Killing Down the Roman Line (8 page)

He broke the shotgun at the hinge and dug the spent casings from the barrels. Flung them into the ashes of the bonfire at his feet.

“So we settled our little corner of the promised land. An enclave of the bedraggled and the dispossessed, desperate to carve out a new life but unwilling to let go of the old ways. No quarter asked and none given. A volatile mix this. A scrap of hope churning inside a hungry belly, and all of it Irish.

“If you had a quarrel with your neighbour you didn’t turn to the law. That law was English law and all knew there was no justice to be had in it. You settled it the old way. With your fists. You shot the bastard’s horse or burned his barn down. That was the old way.”

The shotgun remained broken at the breech, cradled in the crook of his elbow. His mouth set into that leering grin.

“The Corrigans were a rough bunch, no denying that. No worse than any others in town and yet they came to be the enemy of all. And why is that? Simple. They could outfight and outwit every dullard who crossed paths with them. But what they didn’t have was the numbers.

“The good people of Pennyluck decided life would be a lot easier if there were no more fucking Corrigans around. So they formed a little club and called it the Pennyluck Vigilance Society. They holed up at the old swamp schoolhouse not a mile over that ridge and drank their courage up. Then they came south across the fields, a dozen men, maybe more. Armed with rifles and axes and sticks. February fourth, eighteen ninety-eight.”

He went back up the broken steps and turned to the crowd. “Come on inside. I’ll show you where my family died.”

Corrigan disappeared into the house. The crowd of onlookers remained on the grass, glancing around at one another but no one made a move. Berryhill spat onto the grass. “Horseshit,” he said, and clomped up the steps. Kombat Kyle at his heels.

The spell broken, everyone funnelled into the house. Emma wrapped her hand over Jim’s arm. “I don’t think I want to hear anymore.”

Travis was already on the porch, waving at his parents to hurry up. “Come on,” he said. “It’s just getting good.”

Inside the house it was dark and the June air fetid with must and mould. Everyone squinted until their eyes adjusted from the blue sky to the dim of the house, tumbling into one another at the door. The front room was enormous but almost bare of furnishings. A roughsawn table to one side with three matchstick chairs. A rolltop desk pushed against one wall. Antlers hung over the wide stone hearth, cobwebs drifting from the points. The shotgun lay on the mantle.

Corrigan stood in the center of the room, holding the crowd near the door. “They kicked the door down and stormed the house. James Corrigan, the patriarch, came out from the back with a pistol in hand.”

Under Corrigan's boots was a rough dropcloth. Another was tossed on the floor to his left and a third draped down the stairs. He retreated back into the hall and swept forward, swinging up a pantomime pistol. “He got off one round. Missed. He was shot through the stomach by one vigilante. Another gored his ribs with a pitchfork.”

Everyone ducked as he pointed the make-believe gun at them. Corrigan reached down and yanked away the dropcloth at his feet. Chalk lines drawn onto the wooden floorboards, sketched in the shape of a body.

“Then the mob went for the rest of the family. Mary was struck down running to her husband’s side. Bludgeoned with a shillelagh. Choking on a mouthful of shattered teeth, she begged for a moment to pray. ‘Pray in Hell’ the murderers told her, and then they broke her skull in.”

Emma winced at the thought. Some shuffled uncomfortably while others folded their arms in defiance, disbelieving the tale.

Corrigan pulled away the second dropcloth to reveal another chalk outline on the floor. He crossed to the stairs and swept up the third shroud. “Thomas was shot coming down the stairs. His ears were docked from his head and thrown into the fireplace. Michael was cudgelled in his bed. Young Bridgette, not yet sixteen, was chased to the loft where she was raped and cut open with a cleaver.”

Corrigan flung the sheets into a corner and waved at them to follow him through into the kitchen. “When all was quiet, the vigilantes collected the bodies and dragged them out the back.”

His voice trailed off. No one moved for a second and then Travis chased him down the hall. The crowd trooped through the kitchen and out the backdoor to the yard where Corrigan waited for them.

“This way.” He led them through the newly mowed path, up a rise and down to the willow trees. “The bodies were hauled out to the barn where the horses were stalled. Lamp oil was doused over the straw and the whole thing set to blaze. Bodies, horses, all.”

