GROG WARS, DOS

Portland, Oregon

“A Necktie Sociable Will Occur.” The flyer with the provocative title flapped on every piling along the pier. On further scrutiny, the same flyer was tacked next to the door of every business, and pasted to every hitching post. The media loved a good hanging.

Small wonder public hangings in Oregon could get as big a crowd as the circus brought out. This crowd was much bigger and much quieter than usual. But one would suppose the hanging of a child for the crime of murder was a bigger spectacle than most. The elder of two fishermen glanced down Front Street a short spell, to about Block 106, since that was the location of the new jail and the source of the disturbance. The street was already packed with onlookers. Seemed this particular hanging party brought out droves of curious folks from 30 miles around Portland--more than a quarter the population of the territory, some folks were saying. The carpenters put the finishing touches on the gallows while the strangely silent crowd looked on. The older angler shivered. It was only the first of October, but winter’s morning mist was already clinging to the cold, dried mud of the thoroughfare.

“Aw…they gonna hang that little blonde girl?” said the younger, brain-addled angler.

“Shhh”, the older man warned. He elbowed his slow-witted friend in the ribs as they entered Castle Brew House. “See that sad puss over by the window, staring at the Willamette like someone just shot his dog? That’s August Shoemacher, the doomed girl’s beau.” He swiped off his hat and crunched it under his armpit. He nodded at the barkeep. “And this here is Leo, his Pa.”

“Hey’a”, the friend said in greeting. The two men slid barstools apart for themselves, trying not to intrude on the room’s hush. They had a clear view of the platform on which the young girl now stood and they found themselves staring at her. Catching himself, the friend turned to the barkeep. “Say, Leo...I’m real sorry about, er, for your family’s…unhappiness.” Leo nodded in reply.

In a booming voice that forgot all about the respectful silence, the awkward friend said, “But can I tell ya? I ain’t never have’d seen such a pretty…um, judged woman, er, girl, really. Did ya look at her? Perfect hair with that tidy ribbon; her eyes don’t show no signs of fear or crying and her brows ain’t furrowed. No sirs, she don’t look like no doomed woman on her hangin’ day--not to me. She looks like she’s goin’ to the market, good and proper.”

August picked his head up off the bar and turned on his stool. Unlike his girlfriend, August’s eyes did show signs of bawling—and perchance something more at that particular moment, something akin to violence. His expression was filled with loathing for the insensitive drinker, and Lord knew he was itching to pummel a man. But it was not the angler, who was obviously hindered of mind, who August had been thinking of. Anyway, he was in no shape for a fight. Oh, how his head pounded! The muscles that ran from his shoulders up his neck were screaming bloody murder.

The older fisherman took his soft hat and swatted his friend about his soft head, before stuffing the hat in his back pocket. “What did I say?”

“You said, ‘Shhh’.”

“Then, Shhh!”

The friend shook his head in frustration. “I’m sorry. I--”

“It’s okay. Let’s just get to that ‘World’s Best Beer’ I promised you,” the angler said.

But his simple companion could not be quiet on the matter. He hushed his rough voice to nearly a whisper, which only proved more disruptive inside the quiet pub. “I heard since the city leased the prison to that company what runs it, and the company started working them prisoners for money, they ain’t had a prisoner yet who din’t escape.”

“So?” The friend replied with mounting frustration.

“So, why didn’t he jus’ escape to Mexico with her?” He rasped.

“How ’bout I make for that escape right this minute, only I wear your head for my hat?” August hissed through his teeth at the senseless man. He drained his stein; his head pounded. In his current distraught state, his threat held a slight fascination. If he were to kill the man where he sat, would Portlanders hang him for it—hang him right beside Kancy?

He had been so certain Kancy Crawley was the one for him, even if he was eight years her senior; certain their budding romance, a matter of love at first sight, would inevitably lead to a marriage and children.

“They don’t give work furloughs to murder convicts, fool.” The elder angler whispered to his friend.

