I blinked at him a few times. “Of course something happened to her, you daft bugger, a comet fell on her head and killed her.”
He was shaking his head before I was even finished. “No... since then.”
That’s not a great way to ease into a conversation about the dead. “What?”
He fished a key out of his pocket, which is when I noticed the shiny new chain and padlock on the cowshed door. It must have cost Pat a week’s worth of whiskey sales to buy that thing.
“Did Mean-Dog pay us now?”
Pat snorted. “He’d as soon kick me as pay us a penny of what he owes.”
I nodded at the chain. “You afraid someone’s going to steal her body?”
He gave me the funniest look. “I’m not afraid of anybody breaking in.”
Which is another of those things that don’t sound good when someone says it before entering a room with a dead body in it.
He unlocked the lock, then he reached down to where his shillelagh leaned against the frame. It was made from a whopping great piece of oak root, all twisted and polished, the handle wrapped with leather.
“What’s going on now, Paddy?” I asked, starting to back away, and remembering a dozen other things that needed doing. Like running and hiding and getting drunk.
“I think it was that green stuff from the comet,” Paddy whispered as he slowly pushed open the door. “It did something to her. Something unnatural.”
“Everything about Sophie was unnatural,” I reminded him.
The door swung inward with a creak and the light of day shone into the cowshed. It was ten feet wide by twenty feet deep, with a wooden rail, a manger, stalls for two cows—though Paddy only owned just the one. The scrawny milk cow Catherine doted on was lying on her side in the middle of the floor.
I mean to say what was left of her was lying on the floor. I tried to scream but all that came out of my whiskey-raw throat was a crooked little screech.
The cow had been torn to pieces. Blood and gobs of meat littered the floor, and there were more splashes of blood on the wall. And right there in the middle of all that muck, sitting like the queen of all Damnation was Aunt Sophie. Her fat face and throat were covered with blood. Her cotton gown was torn and streaked with cow shit and gore. Flies buzzed around her and crawled on her face.
Aunt Sophie was gnawing on what looked like half a cow liver and when the sunlight fell across her from the open door she raised her head and looked right at us. Her skin was as grey-pale as the maggots that wriggled through little rips in her skin; but it was her eyes that took all the starch out of my knees. They were dry and milky but the pupils glowed an unnatural green, just like the piece of comet that had slid down her gullet.
“Oh... lordy-lordy-save a sinner!” I heard someone say in an old woman’s voice, and then realized that it was me speaking.
Aunt Sophie lunged at us. All of sudden she went from sitting there like a fat dead slob eating Paddy’s cow and then she was coming at us like a charging bull. I shrieked. I’m not proud; I’ll admit it.
If it hadn’t been for the length of chain Paddy had wound around her waist she’d have had me, too, ’cause I could no more move from where I was frozen than I could make leprechauns fly out of my bottom. Sophie’s lunge was jerked to a stop with her yellow teeth not a foot from my throat.
Paddy stepped past me and raised the club. If Sophie saw it, or cared, she didn’t show it.
“Get back, you fat sow!” he yelled and took to thumping her about the face and shoulders, which did no noticeable good.
“Paddy, my dear,” I croaked, “I think I’ve soiled myself.”
Paddy stepped back, his face running sweat. “No, that’s her you smell. It’s too hot in this shed. She’s coming up ripe.” He pulled me further back and we watched as Sophie snapped the air in our direction for a whole minute, then she lost interest and went back to gnawing on the cow.
“What’s happened to her?”
“She’s dead,” he said.
“She can’t be. I’ve seen dead folks before, lad, and she’s a bit too spry.”
He shook his head. “I checked and I checked. I even stuck her with the pitchfork. Just experimental like, and I got them tines all the way in but she didn’t bleed.”
“But... but...”
“Catherine came out here, too. Before Sophie woke back up, I mean. She took it hard and didn’t want to hear about comets or nothing like that. She thinks we poisoned her with our whiskey.”
