by Tim McGregor
~
“You sure you want to do this?”
Travis kicked a pebble into the ditch. “Yeah.”
Jim walked his son down the driveway to the Corrigan house. “You add this to your chores, you won’t have a lot of free time. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
Jim plucked a handful of thistle from the path, watching his boy amble along in that jangleybone way of his, like it would kill him to stand up straight. Or give more than one-word answers. Lately the boy had regressed to simple grunts and impatient sighs. Jim let it go.
Coming onto the yard, they saw more rotted timber piled onto the ashes of the bonfire. Splintered framing and chunks of desiccated plaster and lathe. Jim gauged the fire pit to be too close to the house, too close to that tinderbox veranda. If Corrigan wasn’t careful, he’d burn the place down. Which, on second thought, might not be such a terrible thing.
“There he is.” Travis pointed.
Corrigan came around the side of the house, dragging a splintered mess of cabinet through the raspberry bushes. He tossed the mess into the fire pit and waved, a warm smile beaming through the sweat of his brow. “Hello there, son. Ready to work?”
“Yes sir.”
Jim titled his head at the boy. Sir? Where did that come from?
“Thanks for coming.” Corrigan wiped his hand on his shirt before shaking Jim’s hand. Then to Travis. “Did you bring some gloves? Proper workboots?”
“Check.” Travis plucked the gloves from his back pocket and raised a foot. The steel toe of his boot shone through the worn out leather.
“Excellent.” He led Travis inside, a hand guiding the boy’s slender shoulder. “Come on then. I’ll show you where you can start smashing things.”
Jim followed them into the dark interior. More of the old plaster had been pulled down, revealing soot-stained beams and studs, the bones of the old house. Out to the kitchen where Corrigan handed the boy a crowbar and nodded at the 40’s era cabinetry.
“Hack away, Travis.” Corrigan opened one of the lower cupboards. A few dusty plates and an ancient spraycan of wasp-killer. “Anything that will burn, you can drag out to the firepit. Anything that won’t can be tossed into that trailer bin out back. And be sure to take a break if you get too hot. This old bastard kitchen gets right fucking toasty when the sun hits it.”
Jim winced at the language but Travis didn’t seem to notice. He attacked the old cabinetry with a glee for destruction inherent in all boys, making a godawful racket with the prybar.
“Atta boy.” Corrigan cheered him on and then flipped open an ice cooler on the floor. He scrounged up two tall cans of lager, handed one to his guest.
“I’m okay,” Jim begged off. It was barely noon.
“Too late.” Corrigan popped them both and shoved one at him. “I’m glad you came. I thought maybe you’d changed your mind about letting the boy work here.”
“I told him he could.” Jim shouted over the din. “Hate to go back on my word.”
“Take a walk with me.” Corrigan waved him toward the back door. “Something I want to show you.”
They walked into the punishing sun and Corrigan led the way to the chestnut trees shading the old stone fence. Boots trampled the growth underfoot, Jim spotting shoots of barley, potatoes and corn. Remnants of previous seasons, all fighting for sunlight.
“Look at all this stuff,” Corrigan scooped handfuls of buds, popping them free. “Planted ages ago and growing wild. What is this?”
“Barley. Feed corn.” Jim nodded further downfield. “All kinds of stuff over the years. What do you plan to do with all this acreage?”
“Don’t know yet. I’m no farmer, I’ll tell you that much.”
“I noticed you still got your sign up. You gonna take it down?”
“We’ll see how Kate makes out with her promise first.” Corrigan smeared a forearm over his brow. “Do you know her well? Is she trustworthy?”
“She says she’s gonna do something, she’ll do it.”
“That was a pretty good turnout we had for the tour, yeah?” He clinked his can against Jim’s. “Cheers.”
“I guess. I mean, if you’re goal was to piss off everyone in town.”
“Family history, Jim. I wanted to share it with everyone.”
Jim squared him with a look. “Bullshit. You wanted to shock everyone.”
