The Hanging Tree

Ever since I have moved, I have a different view from my back deck. It took me a while to come to terms with this unintended consequence but I pride myself on my ability to adapt. That being said, I have in my back yard what can only be described as a hanging tree. It is a fifty foot tall oak with a large horizontal branch about fifteen feet up. Often times, late in the afternoon, I will sit on my deck, sipping the major export of Scotland while enjoying a fine Dominican cigar. I like to contemplate how people in different parts of the world are toiling away at their tedious little lives so that I can while away a pleasant summer evening. I also, on occasion, think about the hanging tree.

I can picture a cowboy, on horseback, throwing a noosed rope over the branch and tying the other end off to a nearby tree. I can see three more horses moving through the cornfield, slowly approaching the tree. As I hold this mental image I lean back in my deck chair and I hear it creak slightly under my weight...


... the worn leather creaked slightly as I involuntarily leaned back in my saddle, away from the dangling noose. "You boys aren't serious about this, are you?" I tried to keep my voice steady.

"Serious as blisters, Johnny."

As Jubal moved his horse closer to me, he reached for the dangling noose and my horse skittered sideways, away from the sudden movement. I saw this as probably my only chance to do anything before they got that rope around my neck. Since my hands were tied behind my back, I reared back, grabbing onto the back edge of my saddle for better balance and brought my leg up to try to kick Jubal from his mount.

But Doc was behind me, grabbing a bunch of my shirt at the nape of my neck and jammed the barrel of his .44 under my jawline. "This ain't our first rodeo. Now settle down." he whispered in my ear. My horse was jumpy but was boxed in by the others and calmed down. As if obeying Doc's command.

Jubal snatched my hat from my head, tossing it to Lucas. "Luke, you need a hat?"

The hat hit Lucas' shoulder and fell to the ground. His eyes were hidden in shadow beneath the brim of his range hat. His mouth was an angry slash across the bottom half of his face. Sitting motionless in his saddle, he let his eyes roam the treeline, looking for intruders. "Get on with it." he finally responded, ignoring my hat on the ground.

With a quick movement, Jubal looped the noose over my bare head and his gloved hands tightened the knot, cinching the rough hemp against my throat. "Now if this here were a proper hangin'," he explained, "with a gallows and all, you would drop down and your weight would snap your neck and it would all be over real quick like." Jubal always did like the sound of his own voice. "But... we don't have no fancy gallows. All we got is this here hangin' tree. So when we whack your pony here, he's going to ride off without you and you're just going to dangle like and then you're going to slowly strangle and you're feet'll kick and you'll try'in use your arms but they'll be tied behind yer back and for a little bit you'll look like yer dancin' on air. Then the fight'll go outta you. But you still won't be dead. You're face'll turn red and then it'll turn purple. Yer eyes'll bug out and yer lungs'll feel like they're gonna bust. But still you won't be dead. You'll just be hanging there all still like but yer brain'll still be workin'."

He reached up and tilted his hat back with his thumb and grinned his tobacco stained teeth at me. "Hell, if'n I keep the noose loose enough, you might swing fer half an hour before you die." He looked around to Doc and Lucas. "Ain't that right, boys?"

Lucas scratch a match on his britches and slowly lit a cheroot. Then he growled again, "Get on with it!"

I wanted to reason with them. But the noose was so tight I could only manage an inarticulate croak. Now I began to desperately scan the treeline. Hoping for help... for someone to stop this insanity. Hoping for anything to give me more time. The day was cool for this time of year but my shirt was soaked with my own sweat. I twisted to the left to look at Jubal and to the right to see what Doc was doing. Lucas' horse huffed and I twisted that direction.

This couldn't be happening! What the hell had I done that was so wrong, anyway? Jubal moved away to sit next to Lucas. I twisted desperately around to see what Doc was doing. While I was distracted, Lucas drew his pistol and fired into the air, spooking my horse. He reared up and for just a moment I teetered on the edge of eternity, my weight still in the saddle, my booted feet trying to grip the metal stirrups through the leather soles, my toes curling in vain. Then the horse was galloping off through the cornfield as I looked on in surprise and shock...


"What are you thinking about?" she asked from the other side of the table.

"Huh?" I asked, coming back to reality.

"What are you thinking about? You had a funny look on your face."

"Oh... nothing really. I was just wondering how old that tree was."

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The Gift

When I was growing up I received a gift from my mother's father. His name was Merle Huselton.

