The Choiring Of The Trees

by Donald Harington

  He had pretty much made up his mind to go to Colorado when he broke out. Then he got a letter from me. Much, much later I learned that it was one of the few letters they had let him read, uncensored, in the original envelope. I have promised not to put myself into this story any more than is absolutely necessary, but I have the feeling my letter may have changed Nail’s mind about going to Colorado.

  Dear Nail,

  Viridis told me I should write to you. She writes to me all the time and tells me everything that is happening, or not happening, to you. And then I tell everybody else in Stay More. It makes me feel important to stand around on the porch of Ingledew’s store and tell everybody the news about you. You know, the Jasper newspaper doesn’t say much, and that’s because I guess Judge Jerram and them still run everything in Jasper. But that is changing. Which is what I’m writing to you about now.

  Judge Jerram likes to sit on his brother Tilbert’s storeporch as if he was still somebody important around here, but there is not one of us does not despise him and sneer at him and even his brother Tilbert does not like him because he’s bad for business, Tilbert says to anybody who will listen. There’s room on Tilbert’s storeporch for Sull and Sheriff Snow and a deputy or two, and that’s all, because nobody else will bother with them.

  Your brother Waymon is not the least bit afraid of those fellows.

  He will go right up to the edge of the porch, and turn his back to Sull and say over his shoulder, “You want to shoot me in the back again?” and Sheriff Snow will tell him to go away or he will arrest him for loitering, and Waymon will say, “It sure looks to me like you fellows are the ones who are loitering.”

  And they know they wouldn’t dare try and arrest Waymon or they wouldn’t be able to take him out of Stay More and put him in the Jasper jail. Your brother is fine and strong. I am sorry about your father, but I guess you know his health has not been good for some time. Your mother and Irene and Luther and all are just fine.

  They all miss you, as does every one of us. I think your land misses you too. Yesterday I took me a long hike up through your sheep pastures. The weeds have taken over pretty bad. There’s brambles too. From a distance those pastures are all pretty and green, and rolling, you know, and it’s all so nice and peaceful up there, but when you try to walk through it, it’s overgrown and lonely. The trees sort of sigh.

  There’s this one place, way up against the corner of your upper forty, where the two tree lines sort of converge at the edges of the pasture on what looks like a dead corner up against the mountainside, and is a real dark shade of green, like the mouth of a cave, and you feel sucked into it, or drawn up thataway, and when you get into it you see there’s an old road there, just a trail, if you know the spot I mean, and if you follow that trail up through the woods for quite a ways, a mile or more, with the woods growing deeper and darker, you come to this glade where a waterfall comes down off the very top of the mountain, as if it was gushing up out of some powerful spring up there. The glade is sunny, with the sun shining right on the waterfall, but it’s dark all around, and dark in these several sort of half-caves where it looks like Indians must have lived. It was kind of scary, and I didn’t stay up there very long, but while I was there I thought of you, a lot, and I had a strange vision as if I could see you just living and dwelling in that hidden glade.

  Of course I’ve had to look up some of these words in my dictionary to spell them right, and some of them to find out just what they mean or how they came to mean what they did, and I have to tell you that “glade” and “glad” are sister-words.

  I’m glad that they haven’t killed you, and I don’t think they ever will. The glade and all of us are waiting for you.

  Your friend, Latha

  It was almost, Nail reflected, as good as getting a letter from Viridis. He considered that the letters Viridis was writing to me must have taught me how to write a good letter, or even infected me with some of Viridis’ way with words. But his main reaction to the letter was one of shock: that I should mention the very spot, the waterfall, where he had considered hiding, where indeed he thought about “living and dwelling.” If I had discovered the spot, wouldn’t other people discover his hiding-place? Not necessarily, because I had accidentally stumbled upon that trail whose beginning was almost concealed in the remotest corner of his highest pasture. The glen (and now I have to admit I was wrong: it was not so much a glade as a glen) is hard to get to, and it was the most secluded spot I’d ever been in, myself, and Nail knew it didn’t lack anything he’d find in Colorado.

  But what had I meant, he wondered, about his father? I realize I didn’t word that part too well. I shouldn’t have left it open like that, as if his father was already dead, not just on his way to the hereafter. Nail wanted to ask Viridis what she knew. Had she heard anything about his father dying?

