Killing Down the Roman Line

by McGregor, Tim

  Travis hated the trailer. It was cramped and smelled of mothballs and menthols. There was no where to go, no privacy.

  “You’ll adjust,” Emma told him. “It’ll be like we’re camping.”

  “We’ve never gone camping,” he said.

  “Would you prefer a homeless shelter?” she scolded. “We could bunk with the hoboes and the bedbugs. Because that’s what we are now, Travis. Homeless.”

  Harsh but true. She regretted it now, a day later as she knelt under the hang of the trailer, fitting a hose to the water supply. Travis knew how to push her buttons but she had to remind herself that she was the adult in this situation. She screwed the hose to the coupling and opened the valve. The hose swelled as water pumped into it. “Okay!” she hollered. “Try it now!”

  The sputter of water as air pockets gurgled out of the tap until the line ran clean. Travis came out of the trailer, rattling the aluminum door and gave her a thumbs up. “It works.”

  Some part of her tantrum must have sunk in. Travis seemed a different person since her outburst. Gone were the smart-ass remarks and disgusted grunts when asked to help out. She brushed her hands down her jeans, stepped back and looked over the trailer. It was parked on the flat grass facing the ruins of their house. Close to the barn so she could hear the horse from inside. A small comfort.

  “We’re trailer trash now,” he said.

  “Wow, that joke gets old fast, doesn’t it?”

  She bopped his shoulder to let him know she was kidding and then turned back to their new home. She regretted having parked the trailer so close to the ruins. The charred remains of their home was hard to look at. An open wound festering in the sun and the first thing she’d see every morning.

  “I still can’t believe it’s gone.” She put a hand on his shoulder and Travis didn’t immediately shirk away. A good sign. The last three days he’d refused to be touched, backing away from a hug or even a pat on the arm.

  “Do you think dad’s ever coming home?”

  She looked at him. He hadn’t mentioned his father in the last three days, always changing the subject when she mentioned Jim. “Of course he is, honey.”

  “But what if he isn’t?” He looked up at her, then quickly looked away. “You know what he did.”

  How to navigate this? Emma gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Are you still thinking about it?”

  “I can’t stop thinking about. I keep seeing it over and over.”

  “It’s all a blur to me, that whole night. I hope it stays that way too.”

  He knew it was a lie, and she read it in his face but they left it there. An untruth both agreed upon. And then her phone rang, letting both of them off the hook.

  It was Constable Bauer, calling from the OPP office up in Exford. Asking if she could come and bring her husband home.

  ~

  Jim stared at the floor of the holding cell. A narrow closet of a room with a bunk and a metal door. The smell of disinfectant hadn’t caused his headache but it didn’t help matters either. The headache came from the lack of sleep over the last three days. Going over his story again and again with Ray Bauer.

  He had told Ray everything. It had felt good too, letting everything out, purging it all. At least that first time. Telling it the hundredth time, with Constable Bauer stopping to pick at the details, it felt like nothing at all. Numb to it, like he was repeating a story someone had told him once. Ray kept at him, pecking at the details to find a loose straw that would collapse the whole thing.

  Images of Puddy kept flashing in Jim’s head, his leg clamped in the iron and screaming for help and Jim as useless as a stump. Puddy, whom he had abandoned, leaving for that psychopath to pick off.

  That was why he had told his lawyer to go home. Perry Keller showed up the day after, telling Jim he had found a good criminal defence lawyer and to keep his mouth shut until he gets here. Jim remembered Puddy in the trap and told Keller to go home. He didn’t need a lawyer. He was simply going to confess everything and take his lumps. Keller protested, telling Jim he was still in shock and not thinking clearly. Jim banged on the door until Ray came and took the lawyer away.

  Stupid?

  Maybe.

  He didn’t care anymore.

  The lock clicked over and Jim looked up as the door opened. Ray Bauer waved at him to get up. “Time to go,” he said.

  “Go where?”

  “Home. You made bail.”

  Jim blinked. What had Emma done? His bond had been set at twenty grand, a sum they simply didn’t have and could not borrow. Did she sell the farm? “Gotta be mistake, Ray. There’s no way Emma put up the bail money.”

