by Melody Barnes

Perjury is the basest and meanest and most cowardly of crimes. What can it do? Perjury can change the common air that we breathe into the axe of an executioner. – Robert Green Ingersoll

Leviticus 19:18 states, You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord. I remember this passage now because of the way that Father Connelly’s voice rang out across the room, much like how his voice rings out now. Only now, we sit in the courthouse, not the church, and his words are directed towards the jury. I had not been to church to hear Father speak since the funeral. He spoke differently that day.

Usually Father Connelly speaks about the Lord wiping away our tears, about us being heralded into heaven and the day that we may see our loved ones again. But at that particular funeral, he spoke about the Devil’s work, and holding the Lord in your heart so that you would not be led astray. He did not say such things when my aunt Mary died, and I remember leaving her funeral still feeling sad, but also feeling a little better. I did not feel the same way at the Donnelly’s funeral. Father spoke differently that day.

I sit in the crowd watching as Father Connelly steps down from the witness stand, and James Carrol takes his place. He’s wearing his constable badge over his suit. He begins answering the questions, where he was and what he was doing on the night of the Donnelly family’s death. His voice is low and gravelly. I remember hearing his voice that night. I was hiding under the bed in an upstairs bedroom, but I remember that low, grating voice on the night the Donnellys were murdered.

“You’re under arrest, Tom,” I remember him saying this, his voice somewhat muffled by the floorboards. I didn’t know it yet, but others moved around outside, shuffling, waiting for the signal for them to charge in. I could smell the alcohol on their breath already. Mr. Donnelly, head of the family, awoke to James standing over his son and asked him what he thought he was doing. That’s when hell itself broke loose in the Donnelly home.

James Carrol denies that he was ever at the Donnelly’s that night, denies any involvement at all with the murders, denies any animosity towards the murdered family. People in the stands shift uncomfortably – even the judge attempts to hide a grimace. Everybody knows how people felt about the Donnellys and their endless scuffles. James Carrol himself was there the night Jim Donnelly got in a drunken fight with Patrick Farrell and killed him.

The Donnellys first came from Ireland and settled on some lands that were practically abandoned. Eventually the land had been sold to Mr. Farrell, but by then the Donnellys had raised a whole house and family on the lands. The judge ruled they could keep what they had cultivated; they had earned it fair and square. But nothing was fair when it came to the Donnellys. Months later a fight broke out in a bar, and Mr. Farrell died from a blow to the head. Jim Donnelly insisted it was an accident, but nobody believed him.

James Carrol steps down from the stand and Pat Quigley takes his place. Pat has a mean face and a squashed nose; he always spooked me when I saw him around town. He begins answering the jury’s questions, denying his involvement in the murders with a permanent sneer plastered on his face. He rubs a hand through his greasy hair and the dirt under his fingernails is clear from where I’m sitting. He is the undertaker at the local graveyard, and he always has dirt- stained hands from digging holes with his old, rusty shovel.

I’m gonna break his head open. I remember Pat Quigley’s voice from that night. It was followed by a thick thumping sound that turned my stomach. I felt light-headed. The sound seemed to go on and on. It only stopped when Mr. Donnelly broke free from the men holding him back, and I heard his desperate cry as he lunged forward. The shovel panged as it made quick work of Mr. Donnelly. I shut my eyes tight, but I could still see through my eyelids, through the floorboards, directly into the dead eyes of the dead Donnellys.

Mrs. Donnelly was hysterical; I could hear her being dragged from her room downstairs. Outside, Tucker, the family dog, was barking. I knew Bridget Donnelly was still somewhere in the house, presumably in her room. I prayed to God for Bridget, just as I had prayed for Tom Donnelly and Mr. Donnelly, but I had begun to fear that God had stopped listening. I remember hearing the scrape of Pat Quigley’s shovel on the wooden floor as he made his way outside. The shovel panged again and Tucker stopped barking.

Pat Quigley also denies any animosity towards the Donnellys and again the judge’s face goes stony. Pat Quigley had sat in that very spot only eight months ago when he set fire to the Donnelly’s stagecoach. His uncle had run the only stagecoach line in the area, until the Donnellys became competition. They had done rather well for themselves too, until Pat Quigley put an end to it. He denied the allegations then, just as he is doing now. Pat Quigley was never charged on the account of insufficient evidence.

Once Pat steps down, Mark Ryder steps up to the stand. He is young and has a mop of black hair across his forehead as he stomps towards the stand. People said Mark’s favourite thing in the world was those big, black boots he clomped around in. Some said he polished them every morning after breakfast and every night before bed. He wears them now, looking just as shiny as ever.

Mark was standing by the front door with a pitch fork when Mrs. Donnelly wriggled out of the men’s grasp. She ran towards the front door, hoping to escape. Mark speared her, and she made a sickening, gurgling sound as she slid to the floor. I heard him spear her a few more times, just for good measure. A voice I didn’t recognize told him to check upstairs, and I heard those big, black boots of his thumping up the steps. They reached the second floor and stopped in the doorway to John Donnelly’s room, the room I now hid in. Blood dripped slowly from the pitchfork, oozing into the floorboards. My heart slowed, and every beat felt like an eternity.

“Johnny Boy ain’t here!” Mark cried out as he followed the other men to another room. I could hear cursing from downstairs. The men had not expected anyone to be missing, nor did they expect for the Donnellys to have a guest.

I heard the men tearing apart the other rooms of the house, searching for Bridget. I would find out later that she’d hid from the men using a loose floorboard beneath her bureau. I glance across the crowd to look at her now, seated between distant relatives from a few towns over. She is deathly pale and red splotches paint her cheeks.

When the men were done tearing the house apart, they gathered themselves outside and put the final part of their plan in motion.

Lucky for me, the stairs were close to the backdoor so by the time the smoke made its way upstairs, they were moving away from the house and I could exit without being seen. I didn’t even know that Bridget was alive until a few days later.

Mark denies the allegations, as did all the rest, but at least he is almost believed when he claims to harbour no animosity towards the dead. He had never been involved in any of the altercations with the Donnellys, save the final. He had just fed off the growing hatred that the rest of the town had indoctrinated him into.

A few more men come to and leave the stand; they may or may not have been there that night. They all go by in a blur, each one building off the lies of the last. None admit guilt to what they had done; all of them offer words of sympathy for the family they knew they killed.

Eventually my name is called out. I can feel the piercing gaze of the crowd behind me. Their hatred for the Donnellys, hatred for me, seethe silently as I place my hand upon the Bible. I may have been the only person there that day that truly swore on the name of the Lord. I recount my story in full, everything I saw and everything I heard. James Carrol’s grating voice. Pat Quigley’s heavy shovel. Mark Ryder’s bloody boots. As I speak, I look out at the people of my home town – each and every one silently cursing me.

The jury listens in solemn silence until I finish. I want to say more, but there is nothing left to say. It feels like I didn’t quite get it out right. If only I could go back and tell it again, surely then they would believe me. I quietly shuffle back to my seat, feeling like I am walking in a dream. Bridget follows and confirms everything I said, only in less words. Her voice is thin and she hardly speaks above a whisper.

The jury gets up and leaves the room to convene, and to deliver their verdict. I hadn’t prayed since the night of the Donnelly’s murder, but I find myself praying now. I pray that God would guide the judgement of these men, I pray that the Lord truly did have a plan and that it had all happened for a reason.

The jury returns and the judge bangs his gavel in order to quiet the room. I had seen the judge in church before, singing the prayers of our Lord, and attending Father Connelly’s sermons. I pray that the judge will heed the words of God and see the truth of my words.

But the judge spoke differently that day.