St. Patrick’s Cemetery, Lucan, Ontario. June 26, 1930
Gives me chills to be back here at old St. Paddy’s. It’s been fifty years and nothing much has changed with the big yellow-brick church, the sharp spire like a sword aimed at heaven. There’s even a couple rigs with horses still, though the horse sheds was pulled down years ago. Now it’s mostly automobiles parked. There is a few in the overgrown lot across the Roman Line where Keefe’s tavern used to stand before they burned it down. The little Ford coupe I rented in London is parked there. I came up on the train from Detroit yesterday to sign the papers to sell off the last of my father’s land in Lucan and also to see this funeral that’s now going on inside. It’s a funeral for the last of the vigilantes, Martin McLaughlin. Didn’t want to miss that. Killing two birds with the one stone, you could say.
Didn’t get much for Da’s land. The town’s a lot smaller, quieter now with people moving into the cities. Only one tavern left out of the seven when I was a boy. Truth is, in the years after the massacre and trial, a lot of people moved away from the taint that it gave to Lucan town.
The cemetery has greened up nicely this time of year as it always did and the birds is singing. I’m sitting on a bench close to the old Donnelly graves. There’s Michael and James together under a separate stone. Then Tom and Bridget, and Old Jim and then of course Johannah, buried all together in one casket and their names on one big black headstone. On that headstone too is John Donnelly in his own casket alongside. And on that headstone, it tells you after each name that they was murdered. Will insisted on that and I can tell you it wasn’t a popular decision with the St. Pat’s crowd. Will defied anyone to stop him and he got his way. At least the headstone tells the truth.
You can hear the funeral service going on in the church now. They sang “Holy God We Praise Thy Name” before and now somebody’s speaking the eulogy but I’m not interested in what they have to say. I know what kind of man McLaughlin was. He was one of the worst: smart, wealthy and educated. Made the others feel legitimate. Closer to the church, south of the Donnelly graves, is a fresh open grave, dung-brown dirt piled beside it waiting for the old boy. I went and had a look at it to make sure it were nice and deep and I’m satisfied. Shouldn’t be long now.
I’m sure they all feel fine and righteous in there but I got to admit this place makes me nervous. Is there anyone left would come after me? It’s been fifty years but you never know. The day after the trial was finished they burned my house down and tried to kill me! And I was just a boy of twelve, and me and my parents had to go live with my cousins in St. Catherines, so yes, it were long ago but you never know. These people have long memories, their sons and grandsons.
After the trial, people got on with their lives. Jenny and her Jim moved to Glencoe, closer to Lucan than Goderich, and they had a good number of kids and a quiet life there. Pat, Will, Nora and Robert lived in Lucan for a year after the murders and hired lawyers. Tried to have it declared a mistrial and to get a new trial going—they wrote me a letter and I would have testified again, but they was pretty much ignored and no trial ever happened. I’m surprised the Peace Society didn’t go after the three Donnellys left and finish the job, seeing how easy they got off with the first murders, but after that, Lucan come to be a fairly law-abiding town. I think Pat finally gave up and moved to Thorold and went into blacksmithing. Robert stayed on the farm and rebuilt the house. Will and Nora moved on to Appin with their one baby and had another daughter I met, and they ran the St. Nicholas Hotel. Will is buried in Appin and the others is scattered in various towns.
As for the Peace Society bunch, their families still live in Lucan or along the Roman Line. In truth, a lot of them died young from unknown ailments and farm accidents, or their wives or family members did. Will went to some of those funerals, and he used to love to blame his mother’s curse when he heard of tragic misfortunes among the families of the Peace Society members. He kept the whole list and sent it to me just before he died, passing the torch, sorta like. Soon after the trial, John Purtell disappeared and his family never heard from him again. Jim Carroll headed west and there was talk he killed a man in a lumber camp in the West Kootenays and lived out his life in a hospital for the criminally insane. McLaughlin, Kennedy and the two Ryder brothers stayed on their farms, expanded their families and lived peaceful lives for a while. But “Shotgun” Kennedy’s wife died very young and “Pitchfork” Tom Ryder died of a nasty cancer and his brother “Spadey” James Ryder, who I saw kill Tom, was killed himself in a knife fight three years after. The Feehley who left his coat so’s the door to the Donnelly kitchen would be unlocked lost his son and infant daughter to the influenza two years after the massacre.