“Get the hell out of here!” August startled the slow-witted man out of his stool, while his friend snatched his hat from his pocket and was half out the door before he could pat it to his head.

“Beg pardon, Mr. August. I didn’ mean nothin’—I don’ think clear ’fore I talk, is what they say of me. I’m real sorry. I really am.” The man rushed to offer an apology as he dashed away.

Leo strolled over wearing a white bar towel over his forearm. He shook his eldest son’s shoulder. That warranted him no result, so he tousled the young man’s pale curls. “Go home. You know you should not be here. No man should have to…son, please, go home.”

August raised his head and shook it miserably. “Isn’t there anything we can do? What about Mr. Gaines, Soleil’s friend? Hell, he used to be governor. Can’t he do anything to help?” He swiped at his running nose. “She didn’t mean to do it, Father. It was an accident. It was just an awful accident.” He shook his head again, face to the bar, before dissolving into sobs and perhaps some words that were unintelligible.

Leo patted his boy’s head with affection. “She confessed to doing it. There is nothing for us to do. The judge said she seems nigh well to crave her punishment. I am sorry, son. But, it is you who I worry for. I have seen you flinch with the pounding of every nail. You have not slept. You have naught but beer for sustenance. I want you to eat something and then I want you to go home and sleep. You should not be here for this.”

August collapsed his head on his forearms, too tired to argue. Leo nodded at his younger son, Joseph. He was just twenty-three years of age and already co-owner of Castle Brewing Exchange’s Oregon brewery. Joseph’s shoulders and biceps bulged against the rolled up fabric of his shirtsleeves. Tossing sacks of grain and caskets of ale was muscle-building business, and one which both boys had worked since they were sixteen years old, respectively. He picked up another basin filled with dirty mugs and assorted dishware and headed for the kitchen to prepare something for his brother.

Leo took August’s beer mug away and replaced it with a Tasse, the restaurant’s specialty coffee drink. Leo still marveled that in America, anyone could roast coffee; it was not a privilege permitted only to the rich, as it was in the Fatherland. In America, there was no permit required at all. “Drink it. Get something hot into you. Joseph will return shortly with your dinner.”

Her hands and feet had been strapped; two men in dark suits placed her atop the trap. A black hood and robe had been properly offered and squarely refused.

One spectator, working his chaw like a cow works its cud, nudged the much taller man next to him. “I bet a day of wages she’d be obliged to suicide ’fore this day arrived. My wife will poison me when she learns of it.”

The man chuckled. He stuck out a hand. “Marvin’s the name. Good to meet you. Say, how many hangings has your sheriff done?”

“Don’t know. What’s it matter how many he done? He jus’ pulls a pin, is the whole of it.” The man rifled a line of tobacco juice toward the mud at his feet.

“Oh, my friend, you are incorrect. I write for a small publication that insists I copy every minute detail of these poorly named ‘parties’. There is a science to it all; how far the body should drop, for instance. If she were to fall too far, her head could be ripped clean off and there would be a bloody mess, I can tell you.”

“Aw, Lordy,” the smaller man murmured. “I don’ wanna see that.”

“Yes, I agree. But then if she fails to drop far enough, she could hang and twist for some time before strangling to death. Her eyes will bulge and her tongue will swell and protrude. And they always lose control of their, uh…their—”

“Selves?” the other man offered.

“Uh, no. They lose control of their nether-regions.” The reporter answered.

“How’s that?”

“They defecate. And urinate. I saw one man strangle for twenty minutes before giving in, but they always do--give in, that is.”

“Ah! I don’ wanna see that, neither,” the pitch of the small man’s voice rose.

“I completely agree. It’s a sight that will haunt your sleep, I can tell you. A right solid snapping of the neck is what you want--a nice clean break, if you will. Now, I see your sheriff hadn’t the good sense to keep women and children away from this spectacle. But that’s why I asked you how many--?” The man named Marvin looked about. The little man had vanished.

“Is there anything you wish to confess?” the acting-Sheriff waited but received no reply. “Come now. Did you mean to kill that baby or didn’t you?” he asked.

