Duty

He touched the scar and felt the displaced rib underneath. It irritated him. That fucker did not deserve to be the one that left permanent damage. The scar didn’t count. He was littered with scars, though none so bad or in places to assault his vanity. The scars didn’t bother him. They were stories to tell pretty girls and memories to be drank to sitting alone in his room, reminiscing of old times. But a rib out of place was a permanent internal destruction. It meant someone had gotten a real piece of him. And that bastard didn’t deserve to be the one. That shitty offspring from an inbred house of whores.
He had grown up listening to the stories from his father and grandfather. The tales they had heard from their parents and grandparents, about the old country. Tilling fields and packing peat- possibly the most awful existence imaginable. But they had something he didn’t. Something few people in the newer days did- connections. Connections to the land that would punish and starve them if they handled it wrong. Connections to the weather that could make or break them and, unless you believed in magick and superstition- which they did- could be neither reasoned with or bartered with. Connections to each other. Neighbors, fellow countryman and the guy next to you trying to eek out a meager living on his unfertile, potato-shitting land just as you were on yours. It was a real sense of community. Even if you only saw them rarely and didn’t have a damn thing to talk about but the weather, you knew you were equals. Trapped in the exact same fight against existence that they were.
And it was to those times that the older, darker tales had been told. He scratched the scar even as he thought about them now. The tales his grandfather had told him, from his grandfather, from his grandfather before him. Back when things had been really wild. No law, no order. The sense of community was different then. You were bound in the same fight; true. But who knew where anyone stood when backs were turned. You trusted your neighbor so far as he kept distance. Announced himself from afar when he was coming and never, EVER visited in the dark of night, except to his own self-acknowledged peril. There were superstitions then to, but they took them more seriously. People died. People who may have been witches or may have just been careless with their herbal knowledge. It was fear, mainly. And ignorance. But it made for careful fences and particular customs. That had been when it started.
He ran a hand through his hair and scowled. His family had started in Kork, Ireland. They had migrated several places before ending up in Kilkenny, where they had stayed till his great-grandfather came to America in 1882. It was in Kork that the trouble had started between his family and the Clovers. Clovers. It even sounded like a pathetic attempt at pretend-irish.
The Clovers had been an English family that had moved to Ireland amidst overwhelming debt and impending financial ruin. They had been granted large tracts of land by a nobleman who had them god-knows why. Probably a relic of an older ancestral war of conquest by the English on the Irish. History had long forgotten what sort of financial advantage there was to the operation. Probably the “Clovers” were functioning as some sort of middle manager for the noble, exploiting the low labor costs for farming in Ireland. Even if potatoes were about all anyone seemed to be able to grow… the English loved their fries. Their “Chips”, he remembered they called them. So the Clovers had come in, changed their name to what they must have thought was the most Paddy sounding name possible, and set up shop. The details from there were sketchy- which is to say unrecorded except in oral histories and then only focusing on the things worth remembering: the Clovers and his family got into it. Apparently it had started small, probably just words being exchanged between two members of the respective families. Then a fight. Then a revenge beating. Finally, full-on feud.
At last, something had to have changed, because one night the Clovers took the initiative and raided his families farm, They supposedly killed the entire family, save the youngest son who managed to get away. Mom, dad, five brothers, 4 sisters- two of them only babies- all killed. The family would have been wiped out if it wasn’t for that youngest son, apparently only about 13 or so at the time, getting away and starting a new life in another city. That began the migratory period until the final settling in Kilkenny. No one really seemed to know how many years ago it was. Not until he had found out. He researched using an online database for ancestry and was able to find references to his family name and the Clovers in Kork back in 1722. So, somewhere in the neighborhood of 289 years.
A lot had changed since then. In fact, everything had changed since then. It had made him smile when he visited London several years earlier. Irish and English sitting side by side without any more differences than Americans and Canadians. Well, maybe a few more. But to most sane people, the idea of some vestigial battle of countries between the two was ancient history. As it should have been. He had sometimes wondered what it would have been like to live in older times such as the Civil War, or colonial America, where people lived in such stratisphied worlds. Believing in some true difference of humanity and value between people of different ethnicities or different faiths. Barbaric times where the everyone felt duty to oppress people for the color of their skin. Religion, race, ethnicity… these were not reasons to hate anyone. He was glad that time had passed beyond that. Now it was easier to see that only people’s actions defined them and their family. Only the quality of a family’s character rang out down through time.
His family had sword on eternal hatred to the Clovers. The escaped son taught it to his sons, and they to theirs and so on. All the way to him.
So when he started at office and met his co-worked, Joshua Clover, his eyebrow had gone up. He didn’t think to much of it at first, but the though nagged at him, louder and louder. He started laying awake at night thinking about him. Finally, unable to sleep one night he had jumped on Google and started doing some looking. With the basic information he found- address, phone number, workplace, obviously- he had started tracking Joshua’s history. He was an only child of an only child on his father’s side. Both of his parents were dead and now Joshua was the only living member of his family. He continued tracking back, farther and farther back until it happened. Sitting on the ancestry website he watched, from 289 years away, as the little vine grew from the tree he had built off of Joshua’s name to the Clovers of Kork, Ireland in 1722. It was odd. He had of course considered it. Contemplated how he would feel. The odd chance that life would throw the two families together again, once more working the same area, one more rubbing shoulder in the “office” as it were. But as he saw this connection, he immediately knew what he had to do. There was never a doubt in his mind, never a single perturbation. He had laid back down in his bed and slept like a rock.
The next morning he walked right up Clover, sitting in his cube at the end of the hall, littered with those idiotic Dilbert comics.
“Hey Josh.”
“Terran- what’s happening man,” Josh grinned with that disgusting, shit-eating grin.
“So your last name is Clover right?” He had cocked his head to the side, smiling. He didn’t really like asking questions he already knew the answer to, but this was important.
“Yeah, why?” Joshua’s smile went away.
Terran pulled his hands out of his pockets. “Do you know if your family was ever from Kork, Ireland?”
The smile came back, ear to ear. “I think we were! I remember hearing that from my parents at one point. How did you know that?”
“Because we owe you something.” He stepped back and swung his fist as hard as he could into Joshua’s face. There was a crunching sound and he felt the face beneath go mushy. To his surprise, Joshua had not gone immediately down. Like a wild animal in flight mode, he had lurched up and into Terran, knocking him back in an attempt to run, cognizant of nothing but escape. Falling back, Terran had smashed his side into the edge of the filing cabinet and broken a rib. Even now as he thought about the event he was rubbing the rib, pushing in back and forth on his side. He had gasped out when he hit, and felt the sharp pain that told him something was wrong, but he still managed to get a hand out to grab Joshua’s fleeing leg. Joshua hit the ground and Terran climbed on top of him. The other workers were only just becoming dully aware that something was happening. They didn’t have a chance in hell of getting there in time and pulling him off before he could smash that fucker’s face into the hard, carpeted cement enough times to finish him. It was over quick and he had rolled off the body, leaning up against a cubical wall and wiping his nose, which was running profusely. His hand hurt but he ignored it. It didn’t exist. The people shrieking didn’t exist. The whole damn office didn’t exist. Only him, his dead enemy, and the knowledge that he had done his duty. It had taken almost 300 years- but revenge wasn’t bound by time or place. Revenge simply mandated that you do your duty, regardless of when it calls on you or how much it called on you to give.
Now, sitting in his cell he pushed the rib in one final time, then left it alone. He smiled to himself and nodded. He was glad his ancestors could rest easy now. Glad that those who would come after- his sister was already pregnant with twins- could grow up in a clean world. One free of Clovers.