Glenn Taylor - A Hanging at Cinder Bottom

Taffy Reed surveyed from the open side-doorway. He estimated seventy men, most of them toting big money. Two-thirds were black. Proper coloreds , his father called them. The white men present were mostly politicians, there to glad-hand and get votes in the upcoming interim. They’d leave long before round one’s bell.

Two more police officers stood with their hands crossed at opposite corners of the yard. They were new on the force, former coke-yarders who’d come up from North Carolina two years before. Black men whom Taffy did not trust. The tall one was missing an eye. The short one had the chest of a woman. Fred Reed was paying them overtime to watch for trouble. “Any black man hollers too loud when Johnson wins, you shut him up,” Fred had said. “Remind him he claim to’ve bet on white.”

A man in overalls approached, pushing an iron-wheeled railroad dolly strapped with two crates of champagne. They were last-minute extras shipped in special from Norfolk.

Fred waved the man up the ramp fashioned from two-by-fours. When he’d told him where to put the crates and paid him his tip, Fred stepped to the open doorway and stood beside his son. Together, they watched as councilman J. T. Whitt stepped into the yard. He wore a tall Knox hat and tan bluchers. He smiled and nodded hello and asked each man he greeted, “Newspaper still to your liking?”

Fred leaned on his boy. “He knows he can’t win again, but here he is.”

Taffy nodded.

“Man don’t even take a drink,” Fred said.

They watched J. T. Whitt shake the hand of Harold Beavers.

“Now that man,” Fred said, pointing to Harold, “will win in a landslide.” He laughed a little. Shook his head. “He knows how to win. Knows you got to be crooked as a bucket of fish hooks.”

Taffy didn’t laugh. He’d heard that one before.

Fred put his arm around his boy. “And we right there in that bucket boy,” he said. “We on the side that wins.”

Taffy half-listened. He wanted to go play a few hands of seven-card stud before he sat at the Wobbler that afternoon. He knew he was the second-best poker player in Keystone, but he’d never played the likes of Abe Baach, never been allowed at the Oak Slab. The Alhambra main room may have changed its no-negro policy, but the Oak Slab never would. It had long since loosened formalities, ceasing employment of a dealer in ’01, but no black man would ever be seated. The Ashwood Wobbler would be Taffy’s turn at the table.

Harold Beavers too had his mind on poker, but still, he kept right on glad-handing, working his way across the dry yard. He handed out slugs of his Chokoloskee whiskey. He put his arm around half the men present. “Call me Harry,” he said. He told several men how sharp he found their suits. To Mose Zaltzman, fat in a black tailcoat, he said, “Russia, that jacket is sharp as a rat’s turd in a glass of buttermilk.”

He’d had cards printed on quarter-inch stock, the following proclamation on the front:

VOTE FOR

HAROLD BEAVERS FOR

HOUSE OF DELEGATES

YOU WILL FIND MY NAME ON

THE REPUBLICAN TICKET AND YOUR VOTE

WILL BRING NOTHING BUT GOOD

Rufus and Trent sat on ladder chairs by the chimney chunk, the tarp low against their hats. They compared their leather-bound pipe cases. Trent’s was velvet-lined. Rufus preferred satin. “Doesn’t get stuck with crumbs,” he said.

Trent couldn’t get his mind off that morning’s transaction, a sale at which he’d not been present. “So everything came off without a hitch you say?” His voice was pinched. His stomach was ailing him again.

“There was old man Hood’s signature,” Rufus said, pointing to his lap, “and there was mine.” He’d met Goldie and the lawyer that morning at an office in Kimball, halfway to Welch. “The drive was more than pleasant,” Rufus said. “Very few bad spots along the way.” The road had finally been finished as far as Kimball, and it was the first time he’d tested his Oldsmobile at such distance.

He had not suspected for a moment that the lawyer was Mr. Taylor, the Wednesday regular at Fat Ruth Malindy’s, happy to draw up false papers for the madam of the sweetest cathouse he’d ever seen. Old man Hood’s signature on the power of attorney was forged by Abe. Taylor had handled the true sale of the property just two weeks before.

“And you put the deed in the safe?”

“How many times are you going to ask me that question?”

Trent took out his watch. “I best head next door to welcome Phil and them others,” he said. All men currently at the Oak Slab had been given notice of their impending eviction. They did not possess the city money of their coming replacements.

Rufus watched Taffy Reed carry a schoolroom blackboard from inside. It was the size of a front door. He set it against the bricks and laid out three lengths of chalk. The betting would be heavy.

Rufus cocked his head and studied the younger Reed’s movements. He said, “You think this is all going to come off this evening?”

“How do you mean?” Trent had already stood and taken a step.

“You think Rutherford and my brother can do what they say they can?”

“I do.”

“And you think Taffy Reed will sit pretty for it?” He still watched the young man where he stood at the blackboard, drawing columns with exceptional straightness.

“Taffy will never question Rutherford on a goddamn thing.”

Rufus wondered if it was true. “And you think your Little Donnie has been both thorough and wholly forthright?”

“I know he has. I raised that pup.”

Rufus coughed and snorted. Swallowed. He took off his hat and rubbed his head.

Trent didn’t like the last-minute inquisition. “I’ll say it again.” He lowered his voice. “Rutherford saw it with his own eyes just this morning.” He stared down at his old friend, who did not change his attitude. “The boy had unbolted the safe just like he told us.”

“You don’t think Abe might sniff something tonight?”

“So what if he does? He won’t have any protection on hand. Nobody’s packing a piece at his table — they frisk same as we do.”

Across the way, Harold laughed too loud at his own joke.

Trent kept on. “You’ll have eyes on the Oak Slab the whole time, and you’ll have Munchy and barkeep and Talbert too.”

“Fine lot.”

“They know how to fire a gun don’t they?”

Rufus said he supposed they did. “And you’re still planning to meet this magic man and his gal at the station, despite all that’s got to happen?”

“I am.”

Rufus put away his pipe and crossed his legs. He looked up at the man with whom he’d built Keystone. “And Goldie?”

“What about her?”

Rufus kept on looking.

“Brought it on herself, didn’t she?”

When Rufus didn’t answer, Trent walked away.

For the first time in two months, the barroom of A. L. Baach & Sons Saloon was empty. Only Abe and Goldie sat at the bar. The stage was empty, its gaslights cold.

“Doesn’t seem right,” Abe said, “Sam not behind the bar.” He recalled the day in April when he’d walked in on his brother like a ghost. “Saloon sharks won’t know the difference — he never did stomp one dead.” He thumbed a mug-bottom divot in the bar top.

Goldie held his other hand. “You did the right thing sending him off,” she said.

He nodded his head. It was full up again with ache, strongest at the base of his neck, and his left ear rang on and off. The night before, as he’d practiced his card manipulations in front of a mirror, he’d shut his eyes against the ringing, and when he’d opened them again, he saw in the mirror his hands, precise and mechanical as they front- and back-palmed and passed and fanned and riffled. He looked down to see his true hands motionless against the dresser top, while in the mirror they kept at their furious routine. He shut his eyes and shook his head and looked again. In the mirror, they moved. In the flesh, at the end of his wrists, they were motionless as death.