A Hanging at Cinder Bottom Read online

  “Hello Samuel,” Abe said.

  Sam Baach had grown hard and wiry and his teeth wore the stain of all that he put to his lips and swallowed. His nose had been broken. He had a voice like an old man.

  He set the kerosene can and bottle on the bar top. His mouth went dry. There was a tingle at the backs of his knees. “Abe?” he said.

  The men at the bar frowned and traded a look. They had heard the name.

  He took off his hat and left his luggage where it lay. His strides toward Sam were long and he spread his arms wide on the way. It was an embrace known only to brothers. Abe cracked a couple of vertebrae when he squeezed. “Boy, you are a pawpaw knocker aren’t you?”

  “No taller than when you last saw me,” Sam said. They stepped back from each other and cocked their heads and beheld. Sam was the first to look away.

  The men at the bar looked at one other again and nodded. It was, in fact, who they thought it was, and though they’d lived in Keystone only two years, they had heard tell of the man, and they’d suspected, as most did, that Abraham Baach would not ever come home.

  He took a seat at the bar and turned on his stool to face the two men. “Afternoon,” he said.

  They nodded. The tall man was missing an eye. The short one wore his weight funny and had a chest like a woman’s.

  Sam chewed his lip and attempted to regulate his breathing.

  Abe smiled as he took a small cigar from his pocket and held it up between thumb and fingers. He put the end of it in his ear and pushed, and when it was all the way in, he stuck his finger inside the canal and pushed some more. Then he coughed and pulled the cigar from his lips.

  The short man sneezed and shook his head. He’d seen some things, but he’d not ever seen a man stick a cigar in his ear and pull it out his mouth.

  “So you the Abe Baach they speak on?” the tall man asked.

  Abe smiled. He regarded the pinched hole where the man’s eye had once resided, a belly button now, empty at the center. He said, “If they speak on a man with testes spiked like sweet gum seeds, then yes, I reckon I am one and the same.”

  The tall man laughed. The other was not possessed of an imaginative humor.

  Abe closed his fist upon the little cigar. There was a faint sound of paper tearing. “You gentlemen look to be making the notable move from ale to whiskey,” Abe said. “I wonder if you’d mind relocating to another establishment so my brother and I might visit awhile.” He opened his fist, and in it were two Morgan silver dollars. He slapped the coins on the bar top and pushed them forward.

  “Wouldn’t mind at’all,” the tall man answered, and he examined his coin before pocketing it.

  “I wonder too,” Abe said, “if you’d mind sparing folks mention of my arrival. It would be premature to speak on it just yet.”

  Both men nodded. “Lips are sealed,” the tall man said. He’d rightly noted a vague danger should they break their word.

  “I’m obliged to you,” Abe said.

  They slid from their stools and walked out the door so that for a moment, sunlight lit the place, and Abe listened close to the croak of the rusty spring and the slap of the wooden screen door when it shut. It was a sound he could listen to all day.

  Sam had a shiver about him. He pulled at his beard and watched his older brother. “Jake alive?” Abe asked.

  “As of this morning, yes, but not by much.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Shot. One in the chest, one in the belly, a graze at the neck.” He pointed to the spots on himself as he spoke of them. “One of em still in there. Doctor Warble said blood poisoning.”

  The door sounded again and Abe hid himself by putting his hand to his face as if dozing.

  Sam squinted to be sure of the patron’s identity. “How do Chesh,” he said. Then he gestured to hold up. “Come back in ten minutes.”

  Before the young man nodded and left, he sized up the fellow hiding his face at the bar.

  “Who was it?” Abe said.

  “Nobody.”

  Nobody was Cheshire Whitt, son of councilman J. T. Whitt, owner of the McDowell Times and founder of the Negro Presbyterian Church. Cheshire was the only Whitt to associate regularly with folks in the Bottom, and his father did not like it, for he believed the black man would only make his mark by honest means.

  Abe said, “Who shot Jake?”

