In the court of assizes in London, Province of Canada, the magistrate named McLeod hammered his worn gavel to re-establish order in the traditionally unruly courtroom. Big Constable Fitzhenry was there both to give evidence and provide security along with other officers. All Johannah could do was watch as Jim and Pat Farrell angrily faced each other. The courts being a great source of entertainment, friends of both men had come to see what would happen. The Donnellys had the Keefe brothers and the O’Connors and two Kennedys. Johannah was surprised to see John Carroll in the courtroom. And why was he seated with Farrell’s supporters? But then, maybe she was not so surprised. It made sense to her now.
Taking the stand, Farrell stated his case as crudely as he had at the farm. Jim was so full of emotion, he couldn’t speak in response and Johannah had to come forward as his proxy.
“My Lord, Mr. Farrell waited years until we had cleared much of the good land. He had his spies watching as we increased the worth of the property several times over. Now, days before the property becomes legally ours, he makes his claim.”
As the unruly audience responded loudly for both parties, weary Judge McLeod hit the gavel again.
“Silence or I will empty the courtroom. Mr. Farrell? When did you become aware of Mr. Donnelly squatting on the land?”
“I had no idea Mr. Donnelly was squatting until my friend John Carroll”—Carroll nodded to the judge—“wrote to me explaining the situation only weeks ago and up I comes to sort it out immediately.”
Johannah had to interrupt. “Mr. Carroll knew we were there six years ago!”
Fitzhenry again stayed between Jim and Farrell. Farrell pointed a finger at Jim. “The law’s on my side and I knows the law!”
“Quiet!” McLeod shut him down, his patience gone. “My judgment is this: of the hundred acres, fifty will go to Jim Donnelly and fifty to Pat Farrell, including equal portions of the cleared land as determined by a court surveyor and equal frontage on the Roman Line. Donnelly keeps the existing house and buildings. Deeds will be issued to both. Now accept this fair ruling and find peace between yourselves.”
Johannah was so deeply relieved her eyes teared up. They had secured fifty acres and the buildings. No one could question their ownership. But Jim was furious and Fitzhenry kept his place between the two men and their supporters. Jim leaned around Fitzhenry toward Farrell.
“You son of a bitch!”
“You stinking squatter.”
Fitzhenry raised his arm to hold back Farrell, who wanted to go for Jim.
The judge was done. “Clear the courtroom!”
Muttering about the crazed bunch of Irishmen inhabiting his courtroom, Judge McLeod left the dais and slammed the office door behind him. Fitzhenry and the clerks encouraged the people to vacate the room
Johannah put her arms around Jim. “We won, Jimmy! We have the house and barn and fifty acres and no one can ever take it away from us. We’ll have a deed!”
Jim glared at the departing Farrell.
“He stole my land.”
Jim drove the wagon back up the Roman Line in brooding silence and Johannah remained quiet at his side. The buckboard was only a few weeks old, with springs and new steel wheel bearings that made for a comfortable ride and a new tawny gelding they had bought to pull it. They rode past the pleasant green fields of their neighbours on a warm summer’s day, but Jim could not enjoy the trip for the dark cloud that enveloped him. He knew that logically Johannah was right. All told, with fifty acres free and clear, they had done pretty well as squatters in seven years, but he was not thinking logically. All he could see was the fifty acres he had lost, the acreage he had cleared, the field where Vinnie’s blood had been spilled. It wasn’t right. It took him back to the emotions of Magee’s injustices on the Cavendish estate, to when his father had killed the ponies and then himself. To when they threw his people off the land so cows could graze. Cows could eat while Irish children starved.
Amid his anger and recriminations Jim realized that, just like him, Johannah had been waiting and worrying unspoken those seven years, and thinking they were almost safe when that man showed up. Jim had failed her and himself—it was the Donnelly curse—and no words, logical or placating, could make it better.
