Read Online Killing Down the Roman Line by Tim McGregor - Free Book Online Page B

to grill down the narrow rut and snaking back onto the road. Most of them he recognized. He, Emma and Travis had walked, it being such a warm day. He felt his wife’s hand slide into his, fingers meshing. He didn’t know what she wanted at first, it being so long since they’d held hands like that. For no reason. It felt good and he told her so with a little squeeze.
    Travis walked ahead of them, eager to get there and groaning at his turtle-trodding parents. He caught them holding hands. “Do you have to do that? There’s people around.”
    Coming onto the yard, they nodded to people milling about in the shorn crabgrass. Puddycombe and Hitchens leaned on Puddy’s truck while their wives talked nearby. The Ryder family next to Phil Carroll and his brood. Joe Keefe and his wife. Elaine and Bertie O’ Connor. The Murdy clan and Orlo Miller. Even Bill Berryhill was there, loafing with his little toadie ‘Kombat’ Kyle. Chinless under a downy moustache, Kyle was the local nazi wannabe enamoured with all things military. He wore camouflage and combat boots and never ever spoke.
    Puddycombe spotted Jim and waved him over. “You know what this nonsense is all about?”
    “No idea.” Jim surveyed the crowd, impatient but polite. “But I thoroughly expect it to be a scam.”
    Hitchens laughed. “keep your hands on your wallets, boys—”
    KA-BOOM!
    The crack of a gunshot blast, the report echoing off into the field. Everyone jerked and ducked, shutting the hell up. All eyes swinging up to the sound.
    William Corrigan stood on his tilting porch, a double-barrelled shotgun in his hand. The stock resting on a hip and smoke drifting from the twin bores. He mouth twisted into a satisfied grin.
    “Good afternoon!” Corrigan roamed the faces staring back at him. Some still startled, others angry or offended. He grinned back at them, delighted with the effect. “And welcome to the Corrigan Horrorshow. Nice to see so many of you out today.”
    He clomped down the dryrot steps to the crowd. Mrs. Murdy pulled her children away and stepped back. Donny McKinnon bubbled up, “What the hell’re you doing with the gun?”
    “My name is William James Corrigan,” he hollered, shouting down the protests and clucking tongues. “The last of the Corrigan clan. And this crumbling shell before you is all that’s left of the family homestead.”
    The crowd parted, stepping on one another’s toes as their host ferried forward. “Like most of you, my family emigrated here from Ireland. County Tipperary. My predecessors and yours alike. All fleeing the blight and the bastard landowners, the tithe troubles and the bloodshed of ancient feuds. Here to the New World where there was land for the taking, if you had the backbone to clear it. Land you could own, something denied the Catholics in the British scheme to starve out the Papists. If you survived the coffin ships crossing the Atlantic and the sick houses at the port lands.” Here he swept his arm wide, taking in the horizon. “And of course this godforsaken climate.”
    Emma glanced at Jim, like she was waiting for the punchline to a bad joke. He had nothing to offer so he put a hand on her shoulder. Travis was slackjawed, eating it up.
    Corrigan welcomed the stares coming his way and glared back with delight. “And come we did. The Corrigans and the Connellys. The Keefes and the Farrells. Hitchens, Hawkshaws. The Carrolls, O’Connors, the Donnellys and the Berryhills. Land enough for all. But we didn’t leave the old world behind, did we? No, we brought with us the best of the old country and we ferried the worst of it too. The old hatreds and the feuding. Our cherished bigotries and enmities, one for the other.”
    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