Tim McGregor - Killing Down the Roman Line

What was the number for the pub? It was just around the corner and Kate knew that Puddycombe would be here in seconds if she called. A hell of a lot faster than the OPP office or even Ray Bauer, who was still on duty here in town. Keefe, Hitchens or anyone else in the pub would come running if she called. Even Berryhill.

He sighed. “Don’t play hard to get with me, Kate. It’s unseemly in a woman of your… experience.”

She stalled for time, remembering only half of the pub’s phone number. What the hell was the rest?

“What is that smell?” Corrigan’s nostrils flared. Like a hound, his nose tracked to the fireplace. The thing resting in the old grate, coiled up and blackened to a brittle crisp.

The hearth was limestone, four feet wide as it was tall. The last time she had lit a fire, the place smoked out because the flue was blocked with a bird’s nest. It had been cleared since but it didn’t matter. All she needed to burn this time was a little paper and cracked leather.

Corrigan knelt on the flagstone and reached into the grate. The carbonized paper fell away under his fingertips, blowing through the air like black snowflakes. All of it disintegrated save for the charred leather spine.

He roared and Kate winced at the awful sound. All black rage and venom. She crept back and made for the door while his back was turned.

He spun around. “You evil fucking witch!”

The look in his eyes. Not human. She ran for the exit.

Corrigan ran faster.

CLICK.

The shotgun locked shut with a firm snap. Solid and heavy in his hands. Travis seated the stock into his shoulder and brought the barrels up. Cheek flat against the grain and one eye lined down the sight, he swung the gun over the room and drew aim at the door, the window, the desk. Puffing out a gunshot sound with his teeth, pretending to shoot up the room. The gun slung huge in his hands, sleek and intoxicating, but it grew heavy and he couldn’t hold the aim any longer.

He pushed the lever and broke it at the breech. The barrels empty. He had looked for the shells but couldn’t find where Mr. Corrigan had hidden them. He slid the gun back onto the mantelpiece just as he’d found it.

Already bored but he didn’t want to go home. Didn’t want to deal with his mom. She’d just insist they talk about what had happened. She’d ask him about his ‘feelings’. Wanting him to cry just so she could feel useful. Any little bruise and she was all over him like a wet blanket. Treating him like a baby, smothering him. It was enough to make you puke.

No doubt his old man was in the pub drinking with his loser friends. Probably bragging about how he’d given his boy a good backhand. With any luck, Travis thought, the stupid prick would ditch his truck and snap his motherfucking neck.

Evil thoughts. For sure he was going to Hell.

The old house ticked and creaked around him. Something scuttled under the floorboards and something other chittered behind the walls. It was the house that did it, made you think evil thoughts. Jesus. How many people were murdered in this place? Six or seven? Ghosts lurking in the dryrot walls, floating in the rafters.

A stab of light flashed in the window, blinding him. The headlights arced through the room and then cut out. The thump of the door closing. Travis felt a sudden itch to run. He couldn’t remember why he’d come here in the first place.

The door flung open. Corrigan clomped into the house, breathing heavy as if he’d just run the whole way. He froze when he spotted Travis. Neither moved, two statues in the house.

Corrigan teetered, his mouth souring. “What do you want?”

Travis smelled the tang of booze roll across the room. He should have run when he had the chance. His shoulders jumped to his ears. “Needed to get away. So I came here.”

“Get out.”

“I didn’t touch nothing.” Travis felt his cheeks puff up. “Just had to go somewhere.”

Corrigan teetered but said nothing. His face was marred by raw marks down his cheeks. Angry red lines. “Did you get cut?” Travis asked.

“If you’ve come to cry on someone’s teat, you got the wrong house, boy.” Corrigan crossed the room right towards him. As if to wring his neck. Travis crabbed backwards but the man strode past him.

Mr. Corrigan rummaged a can from the fridge and popped it. Wiped his mouth and looked at the boy standing in the doorway, watching him with little bird eyes. The boy nodded at the iron contraption on the workbench. “What is that stuff?”

Corrigan flung the can at him. Travis ducked and the missile hit the wall, spraying him with foam. The man’s face twisted into something demonic. “Fucking little snoop.”

“I wasn’t.” Travis stuttered, tripping on the consonants. Making him look the liar.

“You filthy little spy. That’s why you keep coming round, isn’t it? Who put you up to it? Your old man?”

Travis denied it. Unconvincing even to himself.

“I thought you were a friend.” He was quick, bunching the boy’s collar and pushing him into the wall. “You’re no better than the rest. You’ve betrayed me. Sold me out.”

“I didn’t!”

Travis felt himself lifted off the ground, shoes scuffing the floor and Corrigan’s knuckles digging into his collarbone. He screamed at him to let go.

“Get out!” He flung the boy away, bowling him across the floor. Kicked his arse when he didn’t get up fast enough. “Get out of my house!”

Bolting for the door, feet tripping on the sill. Travis went ass over tea kettle down the porch steps. The crazy drunk chasing him across the yard. “Go back to your worthless father! You’re all the fucking same, you! Bastards and liars!”

Travis rabbitted over the crabgrass, fell and ran on. South into the dark of the fields, away from the road. He wanted the darkness, the nothingness of pitch black and no stars. To slip into a void and vanish.

How do fix a whopper of a mistake like beating your own child? You don’t, and right enough.

Jim wheeled aimlessly through town, drifting up Bleeker Street, down Chestnut. Nowhere to go except home but not wanting to go. Unwilling to face his sins. He turned back onto Galway and drifted to the curb, killed the engine. Leaned back against the bench seat and watched the dark street.

He still couldn’t shake the look on his son’s face at being smacked. The image stung like a wasp trapped inside his ribcage, lashing out with its nettle.

Travis would never forget it, of that he was sure. Just as he had never forgotten the lashings and the fists doled out by his own father. It was a legacy, a birthrigh from his father, now given to his son. A vicious little gene passed down the bloodline like haemophilia. A reverse philosopher’s stone, taking something golden and turning it to shit.

The blow kept playing itself out in a never ending loop in his head. His hand against the boy’s face. Unable to shut it down, he forced his brain to focus on something else, anything, to cut the endless replay. Running numbers in his head, he calculated acres to yield for corn, then soy. No effect. He thought about sex. Emma peeling off her clothes before bed. Fucking in the grass one afternoon when Travis was at school. The way Emma looked on top of him, back straight and hips grinding. The saltiness of her neck.

It worked and then it didn’t. His erection withered when the reverie was broken by the flash image of another blow. A memory so old he had convinced himself it had never happened. He had hit Emma once too. Ages ago.

Drunk, fighting like cats over God knows what. He’d swung back and broke the flat of his hand across her mouth. She hit the floor like a dead weight and the fight was over. Tears and apologies. Jim vowing on his mother’s grave that he’d never do it again. After that night, they had never spoken of it.