The Choiring Of The Trees Part 11

But just a day later, as if Nail's question had produced some result, he was summoned by Short Leg for a trip to the visit room.

It wasn't Viridis. It was Farrell Cobb. Nail complained, "I thought you generally came into the barracks to see me. Now you're using up my visit room time."

Cobb whispered, "They're shaking down everyone they admit to the compound." He patted his breast. "I didn't want them to find what I'm carrying."

"A gun?" Nail said.

Cobb laughed. Nail had never heard him laugh, nor suspected that he was capable of it. "No. A very thick letter. Pages and pages."

Nail felt stifling frustration. He swore. He glanced all over the edges of the screen separating him from Cobb, as if there might be some opening the letter could be slipped through. He studied the trusty, Bird, who was just standing there looking bored and blank. He inclined his head toward Bird and whispered to Cobb, "I don't suppose you could bribe him to let me have it."

Cobb shook his head. "I wouldn't want to try."

"Well, s.h.i.+t," Nail muttered. Then he asked, "Did you read it? I reckon you could just tell me most of it."

Cobb cleared his throat. Of course he didn't want to admit that he had read the letter. "I skimmed most of it," he said. "There isn't much news that I couldn't tell you myself. There's a very long account of her trip to your hometown and her meetings with the various figures involved in the case, such as Judge Sewell Jerram and the sheriff, et cetera. There's a long account of her attempts to see the governor. An unfortunate business. A truly lamentable state of affairs. She and the child, Dorinda Whitter, tried for a week to get an audience with Governor Hays. They sat in his waiting-room for three whole days. Yes, three days, and I was there with them part of the third day, when I finally demanded of the governor's a.s.sistant that we get admitted to his private office. Most regrettably, Viridis Monday was very angry by that time and her mood kept her from presenting her case effectively to the governor, toward whom she was openly hostile. In this letter..." (again Cobb patted his breast, where Nail could see a bulge beneath his suit coat) "...she gives reasons for her anger at the governor which are unjustified, I think. She even went so far as to tell the governor that he was responsible for Dorinda Whitter, that he would have to make the child his own ward, a preposterous suggestion, if I may say so, and I did say so."

"Go on," Nail said. "So you're tellin me the governor didn't buy none of it? No pardon, huh?"

"Not necessarily on account of Miss Monday's rudeness. The governor feels strongly that the whole business would have to go through strictly legal channels, the case would have to be referred back to a lower court, you would need to be retried if that could even be considered acceptable by the court, you would have to follow established procedures, you couldn't just impose upon the governor's charity."

"Didn't that governor believe what Rindy told him?"

"I'm afraid the child didn't get a chance to tell him her story. The governor insisted that she would have to tell it to a court, not to him."

"But didn't he even take a gander at that pet.i.tion with all those names that Viridis had got signed for him?"

"He said he was most curious to know if the pet.i.tion contained the names of Prosecuting Attorney Thurl B. Bean and Circuit Judge Lincoln Villines. It does not, of course. The governor is of the opinion that Judge Villines must recommend leniency to him, or at least recommend a retrial, and Judge Villines will not. I might add that Judge Villines is, it would appear, an old friend of the governor's."

"It would appear," Nail echoed. He asked, rhetorically and futilely, "What kind of governor is that man anyhow?"

"For now, the only one we have, alas," Farrell Cobb said, the closest he ever came to expressing any sentiment against the governor.

"So what's the next step?" Nail asked.

"Next step?"

"Yeah, how long does it take to get another trial, or whatever?"

Farrell Cobb shook his head. "You don't understand," he said. "The governor was our last resort."

"But didn't ye jist say something about the governor hisself says that the case has to go back to a lower court and git retried?"

"Only if Judge Villines recommends it, and he does not."

"Well, f.u.c.k Link Villines! If a judge does something wrong, he aint likely to ask somebody else to come along and tell him how bad he done. Of course he don't want a retrial!"

"That's the way the law works," Farrell Cobb said.

Nail stared at him in disbelief. "If that's the way the law works, you ought to be ashamed to call yourself a lawyer."

Farrell Cobb reddened. Testily he said, "Insults won't work with me."

"Then what in h.e.l.l will work with you? Tell me that! What have I got to do or say to get some help from you?"

