The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  I know how Nancy Nail Chism had been listening, not to her trees a-warbling but to the coffeepot a-rattling on the stove, sometime before: a sure sign that company was coming. While she was drying the breakfast dishes, she had dropped the towel, and that means a stranger will arrive very soon; she watched to see if she’d drop it a second time, which means the stranger will be hungry and need something to eat, but she didn’t. Seth Chism had dropped his case knife while he was eating: that was proof the stranger coming would be a female; if he’d dropped his fork, it would have been a man on his way up the mountain. “Seth!” she’d said to him when he helped himself to some more of the elderberry jam even though he already had some on his plate; if you absent-mindedly help yourself to something you’ve already got on your plate, it means the stranger coming will be hungry for the same thing. While she’d drunk her own coffee, Nancy had paid close attention to the cup and noticed that coffee grounds were clinging to the sides of it, which was a sign that the visitor would be bringing good news. Also, her left eye was itching; if her right eye had started itching, it would have meant that the visitor had bad news.

  So even before Viridis drove into sight, Nancy knew this much about her: she was a woman, and she was coming to visit, and she would want some elderberry jam, and she would bring good news. Thus the only thing surprising when Viridis came driving up into the Chisms’ yard was that she was driving old Jake Ingledew’s phaeton and was wearing old Sarey Ingledew’s visiting-clothes. Nancy’s first thought was that the lady had the wrong house, but all those signs couldn’t have been so far wrong. So Nancy went ahead and declared, “Howdy. We’ve been lookin fer ye.”

  Had Nail got word to them? Viridis wondered. She saw at once how Nail resembled his mother: Nancy had given him not just his eyes but his eyebrows, his long nose with its strongly shaped end, and his full mouth. Nancy was in good health, and it was almost like seeing Nail the way he ought to be.

  “I’m Viridis Chism,” she said, but then she put her hand to her mouth and corrected herself. “I mean, I’m Viridis Monday. You must be Nancy Chism.”

  “Yes’m, that’s me,” Nancy acknowledged.

  “I’ve come from Little Rock to talk to you about your son Nail.”

  As Nancy told it later, the good news that she’d learned to expect when she’d seen the coffee grounds on the side of her cup was simply that Viridis Monday was here. Not that she brought word of any governor’s pardon or Nail’s escape or even that Nail was in good health, but that Viridis Monday was here to tell what she knew, to find out what she wanted to find out, to do what she wanted: to learn everything about Nail; to convince herself of what she already believed: there was no way Nail could have done what he’d been convicted of; and then to do what she intended to do: get everybody to sign a petition, which would go to the governor.

  Viridis spent the whole day with the Chisms, not just Nancy but also Nail’s father Seth, and his younger brother Luther, and Nail’s older sister Irene, who had once been the wife of Sull Jerram and was, in fact, still married to him. Viridis would come back again later, several times, but this first day she would talk with the Chisms all day, or until time for school to let out, when she would come looking for me. Viridis listened to Nancy tell the whole story of Nail’s life, such as it was, not very exciting or eventful or anything to brag about. In the whole house she had just a couple of photographs of Nail that she could show to Viridis, one taken by Eli Willard the year he first brought the camera to Stay More, and another one Nail had made up in Eureka Springs, the farthest he’d ever been from home until they took him off to Little Rock. The Eureka photograph was one of those trick pictures with props where you pose in front of a fake scene, and it showed Nail dressed in some Wild West costume with sheepskin chaps and a ten-gallon hat and a pair of six-shooters, standing in front of the Palace of Versailles, an incongruity that was lost on subject and photographer. But it was a good picture of Nail at the age of nineteen, handsome and sightly. Viridis asked if she could borrow the picture and have her newspaper make a copy of it, and she would return the original.

  Spreading her elderberry jam on her biscuit, Viridis asked, “Did Nail ever have a girlfriend?”

