A Hanging at Cinder Bottom - Glenn Taylor

Glenn Taylor

A Hanging at Cinder Bottom

AUTHORS 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 Margarets 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 Keystones 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.

A HANGING AT CINDER BOTTOM

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 floors 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. Hed turned thirty in January. Most considered him the handsomest man theyd seen, though he wore a wide scar across his jaw.

At the pith, the condemned man was good, but hed 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 womans 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 couldnt hear him, she sang things like, Theres 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 Alhambras stage while the melody built. High above, crouched on the fly rig, the man who was now condemned had hummed along, and hed spat tobacco juice down upon the stage from a height that caused much spatter, and hed cursed the magician for having not paid the gambling debt hed owed.

The tunes they hummed to each other down the corridor and through the drainpipes had meanings. Theyd 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 theyd requested, and she knew hed not be able to take his eyes off her, for even after a month in the pokey, the condemned woman was the cats 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 oclock 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 oclock, three thousand people had gathered at Keystone in order that they might witness a public hanging in the state of West Virginia. Thered 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 theyd hang just as soon as the big black oak was roped. This hed proclaimed inside the jailers office, with exactly seven men present. Rutherford had believed that such actualities would prohibit words 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 chiefs beliefs 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 nights 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. Im to fetch the chicken at ten.

What about my noontime eggs? Rutherford said. He hadnt yet eaten a thing.

Theyll 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 shell 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 trunks 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 youll 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.