"Mr. Chism, I've given you quite a lot of help," the lawyer said coldly. "I've gone to some extraordinary lengths to appeal your case. In fact, I think it's safe to say I've worked harder on this case than any in my career."

"But I'm still going to the chair," Nail said.

Farrell Cobb did not deny it. But he didn't exactly concede it. After a while he just gave his head a slow shake and said, "Quite conceivably."

Nail gestured toward Cobb's breast, where the precious thick letter was. "Did she give me any hope?" he asked.

Cobb reached for the envelope as if to verify an answer but thought better of it and stuck his hand into his outside coat pocket instead. "As I seem to recall her saying, she said you should not give up. She said something about attempting to attract national publicity to your case."

"What does that mean?" Nail wanted to know.

"The big newspapers and magazines in the East might take an interest in you, and if there were sufficient national publicity, it could pressure the governor into reconsidering."

Nail thought about that. Bird announced that the fifteen minutes were up. Nail said, "Jist one more question. The national publicity would have to come before April 20th, right?"

"One would hope," Farrell Cobb said.

April came. Nail worked on his letter to Viridis. He wrote it and rewrote it, trying to get each sentence perfect in his mind before committing it to paper. Paper was scarce; he had only a few sheets left from the penny pad Warden Burdell had given him at Christmas. As a last favor Farrell Cobb had agreed to come back to the penitentiary when he could safely come into the barracks and take the letter out. Nail hoped that Viridis might come to the visit room even before then, but, as he told her in the letter, he didn't blame her for not coming: it was too painful, for both of them, to realize they couldn't say anything in just fifteen minutes. He told Viridis he wanted to remember her as he had last seen her: happy, beaming, exhilarated from her trip to Stay More, optimistic, bearing the secret of having brought his accuser to apologize. He said how profoundly grateful he was to Viridis for whatever she had done to persuade Dorinda not only to admit her wrongdoing but to come to him and tell him to his face. Even if he was executed, he would know that there was no greater proof of his innocence than a confession from Rindy herself. He said he was sorry that the governor had not heard Rindy say it. He said the only times lately when he got really angry, mad enough to fight Fat Gabe himself, was when he thought about the injustice of that governor making Viridis sit in the waiting-room for three days before letting her talk to him. He didn't blame her for getting rude to the governor. If it had been him, he would have been more than rude: he would have clobbered that governor. He confessed he spent a lot of time thinking about killing the governor.

Then he wrote: I reckon you know that if they try to electercute me I aim to kill as many as I can beforehand and I reckon you also know how I aim to do it. But I have been thinking (which of course is what we all of us do too much of around this place) and have decided that if I'm going to die in that way, I might as well make one honest attempt at getting out of here before they even put me back in the death hole, which it don't look like they plan to do until the week before the electercution date. Before they put me back in the death hole, I think I know a pretty good way to break out of here, and I can do it all by myself if you could find some way to do just one thing for me. I need a little bit of mustard oil, just enough of it to smear on my feet to throw the dogs off my scent when I light out for the country. If there was some way you could smuggle me just a tiny bottle of that mustard oil.

But if you can't, and I have to go sit down in the chair on the 20th, I want you to promise me that you won't come and watch. I couldn't stand that. I sure would like to see you again before I close my eyes for the last time, and to tell the honest truth I'd like to still see nothing else except your beautiful face behind my closed eyes for eternity, but I don't want that to be the last thing I see before I close my eyes, I want to imagine it, I want to create you, I want to be able to take your face with me to eternity because I made it up all by myself.

There is one more request, if you can bear one. Then I won't bother you with any more of them. When I am gone I hope you will take the trouble that you would ordinarily spend on grief and instead do whatever you can for this boy, Timbo Red. He will make a great artist one of these days. Not nearly as good a one as you, but a great one, still, if he gets the chance and maybe some lessons and enough of those drawing materials. He ought to get out of here on parole before too very long. The only thing he ever done wrong was steal a horse, and they can't keep him long for that. If you could watch out for him when he gets out, I'm going to tell him a lot of things that I wanted to tell you so that he can go on for a long time telling you those things almost like I was still around to do it myself, and if you want to, you can pretend his voice is mine, just the same way you brought all of those Stay More voices with you so I could hear them.