“I already answered the judge. I am not confessing a single evil deed to a paltry one of you. But I do want to say I’m sorry to August.”

The two men at the brew house pricked their ears, as the ethereal sound of the girl’s childish voice carried on the breeze. She was hollering toward the brewpub, to August. “I’m sorry, August. I, I just wanted her to sleep a spell.”

The two men looked to each other. The younger man’s nerves were clearly raw as he strained to hear her words. Leo stepped to the door and opened it a crack so they could hear the girl more clearly, should she choose to speak again. She did, within moments.

“I only wanted to be courted by a nice boy. I’d never been.” She watched with indifference as the jailer walked to the bolt-pull and placed his hand on it. “I told the truth. Cassy was only supposed to sleep, August. I swear it! I loved my baby. It’s just…Mama never would have let me go out with you.”

She was attracting quite a lot of attention. Many of the townsfolk, passersby and Looky-Lou’s began to amass around the platform. They had been hoping to hear from the girl’s own lips why she did away with her baby. It seemed nearly the whole township was listening to her, but she didn’t know what August could hear amid the hubbub from the gathering crowd. She stamped her foot one time on the hastily built platform, showing her first sign of frustration. The mannerism stabbed August through his heart with sorrow. He loved her gesture of exasperation, which was reminiscent of his own Aunt Lily.

He mumbled into his sleeve, “I swear it, Father; until that night--until they came for her, I never knew she had a baby.”

Kancy was only a teen—just a child, herself, and she knew she would die on that day. But the girl shed not one hot tear for herself. Instead, she was resolute--but suddenly angry at the injustice of it all. “Mama never made Pearl stay at home, and Cassy was his baby, too!” She hollered to the shock and revulsion of her fellow Oregonians.

“Arghhh!” August shouted before he grabbed a brass spittoon from the floor and vomited into it.

Leo watched his older son suffer and wished he could take the pain for him. The poor boy fell hard, and after only two occasions to court the girl. He suspected there was more to it than that. Before Kancy, August’s earlier sweetheart of nearly four years had delivered him a bolt from the blue when she left him for a former beau. She had kept in touch with the boy by post and when she reached the age of eighteen, she ran away to marry him without offering so much as a ‘fare-thee-well’ in August’s direction.

The selfish girl had left Leo’s eldest reeling. But then Kancy’s folks moved to Portland with her and an older brother, Pearl. Kancy Crawley strongly resembled August’s Aunt Lily, a woman August revered. Plus, he was lovesick over his recent jilting. The poor boy never stood a chance.

Much quieter to the crowd at her feet, Kancy marveled, “I would have expected Portland to see me a good death, if not an untimely one, being a frontier town with a rifle behind every fern. I never would have imagined this.”

Though high noon, Front Street grew strangely quiet. Kancy informed her jailer she reckoned she had already said her piece and she was eager to be reunited with her daughter. She seemed quite calm as she watched him pull the bolt to the trap door beneath her feet.

The sound from the clunky contraption was unmistakable. “Noooo!” August collapsed into his father’s chest, just as his younger brother entered from the kitchen.

Leo looked over his shoulder; first, he eyed the drama below the platform, noting the men were cutting Kancy down in haste. The execution was successful. The rope had snapped Kancy’s neck clean; she died quick and without a struggle. Then Leo noted his younger son and he motioned him over with his head. “Son, I am sending you home. Joseph will escort you.” He handed the ruined man over to his younger brother. “Take him home, make him eat that meal,” Leo nodded at the wrapped bundle. “And see to it he gets some sleep.” Leo palmed Joseph some powder to put in August’s water.

He smoothed the hair of his eldest, trying to force the love in his hands through to his son’s mind. But he knew as sure as he was a German that his son’s mind could only be balmed by one thing; Pearl Crawley’s head on a spike. He could not blame his son if revenge was on his mind—it is what Leo, his own self, would want. It is what he had wanted for many years.

