Tim McGregor - Killing Down the Roman Line

SUNDAY. JIM OILED the chainsaw and took Travis to the eastern property line to clear away three dead trees that needed felling. Not an urgent task but he wanted to keep an eye on their neighbour and his attraction, or scam, or whatever it was. By noon they had felled all three trees and cut the trunks into logs, Jim letting his son have a go with the chainsaw. Not a single vehicle came up the road to the Corrigan property, no trail of dust disturbed the Roman Line this Sunday morning. Good. People had the good sense to stay away from the carpetbagger’s shenanigans. Emma came out to the yard and waved them in for lunch.

Eggs and salsa, toast with the last of the elderberry preserves. It was Travis who spotted the first car on the road, spoiling the pristine sky with its dust cloud. It was followed by two pickups and a minivan. Jim went to the window, surprised to see Puddycombe’s Cherokee turning into the Corrigan lot.

Damn.

“Are we going?” Travis looked up, hopeful.

“No.”

“Oh come on,” Emma said. “Let’s see what all the fuss is about.”

“Plain foolishness is what it is.” Jim turned away from the window, ending the matter.

Emma cocked her hip. “Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”

Jim counted nineteen cars, crowded ass to grill down the narrow rut and snaking back onto the road. Most of them he recognized. He, Emma and Travis had walked, it being such a warm day. He felt his wife’s hand slide into his, fingers meshing. He didn’t know what she wanted at first, it being so long since they’d held hands like that. For no reason. It felt good and he told her so with a little squeeze.

Travis walked ahead of them, eager to get there and groaning at his turtle-trodding parents. He caught them holding hands. “Do you have to do that? There’s people around.”

Coming onto the yard, they nodded to people milling about in the shorn crabgrass. Puddycombe and Hitchens leaned on Puddy’s truck while their wives talked nearby. The Ryder family next to Phil Carroll and his brood. Joe Keefe and his wife. Elaine and Bertie O’ Connor. The Murdy clan and Orlo Miller. Even Bill Berryhill was there, loafing with his little toadie ‘Kombat’ Kyle. Chinless under a downy moustache, Kyle was the local nazi wannabe enamoured with all things military. He wore camouflage and combat boots and never ever spoke.

Puddycombe spotted Jim and waved him over. “You know what this nonsense is all about?”

“No idea.” Jim surveyed the crowd, impatient but polite. “But I thoroughly expect it to be a scam.”

Hitchens laughed. “keep your hands on your wallets, boys—”

KA-BOOM!

The crack of a gunshot blast, the report echoing off into the field. Everyone jerked and ducked, shutting the hell up. All eyes swinging up to the sound.

William Corrigan stood on his tilting porch, a double-barrelled shotgun in his hand. The stock resting on a hip and smoke drifting from the twin bores. He mouth twisted into a satisfied grin.

“Good afternoon!” Corrigan roamed the faces staring back at him. Some still startled, others angry or offended. He grinned back at them, delighted with the effect. “And welcome to the Corrigan Horrorshow. Nice to see so many of you out today.”

He clomped down the dryrot steps to the crowd. Mrs. Murdy pulled her children away and stepped back. Donny McKinnon bubbled up, “What the hell’re you doing with the gun?”

“My name is William James Corrigan,” he hollered, shouting down the protests and clucking tongues. “The last of the Corrigan clan. And this crumbling shell before you is all that’s left of the family homestead.”

The crowd parted, stepping on one another’s toes as their host ferried forward. “Like most of you, my family emigrated here from Ireland. County Tipperary. My predecessors and yours alike. All fleeing the blight and the bastard landowners, the tithe troubles and the bloodshed of ancient feuds. Here to the New World where there was land for the taking, if you had the backbone to clear it. Land you could own, something denied the Catholics in the British scheme to starve out the Papists. If you survived the coffin ships crossing the Atlantic and the sick houses at the port lands.” Here he swept his arm wide, taking in the horizon. “And of course this godforsaken climate.”

Emma glanced at Jim, like she was waiting for the punchline to a bad joke. He had nothing to offer so he put a hand on her shoulder. Travis was slackjawed, eating it up.

Corrigan welcomed the stares coming his way and glared back with delight. “And come we did. The Corrigans and the Connellys. The Keefes and the Farrells. Hitchens, Hawkshaws. The Carrolls, O’Connors, the Donnellys and the Berryhills. Land enough for all. But we didn’t leave the old world behind, did we? No, we brought with us the best of the old country and we ferried the worst of it too. The old hatreds and the feuding. Our cherished bigotries and enmities, one for the other.”

He broke the shotgun at the hinge and dug the spent casings from the barrels. Flung them into the ashes of the bonfire at his feet.

“So we settled our little corner of the promised land. An enclave of the bedraggled and the dispossessed, desperate to carve out a new life but unwilling to let go of the old ways. No quarter asked and none given. A volatile mix this. A scrap of hope churning inside a hungry belly, and all of it Irish.

“If you had a quarrel with your neighbour you didn’t turn to the law. That law was English law and all knew there was no justice to be had in it. You settled it the old way. With your fists. You shot the bastard’s horse or burned his barn down. That was the old way.”

The shotgun remained broken at the breech, cradled in the crook of his elbow. His mouth set into that leering grin.

“The Corrigans were a rough bunch, no denying that. No worse than any others in town and yet they came to be the enemy of all. And why is that? Simple. They could outfight and outwit every dullard who crossed paths with them. But what they didn’t have was the numbers.

“The good people of Pennyluck decided life would be a lot easier if there were no more fucking Corrigans around. So they formed a little club and called it the Pennyluck Vigilance Society. They holed up at the old swamp schoolhouse not a mile over that ridge and drank their courage up. Then they came south across the fields, a dozen men, maybe more. Armed with rifles and axes and sticks. February fourth, eighteen ninety-eight.”

He went back up the broken steps and turned to the crowd. “Come on inside. I’ll show you where my family died.”

Corrigan disappeared into the house. The crowd of onlookers remained on the grass, glancing around at one another but no one made a move. Berryhill spat onto the grass. “Horseshit,” he said, and clomped up the steps. Kombat Kyle at his heels.

The spell broken, everyone funnelled into the house. Emma wrapped her hand over Jim’s arm. “I don’t think I want to hear anymore.”

Travis was already on the porch, waving at his parents to hurry up. “Come on,” he said. “It’s just getting good.”

Inside the house it was dark and the June air fetid with must and mould. Everyone squinted until their eyes adjusted from the blue sky to the dim of the house, tumbling into one another at the door. The front room was enormous but almost bare of furnishings. A roughsawn table to one side with three matchstick chairs. A rolltop desk pushed against one wall. Antlers hung over the wide stone hearth, cobwebs drifting from the points. The shotgun lay on the mantle.

Corrigan stood in the center of the room, holding the crowd near the door. “They kicked the door down and stormed the house. James Corrigan, the patriarch, came out from the back with a pistol in hand.”