A Hanging at Cinder Bottom (32 page)

He sat down on his heels in front of them, forearms against his knees. The gun hung lazy in his hand. “I’m taking everything,” he said.

Trent stood on the passenger station platform and took out his watch for the second time. It was a quarter to seven.

In his fist was a bouquet of wildflowers, still wet at the cut stem bottoms. He’d earlier sent Taffy Reed to pick them from a dry midden ditch out back of Fred’s club. “Put em in a dish a water,” he’d told Taffy.

He hadn’t noticed until now the dirt and tiny brown glass shards spoiling the bouquet. The glass caught the station lights and sparkled along purple soapwort petals. He blew on the flower and brushed away the filth. He tried to stand straight.

In the distance, somebody shot off a skyrocket.

Tony Thumbs materialized from the station’s dark overhang. “Evening,” he called to Trent.

The monkey was still on the man’s shoulder, and Trent thought immediately that Rufus had been right. The animal was staring him down. It wore a lethargic scowl.

Tony’s bow tie was brightly colored. His pants were black satin striped. He held forth an old round flask in offering.

“No thank you,” Trent said. He looked again at the monkey. “He looks like he could use it,” he said.

“Oh no,” Tony said. He chuckled. “Baz only drinks ale.”

Trent looked again at his watch.

Tony forced a smile. “I trust you got the message about Mercurio’s delay?”

“I wouldn’t be standing here if I hadn’t.”

There was an ache in Tony’s hand. It happened when he grew nervous. There were times when he swore he could feel his old thumb twiddling. “I suppose not,” he answered. “I only—”

Another skyrocket boomed in the gray cast air over the Union Club.

Baz watched the outward yellow burst and screeched. He moved his head side to side and nibbled nervous at Tony’s ear.

Trent squinted and regarded the far-off evening sky around his establishment, too distant to make anything out. “It’s not even dark yet,” he said. “Who’s shootin off fireworks?” He didn’t care for the wind’s present direction. It happened sometimes, a southerly gust. A carrying-in of the coke-oven cinders from across the creek. It was why he employed a man to scrub his palace. It was why he wanted land high up on a hill.

Baz made a sound like a cat pushing hairballs.

Trent frowned at the monkey and checked again his timepiece.

Peering out from under the telegraph tarp, Chesh Whitt wondered who was firing skyrockets before dark. He watched the tail of smoke mix with the cinders blowing
off the ridge like summer snow, their hot brick ovens of origin blurring night with day. He fanned himself with the top of a cigar box and tucked back under. “Anything?” he said.

The telegraph operator was growing annoyed at the young man. She ignored him and took the latest wire. “Ninth round is over,” she said. “Johnson left hook to liver staggers Jeffries.”

Chesh bobbed again from under the tarp. He took up the tin bullhorn. “You hear that men!” he shouted. “Left hook to Jeffries’ liver! He’s on his way out! Gettin chopped like a big white birch tree!”

One man whooped and fell off his chair. Most ignored Chesh in favor of reconsidering how to best use their bankrolls. They were oiled up on booze and coiled and cocked at the thought of their black champion finally whipping white man’s best. The one-eyed policeman chalked the board and took side bets on round ten.

Fred Reed whispered in the ear of the short policeman, “Watch that Whitt boy.”

Chesh’s daddy came over on his way out of the yard. He’d seen enough. He scolded his boy for the second time. “You’re embarrassing yourself,” he said. “There are a few men here among the trash who have character.” He straightened the knot of his necktie. “Write up the fight as soon as it’s done. I want the morning edition off the press by four.”

Chesh told his daddy he could give him the headline right then and there. He moved his hands and fingers on the air as if setting type. “How about this?” he asked. “
Negro proven superior to white man in every regar
d
?”

“Stay off the whiskey,” J. T. Whitt said. He donned his hat. “And keep your mouth shut.”

Talbert walked to the long lobby’s far wall. He moved aside a shear and looked out the side window and watched Rose Cantu pull the Chambers-Detroit into the alley. He stepped back and sighed and returned to the front desk. “You two,” he said to the stupid lobby men, “go cross the bridge stand in the Bottom and keep your eyes open. Don’t do a fuckin thing but look around unless I tell you, and stay posted until I come call you back in.”

They walked out the big front doors without a word.

Talbert watched them through the tall front window before he returned to his desk and double-checked that the grain bags were tucked inside the kneehole.

It was quiet and dark at the side stage door when he swung it open. Abe and Goldie were there just as planned. They stood beneath the awning holding hands. No one spoke. Abe nodded to indicate they’d not been seen, and Goldie shut the door behind. She handed Talbert a black Russian dogskin coat left behind by a patron of Fat Ruth’s.
It was Christmas Eve when the man’s wife had tracked him there, and she’d run him out onto Wyoming Street with a tack hammer raised over her head.

