CRYERS (2 page)

The fat man tugged at an oily piece
of rope strung about his pants for the hundredth time that morning and worked
his way through the crowd. People slapped at his balding head, knocking the greasy
strands of comb-over across one bulbous ear. He swept it back into place and
the pants slipped halfway down his buttocks.
Use one hand for the belt, and one hand for the hair.
It wasn’t a
monumental task, but for a fellow like Trot, it was asking a lot. He stumbled
and bumped, and the people kicked at his bare shins, and jabbed at his kidneys
and backside with sticks and clubs.

Finally Trot made it to the center
of Burn, to the giant, black tree devoid of leaves, with peeling bark the
texture of shale. Elward was already halfway up the ladder placed against the
trunk.
 
Trot watched as the man used one
hand along the rungs; the other gripped the noose slung loosely about his neck.
The remainder of the rope was coiled around Elward’s arm like a snake. When death
by hanging was pronounced, it was the sentenced criminal’s final—and only—honor
to see the job done on their own. It was better than the cutting. That
punishment was meted out to only the most depraved of lawbreakers. Trot studied
the man’s hands.
He can climb and hold
the rope at the same time. Why does he have to die when a braindumb like me
gets to live?

It wasn’t a question he would ask
out loud. With the blood-thirsty crowd jostling around him, Trot was likely to
get an answer that could lead to a double hanging. He spotted the lawman up in
his tower against the rising sun. Lawson tipped his hat at him and winked.
His ol’ ten gallon
, Trot thought. That’s
what he called it. Trot had once asked if he could try it on, but the lawman
hadn’t allowed it. He hadn’t said no, but the dead, beady-eyed glare that Trot
received had been more than enough to ensure he would never ask again. Trot was
slow, but he wasn’t stupid.

An old woman grabbed Trot by the
ear and twisted. “Get outta the way, you fat idiot!” She yanked and Trot
yelped. The few greasy hair strands fell back over onto the woman’s hand and
she released him. “Run yerself a bath and scrub somma that shit off.”

A man beside her laughed—the old
woman’s husband perhaps; Trot wasn’t sure. “There ain’t enough water in town to
get that dumb bastard clean.”

More laughter from more people
squeezed around the tree. Elward had finished his climb. He took his hand from
the top rung and reached out for the lowest hanging branch. He dropped the rope
and pulled himself along the sturdy limb with both hands. The laughter stopped
and all watched as the condemned man worked his way out, eighteen feet above
the ground. The toes on his feet curled up, and his legs flailed instinctively,
looking for something solid. Elward stopped and twisted one foot around the
opposite ankle. His body stopped swaying and he tightened his grip on the
branch.

“All the way!” somebody in the
crowd yelled. “All the way to the end and not an inch short.”

Elward shut his eyes and took a few
quick breaths. He started out again. Someone rushed into the empty circle—a
child with less hair than Trot—and stepped on the loose end of rope now
dragging along the ground below Elward. The rope went tight as Elward reached
for more branch. His fingers slipped but caught in time. The crowd erupted into
fresh laughter and the old woman swatted the boy away. “Off with you, brat. We
all didn’t come out this early in the morning to see ‘im drop so soon.”

Trot was still looking at the
lawman. He could stop this. He had the power. Lawson was no longer watching just
him. His gray eyes were taking it
all
in. The crowd. The tree. The condemned. Up in his wooden tower—another twenty
feet, or more, above the struggling Elward—the lawman saw everything. He would
sit up there for hours, day after depressing day, watching the town and flatlands
encircling Burn. When he wasn’t in his law office with the twisted cages that
held bad people before they swung or bled, Lawson, the lawman, sat in his tower
and watched.

Trot was terrified of the big man
but fascinated at the same. He was old and smart and strong. He was everything
Trot was not. But there was something between them—the lawman had actually
spoken
to Trot more than once. And it
hadn’t been to kick him out of the way or make fun of his appearance and silly
walk. Once he had even asked Trot how he was, as if he was a normal citizen. He
wouldn’t call it respect—Trot had no clue what that was—but the man had given
him the time of day, and for that, Trot revered the ground the man walked on.