If you was with me right now, you would be laughing because what I'm thinking about is, wouldn't it be funny if you was to introduce old Timbo Red to Rindy and they become good friends? Live happy ever after, and all that?

On second thought, maybe it ain't funny. But you, dear Viridis, please live happy ever after. Get me that mustard oil if you can. If you can't, don't let it bother you none. You done your best, you done more than any woman or man either could ever have done, and I and the trees will love you for it for ever more.

Then he could only wait and watch for Cobb, to smuggle this letter out. Every day that pa.s.sed was a day lost he'd need to work out some way to get that mustard oil; he had the rest of it pretty well planned: getting over the wall at the right time in the right way. He didn't even tell Timbo Red of his plan, although he considered that the kid himself might need to escape sometime. But he did tell Timbo Red, day after day when they could talk, about Viridis Monday. Timbo Red had to admit he'd never known any female anything like her, and not because Nail was bragging on her or making her out to be better than she was; he was telling Timbo Red exactly everything that Viridis had done that he knew about, and just what she looked like. Of course he didn't tell Timbo Red to expect that Viridis was going to take care of him when he got out of the pen, but Nail was setting him up for it so he wouldn't be absolutely flabbergasted when it happened. But he did tell Timbo Red he hoped the boy would meet up with her if anything ever happened to Nail that he wasn't alive anymore, because then there were a few things he wanted Timbo Red to tell her, if he could remember them.

Timbo Red could remember them all. He could especially remember the directions to a few spots west of Stay More where you could look down into the valley and paint the most wonderful pictures of it. Timbo Red allowed as how he himself would sort of like to go and see some views like that, and even paint them, if he ever got aholt of some paints and learned how to use them.

"You'll git ye some paints, son," Nail told him. "Jist take my word fer it."

One evening at supper Nail was working on his second helping of cowpeas and cornbread when somebody crowded in to sit beside him on the bench, and even before he turned to see the face, he recognized the smell: the barbershop talc.u.m powder of Attorney Farrell Cobb. Nail was both elated and irritated. He didn't have any more use for Cobb, except as a messenger, but that was essential. Cobb shook hands with him, which he hadn't done before, and Nail instantly detected something in their pressing palms. "A letter from her," Cobb whispered. "All folded up into a wad. Hide it. Enjoy it later."

As their hands came apart, Nail withdrew his with the precious wad in it and tucked it into his waistband, then took from the other side of the band his letter for Viridis. It was not wadded up, but there were only four pages, folded three times. He kept it under the table and placed it on Cobb's leg. "Kindly get that to her."

"Wait. No. I can't," Cobb protested, feeling the letter.

"Just stick it in your pocket," Nail insisted.

"No, really, they'd-" Cobb said, darting a glance around the room. "Sshh! They're watching us!"

Nail looked around. Fat Gabe and Short Leg were over at the end of the mess hall, but they weren't watching. The only one watching was the mess trusty, a black man. But he was watching the two of them intently, and he could clearly see Nail's hand on Cobb's leg.

"Take it, quick!" Nail said.

"No, take it back!" Cobb said. "Move your hand!"

The black trusty yelled, "GIT DE WADDEN!" Fat Gabe and Short Leg came over. The black trusty said to them, "Dem two done pa.s.sed some paper," and pointed at Cobb. "Ma.r.s.e Buddell he say to watch dat man. Git de wadden."

Nail had taken back his letter and thrust it back into his pants band but in doing so had jarred loose the wad of Viridis' letter so that it fell down into his trouser leg. Fat Gabe said, "On your feet, Chism!" and as Nail stood up he felt the wad of Viridis' letter slide down his leg to the floor. Without looking down, he covered it with his shoe. Fat Gabe held out his hand, and said, "Whatcha got there? Le's have it!"

Nail held out his empty hands. "I aint got nothin."

Fat Gabe looked at Farrell Cobb and demanded, "He hand something to you?"

"Well...no, he...I don't have anything," Cobb said.

"Search 'im," Fat Gabe told Short Leg, who reached inside Farrell Cobb's suit coat and searched his pockets and then the pockets of his trousers.

"He's clean," Short Leg announced.

