The Hanging of Samuel Ash

by Sheldon Russell

  “These bastards are good, Eddie. The best I’ve ever seen.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Carlsbad jail.”

  “They ain’t likely to be in jail what with you on their trail, Runyon.”

  “I’m the one who’s in jail, Eddie. I need you to verify who I am.”

  “You’re the biggest idiot in New Mexico,” he said.

  “Come on, Eddie. My time’s about up here. Tell the chief who I am, and then call the operator at the depot so I can get the hell out of this place.”

  “I’d let you sit until you grassed over, Runyon, if I didn’t have urgent business that needed attending. Let me talk to him.”

  “Thanks, Eddie.”

  “And phone me the minute you get back to the depot.”

  “Right,” Hook said, handing the phone to the chief. “It’s Eddie Preston, division supervisor. He wants to talk to you.”

  The chief took the phone. “Yeah,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Pickpockets, you say? You’re shitting me, right?

  “Yeah, okay. You might want to pin a note to your boy’s shirt,” he said, looking up at Hook. “I’ll send him on his way. Wouldn’t want to hold up a crime fighter like him, would I?”

  The chief hung up the phone and rolled his shoulders. “Looks like you’re free to go, Runyon.”

  “I’ll take my sidearm, if you don’t mind,” Hook said.

  The chief pulled open a drawer and handed it to him. “Don’t let someone take it away from you and shoot you in the ass,” he said.

  “And how about a ride back to the depot, chief?”

  “Joe, give Clark Kent here a ride back to the depot, will you? He’s in a rush to flush out some more pickpockets.”

  * * *

  Hook rode in the backseat of the patrol car in silence. Every once in a while, Officer Joe would look at him through the rearview mirror and shake his head.

  When they’d pulled up to the depot, Officer Joe said, “Just give us a call if anyone takes your lunch money. It’s a dangerous world out there.”

  Hook got out and paused at Joe’s window. “You might consider taking up a second job, Officer Joe, maybe security out to the drive-in theater or guarding the ticket gate for the high school football games.”

  “What the hell you talking about?”

  “Just something I overheard the chief say. I wouldn’t worry about it if I was you.”

  * * *

  The operator looked up at Hook, folded his arms over his chest, and said, “How was I supposed to know?”

  “’Cause I told you,” Hook said.

  “You got to admit you don’t look like no yard dog.”

  “And you don’t look like a moron. Now, do you think I could use that phone?”

  “Sure,” he said, pushing it over to Hook.

  Hook paused. “You mind?”

  “I’ll be out front. Jesus,” he said.

  Hook dialed Eddie, who picked up on the second ring.

  “Security,” he said.

  “Eddie, this is Hook. I’m at the depot.”

  “You know that siding north of Carlsbad, the one that goes to the potash mine?”

  “More or less,” Hook said.

  “The engineer on the short haul, while coming back from the mine about three this morning, said the wigwag signal had something hanging over it.”

  “What was it?”

  “How the hell do I know? That’s why I’m telling you. Probably some Halloween prank.”

  “This is June, Eddie.”

  “The union’s been stirring things up and down the line. Maybe they sabotaged the signal to get attention.”

  Hook clenched his jaw. Union problems were even more disagreeable than hunting pickpockets, and he didn’t like being caught between strikers and the company.

  “How am I supposed to get out there, Eddie? It’s in the middle of nowhere, you know.”

  “Hang on, let me see if I can locate something.”

  Hook rolled the operator’s chair over and sat down. From there he could see the operator out front. Every once in a while, he would peek through the window to see if Hook had hung up yet.

  “Runyon,” Eddie said.

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s a road-rail over at the Artesia depot. The track crew won’t be using it for a few weeks. Catch the next train over there and pick it up. Make damn sure you get clearance before pulling onto the line with that thing.”

  Hook dropped his head. A road-rail, being a vehicle with hydraulic equipment for running both road and track, was neither fish nor fowl. Its claim to fame lay in the number of railroad employees it killed every year.

  “Jesus, Eddie, can’t you just get me a car?”

  “I can get you a long vacation.”

  “Alright, Eddie. How about sending me another badge?”

  “It’s coming out of your pay, Runyon. They don’t give those things away.” He paused. “At least most people don’t.”

  “Alright, Eddie. I’ll catch the next run.”

  “By the way, Runyon, the department has taken on a new man, a crackerjack, a smart son of a bitch, dictator of his graduating class.”

  “Valedictorian, Eddie.”

  “Whatever. He’s shy on experience, so I’m sending him to Clovis.”

  “That’s great, Eddie. Clovis could use a dictator. But what does it have to do with me?”

  “I want you to show him the ropes.”

  “I don’t have time to deal with some kid, Eddie.”

  “Did I ask? I don’t remember asking, and don’t be teaching him bad habits. Stay off the hooch. This kid is the goddamn future, and his old man is important. Oh, and call me soon as you get that wigwag thing cleared. The railroad don’t stand for no one tampering with its signals.”

  Hook hung up. He could hear the milk run in the distance. The operator stuck his head in the door.

  “I got work to do, you know.”

  “Radio a slow to that milk run,” Hook said. “Official business.”