But there was one bigger and stronger
than the lawman.

The people of Burn fell away as Lode
made his way through the crowd. Those that didn’t move fast enough were thrown
or kicked and, worse yet, threatened by the three-foot blade held in his rock-hard
fist. He stopped below the struggling Elward and looked up. Lode wore no
clothing, save for a loincloth and leather boots he’d made from the hide of a
roller. Some claimed he’d killed the beast with his bare hands. The rest of his
eight-foot tall frame was covered in red tattoos depicting countless slaughters
in neighboring villages he’d either taken part in as a child or led as an
adult. And there was a lot of body to cover. Lode was one of those rare giants,
with brains to match his abnormally large physique. He was a writhing mass of
muscle, over four feet wide at the shoulders, and standing on legs that looked
more like tree trunks. His rusted sword could cut a man in two—the people of
Burn had seen it done—but it appeared more like a knife in his hand. He reached
up and jabbed at Elward’s feet with its tip.

“How long, Elward?” the giant
asked. Elward had made it all the way to the end of the branch. His eyes were
forced shut again as sweat trickled in. “How long will you struggle?”

Elward made no reply. He’d begun to
pull the loose end of the rope—the end not tied around his straining neck—up
towards him. To do this he had to first wrap one arm around the branch. The
hard bark bit and tore at the skin on his inner forearm; the sweat and blood
made him slip further. After a full minute of agonizing struggle, he felt the
frayed end in his fingers. He looped it over the branch and started tying the
knot.

“Make sure it’s good and tight,” Lode
said. The giant reached up with his blade again and hacked off one of the man’s
big toes. Elward screamed but his arm remained locked around the tree branch. “That’s
just a taste of what will come if the knot isn’t tied well.” There were murmurs
and uncomfortable chuckles from the crowd. They went silent as the blood
dropped down and spattered across the giant’s bald skull and landed in his open
mouth. Lode’s mouth opened wider and he swallowed. “It’s sour, Elward. Tastes
like drink and guilt. It reminds me of your wife’s blood.”

Elward spoke for the first time. “Fr-Freeda
swung. Her knot was strong and when she dropped, she
swung
. There was no cutting.”

Lode wiped the blood from his head
and smeared it across his thick chest. “That is true. But after she was taken
down, I had a little taste. You understand, I’m sure…I had to know.”

“You’re vile, Lode. The village hates
you.”

“Is that why Freeda wanted to
become town leader? Because I’m vile? Is that why you defended her and spoke
out against me while she swung? Have I not kept Burn safe? Have our numbers not
grown since
I
became Town Leader?”

Elward’s arm finally gave out. The
knot was complete and he dropped two feet. His hands held the rope and burned
as he gripped. “We c-could be so much more. We don’t have to keep killing and
f-fearing.”

“Aaahhh…yes, there we have it.
Fear.” Lode nodded and looked over the crowd. “And what is it we fear, people?”

They remained quiet as their leader
waited for an answer. The boy that had stepped on the rope finally spoke out in
a soft voice. “The
diff
-rint ones…Them
what have shortcomins and abnamilties.”

Lode nodded his head and smiled. He
had no teeth, only gray gums. “Yes.
Shortcomings
and
abnormalities
. That’s it exactly.”

“The ab…abnormalities will pass in
time,” Elward sputtered out. His hands were beginning to slip.

Lode sunk the blade’s tip into the
bottom of the struggling man’s foot until he scrambled back up another few
inches. “That’s the kind of talk that put Freeda up there. She read too many of
those old books. You read any good books lately, Elward?”

“There are no books left….You’ve
seen to that.”

“And I’ll hang and cut and burn every
sinning fucker that brings any back into town. I’ll gut anyone that even thinks
of
learning
to read.” To press his
point, Lode leapt up and sliced the remaining four toes off Elward’s bloody
foot. They bounced off the dirt and rolled to a stop haphazardly, like sausage
ends flung from a pan.

