Tim McGregor - Killing Down the Roman Line

Travis left the dustpan on the veranda and went exploring.

There was dust everywhere and the smell of mould clung to every room but Corrigan’s plans were plain to see. Prying loose everything from the twentieth century and peeling it back to reveal the original house. Light fixtures were ripped down and the wiring, old knob and tube stuff, was stripped out. Flooring was torn up to reveal the pockmarked hardwood. The only things new were the heavy floodlights set up throughout the house and the cables snaking the floor.

Most of the furniture had been tossed out and replaced with antique stuff Mr. Corrigan had found in town. A big oak table and a few spindly chairs set before the fireplace in the front parlour. A rolltop desk of burled mahogany near the window, littered with paperwork. Stacks of receipts from McGrath’s hardware store and a pile of old library books. A rolled up map that Travis unfurled. The date on it was marked 1910, the entire township of Pennyluck mapped out in a cockeyed grid of lots and concessions. Brittle documents of yellowing parchment. None of it made any sense to Travis so he left it and climbed the creaky steps.

The restoration work had yet to reach the second floor, the rooms untouched and a trail of footprints through the dust. The rooms were cobwebbed, the windows opaque under a film of grime. The biggest room held a bed and little else. The mattress was new and cast loose on top of it was a sleeping bag. On the floor were beer cans and newspapers. A kerosene lantern.

Travis didn’t venture very far into the basement, even with the heavy flashlight Corrigan kept on the window sill. The steps creaked and moaned like they would snap under his workboots. The beam of the flashlight swallowed by the darkness. Shapes and forms, things hidden away under dropcloths. The house ticked and creaked around him and Travis imagined hands reaching up from the cellar darkness and dragging him down. The ghosts of the murdered family, cold and hungry for flesh.

He scuttled back up the steps and closed the basement door. Returned the Maglite to the window sill and went home.

The house was still empty when he came back the next afternoon. Travis hollered up the stairs and checked out back but Corrigan wasn’t around. The truck was still gone too. He sat on the front stoop, wondering if he should just go home when he saw the FJ blowing a dustcloud on the road.

Mister Corrigan looked dishevelled and bleary-eyed as he climbed out and nodded hello. He got Travis to unload the truck and then started him on the one of the second floor rooms. The room was small like the others and was filled with junk. A metal bunk frame and boxes and a dresser bleached from sunlight. There was a sink attached to the wall. Odd, since there was no bathroom on this floor. Travis wondered why someone would put a single sink in a bedroom. Nailed to the wall above the bed was a brass crucifix.

“Do you go to church, son?”

Travis shrugged. “Sometimes. Christmas, Easter.”

“Your folks are Catholic?”

The boy nodded. Corrigan pried the crucifix from the wall and tossed it out the open window. The shape of the cross lingered like a ghost image, clean paint against an outline of grime. Corrigan frowned. “The Lord endures.”

They separated the few salvageable items like the chair and a wooden chest from the junk and Travis helped Corrigan nail a length of plywood into the window frame. A makeshift slide that leaned out onto the backyard. “Toss the rest of that shit out the window,” Corrigan said. “And if you’re feeling up to it, tear out that bastard sink.”

He left him to it and Travis chucked it all out, dropping debris down the plywood ramp and listening to it crash to the ground below. Everything but the bunk was tossed and Travis started in on the sink. His first thought was to just smash the porcelain with the crowbar but maybe he could pry it loose in one piece. The plaster chipped away and he wedged the blade behind it and hauled back for all he was worth. The bar slipped and he thumped ass first to the floor, the crowbar ringing off his shin.

“Son of a bitch!” He curled and clutched his shin bone.

“She’s a reluctant whoor, isn’t she?” Corrigan leaned against the doorframe. Travis dusted himself off, felt his cheeks burn.

“Come on,” Corrigan said. “Take five.”

Down to the kitchen where Corrigan scooped beer cans from the cooler and waved at Travis to follow him outside. “Too nice a day to be trapped in some sickroom.”

Along the footpath to the big willow tree and the gravestones shaded under its boughs. “Come see what the bastards have done,” Corrigan said.

The tall marble spire lay flat in the grass, knocked clean off its foundation. The stone had broken into three pieces and the marble was scored raw here and there, like a chisel had been at it.

Travis bent and touched its notched gloss. “What happened?”

Corrigan sat down on the toppled marker. “Some shit-brained yokel knocked it over. You can see where the fool went at it with an axe.”

Travis silently mouthed two words. Holy shit.

Corrigan motioned for him to sit and Travis did, careful not to set his rear on the inscription. “Where did this monument come from? I mean, if everyone was dead?”

“My grandfather. He came back here two years after the crime to ensure that his family was properly buried. He was outraged to find them interred here on the homestead, denied a proper burial in the churchyard of St. Mary’s. Not that there was much to bury, mind you. Scattered bones and ash.

“He knew then that the guilty would not be brought to justice, that the murdering scum would go unpunished. So he spent what little money he had on this stone. Hiring a stonemason to hammer it out, paying extra to have the word ‘ murdered’ scribed after each name. The stone was trucked over in a donkeycart and assembled. These smaller stones laid in a ring around the spire.

“Two nights later, the monument was knocked over by spineless scum in the night, just as it is now. A note was left for my grandfather on the veranda of the house, warning him to get the hell out of Pennyluck or suffer the same fate as his cursed family. So he fled, a second time, and never returned.” Corrigan shrugged. “Thus are the ways of the world. Bullies win.”

Travis nodded as the story ended, feeling the need to say something but he didn’t know what. Outrage or shock? Sympathy with the deceased or fury at the sinners? He stayed mute and just kept nodding, hoping it would suffice.

Corrigan cracked both beer cans and held one out to the boy. Nodded for him to take it. Travis’s eyes bugged out of his head. “I can’t have that.”

“Go on, son. I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.”

Travis hesitated, thinking the man was going to punk him. He took it and Corrigan clinked his can to the boy’s. “Work like a man, you get treated like one. Cheers.”

A boy’s first sip of beer. It was godawful to Travis’s twelve-year old tastebuds but he knew this was a test, some rite of passage into the world of men. He felt Mr. Corrigan’s eyes hawking him so he did his best to slug it back and not pucker his face against the bitter taste. No chance.

But the man didn’t berate or mock him for it. Mr. Corrigan simply nodded and looked away, allowing Travis to wipe the foul swill from his lips. Travis looked at the beer in his hand and couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about.

“Do you like soccer, Travis?”

“It’s all right.” Travis shrugged. “I’m pretty okay at baseball.”

“Baseball?” Corrigan sneered at that, then changed topics. “You got a girlfriend?”

“No.”

Corrigan swivelled on the broken headstone and fixed him with a sly look. The boy’s cheeks burned again and then his lips corkscrewed into a smirk. “Liar,” he said. “What’s her name?”