The Choiring Of The Trees Part 17

"Hee hee, hee hee," Yeager said. "Aint we been feeding y'all a little bit better lately?"

It was true. There wasn't any steak or dumplings, but the monotonous cornbread and cowpeas had been replaced by an occasional egg at breakfast, a sandwich at dinner, and a square meal at supper: hash or stew sometimes. They really couldn't complain about that. "We're happy, I reckon," Nail declared. "I only wish you'd change that rule about not lettin us ever go to the visit room."

"My goodness!" Yeager exclaimed. "I forgot about that. You haven't seen the visit room lately, have you, Chism? Come up and take a look." The warden himself, but with some help from Short Leg, escorted Nail upstairs, out across the Yard and into the visitors' room, where a few changes had been made: the dense screen had been torn out and replaced with a long table divided by a vertical board down the center of it, with chairs placed along both sides so that the inmates could sit on one side, the visitors on the other. And the table could accommodate up to six inmates and six visitors at a time, not just one of each. Two couples were using it at the moment: a black woman with her child was talking to a black convict, and a white woman was talking to a man Nail recognized as his old bunkmate Toy, who had such bad breath. The warden explained that they weren't allowed to pa.s.s anything across the board or touch or hold hands or anything like that, although one kiss at the beginning and one at the end were permitted. "If it's somebody you care to kiss hee hee," Yeager said. Nail wondered how the woman could stand to kiss Toy. And there were several other good improvements in the room: a visitor could bring you something, a present or some food or anything, so long as it got inspected first for anything illegal, and you could have a visitor not just once a month but once a week if you wanted.

"Well, I'll declare," Nail said. "Now all I need is a visitor."

The warden gestured toward the opposite door, which Bird was guarding in a new uniform that made him look like a hotel doorman. "She's in there hee hee," Yeager said.

"Huh?" Nail said. Then he said, "Oh. Warden Yeager, sir, you sure are a nice man."

"Don't thank me hee hee," the warden said. "It was the Reverend Tomme who made these improvements. Now, enjoy your visit hee hee. Bird, you let 'em talk all they want, just don't let her give him nothin except what's already been inspected."

"Yessir," Bird said, and saluted like some G.o.dd.a.m.n soldier, then opened the door. She stood there, in the doorway, in a green summertime outfit that was thin and silky, a shade of green that matched her eyes and made Nail notice how her hair caught the light in soft red sparks. She came in. Nail stood on his side of the table waiting for her. She came up to the table, studied the barrier-board between them, and raised her hands as if to make sure the screen was gone. She looked uncertainly at Bird. "Y'all can kiss, that's all," Bird informed her.

They both had to put their hands on the tabletop to steady themselves as they leaned toward each other across the divider. His hands were still cuffed together. It took what seemed to him like an awful long time to reach her, to get there. Seeing Toy out of the corner of his eye, he began to wonder if his own breath was bad and tried to keep his mouth clamped tight shut, but he had to make at least a little pucker of his lips. Nail had never kissed a girl before. Not once. As her face began the long journey across the tabletop, she was smiling, but as she came closer the smile vanished, and she seemed as if she were about to faint and closed her eyes. He kept his eyes open for fear he'd miss her completely. He realized their noses were going to get in the way, and he tilted his nose to his left, but at that instant she tilted her nose in that direction too, then opened her eyes to see why he hadn't made contact yet; seeing their noses in the way, she tilted her head back in the other direction at the same instant he was heading that way himself, and they had to stop and start all over again until they could somehow silently agree to tilt their noses in opposite directions and get them out of the way. They made a short, simultaneous laugh of self-consciousness. And then her lips were touching his. It was almost like that time Bobo had given him a quick little charge of current, not that it was painful but it jolted him like something he had never expected to feel and wasn't ready for. He heard those trees, the same singing he'd sometimes heard in the death room. It was real nice. Sometimes, playing his harmonica, he had tried to imagine what it would be like kissing Viridis, but he'd never realized it would be as nice as this, or that it would make him tingle to the tips of his toes. He closed his eyes. The singing of the trees continued until finally it was hushed by Bird's harsh voice: "That's enough now." They disengaged and backed away from the middle of the table.

"Hi, Nail," she said, smiling.

"Howdy, Viridis," he said.

"Y'all sit down, now," Bird said, and they sat in their chairs on opposite sides of the table and looked at each other across the wooden board. The couples on either side of them went on talking. Toy's woman was saying something about a store burning in De Vall's Bluff, and the black man was asking his woman if the white folks she worked for were treating her proper. They paid no attention to Nail and Viridis.

