Gallows For a Gunman

by Rod Miller

  Anyhow, all my boy’s brightness just sort of dimmed out. From that crowd he learned to fight for what he wanted or steal it when no one was looking, or he would not have got anything. The meanness he got there was the beginning, I hold, of all that was to come.

  Myself, I was never the mean sort, drunk or sober. But now and then somebody would get to botherin’ me, pushing me down when I was barely able to stand, or beating me down and stealing whatever they might find on my person. Miners are a rough lot, and when some of them get on a toot they can get downright nasty. The crowd I ran with was no worse than most, I guess, but they never showed no mercy to someone who was helpless.

  When I had them over to my home to share a bottle, they usually repaid the kindness by packing off anything of value they could lay hands on while I was passed out or sleeping it off. A time or two, some of them got to roughhousing and things would get busted up.

  From time to time I myself might rummage through the pockets of a man down in an alley, but I never gave no one a beating or picked on anyone as some did and never stole nothing out of someone’s house, nor broke things for the hell of it. Mostly, I was a sullen and solitary drinker, more likely to be found crying than in high spirits or mean and nasty.

  For two years we lived like that, me and the boy. He didn’t get much care at home, I’ll admit. I guess it just didn’t seem so bad at the time, looking at it like I was through the fog caused by cheap whiskey.

  But the worst was still to come.

  One day at work, we were barring down slabs after blasting in the number-twelve stope on the eight hundred level. We were working quick, so we could get the muck out, lay in the timber, and drill another round to make a muck pile for the next shift.

  See, we hadn’t done the actual blasting that we were cleaning up after. The way it works is, the other shift fires the round last thing so the smoke and gas clear out during shift change. Then, when you show up in your workplace, half your day’s job is waiting for you.

  First, you make sure all the powder fired. Sometimes a round don’t go off right, leaving unexploded powder in one or more of the holes. If you got a misfired round, you have to reset the fuses and shoot off what didn’t go the first time. Leaving it is likely to get you killed.

  Most times, though, the blasting goes just fine and all you have to do is check around for any loose slabs of rock and knock them down so they don’t fall and mash you while you’re working.

  Then it’s a matter of moving the muck—“muck” being the miner’s term for all the dirt and rocks broke up by the blast. Of course the plan is that the muck be laced with metal-bearing ore, but sometimes you’re just moving through plain old rock to get to a vein or a lead.

  This stope we was working was up a short raise, just a rod or so above track level. So mucking there amounted to pushing the muck to a chute that empties down to ore cars sitting on rails in the drift. Then you push those cars out to the station and dump them so’s the muck can be loaded in a skip and hauled up the shaft to the surface, where it’d be dumped in a waste pile or sent to the mill, depending.

  When that’s done, you pound steel to punch a pattern of holes in the next hunk of rock to be moved, load them holes with powder—generally sticks of dynamite—and last thing you do is light the fuse on the way out. Of course it’s a lot more complicated than that, but all the details don’t need telling here.

  So, as I said before my mind wandered off, we were barring down a slab so we could get at the mucking without worrying about it hanging over us. My partner was a bohunk name of Warenski who was about as strong as an ox and only a little bit smarter. He was prying on that big hunk of rock when it split, and the end of it we figured would stay put is the one that fell.

  Fell right where I was standing, as it happened.

  It weren’t such a big rock that it could have killed me, but on the way down it made brief stops on the back of my head, my shoulder, and finally the middle of my back as we each hit the ground about the same time. It wrenched my back something awful and I could not get up.

  Warenski got some help and they strapped me to a length of laggin’ to get me out. They lowered me with ropes down through the ore chute to the drift—the drop, as I said, was only fifteen, sixteen feet or so—and strapped me and my backboard to the top of an ore car and rolled me down the drift.

  I tell you, I can still feel every little piece of rock on those rails and every joint in the track. Then they propped me up in the man cage, still strapped to my laggin’—which is just a plank used to wall up between timbers—and hoisted me to the surface.

  After five weeks, and more bottles of whiskey than I can count, I was able to walk again. But any lifting or even bending or twisting was out of the question. Meaning, of course, that I was out of a job.

