My Bloody Clan History ...

Before William Maclellan won the Barony of Kirkcudbright by killing the Irish robber Black Morrow, his father Sir Patrick Gray, in his day the Maclellan, known as Patrick Maclellan of Bombie, was a legend of Galloway Scotland.  Sir Patrick was loyal to King James and refused to join an alliance to depose the King led by the 'Black Douglas', William Douglas, Earl of Douglas.

Douglas kidnapped Sir Patrick's nephew and held him hostage, and King James sent Sir Patrick to Thrieve Castle with a letter ordering Douglas to set the boy free.  Sir Patrick arrived and presented the letter, which Douglas refused to read until after he dined.  Douglas sent an order in secret to have the boy beheaded while they ate, and after he read the King's letter offered Sir Patrick the boy's body but would keep his head.  Sir Patrick barely escaped with his life and vowed revenge as told in this poem of the day.

The Murder of Maclellan

Now news has gone to good King James,

In En-brugh where he lay,

That Bombie's tutor pris;ner was

By Douglas ta'en away!

For brave Maclellan's loyal soul

Refused the Earl to serve,

And from his lawful king he swore

His path should never swerve.

With anger glowed King James's brow –

"Is't thus I am defied?

Is Scotland's crown a woman's courche?

"I'll curb the Douglas' pride."

Then straight a letter he has penned,

And sealed it with his seal;

"The Douglas shall release my friend,

Or else my wrath he'll feel.

Sir Patrick Gray, mount, speed away!

Maclellan's kin to thee;

Be thine the task to seek the Earl,

And set Maclellan Free."

Now to the wilds of Galloway

Sir Patrick spurs amain:

He knew the Douglas, and he fears

His Kinsmen may be slain.

No time he lost, for kindred ties

Bound Bombie to him near,

And soon he sees the Dee's fair stream,

Thrieve's towers ere long appear.

"Lord Douglas!" cried Sir Patrick Gray,

"A message from the King,

Penned by his hand, sealed with his seal,

To thee this day I bring."

The crafty Earl the missive took,

Its purport crossed his mind:

"Sir Knight," he cried, "by fair Saint Bride!

I'll not read until we've dined."

Then secretly he gave command

To slay the pris'ner brave;

And whilst they sat, the headsman grim

Maclellan's death-stroke gave.

Short time for shrift the victim had,

Scarce time to breathe a prayer;

But conscious worth possessed his breast –

For death he had no care.

The feast was o'er, and noble Gray

With eagerness exclaimed –

"Oh read, I pray, the King's despatch!

Delay is to be blamed."

With seeming awe and feigned respect

The Earl broke up the seal:

He read, and o'er his face the Knight

Saw scornful triumph steal.

"The King demands that I should set

Maclellan's person free;

For honour of this royal note,

I thank the King and thee.

Now come, the King's royal words I kiss,

Maclellan's body's thine;

But ah, Sir Knight, too late thou'rt here –

Maclellan's head is mine!"

Then to a dark courtyard they pass,

Where sunbeams never play;

There, near a bloody block outstretched,

The headless body lay.

Deep grief Sir Patrick felt, and rage;

Dissembling them, he said –

"Alas! my lord, keep you his corpse,

Since thus full low 'tis laid."

Then calling for his horse, he went

Down to the river-side,

And when without the castle walls,

His angry soul untied.

"False Earl," he cried, "thou'lt rue the hour

That wrought'st this cursed crime,

For if I live, by heaven I swear

I'll speed the avenging time!"

"To horse, and seize him!" was the cry –

It sounded not in vain;

Right soon from out the Earl's stronghold

Rushed forth a mounted train.

But good Sir Patrick has the start,

And matchless was his steed:

There's not a horse in Galloway

Can match his own in speed.

Thrice turns he back, and thrice he cries

With voice full loud and high –

"Revenge! false Earl, thou knighthood's shame

Revenge, revenge is nigh!"

Still on he hies, his foes press hard,

Till near Dunedin's tower;

Now once beneath its shade, no more

He heeds their hostile power.

Well thus it was, for had he not

Possessed a steed so rare,

The Earl had brought him back full soon,

His kinsman's fate to share.

