Glenn Taylor - A Hanging at Cinder Bottom

At Ellicott City, he finally slept. He dreamed of Abe and Goldie, flying on the air above the Old Drury stage before the glow of new electric lights. They had no need for wires. They tossed money upon the air, and it floated there, as if unbound by gravity’s rule. And Tony stood at stage’s edge and asked if he could have his cut of the touch, and they told him yes. Of course, Goldie said. Of course. And she looked at Abe and commanded, “Climb!” And the Kid and the Queen levitated, high above the money to the flylines. And Tony held out his hands, and his missing thumb was there, twiddling quick as could be, and above him, the money never fell. It only grew thick. He watched it multiply, and he was happy, for he knew that it was sum enough to procure five golden teeth and a six-month supply of Camel Alley opium, high grade. He knew the money was sufficient to buy a black granite headstone and a silver shoe-box coffin, lined in mulberry Egyptian silk.

July 22, 1910

The moon over the Baltimore wharf was full and low. Abe and Goldie sat on the Frederick Street docks and watched the towboat lamps dance on the water’s black chop. He’d already pointed to the tall pilings and told her how he’d earned his scar. Now he aimed a hand in the direction of Locust Point and said, “See those lights way out there? That’s where Daddy landed in ’77.” He shook his head. “Can you imagine that? Alone and twenty years old. Stepped on a boat in Germany and stepped off it right here.”

The big water suited Goldie. She had even grown fond of its smell. And though Baltimore’s flatness did not likewise fit her fancy, she enjoyed walking the streets, knit close on all sides with tall buildings.

“I believe I’d be seasick most of the way,” she said.

He nodded his head. “Stick with trains.”

Los Angeles, California, was where they’d soon travel, though Goldie wondered if the East Coast might better suit her than the West. Ben Moon was living temporarily then in Atlantic City, where he’d purchased a saloon and a home on the inlet too. He’d given both to the Baaches upon their arrival and told Al he could tend the business in whatever measure he pleased. Little Donnie played cards at the new saloon under the name Caleb Shook. At night he slept in a ground-floor white iron bed, inside the Maine Avenue home of Al and Sallie Baach. Under the floorboards was a door and under the door was four hundred thousand dollars. Sallie had looked at the money only once. She sat mornings and evenings in a wicker throne on the home’s front lawn. She could see the water and the lighthouse both. She could watch Agnes and Ben duck in the high cordgrass and run on the sand. And all the while, as she watched them hide and seek and build castles and knock them down, as she heard them squeal and whistle and mimic the song of the laughing gulls, she bit the tip of her tongue to keep from crying. The children were all she had to beat back the sorrow. The place itself was nothing to her. She’d stay on their account, but such a place was not meant for Sallie. She belonged in the hills, where she suspected her Samuel had returned. Her daddy’s letters told nothing of her youngest — none in Welch had heard a word. Old Man Hood’s last letter had read:

I built that home on Hood Hill Plateau in 1851. I meant it to be a meeting ground for the preachers of God’s good word. It burned to the ground on July the seventh.

The dirt still smoldered when Oswald Ladd and his daddy arrived from Virginia. They left inside a day, afraid for their lives. They’d found that Keystone was in an uproar over the death of their mayor. The circuit judge wore hatred in his eyes and the tiny police chief had told them he cared little for their property deed, and they’d do best to clear off before dark. Sallie cried at the words her daddy had written. She thought often to go and find her Samuel back home, to go too in the ground with the others she’d borne. To go on finally and rest.

Abe and Goldie had stayed five nights at the Maine Avenue home. He’d proposed marriage to her at a boardwalk cafe. She’d smiled then, even lost some of the ache she’d felt since the foul business with Munchy back in Keystone. Still, when Abe left Atlantic City for Baltimore on the eleventh, Goldie had refused to stay at the shore as planned. He went back primarily to line up work for Chesh and Talbert and Rose Cantu, who’d taken to Baltimore right off. When Abe told her it was safer in Atlantic City, Goldie had said, “I’ll die at your side just the same as I’ll live.”

Now they sat where dead fish and chicken-wire bobbed, and the foghorns blew back at the B&O whistles.

He watched her watch the water. He rubbed at her back.

Presently, he felt a rumble in the pier boards beneath him. He turned to see Bushel-Heap Lou McKill walking in their direction, lamp in his grip, another man at his side.

Abe stood to meet them. The man was familiar. A black fellow, tall and thin. He wore a glass eye where once none had been.

“Fella here come up from Keystone,” Bushels said. “Won’t say much other than he needs to speak with you.”

A fluttering commenced at Goldie’s middle.

“You check to see if he came alone?” Abe asked.

“Already backtracked and lit up the crannies.”

Together, they walked to the warehouse. The Radiant Moon sign had been painted over. Coming Soon! the bricks read, Chambers Automobiles!

Inside, the place was emptied, stripped of presses and cutters and long table lines of wrapper assemblage. The four of them stood beneath a single electric bulb tacked to the ceiling in Moon’s empty office.

The tall officer from Keystone took an envelope from his pocket and handed it over.

The photograph nearly fell to the floor when Abe opened the letter. He had not yet read its greeting when he saw his brother’s face in black and white, the eyes both swollen shut, the lips split and sunken where teeth no longer rooted.

A sound came up from deep inside him and he bent a little at the waist.

Goldie turned away. “Oh Samuel,” she said.

The letter was penned in an unfamiliar script. Abe Baach and Goldie Toothman, you have two days from receipt of this letter to return to Keystone to face the crimes of murdering officer Munchy Briles and Mayor Henry Trent. You shall bring with you what you have stolen. The man on delivery of this letter shall not be harmed and shall travel alone before you to advise. If you fail to surrender within two day’s time, Sam Baach will be hung by the neck until dead. If you surrender within two day’s time, he will be set free.

Abe looked at the glass-eyed man, who shook where he stood, pointy-shouldered in a white shirt he’d sweated through.

“Rutherford is whittled down all the way to you?” Abe said. He’d gotten word from Chicago and New York of what had happened to the others who’d tracked him. On July 16th, Harold Beavers had ventured alone and drunk to the office building at 1 Superior Street. It sat across the lane from the Cathedral of the Holy Name, and before he’d stepped inside 1 Superior, Harold had looked up at the spire, two hundred feet above. He’d hesitated, then entered the squat building through the front door, expecting to see secretaries and spectacled types with pencils behind their ears. Instead, he found himself in a smoke-filled lounge of pitiless men playing pocket billiards. He’d said, “I’m looking for Phil,” and the ones who were bent across the felt had straightened and stared him down, and the ones leaning at the wall had put their hands inside their coat. When Harold Beavers moved his own hand to the small of his back, they drew down and fired all at once. They were not the timid kind. They spent their days at 1 Superior Street, headquarters of Dropsy Phil O’Banyon’s North Side Gang. The bullet hole in Harold’s manhood had barely scabbed black when they filled him with fifty more.