Ten paces from the willow trees to the graves. Six stones, no taller than a foot, arced in a wide circle. Each one with a chiselled name:

James. Mary. John. Thomas. Bridgette. Michael.

Corrigan stood in the middle of the ring of graves waiting for them to catch up. Behind him rose a spire seven feet into the air, hidden under yet another dropcloth. Berryhill was the first down the path and he stopped cold. Joe Keefe bumped against him and cursed, and then he too went silent when he saw the graves. The others tumbled in, the same reaction all round. A few genuflected but most stood gaping. Corrigan registered it all with a perverse grin.

“Even in death they were wronged. The parish priest, a known lecher and drunk, refused them burial in the churchyard at Saint Patrick’s cemetery. So they were lain to rest out here. What was left of them anyway.”

Corrigan stepped left and took up the end of the dropcloth. Some new horror waiting to be unveiled. “Yet it wasn’t all tragic. One of the family survived. Young Robert Corrigan, all of eight years old, hid under the floor and watched his entire family slaughtered. He fled barefoot through the snow to a neighbour’s house. They hid the boy, fearing for his life. Later, young Robert gave an eye-witness testimony to the local magistrate, naming each and every one of the murderous assassins.”

A breeze blew up, dipping the willow branches into the faces of the stunned onlookers.

Corrigan let the tension run its pace before going on. “But the magistrate was partisan to the Vigilance Peace Society and publicly dismissed the boy’s claims as delusions. The assassins, cowards and bastards to a man, walked away scot free.”

He flung back the dropcloth, sweeping it to the ground. A tall grave monument refracted the sunlight. Black granite, cleaned and polished. Thick at the base and narrowing to an elegant spire that towered four feet over their heads. A dark hub to the ring of small gravemarkers, the black spire repeated the names of the dead in gothic script. James and Mary Corrigan, the four dead children. Each name catalogued with the date and place of birth. The date of demise for all six was the same but here the elegant chiselled letters gave way to a bolder inscription hammered into the stone.

James Orin Corrigan - Born 1839 - MURDERED February 4, 1898

Mary Agnes Corrigan - Born 1846 - MURDERED February 4, 1898

John James Corrigan - Born 1872 - MURDERED February 4, 1898

Thomas Finn Corrigan - Born 1877 - MURDERED February 4, 1898

Bridgette Mary Corrigan - Born 1882 - MURDERED February 4, 1898

Michael Patrick Corrigan - Born 1883 - MURDERED February 4, 1898

No one moved, no one dared breathe. A full minute and it was Travis of all people who broke the spell. “So who did it?”

Emma shushed the boy but Travis played deaf and hollered again. “Who killed the Corrigans?”

“Look around you, son.” Corrigan levelled his eyes to the boy and chin-wagged at the people gathered before him. “They’re all here. All the upstanding, salt of the earth gentry of Pennyluck. Hitchens and Keefe. The Carrols and the O’Connors. Gallaghers, Farrells, McKinnons. The Connellys and the Berryhills. Those that committed the deed and those that covered it up.”

Bill Berryhill snapped to attention at the mention of his name. Like a sharp slap to the face it stung and stung until his mind clicked over to what the son of a bitch was saying. Berryhill’s response was immediate and predictable. “Fuck you, asshole!”

“The truth is ugly, isn’t it? Your great grandfathers murdered my family and everyone knew it. Those that kept silent were just as guilty as the ones that did the deed.” Corrigan stomped forward, his leering grin even wider. “Look at your hands,” he said. “All of you. Do you see the blood stained there? The blood of my kin. My blood.”

Berryhill pushed Kyle aside and stomped up face to face with his accuser. “That’s a fucking lie!”

Violence folded thick in the air but Corrigan didn’t turn away. “What’s your name, son?”

Berryhill shoved Corrigan hard into the monument. Someone in the crowd hollered at him. “Knock it off, Berryhill!”

“Berryhill?” Corrigan zeroed in on the big man’s eyes. “It was your scum ancestor that raped the girl.”

Big Bill Berryhill was strong but he wasn’t fast, the punch telegraphed a mile away. Still, the accusing party didn’t seem to care, too busy staring at the big man’s face. Corrigan took the punch and bounced off the gravemarker. Hit the ground.

