A Hanging at Cinder Bottom

Jake dried the mugs and kept his back to their patrons.

“What can I get you Mr. Rutherford?” Abe asked.

“I’m not staying for a drink.” He reached in his jacket pocket. “I come to bring you a note from Mr. Trent.” He handed over the sealed envelope, Abraham Baach on its face.

Abe thanked him.

Rutherford ignored him and looked at Al. “Jew Baach,” he said, “your boy played some mighty strong hands today.”

“He is a smart boy.” Al wiped with his rag at a sticky spot beneath his wedding ring.

“That’s what they tell me,” Rutherford said. He regarded the strange oil painting tacked up on the wall, a wide crude depiction of a house on a mountain, a homemade job. Below it was a shelf with a half-empty pipe rack and a framed lithograph of Lincoln that stared back at patrons no matter their stool. “You all know Taffy Reed I’d imagine,” Rutherford said, motioning to his companion.

Each man nodded at Taffy, who nodded back.

Rutherford looked over his shoulder at the young man. “For all I know, you’re in here every payday Taffy,” he said. “Baach serves niggers and under eighteen both.” He laughed.

“All men are welcome in my saloon,” Al Baach told him, “but the patron must be eighteen for beer, twenty-one for spirits.”

“I’m only pullin your leg,” Rutherford said.

Taffy Reed scratched under his wool cap. He chewed on a toothpick he’d soaked overnight in a jar of homemade whiskey.

“Alhambra’s no-nigger policy won’t last,” Rutherford said. “Mark my words, inside a couple years, Trent will be letting em in like the rest of Keystone does—ain’t no other way when they come to be a majority.” He regarded his fingernails, which were in need of trimming.

Jake scooted the gold pieces off the counter into his open hand. He put them in his pocket.

“What you got there Jake Baach?” Rutherford asked.

“Nothin.”

“Somethin can’t be nothin,” Rutherford said. He stared down the Lincoln lithograph. “You got any pickled eggs?”

“No,” Jake said.

“How about just regular hardboiled.”

“Plumb out.”

Rutherford looked at the mantel clock under Abe Lincoln. Breakfast wasn’t too far off. Every morning of his life, Rutherford ate a half dozen hardboiled eggs. As of late he’d had a penchant for the pickled variety.

“I can put on some coffee,” Abe said.

Rutherford just sat. “Seems like your crowd here didn’t make it to the hotel’s big opening,” he said. “Or if they did, they came awful late.”

Nobody said a word.

Taffy Reed flipped his toothpick and bit down the fresh end.

“Look here,” Rutherford said, turning his attention once more to Al. “Word come down that you ain’t on the hook anymore for monthly payments.”

Al could scarcely believe his ears.

Rutherford looked at Abe and spat again on the floor. Then he smiled at Al. “But what’s say for old time’s sake you go on and give me one last handful.”

Al said he supposed he could do that.

Abe watched his Daddy turn and open the money bag. He whispered the numbers as he subtracted from his count.

Before they left, Rutherford told Abe, “I reckon I’ll be seeing more of you real soon.”

In Rutherford’s fist was the last of the consideration money he’d collect from any Baach. He muttered as he left. He had work to do. A young coke-yarder had passed out on the tracks and been cut in two. Rutherford would have to drain what was left from him, and affix him again in a singular piece, and pump him full of preservation juice. Or, if he was tired enough, and if he reckoned there was no kin to miss the boy, he’d wheelbarrow his two halves up Buzzard Branch to the old bootleg slope mine. He’d unlock the big square cover and dump the boy down. Either way, he had work to do before he could retire to his room at the Alhambra, where he would skim from the take like he always did and put a single dollar with the rest of his secret things, inside a locked trunk under his bed.

Jake watched Rutherford leave and said, “There is something wrong with that man.”

Al shook his head. “He likes to make believe he is powerful like his boss.”

“Well ain’t he?” Jake produced his tool chest from beneath the bar and poured himself a beer.

“He look like he is to you?” Abe said.

Al thought on acknowledging the cessation of collection. He wondered for a moment if his middle boy might indeed have found the way, if Trent might finally cut them in on the real money. But he was tired. He told them he was heading upstairs to bed. “Please don’t hammer tonight,” he told his oldest boy.

“Only cuts,” Jake said. He was building an arch and batten for the stage.

They watched their Daddy back through the swinging door with the money bags. “Goodnight boys,” he said.

They said it back in unison.

Jake finished off his beer, crossed the room, and set to work with a pencil in his teeth.

It was customary for Abe to watch his brother mark and cut. He’d done so for years, ordinarily while he counted his daily take or practiced his card manipulations. He gave Jake the nickname Knot, for Jake would stare at a two-by-four knothole for ten minutes. He would turn lengths of wood in his hand and he’d sniff at butt cuts, and in all those years of moments he rarely spoke a word. Abe found peace in his brother’s wood rituals. It was, for each of them, as if they’d found a quiet place, a place both together and alone.