Trot stepped into the clearing and
shook his fists at Lode. “Stop hurting him! He ain’t done nothin’ bad!” He fell
silent, and fear clenched his throat before he could say more. His outburst
could mean only one thing. As soon as Elward swung, Trot would be next. The
terror was so great, he could no longer breathe. There would be no trial. Trot
would hang for this. Or, he would be cut to pieces where he stood.

Lode’s eyes narrowed, the red
tattoo—of a woman being raped—on his skull furrowed in, and the big man
grinned. The crowd began to laugh and Lode joined them.

“Pull up your pants,” the giant
roared. “We came to witness a hanging, not to watch your junk blowing in the
wind.”

Trot looked down at the fabric now
gathered around his ankles.
Of all the
times to forget underpants.
He gathered them up quickly and stumble-trotted
a few steps towards Lode. “You…You’re not gonna kill Elward?” The good humor
about him had given Trot a feeble sense of hope.

“Elward will hang, or Elward will
be cut. I’m going to let
you
live
though. You’re far too entertaining to let go to waste.” He met Trot the rest
of the way and dragged him back to the tree. “Show us how you run.”

“What?”

“Run, you fat bastard. Run around
the tree. Run until Elward himself drops from laughing. Show all the good people
of Burn how you earned your name.”

“I…I don’t wanna run.” Trot started
to cry. His hands dropped to his sides and the pants fell to the ground,
forgotten once again. Lode slapped his bare buttocks with the flat of his blade,
hard enough to make the man jump clear out of the cloth around his feet.

“Run!”

Trot moved. He circled the tree
once at a fast, jerking walk. Lode hit his rear again, harder, and Trot began
to run. His knees shot out to the sides comically and the crowd roared. But
Trot wasn’t finding it funny. He bawled harder as he loped around a second and
third time, his knees popping out and his dirty toes kicking the air.

And the lawman watched.

From his perch, Lawson watched them
all—Trot trotting, the filthy residents of Burn leering and heckling, Lode
licking the tip of his sword clean with a thick, diseased tongue, Elward losing
his struggle with the rope—and more than that. He’d seen the two boys arrive
half-an-hour before. He’d watched the older one lead his one-armed brother
through the mass of jostling limbs to the circle’s inner line of murderous
onlookers. Lawson had watched as they slowly worked their way back through the
crowd again, towards the town outskirts, after Elward had started his climb out
to the branch’s end.

It wasn’t a hard thing to do. Burn
wasn’t that big. It was a ramshackle collection of a few dozen buildings
organized in a somewhat circular fashion and surrounded by a centuries old twenty-foot
high stone wall. The majority of Burn’s four-hundred residents lived in mud
huts and tents pitched where there was room in the narrow, shit-caked,
piss-puddle alleys. All those residents were gathered in the town center this
morning, clustered about the one tree that had been ancient and dying before
the town was established.

Lawson spotted the boys as they climbed
to the roof of the tannery. He watched them jump from the roof to the rope
ladder hanging down from the town’s outer wall. He watched the older boy help
the younger boy up the ladder to the western watch point. He watched them
disappear over the edge. He spotted them a minute later, running across the
gray plains. At first, Lawson thought they might head north, along the banks of
the dirty river, towards the town of Rudd, over twenty miles away. They
continued west instead.

 
The lawman looked beyond the fleeing figures
to the bleak, gray hills and the heavy gray clouds rolling in. His hand reached
down to the revolver holstered at his side. He reconsidered and went for his
rifle instead. The revolver packed a lot of wallop at close range, but accuracy
was key here. He had to be sure.

Two shots fired out. Their heavy
rumble echoed off into the distance. Two plumes of dust rose into the air
directly in front of Trot. He stopped running. Lode quit licking, and the town ceased
laughing.

Lawson leaned out over the wooden
parapet with a notable creak. All eyes were on the old lawman. “No more
runnin’. We’re gathered here to see justice done, and nothin’ more.” His voice
was deep and authoritative; the roughness of it sounded like words forced
through a throat packed with dry gravel.