  “Italian fella, name of Dallara. Carpenter. Two of em was thick as glue.” Sam cleared his throat. “Happened up on Buzzard Branch Saturday last. Early evenin, three shots. Jake run out of the woods hollerin and carryin on, blood all over. One of the girls from Fat Ruth’s seen him, but he was on the ground time we got to him. Never been awake since. He won’t just die like most.”

  “The carpenter?”

  “Captured up at Matewan. They’re keeping him up there in the jail. Rutherford’s one that caught him, tracked him to a hideout up some hollow. Rifle was up on Buzzard Branch, three rounds spent.”

  “Where is Jake now?”

  “Up at the house.”

  “I reckon I’ll head up there.” Abe stared at the wall for a moment, then shook his head.

  Sam’s nerves were getting the better of him. It was as if a ghost had walked in the door. He set out two glasses, poured for Abe and then himself, and they held them up and drank them down. He wanted to ask about the scar, but he couldn’t think of how. He regarded the fine clothes of his older brother. He said, “Jake was setting right there on your stool back in January when he got religion.”

  “How’s that?”

  “He had a vision, and afterwards, he’d tell anybody that listened all about it.” He shook his head and pointed to Abe’s stool. “Happened right there,” he said. “He didn’t take a drink since.”

  “How do you mean?”

  And Sam told how he meant.

  On January 23rd, Jake Baach had the vision that changed his path. It was a Sunday. He’d been drinking whiskey all morning. There was no discerning why the one particular slug was different than those before it, but it was. It went down the wrong pipe, and Jake was choked. He drew no air. His eyes popped. And in the darkness that overtook the inside of his head, a purplish cloud awakened. It pulsed and grew and from it erupted roots and limbs and spewed clods of dirt dried and wetted both, and everywhere there hung the shed skin of reptiles. And the shed skins agitated and moved as if they still held life and they sought each other’s touch and they twisted and went end to end on the black dirt ground and made of themselves a scroll of words which Jake could not distinguish, but still he knew with certainty from whence the words came, and if he drew another breath, he would be indebted to the God he’d never believed in.

  And he did finally draw another breath, and when he came to on the floor with Sam patting his back, he said, “I’ve had a vision,” and he told Sam of it in great detail, and directly he went to see Mayor Trent, who was himself slugging whiskey on the Sabbath at his own establishment.

  Jake had addressed him as Mr. Mayor, which was peculiar, first because he’d only ever addressed the man as Mr. Trent, and second because his voice had changed. It was a full octave deeper. He’d asked if they could be alone.

  With a wave of his hand, Trent excused his accountant and his favorite whore, but it was clear that Rutherford and Faro Fred Reed, each asleep in a straightback chair, were staying put.

  Jake respectfully declared that as an officer of the law he was bound to disallow drinking on a Sunday.

  Trent laughed.

  Jake continued. He said that it was not meant to be funny, and he proclaimed that in addition to enforcing the state’s Sunday liquor laws, he could no longer permit the forced collection of monies from local businesses, an act routinely employed by his fellow officers.

  Trent had quit laughing then. He’d worked the stiff muscle in his twice-broken jaw and said, “Now see here Baach.”

  That had been the beginning of their falling-out.

  Abe could scarcely compre
hend it all. He said to his younger brother, “Jake was a officer of the law?” He wondered if Ben Moon had known such a thing.

  “Around here,” Sam answered, “they’ll pin a pistol on anybody.” There came the muffled trace of a far-off dynamite blast. The floor trembled beneath their shoes. “Abe,” Sam said, “I believe when he got choked, his brain went addled. Air was cut off too long or some such. After that, he was off his head permanent. He was framing a church up on the hill. I saw the sign he cut. Free Thinkers of something or other—religion words I couldn’t even recognize. He was preaching prohibition and didn’t give a damn what anybody thought.”

  “Did he cross Trent?”