  I packed up what little belongings me and the boy owned—which wasn’t much by that time, me having swapped everything of any value we owned for drink; the rest of it stole by my drinking’ pards for the same reason—and we boarded the train at Meeker’s Mill—the end of the rail line—intending to ride it as far as we could.

  Which wasn’t far, as the conductor discovered right away that we had paid no fare and carried no tickets. He put us off at the next stop, which happened to be Los Santos, and here we have been for nigh onto twenty years since.

  At least I have been here all that time, my boy Harlow Mackelprang being absent these past three years living the life of a gunman and outlaw.

  Sweeney must have finally regained his powers of speech, and he jolts me back to the present with a question.

  “Broom, I confess you have me at a disadvantage. How could it possibly be that you bear responsibility for the misdeeds of a hardened criminal the likes of Harlow Mackelprang?”

  “Oh, it ain’t so hard to figure. He’s my boy.”

  “What?”

  “My son. I’m his pa.”

  “Imagine that. I confess it does not enter one’s mind that notorious characters such as Harlow Mackelprang even have parents. Logic, of course, says they must. But one assumes they somehow sprung into existence fully formed, complete with bad habits and lack of character. And yet you are his father.”

  “Not much of one. Which is probably why he turned out as bad as he did.”

  “Surely, man, you gave it your best effort.”

  “No, Sweeney, I can’t say as I did.”

  “Your good wife then. Surely she attempted to form his character into more productive avenues.”

  “It started out that way, sure, you bet. But, see, his ma died when he weren’t but knee-high to a grasshopper.”

  “A tragedy to be sure,” Sweeney said. “But a man does what he can.”

  “A man would, sure. But not me. When my Bonnie went to her grave, I might as well have gone with her. I turned to drink and have not had the will to turn away. Then I got hurt in the mine and lost my job. Haven’t had one to speak of since.”

  “As bad as that then, Broom?”

  “Oh, hell, yes. I got no illusions anymore about what I am. God knows I’m reminded of it often enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ask anyone about ol’ Broom. They got more names for what I am than I can remember. A drunk, of course. And drunkard. Then there’s ‘sot’ and ‘boozer’ and ‘soak’ and ‘stiff’ and ‘lush.’ Fancier names too, like ‘alcoholist’ and ‘dipsomaniac.’ They’ll tell you I’m all the time soused, stewed, and swizzled. Liquored up, inebriated, on a bender, on a toot, top-heavy, tight, and tangle-footed.

  “I know what I am all right. And I know it didn’t do my boy Harlow Mackelprang any good having the town drunk for an old man. On top of that, I’m accused of being lazy and shiftless and not willing to work.”

  “Is that so? I mean, have you shunned gainful employment?”

  That produced a laugh. “Working steady would interfere with my drinking, Sweeney,” I say. “Can’t have that, you know.”

  He did not reply, and my laugh
ter soon faded. I decide to point out the irony of the situation. Which is strange in itself, all this talking on my part. I have not strung this many words together since I don’t know when.

  “Truth is, I don’t know if I can’t work because I drink too much or if I drink so much because I can’t work. You remember I talked about that time I got hurt in the mine?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, see that really did mess up my back something awful, and it ain’t got any better even after all these years. I can’t lift hardly anything—even just bending over sometimes, I get stuck that way and have to lay right down for a spell until I can get straightened out. Reaching, twisting, even sitting still for more than a few minutes pains me something awful. So what kind of work is a man in my condition suited for?

  “Being useless is bad enough. And hurting like hell most of the time don’t help any. Drinking dulls the pain in my back some, but I don’t know if it hurts or helps when it comes to the feelings that dog my mind of being a useless no-good so-and-so and no-account father of a rotten kid. Maybe it helps, maybe it makes it worse—on account of drinking sometimes makes me brood about it.

  “One more thing about a bad back—it don’t show. Take the marshal now. He’s got a bunged-up knee so’s he walks with a limp. Or you take a man who’s had an arm took off, or something like that. Them injuries show. Not so when it’s your back. So folks never know if you’re telling the truth or just telling tales on account of you’re lazy. Most people think it’s laziness.