“It’s strong, I’ll admit, but it’s more likely to kill a person than make the dead wake back up again.”
“I told her that and she commenced to hit me, and she hits as hard as Mean-Dog. She had a good handful of my hair and was swatting me a goodun’ when Sophie just woke up.”
“How’d Catherine take that?”
“Well, she took it poorly, the lass. At first she tried to comfort Sophie, but when the old bitch tried to bite her Catherine seemed to cool a bit toward her aunt. It wasn’t until after Sophie tore the throat out of the cow that Catherine seemed to question whether Sophie was really her aunt or more of an old acquaintance of the family.”
“What’d she say?”
“It’s not what she said so much as it was her hitting Sophie in the back of the head with a shovel.”
“That’ll do ’er.”
“It dropped Sophie for a while and I hustled out and bought some chain and locks. By the time I came back Catherine was in a complete state. Sophie kept waking up, you see, and she had to clout her a fair few times to keep her tractable.”
“So where’s the missus now?”
“Abed. Seems she’s discovered the medicinal qualities of our whiskey.”
“I’ve been saying it for years.”
He nodded and we stood there, watching Sophie eat the cow.
“So, Paddy me old mate,” I said softly, “what do you think we should do?”
“With Sophie?”
“Aye.”
Paddy’s bruised faced took on the one expression I would have thought impossible under the circumstances. He smiled. A great big smile that was every bit as hungry and nasty as Aunt Sophie.
* * *
It took three days of sweet talk and charm, of sweat-soaked promises and cajoling but we finally got him to come to Paddy’s cowshed. And then there he was, the Mean-Dog himself, all six-and-a-half feet of him, flanked by Killer Muldoon and Razor Riley, the three of them standing in Paddy’s yard late on Sunday afternoon.
My head was ringing from a courtesy smacking Mean-Dog had given me when I’d come to his office; and Pat lips were puffed out again—but Pat was still smiling.
“So, lads,” Mean-Dog said quietly, “tell me again why I’m here in a yard that smells of pigshit instead of at home drinking a beer.”
“Cow shit,” Pat corrected him, and got a clout for it.
“We have a new business partner, Mr. Mulligan,” I said. “And she told us that we can’t provide no more whiskey until you and she settle accounts.”
“She? You’re working with a woman?” His voice was filled with contempt. “Who’s this woman, then? Sounds like she has more mouth than she can use.”
“You might be saying that,” Pat agreed softly. “It’s my Aunt Sophie.”
I have to admit, that did give even Mean-Dog a moment’s pause. There are Cherokee war parties that would go twenty miles out to their way not to cross Sophie. And that was before the comet.
“Sophie Kilpatrick, eh?” He looked at his two bruisers. Neither of them knew her and they weren’t impressed. “Where is she?”
“In the cowshed,” Pat said. “She said she wanted to meet somewhere quiet.”
“Shrewd,” Mean-Dog agreed, but he was still uncertain. “Lads, go in and ask Miss Sophie to come out.”
The two goons shrugged and went into the shed as I inched my way toward the side alley. Pat held his ground and I don’t know whether it was all the clouting ’round the head he’d been gettin
g, or the latest batch of whiskey, or maybe he’d just reached the bottom of his own cup and couldn’t take no more from anyone, but Pat O’Leary stood there grinning at Mean-Dog as the two big men opened the shed door and went in.
Pat hadn’t left a light on in there and it was a cloudy day. The goons had to feel their way in the dark. When they commenced screaming I figured they’d found their way to Sophie. This was Sunday by now and the cow was long gone. Sophie was feeling a might peckish.
Mean-Dog jumped back from the doorway and dragged out his pistol with one hand and took a handful of Pat’s shirt with the other. “What the hell’s happening? Who’s in there?”
“Just Aunt Sophie,” Pat said and actually held his hand to God as he said it.
Mean-Dog shoved him aside and kicked open the door. That was his first mistake because Razor Riley’s head smacked him right in the face. Mean-Dog staggered back and then stood there in dumb shock as his leg-breaker’s head bounced to the ground right at his feet. Riley’s face wore an expression of profound shock.
