Tim McGregor - Killing Down the Roman Line

“Calm down.”

“Or what, you’ll smack me around too?”

Jim took another shove. Told himself to stay calm, let Emma get it out of her system.

Keep your hands down.

Be still.

Get out. Before something bad happens.

He walked away, banging out the screen door and across the yard. Emma still roaring at hin. He climbed into the truck and barrelled out the driveway.

Emma paced the floor until she cooled. Splashed cold water over her face.

Overhead, a thud. She crossed to the landing and hollered up the staircase for Travis to come down.

No response. The stairs rose into darkness, the hallway light off. His door still closed.

She went up the stairs. Slow, like an old woman. The adrenaline burned off, leaving her hands shaky.

“Travis?” Tapping on his door, her toes caught in the band of light at the sill. “I’m coming in, honey.”

The room wasn’t empty, just the opposite. Cluttered with a twelve-year old boy’s things. Dirty clothes on the floor, a stack of comics near the bed. A desk meant for homework but piled high with anything but. Firecrackers and a jackknife.

The only thing missing was Travis. The window pushed open, the threadbare curtain blowing. The sound of bullfrogs tumbling in with the breeze.

A TWELVE FOOT drop from the eave to his mother’s vegetable patch. Travis’ bedroom window fed out onto the pitched roof of the mudroom. The shingles broke and slipped under his kicks, crabwalking down to the eaves trough. No other way down. He dangled his feet and jumped. Crashed onto the tomatoes and rolled through the leeks. The soil was soft but the landing was all wrong. He cursed through the sting in his ankle and walked it off.

Shit, shit, shit!

Limping to the barn, one curse every time his bent ankle came down. Travis spaz-walked through the barn doors and blinked. Fuck . His bike wasn’t here. His dad had tossed it into the back of the truck at the fairgrounds and no one had unloaded when they got home. His old man drove off with his only means of escape rattling around in the box.

What now? Hide out in the barn all night? His nearest friend was back in town, a two hour hike on good legs in daylight. How long would it take limping in the dark?

There was only one place to go and Travis realized he’d been thinking of it the moment he decided to crawl out the window. The only friend within two miles. He limped back out of the barn and hobbled west into the clover. Swinging his legs over the old stone fence and wincing all the way through the ditch and up the field to the neighbour’s house.

The house was dark. No vehicle in the driveway. Travis pushed open the door, knowing it would be unlocked.

“Mr. Corrigan?”

He didn’t expect a reply. Feeling his way through the pitch, to the west wall to where he knew the work lamp to be. Patting fingers down its base, he turned his eyes away and clicked it on. The array of lights lit the room and Travis dialled it back to a dull glow. He slumped into a chair and rubbed his burning ankle. He’d wait. Mr. Corrigan wouldn’t mind him being here.

Travis bored quickly. Up and snooping around, drawn immediately to the big shotgun on the mantelpiece. He traced a finger down the gun barrels, wanting desperately to pick it up but his dad had admonished him endlessly to never never never touch a gun unless he was present. He’d wait until Mr. Corrigan came back and ask to handle it. Hell, Mr. Corrigan would probably let him blast a few shells too.

Hobbling to the kitchen, he found a can of cola among the beer in the portable fridge. Travis sucked it back and kept snooping. A workbench had been set up on the east wall, tumbled with Mr. Corrigan’s tools. Hammers, crowbar and a rubber mallet, most of which he’d used himself to tear down walls and rip out the old wiring. A length of chain coiled loose. He lifted it, trailing the end to a big metal contraption. A wide base with two hoops of banded steel. Seeing the serrated teeth of the iron hoops, Travis realized what it was. A coyote trap, the kind that snapped the animal’s leg in those cruel looking teeth.

Weird. There weren’t coyotes in this part of the country, much less bears or wolves or anything else one would use the trap for. What did Mr. Corrigan want it for?

The rage festering in Jim’s gut had nowhere to go but the gas pedal. The argument replayed in his head over and over in a sickening loop, thinking up clever comebacks and cruel jabs but the loop ended with his hand striking his son’s face. The look in the boy’s eyes. Shock, then fear. Looking at him like he was some monster.

When the adrenaline burned off, all that anger curdled in his stomach. Jim pulled to the shoulder, tipped out of the cab and threw up on the gravel.

What the hell had he done?

Travis was born in March, thirteen days early. Holding the red-faced baby, Jim was humbled and awed and scared shitless. He made a silent vow to be the best dad he could be. Or at least better than his own father. They all do, sons vowing to euchre the father in legacy and honour. Wiping strings of mucous from his lips, Jim realized how disastrously he had failed. No better than his own vicious-tempered old man.

What is bred in the bone will never be out of the flesh.

Where the hell had he read that? Not long ago. A bumper sticker? No, an engraving. Whittled into the flagstone of the hearth at the old Corrigan place. Corrigan. Jim climbed back under the wheel and realized where his son had gotten the brass knuckles. Who else would have given a thirteen year-old a weapon like that?

The banner straddling the main drag crinkled in the breeze, welcoming all to the Heritage Festival. Cars lined both sides of the streets, chewing up all of the parking spaces. Tourists and locals traipsing along the sidewalks. Kate’s festival was a hit. Jim trawled past the smokers outside the Dublin House and swung down Newcastle Road towards the fair grounds.

The parking lot had cleared, a few hard-goers still trying to win prizes or swinging plastic cups in the beer garden. Jim stomped through the grass to the willow tree looking for Corrigan but the man had vanished along with his blasphemous display. The only thing left was the noose swinging from the branch and the charred ashes of the straw man.

He knew Corrigan wouldn’t be in the beer garden but to hell with it, he wanted a drink. He spotted Hitchens, crowding a picnic table alongside Murdy and a few others, but he steered for the bar. Ale sloshed into a plastic cup, he looked out over the picnic tables. Puddy’s regular patrons, hunkered down for the duration. God help them when the beer tent closed and they all raced out of the lot for last call at the Dublin.

The din was loud, everyone talking over one another. Except for the other lone drinker at the far end of the tent, a picnic table all to himself. Unfinished business.

“Hey Houdini. That was quite the vanishing act you pulled on me.”

Gallagher’s eyes lifted from his drink. “Jim.”

Jim leaned an elbow on the plastic gingham tablecloth. “Why’d you disappear on me the other night?”

“Trouble brews, I employ the wiser part of valour.”

“What’s that?”

“One’s legs.” The old man looked back into his drink.

“You said you had something to show me. About the Corrigan family.”

“Did I?” The old man’s brow stitched into a hundred creases. “That night’s a bit foggy.”

“You said you had proof.”

“I say a lot of things when I’m in my cups, Jimbo.” He swatted the notion away. “Idle talk, nothing more.”

Jim pushed the man’s cup away. “Show me.”