  Nancy Chism laughed a bit. “I have to tell ye a little story,” she said, and she told about Nail’s very first girlfriend, sort of. When the McCoys used to live at the next place down the road, the place where Waymon Chism lives now with his wife, there was a little girl named Dorothea Lea McCoy, about the same age as Nail, three, and sometimes when Mrs. McCoy came to visit with Nancy, she’d put “Dorthlee,” as everybody called her, out in the yard to play with little Nail, under that maple tree that he thought was his own. Sometimes Dorthlee would get permission to walk up the road from her house to play with Nail under the maple even when her mother wasn’t visiting Nancy. One day Dorthlee came running into the Chism house hollering, “Miz Chism, Nail’s a-pickin yore flars!” and Nancy went out to discover that Nail was helping himself to the marigolds, making a bouquet. “Course I had to whup ’im fer it, for he knew better,” Nancy explained to Viridis. Another time, later in the summer, Dorthlee again came running into the house, saying, “Miz Chism, Nail’s a-pickin yore flars!” And once again Nancy found her son out in the flower garden, making a bouquet of zinnias. And once again she had to take the hairbrush to his backside.

  Dorthlee’s father decided to move to Oklahoma, where some of the good Indian lands were being opened to settlement, and the McCoys left Stay More. “Not too fur along after that,” Nancy told Viridis, “in August I reckon it was, I happent to look out the winder and I seen little Nail out yonder there again in my flar gyarden. I snuck up behind ’im and susprised ’im.” Nancy paused, wearing a great smile of fond reminiscence and wonder, and then she finished: “And Nail looked up at me, holdin this yere bouquet of flars, and he said, ‘Miz Chism, Nail’s a-pickin yore flars.’”

  Viridis laughed, although a tear touched the edge of her eye, and said, “And you were so tickled you didn’t punish him that time?”

  “That’s right. I jist busted out laughin. The funniest thing was, was the way he said it. He sounded jist exactly lak Dorthlee!”

  Seth Chism too told some stories of his experience with the young Nail. One of these stories, he said, was famous all over Newton County: When Nail was just seven or eight, and hadn’t yet started helping out at the still but knew where it was, he was playing out under his maple tree one day—he spent nearly all his time a-cootering around beneath that old maple out in the front yard—when a stranger rode up, a man on a big horse. Others who had seen the man said later that they couldn’t tell whether or not the man was a government agent but it sure was a government horse. Anyway, he asked Nail where his daddy was, and Nail come right out and said, “Oh, Paw’s down in the holler, makin whiskey.” And the man asked, “Well, where’s your mother?” and Nail said, “Maw’s down there a-holpin him.” “Sonny,” said the man, “I’ll give ye fifty cents if you’ll tell me how to get to where your father and mother are at.” Young Nail just held out his hand for the fifty cents, but the man said, “No. No. I’ll give ye the money when I git back.” Nail shook his head and continued holding out his hand. “You aint a-comin back,” he said.

  At noon Nancy Chism stepped on the porch to sound a dinner triangle, and the ringing of it brought Waymon Chism and his wife Faye up from the house below, and they all had dinner together. Nail’s older brother, Viridis observed, didn’t look much like him; he wasn’t as tall, or as sinewy, and his eyes didn’t have the quality that Nail’s had, of seeming to understand everything at a glance with not simply intelligence but tolerance and quiet understanding. Like his parents and Irene and Luther, Waymon was eager to talk about Nail. Just a few more hours would pass before I would discover for myself what it was about Viridis Monday that could get Waymon Chism to open up and talk in a way that he wouldn’t talk with strangers, let alone women: not just that he sensed she was there to help, or honestly intended to do e
verything she could to help; possibly she even had the power to help. In this regard she impressed Waymon in a way that Farrell Cobb had not.

  But Viridis’ presence in the Chism household almost started a family quarrel. If there was only one quality of Nail’s that his brother Waymon possessed, it was a sense of outrage, a quick temper that bridled at injustice. The Chisms may have been lawbreakers, in that moonshining was illegal, but Seth Chism had taught his sons principles of honesty and justice from childhood. Seth had taught his boys never to start a fight but, if the other fellow started it, to finish it quickly to the other fellow’s sorrow. Waymon Chism had told so many people that he intended to kill Sull Jerram if anything happened to Nail that word of this threat had reached Sull, and now Sull was threatening to kill Waymon first. This was understandable, but something nobody who knew Sull could understand was that Waymon intended to do the killing with his bare hands.

