That Kind of Outlaw

I’ll never forget when my son Will said, “I’ll be an outlaw when I grow up.” We were in the center of town, on the sand-filled main road, in a crowd of a thousand people, watching a hanging. Some families had picnics with a nice spread and chairs, but most of us stood. The angrier folks were pushing against the makeshift fence that surrounded the gallows and was guarded by some men the sheriff deputized every Saturday.

It was what my son said that I remember. When he said it I felt a shiver run down my spine, but he was young, only seven years old, barely taller than my hip. His hair was dark and long. His reading was bad, but so was mine. He played with other kids in town while I tended the boarding house. We rarely had enough visitors to need his help, but I made sure he worked every day, seeing as work is good for the soul and all that. 

The man who was to be hung tried to rob the town’s saloon and made a lot of folks angry. A lot of folks that weren’t from town had come and they had decided to be angry as well. So, when the sheriff marched the man along the makeshift fence guarded by deputized men, the crowd went wild. They started screaming and kicking the fence and their eyes bulged like they were the ones being hung and spittle flew out their mouths and sweat fell down from their never washed hair. Meanwhile, to the side, there were the unbothered families enjoying their picnic, all serene-like. 

Will and I were closer to those families, and we couldn’t see the man to be hung through the crowd till they took him up the stairs of the gallows. The gallows were eight feet tall, made of ironwood which had been transported into town through the Sonoran Desert, and they were the pride and joy of the town; the whole community had pitched in to get the gallows built and since then it had paid off. People from all over came to see lawbreakers hung at our gallows. 

The man to be hung was short with great long black hair and a matching beard. He was stooped over but held up by the sheriff. He’d been beaten, which wasn’t a surprise since it had been the common folk that captured him; he was lucky he hadn’t been lynched or burned alive. Instead, he got a trial; probably a sham trial since it was handled by the hanging judge, Judge Parker. 

Once the man was up on the gallows, the sheriff made a speech and then it was time for the final words, but the man declined. The pastor, a drunk and a disgrace to the Church, crossed himself clumsily. The hangman put the noose over the man’s face and around his neck so that the large knot was on the left side. I spoke to him once and he assured me that the knot had to be large and on the left else the killing wouldn’t be humane, and he’d be damned if his killings weren’t humane. After the noose was tightened, a black bag was placed over the man’s head. The hangman walked to the trigger rope and grabbed his waiting hatchet.

“Let’s see what happens to outlaws,” I said as the hangman raised his hatchet.

The time between the swing and the drop transcends time. Everyone is stuck in anticipation, waiting for that hatchet to hit the rope and for the man to fall and for his neck to snap and for his life to end. Doesn’t matter if you were like me and hated hangings, you were still watching. You couldn’t not watch. There wasn’t an option. You had to watch. 

###

On our way back to the boarding house, Will said, “I’m not going to be that kind of outlaw.” I didn’t say anything. I almost never held his hand, but I did that day. He walked slowly and his head was staring down at the sand-covered ground. I felt bad for him. He had begged me to go and I had tried to convince him that he was too young for a hanging, but a child begging day after day for years can change just about anyone’s perspective.

###

The only change in seven years was that Will ran off the day he turned fourteen. He didn’t leave a note— that didn’t bother me, seeing as he hadn’t learned how to read or write—or anything else behind. His leaving didn’t bother me, what bothered me was that his leaving didn’t bother me. I might even say that I was happy, or at the very least relieved. I had my reasons; trust me, I had my reasons.

After the hanging, he became the worst kind of kid. He stole the cross from the church where that son of a bitch pastor preached us the bible. He tried to sneak into the town’s brothel at ten as if he could fool one of them into thinking he was a man or something, the damn fool… He was caught at school trying to set books on fire so he wouldn’t have to read. What got him into real trouble was when he tried to steal a gun from a drunk at the saloon; I nearly lost my life that night if it hadn’t been for the newly elected sheriff, Sheriff Miller. Miller had had words for me that night, he called Will the devil incarnate, a walking demon. He hated that boy more than anyone else in town and I know for a fact that he took the night off to celebrate the day Will left town. I can’t even blame Miller: that boy was a pain.

