Tachycardia and Other Tales Read online

  “Wellsir, ten people died that day. And it all started with my signal. And that signal was when I put my pistol right behind Albert Felts left ear and pulled the trigger. I was close enough to him when I killed him to remember the smell of that fancy cologne of his that you could only buy over in Bluefield. And then I finished off C.B. Cunningham, who just as I said that day, ‘that goddamn sonuvabitch sure had a heap of guts’. He had more holes in him than a sieve before he finally died!”

  John Brown was sitting back now and listening to Sid get it all out. He then asked the next, obvious question. A question he asked Sid about every twenty years.

  “And the mayor, Sid? Did you not kill Mayor Testerman because you were having an affair with his wife?”

  Sid sat down like his body was suddenly too heavy for his frame and answered, “I killed Cabell Testerman. I was having an affair with Jessie and she wouldn’t leave him. So, I shot him right through the liver and he died there on the street.”

  “And what of your arrest a few weeks later? For improper relations?” inquired John Brown.

  Sid was now back to his smiling self when he replied, “We did have relations, but they sure seemed proper to me! Jessie was a fun girl and Huntington was a fun town! Besides we got married a few weeks later.”

  “And then,” said Captain Brown, “you were dead a few months after that.”

  “Well it took about 15 months before I got killed. Before that, we had a court case, after what the reporters started calling the Matewan Massacre. It was a local thing, nothing like your highfalutin trial, the whole thing was rigged and I got off. How come they didn’t rig your trial?”

  “Well, I’m not sure,” choked John as he was taken aback by the question. “ I decided to use the trial as a platform to denounce slavery. I had been injured during the battle and was quite weak during most of the proceedings, but I was able to muster a call to action in my final statement.”

  “Hell, my lawyer told me not to say nothing. He told me to just to sit there and smile. At your trial, didn’t you say that there was gonna be a war?”

  “Not exactly. During the trial I stated, same as I have here tonight many times, that my actions were in accordance with the laws of God and in the name of the oppressed. On my way to the gallows a few days later, I handed a bystander a note that said that ‘the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.’ And then, they hanged me. I had a terrible pain in my throat and then I saw the glorious light of our Lord. Did you see the light? Wasn’t it beautiful?”

  “ The only light I saw was the sun as I was laying there on my back dying,” snorted Sid.

  “Me and Jessie had to go over to Welch for a hearing on some shit they made up over in the town of Mohawk. Ed Chambers and his wife was with us. Ed and me left our pistols at the house, seeing how we were going to the courthouse and all. We were walking up the steps, and along came C.E. Lively with his guns blazing. I fell down the steps and the last thing I remember is looking up at the sun.”

  “And what about now?” asked John, “ when you look back at your life, was it worth being a martyr?”

  “Hell, I don’t even know what that is. I know they gave you all kinds of credit for how things went with the slaves and all. But I ain’t no martyr, I’m just dead. Whoever is left out there living only thinks about what it’s like for some fella to be a martyr. But I know most of the people who die like me and you did, are little fellers who get squeezed by big fellers. If they don’t want us little fellers killing folks, in the name of God or country or anybody else, the big fellers ought to not be so tough on the little fellers.”

  “Amen” said John Brown.