Killing Down the Roman Line (21 page)

Emma drew up next to him, barefoot in the grass. “What is it?”

“Reprisal,” he said.

~

A sullen fog settled over the drinkers. The eve of the festival, with its new faces and visitors, brought a crackle of life to the old pub but as the boozing got down to business, something changed and the revelry turned wistful. If asked what they were wistful for, few could have put a name to it. Most would be more than happy to cut the question short with a slurred exhortation to go fuck oneself.

Puddycombe was cajoled and harassed into plugging in the old jukebox. He demurred but the patrons were unrelenting and the pub owner regretted installing the old thing. It was meant for show. Restless, the natives held sway. Each song notching below the last in maudlin sentiment. By the time Jim came through the door, the whole damn bar was braying like sick dogs, singing along with Shane McGowan about a pair of brown eyes. The howling bristled the hair on Jim’s neck. No good would come of this, the whole effing town was in its cups.

He squeezed through the swaying bodies, ducking elbows and the raised pints sloshing along to the melody. Pushing through, he gripped the cherrywood trim like a floundering swimmer. Waved the bar owner down.

Puddy slung another pitcher under the tap, leaned in Jim’s direction. His tone cold. “What do you want?”

“Where’s that idiot Berryhill?”

“How should I know?” Puddy shrugged, still testy.

Someone stepped on Jim’s toe and he shouted above the yowling drinkers. “Do you know what that idiot did?”

Puddy leaned on the tap, cold. “Do you want a drink or no?”

“Yeah.” He nodded to what the pub owner was pouring. Puddy set it down and he paid and that was the end of it. Jim craned his neck to see over the crowd. No sign of Bill but he saw Pat Ryder in the press of bodies. Shouted and waved at him. Ryder turned his back to him.

Earlier in the day, he couldn’t imagine who would have trashed his pickup with such viciousness. Now shunned on all sides, they all looked guilty.

“Persona non grata. That’s what you are, Jim.”

He turned. Old Martin Gallagher sat at the end of the bar, alone. Watching Jim’s plight. The Dublin House was packed and yet there was an empty stool next to Gallagher. Seemed even the tourists knew better than to fraternize with the old rubby.

He shouted from where he stood. “So why are you talking to me?”

“Even the outcast hate to drink alone.” The old man nudged out the empty barstool. “Come. Sit.”

He trudged over slow, the condemned walking the plank, and set down. “I’ve always wondered what it was like to be publicly shunned.”

“You get used to it,” Gallagher said. “Cheers.” The last thing Jim wanted was to touch his glass to the toothless old man’s but he obliged nonetheless.

The AC blasted full but couldn’t keep the soupy air from creeping in every time the door swung open. Jim peeled off the T-shirt taped to his back. Hitchens passed by without so much as a look. “It’s like high school all over again.”

“You ought not to complain, Jimmy.” The old man wiped the Guinness from his lips. “You brought this on yourself.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t go crying, son. You broke ground on that Godforsaken land, the Corrigan’s. You woke the sleeping ghosts.”

Here it comes, he thought. “Spare me the crazy talk, huh?”

“Used to be a time when just uttering that name was chancing bad luck,” Gallagher croaked on, happy for an audience. “That’s why no one spoke of it, see? Why would they? Damn awful business.”

Jim watched the room. Fraser and McFarlane bellowed sloppily at one another, arguing the merits of the country’s obligations in Afghanistan. Damn near coming to blows over staying the course or leaving the obstinate bastards to their medieval doom. Five minutes earlier, they’d been talking hockey. The two men were now on their feet, teetering and barking, waking their mate Atkinson who warned them to shut their yaps before he glassed them both with the pitcher. A bottle shattered on the north end of the bar and two knotheads at the pool table went at it, going to the floor in a blur of fists and elbows. They were hustled out the door to finish it in the parking lot.

“Nothing changes, does it?” Gallagher watched the fights with rheumy eyes. “How we managed to survive this long without nuking the world into a cinder is beyond me.”

The old man was waxing. Time to split. Jim drained his glass when the old guy leaned in close. “Do you want to know a secret, Jimmy?”

“Nope.”

“You know his story’s true, don’t you? Our forefathers murdered the Corrigans. Mine, yours.” He nodded at the drunken louts before them. “All of them.”

He should have left then and there. Jim looked at the old man. “You’re drunk.”

“There’s proof,” Gallagher whispered. “The worst kind.”