"Search Chism," Fat Gabe said. Nail wondered, Am I gonna have to use my knife before it's time? He hoped Short Leg wouldn't find his knife. But Short Leg went immediately to his trousers and, knowing that no convict's trousers ever had pockets, felt inside the waistband and brought out the letter. "Well, well," Fat Gabe said, s.n.a.t.c.hing the letter out of Short Leg's hand and holding it up high. "What have we here?" He turned to Farrell Cobb and waved the letter under his nose. "He try to pa.s.s this to you? Or did you give it to him?"

"Well, not exactly," Cobb said.

"What do you mean, Mister Cobb?" Fat Gabe demanded. "Is this yours or his?"

"It isn't mine, I a.s.sure you," Cobb said. "I've never seen it before."

"Get the f.u.c.k out of here, Cobb," Fat Gabe said. Cobb hastily departed, and Fat Gabe said to Short Leg, "Get the boss."

Warden Burdell was summoned, and came, and Fat Gabe handed him the letter. The warden took out his spectacles and put them on. He unfolded the sheets, giving Nail a glance to indicate he recognized the writing-paper as the same he had given Nail to write his mother at Christmastime. He read the letter, grinning. Nail stood helpless, the sole of his shoe pressing down on the wad of Viridis' letter. Would he ever get a chance to read it? Finally the warden looked up and said to Nail, "So this was intended for Miss Monday of the Gazette, huh? As I suspected, she's sweet on you. Right?" Nail did not answer. The warden flapped the letter. "You say here that you'd like to kill the governor. Is that true?" Nail would not answer. "Answer me, or do you need Gabe to give you some persuasion?" Nail gave a semblance of a nod. "And it says here you're planning to kill a few of us before we electrocute you. You want to tell me how you're planning to do that?" Nail could not answer. The warden removed his spectacles and looked at Fat Gabe and Short Leg and said to them, "Maybe he thinks he can do it with his bare hands!" and both of the sergeant-guards laughed. "If you're so impatient to give it a try, Chism, your date with Old Sparky is right around the corner. I think we'd better put you back in the death hole to wait for it. But first..." (the warden inclined his head in the direction of Fat Gabe) "...first I believe my a.s.sistant here, ole Gabe, would like to inflict an appropriate punishment for your stupid attempt to smuggle this letter out of here. Is that right, Gabe?"

"Just let me get my hide," Fat Gabe said. "We'll do it right here in the mess hall."

"Very good. Everybody can watch," the warden said. "Except me. I wouldn't have much fun watching you get strapped, Chism. But I expect I'll have some pleasure watching you fry. Unless you find some mustard oil." Before walking away, the warden shook his head and said again, "Mustard oil!" and snorted a laugh.

Inmates hate to have to watch a flogging right after supper; several of them are sure to puke. The wheelbarrow was not brought in as a rack for Nail's body; he was just spread out right there face down on the dining table, with three trusties holding his arms and legs, while Doc G.o.de got ready to take his pulse.

There were three things Nail saw, in succession, before the blows started: first, the wad of Viridis' letter, still there on the floor, n.o.body noticing it or thinking anything of it, or at least not bending down to pick it up and find out what it was; second, the face of Timbo Red, who was looking at him with mingled terror and fierce indignation, whose sixteen-year-old eyes were already beginning to acquire some of the keen look of having seen too much of this world and having tried without success to make sense of it; and third, as Nail shut his eyes, that face with its caressing green eyes and frame of fire-red hair, that face he would always see whenever he shut his eyes until the very last time he shut them. He tried to fix that face in the darkness as the bra.s.s-studded lash opened up the skin of his a.s.s. And when they sponged salt water into the wounds, he did not scream. He bit his tongue and gritted his teeth and hoped that maybe he would faint before the pain got too bad. The only sound he could hear at first, other than the loud slapping of the leather against his skin, was the heavy breathing of Fat Gabe exerting himself as he had never done before, almost as if he'd found a woman who was his match in bed and needed every bit of breath and thrust he could give her. And then Nail heard a man retching and heaving up his supper. And then another. Nail's own double-supper had risen in his craw and was threatening to choke him. Better to drown in his own vomit than be beaten to death. But he held it down, as he held back his screams that were begging him to let them beg.

