The Choiring Of The Trees Part 6

As Toy, Stardust, and Thirteen lined up and prepared to get into lock-step, Nail said to them, "Tell 'em I need a doctor."

Much later in the morning two Negro trusties, not the same two who had held him when Fat Gabe laid the strap on him, came and got him and dragged him upstairs to the attic. It wasn't a bare attic but had been fixed up into a kind of room. It had two windows, both of them rendered almost opaque by flyspecks. There were dirt-dobber nests on the rafters. The black men put him on one of the two cots and left him there. He was too sick to get up and reconnoiter the surroundings, but from where he lay he could see the blurred shapes of black bars through each flyspeck-frosted windowpane. The whole room smelled foul in a new kind of foulness that was almost a relief from the smell of Toy's breath and the slop bucket because it was different: a smell of sickness and decay and, yes, something that Nail realized he'd never smelled before: death. The cot that Nail lay on had gray sheets that were ripped and stained but appeared to have been washed recently, while the other cot had sheets and blankets that were thick with dried blood and other discharges. The room was terribly cold yet not absolutely frigid; Nail realized that because it was in the building's attic it received some warmth rising up from the barracks below, what little body heat the three hundred men had generated. The extreme cold of the room would not ordinarily have bothered him, but now in this sickness he was weak and began to s.h.i.+ver uncontrollably. Nail had enough strength to reach the other cot and remove its b.l.o.o.d.y blanket and wrap himself in it.

Eventually a man came in, accompanied by two more of the black trusties. He was dressed like them, dressed like Nail, in clothing printed with wide gray stripes. He wore thick spectacles and did not look like a criminal. He stared down at Nail not with curiosity or kindness but with a kind of boredom, and he asked, "What do you need?"

"I need a doctor, I reckon," Nail said.

"You won't get one," the man said. "I used to be one. I'm the closest to one you'll find. G.o.de's my name. Now what do you need?"

"Something for my stomach," Nail said. "Or my bowels. Or both."

"Gaumed up or trots?"

"Trots."

"Wee-wawed any?"

"Wee-wawed?"

Doc G.o.de did a pantomime of vomiting. "Puked."

Nail shook his head and pointed at his mouth. "Not at this end."

The man was staring at the top of his shaved head. "You been in the death hole? Your head's peeled."

Nail nodded. "I cheated the old hot squat," he said, and smiled.

Doc G.o.de didn't smile back. He reached inside his pocket and took out a key. On the wall of the flyspeck room was a wooden cabinet, its two doors latched and padlocked. The man unlocked and opened the cabinet. The two shelves inside contained a blue bottle, a brown bottle, and two bottles in shades of green, as well as a roll of gauze and a few other items. From where he lay Nail could only read the label on the brown bottle: carbolic acid. The ex-doctor took down one of the green bottles, uncorked it, and handed it to Nail. "Take just two swallows of this," he commanded.

The label read: paregoric. The name sounded sinister. "What does it do?" Nail asked.

"It will ease your guts," the man said. "Come on. Take two swigs and hand it back."

The stuff didn't taste too bad. After a second swallow Nail handed the green bottle back, and Doc G.o.de returned it to the cabinet. Before he could close the cabinet, Nail requested, "Could you take a look at my behind? I reckon I may need a bandage back there."

The man motioned for him to turn over, then pulled down the back of his pants, took a look, and said to the black trusties, "Hold 'im, boys." The two Negroes grabbed Nail's arms and gripped tightly, and soon Nail felt a burning on his b.u.t.t worse than the licking he'd received, and he screamed.

When he got his voice back and could see through the tears in his eyes, he saw Doc G.o.de holding the unstoppered brown bottle, carbolic acid, and he said, "Ye G.o.ds! What was that for?"

"A little disinfectant," Doc G.o.de said. "It'll keep the germs out. But I can't waste any wrappings on that. Just don't sit on it for a week."

There was a commotion on the stairs, the door flew open with a crash, and two more of the black trusties came into the room, carrying the limp form of a middle-aged white convict, naked, his entire body flayed: flaps of his flesh were dangling loose, two-inch strips of skin hung from wounds that looked as if they had been scorched with a hot iron, and he was covered with blood.

The blacks dumped the body onto the other cot. One of them said, "Ma.r.s.e Gabe done really laid it on 'im." There was almost admiration in his voice, as well as awe. "Ole Ma.r.s.e Gabe done whupped de daylights out ob dis po buckra."

Doc G.o.de lifted the man's dangling arms and folded them over his chest. He opened one of the man's eyelids and looked closely at the unseeing eye. He felt the man's pulse. He turned his head and looked at Nail and asked disdainfully, "Now you see why I couldn't waste any bandages on you?" Doc G.o.de took down the roll of gauze from the cabinet and the bottle of carbolic acid. He gave Nail one more look. "You don't want to watch this."

