one too.”

  “But you don’t believe it,” Emma said.

  “As much as I believe it was a band of renegade Apaches or hobgoblins.” He slid the wine bottle across the table to her. “This is for you. A little peace offering.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “It’s not much, I know. The wine selection around here is a little slim.”

  Jim slugged back his beer. “We’re not really big on wine.”

  “Then I’ll bring champagne next time.” He turned back to her. “Everyone likes champagne.”

  Emma shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess.”

  “Okay? Then you’ve never had the good stuff.” He winked at her. “I’ll bring you some.”

  Emma smiled back. The man had his charm. “So where are you from, Mister Corrigan?”

  “Will, please. Lately of Halifax.”

  “I’ve never been there. I hear it’s lovely.”

  “It is. Lots of history too.”

  Jim, wanting him gone, went for bluntness. “What do you do, Corrigan? Besides entertain people, I mean?”

  “Security. Or I used to. Time for a change.”

  Emma seared Jim with a look for his rudeness, then leavened her tone. “Is that what brings you here? Looking for a place to settle down?”

  “In a way. I wanted to find my roots, my history. I wanted to find out who I am, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do.” Emma smiled. The man seemed sincere. “But why now? Why haven’t we seen any Corrigans before this?”

  “There aren’t any others.” Corrigan glanced about, taking in the room. The photos on the fridge, grade school drawings their son had made. The lopsided sugar bowl on the table that Travis had made for mother’s day. “My brother died years ago. A car accident. Dad passed in oh-two. That left me. The last one bearing the Corrigan name.”

  Jim killed his beer. “Why wait so long to come here?”

  “I was in jail.”

  Emma’s face fell, as did her husband’s. The sound of crickets filled the vacuum. Corrigan remained stone-faced for a moment then guffawed.

  “Gotcha!” His laugh boomed big and bellied through the kitchen. Emma broke and laughed too. Even Jim cracked a tiny smile.

  “Enjoy the wine.” Corrigan stood and gave a cockeyed salute. At the door, he stopped. “One more thing. Does Travis want the job? I would sincerely appreciate the help.”

  Jim was about to nix the idea when Emma brightened. “I think an after-school job would be a great idea,” she said.

  ~

  “Who is this son of a bitch anyway?”

  The bristling topic of conversation inside the diner. Speculation, fuelled by the offence hurled at their town, ran wild and rabid through Pennyluck. The attendees of the inaugural Corrigan Horrorshow crowded the tables of the Oak Stem, the rest eager to hear the tale and partake of the collective outrage. Any other day of the week, the crowd would have reconvened at the pub but this being two o’ clock on a Sunday, they demurred and settled for coffee and rhubarb pie.

  Across the table, Puddycombe grumbled what many were thinking. “He’s got no right saying garbage like that. Corrigan or no.”

  The mayor, just now coming through the door, was set upon. Joe Keefe waved her to his table. “Kate, what do you know about this guy? Where’s he from?”

  Kate had been home, finally getting to the flowerbeds, wh
en her phone went crazy. The last three weekends had been swallowed up with work and she was determined to get the gardening done now before spring was gone. She knew about the tour at the old Corrigan place and sure enough, her phone rang as soon as it was all over. Better come meet us at the coffee shop, the caller said. You’re not gonna believe what just happened.

  Now she was in the thick of it, patrons talking over each other in their rush to get out all the details, all the horrible things that man said. And now they all looked at her like she had an answer. “I’m sorry,” she confessed. “I’m as much in the dark as you are.”

  “Meaning what exactly?” Berryhill thumped the table, rattling the coffee spoons. “You ain’t gonna do anything about his slanderous shit?”

  “I’m not sure what I can do.”

  “Useless,” Berryhill grumped. “Fucking useless.”

  “We’ll sue the bastard.” Hitchens pointed a finger at the faces assembled around the tabletop. “Slander. Defamation of character. Whatever else you got. All of us, like a class action thing.”