  “She didn’t.” Ray waved at him again. “Come on. Someone wants to talk to you.”

  Ray led him down the hall to a small room not much bigger than the holding cell. Jim stepped inside, eager to put his arms around his wife but Emma was not in the room.

  Patrick McGrath sat at the plastic table. “Hello Jim.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Came to talk. Sit down.”

  That seasick feeling came back, see-sawing the ground under Jim’s feet. He eased down into the hard plastic chair. “Did you post my bail?”

  “Yes sir.” McGrath looked over the tiny room. “You don’t belong in here. Ray tells me you didn’t want bail. Izzat true?”

  “I need to talk to my wife.”

  “It’s a terrible thing, what happened to you and those other men. And I understand, someone’s gotta pay. But that doesn’t mean it has to be you.” He drummed yellow fingers on the table top and Jim figured the hardware man was already itching for a cigarette. McGrath went on. “Constable Bauer told me about your confession. I think you’re being too hard on yourself.”

  “It’s what happened.”

  “You’re not thinking it through, Jim. I can understand feeling guilty but what about the other men? What are their families gonna think? Puddy’s wife, Hitch’s kids? They’re already mourning and you wanna go and shit all over their grief with this story? And for what? To assuage your own guilt?”

  Jim set his teeth so hard they squeaked. “It’s what happened,” he said again.

  “Well I don’t buy it. Not a word.” He swept his hand across the table, as if clearing it of debris. “And there’s nothing to back it up with.”

  Jim balled his hands into fists and bit back the urge to choke the smugness right off the fat man’s face. “Go away, Pat.”

  “Where’s your proof, Jimmy? Where are these confessions you say you found? About the Corrigan murders?”

  They burned up in the town hall fire, didn’t they? Along with Kate.

  “Ask Gallagher. He’ll tell you. Hell, he’s the one who showed them to me.”

  “Gallagher’s gone.”

  Jim’s eyes snapped up. “Gone where?”

  “He disappeared. No one’s seen him since that night.” McGrath shrugged, swaying the wattle under his chin. “More than likely he’s dead. My guess is he was drunk and slipped and fell into the river. Someone’ll snag him on a fishing line when he bobs up in Garrisontown.”

  Another kick to the guts. Did Corrigan get to the old man too? It’s possible. So too was the likelihood that Gallagher passed out in a ditch somewhere and simply hasn’t been found yet.

  “So who does that leave?” McGrath said. “Who else can back up your story? Brian Puddycombe is dead. As is Doug Hitchens and Bill Berryhill and that little punk Kyle what’s-his-name.” He leaned in again, whispering a little sidebar. “I don’t mean to speak poorly about someone who’s deceased but there was something seriously wrong with that kid.”

  Jim felt his skin crawl. He desperately needed a shower.

  McGrath wheezed on. “The point is, Jim, there’s more here than just you. Do you want to leave these men a legacy like this? Leave their families with this awful story about how they died? They deserve better than that.”

  The floor was see-sawing again and Jim gripped the table for balance.<
br />
  “And what about your family?” McGrath went on. “What’s Emma gonna do now? Your boy? They gonna run that farm by themselves? They need you, Jim. What they don’t need is a martyr.”

  Jim tasted the sick in his throat, eyes darting around for a bucket to hurl into but there wasn’t one. He put his head between his knees.

  McGrath stood and lumbered for the door. “Your family’s on their way to pick you up. Go home.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Looking out for my own. It’s what a mayor does.”

  ~

  The reunion was awkward. Jim came out of the police station and bear-hugged his wife and son but they were stiff in his arms and no one quite knew what to say. Travis was aloof, Emma stilted and distracted. He quickly smeared his wet eyes, self-conscious and clumsy out here on the sidewalk. Emma fussed over his appearance but shied away when he tried to catch her eyes. They’d been through a lot, he told himself. Still in shock.

  Emma smoothed his hair and asked if he had slept at all. Was he hungry?

  He just wanted to go home.