“I admit I had fun. Did you see their faces?” Corrigan’s grin melted off as he cast his gaze over the field. “But it’s not just family history, you understand. It’s their history too.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Jim gauged the man’s mood, looking for a moment to talk some reason into him. “How do you know that story of yours is true?”
“I told you. It’s an eye witness account.”
“By a little boy hiding under a bed. What if he was wrong?”
“He wasn’t wrong. My grandfather knew every one of the men who murdered his family. They all went to the same church, for Christ’s sakes.” He slugged on the can. “I know it’s ugly, Jim, but the truth often is.”
Jim leaned against the stone fence and said nothing. Corrigan looked up at the blue sky and pointed to birds circling the field, dark slices gliding around and around. “I keep seeing these birds up there, circling around the farm. What are they?”
“Turkey vultures. They’ll go round and round for hours looking for something dead. Or about to die.”
“The way they glide like that, without flapping a wing. They’re beautiful.”
“Not up close they’re not.” He watched Corrigan watching the vultures. “You know, the people here… these are good people. They haven’t done anything wrong. They don’t deserve to be called murderers.”
“You think I was too harsh?”
Jim caught a note of remorse in the man’s voice. “It was a long time ago. Things were different back then. People were different.”
“That’s bullshit, Jimmy. People are no better then their savage forefathers. They just think they are.”
“It was a hundred years ago. What does it matter now?”
Corrigan wiped the foam from his lips. “The dead have their claims on the living. Whether we see it or not, we’re beholden to them.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means every sin has to accounted for somewhere. Even by those who didn’t pull the trigger.”
“You know these people won’t just stand around while you sling mud at them.” Jim gave up trying to hide his frustration. “I mean, you’re not exactly making friends, are you?”
“You’re a friend. Aren’t you?”
Jim dialled it back. “Sure but… Jesus.”
“You think I should just let it be.”
“Maybe, just maybe the story you heard was wrong. No one was ever charged for those crimes. In a small town like this.” Jim shrugged. “Maybe it really was a mob of lunatics.”
“Come on, Jim. That’s the bullshit they troweled on to hide their mess.”
The man wasn’t going to budge and Jim was out of arguments so they stood in the chestnut shade and watched the vultures drift in lazy arcs.
“So what’d you want to show me?”
“Over here.” Corrigan crushed his can and pitched it onto Jim’s side of the fence and marched on. Jim looked at the litter in dismay and followed. Twenty paces in, Corrigan pointed south, where the land rolled gently down to the creek at the lower forty. “See down there at the bottom. The old fence.”
Jim froze. Corrigan’s finger wagged down to the berm of fieldstones piled up and the breech in the old perimeter. The spot he had ploughed through with the blade of his tractor.
Shit.
“This old fence borders our property, yeah? See the mess? Someone’s knocked it down. Looks like they dragged a plough through and started tilling.”
Corrigan rolled his eyes up to meet Jim’s. The man already knew the answer, that much was clear, and now he simply wanted to watch Jim sweat.
He got his wish. Jim could feel it rivulet down the small of his back.
Time to come clean. “I did it.”
“You?” Corrigan’s surprise was soap-opera fake. It vanished and his tone dropped to a gravelcrunch. “Why?”
Jim stepped back, expecting a blow. “All this land has been neglected for so long. Gone to seed. I just—” He killed off his words. It was grovelling and it stung and he despised himself for it. “I needed the land.”
“You’re squatting on my property,” Corrigan said.
Jim shifted his weight square to both feet and his hand balled instinctively into a fist. The other man fixed him with venom roiling his pupils. A donnybrook about to blow the martins from the tree branches above them.
“All right.” Corrigan stood down and broke off his stare, casting his eyes down the broken stone fence. “Go ahead. Farm it.”
Jim wasn’t sure he got all that but his muscles suddenly breathed, tension leaking away. “What?”
“Farm it.” Corrigan’s face creased back into that familiar smile. “Our families cleared all this land. Be a shame to let all that backbreaking work go to waste.”
Jim still wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly but balked at saying ‘what’ again.