Nail turned his head away. He listened but heard no sounds coming from the victim, and a good while later, when he stole a glance in that direction, he saw that the victim's worse wounds had been wrapped and taped, but many areas of his body were still raw and b.l.o.o.d.y.

Mr. Burdell came into the room. "What's goin on up here?" he demanded. "Y'all havin a party?" He saw Nail and said, "What're you doin here, Chism? Playin off?"

"Doc G.o.de's been treatin me for what ails me," Nail said.

The warden looked at the ex-doctor. "What's wrong with Chism?"

"Dysentery," said Doc G.o.de.

"No s.h.i.+t?" the warden said.

"Too much s.h.i.+t," Doc G.o.de said.

Nail couldn't help laughing, even though it was a serious matter if Doc G.o.de was truthful: Nail recalled reading about it in Dr. Hood's Plain Talks and Common Sense Medical Advisor. But Doc G.o.de too was chuckling a bit, and maybe he wasn't serious.

"What's so funny?" the warden demanded, but then he seemed to become smart enough to catch the joke, and he smirked and said, "Well, if you got any s.h.i.+t left in you, Chism, we will beat it out." The warden lost interest in Nail and began studying the other patient. "He don't look too good, does he?" Burdell said.

"Very weak pulse," Doc G.o.de said.

The other fellow looked done for, Nail observed. He couldn't recall ever having seen the man before; he was just one more convict among the hundreds; but Nail suddenly found himself inventing the man's life: he had a wife somewhere out in the country and a whole bunch of children; he had a mother still living, and some sisters and brothers; he had worked hard all of his life, toiling in the sun, until the day he got in trouble and was sent to the pen. Probably he was hoping he could get a Christmas pardon and be home with his family.

"Mr. Burdell, sir, could I say somethin?" Nail discovered himself requesting before he could have the sense to stop himself. The warden turned away from the dying man and looked at Nail. Burdell didn't say, Yes, go ahead, but he didn't say, No, keep your trap shut, so Nail went ahead and said what he had to say: "Sir, I know that Fat-I know that Mr. Gabriel McChristian is jist doin his job, and I know it aint a easy job either. But I jist wonder sometimes if you know, sir, how evil he is. Evil. This world is full of cussed wickedness and cruelty, but when a feller gits a crazy pleasure out of causin awful pain to another human bein, he aint jist wicked or cruel, he's evil, he's criminal, he's sick in the head. Don't that bother ye none, sir?"

The warden just stared at him. Then the warden and Doc G.o.de exchanged looks. The black trusties exchanged looks, and one of them rolled his eyes up into his head. Finally the warden prefaced whatever response he was going to make by saying severely, "Chism-" but then he seemed to change his mind and adopt a milder tone, although it was a strain on him. "Nail, I know we aint perfect, none of us," he said. "And ole Gabe is prob'ly the least perfect amongst us, shall we say? But evil? Evil, did you say?" The warden abandoned the effort to be polite. "Who the f.u.c.k are you to tell me about evil? You raped a kid, Chism. You grabbed a little girl and knocked her down and rammed your hot c.o.c.k into her tiny little c.u.n.t! You tell me about evil! She begged you for mercy, and did you have any? Don't you talk to me about evil, you miserable son of a b.i.t.c.h! I'll show you what evil really is before you git your a.s.s fried!" The warden whipped around and yelled at the trusties, "Git this b.a.s.t.a.r.d out to the yard!" As the trusties dragged Nail off his cot and toward the door, Burdell spoke up close to his face, shaking a long, trembling finger at the man dying on the other cot. "You know why he got beat? Huh? Because he was tryin to escape! I swear, Chism, when we git through with you, you're gonna try real hard to escape."

They took Nail out of the flyspeck room, out of the building, into the yard. It was a big yard, acres of empty ground between the building and the wall. They stood Nail up and told him to walk. But he couldn't walk. They picked him up again and kicked him and hit on him and told him to walk. He walked a bit. It began to snow. At first just feathers but then heavy flurries. His bare head and his shoulders became covered with flakes. And his back, when he fell. The rest of the day they kept picking him up and making him walk. The blacks complained to one another of the futility of it, the dumbness of it, the monotony of it, but they kept on with their job.

The man in the flyspeck room died. Before they hauled him off for burial, they placed his body on the floor at one end of the barracks. Warden Burdell made a short speech warning against attempted escape, and Fat Gabe and Short Leg moved among the men, clubbing one who protested that the dead man had never tried to escape. When Burdell's speech was finished, all three hundred of the men were lined up in slow lockstep, and each man, black and white, was required to bend down and shake hands with the corpse and say good-bye. Each man except Nail, who couldn't lift his head from his bunk.