Within a year from that dark day

The Earl himself lay low;

Maclellan's ghost it hovered near,

And nerved the Kingly blow.

To expand on the last stanza; Sir Patrick and the Maclellan clan made war on the Douglas's for a full year, slaying them almost to a man.  The Earl appealed to King James to make the Maclellans end their war during a feast known afterward as The Black Dinner.  The King asked Douglas to swear allegiance to him, and when Douglas refused, the King stabbed him in the throat.  Sir Patrick finished the job and threw his body from the Rose Window of Edinburgh Castle and buried it where it fell.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Erased History and Fostered Cruelty ...

In my novels I have often included exposure of social and cultural evils; in That Dog Don't Bark it was sex slave traffickers; in BETWIXT, the madness of religious cults; in Leaving Wonderland, the bigotry and violence against our LGBTQ+ community.  Even in my latest WIP; Mark'd With Blood - Devil Brigham's Case Files, I highlight the collective trauma of soldiers returning from the meat-grinder of the Great War, and the struggles of those trying to survive the Great Depression.  Horrors all, if one was the victim.

There is a current horror being perpetrated by the Republican Party in the United States and right-wing governments in countries across Europe.  It is the erasure of history and the fostering of cruelty and eradication of compassion and empathy.

In Poland, the right-wing government is erecting statues of Poles they proclaim as heroes of WWII, being saviours of Jews being sent to the genocide factories like Auschwitz where systematic murders were carried out to the tune of 1.1 million Jews in that site alone.  The reality of Poles at that time was that there was deep-seated hatred of Jews in Poland, and the majority happily betrayed any Jew they knew, KNOWING they would be sent a concentration camps that were nothing less that factories designed to murder people en masse and dispose of the bodies.

In the United States, 37 states have introduced bills that would restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism.

Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia have recently passed laws to disallow the teaching of the American genocide of First Nations people; the 246 years that African people were kidnapped from their home countries, chained, and beaten as slaves by American "the land of the free"; the social crimes of the Jim Crow Era against former slaves; the bigotry, hatred, and murders of LGBTQ+ citizens that carries on even today, and the most shameful of all; Teachers are directed to avoid teaching about the Holocaust, and if the subject arises they are to present counter arguments to support Hitler's extermination camps.

Yes, you read that correctly.  Teachers are mandated to offer arguments that the systematic murder of 6 million Jews was justified.

Why would any educated and responsible lawmaker promote such a horror?  Because political parties like the Republicans want to whitewash their history and raise a generation of children who have no knowledge of historic injustices and no empathy or compassion toward ANY minority that isn't wealthy, white, and christian.  The banning of Maus, the graphic novel by Art Spiegelman is a dead giveaway on the aims of Republicans.

There have been so many dystopian novels written as warnings about horrors such as this.  It Can't Happen Here, (1935) by Sinclair Lewis, and 1984 (1949) by George Orwell come to mind.  But this is no novel, this is a living nightmare perpetrated by right-wing parties like the Republicans and it is happening across the world today.

How long before we've hit that slippery slope and moral people must go to war, or civil war to right this inhumane injustice?

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Maisie and Old Willow ...

Maisie was up walking the farm most of last night, staying close to the fences because the rows had been ploughed and the baby seeds rested as they waited patiently to grow.  She'd walked around and around, and only stopped when she saw Aggie's bedroom light on in the Lonsdale house so far away.  She sat then, near the big willow where Aggie and her would play as young girls, peering out at Aggie's lit window through the split rails of the fence, seeing them as prison bars holding her captive and away from her love.  She knew Aggie was lying in bed reading a book, and knew – that like her – Aggie missed being with her and longed for Maisie to be laying beside her so she could read to her.  Maisie loved Aggie's gentle voice.

As she sat, Old Willow began to tell Maisie the story of how her and Aggie had met.  How they each were curious about the little girl who played alone on the other side of the fence.  How they both had big brothers who were sometimes mean to them, how one girl's daddy was a farmer and the other girl's daddy an orchardist.  How one daddy had horses and the other had chickens, and in their minds none of those things were very far apart or strange.

