Glenn Taylor - A Hanging at Cinder Bottom

Goldie watched him close. She still could not understand why Abe wouldn’t accompany the boy on such an errand.

Abe said, “Tell him Chicago Phil left but said he’d be back in about a month. Tell him the man is hooked and he wants to sit once more against me here before he tries his hand at the Oak Slab. Tell him he’s bringing back bigger money and a building deed both.” He patted the head of the big hollow barrel. “Tell him there’s a safe in back under a barrel,” he said, “and that what’s in it grows nightly.”

Little Donnie committed it all to memory.

Abe had a headache. He touched at the healed spot over his ear where the pump knot had once resided. There came, at his touch, a roaring sound still.

Little Donnie watched him put his fingers to his head and work his jaw open and shut.

“You okay Abe?” he asked.

“Chesh Whitt is out front, armed,” Abe said. “He’ll tail you and make sure nobody tries to rob you on the way.” The young Whitt had proven eager to work whatever job they gave him. He liked the money and he didn’t ask questions.

Little Donnie said he needed to drain his bladder before he left. The sight of that much money made him nervous, and when was nervous, he had to go. He stepped into the old pantry where the piss bucket resided.

They waited for him at the back.

Abe patted the boy on the shoulder, unlatched the door bar and lifted it, then turned the big lever key.

Outside, the sun was rising.

When the boy was gone, Goldie crouched at the false-bottom barrel. She pressed herself to its middle and wrapped her arms around and lifted it off the safe. She set it on the floor.

“Strong,” Abe said. “Well put together.”

She slid her drawers off over her stockings and shoes. She hopped on top of the safe and hiked her dress and spread apart her thighs.

“You been into the comet shots?” Abe asked her.

“I been into remembrance,” she said.

Rutherford paced the length of Trent’s office, eating the fifth of six pickled eggs. He did not care for the sound of Little Donnie’s voice. Rutherford’s strides were long as he could make them, soft so as not to agitate his bunions. He scratched at his chest as he paced. Bedbugs had roosted in the hair.

Trent leaned back in his big chair and counted the notes in the envelope. He shook his head. “Five thousand,” he said. “The easy way. And this fella is coming back for more in a month?” He laughed. “Timing might work out. Rufus and Harold aren’t due back until June the twentieth.”

Rutherford quit pacing but kept scratching. His mouth was full of egg. “Why in the hell does it matter when the Beavers come home?” he said.

Trent answered. “I told you already. We’ve got to cushion them with the possibility of a second big touch and the Hood property both. They’ll not be happy with the Abe Baach development otherwise.”

The Beavers brothers were raising money in the Florida Everglades. They were celebrating Harold’s retirement from the slaughter of plume birds, and they’d be home in time to throw summer money at the September primary elections. The midterm meant council seats and new state delegates too.

Rutherford looked at Little Donnie, who looked at his shoes. “You best make this worth it,” he said.

Little Donnie looked at Rutherford, then Trent. He said, “There’s a safe in back of the storeroom, hidden under a barrel. It’s where they put the table winnings, which are growing considerable nightly.”

Trent and Rutherford shared a look. “That’s good work boy,” Trent said. He laid the five thousand on his desk, opened the top drawer, and took out a hand mirror. He raised his lip and regarded his teeth. There was a snag on the tip of his silver incisor. He’d cut his tongue on it twice already. From the same open drawer he took out a long wood rasp that had belonged to Jake Baach. He placed it against the silver snag and filed it smooth. “Rutherford,” he said. “Excuse me and the boy for a moment.”

The tiny man slammed the door behind him.

Munchy was on his stool with the paper quartered in one hand and a pimiento cheese sandwich in the other. “What’s got you so hot?” he said.

Rutherford slapped the sandwich to the floor and wiped his fingers on Munchy’s coat sleeve. Four orange stripes dotted in red. “Shut your fuckin mouth fat man,” he said.

In the office, Trent stood and said, “For that kind of good work, I’ll give you a little more than three percent. Give you an even two hundred.” He counted it off the stack.

Then, as was customary, he asked Little Donnie to turn and face away while he opened the safe to deposit the forty-eight hundred. He blocked a direct view with his body.

The boy did as he was told, but he rolled that loose left eye as far to the socket corner as he could. He trained it on the wall-embedded junebug mirror he’d angled precise the night prior, and in that tiny mirror, he studied the spinning knob.

His other eye he shut to better hear the clicks.

May 24, 1910

The night he met chief Rutherford, Tony Thumbs had been in Keystone for only two days, and he would leave inside a week. He’d stepped onto the depot platform Sunday afternoon, his rolling dresser trunk behind him, his white-faced capuchin monkey riding on top. The monkey’s name was Baz. He was forty-one years old, exactly half his master’s age. Tony Thumbs had bought him for nine dollars in Guyana from a British organ grinder with one tooth. On the platform at Keystone, Baz transacted with a small boy selling the last of his folded McDowell Times for three cents. The boy had smiled when the monkey handed him the pennies. Baz had smiled back and held open the paper in front of Tony Thumbs. The headline read: Now You See It, Now You Don’t. The Moon Will Disappear on Tuesday Night . “Good,” Tony Thumbs had told his monkey. “Very good.”

Tacked to the first telegraph pole they saw was a handbill proclaiming You Can Still Sleep After You Are Dead. Come to A. L. Baach & Sons Saloon Tuesday Night and Watch the Moon Vanish .

Now it was nearing midnight of that very Tuesday, and Baz the monkey stood on his pedestal in the street next to his master, who, despite his advanced age and having only one thumb, turned the fastest monte since Canada Bill Jones. He’d grown long the nails of his pinky fingers and used them for getting under the card’s surface. He used them too for scooping and snorting the homemade snuff he kept inside a silver necklace box.

His stack of wine crates was set up next to the bow-tied guitar player in the wicker-seated chair, at the same spot on Wyoming Street where the comet pills had sold out six nights prior. A crowd gathered.

Tony Thumbs was stooped in his tall gray hat and matching broadcloth coat. His white mustache was twisted sharp at the tips. Twin kerosene lamps burned high at the edges of his crate. He was all glow and shadow as he called, “Follow the queen! Follow the queen!”

And officer Munchy the doorman did just that, touching his wide middle finger to the blue patterned card-back he knew to be the queen. Tony Thumbs turned it and doubled the fat man’s five. The crowd grew.

Munchy smiled at his earnings and stepped to the door of A. L. Baach & Sons Saloon. He aimed to buy a drink for Goldie Toothman. All his life, he’d wanted little more than the touch of Keystone’s Queen Bee.

Rutherford stepped into the Bottom without Taffy Reed in tow. In his fist was a balled-up handbill for the lunar eclipse gathering. He was drunk. He tucked himself between Fat Ruth’s and the restaurant, leaning against the siding, looking for Abe Baach.