  The tables rumbled in approval.

  Puddycombe stood and waved until he had everyone’s attention. “How do we even know this guy is who he says he is? A Corrigan? For all we know he could be some huckster trying to shake us down for a quick payout.”

  “Excellent point,” Kate said. The mood was turning uglier and she’d heard enough. Looking for a way to cap the discussion and get out. “Thank you. All of you. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  She stood but the men weren’t letting her off that easy, peppering her with questions and demands for action. A hand gripped her elbow and she turned, ready to blow.

  It was Jim, elbowing his way through and pulling her away. “You’re a popular lady today.”

  “Can we talk outside?” Kate’s words, but her eyes said something else. Get me out of here.

  The street was quiet and the breeze cool after the greasy heat inside the diner. They stepped under the shade of an oak tree. Kate looked at her fingers, garden soil still crusted under the nails.

  “You missed the big show,” Jim said.

  “I heard. What do you know about this guy?”

  “Nada.”

  “You’re the only one he’s talked to. He must have told you something.”

  “He said his grandfather was the sole survivor of the massacre that night. The little boy who witnessed it all and lived to tell the tale.”

  “What does he want?” Kate rubbed her eyes. She just wanted to get back to her flowerbeds. “What is he trying to prove with this little stunt?”

  “You’d have to ask him. He’s kinda cagey about what he’s up to.”

  “Did he tell you anything else?”

  “He’s from Halifax. Said he used to work in security.” Jim shrugged. It was all he had.

  Ding. The door swung open. Berryhill and Hitchens spilled out, with the dutiful Combat Kyle dogging their heels. Hitchens nodded a polite goodbye but Bill openly scowled. Kyle’s mug was a lemon pucker of disdain but his face was forever fixed that way no matter what his mood. The happiest day of his life and his sneer wouldn’t budge.

  Jim watched them stomp off to their cars. “What about Corrigan’s story? The murders? Is it possible they were really killed by their neighbours?”

  “No. I don’t know. It’s ancient history. If it was true, don’t you think it would be known. Even a rumour or a skeleton in the closet? A ghost story?”

  “It is a ghost story. Do you know how many spook-hunters I’ve chased out of that old place?”

  “It’s just so…” Kate groped for a word, settled for “preposterous.”

  “So he’s making it up?”

  “Can you talk some sense into him?”

  Jim stepped back. “Why me?”

  “Because you’re the only friend he’s made.” Kate leaned in close, eyes bright. “Find out what he’s after. Reason with him.”

  “I don’t want to get involved in this mess.”

  Her tone dropped, face set in stone. “You already are involved, remember? Just talk to the man. Find out what he wants.”

  It took a moment but Jim realized he was learning a tough lesson. Playing politics was like learning to throw a boomerang. The harder you hurl the thing, the faster it screams back at you.

  He shook his head, wanting to say no but obligation swapped out his answer.

  “Okay, okay. Jesus…”

  9

  THE CORRIGAN PLACE was quiet the rest of the day. No more visitors, no sign of the man nor his vehicle. The big sign Corrigan had placed near the roadside had been defiled, pummelled with something red and sticky. Red rivulets of it dripping down the stencilled lettering. Looked like tomato.

  Monday was spent tilling the rough skirt of land down near the creek. He slowed the tractor as he passed the breech in the fence he’d made days earlier. The stones neatly piled up and the first few passes with the plough on the other property. The tractor ticked and sputtered as he wondered what the hell he was going to do about it now. Reassemble the fence stone by stone? To hell with it. He chucked up the gear and trundled on.

  He couldn’t shake the awful story Corrigan had told with such glee. How could such a horrible thing be true? How could it remain so forgotten? Other than kids goosing one another with ghost stories, no one ever talked about the Corrigans or what happened to them. And yet he knew of the town’s reluctance to say that name aloud. He remembered being shushed as a kid once while talking to a cousin about the ‘haunted house’. Uncle Finn scolding him for uttering that name, saying it brought bad luck.