  “I manage to pick up enough money to keep my bottle full by cleaning up here, swabbing out the saloon, sweeping up at the café and general store and freight office, things like that. It ain’t much, but it’s all I’m good for.”

  “A sad tale to be sure,” Sweeney opines. “I cannot imagine, however, that the good people of Los Santos hold one in your difficult circumstances accountable for a wayward son’s actions.”

  “Maybe not anymore. But early on, they didn’t mind telling me about it every time he done something wrong and demanding I do something to make it right. Most times I was too drunk to care about what they said, let alone doing anything about it. It started out simple enough. I left the boy to wander the streets and folks would cuss me for being neglectful and irresponsible.

  “Then, in a few years, they was always after me because he wouldn’t stay in school. It got worse from there. Stealing stuff, breaking things, like that. Most times no one saw him do it, but it was pretty much the order of things around here that if something was missing or messed with, then Harlow Mackelprang must of done it. The older he got, the worse it got.”

  “Was there nothing you could do, Broom, to alleviate the situation?”

  “Nothing that worked. Not that I tried all that much. Talking went in his one ear and out the other. The few times I took a strap to him didn’t help. Most times when I did sober up enough to try to correct him, he would just run off and hide somewhere and stay hid up till I wasn’t sober anymore. Even he knew I’d be falling down drunk again before too long.

  “That’s one thing about the kid—he ain’t stupid. Mean, sure. Maybe even crazy. But from early on he was smart enough to figure out how to get what he wanted without getting caught, and to weasel his way out of trouble when he did.

  “But that don’t last too long in a town this small, and after a while no one was buying his act. By then it was too late anyway. He was too far gone and I was too far gone to care overmuch.”

  “But you do still care, don’t you, Broom. I sense that the guilt affects you more than the drink—and is the harder habit to break.”

  “Could be, I guess. Hell, I don’t know. I try not to think about it too much. Just makes me thirsty. So does talking. I ain’t talked this much since I don’t know when.”

  “Talking. Now there’s something I have a talent for. The fine arts of oratory and rhetoric, combined with the ability to intuit human nature, along with a flair for persuasion have enabled me earn a fine living,” Sweeney said.

  “Ended you up in here, though, didn’t it, all that talking.”

  “Every job has its hazards, Broom, every job its hazards. In mining, as in your case, the dangers are physical. In my line, they run to legal disputes and jail time. Although, on occasion, a promoter may be tarred and feathered or ridden out of town on a rail. Some have been subject to a beating or even a shooting at the hand of a disgruntled customer. But those are rare occurrences, thank goodness. Violence is not often a danger in my line of work.”

  This prompted another ironic laugh on my part.

  “Once again, Broom, you have me at a disadvantage. Where, pray tell, is the humor in my statement?”

  “Oh, I was just thinking what you said—every job having its hazards. Here you are in jail, here I am a useless drunk. But that ain’t nothing compared to what my boy Harlow Mackelprang got on account of his chosen line—they’ll be stretching his neck any minute now, by my reckoning.”

  Once more, Sweeney was at a loss for words.

  “I guess I better get finished up here. I don’t want to be around when that strong-arming marshal gets back. Slide your honey bucket over here by the door, then stand back out of the way. Not that I don’t trust you, Sweeney, but the last thing I need is for a prisoner to escape on account of the town drunk not paying attention.”

  Sweeney did just that, and I unlocked the cell door and opened it just enough to slide the bucket through. Keeping one eye on him, I dumped his mess into the bucket from Harlow Mackelprang’s cell and returned it empty, locking the door. Then I poured in the mop water, stood the mop in the empty mop pail, and slid them into the corner.

  “I’ll be going now, Sweeney. Been nice talking to you.”

  “The pleasure has been all mine, I assure you, Broom. The pleasure was all mine.”

  With that, I picked up the full bucket and left through the marshal’s office. As I walked around the jailhouse to the ditch out in the back alley, I could hear the crowd over there where the gallows is.

  Of a sudden, things got real quiet.

  Then there was this loud bang and low twangy hum and what sounded like every man, woman, and child in Los Santos sucking in a big breath all at once, just as I dumped the remains of Harlow Mackelprang’s last supper into the ditch.

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  Copyright © 2005 by Rod Miller

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-3308-9

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  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

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