  “He didn’t so much cross anybody. Frightened em maybe.” Sam was careful about his words then. He looked again at that long wide scar. “He sure didn’t bite his tongue around his highness the mayor though,” he said. “You remember how Jake always knew when to keep his mouth shut, taught us the same?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, those days was over. I heard from Rebecca Staples back in March that when Jake turned in his badge, he told Trent his intention to run for council at the interim, and come the general in ’12, he aimed to be mayor of Keystone. Rebecca said Jake got right up close on Trent, right in his ear, and said, ‘I may not win, but there ain’t no politics in heaven, and there ain’t nothin but in hell.’”

  Abe spun his empty short glass slow on the bar top. “You think Trent had him killed and pinned it on the Italian?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind.” Sam breathed deep. “But it doesn’t figure. Jake may have gone a little peculiar, but you know how everybody liked him. He told a good straight story, he was fair. Trent was right fond of him for a few years there. Rutherford and Fred Reed too. Rest of us they’d just as soon piss on, but here they had Jake do a little carpentry at the Alhambra—he built a coat-hook partition wall by the bar, solved the problem of men coat-smuggling things to the Oak Slab—and next thing you know he’s on the police force and taking what he wants to take from whoever he pleases. Trent let him roam free and paid him handsomely to do it.” He shook his head. “Things was fine up to that day he got choked.” Outside, the bell clanged for shift change at the coke yard. “After that, things was bad as ever.”

  Abe quit spinning his glass and pointed to it.

  Sam poured. He watched a long-legged centipede scurry across the floor.

  Abe saw it too. “Saloon shark,” he said. “Step on it.” These were words uttered at one time by each of those who lived and worked in the family saloon. It was ritualistic sport passed down and enjoyed by all.

  Sam gave chase and stomped four times, but the little gray bug was fast against the floor trim and took refuge behind a stack of newspapers in the corner.

  “You ain’t practiced any killin in seven years?” Abe said.

  Sam wiped at the sweat in his mustache with the kerosene rag.

  Abe watched his brother’s hands to see just how they shook. “Well,” he said. Then nothing for a time. “Goldie’s well?”

  Sam thought on it, then answered. “Yes, though she’s acquired a mean streak. Cusses not a little.” He made a face to indicate the degree. “She runs Fat Ruth’s.”

  “Ruth?”

  “Disappeared. Most likely dead.” He looked at the wall clock, stopped again and displaying nothing of use. He told Abe, “Mother reckons Jake is holding on until you get there and say goodbye.”

  Abe nodded and stood from his stool. “I’m going to put my things upstairs before I go.” All those years gone and he’d kept the key.

  He stepped inside his old room and locked the door behind him. It stunk of mildew in there. The window shades were drawn. There were wood crates stacked beside the window, and each wore a uniform watermark on its side—clay-colored stains as proof they’d once resided flood-level in the storeroom. It seemed most everything had come up from below. A straight-knee snow sleigh leaned against the far wall, rusty runners bent from hitting rock. Once, a month after Abe had turned eight, a blizzard left Keystone covered, and he’d lain on Jake’s back astride the sleigh and shot down the mountain, house to town, narrowly missing the bone-hard trunks of thick-coming trees.

  The big wardrobe was shoved in a different corner than before. He opened it and bent to the false bottom. He reached behind and tripped the latch and slid the slat and lifted. It had not been touched. He pulled out the money and smelled it. He counted the twelve hundred in notes he’d not been able to rescue the night he had to run. They were neither mildewed nor crinkled.

  He put the money back, added most of the seventy-five hundred he’d brought from Baltimore, and slid closed the slat.

  His suitcase was open on the bed, and he took from it his suits and shirts, and he hung them. At the bottom of the suitcase were the two boxes Bushels had wrapped in oilcloth. He set them on top of the wardrobe.

  He took stock of himself as he always did when the nature of coming circumstances was unpredictable. He double-checked his vest pockets, both the conventional and the hidden variety. He had ample monies and his spur-trigger pistol and his watch and his nail dagger. Because the present circumstances were exceptionally unpredictable, he’d hidden in the barrel cuffs of his shirtsleeves smaller nails to be used, if need be, for picking locks or stabbing a man in the testicles should a desperate situation present itself.

