John D. MacDonald
Hang the Man High!
Chub, who had set himself up as carpenter and wheelwright in town after a big sorrel out at the Lazy Anchor had crushed him against the corral fence, looked up from the pins he was whittling for the cracked tree when the shadow darkened his doorway. He saw that it was the white-faced man who had come in on the stage two days before with more trunks than any man should carry around with himself.
“Somethin’?” Chub asked, politely enough. He had heard that this new one had an accent like nothing ever heard in Chambers before.
“You are carpenter?” the man said in a thick foreign accent. His face was broad and white, with heavy bones, and he had a straight, humorless mouth. Chub noticed that the pale hands were thick and that the man carried himself very straight.
“They keep telling me I’m a carpenter, friend. What would you want?”
“I want wooden woman.”
That was when Chub dropped the pin he was working on and gave himself a shallow cut across the back of the thumb.
“You want a what?” he asked loudly.
“Wooden womans. For to put on dresses in the window my store.”
Chub got up and limped over to the windowsill and got his pipe. He said, “Now let me get this straight, friend. You have a store?”
“Today I get it. With window. I paint my sign. Want womans in the window. For cloths.”
Chub grinned as the great light dawned. “You want a dress dummy! And that’s what all those trunks are for. You’re opening a store.” The man nodded stolidly. Chub asked, “What kind of woman? You want a face on her? Don’t think I’d be so good making a face out of wood.”
“No face. Can you do?”
“I’ll try it, friend. What’s your name?”
“Wadic. I am from Boston. I work in store there, save money, buy cloths, come here where there is no store.”
“Yep. The womenfolk take the stage to Larabee when they need dress goods.”
“When is wooden womans done?”
“Say a week. You rented Hartell’s place?”
“From his widow.”
“Yep. Charlie wasn’t making enough out of feed and he tried palming an ace to help out. When Dee caught him at it, old Charlie lost his head and grabbed for his knife.”
“I do not understand.”
“Forget it. When she’s done, I’ll bring her around. Fifteen dollars be okay?”
“If wooden womans is good, is not too much.”
A week later, the hands coming in from the nearby outfits varied the routine of years standing. Saturday night they usually spent as little time as possible getting from the saddle to the bar, but word had gone around, and they went from the saddle in a grinning group outside the window of Charlie Hartell’s place and gawk at the wooden woman.
Wadic had decently draped her in a sheet, but under the bottom edge of the sheet they could see the pine ankles that Chub had carved. Chub, with sturdy ideas of womanhood, had made the ankles staunch enough to match the rather ripe outlines of the rest of her. Wadic had asked for a little extra planing here and there.
It was at that unfortunate hour, just before sunset on a Saturday night, that Wadic climbed into the window from the dark interior of the store. Most of the Lazy Anchor bunch were there, all the way from Redneck George, the slab-handed foreman, to little Tad Morgan, a hundred and ten pounds of cured leather.
Wadic gave them one incurious glance through the glass. His compressed lips held a glittering array of pins. He carried a thick fold of material over his arm. He slung it over the shoulder of the wooden woman, shaking out the folds of it. The hands nudged each other and cackled in glee.
“Seems downright indecent,” Tad said firmly.
With the material covering her charms, Wadic snatched out the sheet, began busily draping and pinning the material.
“Full grown man, too,” Redneck George said. “Or, on the other hand, is he? Look how he keeps that little finger bent.”
Wadic pinned and adjusted and gathered folds in the material. He wore a shiny blue serge suit. After each few pins he stepped back one pace, cocked his head on the side and examined the dummy.
The last sunlight had faded when he was through. The wooden woman stood, resplendent in the dress of rich material. Only when he stepped out of the window did the group move off to the Ace High to talk it over at the bar.
John Cowl, lean young half-owner of the Diamond C spread, stood at the end of the bar and listened glumly to the general conversation. Cowl was a silent young man with a local reputation for stepping in on the side of the underdog.
The bar echoed with a chorus of resentment about the “furriner,” this Wadic who had dared invade Chambers with his foreign ways, his wooden woman, his mouth full of pins and his bent little finger.
Loomis, the fat-chested hand from the Running Moon, slapped a heavy paw against the bar and said, “Like as not our womenfolk’ll be going there and then he’ll be draping them up with his fancy cloth the same way he draped up that dummy.” Nobody remarked that not only did Loomis have no womenfolk, but that he didn’t have a chance of having any unless some girls with pretty strong stomachs floated into town.
His words brought a low roar of disapproval. Jake, behind the bar, said mildly, “My old lady bought some cloth off of him yesterday. Took her two hours to make up her mind. Cost me eleven dollars before she got through.”
Redneck roared, “There’s no place in Chambers for that one.”
After the per-capita average of drinks consumed had reached the neighborhood of five, the crowd had gotten away from the angry, muttering phase and were entering into the planning phase.
“We ought to be able to show him somehow,” Loomis bellowed. “Damn furriner, coming in to mess up our town, gettin’ the women all gaga over his fancy cloth. Like as not he stole the stuff in the first place.”
Dee came wandering over from the poker table. Loomis turned on him and said, “You started this by shooting Charlie. If you’d just winged him a little instead of blowing half his head off, this Wadic wouldn’t have found an empty store in town.”
“Shut up, Loomis,” Dee said mildly.
Loomis was about to make an angry retort when sudden silence filled the room. Wadic pushed through the swinging doors, an uncertain smile on his face.
“Good evening,” he said.
Nobody answered except John Cowl. The others glared at John. Wadic, with timid haste, made his way to Cowl’s side, made a fluttery gesture at Jake behind the bar and asked softly, “Wine have you?”
Jake gave him a long, cool look, reached under the backbar, pulled out a dusty bottle, yanked the cork, set the bottle and a shot glass in front of Wadic.
Wadic smelled it, frowned slightly and said, “It is bad.” Jake said nothing. The men at the bar said nothing. Wadic gave them a shy smile, poured wine in the shot glass and sipped it.
Redneck nudged Tad. Every man at the bar picked up his drink and sipped it delicately, little finger extended. Wadic did not seem to notice. He turned to John Cowl and said, “I am new here, you know. I want to be friends with the men in this city. My store is here. I live here maybe the rest of my life.”
“Maybe short life,” Loomis said wryly. The roar of laughter startled Wadic so that a bit of wine splashed onto his sleeve. He took out a pure white handkerchief and dabbed at the spot.
“Hey, let me do that for you,” Loomis said. He unknotted his bandanna, walked spraddle-legged over to Wadic, dabbed vigorously at the spot.
“Thank you very much,” Wadic said politely.
Loomis mopped the sleeve and up the arm and across the shoulder. The bandanna masked his fist. Almost delicately he mopped at Wadic’s mouth. Wadic bounced back against the bar, stumbled and sat down, blood running from the corner of his mouth.