"How are you?" Viridis asked, rather formally.

"I am real fine, I reckon," he answered, somewhat formally himself. "And how are you?"

"I am very hopeful," she said. "Everything is looking up. They're treating you decently, aren't they?"

"Compared with the way it was before," he said, "it is sure decent."

"You look good," she said. "You're putting on some weight."

He ran his hand over his bare skull. "My head don't look too good, I guess."

"Your hair's starting to grow back," she observed. "And they'll never shave it again." She repeated: "Never."

"I don't know how to thank you for what you done to stop that last execution, because I don't know for sure just what you done, but me and Ernest both are awful glad you did."

She smiled. She just smiled that real pretty smile of hers, like she wasn't going to tell him a thing about what she done. "I hear the...thingamajig in the power plant-the dynamo or whatever you call it, that powers the electric chair-was incapacitated," she said.

"Yeah. Incapacitated." He liked the sound of that word. "Dempsey, the new guy, that I'm workin for, he says he can't figure it out. Something's busted bad in that dynamo, but I might be able to fix it myself." He laughed. "Wouldn't that be something? For me to learn enough about electricity to fix the dynamo so they can go ahead and finish fryin me with it?"

She did not laugh. She leaned close toward the barrier and lowered her voice almost to a whisper. "Nail, the dynamo has a Number 12 cartridge fuse that has been removed and is hidden on the top shelf of the broom closet in the engine room. Leave it there."

Nail nodded his head. And then he nodded it again, and just left it nodding. At length he asked, "How did you know that's what it was?"

"It's written on the side of the fuse," she said.

"I didn't think Bobo was smart enough to read," he said.

"Nail," she said. She just said his name, but the way she said it seemed to mean, Let's quit pretending we don't both know what happened.

He kept his voice down. "Where'd you git the fake mustache?"

She giggled. "It wasn't fake. It was his. I cut it off."

"How did he like that?"

"He was dead drunk, and he was still dead drunk when I put his clothes back on him and left him. I doubt he ever woke up until the next morning."

Nail felt his face getting red, and he knew Viridis could notice the blush. He observed, "You must've seen me and Ernest without a st.i.tch."

"A st.i.tch is a st.i.tch," she said. "It's all the same to me." They both laughed so hard that Bird snapped to attention from his half-bored stance. "You do have a nice body," she went on. Did she enjoy keeping the blush on his face? "How did that Post-Dispatch reporter say it? 'Chism is a blue-eyed, light-haired, fair-complexioned man of splendid physique despite what harsh incarceration has done to it.'"

The blush stayed. "I never read no story of that kind," he said.

"I'm keeping a sc.r.a.pbook for you," she said.

Trying to change the subject, he said, "There's something I can't figure out. How did you get inside The Walls if you didn't have Bobo with you?"

Very quietly she rapped out on the tabletop, Shave and a haircut, two bits. "That's the code for the door at the main gate," she said. "But to get into the powerhouse, I also had Bobo's key-ring on my belt...his belt, which I was wearing. That key-ring is the only thing of his I've kept."

Nail whistled, then whispered, "You still have Bobo's keys?"

She nodded. "He doesn't need them anymore. For instance," she lowered her voice even more, "did you notice there's a long ladder lying against one wall of the engine room?"

"Yeah, and it's padlocked on both ends to the wall," he said.

"The key to the padlocks," she whispered, "is in my hand. Before I have to go, I'll slip it into my mouth. Then, when I kiss you goodbye, I'll put it into your mouth. Okay?"

"Viridis," he said, "you are as good as they make 'em. I mean, you are really truly good as all gitout. But there's just one other thing I'd have to git..."

She didn't give him a chance to finish. "On the same shelf of the broom closet where the dynamo fuse is hidden," she said, "is Irvin Bobo's empty whiskey pint in a paper sack. Only it isn't empty. I filled it with mustard oil."

He shook his head. And then he shook it again and just left it shaking. "You didn't leave a railroad ticket up there too, didje?" he asked, laughing.

"Shh," she hushed him. "No, but I could tie Rosabone to a tree out by the swamp," she said, meaning it.

"I'll go on foot," he said.

"Where?" she asked.

"Where? Why, home, of course."

She shook her head. "That's the first place they'll look for you."

"Where else would I go?" he asked. "Mexico?"

She whispered again. "I could hide you up in the attic of my house." When he frowned and shook his head, she said, "I could really make a nice room up there, and you could have anything you want."