Even though Maisie knew the story because she lived it, she felt an aching sentimental love as Old Willow told the story of the girls playing under its wide limbs, its drooping branches and the lace of its leaves forming a perfect round little house that was all their own.  Of how Aggie liked it when she lay on her back and read aloud as Maisie rested her head on Aggie's belly, feeling her breathe, feeling the warmth of her body, and soothed by the sound of her voice.  When Old Willow got to the day Maisie hugged Aggie just a little too long, and Aggie's breath caught her throat as they came up nose to nose and Maisie said "I love you" for the very first time and Aggie kissed her long on the mouth, Maisie felt a yearning inside her that made her eyes blur with tears.

When Aggie's light finally went off, Maisie continued to sit and send Aggie her love, hoping she could feel her arms around her like they should be, feel her lips on hers like they should be, and feel her breath on her ear as she whispered "I love you" again and again.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Hattie ...

 

Devil and Locke had only been back in the office an hour and a half when Hattie Mason arrived at Devil's office door, wearing a long charcoal dress and matching vest and hat, all buttoned tight around a pale yellow blouse.  Hattie was a lissom woman of delicate features, skin complected pale and smooth like cream floating atop fresh milk.  Her eyes the colour of violet petals floating in the blue of a sky reflected in water, and her russet hair adorned her face and neck in barely controlled ringlets.  Hattie's elegant and clever fingers were tipped with nails the shape of almonds, often buffed but never coloured.  And around her the wisp of a playful and sensuality atmosphere floated like a scentless perfume.

Devil rose and walked around the desk to greet Hattie and usher her toward a chair.

"Hattie's here to see you, Devil." Stuckey called from the radio desk a shade too late as usual.

"Good to see you again, Miss Mason." Devil said, as he walked her in, "This is Detective Sergeant Locke of the Provincial Police."

Locke squeezed her offered hand and bowed.

"Very pleased to meet you, Miss Mason.  I hear you help the Arawana Police Department on occasion."

"I do." Hattie said and smiled as Devil held a chair out for her.  Locke noticed her buffed fingernails were not painted and given her profession, their pristine glisten spoke to her fastidious nature.  She was a woman who would never allow evidence of her craft to upset the public.

"What do you have for us, Hattie?" Devil asked, taking his seat across from Hattie and Locke.

"Our subject, Sergiy is a deceased male in his late thirties.  He was in good physical health prior to death, but suffering from mild emaciation." Hattie said, "Sergiy was a labourer, evidenced by his calloused hands and developed musculature.  There was no indication that he smoked or drank to excess.  He had a loving relationship with a woman and had sexual union with her just prior to his death but she wasn't present during the attack.  I assume she was his wife."

"How can be sure she wasn't there, Miss Mason?" Locke asked.

"Because though Sergiy fought back against his attacker,  If his lady had been with him he would have fought harder to protect her.  It was the woman who discovered him after the attacker left, correct?"

"His wife, yes."

"He was barely alive when she found him, bleeding badly and already fading.  Her bloody handprints were smeared around his throat and she traced her fingers down his cheeks, I assume trying to soothe him in his final moments.  Her tears disturbed the blood sprayed across his chest.  The evidence says they had a loving relationship until the end."

"You can tell all that by examining a body?" Locke asked.

"The dead speak a sacred language, Sergeant Locke, and it's only right that we listen; to learn who they were, who they loved, how they made their way through this world, and what brought them to their end.  Their flesh tells me the tale of their lives and of their deaths.  The language of the body is a subtle and intimate one."

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Snippet I didn't use ...

 

A snippet i didn't use that sounded too American for Leaving Wonderland

"This isn't playtime. This isn't 'let's wing it'. This isn't 'I saw it in a movie once'. This is real tradecraft. People get kidnapped, people get hurt, and people get killed. It's Moscow rules. Understood?"

"Yes."

"Good. Because if you fuck up, I'll kill you myself."

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

The Valley

Nestled between the Columbia and Cascade mountain ranges in south-central British Columbia, the Okanagan valley is both a geologic oddity and a paradise.