  And he got a chance soon: Viridis came for another visit. Once again they leaned across the table, meeting their lips above the dividing-board, and greeting, and sitting, and then Nail said, “I had a letter from Latha. Bless her heart. But why do they let me have her letter and won’t let me have yours?”

  Viridis smiled. “I suspect her letter wasn’t nearly as bawdy as mine.”

  “Bawdy? You mean you used blackguardy words?”

  “Blaggarty?” She laughed. “What kind of blaggarty word is ‘blaggarty’?”

  “Black-guardy,” he pronounced it more carefully. “Aw, it just means smutty, you know. Dirty.”

  “My letters to you are very white and clean, but also very lurid.”

  “I wish I could read them.”

  “I’m saving them for you,” she said. “I’m saving everything for you.”

  “It won’t be long,” he said.

  Her eyebrows went up. “How long?”

  Nail glanced at their tablemates, a couple sitting a few chairs away and engrossed in each other. Bird wasn’t paying any more than his usual bored attention. Nail whispered, “Probably next Saturday night.”

  “Really?”

  In a normal voice he asked, “Viridis, what did Latha mean in her letter when she said she was sorry about my dad? He’s not left this world yet, has he?”

  “No. Did Latha say that? He’s very ill and ought to be in the hospital, but he won’t go. I think the only thing keeping him alive is he wants to see you again.”

  “He’ll see me soon,” Nail whispered.

  She whispered too: “No, Nail, his house is the first place the lawmen will watch for you.”

  “I’ll find some way to see Paw,” Nail reaffirmed.

  “And me?” she said. “Will you find some way to see me?”

  “I’ll see you,” he said, and realized it sounded as if it were just a polite leave-taking, and he didn’t mean it that way. He said it again as if he really meant it: “I will see you.”

  “You were going to draw me a map, remember?”

  He smiled. “No need of that. Just ask Latha.”

  “She knows?”

  “Tell her she knows.”

  Viridis laughed. “I love the way you put that: ‘Tell her she knows.’ We would all like to be told that we know.”

  “Be told, then, that you know.”

  “Thank you. Now, here is something you should know.” She lowered her voice to the point he had to watch her lips and try to keep one eye on Bird. “One mile southwest of The Walls, beyond the swamp, is a great big old sycamore tree. The newspaper mentioned it in connection with that awful story about how they demonstrated the bloodhounds on poor Ernest. That’s the tree Ernest climbed to avoid being bitten by the dogs, but it’s where they treed him and caught him. That’s how I know about it, and that’s how I found it. It’s the only sycamore tree in the neighborhood, and it’s so tall you’ll see it silhouetted against the night sky, so you can’t miss it, even if you don’t hear the beautiful song it sings. At the base of that tree there is a flat rock, not too heavy for me to lift. Next Saturday afternoon I’m going to place beneath th
at rock a canvas bag containing a Smith & Wesson revolver, a box of bullets, a hunting knife, a harmonica, a pocketknife with a can opener attachment, and a few cans of food, corned beef and beans and such. I thought of including some sandwiches with fresh meat, but the scent would attract animals who might take the bag away before you got to it. I will also put in a hundred dollars in cash. Is there anything I’ve forgotten?”

  “My God, Viridis!” he exclaimed. Bird looked up at them. Nail lowered his voice and asked, “What do I need all that money for?”

  “You never know,” she said. “You’ll run out of food and need to stop and buy some more.”

  Nail thought of something. “Yeah, I might have another mouth to feed. For a while. You don’t think I would go off and leave Ernest, do ye?”

  “I didn’t think you would,” she said. “That’s one reason I’m going to ask him, when we visit this afternoon, to give me all of his finished drawings, to take with me, since he can’t take them with him, or leave them behind.”

  “But he don’t know, yet, that I’m plannin to go,” Nail pointed out to her. “I aint even asked him if he wants to go with me. I caint talk to him about it because of them other fellers down in the death hole. I don’t want them hearin us, ’cause then they’d want to go too, and I shore don’t aim to take everbody.”