"Anything except mountains and meadows and creeks and country," he said. He shook his head again. "No, I thank ye kindly, but I'll light out for the back of beyond. I don't mean I aim to git my old bed back, in the homeplace. But there's some hollers I know up on the mountain where aint n.o.body ever been, except Indians. Places where n.o.body could find me."

"Could I find you?"

"Not if I didn't draw ye a map."

"Draw me a map."

"When the time comes. I aint leavin tonight. First I've got to figger some way to git upstairs from the death hole in the middle of the night."

"Whatch'all talkin about?" Bird said, and they looked up to see him leaning over them. Had he been listening? Had he heard anything they said? Would he snitch? Nail grew very anxious. But Bird was simply intent on announcing, "Y'all just got about five minutes left."

"All right," Viridis said. Bird backed away to his guard spot, and they went on talking. Viridis said, "I hope you don't mind if I visit with Ernest after you leave."

"Mind?" he said. "Course I don't mind. You know he don't have no folks to visit him from up home, where he comes from, up around Timbo. You gonna kiss him too?"

"I just want to talk about his drawings," she said. "Has he started using his pastels yet?"

"Those colored chalks? Yeah, he's covered a new pad with 'em. Did you bring back his old pad?"

She shook her head. "Does he need it? I had most of those framed to show to people to help save him from the chair."

Nail said, "There's one of them I hope you didn't have framed. Ernest forgot it was in the pad, and he sure was mortified at the thought you seen it."

It was her turn to blush. He was glad to see that she could. She'd caused him so many blushes. "No," she said. "I'm not showing that to anyone. Who is the girl?"

"What girl?"

"That he drew you in bed with."

"What makes you think it was me?"

"Nail. It looks just like you."

"He's sh.o.r.e a good artist, aint he?"

"Who's the girl?"

"Aw, she's jist some story I tole him. There wasn't never n.o.body like that. He jist made her up. I mean, I jist made her up, and he jist drew her."

"You've never been to bed with a girl?"

"Sorry, y'all's time is up," Bird said, and handed her a basket. "Lady, you can give 'im this now."

Viridis had brought him a basket of goodies, which had gone through an inspection by another trusty-guard in the anteroom. It contained fruit, cookies, men's hosiery, underclothes, handkerchiefs, books, packages of chewing-gum. Bird said to her, "You hid two things in there that's not allowed, and you can pick 'em up outside. He can't have that harmonica, and he can't have that letter."

"Oh, dear," Viridis said. "Well, that's too bad."

"You can just mail him the letter," Bird suggested. "But I don't know about that harmonica. They prolly wouldn't let him keep it, on account of before."

"I guess I'll have to say good-bye," Viridis said. "I can't say anything else." Nail saw why she couldn't say anything else: she had put something into her mouth. Pretending to wipe her lips in preparation for a parting kiss, she put the padlock key into her mouth. Bird wasn't paying much attention anyway; kissing seemed to make him squirm. They leaned across the table, and again Nail felt the spark of their lips meeting, and wondered if the Rowland book had any explanation for that. Her lips parted, and the key came through them, between his, into his mouth. Suddenly he was aware of a tightening in his pants. He took the key into his mouth and, unable to talk, nodded his head good-bye to her. Later he wished he had thought to tell her he loved her before he got the key in his mouth. He had planned to say so during the meeting but never did.

Ernest came back to the death hole from his fifteen minutes with Viridis more cheerful than Nail had ever seen him. He had got permission from the trusties to pa.s.s the new sketchbook across to her, and they had talked about his pastel drawings, which were considerably more complicated than the black-and-whites he had been doing. Viridis had made a few suggestions but mostly had just complimented him, and had said "Ooh" or "Ahh" as she turned the pages, and just made him feel real good watching her eyes and her face as she looked at his work. She had also brought him a basket, with pretty much the same things she'd brought Nail-"enough cookies to choke a horse"-as well as a couple of art books, Advanced Pastel Techniques and Great Drawings of the Masters.

That night Nail went through the basket Viridis had brought him. It was better than Christmas. He ate an apple and wanted to eat a banana too, but he saved it. He chewed some of the chewing-gum. He opened the books; there were three of them: a clean, revised edition of Dr. Hood, big and thick and fancy-bound, with new chapters he hadn't read before, on things like unhappy marriages and how to avoid them, how to raise children, and so on; there was a new book called Tender b.u.t.tons by a lady named Gertrude Stein; and there was a slender little book of poems, called Irradiations: Sand and Spray, by John Gould Fletcher. Nail opened it to the flyleaf and read: To Nail Chism, a brave Arkansawyer, whose story will take more pages than this book.