  While Viridis was talking to Nancy Chism at the dinner table, she kept hearing mention of a gun in a conversation among Waymon, Seth, and Irene. She attempted to eavesdrop more closely, but every time she and Nancy stopped talking the others would hush.

  It was Nancy who spoke up: “What’s this here about a shootin arn?”

  Irene started to speak, but Waymon shushed her. “No, Waymon,” Irene blurted, “Maw oughta know it. Sull has got him one of these here automatic pistols, a Colt .45, and he carries it around with him. If Waymon don’t keep away from him, Sull might jist use it on him.”

  “He’ll have to draw it first,” Waymon said. “He don’t carry it in no hip-holster like the sherf does. If he started to pull that thang on me, I’d strangle him before he could git his finger to the right place on it.”

  “Son, you’d jist better git yoreself a arn,” Seth said to Waymon, and the argument resumed as if Viridis were not listening to it. She sat and listened and tried to figure it out. Waymon refused to carry any weapon other than a pocketknife, which every man carried, not as a weapon but a tool, a utensil. Waymon wasn’t planning to do any violence to Sull Jerram unless something happened to Nail, and now it looked as if maybe this lady Miss Monday could stop them from killing Nail.

  But Waymon’s parents and Irene were convinced that Sull Jerram intended to kill Waymon, not so much in actual self-defense as in prevention of Waymon’s ever placing him in a position of having to defend himself. They tried to get Waymon to remember that the sheriff was on Sull’s side, and in fact Sull’s being county judge made him the sheriff’s boss, even if they weren’t such good buddies. But Waymon insisted he wasn’t afraid of no sheriff neither.

  After Waymon and Faye had gone home, Nancy and Irene put on their winter wraps and took Viridis out to look at the place. After a big midday dinner they needed a hike, and they walked all the way down into the holler where the big Chism still was perched beside the spring branch on a ledge beneath a bluff. It wasn’t in operation at that time, but Nancy gave Viridis an explanation of how it worked, and Viridis wanted to know which part of the procedure Nail had been responsible for, and they showed her. Then Viridis wanted to see Nail’s sheep pastures, and they took her to them, although they were bare of sheep and even of most grass, just patches of snow melting in the afternoon sun on the hillsides. Coming back to the house, they showed Viridis the maple tree at one corner of the front yard, its branches doing their best to wave at her because she couldn’t quite hear its gentle singing. Viridis stood at the base of the tree and looked at the roots over which Nail had built highways for his toy wagons, and she could almost see his tin soldiers fighting on the parapets of the roots’ knees.

  Then Viridis was exposed awkwardly to her first experience of what we all of us take for granted: the traditional ritual of leave-taking and exchanging of polite, conventional invitations and counterinvitations.

  Viridis said she had to find the Bourne place and talk with young Latha, as Nail had suggested.

  Nancy looked properly stricken and said, “Don’t be a-rushin off! Better take supper with us and stay all night.”

  Viridis was supposed to counter by asking Nancy to come and go home with her, but Viridis didn’t know this. She just said she’d be back the next day, or soon, and she thanked Nancy for the hospitality and the generous heaping of Nail she’d served up. Nancy told her which turns to take to get to the Bourne place.

  And here she came! I was just home from school and doing my chores, redding up the front porch with a broom, when here came that Ingledew phaeton (although I didn’t know that’s what it was; the last time the governor had driven it was before my time) a-turning into our yard. You could have swept me off the porch with a feather. Later, long after she’d gone, I would look at myself in the mirror with my lower jaw a-hanging open, just to see how awful I looked that way: she could probably see the bad teeth that E.H. Ingledew hadn’t pulled yet. It’s a wonder I had sense enough finally to close my mouth and answer her eventually, some time after she’d said, “You must be Latha.”