  “My God…”

  Jim swung out of the cab but left his guts back in the truck. The last time he had seen the house it was still burning, still upright. He hadn’t thought about what it would look like now. It was all gone. His eyes stung and everything went liquid and soft.

  Emma saw the tears in his eyes and told him it was okay. Speaking softly, the way she did to her horses. A dumb animal. He smeared away these new tears, quick and with shame. The way men do.

  He squeezed her hand, a little pump to tell her he was okay but felt her bristle at his touch. Her eyes dropped to his hand, the one squeezing hers, and he saw something ripple across her face. The same revulsion he had seen that night when his hands were covered in blood. Is that what she was seeing now?

  Watching her eyes dart around like a bird, he could read the thoughts behind them, the admonishments she was telling herself.

  Don’t pull your hand away.

  Get over it.

  “It’s just a house,” she said. “Wood and bricks. That’s all.”

  When she slid out from under his arm he felt lost. Unmoored like a rowboat slipped from the dock, left to bob away on the current.

  “We can rebuild.” He looked over his shoulder to where Travis sat on the picnic table. Clutching what looked like a black stick in his hand. Jim beckoned for his son to join them. “Right Travis?”

  Travis didn’t move, watching them from his perch with dark mouse eyes. Observing from a safe distance and no further.

  “Travis.” Emma’s voice was sharp. “You’re dad asked you a question.”

  “Sure,” Travis said in a timbre flat and bloodless. “I guess.”

  “What do you got there, son?”

  The boy watched his father with cold eyes, like the man was an acquaintance he couldn’t quite remember and then looked at the thing in his had. “Nothing.” Travis spun off the picnic table and ambled away towards the barn.

  Jim took a step, about to call the boy back when Emma spoke. “Let him go.” Her arms folded tight like she was cold. “He’s had a rough time of it.”

  “He’s scared of me.”

  She looked at her feet. “He’s still in shock.”

  “You are too.”

  “No. God, no. It’s just—” Her hand swept over the ruins of their house. “It’s this. It’s like a death in the family.”

  She’s scared shitless. Just like your son.

  The wariness in her eyes, the tensed shoulders. Like someone waiting for a bomb to go off. I’ve lost them, he thought. They’re here but they’re long gone.

  Emma chinned the trailer. “What do you think? Pretty sweet, huh? Harvey and Anna said it was ours for as long as we needed.”

  “It’s nice.” He hated it but felt grateful. Anything will fit a naked man. His eyes drifted back to the ruins.

  “What happened?” Emma blew the hair out of her eyes, deflating like she’d been holding her breath the whole time. “At the police station?”

  “I told them what happened.”

  “And that’s it? They just let you go?”

  “They didn’t believe me.”

  “The police think you’re lying?”

  “No. They just have their own version of events and they’re sticking to it.” He kicked at the dirt. “Ray and McGrath and, I dunno, everyone else in town.”

  Emma parted her mouth to say something but nothing came out. The crickets sounded louder than ever.

  “I’m sorry, Emm,” he said, eyes still on the ground. “I couldn’t fight them anymore. So I told them what they wanted to hear.”

  He watched his wife to see how she would react. She kept her gaze levelled on the ash pile and didn’t move. No reaction at all.

  “You’re home now. That’s all that matters.”

  Every muscle burned to touch her. To reach out, hold her. Anything. But he couldn’t. Spook her now and she’ll be gone for good.

  “You must be starving,” she said, turning for the trailer. “I’ll start dinner. Can you fire up the barbecue?”

  He watched her disappear inside and listened to the water gurgle and spurt as she ran the taps. He looked for Travis but the boy was nowhere in sight and he didn’t know where to go so he stood in the hot sun, in some halfway mark between the ashes and the double-wide trailer home.

  It was almost funny. He had dug that second grave after all.

  The way Emma and Travis looked at him now. He was down deep at the bottom of it and it would be a slow, thorny climb back out of this coffin hole if he was going to win them back.

  After what you done? What they saw? Hell, you’re getting off easy, son.

  A screech hooked his ear, shattering his thoughts. A turkey vulture squatted on the roof of the barn, spreading its wings in the sun and lifting one foot then the other. Its boiled-looking head turned and watched him.