Fat Gabe came to his bunk. "Can't move a finger, hey?" Fat Gabe asked, but Nail couldn't even talk. Fat Gabe moved his face close so that his words spattered Nail with flecks of spittle: "I got a mind to move a few fingers for you, boy. But not tonight. I'm gonna save you. I'm gonna save you till you're strong enough to 'preciate what I'm gonna do to you. You got to be able to move to 'preciate what I'm gonna do. Gonna let you know what evil is. Gonna make you learn what sick in the head is. Gonna do crimes on you that spell out what criminal is." Fat Gabe cleared his throat twice, hawked, and spat at Nail a faceful of phlegm.

Nail lost track of time. He couldn't remember having had anything to eat, he couldn't recall ever being able to get up and go with the others to the mess hall, but he didn't have any memory of anybody bringing him anything to eat. Probably he didn't eat at all, for a week or so. But he didn't have any memory of having to get up and go to the slop bucket either. Or use the floor. Strange, he didn't know thirst even. His bunkmates began to try their best to pretend he wasn't there. Toy said to him once, wonderingly, "Did you really truly rape a little girl?" All that Nail could manage was to mumble, "She wasn't little." And when it occurred to him to add, "And I didn't rape her neither," Toy had disappeared, and never spoke to him again after that. Another time, in the night, someone-he figured it was Thirteen-tried to insert a p.e.n.i.s into his mouth. Nail had just enough strength to raise a hand to stop the action. The owner of the p.e.n.i.s said, and it sounded like Thirteen, "You did it to that little girl, didn't you?"

Nail discovered that if he tried hard enough he could shut out entirely the Arkansas State Penitentiary in bitter December and make it into a hillside of Stay More in the middle of June with his sheep all around him. He could do anything he wanted to, with those sheep. They would gambol into square dances when he played the right tunes on his mouth organ. The fescue was cropped a bronze-green by their grazing, but the orchard gra.s.s was still like emerald, and behind the green meadow rose the turquoise mountain, and beyond it the blue-green hills, and beyond those the light smoky blue of faraway Reynolds Mountain. When the sheep finished their dancing, they would crawl up leaf-dappled under the green shade of the big oaks at the edge of the meadow, and there they would kneel and nap, and Nail would nap with them, long in the summer afternoon, listening to the clear spring gurgle down the talus. When they woke up from their nap, they were whole and sound and sane and ready to play some more, and Nail would play his harmonica for them and feel almost well.

His bedclothes were often damp with blood and pus, and he couldn't understand why, because his wounds seemed to have scabbed over enough not to be bleeding. Eventually he was able to determine that the blood and pus were coming from his bedmate, who was now Stardust, and he didn't know if it was because they were flogging Stardust too; he tried not to listen when they were flogging somebody and the poor devil was screaming his head off. Stardust was not one to talk, anyway. But then Stardust began noticeably to take leave of his senses, as if he had not already left them long ago: he could be observed standing beside the bunk, moving his hands in the air as if building imaginary trees, root to bough, twig to trunk. That's all he did, when he was not crooning. He would stand for hours making trees until Fat Gabe would come and cut him down and dump him in beside Nail, where he would bleed and ooze. Finally Stardust and his few belongings were gathered up and taken away to the state hospital for the insane...which, I have good reason to know, was not a better place.

As soon as Stardust's spot was empty, they filled it with a new man, or a kid, rather, a boy maybe fifteen, sixteen at the most, whose hair reminded Nail of that woman's, what was her nice lady name who came and what was it she pretty girl had hair that same reddish sort of, Friday, Sat.u.r.day, Sunday, Monday, yes her name was Monday, that lady, this boy his hair is like hers, red, he could pa.s.s for her kid brother only she was too nice a lady to have a kid brother to get hisself in trouble and thrown in the pen. This boy had stolen a horse. Nail listened, which was all he did these days and nights, when he wasn't running off to those sheep-cluttered hills in Stay More. The boy's name was Ernest something, but they were calling him Timbo Red because he came from Timbo, Arkansas, up in the hills of Stone County. Timbo Red talked more or less the same way that folks up home talked. Most of these fellers in here sounded like east Arkansas or downstate somewheres or probably outlanders from some other state, but Timbo Red sounded nearly just like Nail's kid brother Luther, and Nail took an interest in what he was doing and saying, and he took a special interest that first night when Thirteen tried to seduce the kid. Nail still couldn't talk very strong, but he had enough strength to raise himself up and say to Timbo Red, "Boy, don't ye let this here feller show ye his jemmison, or you'll hate it."

Thirteen turned on Nail. "My what?" he said.

"Keep yore p.e.c.k.e.r in yore pants, Thirteen," Nail said.