“Farming’s a merciless job, isn’t it?” Corrigan said. “You in financial straights?”
“We’ve seen better days, yeah.”
“Then farm it.”
Jim went back to shaking his head. “I can’t.”
“Don’t be proud, Jim. It’s dishonest and it doesn’t suit you.” Corrigan snapped his fingers. “Tell you what, I’ll lease it to you. However much acreage you need, you can lease the land from me.”
Jim leaned back again. Wanting to ask but expecting to get fleeced. “How much?”
“How many acres are we talking about? Forty, fifty? More?” Corrigan tilted his head like a puzzled dog and scrutinized his neighbour. Tailoring a price to suit the man. “A dollar.”
12
TRAVIS LIKED THE work. An hour or two after school, smashing cupboards or peeling up cracked linoleum. Mister Corrigan didn’t hover over him or criticize his work, letting him toil at his own pace. On the third day, Corrigan told him to let himself out and climbed into his truck and left. Travis finished pulling the plywood subfloor up from the hallway. The last stray nails were pried out and the dirt swept up to reveal the original black oak. He stood on the porch and looked out at the road. From here, you could see any car coming up the dusty road long before it reached the driveway. Not a single vehicle anywhere in sight.
Travis left the dustpan on the veranda and went exploring.
There was dust everywhere and the smell of mould clung to every room but Corrigan’s plans were plain to see. Prying loose everything from the twentieth century and peeling it back to reveal the original house. Light fixtures were ripped down and the wiring, old knob and tube stuff, was stripped out. Flooring was torn up to reveal the pockmarked hardwood. The only things new were the heavy floodlights set up throughout the house and the cables snaking the floor.
Most of the furniture had been tossed out and replaced with antique stuff Mr. Corrigan had found in town. A big oak table and a few spindly chairs set before the fireplace in the front parlour. A rolltop desk of burled mahogany near the window, littered with paperwork. Stacks of receipts from McGrath’s hardware store and a pile of old library books. A rolled up map that Travis unfurled. The date on it was marked 1910, the entire township of Pennyluck mapped out in a cockeyed grid of lots and concessions. Brittle documents of yellowing parchment. None of it made any sense to Travis so he left it and climbed the creaky steps.
The restoration work had yet to reach the second floor, the rooms untouched and a trail of footprints through the dust. The rooms were cobwebbed, the windows opaque under a film of grime. The biggest room held a bed and little else. The mattress was new and cast loose on top of it was a sleeping bag. On the floor were beer cans and newspapers. A kerosene lantern.
Travis didn’t venture very far into the basement, even with the heavy flashlight Corrigan kept on the window sill. The steps creaked and moaned like they would snap under his workboots. The beam of the flashlight swallowed by the darkness. Shapes and forms, things hidden away under dropcloths. The house ticked and creaked around him and Travis imagined hands reaching up from the cellar darkness and dragging him down. The ghosts of the murdered family, cold and hungry for flesh.
He scuttled back up the steps and closed the basement door. Returned the Maglite to the window sill and went home.
The house was still empty when he came back the next afternoon. Travis hollered up the stairs and checked out back but Corrigan wasn’t around. The truck was still gone too. He sat on the front stoop, wondering if he should just go home when he saw the FJ blowing a dustcloud on the road.
Mister Corrigan looked dishevelled and bleary-eyed as he climbed out and nodded hello. He got Travis to unload the truck and then started him on the one of the second floor rooms. The room was small like the others and was filled with junk. A metal bunk frame and boxes and a dresser bleached from sunlight. There was a sink attached to the wall. Odd, since there was no bathroom on this floor. Travis wondered why someone would put a single sink in a bedroom. Nailed to the wall above the bed was a brass crucifix.
“Do you go to church, son?”
Travis shrugged. “Sometimes. Christmas, Easter.”
“Your folks are Catholic?”
The boy nodded. Corrigan pried the crucifix from the wall and tossed it out the open window. The shape of the cross lingered like a ghost image, clean paint against an outline of grime. Corrigan frowned. “The Lord endures.”