  His patting of himself was ritualistic and meant to stir confidence, but this time, it did not work. The weight of what he’d find up at the house pressed on his lungs and moved up his throat, and for a moment he wondered if his lack of sleep might catch him this time.

  He walked to the window. He lifted the shade and looked in the street, and there, striding toward the saloon, was Goldie Toothman.

  That’s when it caught him and put out his lights, and on his way to the floor, his head banged the very sill where he’d riffled those cards and watched her all those years.

  His fall produced two heavy clunks, and from below Sam Baach looked at the ceiling. He knew the sound of a man hitting the floor, and he uttered to himself, “What in blue blazes?” just as Goldie came through the door.

  The screen creaked and slapped behind her. She’d drunk a pot of coffee. She asked, “Any word from Baltimore?”

  Sam pointed to the ceiling. “He’s in his room,” he said. “I believe he’s just collapsed on the floor.”

  When there was no answer to their pounding, Sam fetched the key ring from the empty money box.

  When the door was opened, Goldie went quick to Abe. She knelt at his side and held his head against her thighs. There was a pump knot taking shape under the hair above his ear. There was another long-since formed at the back of his skull. “Good Lord he’s beat up,” she said. She ran her finger along the scar at his jaw. She listened to him sleep-breathe.

  Sam stood over her. It occurred to him then that he was some sort of devil barkeep, that the drinks he poured were bound to curse his brothers. “He only had three or four swallows,” he said.

  “Looks tired.” Still, she thought, he was more handsome than when he’d left.

  When he came to and saw her looking down at him, he said, “Well I’ll be a tallow-faced prairie dog.”

  Goldie laughed to keep the crying at bay.

  Sam looked at the two of them together on the floor. He said he’d go down to the icebox and fetch a frozen cut of meat for the swelling.

  Abe could scarcely believe she was there above him. She was more beautiful than when he’d left. He sat up and asked her, “Can I hug you?”

  She said he could, and it was quiet then, and they did not come apart until Sam was back.

  They stood and Abe took the stringy cut of meat and regarded it. “Last I heard,” he said, “shoe leather doesn’t take swelling down.”

  Sam took it back. “I’ll put some salt on there,” he said, “lay it on a hot coal shovel over the embers—it’s good as any you’ll eat.”

  “It’s a real Delmonico
is it?” Abe said.

  Goldie asked if he’d been up to the house. When he indicated that’s where he was headed, she said she’d come along.

  “I’ve said my goodbye already,” Sam told them. He said he’d be there at five for dinner.

  They’d need to take the long route to avoid Railroad Avenue. Abe did not want it known he was home.

  In the woods, they moved fast and single file, Goldie in the lead. He watched her as he climbed. It didn’t matter where he looked—the heel of her boot or the nape of her neck or the place beneath her waist—she stirred in him a thing he’d not felt in seven years. He found that his trousers tented unless he looked at the horse path, but he could not look away from her for long, and this pattern of pecker protraction and contraction continued all the way up the hill, and despite his repeated crotchal adjustments, it was the most discomforting hike of his life. He stopped at a beech tree to adjust and took note of a fish someone had carved in the bark.

  Goldie hollered at him over her shoulder. “Climb!”

  The sound of it made him smile.

  At the grass bald below the second house, Abe had gotten his trousers under control, and he’d begun to consider all that had to be considered. He asked if they could stop for a minute. “I only heard about your father’s passing yesterday,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  When he started to go on, she stopped him. “Why don’t we talk this evening,” she said.

  In the front yard of Hood House, from just behind the fading rate sign, Sallie had watched them come on the horse path, her eye pressed against the blued steel scope of a rifle. She kept watch in this manner three times a day, training on whatever moved in the woods. She had done so ever since Al was shot in the kneecap, ever since Trent had proven himself utterly mad and unpredictable as the wind.