He was not counting the blows. It was somewhere past thirty, but he wasn't counting. He was thinking how sad it was that Viridis would never see that last letter he wrote to her. No chance the warden would let her have it.

Fat Gabe seemed to be getting a bit frustrated. "G.o.dd.a.m.n you, Chism, if you die, it's gonna be me who does it, not Ole Sparky." Nail made no response. There was a longer interval before the next blow, and when it fell Nail knew why: Fat Gabe must have hauled off and reared back as far as he could with that strap before giving it all he had. And all he had was not enough to bring a scream out of Nail, only a groan. And Fat Gabe cursed the trusty: "n.i.g.g.e.r, G.o.dd.a.m.n you, squeeze some of that salt in there!"

Suddenly Nail felt someone tearing at his chest. He opened his eyes to see Timbo Red, who said, "Let me have that knife!" and grabbed the string inside Nail's s.h.i.+rt and pulled it out, and tore the knife off it, tearing off too the gent's tree charm, which flew out and landed on the floor not far from the wad of Viridis' letter.

"No!" Nail hollered at Timbo Red, but before anyone could lay a hand on the kid he had stuck the knife into Fat Gabe's belly and pulled upward with all his might, tearing right up through the middle of his guts. Fat Gabe screamed and dropped the strap and clutched himself in the middle, and Timbo Red slashed the knife across Fat Gabe's throat, from ear to ear. Short Leg had his gun out, but before he could fire it, Timbo Red had plunged the knife into Fat Gabe's chest.

The trusties holding Nail had let go of him, and he too was up and watching as Short Leg, instead of shooting Timbo Red, decided to c.o.c.k him over the head with the b.u.t.t of his gun, and knocked the boy unconscious to the floor, right beside the wad and the tree charm. Nail sprang down beside him, and, while making sure the boy was okay, or at least pretending to care for him, he palmed the wad and the tree charm. A moment later, while everyone was watching Fat Gabe roll and toss and buck, Nail concealed his treasures by thrusting his hand down into his pants and tucking the wad up under the s.p.a.ce behind his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es and then hiding the tree charm in his a.n.u.s.

In the confusion that followed, n.o.body paid much attention to Nail for several minutes. All of the trusties were there, including the armed ones. All of the half-trusties, or do-pops, came running, and everybody crowded into a circle about Fat Gabe, who was flopping and coughing up blood, his guts spilled onto the floor. Short Leg was waving his pistol as if somebody else might try to do something, and Timbo Red lay sprawled on his back, his eyes closed but almost a trace of a smile on his mouth. Fat Gabe, with his last bit of strength, pulled the knife blade out of his breast and held it as if to plunge it into Timbo Red. At that instant Warden Burdell came running in and yelled, "Christ, Gabe, what in h.e.l.l is a-gorn on here?"

Fat Gabe's eyes clouded over, and he echoed one of the words as if he were already on his way there: "h.e.l.l." Then he collapsed and was dead.

Down in the death hole later that night, Nail lay on his side in the old, familiar, mouldy cot that had been his bed so many months in the autumn. It was almost good to be back. He was careful how he lay, because of the wounds in his b.u.t.tocks, which still bled. It was absolutely dark, and he would have to wait until morning before attempting to read Viridis' letter, which was still in a wad tucked snugly into his groin behind his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. For now, he was watching again and again that scene in the mess hall, particularly those precious seconds when he had failed to prevent Timbo Red from taking his knife and killing Fat Gabe with it. If only he had acted quicker. The boy should have known that Fat Gabe wasn't killing Nail, that Nail would survive it, that it wasn't worth risking his own life to kill Fat Gabe. The boy had practically committed suicide. There was no way now they would ever let him go. If they didn't electrocute him, they'd keep him in The Walls for the rest of his life or, worse, send him off to Tucker Farm, where the hardcases would rape him to death. Nail was tremendously moved and beholden that Timbo Red would have done something like that for him, would have liked him so much that he would act impulsively to protect or save him, but he was sorrowful beyond all imagining that it had actually happened, and there was no taking it back. The sheriff of Pulaski County had come out to The Walls to arrest Timbo Red and take him off to the county jail, because that's the way the law worked, and the sheriff and some other men had taken Nail into Warden Burdell's office and questioned him for an hour, trying to find out if Timbo Red was Nail's "punk" and if the boy might have done it because he was in love with Nail. Finally Nail had lost his temper and demanded to know why that sheriff had never come out and arrested Fat Gabe for all the murders he'd committed on the inmates. That question had shut up the whole room for a long moment, and then Short Leg had taken Nail down here to his old home in the death hole. Before the heavy iron door clanged shut on him, Short Leg had remarked, "I'm just afraid that whoever the boss gets to replace ole Fat Gabe is going to be a meaner feller than he ever was." Nail had thought about that for a while, trying to determine if it meant that Short Leg had approved or disapproved of Fat Gabe's ways.