  “You wouldn’t want to take Sam Bell,” she said. “He’s a psychopath.”

  “A what? No, I don’t want to take nobody. Just me and Ernest, and I wouldn’t even take him except I cain’t leave him here to die or rot, whichever came first.”

  “I’m so glad you’re taking him,” she said. “Maybe I should put some extra clothing into the bag. At least some caps to cover your bare heads.”

  “But I caint tell him what I aim to do, not without them hearin us. So you’ll have to tell him this for me. Tell him this Saturday night. Tell him Fat Gill will come down to git me to fix the fuse or whatever, and for Ernest to start countin, and when it’s five minutes after Fat Gill takes me upstairs, for him to be ready to go without nobody else in the death hole seein us. It will be dark. I’m gonna kill all the power. He’ll have to jist follow me upstairs in the dark without any word when I come down to git him.”

  “How will you unlock his cell?”

  “Let me worry about that. Like I say, I aint even sure he would want to go. He’d be a fool not to, but maybe he’d rather take his chances with life at Tucker. If he does go over the wall with me, he caint go home with me. When we git out of Pulaski County, we split up: he can go home to Timbo or wherever, or go to Paris to study art like you did, or whatever he wants to do. But you better say your good-byes to him this afternoon, because you might not never see him again. So you jist tell him this: tell him that if he wants to go with me, for him to say, when we’re back in our cells together, for him to say, ‘Yes, it might be clear Sunday,’ and I’ll know he wants to go. Okay?”

  “I’m so excited,” she said.

  “I’m so bored,” said Bird, and they looked up at the trusty-guard looming over them. He added, “Y’all’s time is about up.”

  “I wanted to thank you for the basket you brought last time,” Nail said to her. “I ’preciate ever bit of it.”

  “Did you read the books?”

  “Ever word,” he said. “Except in Dr. Hood, I couldn’t read all them words, and Dempsey give me this here electrical book to memorize that’s givin me eyestrain. I’ll need spectacles before long.”

  “Did you—did you have any trouble with Gertrude Stein, or the Fletcher poems?”

  “Not a bit. That lady can really use words. I read some of it two or three times, just to make sure it was as good as I thought the first time. And you tell your ole boss, when you see him, to thank Mr. Fletcher for what he wrote to me in his poetry book, and to tell him that I think he ought to be back home in Arkansas where he belongs instead of over there in London.”

  Viridis laughed. “I agree. I’ll tell Tom to tell him that.” She glanced to make sure that Bird had moved back to his post, out of earshot, and she said, “I brought you another basket this time, and I didn’t know you would be leaving so soon, or I wouldn’t have put so many cookies in it. Don’t try to take all the cookies with you over the wall. Nor the books.”

  “I’m takin Fletcher,” he declared. He smiled. “And Ernest too, of course.”

  Before their lips met again in parting, he said, in a very gentle voice, as if he were still conspiring in his escape, “I love you, Viridis, and I’ll see you soon in the great free world of trees.”

  “I love you, Nail, and I can hardly wait,” she said.

  Later, back in their cells after Ernest had been up and delivered his whole output of artwork to Viridis, Nail heard Ernest remark as if to the walls, “Yes, it might be clear Sunday.”

  “Who cares?” said Sam Bell.

  “Going to a ballgame maybe?” asked Joe Strong.

  “Naw, he’s goin on a picnic,” said Clarence Dewein.

  “Don’t save none of them cookies for it,” Nail suggested. “Share a few with the other boys.”

  “You’uns want chonklit, pecan, or oatmeal?” Ernest offered.

  On the Tuesday ahead of that special Saturday, it was announced that the movie this week would be a lively comedy photoplay on loan from a major downtown theater, The Gem, and would have six whole reels. It was called Tillie’s Punctured Romance, and Tillie would be played by Marie Dressler, while the male lead was acted by the celebrated Charlie Chaplin, who everybody was dying to see. Nail himself was sorry that he couldn’t watch the movie, because he wanted to see if it was true, as Viridis had told him, that Charlie Chaplin looked just like ole Bobo…or like Viridis herself that one time she had changed herself. Nail did a little bit of calculating and decided he couldn’t just leave the circuits shorted while he went over the wall. It wouldn’t be fair to the inmates, who by that time would be spellbound by the movie. He would have to figure out some way to turn the projector back on as his last act before taking off.

