Tim McGregor - Killing Down the Roman Line

The constable scratched his pen across the paper and then leaned back in his chair. The boy was twelve years old but his eyes seemed dead, without fire or intelligence. Carroll commended the boy for his bravery, not only surviving such an awful business but coming forth to tell his tale. Robert made no reaction, gape-mouthed like he didn’t understand. Constable Carroll spoke slowly, advising the lad to remain here in custody for his own protection.

Young Robert Corrigan nodded his head and said that he understood but he quickly made other plans. Left alone in the constable’s cottage, he slipped out the back door. Presumably to the Finns who had sheltered him since that awful night.

News of the survivor leaked quickly through town, reaching the tavern first and the faces of men grew grim under the greasy lamplight. In the darker corner of the public house, three men rose and went out the back, leaving their ale on the table.

However the Corrigan boy did not return to the Finn’s farm. He simply vanished and was never seen again. Later that night, the Finn’s barn was burned to the ground. Punishment for having sheltered the devil’s child in the first place.

The Corrigans are killed.

Thanks Be To Christ.

THE TURKEY VULTURES had been circling the southern acreage all morning, descending in lazy loops and drawing closer to the ground with each pass. Whatever they were eyeballing in the bunchgrass below was about to give up the ghost.

Jim Hawkshaw hated turkey vultures, always had. They looked beautiful and almost noble from afar, high in the sky as they rode the thermals in slow arcs without ever flapping a wing, but up close they were monsters. Their bald heads looked boiled and reptilian and the damn things stank to high heaven of rotten flesh.

And he had a bad feeling about what they were stalking.

At last count Jim had four barn cats, all friendly but still part feral as barn cats will be. The wildest of the bunch was a slim calico he had nicknamed Killer for his skill in catching field mice. Killer was a scrapper who refused to back down no matter how big the other animal was. Jim had seen the damn cat tear hell after raccoons, possums and once, even a fox. He admired Killer’s spunk but knew that sooner or later the calico would cross an animal that wouldn’t back down and then there would be trouble. It finally happened two days ago. Early Sunday morning, Jim came out to the barn and spotted Killer slinking awkwardly out the door, limping badly and bleeding from its hind leg. He’d called to it, trying to coax it back inside the barn but there are few things as skittish as an injured cat. Killer looked back at him once before slipping into the briars and vanishing completely.

When he spied the vultures circling his field early this morning, he knew the calico was out there and in very bad shape.

He’d be damned if he let those red-headed monsters have his cat. Jim climbed up into the tractor, knowing the evil birds would clear off if he roared up in the noisy old Massey Ferguson but when he turned the ignition, the damned thing wouldn’t start. The Massey was old and the timing was off and the starter often shrieked loud enough to bleed your ears. He adjusted the choke and tried again. The engine rolled over but refused to catch.

He looked up. The vultures swooped down, dropping fifty feet. Closing in for the kill. Or after-kill. Turkey vultures were scavengers, garbage-pickers that waited for things to die, never killing their own prey. All the more reason to hate them and get the goddamn tractor started.

It finally caught and Jim dropped it into gear and roared off alongside the old fieldstone fence, hammering hard for the back forty. A plume of dirty diesel exhaust roiled behind the Massey and Jim wished he had brought the shotgun. A scattershot would drive the ugly birds away, maybe even bringing one or two down, but the shotgun was back at the house, locked in a cabinet in the basement. No time to go back for it now.

He gunned the engine and jostled along in the hard seat. The vultures flapped to the ground. Three of the damned things, pouncing after whatever lay on the ground.

The Massey sputtered and popped towards them and the vultures backed off. They hissed and spread their wings in a span of defiance. Jim popped the handbrake and jumped down, already smelling their stench from here. He scrounged up a good sized stone and flung it at the birds. They hopped about in the peculiar way of those birds and snapped out their wings but didn’t fly off.

Killer lay in a row of freshly tilled earth, dead but still warm to the touch. His fur was matted and wet, the tongue lolling between the teeth and peppered with grit. At least the monsters hadn’t gotten to him yet. Small mercies. The scavengers withdrew, hissing and spanning their wings to scare him off. Bold as brass, waiting for him to leave so they could get at it. For a second time Jim wished he had brought the shotgun.

He scooped up the dead cat, limbs flopping loose as a sock puppet in his hands and carried it to the tractor. The vultures hopped and screeched in protest, cheated out of their breakfast. There was a spade mounted onto the back of the Massey Ferguson and Jim pulled it down and crossed to the stone fence that demarcated the property line of the Hawkshaw farm. The stones had been cleared from these fields two hundred years ago and stacked up to form a low wall, like some defensive barricade against an army of dwarves. On the other side was more acreage, untouched for generations and left to seed. Nature had made small forays to reclaim these neglected fields, creeping up from the creek at the southern end but most of the untended acres remained clear, with stalks of timothy and barley that grew and died and grew again each season.

Jim chose a spot next to the ancient fieldstone, a small pocket in the fence. He laid the cat in the weeds and started digging. Ten minutes in and his shirt clung with sweat as he dug the little grave under the hot sun. It was silly, going to this much trouble for an old barn cat but Jim didn’t care. His hatred for the foul birds was that strong.

Truth was he felt an affinity for the poor cat, wounded as it was with those grotesque birds waiting for it to die. Vultures were circling over Jim’s head too, waiting for him to croak so they could swoop in and gobble it all up. Banks and creditors, all eyeballing the Hawkshaw farm, clacking their beaks in anticipation of an easy meal.

He wasn’t going to last another season, of that he was sure. He would lose it all; the farm, the land, the house. Five generations of Hawkshaws had farmed this land down here on the Roman Line and he would be the fool to lose it. He’d be the one to betray the family, betray all those who had come before him and broken their backs on this hard clay soil.

The debts had snowballed into a dead weight he couldn’t hold up anymore. Each season yielding worse returns than the last, no matter how many times he alternated crops. He stopped lying to himself about the “one good crop, the one good year” that would balance the books and set them on the climb out of debt. He’d maintained this lie to his wife and by proxy, his son but now there were simply no more lies to tell.

Jim tossed the spade into the bunchgrass and looked down into the hole he had dug. Deep enough. He gathered up Killer and nestled him into the bottom of the hole. He smoothed his hand down the calico fur and then took up the spade and backfilled the little grave.

The vultures screeched and flapped around him.

To hell with them. To hell with himself too.

“Go on,” he said, looking for another rock to throw. “Find something else to tear apart.”

Smokey refused to cooperate.