Before bringing him down to the death hole, Short Leg had let him pick up his stuff: his two books, the Bible and Dr. Hood, and his harmonica, which he hadn't played since that one time around Christmas. Now he raised it to his mouth, cupped his hands around it, and let his breath escape slowly onto the holes and reeds, and then he made one hand tremble to s.h.i.+ver the sound. The hand trembled pretty well all by itself without his willing it. He was still shook up. He drew in his breath slowly, changing the notes of the sound, making them more mournful, and he discovered he was playing a very slow and elegiac version of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Mine. Eyes. Have. Seen. The. Glory. Of. The. Coming. Of. The. Lord! The confines of the dank cell gave a special resonance to the haunting voice of the Hohner, so that the hymn was not one of praise but of loneliness, sadness, yearning. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored! The measured cadence of the poignant notes was molded by his hands, his lungs, and his lips into an expression of nostalgia and regret. He hath loosed the fatal lightning of His terrible swift sword! Nail made love to the instrument the way he'd sometimes had fancies of kissing Viridis. His! Truth! Is! Marching! ON! He stopped and took his lips away from the harmonica and said aloud to himself, "On?" and then he asked also, "Truth?" and he just lay there in dazed thought for a long time before he could again raise the instrument to his mouth. Then he played a few old ballads. He played a couple of his favorite love songs, "On Top of Old Smoky" and "Down in the Valley," the latter filled with the sound of the wind blowing through the valley, the loneliness of jail, the hope of knowing and seeing love. And then, to test the harmonica's range of perky and jolly tunes, he played "The Old Chisholm Trail." That was about an old cattle-driving road running from Kansas to South Texas, which, his daddy had told him, had been named for a kinsman, Jesse Chisholm, who didn't know how to spell his last name. It runs on through twenty-three verses, with the chorus of Come-a-ti-yi-yippy after each one, but twenty repet.i.tions was all he could tolerate before he grew very sleepy and quit.

"Dat sho am sweet," a voice said, and Nail realized that the other death cell was occupied. They introduced themselves. His companion was Percy James, called Fleas, or Fleece, Nail would never be sure which. Fleas had carved up his wife with a razor while drunk at Christmas, believing she had been unfaithful to him. He was scheduled to sit on Old Sparky in just a few more days, he wasn't sure whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday. He wasn't too scared; an uncle of his had also had an appointment with Old Sparky, and, oddly enough, for the same offense. Nail and Fleas got acquainted until both of them grew sleepy.

Before falling asleep, Nail focused his mind away from the gashes on his b.u.t.tocks to a spot nearer the front, that fleshy little mound where the skin of his s.c.r.o.t.u.m joined his crotch, wherein the paper wad was nestled, which, both then and moments later in sleep, he imagined was the gentle thumb of Viridis.

The only light the death cells ever got was a wedge of early-morning sun that hit a small bas.e.m.e.nt window and bathed the interior of the cells for an hour or so in a glow that in autumn and winter had seemed cold and menacing but now, in spring, was warm and promising, and lit the floor as well as the wall. Nail sat in that light and ate all of the hunk of rock-hard cornbread they gave him for breakfast. And drank his tin cup of water. He remembered his neighbor and called out, "Good mornin to ye, Mr. James." There came in reply a chuckle, followed by: "Moanin to you, Nails. Aint no wat man eber call me mistah befo."

