A Hanging at Cinder Bottom Read online

  This one is for the people of

  McDowell County, West Virginia,

  past, present, and future.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Though this novel is an unruly work of fiction, the reader may be best served to know a few truths. First, the last name Baach is pronounced BAY-CH. My wife Margaret’s great-great grandfather was Isaiah Lee Baach of Kermit, West Virginia, in Mingo County. He was most likely born in or around Pocahontas, Virginia, where his parents had settled after emigrating from Germany. Though I. Lee Baach was for me a starting point and a fascinating man, it is important to note that he is nowhere indicated or alluded to in the pages that follow (beyond the use of his last name), and that I have taken great liberties in the writing of this novel. Thus, all characters, their actions, and their speech are the product of my imagination and in no way represent any person, living or dead. The reader might also note that Keystone’s beginnings and explosive growth occurred slightly later than is depicted herein. Likewise, the layout and geography of the town (including its infamous red-light district, known as Cinder Bottom) was slightly altered for ease of understanding, though Keystone is not a place to be easily understood. It has been many things since its inception. The same could be said of its county, McDowell, a place that is anything but ordinary, a place I have sought to better comprehend through reading the important work listed in the acknowledgments at the end of this novel. McDowell County is a place that is often misrepresented. I invite the reader to find it.

  Cook ovens glare red-eyed upon the darkness

  And belch their cinders at the fevered days.

  —LOUISE MCNEILL

  A man with a guitar laid flat on his lap

  And a pocketknife for a slide

  Called a song about old Keystone

  Where the strumpets and knaves reside

  Come all ye fornicators he sang

  Come on Death’s Black Train

  Ain’t no difference ’tween here and hell

  ’Cept a creek running ’side the lane

  He told the tale of the Kid and the Queen

  And he told what came before

  The years he gave were wide apart

  A season apiece made four

  1877’s Fall and Winter ’97

  1903 in Spring and Summer 1910

  The hell he conjured was so glorious

  I found salvation in every sin.

  —JENKINJONES CHESTER

  CONTENTS

  SUMMER 1910

  Their Day Had Come

  FALL 1877

  Are You a Drinking Man?

  WINTER 1897

  Queens Full of Fours

  SPRING 1903

  It’s a Toad-Strangler

  SPRING & SUMMER 1910

  The Crows Were in the Evergreens

  The Pulpit Would Have Wheels

  April Fools’ Has Come and Gone

  No Buckwheaters, No Chickens

  Cyanogen Gas Will Impregnate the Atmosphere

  A Radiant and Blood-Red Room

  Hide the Whiskey and Bend the Knee

  Bet Your Last Copper on Jack

  Ten Fun of the Number One

  Their Day Had Come

  SUMMER

  1910

  THEIR DAY HAD COME

  August 21, 1910

  The condemned man wore no shoes. He stood over the drain hole in his cell and hummed the low notes running swollen in his blood. He shed his trousers while he hummed, and his shirt and his undergarments too. Each he folded in a square and set upon the straw tick in the corner. The foul drain at the floor’s middle called out to him in the singing voice of his woman down the hall. He answered, a long weary-throated note, a brand of humming borne from a troublesome lot.

  He was better than six foot two inches and sturdy despite incarceration. He’d turned thirty in January. Most considered him the handsomest man they’d seen, though he wore a wide scar across his jaw.

  At the pith, the condemned man was good, but he’d forever run afoul of temperance and lawmen.

  Daylight through the barred window marked his lower half. His feet were pale, and his pecker, in ordinary times a swag-bellied hog of considerable proportion, was, on this morning, contracted. His woman’s voice grew louder, and in his mind he could see her, and he hummed to his contracted pecker a snake-charmer tune fetched from a hoochie kootch show, and its furrows protracted, and it was made long and serpentine. And the condemned man imagined then that it grew longer still and mined the drainpipe clear to the cell of his woman, and it whispered to her there, Keep your temper. And this thought made him smile.

  Down the hall, the condemned woman hummed along. When he crescendoed she did too. When he went so low she couldn’t hear him, she sang things like, There’s a hole in his pants, where the crabs and bedbugs dance.