  * * *

  Hook waited on the platform for the caboose to come downline. He set a pace, latched on to the grab iron, and swung up. So far, it had been one hell of a day. The way he figured it, things could only get better.

  3

  WHEN THEY CAME into Artesia, Hook swung down from the caboose and waited for the train to pull out. He made his way into the depot. The operator sat with his feet up on the desk and his hands behind his head.

  “I’m the bull out of Clovis,” Hook said. “Division says there’s a road-rail here that I can use for a couple weeks.”

  “Gotta badge?” he asked, grinning.

  “Operators got anything to do besides gossip?” Hook said.

  “It’s parked around back. I’d about as soon ride a mule myself.”

  “I’m heading back to the potash switch. Is the line clear?”

  Checking the board, he said, “There’s a mail run out of Pecos coming through about three, and a westbound short haul on the potash spur due about midnight. After that, she’s clear ’til morning.”

  “I should have been an operator myself,” Hook said. “Sit around with my feet up while everybody else is working.”

  “Someone’s got to do the headwork around here,” he said.

  “Division says there’s signal trouble on that spur,” Hook said. “I figure kids covered up the wigwag lights. I’m going to check it out.”

  “If I was you, I’d road that road-rail to the crossing just this side of the potash switch and get on the tracks there. Stay off that goddang line long as you can. A road-rail don’t set off the signals, you know, and the odds of some drunk running you over is about fifty-fifty. On top of that, it’s Friday the thirteenth. Then there’s wildcat strikes brewing, too. Uncle John’s been hiring up scabs, and tempers can run pretty high, you know.”

  Hook nodded. “I could see it coming. The War Labor Board and the union bosses been sleeping in the same bed ever since the
war started. The union guarantees no strikes, and the government guarantees no one can quit the union. Everybody else sleeps on the floor.”

  Hook paused. “You wouldn’t spot me five ’til payday, would you? I’m a little short.”

  “Someone pick your pocket or something?”

  “That Carlsbad operator’s on my list,” Hook said.

  The operator grinned. “Here’s a fiver. It’s worth it for the laugh.”

  “Thanks. I’ll get even with you come payday. You have the key to the road-rail?”

  “Key’s in her, far as I know.”

  “Pretty slack security, isn’t it?”

  “No one in his right mind would steal that thing,” he said.

  “I could use a flashlight, too. It can be pretty dark at those crossings.”

  “They keep one in the glove compartment and extra batteries under the seat,” he said. “Never know when you might need to flag off an oncoming freighter.”

  “But you’d know if there was an oncoming, you being the operator. Right?”

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “Most of the time.”

  * * *

  Hook walked around the old road-rail, and then he walked around it again. Pilot wheels hung underneath like a cat crouched on a sandbox. A cable wench had been mounted on the front and the cable end looped around the bumper to keep it from dragging on the ground. The front fender had been crushed like an accordion, and a grease rag plugged the gas tank.

  Hook got in and searched for the ignition. The cab smelled of oil and sweat, and empty cigarette packages covered the dash. A hole the size of a coffee can had been poked through the door by something, and a wad of electrical tape served to hold on the gearshift knob.

  Hook pumped the accelerator a half-dozen times and cranked her over. To his surprise, she fired up, and a cloud of blue smoke drifted away.

  He took off down the road, rumbling like a thrashing machine. When he hit forty, the front wheels started wobbling, and a high-pitched squeal emanated from the differential.

  By the time he got to the crossing, his arm ached from hanging on to the steering wheel, and his eyes burned from the smoke boiling into the cab.

  He checked his watch. The mail run should have passed Artesia and be headed for Clovis by now, so he pulled onto the crossing, lined up his tires on the rails, and lowered the pilot wheels. Dropping her into gear, he eased off down the tracks.

  The old road-rail, transformed into a track vehicle, clipped along as light and easy as a summer breeze. As he sped into the desert, he released the steering wheel and leaned back. With luck, he’d make the wigwag and be on his way home before the short haul left from the potash mine.

  Vandalism had taken its share of his time over the years, and odds were that’s what awaited him at the wigwag. Boys, cranked up on beer and testosterone, had probably covered the signal lights as a prank. Kids often didn’t know the difference between fun and funerals. Tampering with a crossing signal came as close to murder as a person could get without pulling a trigger. He’d picked up enough body parts at crossing accidents to know.

  After switching onto the potash spur, he brought her up to speed. The moon climbed into the sky, and the stars slid overhead like sequins. Out here in the desert, the clatter of the world fell away, and a man’s thoughts lined up one behind the other like soldiers.

  When the wigwag signal rose up in the darkness ahead, he coasted in. At first, he figured the engineer to have been right, that someone had covered the lights. But as he drew near, he could see a body hanging from the cantilever, and it had blocked the signal arm. Heat rose into his ears. He’d seen his share of death over the years, but it never came easy.

  At the crossing, he lifted the pilot wheels, pulled off the tracks, and backed down the slope of the road until the headlights lit up the body.

  “Bastards,” he said.

  For a man with only one arm, getting a body down from that high up would be impossible. Maybe he could drive back for help, but that would take hours. In the meantime, the crossing would be unprotected, and the railroad hated nothing more than paying compensation for crossing fatalities.