Jim gripped the man’s arm. Skeletal under the sleeve of rancid tweed. “What proof?”

“You sure you want to know?”

First instinct, damn straight. But Jim wavered and kept his mouth shut. Something in his gut held him back. Fear, reluctance? Some loosed genie that would not go back in the bottle?

“Hey!” A holler cracking over the bar. Berryhill swaggered in from the patio, elbowing bodies aside as he strode right up on Jim. “Who you calling an idiot?”

Jim despised Bill at the best of times but always remained wary. Belligerent and red-eyed, Berryhill was downright scary. Jim bluffed up. “That was one stupid stunt you pulled.”

“I dunno what you’re talking about.” Lager breath blowing hot on Jim’s face.

“What the hell were you thinking torching Corrigan’s sign?”

The best defence, no matter how damning the evidence, is always a flat out, unshakeable denial. Even fools know this. Bill swayed, eyes glassy. “Wasn’t me.”

“The wind changes direction and that fire sweeps directly my way. You could have burnt my house down, you idiot.”

Berryhill struck out, slamming the heel of his hand into Jim’s breastplate. “Told you. Wasn’t me.”

Faces turned, eager to see another brawl brew up. Jim felt his face burn hot. Goddamn high school all over again. His guts ordering him to back off but the pressure from the gawkers egging him on. No way in hell he could win. Bill would stomp his guts in. “Grow the fuck up.”

The big man leaned in, jutting his chin forward. “Take a shot, you pussy. On the house.”

Combat Kyle chittered and giggled like some ape, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Jim knew that if he went down, the little rat bastard would jump in, boots first. He’d seen it before. Jim felt his fist whiteknuckle. It would almost be worth the punishment if he got one clean shot to this troll’s ugly face.

“BILL!”

Stuey McGuire pushed through the onlookers, gangly and panting. “Bill! Your truck’s on fire!”

~

The black crewcab was already an inferno. Flames licking into the sky, threatening to melt the power lines above. Greasy black smoke choked the parking lot. The acrid stank of melting plastic and burning rubber.

Puddycombe dashed out with a fire extinguisher and emptied the whole canister. A chemical fog roiling over everyone but the flames roared up angrier. Patrons jumped into their cars and pulled away from the burning pickup. Instant gridlock inside the lot as every driver honked and cursed to save their vehicle from the same scorched fate.

Bill’s jaw worked up and down but no sounds came, eyes bugging at the sight of his truck burning to cinders. It was paid for. The sound system he installed, the blower and bodywork, all of it going up like a campfire. All he could do was watch his beloved ride give up the ghost.

The signal from brain to lips finally clicked over and Bill sputtered. “Son of a bitch.”

Jim watched the gates of hell open and swallow Bill’s truck. Puddy tossed away his dead extinguisher, looked at Jim. “What the hell happened?”

Jim had a good guess but kept it to himself, shrugging instead.
God knows.

Bill knew. “Corrigan! That motherfucking Corrigan!”

Jim cleared everyone from the lot, hollering and shoving them away. Atkinson and McFarlane pitched in. No one knew how much fuel was in Berrhyill’s truck. Puddy reeled out his garden hose, spraying down the wall of his bar. Half the crowd was drenched by the time the volunteer fire crew screeched in, lights whirling. The tang of wet charcoal stung every nose and Bill, still cursing, had to be dragged away.

Jim jostled through the gawkers pushed to the far side of the alleyway, choking up a hairball of soot. He pushed through the slackjawed faces, looking for the old man. Asking if anyone had seen Gallagher. Someone said he’d stayed inside the pub the whole time.

The fire crew were a blur, unloading gear and barking orders. Jim slipped the barrier and darted back inside the pub.

Puddy had snuck inside moments before. He stood in a puddle of beer, looking over the empty room. Close to tears. “Christ almighty,” he said, seeing Jim. “I was a hair away from losing it all.”

Jim patted the man’s shoulder, told him everything was fine. No one got hurt. “What happened to Gallagher?”

“Dunno. He must have legged it.”

20

7:00 AM, Saturday morning, a five man crew met at the municipal yard over on Mersey Avenue. All of them griping about working the Saturday. Most had planned on being at the fair grounds for the festival, or at least sleeping off Friday night’s drunk. The griping ended when Joe Keefe pulled into the yard with coffee and a box of donuts. Handing out the cups, Keefe thanked his crew for working the day and told them he’d be providing lunch. The mood of the bleary-eyed men lifted and they asked what this ‘special job’ was all about.

