Grange Tales: The God

1868: The Blacksmith
Saturday: The Stranger
The hanging was over, the condemned was dead. The motionless corpse hung from the simple gallows, sweat darkening the coarse shirt, urine and excrement fouling the denim trousers, the wry neck stretched to an impossible length.
Blacksmith Milton Wright didn’t spur his horse but approached in respectful silence along the lonely stage trail’s curve. Twice before he had seen such as he approached prairie towns as he did this Kansas town, seen a condemned man’s corpse, moved only by prairie breezes, seen only by hungry buzzards and coyotes, left stark against the sky for hours, sometimes days, serving as a silent threat to the violent, to the criminal, fulfilling the last service of a murderer to the community where he had murdered.
He dismounted, dropped one of Dixie’s reins to the ground, sure the well-trained gelding wouldn’t move, and untied his shovel from behind the saddle. It was still mid-morning and not so hot as to prevent him from digging a shallow grave. He did so twenty feet from the gallows, a hundred from the lonely trail.
After the hole was three feet deep and long enough, Milton put the shovel away, uncoiled a rope and threw one end over the cross bar. He tied the other to the saddle horn, tossed the loose rein over the horse’s neck and shinnied up the right post. He looped the rope around the corpse’s chest, and then called, "bayak" in his Tennessee Mountain dialect and his mount backed up. "Hawd," he ordered and the horse held still. Milton removed the noose and climbed down. He led the horse closer to the gallows until the body gently settled on the ground with a rag doll’s limpness.
Milton removed the hanging hood and examined the body. The body was dressed in seaman’s clothing including the boots of a seaman. Why would an injin wear a seaman’s clothing? In Kansas?
The shirt was torn twice over the dead man’s heart. How? There were no marks on the chest behind the rips so the tears weren’t from bullets.
He went through the pockets, not expecting anything to be there, yet he found three extremely shiny Spanish Reales, silver ‘pieces of eight,’ and five playing cards in the pants pockets. The cards were all face cards, were all stiff, all had a crispness which seemed almost impossible. He realized the five, held together, were a quarter the thickness of an entire, regular deck. No one could shuffle a deck like that. How could such a deck exist? Milton Wright figured he’d find the answers in the Municipality of Grange Kansas.
　
　
1968: The Youngster
1968: The Youngster
Saturday: The New Stranger　
"Get-up-get-up-get-up-it’s-morning-it’s-morning-feed-me-feed-me-let’s-go-play," yapped the shaggy, gray, purple tongued, double-fist-sized, tail wagging mutt using his mastery of body language in a Summer-Saturday manner which was slightly more obnoxious than was the case for the rest of the week, simply because this particular Saturday wasn’t the rest of the week. Today’s bunion is always worse than yesterday’s.
The two year old, wiggling mass of vexing exuberance caught the glare of his opposite, an eleven year old human with only enough morning attitude to raise one glowering eyelid and exude an unspoken "Shut-up-mutt!" at the prancing criminal.
After several seconds the clock radio clicked on and, after the tubes warmed up, an equally irritating morning voice enthused, "This is KRNG, Grange’s best ROCK station, bringing you sleepyheads the newest and best ROCK AND ROLL! And now from the Beatles-"
THUD! The fist at the end of her skinny, still growing arm, thumped on the snooze button. She raised both eyelids and looked at the time. 6:15.
"Wonderful," she observed, switching the radio to go-away, after which she sat up and silently criticized the birds for being work-a-holics.
"Now-do-we-go-eat?-Now-do-we-go-eat?-Now-do-we-go-play?"
"Graymalkin, do you know what the Vietnamese do to dogs?"
The overgrown pup couldn’t have cared less. "This-isn’t-Vietnam!-This-is-the-Land-Of-The-Free-the-Home-Of-Canned-Dog-Food!-Feed-Me!-Feed-Me!" he insisted.
She glared at the insistent wiggle, then gave up, grabbed a shirt and jeans and headed for the bathroom for a shower.
After she finished lacing her tennies, she looked in the dresser mirror. She combed her black hair neatly and anchored it with yellow hair combs. She turned her ebony face to one side, then the other, checking for stray hairs. She stepped back so she could see all of herself. She’d heard "sloppy nigger" too many times back in Georgia and she didn’t care to give anyone in Grange the chance to voice that same stupidity. She looked her best. When she left her room it was neatly cared for and tidy.