They separated the few salvageable items like the chair and a wooden chest from the junk and Travis helped Corrigan nail a length of plywood into the window frame. A makeshift slide that leaned out onto the backyard. “Toss the rest of that shit out the window,” Corrigan said. “And if you’re feeling up to it, tear out that bastard sink.”
He left him to it and Travis chucked it all out, dropping debris down the plywood ramp and listening to it crash to the ground below. Everything but the bunk was tossed and Travis started in on the sink. His first thought was to just smash the porcelain with the crowbar but maybe he could pry it loose in one piece. The plaster chipped away and he wedged the blade behind it and hauled back for all he was worth. The bar slipped and he thumped ass first to the floor, the crowbar ringing off his shin.
“Son of a bitch!” He curled and clutched his shin bone.
“She’s a reluctant whoor, isn’t she?” Corrigan leaned against the doorframe. Travis dusted himself off, felt his cheeks burn.
“Come on,” Corrigan said. “Take five.”
Down to the kitchen where Corrigan scooped beer cans from the cooler and waved at Travis to follow him outside. “Too nice a day to be trapped in some sickroom.”
Along the footpath to the big willow tree and the gravestones shaded under its boughs. “Come see what the bastards have done,” Corrigan said.
The tall marble spire lay flat in the grass, knocked clean off its foundation. The stone had broken into three pieces and the marble was scored raw here and there, like a chisel had been at it.
Travis bent and touched its notched gloss. “What happened?”
Corrigan sat down on the toppled marker. “Some shit-brained yokel knocked it over. You can see where the fool went at it with an axe.”
Travis silently mouthed two words. Holy shit.
Corrigan motioned for him to sit and Travis did, careful not to set his rear on the inscription. “Where did this monument come from? I mean, if everyone was dead?”
“My grandfather. He came back here two years after the crime to ensure that his family was properly buried. He was outraged to find them interred here on the homestead, denied a proper burial in the churchyard of St. Mary’s. Not that there was much to bury, mind you. Scattered bones and ash.
“He knew then that the
guilty would not be brought to justice, that the murdering scum would go unpunished. So he spent what little money he had on this stone. Hiring a stonemason to hammer it out, paying extra to have the word ‘murdered’ scribed after each name. The stone was trucked over in a donkeycart and assembled. These smaller stones laid in a ring around the spire.
“Two nights later, the monument was knocked over by spineless scum in the night, just as it is now. A note was left for my grandfather on the veranda of the house, warning him to get the hell out of Pennyluck or suffer the same fate as his cursed family. So he fled, a second time, and never returned.” Corrigan shrugged. “Thus are the ways of the world. Bullies win.”
Travis nodded as the story ended, feeling the need to say something but he didn’t know what. Outrage or shock? Sympathy with the deceased or fury at the sinners? He stayed mute and just kept nodding, hoping it would suffice.
Corrigan cracked both beer cans and held one out to the boy. Nodded for him to take it. Travis’s eyes bugged out of his head. “I can’t have that.”
“Go on, son. I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.”
Travis hesitated, thinking the man was going to punk him. He took it and Corrigan clinked his can to the boy’s. “Work like a man, you get treated like one. Cheers.”
A boy’s first sip of beer. It was godawful to Travis’s twelve-year old tastebuds but he knew this was a test, some rite of passage into the world of men. He felt Mr. Corrigan’s eyes hawking him so he did his best to slug it back and not pucker his face against the bitter taste. No chance.
But the man didn’t berate or mock him for it. Mr. Corrigan simply nodded and looked away, allowing Travis to wipe the foul swill from his lips. Travis looked at the beer in his hand and couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about.
“Do you like soccer, Travis?”
“It’s all right.” Travis shrugged. “I’m pretty okay at baseball.”
“Baseball?” Corrigan sneered at that, then changed topics. “You got a girlfriend?”
“No.”
Corrigan swivelled on the broken headstone and fixed him with a sly look. The boy’s cheeks burned again and then his lips corkscrewed into a smirk. “Liar,” he said. “What’s her name?”