With ineffable admiration, John Gould Fletcher Beneath the fancy ink of that inscription there was written in pencil in Viridis' hand: "He is the cousin of my ex-boss, and grew up in Little Rock, lives now in London, but has read all the newspaper stories about you, and thinks the world of you." Beneath that in blacker pencil someone had block-printed: WRITING STUFF IN BOOKS IS AGAINST RULES OF THIS PRISON.

Nail had been required by his teacher at the Stay More school to read poetry, but he hadn't particularly cared for it or had time for it. Now that he had a lot of time, he read Mr. Fletcher's verse cover to back, and then back to cover. There weren't any rhymes in it, and Mr. Fletcher seemed to get overexcited at times, but he had a good way of putting things, and Nail understood what he was saying. There was one long poem, called "Green Symphony," that was mostly about trees, and Nail appreciated such lines as: The trees splash the sky with their fingers, A restless green rout of stars.

and: The trees lash the sky with their leaves, Uneasily shaking their dark green manes.

A good poem, Nail reflected, ought to make you want to see it yourself, and he wanted to see those trees...or any trees. That time Dempsey had taken him to fix the wiring in the warden's house, Nail had glimpsed the trees on the warden's lawn, the first he had seen for eight months.

He wanted to watch some trees somewhere splas.h.i.+ng the sky with their fingers and shaking their dark-green manes.

Since the painting of the death hole was all finished, they had Ernest build four more cells. They gave him the cement and the concrete blocks and the tools and finally brought him four ready-made barred doors, and all by himself Ernest built four more death cells, each of them only four feet wide by seven feet deep, and he painted those too, making a total of six cells for the death hole, and pretty soon three of the new cells were filled: there was Sam Bell, who had been convicted of killing four members of his divorced wife's family; and, briefly, two black men who had been convicted of killing their bosses, but they hardly stayed long enough for Nail to learn their names before the governor commuted them to life imprisonment and sent them to c.u.mmins in order to make room for Clarence Dewein and Joe Short, two young white men not much older than Ernest, who had killed a storekeeper together, or one of them had done the shooting while the other robbed the man. The population of the death hole was five. There would have been even more than that, according to the Gazette, except for all the publicity about Nail, which had made juries all over the state reluctant to send men to the electric chair, exercising instead their new option for sentences of life imprisonment.

Warden Yeager summoned Nail to his office, had Short Leg unlock the handcuffs, and offered Nail a cigarette, which he declined. "Gettin kind of crowded down there, aint it hee hee?" the warden observed or asked.

"Yessir," Nail agreed. "I don't think that hole was meant to hold that many."

"But we don't keep you down there. You doin a good job upstairs with Dempsey, I hear hee hee. A good job, he tells me. Learnin a lot."

"Thank you, sir."

"Are you happy, Chism?" the warden asked. "Is there anything we could do for you?"

Nail thought. "Well, sir," he said, "you know that empty piece of the Yard on the east side of the powerhouse? Could I put me a mater patch in it?"

"A mater patch?" the warden asked.

"Yeah, and grow...to-maters? It's a shame to let a piece of land jist go to waste out there in the Yard, that the men don't walk on or nothin.

"I could grow enough maters on that piece to feed the prison, come August and September, if you could git me the plants."

"Well, why not?" the warden said. "I'll get some n.i.g.g.e.rs out there to spade it up for you. You need some fertilizer too. That's a good idea. How many plants you need?"

"I reckon fifty or so ought to be all it could hold."

"We'll sure do it, then, Chism. Would that make you happy?"

"It would help."

They gave Nail his tomato patch. It was really late in the year to be planting tomatoes, but the plants the warden got were kind of old and leggy anyhow, and Nail planted them deep. While Nail was cultivating them one afternoon, the warden came out there with three other fellows, all of them dressed in suits with straw hats. Nail was wearing a straw hat too, but it wasn't fancy, and he took it off. One of the men was a black man, and he was dressed the best. The only one Nail recognized was that local sheriff who had arrested Ernest and had come with the governor to his last execution.

"Chism," the warden said, "these here are some gentlemen would like to talk to you. This is Mr. George Donaghey, who used to be our governor, and this is the Reverend Dr. Alonzo Monk of the AME church, and I believe you've met Sheriff Bill Hutton. Now these men are gonna ask you some questions. Governor Hays has appointed them a commission to inspect and investigate the prison, and I want you to tell 'em just what you think, okay?"