“What?” Mean-Dog asked, as if anything Pat or I could say would be an adequate answer to that.
The second mistake Mean-Dog made was to get mad and go charging into the shed. We watched him enter and we both jumped as he fired two quick shots, then another, and another.
I don’t know, even to this day, whether one of those shots clipped her chain or whether Sophie was even stronger than we thought she was, but a second later Mean-Dog came barreling out of the cowshed, running at full tilt, with Sophie Kilpatrick howling after him trailing six feet of chain. She was covered in blood and the sound she made would have made a banshee take a vow of silence. They were gone down the alley in a heartbeat and Pat and I stood there in shock for a moment, then we peered around the edge of the door into the shed.
The lower half of Razor Riley lay just about where the cow had been. Killer Muldoon was all in one piece, but there were pieces missing from him, if you follow. Sophie had her way with him and he lay dead as a mullet, his throat torn out and his blood pooled around him.
“Oh, lordy,” I said. “This is bad for us, Pat. This is jail and skinny fellows like you and me have to wear petticoats in prison.”
But there was a strange light in his eyes. Not a glowing green light, which was a comfort, but not a nice light either. He looked down at the bodies and then over his shoulder in the direction where Sophie and Mean-Dog had vanished. He licked his bruised lips and said, “You know, Pegleg…there are other sonsabitches who owe us money.”
“Those are bad thoughts you’re having, Paddy my dear.”
“I’m not saying we feed them to Sophie. But if we let it get known, so to speak. Maybe show them what’s left of these lads…”
“Patrick O’Leary you listen to me—we are not about being criminal masterminds here. I’m not half as smart as a fencepost and you’re not half as smart as me, so let’s not be planning anything extravagant.”
Which is when Mean-Dog Mulligan came screaming back into Pat’s yard. God only knows what twisted puzzle-path he took through the neighborhood but there he was running back toward us, his arms bleeding from a couple of bites and his big legs pumping to keep him just ahead of Sophie.
“Oh dear,” Pat said in a voice that made it clear that the reality that his plan still had a few bugs to be sorted out.
“Shovel!” I said and lunged for the one Catherine had used on her aunt. Pat grabbed a pickaxe and we swung at the same time.
I hit Sophie fair and square in the face and the shock of it rang all the way up my arms and shivered the tool right out of my hands; but the force of the blow had its way with her and her green eyes were instantly blank. She stopped dead in her tracks and then pitched backward to measure her length on the ground.
Pat’s swing had a different effect. The big spike of the pickaxe caught Mean-Dog square in the center of the chest and though everyone said the man had no heart, Pat and his pickaxe begged to differ. The gangster’s last word was “Urk!” and he fell backward, as dead as Riley and Muldoon.
“Quick!” I said and we fetched the broken length of chain from the shed and wound it about Sophie, pinning her arms to her body and then snugging it all with the padlock. While Pat was checking the lock I fetched the wheelbarrow, and we grunted and cursed some more as we got her onto it.
“We have to hide the bodies,” I said, and Pat, too stunned to speak, just nodded. He grabbed Mean-Dog’s heels and dragged him into the shed while I played a quick game of football with Razor Riley’s head. Soon the three toughs were hidden in the shed. Pat closed it and we locked the door.
That left Sophie sprawled on the barrow, and she was already starting to show signs of waking up.
“Sweet suffering Jesus!” I yelled. “Let’s get her into the hills. We can chain her to a tree by the still until we figure out what to do.”
“What about them?” Pat said, jerking a thumb at the shed.
“They’re not going anywhere.”
We took the safest route that we could manage quickly and if anyone did see us hauling a fat, blood-covered, struggling dead woman in chains out of town in a wheelbarrow it never made it into an official report. We chained her to a stout oak and then hurried back. It was already dark and we were scared and exhausted and I wanted a drink so badly I could cry.