As a father, though, it’s hard to wake up and not wonder how your boy is doing. You hope for the best. God knows I did. Every dream I had was about that damn boy. In one dream he was off in the north managing a factory. In another, he was studying law at some university and saying big words like he actually knew what they meant. When I woke up, I was more realistic. I hoped that he was alive and well, that would be enough for me. I prayed that one day I’d see him again and we could have a nice conversation, like father and son. But, it wasn’t meant to be. 

I was at the boarding house, sitting outside on my chair, minding my eyes from a sand-filled gust of wind when Sheriff Miller came to see me. He was about my age, forty-three if memory serves. He shaved his face and head every day and had a big black hat to keep the sun away. His tan uniform was sweaty and grimy and he perpetually smelled like a pig in a sty covered in shit. We all did back then, but his was a special kind of smell that got stuck in the nostrils. What stood out that day was his smile, like the day he’d been elected sheriff over his brother. It wasn’t just self-satisfied, it was triumphant. 

“Andrews,” he said.

He never called me by my first name and I don’t recall much of what was said after that. I remember him eventually reaching into his breast pocket and pulling out a piece of folded paper and handing it to me. I unfolded the paper and saw a picture of a man I didn’t recognize. In hindsight, he looked like the man from seven years before. He had a long black beard and longer hair. His eyes were too difficult to make out in the photo, but it was easy to see his sneering mouth. I looked below the picture and read: “Wanted: Will Andrews.” The paper fell from my hands and flowed away with the sandy wind. Miller got real angry that I had thrown away the bounty, but I wasn’t even listening. He ran after the paper while I sat in silence. I couldn’t wonder anymore what he was up to. I couldn’t dream of a better, safer future for him. I couldn’t lie to myself that he was going to change. He was an outlaw. He had no future. He was a deadman and, from then on, that’s what I considered him to be: a deadman. 

So much changed after I saw that poster. I started attending hangings. We usually had two or three a month and they excited me, they made me feel alive. When there wasn’t an execution on the weekend, the monotony of the days weighed more and more than any concern I had previously had for Will. It became too much one day and I went to the saloon. At first, I hated it: the lost money, the rough taste, the bad company, the brutal mornings. But alcohol can lighten any load, at least for a moment. I did what any good drunk does, I extended the moment. I drank at work, I drank at home, I drank at the saloon, I drank on walks through town. I drank so much that three years went by and I haven’t a clue what I did or who I talked to.

###

It was Saturday morning and I was at the saloon having a drink with Pastor Isaac Hoge. It was a tradition of ours. Most Saturdays there was at least one execution and he and I would drink till it was time for him to go to the damned for their confessional. He didn’t give a damn. He’d show up so drunk that he didn’t remember a word they said, couldn’t even get their names right half the time, and we thought that was real funny.

There was no scheduled hanging that day which we all thought was a shame, but the town was still packed and we drank more than usual. Most of the town had the same idea as us: The saloon was packed. There was gambling, whoring, drinking, smoking, and god knows what else going on that day. It was a rowdy morning and the whisky was particularly good.

“Billy,” I shouted.

Billy was the bartender and a huge, consummately well-dressed man that almost never spoke a word. He nodded back at me. During that distraction, I hadn’t noticed the town’s doctor, a small man with round glasses and a big belly, come up to Hoge. We called him Doc but his name was Sam Holiday. He was whispering something to Hoge and Hoge nodded.

“Looks like I got to go,” Hoge said.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Hanging,” he whispered to me.

“Who?”

“Don’t know yet,” he said.

Doc pulled Hoge away and Hoge went along with him. The bar instantly noticed; Doc pulling Hoge away from the bar was a sure sign that a hanging was about to happen. The bar erupted in cheers. Men threw up their hats and I nearly threw up from the excitement but I pulled it back. It was odd to have a surprise hanging but we didn’t care.

I raised my hand and Billy walked over while the bar celebrated. It was too loud to talk so I put my hand over my glass and handed him my flask. He nodded, filled the flask up with whisky, and took a swig from it before handing it back to me. I took a swig as well and walked outside.

Fences were being put up by the usual deputized men. None of the usual families had time to set a picnic so there was none of that, but the photographers had to get a picture of the man when he hanged so they were running around in a craze. I took another swig from my flask and decided to go to the gallows. Usually, I watched from the porch of the saloon with Billy, but today felt different. I wanted to be there, see the eyes of the criminal, hear their last words, experience the cutting of the trigger rope, see the dancing legs. I could barely contain myself as I stumbled towards the gallows.