  That was just plain weird.

  When he got back to the yard he found the goats in the flowerbed, snapping up tulip heads. Why they needed goats, or why the horse needed ‘companion animals’, Jim still didn’t quite buy but Emma was the horse expert. He took her word for it but the damn things were getting into everything. The marble-eyed goats had the strangest taste too, ignoring the vegetable garden but devouring every tulip they could find. Jim had tried to feed them dandelions, hoping they’d acquire a taste and start weeding his lawn for him but the goats turned away in disinterest. Instead, they had started eating the bark off some cedar saplings he had planted three years ago, leaving the greenwood bare and exposed like a wound. Jim had kicked the animals away but the brainless goats just looked at him, jaws grinding away.

  He washed up at the sink, told Emma he was going to run errands in town. He was out the door and into the truck, almost away before she ran out with a grocery list for him. Damn.

  Galway Road was quiet, a few cars zipping from the hardware store to the grocery store and then home. Pat Murdoch stood outside his auto garage, chewing a toothpick and watching the sun go down. Jim bopped his horn and Murdoch waved.

  The errands went quick enough. A spanner wrench, a replacement blade for his circular saw and a roll of heavy gauge wire to wrap the saplings and save them from the goddamn goats. Groceries went into the lock-box in the back of the pickup, which would keep them cool enough until he got home. He left the truck in the lot, cut through the alley to Galway and down a block to the town hall building. A limestone gothic edifice with a clock centered in the tower.

  He passed Hitchens coming the other way. “Where you going, Jimmy?” Hitchens pointed in the direction he was going. “The pub’s this way.”

  “Got some homework to do. I’ll catch up.”

  Hitchens watched Jim take the steps two at a time. “When did you learn to read?”

  Jim flipped him the bird and passed through the doors of the Pennyluck public library.

  ~

  Where the hell was the history section?

  Jim went down one aisle and up the next. Lost. He hadn’t been in a library since he was a kid and having already wandered the stacks for five minutes felt too embarrassed to ask for help. Kids slouched over the desks watched him wander hopelessly like an idiot.

  A film of sweat had settled on his brow when he finally
located it, in the end stack near geography. Frustration returned when he couldn’t find what he was looking for. There was Canadian and U.S. history, then European and finally world history. This last section consisted of a travel book about Mexico and a picture book about mummies. Not a single book about Pennyluck or even Ontario history.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Two schoolgirls near the window looked up when he cursed and Jim fought the urge to sprint for the exit. An old woman shushed him.

  “Can I help you?”

  Jim turned to find the librarian standing behind him. Not what he expected either. A redheaded woman who looked to be half his age with a heavy stack of hardcovers cradled in her freckled arms. “No,” he blurted out on instinct. “Just browsing.”

  “Okay. If you could keep the cursing to a quiet blasphemy, that’d be great.” She smiled and turned to go.

  “Wait. Uh… where’s the local history?”

  Three aisles over, near the kid’s reading tables, on a shelf with the genealogy books. The young librarian’s name was Siobhan Murphy, second daughter to the Murphy’s over on Bleeker Street. She asked what he was looking for and pulled a handful of books. She flipped through the indices, helping Jim narrow his search. Siobhan smiled a lot and even laughed at the jokes he made about his ignorance. She tilted her head and giggled and for a brief moment, Jim wondered if she was flirting with him but chased the thought away.

  The sound of books crashing in a nearby stack interrupted them and Siobhan excused herself. Jim settled into a table and flipped through the yellowing books, their spines cracking from disuse. A History of Pennyluck and its People, Middlesex County Memories. The typeset was dense and the pages smelled of mildew. No volume newer than the late seventies and Jim groaned over the prospect of reading through it. The florescent lighting and the constant shushing of the old woman in the next aisle was tortuous.