Glenn Taylor - A Hanging at Cinder Bottom

Hiss.

The Beavers said it was the best ten dollars they’d spent.

Tony held Baz like a baby then, and the monkey went right to sleep. Tony took him to the car and held him there still, humming a made-up tune. He didn’t like to see his little friend do the trick they’d dubbed the bottle-and-smoke, but Baz had long since known it by the time he came to Tony, and it had always proven stellar in the making of friends.

The men spoke on the rarity of the ladies of Fat Ruth Malindy’s. They spoke on the Reno title fight and the current price of coal per short ton.

At half past four, the two men and a monkey departed, trailing dust. Phil shouted a verse as they rolled on: “Let’s drink to our next meeting lads, nor think on what’s atwixt!”

The other men leaned and slumped and watched them go. Rufus said, “Those fellas is somethin else.”

“Climb in your chariot Rufus,” Harold answered. “Let’s us see who can lay off the brake longest into town.”

Goldie was on her way up the hill as the Beavers came careening down. She hid herself behind a poplar tree and cringed at the sound of their vehicles.

When they’d passed, she went on.

She’d put Rebecca Staples and little Bob on the four o’clock to Princeton. She didn’t know why, but she’d nearly cried as the train pulled away.

Now she came into the clearing out of breath. Her feet were tired and even the sound of Ben and Agnes couldn’t lift the lilt at her middle. They exploded from the screen door in a burst of high-spirited calls and hinge-croak and wood-slap, and Goldie paused to watch them.

The cut grass seemed somehow wrong.

Sallie Baach was at the big table, stacking dishes. She leaned across it to fetch a butter knife and her back seized up, a charge coursing the muscles to the right of her spine.

Goldie did not move from her anonymous spot at woods’ edge. She watched Sallie stiffen and go still. She recognized the posture of pain from all those years her daddy had struck the same pose, but still, Goldie did not budge. She’d not offer assistance with the dishes or the infirmities of a body gone bad. She’d not engage Sallie in any sort of talk about the shame of leaving Keystone, of giving up Hood House land. They’d started such a conversation in the near-emptied barn two weeks prior, and Goldie had ignored Sallie then, listening instead to the soft bursts of wind from the long nostrils of Snippy the mediocre mare. Goldie could still lose herself in the darkwater eye of a horse, could still see things there. The last thing she’d heard Sallie say was that the world’s compass was set straight to hell, and no one, once there, could walk back out.

Now Goldie stood across the cut grass bald from the older woman, who’d straightened and turned to face her. It was quiet, not a crow to be found on any pine branch. They regarded each other before Sallie carried her load of smeared dishware back to the house she’d soon have to vacate.

How old she seemed then to Goldie.

July 4, 1910

Before the sun rose, Cheshire Whitt had already taken care of the coupe. He’d already laid the McDowell Times Independence Day edition at the three doors in town that mattered most. Trent and the Beavers would awaken to the following headline: Boilermaker Jeffries or Galveston Giant Johnson — Who Will Wear the Crown? The article that followed was dry and bereft of humorous insight or mention of racial superiority. Chesh’s father had insisted on such a tone. “No need to salt what’s already boiling,” he’d said. It was more than money riding on this fight.

There was a quarter-page advertisement below the fold inviting all to come to the Union Social and Political Club, where a special telegraph line had been installed for round-by-round returns direct from ringside in Reno. Adjacent to this was a smaller advertisement proclaiming the arrival of the Sublime One, Max Mercurio, with his Beautiful Beatrice. Seats were already sold out for the opening-night show on July 6th.

On his way from the Alhambra to the bridge, Chesh saw, from a distance, the Baach family boarding the early morning train. The platform on either side of them was dark, but the porters had laid out two lanterns by which to load, and they lit the Baaches like footlights. Al carried little Ben. Sallie had an arm around Agnes. Sam stood motionless, nothing in his hands. Chesh regarded his friend. He knew Sam was loathe to leave.

Abe had forced his younger brother to go with the rest of them. “It’s your duty,” he’d told him.

The porters worked fast at the baggage car, lifting suitcases and shoving at iron-bottom trunks.

Before they boarded, the Baaches looked up at the hills they couldn’t see.

Agnes cried, a quiet whimper. No puppeteer had ever come to frighten and delight.

Chesh Whitt watched them step from platform to stair. He listened to the final boarding call. His pocketwatch told him it was a minute past five.

In less than twelve hours, his role would commence, and he wondered if Abe and Goldie’s plan might actually play out. Regardless, his job was easy. “Start a ruckus, whether Johnson loses or wins,” they’d told him. The beckoning of authority by way of drunken foolishness was a vocation with which Chesh was familiar. This time would no doubt prove different.

But Chesh Whitt knew one thing. The white fighter would never best Johnson, and his own celebratory whoops would come genuine.

At quarter past five, the sun still not up, Little Donnie stood in the back of Baach’s storeroom. He unlatched the steel arm and lifted it. The heavy door swung slow and quiet. Abe had oiled the hinges.

In the alley was Rutherford. He stepped inside carrying a lantern. Neither spoke as they moved to the barrel. Little Donnie lifted it and Rutherford crouched, swinging his lantern for a better look. Just as the boy had said, the floor safe bolts were no more. He’d undone them an hour before, as he’d told Trent and Rutherford he would.

They locked eyes and nodded, and he set back the barrel.

He pointed to a low shelf behind him. Rutherford held out his lantern.

Little Donnie shoved aside a sack of coffee to reveal a six-foot length of steel chain. The links were a half inch thick. Hitch hook on both ends.

He pointed to the corner, and Rutherford aimed his light at a four-foot warehouse hand-truck with a long steel nose.

When the time came, rolling away the safe would take no time at all.

They peeked from behind the shelves and stepped together to the pantry where the card-players-only piss bucket sat. Inside the tiny room, it smelled of ammonia and mold. Against the wall was an old Western washer with a broken crankshaft. Little Donnie lifted off the top and Rutherford swung his lamp. Tucked in the bottom corner were two.41 caliber double Derringers. Little Donnie opened the breech of each to show they were loaded and Rutherford noted the S&W on the rim. Guns tucked back in place, they stepped quiet from the piss pantry.

Back behind the shelves, they locked eyes and nodded once more, and Rutherford walked out the open door.

Little Donnie relatched the heavy arm and turned the key.

He let out the deepest breath he could ever remember taking.

The fight wire was spooled and ready on a temporary short pole by noon. Already it was eighty degrees or more, and men stood in the side yard of the Union Social and Political Club, some of them hatless and crowding under a wide tarp. It hung at an angle between the building and the chunk of brick chimney at yard’s middle. Beneath it, the telegraph operator sat at her relay board and tested the key spring. She fanned herself with a ledger book.