Then Nail reached down to where the thumb still touched, and took out and gently unfolded the wad. He unfolded it once, twice, thrice, a dozen times: it was a sheet of ordinary white writing-paper, now turned grayish by the tiny pencil markings written in a fine hand with a fine point all over it, on both sides. He had to hold the paper very close to tell one line from another, and he had to squint to tell one word from another and he had to reread to tell one letter from another. There were no margins. To save s.p.a.ce, she had omitted the date and the greeting and the closing and their names, but these were not necessary.

This must be a poor subst.i.tute for at least fifty pages I have written you since my last letter. Nice Mr. Cobb says that he will try to get this to you if I am able to abbreviate it to only one page, and I must ask myself which of those thousands of words that I wrote at more leisure I need most to say here. I feel like writing in quick, three-word sentences: "All is well. Please be happy. You will live. Don't give up. Gardez la foi. We shall prevail. Truth will out. Justice will triumph. I love you." There, but don't you see how I can't say that in only three words? Yet I can't say it in one page either. Please believe I tried several times to visit you, but each time I was told that you were being punished for stealing food and were not allowed to have visitors. The last time I made an attempt, the guard, Gabriel McChristian, said he would let me see you if I would "step out" with him, which, I gathered, meant meeting him somewhere outside The Walls for some illicit purpose. I considered exposing his despicable bribe to the authorities, but these days I have very little faith in any authorities, as you can imagine, after my experience with the governor, which, I am the first to admit, I bungled by stupidly permitting myself to become irritated and indignant with "His Excellency." But he is such a mean-spirited, small-minded little politician, probably the worst governor that Arkansas has ever had. Your dear friend and mine, young Latha Bourne, went to great trouble to collect the signatures of nearly 2,000 Newton County women to add to my pet.i.tion of registered voting males, with a wonderful letter (she sent me a copy) in which she beseeched His Excellency for clemency and reminded him, "None of us females can vote, Governor, but we can sure influence the men who do." As far as I know, Gov. Hays didn't read her letter or give her pet.i.tion any more of his precious attention than he gave mine. But if he and the people of Arkansas are blind and deaf to the hideous injustice of your wrongful conviction and punishment, perhaps Americans in general will not be. I am trying very hard to find a publisher for one or more of several articles I've written about the case. So far, I've placed one in the Houston Chronicle and one in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which isn't much of an accomplishment, but at least it means that there are some editors who are interested in you, which is more than can be said, unfortunately, for the editors of Little Rock, including my former boss, Mr. Thomas Fletcher, to whom, I'm both sorry and happy to say, I've submitted my resignation. I am very hopeful that a.s.sociated Press, a national news service, will accept the best of my articles so that it will appear all over the country. Now, if you are interested in Dorinda, the pitiful origin of this whole mess, she is reasonably happy living here at my father's house and attempting to attend Fort Steele Elementary School, where, I am told, she is having problems with reading and comprehension as well as "ability to get along with others," but is making progress. She sends you her best wishes, her continuing (that is, lifelong) regrets, and her "bedtime prayers." Sometimes I feel inclined to prayer myself. You are right, I don't know you and I never asked you where you stand in regard to a Supreme Being, but I learned enough about you on my trip to Stay More to have the impression that you are not exactly a praying man yourself. If there is a G.o.d, He (or She) would at least have allowed Governor Hays to listen to Dorinda's story, but he (and He) would not. I don't believe in Governor Hays, either. I believe in you, Nail. I believe that men as good and as brave and as strong and as pa.s.sionate as yourself are the highest manifestation of life on this earth...next to, of course, trees. If we were trees, if we were all rooted, and still, and swaying gently in the spring breeze, would we be happy? Perhaps, but we could still be cut down. n.o.body is going to cut you down, my dearest. Not as long as I am still standing.

"Nails, mah fren, does I heah yo weepin? Do de sadnesses got you too? It aint no hep to cry. We got to be brabe, man. We got to face de music. You dry yo eyes now, heah me?"

