A Hanging at Cinder Bottom Read Free Page B

in Keystone on the ninth of January in the year 1880.” The people listened. “Up to April, I had not stepped foot in this place for seven years.” He looked at them. “Most of you people know me, even if you act like you don’t.” His voice carried clear to those in the trees. “My mother is Sallie Hood of the Burke MountainHoods. My daddy is Al Baach.” Men from outlying counties yawned and checked their pocket watches. “Maybe you drank something once upon a time in his saloon on Wyoming Street,” Abe said. “I served plenty of you, and so did my brothers Jake and Sam.”
    Two dogs got into it at the foot of a hillside birch tree. Their throated snarls turned the heads of most in the crowd until a girl kicked their snouts apart and the smaller one ran for cover under a tall horse.
    Abe pointed his shackled hands at an old man who stood at the fence with his knotty fingers intwined. “Right down here is ole Warts Wickline,” Abe shouted. “When I wasn’t but knee-high, I’d set up on the bartop and play dishrag peek-a-boo with this gentleman right here in front of me.”
    “Handsome baby,” Warts Wickline said. His neck was covered in skin tags of varying size and shade. “He done a dance up there, stuck out his little hand for a cent piece.” None could hear him but those in proximity, and the crowd along the edges murmured and moved. The old man kept on. “Stuffed your britches with them pennies didn’t you,” he called up to Abe. “We called you Pretty Boy Baach back then.”
    Abe nodded his head. “I remember,” he said.
    The whistle of the westbound noon train came faint on the air. It was nine minutes behind schedule. The rain slowed.
    “There’s a good many of you that want me to take out my cards and show you a trick or two,” Abe called out. “There’sa good many more wants to know the truth of who does the killin around here and who fires their gun in defense.” He held up his wrists. “It’s hard when you’re shackled, but I’ll oblige.” And he opened his clasped hands, and in them he held a fresh deck.
    Rutherford’s stomach made a watery sound. He didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.
    Abe split the deck’s seal with his thumbnail and said, “At the end of it, if the law is still standing behind me, he can by God yank the handle.”
    There was a rumble among them then. Some had had enough of this talk from a convicted criminal. “Go on and stretch his neck,” somebody called. One woman yelled that Goldie was a whore. Another man advised not to listen to a half-Jew swindler such as Abe. Others leaned to the ones in front and asked what it was that ole Warts Wickline had said, and when told, they passed it on to another who’d inquired, and so it spread, and there were those then uncertain about the hanging of such a beautiful young woman and a handsome man who’d once been a boy who peek-a-booed and danced for a britches penny. Those uncertain knew themselves to be good then, and they leered at those about who were drouthy for spilt blood.
    Reed leaned to Rutherford and whispered, “I best put them ankle irons back on.” Rutherford nodded, and Reed knelt before Abe and set to work.
    “Yank the handle!” a skinny boy said.
    An old woman said no. She said the condemned ought to be able to say his piece.
    The people were stirring, talking loud over the slacking rain.
    Rutherford had seen enough. He bent to the nooses where they hung and gathered their lengths in his fist, and as he did, a tingling commenced in his fingers and toes, and thereupon Abe let loose a booming invocation which carried to the scant trees on the ridge and beyond. “I’ll tell the truth before I die,” he roared, “or I’ll walk out of hell in kerosene drawers and set the world on fire!”
    Rutherford was still bent at the waist when he let go the rope lengths. He wobbled, then dropped to his knees. When his face hit the boards, there came from his backside a mighty gust. It escaped