  Surely I had the sense to at least nod my head before I could find my voice? Maybe not. Maybe I couldn’t even find my voice, because she went on and said, “My name is Viridis Monday, and I’m from Little Rock. I work for a newspaper. We’re doing a story about Nail Chism of Stay More, who has been condemned to die in the electric chair, and I was told that you could give me some information that would help us.”

  Still I couldn’t find my voice, except to say to Rouser, our dog, “Hush, Rouser! You jist hush!” His barking soon brought my father and mother and my sisters Barb and Mandy out of the house. Paw kicked old Rouser off the porch, and that shut him up. Momma said, and I could have died of mortification, “We caint buy nothin today, thank ye.”

  The lady smiled. She was the most beautiful lady I’d ever seen even a picture of, and she had the nicest smile I’d ever thought a body could have, and I’ve been practicing it ever since. “I’m not selling anything,” she said, and then she repeated word for word what she’d just said to me, and she added, “Nail Chism suggested that I might talk with your daughter Latha about the circumstances of the case. He feels that she can tell me the truth.”

  “Wal, come on in and set by the far,” Maw invited her, and we all went into the house, into the front room that was my parents’ bedroom but also served as our parlor, so to speak, because you could sit on a divan as well as the bed, and the divan was up anent the fireplace. They gave her Paw’s chair, and Paw had to sit on the divan with Momma, and all three of us girls sat side by side on the edge of the bed, with me in the middle, until Momma said, “Latha, why don’t ye brew us up a pot of that coffee I save for the preacher?”

  And I jumped up and started for the kitchen, but the lady said, “No, thank you, please, I’ve been drinking coffee all day up at the Chisms’.”

  “Oh,” Momma said. “You’ve done talked to them, have ye?”

  “Yes,” Viridis said, and she was wondering how she could politely get me alone to herself, so she added, “and I’m trying to talk to as many people as I can while I’m in Stay More. I’d like to talk with each one of you, but I’d like to talk to you one at a time, if that’s all right, and I want to start with Latha.”

  Paw gave Momma the elbow in her ribs, and a severe look. Mandy and Barb looked at each other like they’d just remembered it was Friday and they had something to do to get ready to go into Jasper tomorrow. Momma was the last to leave the room, and said, “But don’t ye be a-rushin off, ma’am. Better jist take supper with us, and stay all night.” By this time Viridis was beginning to understand that that was just what everybody said, all the time, whether they wanted you to or not.

  The lady did stay to supper, but only because it was already getting cold on the table before she got done talking with me and she couldn’t very well walk out and leave it to get even colder after they’d waited for us. We talked from right then, when my parents and sisters went out of the parlor and left us alone, until suppertime and then some past, before Viridis finally knew what to say t
he third or fourth time my mother asked her to spend the night, and even then she didn’t know that you’re supposed to counter it by saying, Come go home with me, so she just said, finally, that she was expected back by the old woman living in Jacob Ingledew’s house, where she’d left her horse, and had to return this team and buggy to Willis Ingledew’s livery. We were relieved, I guess, because we wouldn’t have had anyplace for the lady to sleep, although I’d have been more than pleased to fix myself a pallet on the floor and let her have my place in the bed with Mandy and Barb. That’s how much I loved her, by then.

  But all of that didn’t come until past dark. We still had an hour or so of daylight left. After the others left us alone in the parlor, Viridis looked at me and gave me that galuptious smile again and tried to hold me with her eyes. I was still too shy to look her in the eye at first, and I reckon I must have kept pawing the rug with my feet and trying to find something to do with my hands besides sit on them. I still hadn’t said a word.

  “Nail thinks you believe he’s innocent,” she said.

  Finally I had to look her in the eye to let her know that I meant this: “I don’t jist believe it. I know it.” That was the first thing I ever said to Viridis Monday, I want it recorded here.

  “You have nice eyes,” she remarked. “He said you did.”