Nail was not aware that he had made a sound, but he saw that a drop of water had fallen on Viridis' letter, and it wasn't sweat. He was almost glad that the letter he'd written for Cobb to smuggle out to her, that was probably right now on the warden's desk, would never reach her, because it was such paltry, numb, ignorant nonsense compared with her letter. The only thing he'd said that came anywhere near equaling the beauty of her letter was when he almost came as close as she had to coming right out and saying "I love you." How had he put it, or sneaked around not coming right out and putting it? Yes: he had written, "And I and the trees will love you for it for ever more," which wasn't the same as saying "I love you" or even saying "Me and the trees too love you" but just saying "We will" as if it hadn't happened already but was likely to happen if we just all got a chance to last forevermore. Thinking of trees, he remembered the tree charm and remembered where he had hidden it, and he fished it out and cleaned it off and hid it inside Dr. Hood. To take advantage of the morning light, he read for a while in Dr. Hood, which was written as if a real medical doctor were having a series of informal but educational chats with one of his patients. Nail received advice on what to do while his wife was delivering the baby. He happened to read, "In the event of prolonged labor, the ingestion of a small quant.i.ty of mustard oil will increase peristaltic movements of the stomach and possibly advance the contractions of the womb." Nail wondered who was supposed to drink the mustard oil, himself or his wife? Probably her. He flipped over to the section on Pharmacopoeia and read: "Oil of mustard-an ester of isothio-cyanic acid useful as a rubefacient, counterirritant, emetic, and to disguise one's scent from bloodhounds while escaping from the penitentiary." Nail gave his head a brisk shake and reread the definition and found the last part of it missing on the second reading, and told himself that he was beginning to go stir crazy...if he had not already been for quite some time now. It scarcely mattered that Viridis would never read his request for mustard oil; he couldn't use it now if he had a gallon of it. He would stay in this hole until...but, G.o.ddammit, it did matter that she would never read his request not to attend his execution. Somehow he had to get word to her that he did not want her to do that.

"How you doin there, Fleece Boy? Have you prepared yourself to meet your Maker?" Nail heard a familiar voice he hadn't had to listen to for quite some time.

"Ya.s.suh, Reberen McPhee, I sho has. De Lawd say He gwine take me in His ahms and He aint gwine let dat ole sizzle chair hut me one bit."

"Well, that's good, Fleece, I'm real proud to hear that. How 'bout I read you some scripture this mornin?"

"I sholy 'preciate iffin you did, Reberen."

Nail listened to Jimmie Mac visit with Fleas for most of an hour, thinking that his turn would have to come next and he would have to give up the last of the morning sunlight to McPhee, when he'd rather use it to read to himself a couple of those nice love songs that Solomon wrote, especially that one about how beautiful the lady's feet were with shoes on them.

"Good to see you back again, Brother Chism. I mean, now, I don't mean it's good that you're back in the death hole, I just mean it's almost like a kind of homecoming. Right? In my experience I've known a number of men to actually prefer being down here to being up there. Up there they've got problems you don't have down here. Down here too it's kind of quiet and peaceful, don't you think? Up there it can get anything but. Now, I don't suppose you've had any revelations or second thoughts that might make it easier for me to get you ready to meet the Lord?"

It took Nail a little while to determine that this was a question, not a simple observation of reality, and at length he said, "Well, Preacher, I'll tell ye. I've done some thinkin, and I believe I can see G.o.d. Yessir, I can see the face of G.o.d as plain as I can see you a-standin there, and the wonderful thing is, Reverend, that G.o.d is a her, I mean She's a Woman. Did you know that?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Yessir, you are, because what I'm tellin you is, and you'd better believe it, is that here all along folks have been under the mistook impression that G.o.d is a man, and a father. But She's not. No, I'm tellin you, She's a female, and a mother. She's the best mother ever there was."

Jimmie Mac did not say anything. He seemed to be searching his memory to see if he had ever encountered anybody who had ever said anything like this and, if so, what he had said in reply. But after searching corners of his memory he had forgotten he had, he couldn't find anything. Finally he said, "Well, Brother Chism, that's very interesting. But you're wrong. The Good Book tells us through and through that He's a him, and a man, and He took the form of a man when He became the Son of Man and died on the cross for our sins. They never hung no female up on a cross."

"Yeah, poor Jesus was a man all right, just like me, but G.o.d was his mother, not his father."

"That's blasphemy, Brother Chism. It hurts me to hear a man talk sacrilegious."

"You don't have to listen," Nail pointed out to him.