Keefe told them it was an emergency road resurfacing and got the crew moving. He told Davie to bring around the dumptruck, the old Mac, not the big tri-axle. Hook up the small trailer and load up the small backhoe. He tossed keys at Reggie, said they’d swing by Third Line Road to pick the grader where they’d left it at the last jobsite.

Tools were loaded into the pickup and, as always, no one could locate the orange vests they were required to wear on all jobs. Keefe loaded two coolers of chipped ice and bottled water into the box. The day’s forecast was hot and sticky with a chance of thunderstorms on towards evening. It was going to get worse before it got better.

The convoy rolled out of the yard onto Harvester Road and then north on the Orange Line Road. The yellow crewcab eating dust from Keefe’s shiny F10. The dumptruck rumbling after them, hauling the backhoe on a float. Reggie hopped out on 3rd Line and fired up the grader. The convoy continued on up 3rd Line road and swung west on the next road. Keefe pulled over at the intersection while the crew rumbled on. Once the grader had followed the turn, Keefe pulled pylons from the box and planted three of them at the entrance to the road, blocking access to the old Roman Line.

~

The festival began at noon. Constable Ray Bauer, along with a handful of volunteers from the fire department and Knights of Columbus, closed down Galway Road for the parade route. Melissa and Charles did a quick head count of the gathered masses. Almost seventy people turned out to the official start here at the war memorial west of the river. The air was already steaming and the Black Guard Pipers wilted in their kilts waiting for their cue.

Kate gave a short speech about celebrating their community and how a proud sense of history and accomplishments of the past built a foundation to move boldly into the future. Rather than cutting a ribbon, Kate produced a bottle of champagne to break over the corner of the granite war memorial. That honour was given to old Johnny Dinsmore, Pennyluck’s oldest war veteran. Johnny Reb to his friends. A permanent, if foul-mouthed, fixture of the Legion Hall, branch 540. Johnny had fought his way through Italy as an infantryman in the 48th Highlanders, losing two fingers in the bloodbath of Ortona. Weighed under by his medals, the champagne bottle slipped from Johnny’s grip on the first try and rolled in the grass. He muttered something about ‘fucking Fritz’ and then smashed the bottle good and proper on the second attempt. A cheer went up. Pipe Major Bob Wills mistook the cheer for his cue and ordered his pipers to fire up and roll out. A small bit of confusion as Kate’s wrap up speech was culled under the blast of the band and old Johnny was almost trampled under the juggernaut of marching kilts.

Charles and Melissa scrambled as the proceedings went to hell, brandishing their timetables at the marching bagpipers. Kate told them to just run with it and to get Johnny out of the way before he was run over by the tartan marchers.

The miscue in the itinerary threw off the volunteers on the parade route. Jake Walton, pissed at the blocked access to the main drag, drove down one alley and then another to sneak back onto Galway. Slipping past the volunteers, Walton swung east and came bumper to knee with the pipers.

“Holy Jesus,” he said.

Pipe Major Bob shot him a dirty look and swung around the vehicle. Walton sat cowed and shamefaced behind the wheel as the parade flowed around him like a current against a rock, the cacophony of the pipes splitting his ears.

The pipers paraded smartly down Galway and snaked down Newcastle to the fair grounds. Pennyluckers lined the sidewalks, waving. They laughed and jeered at the idiot Walton caught in the middle of the marchers. Kate, the few councilmen in attendance and the rest of the crowd fell in line behind the marching band.

Travis straddled his bike at the corner of Galway and Blackthorn, watching the pipers. Given the day off from his chores, he’d been allowed to pedal into town to see the parade. Not an easy thing given his condition. His parents would meet him later that afternoon. His friends, Owen and Felix, said they’d show up later to cruise the fair grounds on their bikes. With any luck, Brenna would be there too. Travis leaned over the handle bars as the band blasted away. A flash of colour caught his eyes on the other side of the parade and his balls shrivelled up. Brant Coogan sat atop a mail box, huffing a cigarette and sneering at the pipers. He flicked his smoke at the marchers, slipped down and disappeared.

Travis’s knees went numb but his fingers dug into a pocket and slipped free the object hidden there. He slid the brass knuckles on and made a fist and then hid the tooth-smasher away again. God willing, he’d get a chance to try them out on that dickless bastard.