“I had a jug in the shed,” Pat whispered as we crept back into his yard.
“Then consider me on the wagon, lad.”
“Don’t be daft. There’s nothing in there that can hurt us now. And we have to decide what to do with those lads.”
“God…this is the sort of thing that could make the mother of Jesus eat meat on Friday.”
He unlocked the door and we went inside, careful not to step in blood, careful not to look at the bodies. I lit his small lantern and we closed the door so we could drink for a bit and sort things out.
After we’d both had a few pulls on the bottle I said, “Pat, now be honest, my lad…you didn’t think this through now did you?”
“It worked out differently in my head.” He took a drink.
“How’s that?”
“Mean-Dog got scared of us and paid us, and then everyone else heard about Sophie and got scared of us, too.”
“Even though she was chained up in a cowshed?”
“Well, she got out, didn’t she?”
“Was that part of the plan?”
“Not as such.”
“So, in the plan we just scared people with a dead fat woman in a shed.”
“It sounds better when it’s only a thought.”
“Most things do.” We toasted on that.
Mean-Dog Mulligan said, “Ooof.”
“Oh dear,” I said, the jug halfway to my mouth.
We both turned and there he was, Mean-Dog himself with a pickaxe in his chest and no blood left in him, struggling to sit up. Next to him Killer Muldoon was starting to twitch. Mean-Dog looked at us and his eyes were already glowing green.
“Was this part of the plan, then?” I whispered.
Pat said “Eeep!” which was all he could manage.
That’s how the whole lantern thing started, you see. It was never the cow, ’cause the cow was long dead by then. It was Patrick who grabbed the lantern and threw it, screaming all the while, right at Mean-Dog Mulligan.
I grabbed Pat by the shoulder and dragged him out of the shed and we slammed the door and leaned on it while Patrick fumbled the lock and chain into place.
It was another plan we hadn’t thought all the way through. The shed didn’t have a cow anymore, but it had plenty of straw. It fair burst into flame. We staggered back from it and then stood in his yard, feeling the hot wind blow past us, watching as the breeze blew the fire across the alley. Oddly, Pat’s house never burned down, and Catherine slept through the whole thing.
It was about 9 p.m. when it started and by midnight the fire had spread all the way across the south branch of the river. We watched the business district
burn—and with it all of the bars that bought our whiskey.
Maybe God was tired of our shenanigans, or maybe he had a little pity left for poor fools, but sometime after midnight it started to rain. They said later that if it hadn’t rained then all of Chicago would have burned. As it was, it was only half the town. The church burned down, though, and Father Callahan was roasted like a Christmas goose. Sure and the Lord had His mysterious ways.
Two other things burned up that night. Our still and Aunt Sophie. All we ever found was her skeleton and the chains wrapped around the burned stump of the oak. On the ground between her charred feet was a small lump of green rock. Neither one of us dared touch it. We just dug a hole and swatted it in with the shovel, covered it over and fled. As far as I know it’s still up there to this day.
When I think of what would have happened if we’d followed through with Pat’s plan…or if Mean-Dog and Muldoon had gotten out and bitten someone else. Who knows how fast it could have spread, or how far? It also tends to make my knees knock when I think of how many other pieces of that green comet must have fallen…and where those stones are. Just thinking about it’s enough to make a man want to take a drink
I would like to say that Patrick and I changed our ways after that night, that we never rebuilt the still and never took nor sold another drop of whiskey. But that would be lying, and as we both know I never like to tell a lie.
THE END
HISTORICAL NOTE: There are several popular theories on how the Great Fire of Chicago got started. It is widely believed that it started in a cowshed behind the house of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary. Historian Richard Bales asserts that Daniel “Pegleg” Sullivan started it while trying to steal some milk. Other theories blame a fallen lantern or a discarded cigar. One major theory, first floated in 1882 and which has gained a lot of ground lately, is that Biela’s Comet rained down fragments as it broke up over the Midwest.
About the only thing experts and historians can agree on is that the cow had nothing to do with it.