So, in the spring of ’58, the Donnellys hoped Farrell would build his house off over the hill and behind the trees as a sane man would do, but no. Pat Farrell made the decision to build his house on his fifty acres as close as possible to their property line, so painfully close to the Donnellys’ own house it seemed you could almost touch his building by leaning out their downstairs window. Perhaps there was logic in this, for if one house was set on fire, it was likely the other would burn too, providing mutual protection against arson.
Farrell hired a team of men to first quickly build a fence on the lot line and then to put up the framing in the new fashion of house building. Then Farrell worked slow and alone with his young boy, Billy, boarding it in, pounding away at all hours, every day. It was like water torture, each a hammer blow to Jim’s head, announcing the theft of his fifty acres. Jim, and sometimes some of the boys, would stand out there at the lot line and glare at Farrell, who didn’t seem to mind the attention at all. Johannah had no doubt the trouble would escalate sooner or later, like watching a nasty rainstorm coming at them and not much anyone could do about it.
Farrell had just installed a brand-new window in the house facing the Donnellys, and it was like a red flag to a bull. When the inevitable smash occurred, both Johannah and Farrell ran outside of their houses to see Jim and a couple of his boys standing close to the property line. Jim looked up at the sky, smiled at Farrell and held out a flat palm. “Hail,” was what he said.
“You bastard, Donnelly. You’ll pay for it.”
That night Johannah spoke sternly to Jim in private. “This is childish and I’m surprised at you.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“What kind of example are you setting for the boys?”
“They are learning to stand up for their rights.”
“The right to harass your neighbour? Jim, we have to make peace. Do you hear me?”
“I’ll think about it.”
The next week Farrell was digging out stumps for his truck patch. Keefe had offered his oxen, but Farrell had decided on dynamite, “the lazy man’s choice” as Jim declared. The noisy blasts started at six a.m. and permeated their day at regular intervals. After two days of this, putting everyone on edge, Johannah heard a gunshot just outside the house. Jim was standing with his rifle and there was a bullet hole in a tree over Farrell’s head. Will, James and Tom were with him, all quite amused. Jim pointed to the tree and explained to Farrell, “Crows.”
“I’m going to get the law on you, Donnelly.”
“No law against hunting crows.”
That evening they were eating dinner at the big table out in the summer kitchen where it was cooler. Jim was talking to his sons as he tucked into his chicken dinner.
“I’ll never forget the look on his face. He thought for sure I was about to finish him off.”
The brothers looked from their father to their mother, aware of the latter’s disapproval, smiling at each other like guilty schoolboys.
“Can’t he take a joke?” Will asked.
“You were just playing with him,” Michael offered.
“No law against scaring off crows,” James repeated, giggling.
“Eat your dinner,” Johannah told them all.
Will made the sound of a rifle firing and they all laughed.
Johannah’s anger got the best of her. “All right! I’ve had enough of this, Jim! You made me a promise there would be no more of this over here. No more feuding. The fight with Farrell has got to stop! Now!”
Jim looked slightly embarrassed for a moment but then he answered with a broader conviction: “It’ll stop when Farrell gives me my land back.”
Johannah threw down her knife and fork, breaking her dinner plate, the gravy flowing onto the oilcloth. They were all listening now.
“You’ve got your land, Jim. It’s plenty and you’ll not get any more. You leave this thing with Farrell alone, now! Or you’re the biggest fool God ever breathed life into.”
Just then there was a dynamite explosion much bigger and closer than the others. The plates and glasses on the table rattled. Jim stood up, threw down his napkin and went out into the backyard. They all followed. Outside they found a stump very close to the property line had been blasted into pieces and the roof of the Donnelly chicken coop just on their side of the lot line had been blown off. A dozen chickens were flying and running in panic. Farrell was standing on his property, a smile on his face.
“Stumps,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
Jim made as if he would go after him. “You’ll pay for that, Farrell.” But Johannah grabbed his arm.