“Hit him again!” Someone from behind, goading him on. Jim and Puddycombe jumped in and pulled Bill away. Others yelled at them to stop and a few ordered Bill to shut his mouth. Bill flung the two men off, spat at the bastard on the ground and stomped away.

Corrigan brushed the grit from his hands and rubbed his jaw. The grin was still there, as if everything was how it should be. “If you don’t believe me, look in your attics and your crawlspaces. You’ll find proof there.”

Joe Keefe told him to go to Hell but Corrigan shouted him down. “The morning after the massacre, the whole town came out and traipsed through the ashes. They took little souvenirs, like they were at the fair, snatching up little pieces of bone and pocketing them. Fingerbones and ribs, keepsakes of a lovely day’s outing. Look in your basements, people. Search your hidey-holes and your attics and you’ll find the bones there. I want them back. Bring them to me.”

The stranger was gnashing his teeth, nigh foaming at the mouth, and Emma pulled Travis away, hissing at Jim to follow. The Murdys and the Connellys turned and hurried back up the path, away from the leering man and his blasphemous sideshow. The others cursed and followed.

Corrigan waved at the departing crowd like some demented carnival barker. “Come again, folks! And bring your friends!”

Jim lingered as the bodies migrated past him, cursing and growling. He closed the distance between himself and Corrigan. “What the hell is this? Some sick joke?”

Corrigan smiled. “Just celebrating local history, Jim.” His bloodshot eyes were feral and burning. “Come on up to the house and have a drink. Bring the family.”

Too apoplectic to respond, Jim turned and walked off with all the others, shooing his wife and son before him.

8

“THAT WAS AWESOME!” Travis let the screen door bang shut again as he raced into the house. “I can’t believe nobody ever told me that story.”

Jim and Emma were silent on the walk home, too shocked and confused to articulate anything they were feeling. The boy prattled, kicking stones and the sun midway through the sky hurrying them home. They hurried for the shade of the house.

Travis snatched a can of root beer from the fridge without asking. “Working for that guy’s gonna be cool.” He popped the can and scurried up to his room.

Jim listened to the boy pound the steps as if trying to smash them and looked at his wife. “No way in hell is he working for that man.”

“We already said he could.”

He scrounged two bottles of beer from the icebox and threw down into a chair. Twisted the caps and slid one across to her. “Didn’t you hear that bullshit back there?”

“His family was killed.” Emma took a pull, felt the bottle sweat in her hand. “He’s angry.”

“It was a hundred years ago for Chrissakes.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s still wrong. The man has every right to be angry.”

“You believe that story? Emm, he accused everyone in town.”

“Do you think it’s true?”

Jim tilted his beer, then dismissed it all with a wave. “He’s just trying to stir up trouble.”

“That’s not what I asked. Is his story true?”

“It’s complete nonsense. Those people were killed by a gang of escaped convicts and that’s the end of it.” He shook his head again. “Hell, even if it was true, what does he think he’s gonna do? Lay charges against folks already in the ground?”

“Still,” she said. “It’s an awful thing.”

“It’s ancient history. Got nothing to do with us.”

Emma leaned back and fanned her face with yesterday’s newspaper. The peak of the midday heat blowing in through the open window and it not even high summer yet. The knock at the screen door startled them both.

Will Corrigan stood on the other side of the torn screen. A bottle of wine clutched by the neck. “You must be Emma.” He pulled the door open and thrust out a hand. “Will Corrigan. Pleased to meet you.”

~

Emma didn’t know what to make of their guest. For someone who had just offended twenty people and taken a hard right to the jaw, he was remarkably chipper. All smiles and warmth, complimenting Emma on their lovely home and asking about the flowers she had blooming all around the yard.

He took a seat at the kitchen table but refused a drink or even coffee. Jim had withdrawn to the sink, watching the man with mute hostility. Emma scolded her husband with a look and joined their guest at the table.

“I’m sorry I had to bushwack you back there.” Corrigan placed the bottle on the table. “I didn’t want anyone spoiling the surprise, you see.”

“We
were
surprised,” she said. “Everyone was.”

“Then you’ll forgive me.”

Jim levelled a finger at him. “That’s one nasty accusation you threw down.”

“That was a history lesson. One that seems to have been conveniently forgotten about.”

“You expect everyone to believe that story?”

“It’s no story. God’s truth.”