Glenn Taylor - A Hanging at Cinder Bottom

It was relatively cool inside the jail. Humid, but no sun to speak of through the small windows facing north. Rutherford looked at an officer who was in particularly bad shape from the previous night’s imbibing. “Pick your chin up Reed,” he said.

Reed was one of three black men on the police force and the son of Fred Reed, owner and president of the Union Political and Social Club. He was gut-sick, but he nodded and did his best to look alive. “Clothes is patted and stacked,” he said. “I’m to fetch the chicken at ten.”

“What about my noontime eggs?” Rutherford said. He hadn’t yet eaten a thing.

“They’ll be ready.”

The two of them listened to the condemned woman sing of oiled bedsprings and steeple dicks and the devil as the man in the moon. Her voice was high and sweet.

“Last lullaby she’ll ever croon,” the chief said. He stepped outside again.

In the street, a Chinese man in a stovepipe hat walked along bent, a flat-top trunk on his back. He nearly lost his footing in the mud, then continued until he was square in front of the jailhouse. A leather strap secured the heavy trunk, strung bandolier-style across his chest. He sat down careful and undid himself. Then he stood and pushed the long box onto its side, kicking mud at the mass of ankles passing by. He rigged a tarpaulin to a telegraph pole in order to keep dry. He took off his slicker. His tan three-piece suit was dry. He undid the trunk’s latches, hefted out his broken-down Punch and Judy booth, and proceeded to erect it around himself where he stood. It took no more than a minute. Head-high and striped red and white, a curtain up top framed in whittled driftwood to frighten and delight.

The rain slowed. A woman with a baby on her hip stopped to watch, and then a young man did the same. So too did a drunkard with bleared eye and clumsy foot. “What is that contraption?” the drunkard asked, and, as if to answer, a voice erupted from inside the bright booth.

“Good Men and Madames of Keystone!” The greeting cut through the drizzle like a horn. More stopped and waited to be entertained. The street clogged and the rain picked up again. Umbrellas deployed. “I shall send round my bottler,” the voice went on, “and if you’ll put a coin in the hat, the Great Professor Verjo will furnish you a show!” The Chinese man emerged from the booth and twirled his hat from his head. He maintained a scalp-lock fashion, like an Iroquois warrior, a singular black rope of hair falling to the small of his back, the rest of his head kept bare by straight razor. “Right here, right here,” he called, hat brim upturned and waiting on compensation. A nickel hit the bottom, then another. The people were confused by him. Some had never known a Chinese man. Those from Keystone knew only Mr. Wan, and he had never worn a vest-suit in his life. One woman asked another, “Is he Injun or Chinaman?” They wanted to know how he spoke good English. The man calling himself Professor Verjo had long since grown accustomed to such folk, and he was predisposed to answer any question on his origins. He told the truth. He was born in a freight yard at Los Angeles, California.

In front of the Busy Bee Restaurant, a jewelry peddler heard the Punch and Judy man’s call. The peddler stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled so loud that the woman regarding his wares stumbled back. He banged his stand with a cow’s bell and called, “Here, here is where your money is wise! Gold watch-chains! Silverware!”

Another man on Bridge Street stuck a fist of rolled paper high over his head and waved. He called, “Only true confession of Goldie and Abe! Here are the words of the Kid and the Queen! The rest are forgeries! Here’s your confession!”

The calls carried through the open jailhouse door, down the narrow hall, and into the cells of the condemned man and woman. Abe Baach ceased his humming. He looked upon his bare feet and smiled and spoke to himself. “That’s it boys,” he said, quiet. “Run em in and run em out.”

Goldie Toothman called out a high note and danced a circle around the drain hole.

Their day had come.

In the street, the Punch and Judy man whipped his hook-nosed puppets side to side on their stage above his head, his movements furious and precise. Punch was not Punch on this day, and Judy was not Judy. “How can they string us up Abe, oh how?” she sobbed, her little wooden hands against her red-circled cheeks. “Don’t you know by now Goldie,” the puppet man answered, “Old Scratch is in Rutherford’s skin.” And with that, they dropped behind the striped curtain, and in their place the red devil appeared. He was not sanded smooth like them. His jawbones were jagged, his paint job ragged. From each dull horn hung a kite-string noose. His head swiveled slow, surveying the crowd. They waited. They were quiet. The red devil bowed and the nooses swung like earrings. He straightened and said, “Let em dangle.”

Some in the crowd clapped their hands and whistled. Others moved on repulsed.

Inside, Officer Reed walked into the hall with his arms full. He toted two covered pans balanced atop a stack of pressed clothes. Abe and Goldie had ordered the same last meal — fried chicken, cornbread, and pinto beans. In Reed’s pockets, their morning whiskey ration chimed, pint bottle clacking shot glasses. He carried triple portions on account of the unique circumstances.

They’d quit their music-making.

There was a sheen on the stone hallway floor. Reed watched the pans tremble on the stack he hefted. He stopped in front of cell one and excused the tall officer who’d been on watch there for three hours. The man was tired, but he said he’d just as soon stay. “I’ve got used to the hummin and singin,” he said, “and I can watch him with one eye shut.” He popped a glass eye from its socket and held it out while shutting his other one tight.

When Reed saw that Abe was naked, he turned his back and set down gingerly his stack.

When he slid the suitclothes through the bars, he kept his eyes on his boots.

Abe said not a word, but took his pressed goods and retreated to the corner. He put on his fresh underclothes. He watched Reed pour a swallow of whiskey and set it on the food ledge where his uncovered chicken steamed. “Thank you,” he said. “And maybe a boiled egg if they’re ready?”

Reed looked him in the eyes and nodded his head. Then he turned away and bent to regather Goldie’s stack. He started down the hall and then stopped. “Preachers is here,” he said. “I can bring them to you.”

Abe had stepped to the food ledge. He breathed the air of his chicken and said, “By all means.”

Reed was clenched tight as he came upon Goldie’s cell. When he saw that she too was naked, he did not turn his back to set down the stack. And when he slid her dress through the bars, he did not look at his boots.

She stood with her arms crossed under her breasts. She was still-balanced on one foot. “Morning sunshine,” she said.

From down the hall, the tall officer called, “Reed, don’t you look too long. She always up to somethin.”

At half past ten, chief Rutherford again stood out front of the jail, this time atop a stack of upturned tomato crates. Such a stack was necessary for a man of short stature. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he hollered. The crowd didn’t listen. “Ladies—” The thin wood split beneath him and he broke through all three crates, clear to the porch boards, so that he was boxed in to the waist. The short drop had caused him to lose his stomach, and for a moment, he considered the long drop awaiting the condemned. What must it be like, he wondered, to free-fall through a door such as that.

The Punch and Judy man ate an apple on break between shows. He was next to the chief as he fell. He stifled a laugh and helped the man to his feet, lifting him at the waist until Rutherford slapped at his hands. A little girl had seen too, and she didn’t stifle her own laugh, and she pointed at the lawman where he stood, his face having lost its color. The chief kicked at the splintered wood, regained his composure, and called out: “Ladies and gentlemen, this here hangin is about to come off. We’ll start over to the site shortly, and if you want a place to see from, you had better go now.” He pointed downriver toward Cinder Bottom, where the hasty gallows stood high. He was nervous. A man had told him that word could go as wide as the governor that very morning.