  He scrounged up a good sized rock and hurled it full bore at the obscene bird. It clattered short against the pitched roof and the vulture continued to dance its little dance as if the peak of the barn was too hot. He pitched another and the foul thing flapped up and flew away.

  His shotgun was gone, lost in the fire but he would get another and when those ugly birds came back, he’d just start shooting. Blast them out of the sky and leave them to rot on the ground until his plough blades churned their carcasses into worm meal.

  He had won, hadn’t he? Corrigan was gone and no court would convict him for it. History was written by the winners and the story had played out exactly as it had a century ago.

  How else could it have played?

  It was meant to be.

  Jim closed his eyes and crossed his fingers but when he opened them his home was still a cinder pile and across the field, beyond that stone fence, rose the Corrigan house, teetering and rotten but still standing.

  Come sundown, Jim would fetch the red gas canister and burn that goddamn eyesore to the ground.

  A brief note about the story:

  If any element of this story rings a bell, that may be because it was inspired by true events. On a cold night in 1880, the ‘Black Donnellys’ of Lucan, Ontario were attacked and murdered by a mob of vigilantes. The parents (James and Johannah), a son (Tom), and a niece (Bridget) were violently dispatched with guns, clubs and pitchforks. The house was set ablaze and the mob then marched on the home of the elder son, club-footed Will Donnelly, with the intent to shoot him down but ended up killing another son, John Donnelly. The following day, the entire town turned out to see the razed house. They traipsed through the ashes and some collected souvenirs of the occasion, including small bones. The local constable did not arrive at the scene until midday.

  Despite two separate trials and an eyewitness account, no one was ever convicted for the murders. Enraged over the injustice, Will Donnelly erected a monument at the grave inscribed with the term “murdered” after each name. That tombstone became a popula
r tourist draw until it was removed from Saint Patrick’s Cemetery in 1964 and subsequently vanished.

  Lucan Ontario in the late nineteenth century was something of a wild town and overwhelmingly Irish. Feuding broke out with regularity among the locals over land ownership and business. Disputes were commonly settled with fists and clubs, reprisals and the cycles of violent revenge inevitable. Torching an enemy’s barn was a particularly popular payback, but if you were really vindictive, you’d wait until the loft was stocked with hay for the winter and then burnt it down.

  Without doubt, the Donnellys were a tough bunch but perhaps no more vicious than any of the others. What made the difference was the newly arrived parish priest, Father John Connelly. Unfortunately the Donnelly’s rivals got to him first and convinced him the Donnellys were a menace to the town. With the priest’s guidance and blessing, the locals formed a crude alliance named the Biddulph Peace Society to “defend” against their enemies. As the feuding escalated, the men of the Peace Society decided they had had enough and reconnoitred at a small schoolhouse near their enemy’s farm to make plans. Drinking their courage up and blacking their faces with soot, they marched across a field and attacked the Donnellys under the cover of a cold February night. The violence that ensued was one of the most gruesome crimes in Canadian history and became the stuff of legend.

  Secrets are hard to keep in a small community and tongues wagged and then an eyewitness appeared but in the end, the vigilantes got away with murder. Although charged with murder, the members of the Peace Society were acquitted in two separate trials. The surviving Donnellys eventually moved away and the whole sordid business was forgotten about. Taboo even, as local folklore held that simply mentioning the name ‘Donnelly’ ensured bad luck.

  Over time, the story of the Black Donnellys became the stuff of popular folklore. Writer Thomas P. Kelley was the first to popularize the tale in print for the pulp market of the 1950’s with two novels, “The Black Donnellys” and “Vengeance of the Black Donnellys”. Other books followed, along with plays, documentaries and features on the History Channel. The best of the bunch are two non-fiction books by Donnelly historian Ray Fazakas, “The Donnelly Album” and “In Search of the Donnellys”. In 2007 NBC premiered a TV series called the “The Black Donnellys”, created by writer-director Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby). Born and raised in London, Ontario, (a short drive from Lucan) Haggis grew up hearing the legend of the Donnellys and re-imagined the tale for modern times.