Killing Down the Roman Line (3 page)

“Later may be too late. We need to expand the farm now. This season. Or…” He didn’t bother finishing the thought.

“Is it that bad?”

“I’m afraid so,” Emma said. She felt her cheeks burning with shame, like a school kid explaining why her homework wasn’t done.

Whippoorwills trilled overhead and they listened to the sound without speaking for a few moments. Kate leaned against the old stone fence, pressing a palm to the cold surface. “What if this fence wasn’t here?”

Emma’s eyebrow shot up. “What do you mean?”

Kate’s hands found a loose stone and rolled it away. The stone fell down the far side and rolled into the long grass. “What if you knocked a hole in this and farmed the back acreage?”

“That would be illegal.”

“Who would know?” Kate brushed the grit from her palm. “Outside of us?”

It wasn’t a bad idea and they both knew it. Back here, well away from the road, no one would know the difference. Jim looked at his wife and knew by her eyes that she didn’t like the idea. Too risky or just plain wrong. “I dunno, Kate.”

Kate took a step sideways, her heels sinking into the ground. “You farm this back forty and boost your production, right? A year from now, maybe two, you’ve pared down your debt load and you buy the property fair and square.”

“It’s wrong.” Emma wouldn’t budge.

“It’s shrewd,” Kate offered. “When your back’s against the wall, you have to get creative. Bend the rules a little.”

A shadow passed over them. Jim looked up to see a turkey vulture drifting overhead, with three more further out. Riding the thermals without beating a wing, circling for something dead in the weeds.

They watched Kate climb back into her Explorer and wave as she pulled out of the driveway. Tentative plans made for dinner next week. Tentative because Kate’s schedule was far more crowded since moving into the mayor’s office of their little town. The dinner plans had run over the last month, with Kate always begging off at the last minute as more demands were placed on her time.

Emma watched the dust settle on the road. “You know it’s wrong.”

“Who would know? It’s a waste of perfectly good land.”

“That’s not the point, honey. It’s squatting on someone’s land. In the old days, people would kill you for such a thing.”

“Good thing we’re living in more civilized times.”

She turned back towards the house. “Travis will be home soon. We can talk about it over dinner.”

~

Raspberry thicket swayed against the stone fence, flowering under the high sun. Here at the southern end of the property, the fence thinned out as it neared the creek. Down here Jim couldn’t even see his house, let alone the road. He stood in the bunchgrass and listened to the Massey Ferguson idle and sputter behind him.

He climbed back up into the seat and lowered the bucket. The teeth of the front end loader sparkled like chrome, pumiced clean from digging. Jim geared low and inched the tractor forward until those gleaming teeth knocked against the fence. He gave it a little more gas until the stone cracked, flinting with pops. Dust spewed and the stones tumbled down. He backed the tractor up and hit another section, knocking it all down. Within twenty minutes, he had breeched twenty feet of wall. Knocked down, scooped up and piled into a neat berm under a beech tree.

He circled back and hooked up the plough to the hitch and drove it onto the fallow fields of the old property. Green shoots of new growth fingered up through the choked deadfall of last season, the earth still wet from the spring runoff. Jim lowered the business end of the plough and shifted into second gear. The tractor crawled forward and the metal blades bit into the earth, digging up weeds and churning up soil. Black earth boiled up in the blades, spitting up truncated roots. The Massey Ferguson sputtered along, popping and belching black smoke.

A bone spewed up in the tilled earth, left behind by the blades. Its porous surface stained dark with soil, now touched by the sun after its long internment in the ground. The remains of some slaughtered cow or a horse crippled from a gopher hole and put down where it fell. Or yet some other slaughtered thing.

Jim drove on at a snail’s pace, oblivious to what the blades were digging up.

~

The school bus rolled to a dusty stop where Clapton Road crossed the Roman Line, the dented stop sign swinging out from the side of the bus. Travis Hawkshaw stepped off and the bus trundled away. Travis swept away the road dust and walked the empty quarter mile home. The bus used to bring him all the way but not anymore, Travis being the only school age kid left on the Roman Line. The rest of them had grown up or moved away so the bus dropped him at the corner and went on. He didn’t mind walking the rest of the way and he hated the bus anyway. The thing stank of orange peel and wet socks and he was glad to get shed of it.

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.”

“Dinner?” Emma leaned out of his grasp, suspicious. “Why?”

“To celebrate.”

Travis sat up. Maybe this wasn’t so bad. “Can we go to Burger Barn?”

“No.” Jim shooed his family to the door. “Get your shoes on. No more questions.”

Travis was already dumping his homework back into his schoolbag. Emma looked at her husband as if he was crazy, temper sparking up. Dinner out? With what, coupons?

He took her hand and pulled her towards the door. Gave her rear a sharp tap. “March.”

3

WEST DOWN THE Roman Line and then south on Clapton Road. A ten minute drive into Pennyluck. Pop 5200. Rattling over train tracks, the old baseball field to the left, two forgotten grain silos on the right. The derelict cannery across the river.

The speed limit dropped as Clapton arced onto Galway Road, the main drag through town. Brick storefronts and weathered facades, narrow sidestreets bisecting the thoroughfare in a plan laid out before the advent of cars. Trim Victorian buildings hitched next to pioneer false fronts hiding pitch roofed shacks. The town hall was a limestone edifice of columns and pediments and clock tower. The letterboard out front read:
Heritage Festival, June 12-15.

The pickup truck rumbled through the puddles on Galway. Jim steered around potholes that were older than his son. Past both banks and one of the town’s two dollar stores before pulling into the gravel lot beside the Dublin Public House. An eyesore of a tavern, unremarkable in its faux Tudor facade. Jim swung out of the cab and waited for his wife and son to amble out. Emma had slipped on a clean shirt, a little lip gloss. Travis had preened in the mirror for ten minutes yet still managed to look exactly the same. Tussled and loose, like he’d just been yanked from bed and dressed in the dark.