“Just stop this! Both of you.” She gave equal attention to Farrell. “You’re behaving like children. An embarrassment to your own! You have to stop.”
Johannah turned away and went back in the house, slamming the door behind her. Chastised for a moment, Jim and Farrell then glared at each other as the Donnelly boys began to scramble around the yard, rounding up the liberated chickens.
After the dynamiting of the chicken coop and Johannah’s condemnation, there were a few days of peace. But then, Farrell’s drinking water from his well turned bad. He and the boy went fishing with a bailing hook in the depths of the well and caught a rotted cow’s head some days old. Farrell came to the Donnelly door with the ripe evidence, his poor son beside him throwing up on their flower bed. It was Johannah who opened the door and Farrell called out past her.
“Donnelly! Donnelly, you son of a bitch. I’m going to kill you.”
Jim was lying low in the summer kitchen after this, his latest harassment of Farrell. Johannah answered for him.
“You can’t be uttering threats like that on our doorstep, Mr. Farrell, unless you want to be prosecuted.”
Farrell left soon after and a couple of hours later, a weary Constable Fitzhenry stood on the property line with Jim and Farrell, each on his side. Farrell’s son was beside his father looking worried. Will and Johannah stood with Jim. Farrell pulled from a sack the rotted cow’s head, still on the hook and rope for display, as if this fully explained the entire circumstance. The rest of them took a step back to breathe.
“It’s from the cow he butchered last week. See the spot on her ear. That’s his cow. I want him charged with poisoning and vandalism and attempted murder!”
“He was the one who threatened to kill me,” Jim told Fitzhenry. “We all heard him. I want him charged.”
Johannah recognized Fitzhenry’s substantial patience was wearing very thin.
“I’ll have to charge you with something, Jim.”
“He can’t prove anything. You charge him with making death threats, and also stealing my land while you’re at it!”
Just then they all became aware of a lone figure approaching them on a donkey along the muddy Roman Line. The rider wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and the clerical collar of a priest. He was about sixty, not a young man, and he wore a pleasant, benign expression as he made his way toward them. The priest brought the donkey to a stop and they all said their respectful greetings to him. Farrell took off his hat.
The priest smiled and replied, “Good morning to you all. Are you having a difficulty here?”
Jim started. “This thief…”
Farrell cut him off, “This maniac has been driving me…”
“QUIET!” Fitzhenry reasserted his position of authority, embarrassed in front of the cleric. “I’m sorry, Father. It’s a land dispute.”
“A land dispute. I see. My name is Father John Connolly, originally of Tipperary. I was for many years at Notre-Dame in Montreal. I am now the new priest at St. Patrick’s.”
“Oh, Father! Welcome!” Johannah exclaimed, stepping forward. “Father O’Brien must be relieved you’ve come. He’s been under the weather in recent months. Thanks be to God.” She turned to glare at Jim and Farrell. “It’ll be a blessing to have a little fresh divine intervention here.”
Father Connolly seemed perplexed by Johannah’s outspoken interruption and turned back to the men.
“Well, I’m not sure what your dispute involves but I’ve come to invite you all to my first Mass tomorrow. I have a special message that may inspire you. I do hope you’ll be there. I’ll look for you all.”
“Yes, certainly, Father,” Farrell responded.
“Yes, Father. Of course,” Jim told him.
“Good. Good day, then.”
“Good day, Father!”
Johannah took a couple of steps as if to follow him, and with Fitzhenry standing firmly between Jim and Farrell, they all watched as Father Connolly continued his slow journey on up the Roman Line without a backward look.
“Well, maybe the Father’s special message can work a miracle between you two. In the meantime I’m ordering you both not to speak or be within a hundred feet or even look at each other until after Mass tomorrow or so help me, I’ll arrest you both. Do you agree?”
Fitzhenry looked each man in the eye and reluctantly, each man nodded. Fitzhenry turned to Johannah.
“Can you see to that, Johannah?”
“If I have to lock him in the broom closet.”