Father Connolly stayed on for years at St. Patrick’s. I heared he left in 1894 to go back to Ireland and he died the next year. I visited Will once or twice over the years and he was happy to hear Connolly was dead. Like with all the other deaths, he blamed this one on his mother’s curse, but I don’t. I figure it’s just life and there’s no one really keeping score.
As for me, I’ve travelled some, out to work in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, worked in Chicago, then went down to California for awhile. I’m now in Detroit and have done all right for myself in the automobile business. I have a good wife, Rachel, and the two kids, William and Jenny, is all growed up.
Truth is, it don’t give me much joy being here for this funeral. Being witness to what happened has been my life’s burden. I’ve always had terrible nightmares since. Terrible guilt I couldn’t save her, or any of them, that night. Still do. Still have trouble sleeping. Still dream about the horsemen coming, more’n a hundred hooves kicking up ice and dirt, horses’ eyes wild, coats lathered, frosty breath, men with feathered hats tied on with rope, carnival masks and clown paint, and that thick metal smell of blood in the kitchen. Some nights it all comes back.
How much longer are they gonna drone on in there? I check my watch. If they knock off soon I could still make the four o’clock train back to Detroit.
I’ve come to believe that evil is something that is always out there flying around the world and sometimes it just settles somewhere and normal people do terrible things. That’s what happened here, I believe, and I seen it. I don’t have a better explanation.
All right, they’re coming now with the coffin. The burial is under way. Get it? Under way. Will would have laughed at that one. The people have come out of the church and followed the coffin to the open grave and the men are rigging up the ropes and the young priest is opening his book. I’m looking now at the family at the graveside: the adult children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren all grieving for the deceased. Good-looking people, several generations sired by that murdering bastard. None of them would exist if he had hanged, but I don’t find much consolation there. The young priest is reading. It’s almost time for my bit.
“Thou carriest them away as with a flood and they are even as a sleep; in the morning they are like grass that growth up.”
There are tears for this old boy but I must say, he lived a long and lucky life compared to most of the others, considering the evil he got up to, and if you put any stock in Johannah’s curse.
“In the morning it is green and groweth up, but in the evening, it is cut down and withered. For we consume away in Thy displeasure, and we are afraid at Thy wrathful indignation.”
I walks up to the gathering by the grave and people start to look up at me. Many of the older ones know who I am and I can see I am expected. I see they’s uncomfortable and want me to go away. I see fear and resentment, but I also see guilt.
“Thou hast set our misdeeds before Thee and our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance…”
Then the young priest spots me and his voice trails away and he goes quiet. The mourners actually stand back to make way. I steps up to the grave and looks down at the coffin for a moment. His wife is already buried there and on the stone under his name is the birth date but not yet the date of his demise. The stone says, “Martin Edward McLaughlin.” And I think it should say, “The last of the vigilantes that murdered the Donnellys.” But it never will.
The mourners are silent and even cowering away from me. I clears my throat twice, leans over the open grave and spits very generous-like down on the coffin and tells old McLaughlin, “May you go straight to hell.”
No one moves or speaks. I pick up a shovel, scoops a heaping blade full of dirt and throws it down on the coffin with a heavy thump. I am satisfied. I turns away from the grave and let them finish with their respects to the old boy. I’m finished with mine.
So I go back to the Donnelly graves then and tell them all, “Well, that’s the last of them.” I reach down into my pocket and find what I’m looking for. It is the smooth, round river stone with the bits of green and gold and red, the little piece of Ireland, of fairy dust and blood, that Johannah always kept with her and I took that night and kept with me. It’s been around for a million years and will last another million, long after we and our tribulations is all gone. I do feel it protected me well that night and brought me luck over fifty years of my life and I thank her for it. I place it carefully on the ledge of the family gravestone. I go down on one knee and lay my hand flat on the trimmed grass of the grave where she lies, which has been warmed by the summer sun.
“Rest peaceful now, Miss Johannah.”
Then, after a moment, I stand and look out across the graves of the friends and foes of the Donnellys. Then I head over to my Ford and I turn my back on Lucan for the last time.