Talbert folded the heavy coat over his arm.

They followed him to the emptied lobby, where they crawled into the kneehole of the big front desk. It was dark. They pulled their knees to their chests and rested their chins. They faced each other and listened.

Talbert stepped into the main card room at two minutes to seven. Three tables of midlevel poker men paid him no mind. He stepped to the long counter, put his boot on the foot rail, and waved over the barkeep with two fingers.

The man set down his rag and ambled over slow.

“Girl just come in out of breath,” Talbert told him. “She’d run clear from the Bottom, your neighbor I believe. Said your wife had fallen off the short ladder and cracked her head on the range.”

“What?” He’d stood straight from where he leaned. He untied his apron with trembling hands.

“Best get home. I’ll tend to the drinks.”

Nothing else was spoken. Barkeep was around the counter and gone.

Talbert stepped behind the bar and bent low to the hay-hook shotgun. He broke it open quiet, replaced the two shot shells with black powder blanks, and hung it back.

From the kneehole, Abe and Goldie listened to the barkeep’s footfalls as he passed and hit the big front doors. Abe
squeezed Goldie’s hand tight. “Just one more and you’re on,” he whispered.

Out on the bridge, the stupid lobby men leaned against the handrails and laughed at the barkeep’s desperate gait. “He ain’t got the wind for that,” one said.

Munchy was on Trent’s office door. He’d noticed the barkeep’s hasty exit, and now he awaited Talbert, who presently approached.

Before he stepped to Trent’s office, Talbert made for the corner partition wall, where he hung the heavy coat on the farthest hook. He remembered when Jake Baach had framed the wall up, and it seemed fitting to him then as he double-checked the right pocket.

When Talbert stepped back out and came to the door, Munchy asked after the barkeep. “What’s crawled up his shit shoot?” he said.

“It’s what’s crawlin out,” Talbert told him. “Venison had turned and he ate it anyhow. He’ll be out of the lavatory in five minutes or so.”

“Well,” Munchy said. “We all got to eat a peck of dirt before we die.”

Talbert said he reckoned we did. Then he made his customary tap on the door and waited a moment and went through.

Munchy took up his halved paper again.

Around the Oak Slab, it was quiet save the clack of thrown-in chips and the mumbled repeat of “check” and
“fold.” The men paid Talbert no mind as he shut the door and took a seat against the wall next to Rufus Beavers. It was dark there in the corner, and Talbert leaned to the man’s ear and whispered what he’d rehearsed. “There’s trouble next door at Fred’s. Johnson is whipping Jeffries. Mr. Trent sent word from the station, said to have you step in.”

Rufus shut his eyes and shook his head.

Talbert kept on. “Said to take the cut barrel from under the bar, make an example of any coloreds get too proud.”

Rufus sighed. He handed the leather bank pouch to Talbert and looked him in the eyes. He kept his voice low. “You stay right here in this room.” He pointed to the pouch. “There’s a six-shot under the money,” he said.

Talbert nodded.

Rufus stood and stepped to the table. Little Donnie had just folded, and the one they’d named Woodrow pulled his chips. Rufus forced a smile and said, “Men, I’m going to see what’s holding up the drinks. I won’t be long.” He gave Little Donnie a look.

Little Donnie nodded that he understood. These city boys needed close watch.

When he’d gone through the office and closed the door behind him, Rufus grabbed the halved paper from Munchy’s fat grip and threw it across the floor. “You keep your eyes here,” he said, motioning at the room behind him. He inquired on the barkeep’s absentia.

“Diarrhea,” Munchy said. “Back in five minutes.”

Rufus shook his head yet again and marveled at the ineptitude of his associates. “Tell him I took the shotgun,” he said.

When Rufus stepped lively through the lobby, Abe recognized the sound of his gait.

The front doors shut, and they crawled from the kneehole.

The seven o’clock train arrived eight minutes behind schedule. Trent held his drooped bouquet with both hands and licked his teeth to be sure no food remained. He watched a mother step on the platform stool with a squalling baby bucking in her arms. A young man jumped off behind her with his cardboard grip half-open, a faulty latch swinging loose. “
This
is Keystone?” he said.

Trent had an uneasy feeling, and it wasn’t indigestion.

Tony had scooted into the overhang’s shadow once again. On account of his nerves, he’d earlier taken too much of a new powder, and now he was foggy. He’d forgotten the details of his role upon train’s arrival. He could remember neither his exit cue nor the whereabouts of his luggage.

An older gentleman stepped off the train with an umbrella hooked on his arm. He straightened his suspenders. He squinted and adjusted his spectacles. He had superior night vision when he wore them, and so it was that he spotted Baz, and in turn, Tony. “Tony Thumbs?” he called.