Tim McGregor - Killing Down the Roman Line

He wouldn’t have to put up with it much longer. A week left of school before the summer break and it couldn’t come soon enough. Summer was a double-edged thing for Travis. Eager to get out of school itself but he wouldn’t see his friends that much. The farm was isolated from town and most of his friends. And there was work. Not the usual chores but hard work that his dad needed him for.

He kicked at stones along the way, watching them bounce along the dirt road. This summer was going to be different though. He’d made his parents promise him that he could ride his bike into town to see his friends. Alone. No drop offs, no lame excuses from mom or dad about driving him over to his friend’s house for the afternoon. He had turned thirteen in April, old enough to ride into town on his own. It would probably take him an hour just to reach the bridge that served as gateway to town but that didn’t bother him. The wet spring weather had mostly passed and once the fields were drier, he could shortcut through the Meyerside’s fields and the McFarlane’s pastures, shaving twenty or thirty minutes off his time.

Halfway home, the old house peeked up over the foxtail stalks. A crumbling farmhouse of faded clapboard and tilted timbers. The windows broken and gaping like eyes. Eyes that Travis felt watched him every morning and afternoon on his way past. The Corrigan house as it was called by older people, his folks and their friends. It was the ‘haunted house’ to anyone under twenty. Not that Travis knew. His dad had made him promise to keep clear of it. It was unsafe and likely to fall in on itself any day now. The floor so rotted you’d fall straight through into God only knew what was lying in wait below.

So Travis watched it from the road. He dropped his bag and searched the ground for a perfect sized rock and, swinging back like a pitcher, hurled it at the house. It fell short, disappearing into the long weeds like always. One time, last summer, he had braved his way up the overgrown driveway to get closer to it. A good sized stone in his hand, pitched perfectly and sailing clean through one of the few remaining panes. The satisfying crinkle of breaking glass. It was short lived. Something inside the house popped and then there was a creak. As if his stone had knocked loose a support stud and the whole damn thing would fall down. Later he would tell himself that his imagination had gotten the better of him but in that moment, Travis swore the house changed. Looked angry, glaring at him with those broken glass eyes.

He didn’t venture up the drive again, content to hurl rock s from the road knowing they would always fall short. The house seemed to lose its wrathful visage, like a truce called and kept. The boy, the house.

Travis looked but found no other suitable sized rock so he took up his backpack and went on home.

Emma dropped a handful of beans into the sieve and ran them under the tap. The porcelain sink was old, the enamel cracked and worn through. Like everything in this house that had belonged to Jim’s parents and the parents before them. Worn out and weather-beaten, held together with patchwork and spit. Sometimes it burred into her bones, the look of the place, the age of it, its resistance to change. God knows she had tried, repainting and moving furniture around. Jim had replaced the countertop, the tile and backsplash she had done herself. Refinished cupboard doors and a stove that, while not exactly new, was newer than the one it replaced. Nothing worked, none of it changing the appearance of the kitchen. The kitchen still looked worn down and used up. The new counter and stove only served to amplify the creaky age of the house.

“Travis?” She looked over her shoulder. “Time to focus.”

Travis sat at the kitchen table, his homework spread out before him. Their usual routine where Emma cooked and Travis did his homework before dinner. Left to himself, Travis was too easily distracted so Emma had compromised with him. An hour of homework that chained Travis to the kitchen table where she could keep him focused and prod him when he got bored. And boredom set in quick with Travis. He kicked his Vans against the table leg, slouching further down his chair as if his bones were jelly.

“History sucks,” Travis sneered.

History bored Travis. Specifically Canadian history, laid out in his seventh grade history text. The fathers of Confederation? Who gave a shit. Bunch of boring old white dudes bickering over politics and economics. It wasn’t cool like American history where you had a Civil War and wars against the Mexicans and shootouts at the OK Corral. Jesse James robbing railroads and riding off into the sunset. What did Canada have? Louis Riel maybe, but what did he do? Not like he jacked a train or laughed off all the marshals gunning for him. Canuck history was just a bunch of boring stiffs trying to weasel their way back into office. Snoozefest.

“Okay,” Emma said, prodding him back to his history studies. “So the Sioux flee up to Canada but then they eventually go back. Why?”

Travis shrugged. “I dunno.”

“What does the book say?”

He flipped back a few pages in the textbook. Every picture of John A. MacDonald was defaced with a black eye or glasses, Travis’s own handiwork. He sighed to convey his annoyance with her. Like history wasn’t bad enough, he had to have his mom ride his ass about it. “Says they were forced to go back.”

“Yes but why?”

“I dunno,” he snapped. Pushing the book away. “Just says they were stalled by the Mounties here in Canada and then lured back to the states. Then they all got captured and Sitting Bull gets killed.”

“Is this what your report is about? The reason’s why it happened.”

“I hate history,” he said, as if that would end the matter.

Emma dropped the greens into the steamer. “I know, honey. But you still have to learn it.”

Then why don’t you study this stuff? He grunted, slouching further down his chair. Glancing at the clock on the microwave, timing out the remainder of his torture. Twenty minutes.

The backdoor popped open and Jim stood on the porch, banging the dirt from his boots. He smiled at his son. “Hey chief. How was school today?”

Barely a shrug. “It sucked.”

“Why did it suck?” Jim crossed to the sink, washed the dirt from his hands. Kissed his wife. “Did something happen today?”

Travis said nothing, unwilling to elaborate further. He scrawled his pen over a picture of Wilfred Laurier, doodling devil horns on the bald dome of the seventh prime minister.

Jim looked at his wife. “History?”

Emma caught the grime under his nails. “What were you doing out there?”

“It’s spring. What wasn’t I doing?”

Emma sniffed out the brush-off. Squared him with a look. “What were you doing?”

“Clearing land.”

She couldn’t believe it. “On that old property? We were going to talk about this first.”

“It’s no big deal, Emm. I just turned the soil.”

“That isn’t the point.”

Travis looked up from his textbook, antennae picking up the tension in their voices. Watching his folks argue wasn’t much of a distraction but anything would do in the face of the brain-deadening boredom of Canadian history. Maybe mom would lose her temper again and throw something. She was like that, blowing her top when provoked. Dad was the opposite, never raising his voice or breaking stuff. The more he didn’t get mad, the more she’d scream. And then one of them would order him to go to his room, giving him an immediate excuse to not do his homework. It had happened before.

Not this time. His dad wrapped his hand around mom’s waist and pulled her in for another kiss. Gross.

“Put that away,” Jim said, nodding to the steampot. “We’re going out to dinner.”