  He climbed out, kicked his foot up on the bumper of the road-rail, and that’s when he spotted the cable wench again. Getting back in, he pulled up to the wigwag, tied off the rope, and hit the switch. The body turned in the moonlight as the wench lowered it inch by inch to the ground.

  When it had come to rest at Hook’s feet, he knelt for a closer look. He guessed it to be the body of a young man, no more than a boy, though in the darkness he couldn’t be certain.

  The rope had been knotted and then looped over the victim’s head. Whoever did it hadn’t bothered to secure the boy’s hands. A ligature mark cut deep into his neck, and the veins in his eyes had ruptured and bled. Without a fall to break his neck, he’d strangled in the slowest and most cruel way.

  “Bastards,” Hook said again.

  He sat back on his heels. Sometimes his work pressed in like a weight, and then there would be the images flashing in his head for months to come.

  He searched the victim’s pockets, finding nothing, no identification, no indication of who he might be or what brought him to die in this place.

  The moonlight reflected from the signal’s red eye. The victim could be a hobo, he supposed, though he doubted it. Most boes hit the rails to escape their pasts, moving from place to place, broke and hungry most of the time, and of little consequence to anyone. On occasion there would be a knifing or a beating, some random act of violence over a stolen meal or a bottle of whiskey. But rarely did boes suffer anything as deliberate and time-consuming as a hanging.

  He looked for prints in the hard-packed road. He walked the tracks with the flashlight and found nothing that might reveal who had been there.

  The Artesia operator had been right about the anger generated in a strike. Given the absence of individual responsibility in a group, men’s capacity for violence increased. If strikers had been involved here, there would have been a number of them trampling about, a gang of fired-up and angry men, which would increase the chances of leaving behind some sort of clue. But he’d found nothing, not a cigarette butt, not a shoe print, not a hint as to anyone having been there.

  Suicide, while always a possibility, struck him as unlikely as well, given the proximity of the body to the cantilever, which was easily within arm’s length for the victim. What man, given this option, could have resisted reaching up and liberating himself from suffocation? This fellow was either dead or unconscious by the time he got up there.

  Hook looked at the time. The search had taken longer than he realized, and he needed to contact the New Mexico State Police, who complained if they didn’t get their hand in from the outset. They’d probably run prints on the chance that something would turn up in their files. If that failed, they’d write the whole thing off as just another dead tramp, and he’d be right back where he started.

  When the short haul’s whistle lifted in the distance, he turned up track to wave it down. Two-way radios had been installed in most of the equipment by the end of the war, and with luck, the engineer might be able to call in and save him a trip back to Carlsbad.

  When the engine’s glimmer broke, the wigwag, freed of its encumbrance, fired up behind him, its lights swinging and its bell clanging.

  Hook swung his flashlight in a stop signal, and the short haul set her air. The ground trembled under Hook’s feet, and the heat from the engine warmed him as the engineer eased her up next to him. He leaned out of the cab window and pushed his hat back.

  “What the hell is going on?” he asked.

  “I’m rail security out of Clovis,” Hook said. “A man’s been hung off the wigwag. Could you radio the Carlsbad operator and have him send out the state police?”

  “Hold on.” When he poked his head back out he said, “The fireman’s putting in a call.”

  “Appreciate it,” Hook said.

  “Know how it happened?” h
e asked.

  Hook shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Some folks need hanging,” he said. “Like this fireman I got in here.”

  “Hanging a fireman isn’t illegal,” Hook said. “Long as he doesn’t obstruct the wigwag signal.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “There are wildcats popping up here and there, you know. Maybe they hung a scab?”

  “Think you could tell them to send out a meat wagon, too?” Hook asked.

  “Hang on,” he said.

  Hook listened to the thump of the diesel engine as he waited.

  The engineer leaned out over his elbow. “They’re sending a trooper out and an ambulance. Anything else?”

  “No. Thanks,” Hook said.

  The engineer nodded and brought up the engine. The rumble filled the night as he bumped out the slack and eased off down track. Hook waited until the end light disappeared before going back to the crossing.

  He sat down on the bumper of the road-rail. Moonlight cast onto the body lying crumpled and silent in the road. Hook rubbed the tension from his neck and wondered what plans and hopes had also died on this night. He pulled his collar up against the evening cool.

  “They’re on their way, my friend,” he said. “They’ll be here soon.”

  4

  THE PATROL CAR, with the ambulance close behind, rolled down the road with its emergency light on.

  Hook stepped into the road and signaled with his flashlight. The adrenaline could run high in these situations, and he had no intention of being mistaken for a criminal.

  The officer opened the door and stood behind it. “Identify yourself,” he said, his voice tight.

  “Hook Runyon. I’m the Santa Fe bull out of Clovis, the one who called in.”

  Closing his door, the trooper came forward, his hand resting on the grip of his weapon. His hat was squared, and gray stripes ran the length of both pant legs. The gold badge on the front of his uniform shined.

  “Officer Payne,” he said. “Step into the headlights, please.”

  Hook moved forward and waited as Officer Payne looked him over.