“Andrews.” Sheriff Miller was to my left, by the fence that had just been put up. He had his hands in his pockets and had a big pouch of chewing tobacco stuck in his left cheek. He spat a black wad in my direction. “Gonna need you—”

I said one cuss word or another, I don’t know. 

“Andrews,” he said again.

I don’t know what I said but he left me alone after that. He wasn’t going to stop me from getting the best view. He’d stopped me before, saying that I was too drunk and liable to do something stupid. But not today, I thought as I leaned against the fence closest to the gallows. I was so near them that I could see the grain of the ironwood and look at the buttons of the overlarge black suit that the hangman wore for each execution. It had three buttons and he was nervously checking the noose’s oversized knot. I called out to him but he didn’t reply, the crowd was starting to form and it was a loud crowd. I had next to me two men: one small and built as if he worked on the farm doing hard labor, the other my height but fat like he had more than enough money to eat whenever he pleased.

I took a swig of my flask as the crowd jeered, the damned man had begun his last walk. To celebrate, I had another drink and offered it to my two neighbors but both declined, so I had another in their honor as the man was brought up the stairs of the gallows. The crowd pushed against my back to get a better look.

Sheriff Miller came to the front of the gallows and we started screaming for blood. Miller pulled out his gun and shot twice into the air. That shut us up real quick.

Miller turned back and the man about to be hung came forward. His face was beaten to a pulp with black and blue bruises almost covering his eyes. His lips were swollen and blood had dried around them. He was hunched over so that his hair fell across his face and his beard hung to the ground parallel to his legs. He wore a torn black suit with a white shirt turned brown from sand and sweat. When he stood in front of the crowd, though, he stood up proud. He looked like he was in pain, but searching for someone. 

“Well,” the doomed man said to the crowd. “It’s good to be doin' this in my hometown… That’s it, let’s get this over with.” 

The crowd was usually completely quiet at this moment but everyone started whispering amongst each other. No one seemed to know who he was. As the man stepped back, Miller came forward.

“I’m not going to go through all the details with y’all but suffice it to say that Judge Parker has sentenced this man to death. Given his record, we saw fit to expedite it in case any of his friends try to break him out. Now—”

The rich man next to me yelled out, “Who is he?”

Miller looked at the man while still holding his gun and then he saw me. Miller had looked at me a lot of ways in life, mostly in anger or in extreme annoyance, but never like he did that day, standing on the gallows, next to some unnamed man. I know what he said next, but it isn’t important. I looked at the man standing behind Miller and that man was looking at me. I could barely see his eyes from the bruising and his hair which need to be cut, but I knew that he was looking at me. He’d found who he was looking for and I was so drunk I could barely stand, but I felt a weight on me that no amount of alcohol could make go away. 

When he smiled at me I felt the tears falling down and I called out to him, reaching, trying to break through the fence but those damn deputized townsfolk held me back as I watched the hangman put the black bag over his head. I screamed out for him and pushed as hard as I could. I screamed out at Hoge to help, but Hoge stood there with his head down in prayer. I begged Doc to save him but Doc stood there with his hands behind his back and shook his head. I swore at the hangman who had heard worse than anything I could say. I threatened the Sheriff who knew I would never make good on anything I said. 

I watched the hangman raise his hatchet and I found myself suspended in time, begging for time to finally stop. But it didn’t, especially not for a no-good drunk. The hatchet fell onto the trigger rope, the trapdoor fell away, his body fell and came to an abrupt stop, and I saw what I came for: dancing legs. 

###

I spent one more week in town. I didn’t have a plan for where I’d go, I just knew that I needed to go. On the day I decided to leave, I found Hoge waiting for me at the stagecoach. 

“Do you even remember what he—”

Hoge put his hand on my shoulder, “I just want to tell you his last words when the bag was over his head.” He paused and waited for me to say something, but I didn’t. I was trembling, from sobering up; I was trembling from sobering up. “I don’t know what he meant, but he said, ‘Sorry Pa, looks like I am that kind of outlaw.’”