  It was the same snake-charmer melody the Alhambra house band had played seven years prior, on the night the condemned man had lit out of town, the night a big-name magician had levitated a woman on the Alhambra’s stage while the melody built. High above, crouched on the fly rig, the man who was now condemned had hummed along, and he’d spat tobacco juice down upon the stage from a height that caused much spatter, and he’d cursed the magician for having not paid the gambling debt he’d owed.

  The tunes they hummed to each other down the corridor and through the drainpipes had meanings. They’d worked out a system of codes. The condemned woman knew then from his hum that the morning-shift hall guard had arrived, and that it was nearing time to change into her finery. She took off her underskirt while she sang. She took off her umbrella drawers. Each she folded in a square and set upon the straw tick in the corner.

  She was graceful and everywhere arched proportionate. Her skin was tanned despite incarceration, and she stood above the drain hole and hummed some more, waiting for her man.

  Young officer Reed would be along shortly with the last meal and fine clothes they’d requested, and she knew he’d not be able to take his eyes off her, for even after a month in the pokey, the condemned woman was the cat’s whisker.

  Outside, the chief of police, a runt of a man named Rutherford, watched the people come on foot and horseback and great big farm wagons with three families to a bed. The night before, passenger cars on the nine o’clock train had folks pressed to the windows, and more had stuffed themselves into boxcars and empty coal hoppers.

  Now it was morning, a Sunday. Rain fell hard after forty days without. On Railroad Avenue, mud ruts made by wagon wheels multiplied and widened. A tied, riderless horse had been made to drink rye whiskey. It fell down buckskinned and got up half brown.

  By nine o’clock, three thousand people had gathered at Keystone in order that they might witness a public hanging in the state of West Virginia. There’d not been another in thirteen years, and this one was to be a double.

  Chief Rutherford had not expected word to get out as wide and fast as it had. In truth, the impending execution was not intended to be publicly viewed, beyond choice residents of Keystone. It was likewise not in any way legal. Few had even known the pair was incarcerated before Thursday. It was on Wednesday that circuit judge Rufus Beavers—who had no jurisdiction even if the condemned had been given a trial—declared guilt and handed down the sentence too. He said they’d hang just as soon as the big black oak was roped. This he’d proclaimed inside the jailer’s office, with exactly seven men present. Rutherford had believed that such actualities would prohibit word’s spread, that it would only leak a little on Thursday, when it was decided that a fast gallows would be built. And when it became clear that the date of the hanging was the Sabbath, the God-fearing, he hoped, would keep away. And so it was that all of the police chief’s belief
s had proved foolish.

  Even the first rain in over a month could not keep the people away.

  Rutherford watched them walk in it.

  He stuck his head inside the jailhouse to be sure his men looked alive. Six of seven were there. Three rode the bench and three leaned against the block wall. Behind them came humming, singing. More symphonious orchestration from the condemned, each day the same tune. Every lawman knew better than his own name by then that there was a place in France where the naked ladies dance and there was a hole in the wall where the men could see it all. On and on it went. The condemned had a repertoire of words a mile long. They stuck those words without cease into the snake-charmer song. There was a place in New York where the hambone chased the pork. There was a place Rutherford prowls where the chickens pork the hoot owls.

  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 wai
st. 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.

  At eleven, Rutherford walked past the condemned without looking at them. He threw open the door at the end of the jail’s hall and stepped into the embalming room. “I’m liable to faint if I don’t get them eggs,” he said. Taffy Reed sat on an iron stool and read the newspaper. He pointed to the big steel table, where he’d laid out a soup-plate of a hardboiled dozen.

  At a quarter to noon, lawmen toting repeating rifles cleared a path, and two open box wagons rode up to the jail’s side door, a black coffin centered on each. Behind them was a long-top surrey. Most of the crowd had started for the gallows, but some remained. They watched the big door swing open, and there stood Abe Baach beside chief Rutherford. The lawman’s full height, upon first sight, marked him a boy next to the condemned, though Rutherford was nearly twice his age. Abe was bolt straight in shined shoes and three-piece suit. He wore a high collar and a fine silk necktie. No expression on his face.

  “My Lord that fellow is handsome,” one woman said.

  His hands were shackled in the front, and his steps into the wagon were short and measured for the ankle cuffs. He sat down on the coffin with the chief on one side and a portly preacher on the other. The driver nudged the big bay forward, and the second wagon fell in.