Leo blamed Regis Kaufmann, father to Burke and Bryce and uncle-by-law to his sons, for the death of his sister. He had nearly tasted the electric, metallic charge of revenge; indeed, the memory had it swirling about him again. But it was not in him to make orphans of his precious nephews—there were three of them before the eldest, Hans, met his premature death. Leo had loved them all. He was thankful Regis finally did meet his comeuppance, some ten or so years earlier, without any help from him. Kaufmann killed himself and the prostitute he was consorting with, in a drunken cart accident many, many miles from their hometown of Mainz.

As Leo gave his two boys a gentle push toward the door, he wondered if Pearl Crawley could do his son a similar favor. Maybe he would get himself killed during one of his thieving escapades. Maybe he already had. No one had seen Pearl Crawley in almost a week.

“I’ll come back when August is settled in.” Joseph tossed over his shoulder as his right boot coaxed the door to open wider.

In the harsh early afternoon light, Joseph squinted toward the jail and saw men carrying a bundle into the undertaker’s shop. Already, carpenters were dismantling the platform. Joseph supported his brother, veering him away from any view of the street.

Fifty feet out the brewery’s door August stopped his sobbing. He seemed to need much less support from his brother as well. August lifted his face to his brother and softly told him, “I am going to kill Pearl Crawley for what he’s done.”

“I know you feel like that now, bu—.”

“And I will feel like it tomorrow and the next day, and every day until he’s dead.” August shirked off his brother’s arm to face him. “She only just turned nineteen years old. In the jail yesterday, Kancy told me Pearl raped her, his own sister, when she was just sixteen. First her parents made her have the baby, and then those damned gypsies forced her to keep the child and be sole provider for her. Kancy said she loved that baby and I believe her. But she was feeling like her own life was over—she had not been allowed to go out for nearly two years. I guess it was over for her either way. Not for Pearl, though. No, sirree. Pearl gets away free.”

“Yes, I…I don’t know what to say about that. It was a shock to hear it. I am sorry, August. I really am. I liked her.” Joseph meant it. August noticed his brother’s eyes watered for Kancy, too. “She was pretty and often funny, in her way, and she smiled so sweetly.” Joseph shook his head with sadness. “Boy, she never once let on she was (pause)…living in such a state.”

“Kancy’d reached her limit, I guess. It was upsetting to hear her tell all of Portland their ugly family business before she left us, but I’m glad she did it. Now Pearl cannot show his face in Portland, and folks will see her parents for what they are: monsters--thieving, drunken gypsies and assaulters of children.”

August walked without assistance as they approached the hill to their home. It was the house their Uncle Burke had built for Lily. He stared up at the comely Victorian manor. “Do you want to hear what they told Kancy about how she got her name?” He asked his brother.

Joseph shrugged. “Sure.”

“Her mama was supposed to name Kancy after her maternal grandmother, Nancy. She had drunk so much alcohol she could barely hold a nib in her hand, and the midwife mistook the N for a K. When they told Kancy’s ma that correcting it was a simple matter of signing a new card, she answered that the infant girl was only hours old and already a bother. Kancy it was.” August glanced at his brother before he started up the hill. “They let Pearl go off and do any number of hoodlum things, day or night, but they made Kancy stay at home--always. She told me she felt like a prisoner at home, same as the jail cell. Only now, she didn’t have her baby anymore. She said she’d just as soon hang so she could go be with Cassy.” August said. He stopped and looked his brother in the eye. “I will kill Pearl Crawley.”

Joseph sighed. “You will have to head pretty far south to do it, I am sorry to tell you. Pearl Crawley and Raymundo, that Indian drunkard he likes to pal around with, left last week to join the army of William Walker, the American Adventurer who aims to be President of Mexico. That is what I have heard.”

August took a breath and began climbing the hill anew. “Then I will go south.” He told Joseph, matter-of-factly. “Do they drink beer in Mexico?” He asked him over his shoulder.

Joseph gave his head a sad wag before he climbed after his brother. “I don’t know. I have a feeling they soon will.”