  The next morning he asked Dempsey, “Does this here circuit draw from the same box the arc lamps are on?”

  “No, that’s on the free line down to the transformer,” Dempsey pointed out, and chided him: “You ought to know that.”

  “Jist makin sure,” Nail said.

  Warden Yeager called him in once more, and once more the warden asked, friendly-like, “Is there anything more we can do for you to make you happy?”

  “Nossir,” Nail said, “I reckon I’m pretty happy.”

  The warden changed his tone, dropping the friendliness. “You aint gonna be much longer. I got bad news hee hee. Matter of fact, I got lots of real bad news. One, we got to take you out of that powerhouse and out of your tomato patch. It’s against the rules for a condemned man to do any work, you know that, and we been letting you do it just on account of Reverend Tomme. They fired him. He was a nice fellow, and I’m kind of sorry to see him go, but he was really meddling a lot, and he don’t know very much about how to run a pen. If you want to say good-bye to him, we gave him permission to make one last visit to the pen tomorrow. He said he wanted to see you especially, because he knows you’re gonna die. That’s the real bad news. There’s three more men coming in this week to wait for the chair, and that’s just too many. The governor has been getting a lot of trouble from everybody because of all the pardons and delays and commutations he’s been throwing around like Santa Claus. So the word is out: we got to make room in the death hole. You and Bodenhammer and Sam Bell are getting transferred hee hee, to hell hee hee, in the chair this Saturday at sundown.”

  Nail was not too certain he had heard the warden correctly. What with all of those hee-hee’s mixed up in there, it was kind of difficult to be absolutely certain that Travis Don Yeager had just announced that there would be a triple execution this Saturday, approximately two hours before Nail intended to go over the wall. “Sir?” Nail said, feeling bewildered. “What did you say?”

  “Y
ou heard me,” Yeager said in a voice so cold that Nail felt Yeager was probably having to force himself to sound mean. He really does like me a little bit, Nail told himself, but now he’s got to try hard not to show it.

  “This is awful sudden,” Nail observed. “One day you’re treatin us like human beings, and bein decent and kind to us, and then the next day you’re puttin us right back where we were.”

  The warden lifted a folder from his desk. “You ought to read the report of the governor’s commission of inspectors for the prison system.”

  Nail held out his hand. “Could I read it?”

  “It don’t mention you hee hee. Not by name, anyhow. It just says we’ve been coddling our prisoners and treating them like citizens, which they aint, not after conviction, and it says the governor—let me find it…” The warden opened the folder and ran his finger down several pages until he came to the words: “‘Governor Hays has been required to yield to extraordinary outside pressures in order to stay executions, and this interference with justice works to the detriment of the whole system.’ That’s what it says, Chism hee hee. You can probably read most of it yourself in tomorrow’s Gazette, along with the announcement of this Saturday evening’s executions.” The warden waited a full minute for Nail to comment, and when Nail did not, the warden said, “If you got nothing to say, you can get out,” and waved him to the door.

  Back in his cell, Nail still surprised himself by feeling no emotion. He was neither frightened nor disappointed, frustrated nor angry. He had been sent to the chair so many times, and nothing had happened. Maybe it was dangerous, he thought, to get to the point where you don’t feel anything.

  Ernest and Sam Bell apparently hadn’t been told, not yet. But the next morning’s Gazette was delivered not by a trusty but by the chaplain himself, or rather the ex-chaplain making his farewell appearance. Lee Tomme first visited the cell of Sam Bell and gave him the newspaper, and Nail listened to Sam Bell reading the item aloud for the benefit of the others. Then Lee visited awhile with Ernest, and Nail could not hear what they were saying. Finally Lee gave Nail his own copy of the newspaper. The report of the governor’s commission was on the front page. The announcement of the executions was back on page 4, in a small item all out of proportion to the newsworthiness of the event: Arkansas’s first triple execution since the days of Hanging Judge Parker of Fort Smith. It was almost as if there wasn’t room for it on the front page, which was taken up with the commission’s report.