Formed by the massive receding glaciers of the Pleistocene Epoch over ten thousand years before the coming of humankind.  The long valley is flanked on either side by rolling hills and stepped plateaus and cut through its middle by a chain of long lakes carved out by the glacier's meltwater and sustained by the thousands of creeks that drain the snow caps each spring from the two mountain ranges.

The lakes, from Swan and Kalamalka, through the eighty-four mile long Okanagan and south through Skaha, Vaseux, and Osoyoos lakes, are interconnected by the Okanagan river that eventually finds its way to the mighty Columbia.

The resident natives of the Sylix nation who used the valley's lakes and river as a highway to follow game and forage in their sturgeon-nose canoes, call the valley 'sookanhkchinx', which translates as; 'transport toward the top end'.  The valley was their home until the white men came and discovered its rich silt and sand soil was exceedingly valuable for rangeland and orchards and its surrounding hills laced with enough placer gold to tease but never satisfy.

To the south lies Canada's only true desert; the northern tip of the Mexican Sonora with sand as soft as talcum powder whose swath can be followed all the way to Mexico itself.  The scrub pines and cottonwoods that grow through the arid, semi-desert hills above Okanagan lake give way to cedar and hemlock in the north.

It is the desert that gives the Okanagan its unique weather.

All summer long, a slow northerly flow of hot, dry air wafts up from Mexico until there comes a day each year in early October when the frigid outflow from the Bering sea overpowers it and brings frost to the valley.  It's said that spring and autumn go by so quickly there are really only two seasons in the valley; summer and winter.  It grows warm in April, hot in May, then inexplicably, the rainy season occurs every year in June.  July and August remain scorching hot when the lakes become popular destinations.

The McBairn ranch is spread across one of the plateaus above Okanagan lake, the original log cabin porch having a spectacular view of the lake from Penticton through Summerland and Peachland located where the lake bends slightly on its way to Kelowna.  The McBain land was once a working ranch, its outbuildings now blackened and twisted tombstones of the industry of the previous century.  The only buildings still maintained are the large log cabin and the patchwork barn that is home to Random, the only working horse left along with the hay and oats that feed him in winter.  The barn doors are rarely closed, so Random can come and go as he sees fit and spends most of his time grazing the grasslands of the ranch and drinking from the natural spring that feeds the clusters of pine and cottonwood trees that give him shade.

The spread is also diligently patrolled by Chance, Devil McBairn's mongrel dog who harasses the whitetail deer that share the grazing land with Random and alerts Devil if anyone crosses the ranch's property lines.

Devil McBairn heard the clattering ring of his phone early on that Thursday morning in late April, nineteen thirty-four, but made no move to run to the cabin to answer it.  He knew the caller would give up by the time he got there and so continued to pour out the bag of oats in the trough was Random chomped beside him.

"They'll call back." Devil told Random, "They always do."

But just after the phone stopped ringing, the squawk of the two-way radio in Devil's 1929 Buick Master Six sedan patrol car told Devil it was police business.  With a sigh, Devil crushed the empty oat sack and dropped it in the burn barrel on his way to his car parked at the side of the cabin.

"Base to Chief." came the crackling voice of his deputy, Will Smalls, "Base to Chief, come in?"

The sun had already started to bake the interior of the Buick when Devil slid into the driver's seat and picked up the microphone.

"Go ahead, Will."

"We've got a situation here, Chief."

"What sort of situation?"

"We ... Deputy Rutledge found a lady wandering Cage Creek road on his way in this morning."

"And how is that a situation?"

"She's ... well, she's naked."

"Did you get a name for this naked lady?"

"She ain't talking, Chief."

"Get Carl to run her over to the clinic.  She might need a Doc more than a cop."

"We've got her in the cell, Chief.  She's ..."

"She's what, Will?"

There was a pause, then;

"She's covered in blood, Chief."

Shit.

"I'm on my way." Devil said and hung the microphone back on its hook.

"Mayor Brusker wants so see you first thing.  He's been calling."

"To hell with Brusker and any horse that would carry him." Devil muttered to himself as he got out and held the door open.  He let go a shrill double-whistle and called; "Chance!" and waited while his white and grey mutt came bounding across the nearest field and leapt into the car, taking his usual station in the passenger's seat.