My father worked a heavy construction job during those years but it was seasonal work. In the winter time we would live on welfare checks and eat government food. I remember going to the local firehall and carrying home tins of cheese and canned meat and bags of potatoes. As a child I never thought this was unusual. I thought this was the way everyone lived.

I did not know that we were poor.

Having said that, I thought my grandfather was poor.

He lived in a single room above a local bar. It was a bleak room. I remember going to visit him by myself one day. There was a door next to the entry for the bar. My father sent me up to room 11 while he went through the other door. I could hear the sound of the jukebox and someone laughing as the bar door opened and closed.

Just inside my door was a steep flight of stairs. The walls were painted green at one time but were now a smudged dirty brown. The stairs creaked under the weight of my tiny feet. I could smell beer and fried onions... and something else, I guess. Not healthy. I could feel the vibrations from the jukebox through the rough plaster wall as I slowly climbed the stairs.

At the top was a long hallway. There were battered wooden doors down both walls. These walls were painted a slightly newer version of the stairway green. My grandfather's door was about halfway down on the right. Number 11. The floor was worn and sticky in spots. Empty beer bottles littered the hall. I could hear voices arguing behind a door on my left. Further down the hall I could hear someone playing a scratchy Hank Williams record. For some reason I tried to be very quiet.

When I got to number 11 I tapped on the door with my small knuckles. I waited quietly. Then I knocked again. I was about to leave when I heard him clear his throat and spit into something. I waited a little longer and knocked again. This time I heard a chair scrape on the floor and his heavy footsteps approach the door.

As the door opened I saw that he looked very tired. He was about six-four and weighed around a hundred and fifty-five pounds. He had a full shock of gray hair and about three days of white stubble on his sunken cheeks. His eyes were watery and bloodshot. I recognized the red flannel shirt he was wearing as one my mother had given him for Christmas. It was tucked into a baggy pair of corduroy pants. His work shoes were untied.

He squinted down at me and gave me a quick smile. "Johnny!" he cried. "Git in here, you little shit!" He was happy.

"Hi Gran'pap." I said. "Daddy's down at the bar." I pointed down the hallway.

His work calloused hand guided me by my shoulder into the room. He pushed some magazines off of a wooden kitchen chair and told me to sit down. He sat opposite me at the little table. His chair was made of chrome tubing and torn vinyl. There was also a sway back bed and a night stand in the small room. Inside an opened closet door I could see a battered chest of drawers and a few shirts and pants on metal hangers. The tattered curtains were gray and dusty looking. He had a great view of the alley behind the bar.

After we made some small talk he offered me a warm bottle of orange pop. (We called it pop back then. I had never even heard of soda. I guess it was a western Pennsylvania thing.) He opened the bottle of pop with a tool on his key chain. I took a big swallow and he said, "Did you finish it?"

I looked at him with my big hazel eyes and nodded gravely.

"Well?"

"It... was... sooooo neat!" I said. "It was the best one yet!"

We were talking about a paperback western called Buffalo Wagons. It was written about five years earlier by Elmer Kelton.

This was our thing.

My grandfather was an old coal miner from the hills of Pennsylvania. He had raised his family in a series of wooden shacks and lived from pay to pay off of the company store. It was a rough life and I guess he never really got ahead. He was a hard worker and a hard drinker. By the time I got to know him he was a burned out old man, down on his luck, with failing health. I don't think he was much older than I am, right now.

But he loved to read. He always had a box of paperback westerns in the corner of his closet. The covers were creased, the bindings broken, the pages dog-eared from reading and re-reading. I guess it was his escape.

He would get his check at the beginning of each month. He would pay his rent, give my mother some money to hold for him, go to the drug store to get a couple of dime novels and then get rip roarin' drunk. Several days later, most of his money would be gone. My mother would dole out what he needed for necessities and feed him several times a week. And he would sit in his room and ride the range with Zane Gray and Louis L'Amour and Elmer Kelton.

I honestly don't know which part made him happier. But I do know he loved to share his books with me. We would sit for hours and discuss the gunfighters, and the settlers living in the mountains of the old west. We'd talk about the Indians and wagon trains and skinning buffalo. And for just a little while we were there, too. Riding the trails, sleeping on the ground, eating beans and boiling coffee.

And I know it is because of him that I have a love of reading. He taught me how to think critically and how to look into the story, beyond the written words. He taught me that imagination and adventure are often the same thing. That your circumstances should not narrow your world. That history is not a bunch of dry facts and boring details but is the living, breathing essence of who we all are.

And he taught me that even poor people can be rich.

Thanks Gran'pap!
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