"No rest for the wicked." Devil told her as he got in behind the wheel.  Devil pushed in the clutch and slid the Buick into second gear before releasing the handbrake.  Like he always did, Devil had parked the patrol car facing down the incline that led to the ranch's main gate on account of sometimes the radio drained the battery.  He let the car pick up some momentum and turned the ignition on before popping the clutch.  The old Buick lurched and coughed and came to life as Devil drove it down the hill through the gate and down Arawana Road toward town.

The town of Arawana was actually a district that covered a wide expanse of territory that spread out like a fan above the lake.  Aside from the Constables in Penticton, Summerland, and Kelowna, Devil and his two deputies were the law on this side of Okanagan lake and were responsible for the safety of a wide variety of people; the small Syilx families that lived off the reservation, the poor and wealthy orchardists and ranch owners, and the lone and sometimes ornery placer miners who were scattered far and wide between the valley and Bridesville.

As Devil rolled off Arawana road onto Main street, the town was just waking up.  Marta was flipping the Closed sign on Ruby's Diner to Open which meant the coffee was already perked, Harold was sweeping the sidewalk in front of Ritchie Hardware and Lumber, Mister Fitch was lowering the fabric awnings over the windows of the Arawana General Store, and Lance Gilbert was propping open the fold up wooden front of the Gilbert Fruit and Vegetables shack.

Devil parked where he always did at the mouth of the alley beside the brick Police Department building, backing in to take advantage of the slight slope in case the battery died again.  Then together, he and Chance walked around the corner and in through the front door.

"Morning Chief." Stuckey Brusker said as he limped past him toward the radio desk with his half cup of coffee.  Stuckey was once a deputy but now filled the role of Dispatcher having a fused hip-joint from taking the bulk of a double-ought buck shot during an eviction in '29.

"Morning, Stuck." Devil greeted him as he pushed through the swinging gate that separated the front complaints counter from the operational area of the station, "I heard your nephew wants to see me.  Know anything about that?"

"Most like it's about that Provincial Police nonsense." Stuckey strained as he lowered himself into his swivel chair, "All the individualism is being sucked dry out of us.  We should never have joined the Confederation."

"That was a fight that was done before either of us was born, Stuck." Devil said, "The only constant is change." Then to Deputy Smalls who stood nervously in the centre of the bullpen, "How's our naked lady, Will?"

"Still hasn't said a word, Chief.  We got her a blanket, but she won't wear it."

Devil turned the corner and looked at the woman in the cell.  She was in her mid-thirties, dark hair and eyes the colour of aged whiskey, body slightly gone plump with silver stretch marks laced across her belly and sides of her breasts.  Her nails were short and her hands calloused, and like Will had said over the radio, her hands, arms, and face were covered in dried blood.

"Any of that blood her's?"

"I couldn't see any wounds, Chief." Will told him.

Devil studied her emotionless face as she stared back at him and noted the pinched sides of her eyes, the pug nose, and heavy eyebrows.

"Carl?" Devil said, still studying her face.

"Yeah, Chief." Carl looked up from his desk where he was writing his report.

"Run down to Simpson Sawmill and ask Kirill Sokolov to come back here with you."

"What are the charges?"

"No charges.  I think our lady here might be Russian." Devil said and noted that the naked woman reacted to the word, "Maybe she'll talk to him."

Devil walked toward his office passing Stuckey in the way.

"Stuck, your wife is about the same size as her, think she can part with something she can wear?"

"I'll call her." Stuckey said, picking up the phone.

Chance was already curled in her favoured armchair in Devil's office when he walked in and hung his coat and stetson on the coat tree inside his door.  He had to get to the overnight reports called in from the other Police stations in the surrounding area and see what went on in Arawana according to Carl who'd been on-call.  It was usually the first thing he did, barring any naked ladies covered in blood.

"Will?" Devil called as another thought came to him.

"Yes, Chief?"

"There any picker camps that over-wintered up Cage creek way?" Devil asked and by the time he sat down, Will was in his office door.

"Some of the Chinese stayed down by the creek over the winter, and Carl said there was another one that just went up in March further up the road."  Will reported.

"Chinese or caucasian?"

"Not sure."

"Find out, will you?"

"I'll get on it."

"Chief?" Stuckey called him from his desk trying to keep the wear and tear on his hip down.

"Yes, Stuck?"

"Irene's coming in with some old blue jeans and a flannel shirt.  She's gonna bring some drawers as well."

"Sounds perfect."

"And Chief?"

"Yes."

"Mayor's here."

Shit.

"Send him in." Devil leaned forward and looked at Carl's call report.

"'Morning Constable McBairn." Harold said as he entered Devil's office and huffed as he sat in one of the wooden chairs in front of the desk.  The chair creaked alarmingly.

"Hello, Harold."

Mayor Harold Brusker was a soft man who'd edged past chubby after he married Abigail Simpson five years before.  He fancied himself a progressive frontiersman and sported polished western boots that had never seen a stirrup, a white stetson that had never seen rain, and a rodeo buckle he'd bought from a pawn shop in Penticton.

"I guess you know why I'm here."

"Not a clue, Harold."

"Come on, Devil.  Ignoring it isn't going to make it go away."

"What is it I'm supposed to be ignoring?" Devil asked as he underlined an entry on the local overnight report with a pencil, set it aside and looked up.

"Detective Sergeant Locke from the British Columbia Provincial Police Boundary District is arriving tomorrow to evaluate my Police services."

"Your police services?"

"Arawana's police services." Harold said and Devil saw the colour rise in his cheeks, "We may be overstaffed and Sergeant Locke will look to keep some of you on.  Then again, he may consider replacing all of you with one or two of their Constables trained up in Victoria."

"How long will this evaluation take?"

"Hard to say." Harold said, rubbing at a smudge on the toe of his right boot, "He'll want to interview all of you one on one and observe your department in the field."

"Alright." Devil nodded, then stared at Harold a moment, "Anything else?"

"Well, while I'm here I might as well collect your Chief Constable badge."

"You have a copy of the last District Council meeting minutes with you?"

"No, I do not.  Why do you ask?"

"So you can show me the vote on the motion to remove me from office."

"I'm the Mayor."

"Yes, and I'm Chief Constable until the Council votes otherwise."

"I'm the Mayor, god damn it."

"So you keep reminding me, but you didn't hire me, the Council did."

"You're on your way out, Devil."

"Maybe.  But right now you're on your way out."

"I'm not leaving without that badge."

Devil made a soft double-whistle and Chance - who'd been napping quietly in her chair - lifted her muzzle and growled softly at the Mayor.

"You're going to sic your mutt on me?" Harold's voice rose an octave as he scrambled from his chair.

"She's deputized and more than willing to show you to the door."

"This isn't over, McBairn." Harold sputtered and stormed out of the office.

"Nothing ever is." Devil said softly to himself as Chance lowered her head onto her paws, watching the doorway with suspicion.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

My Girl

 

I worry about my girl.

I worry about the mysterious sadness that envelopes her like an old woolen blanket late at night.  It shrouds her as she huddles in the armchair by the fire, wrapping itself so tightly around her that it squeezes silent tears from her eyes as she stares deep into the coals, seeing an old memory of pain flickering within.

I worry about her health.  She doesn't eat enough and when she does it isn't wholesome food, just prepared meals from a tin made in a factory, so saturated with preservatives and chemicals that its noisome odour burns my eyes.  I didn't used to be sensitive to such things, but I am now.

I worry about her state of mind as she struggles to write her latest novel.

She sits at the small desk in the sitting room, fingers playing at their rhythm as she stitches letters into sentences on her small machine.  It is green and comes with its own little house.  Yet each time she performs this literary ritual I watch the worry line appear as her brows knit and the lines she sews begin to unravel until her fingers falter and the machine grows silent.  Her words become unwanted artifacts as she reads what she has written and the dissatisfaction is plain on her face.

She's written seven novels, I've seen them in the bookcase in the corner of the sitting room instead of amongst my books in the grand library.  She doesn't think her books are good enough to stand beside Dickens, Shakespeare, Austen, and Brontë.  Yet writing a book is a monumental thing for any human being, and she has done it seven times before.

I think she has forgotten that.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website