"s.h.i.+t, mine is better than yours," Thirteen snarled. "You want to git him to yourself? I claimed him first. He's good ripe cherry punk, and I got him, and I aint gon let no man mess with my bride." He put his full palm over Nail's face and pushed down hard and mashed Nail's head down into the bunk. Then he resumed his seduction of Timbo Red, telling the kid that it wouldn't hurt a bit, not anywhere like the way the kid would get hurt if he didn't get his sweet a.s.s out of those pants real d.a.m.n fast.

Nail listened. He tried to tell if the kid was scared or eager or what. Some boys liked that kind of thing; there was a big old boy several bunks over who couldn't seem to get enough of it and would drop his pants for any feller who asked, and sometimes even went around asking them. Nail listened and thought he could hear Timbo Red asking to be let alone. The way Nail's mind ran away from him these days and wound up in that Stay More meadow faster than he could think, his mind was now beginning to believe that Timbo Red was Miss Friday or Miss Monday herself, asking old Thirteen to leave her be. Nail couldn't just lie here and let that nice lady be took against her wishes, or even took with her wishes by somebody foul like Thirteen. Now she seemed to be squealing. It wasn't a very happy sort of squeal. Nail's fingers were absently fooling with the collar of his jacket, and then slipping inside the jacket and fooling with the string around his neck. And then his fingers touched that steel. It was still there; he had almost forgotten about it in the what? weeks or days or months or whatever time had pa.s.sed since he had intended to use it. He still had to remember not to roll over onto his stomach at night, or, if he did, to do it carefully so the razor-sharp dagger didn't cut his chest.

He took a deep breath and somehow got his legs up and under him so he could crouch and use what energy he had left to reach over and fall against Thirteen and pin him down and hold the dagger up to his eyes so he could get a good look at it, and then Nail said to him, "Thirteen, d'ye want to try out the edge of this and see how sharp it is? Or will you jist take my word for it?-it'll leave a gash from one of your ears to th'other'un in jist one swipe."

Thirteen scrambled away from the kid and away from Nail. "Where'd you git that s.h.i.+v?" Thirteen asked.

"Been savin it fer ye," Nail said. "And I'll use it on ye if you touch her again."

"'Her'?" Thirteen said. "You want 'her' for yourself, huh?"

"Him," Nail said, fl.u.s.tered. "He ast ye to leave him alone. I'm askin ye to leave him alone. Or die. You choose."

"Them guards catch you with that pigsticker, they gon make you die," Thirteen grumbled, but he didn't bother the kid for the rest of that night, and maybe not for the next few nights either, Nail couldn't tell how many nights went by, one after the other, without the kid being bothered.

One night Timbo Red just tapped Nail on the shoulder and said, "I thank ye, mister."

Timbo Red did not lose his virginity before Christmas, but he got the dose of the strap that Fat Gabe measured out to let anybody new know who was boss. Nail, listening, was not able to determine that it had been provoked. Probably not. Timbo Red seemed to be trying his best to get along with people; his lockstep was always right in line, and he tried to be well behaved and inconspicuous. Somewhere he had found a piece of white chalk, the same kind you write on blackboards with, and he would sit on the concrete floor drawing pictures on it. He could draw pretty fair. More than pretty fair, really. He could make an eagle that looked like an eagle and a black walnut tree that looked like a black walnut. The way he would sit and draw also reminded Nail of Miss Monday. Timbo Red's drawings got walked on, but he didn't care, and somebody always p.i.s.sed on the drawings during the night and erased them that way, but Timbo Red would just start a fresh one the next morning. If Timbo Red ever did anything that might have provoked Fat Gabe, it must have had something to do with the way he was arting up the floor.

But more than likely, Fat Gabe just felt it was time to let the kid know what the strap felt like. Coming from a dirt farm in Stone County, Timbo Red probably knew the feel of harness leather on his hide the same way that Nail did, and he took the first ten lashes without even flinching. Fat Gabe was halfway through the second ten, and panting like a horse, before Timbo Red gave any sign that he even noticed what was happening to his behind. But along about the fourteenth lick the boy started to weaken. He whimpered. At the nineteenth lick he was broken and sobbing. Fat Gabe didn't stop at twenty. Usually, twenty swings of the strap was all that Fat Gabe could manage at one time, but he was mad because the boy had tried to hold out on him like that, and he kept going. The boy kept sobbing like a child.

Nail didn't bring out his dagger, although he was tempted. Instead, he brought out his harmonica. He had never played it before where anybody could hear him. He had played it all the time when he was alone in the death hole, but not once since then, and he missed it. Now he wasn't even sure he could get the tune right, but from the first note he blew into it, he knew he could do a fair job. He played "O Little Town of Bethlehem." He played it loud, he played it lively, he played if with his tongue and lungs and heart. He played it loud enough to drown out Timbo Red's crying. He played it louder than the crack of Fat Gabe's strap.

Everyone listened. A few men tried to hum in tune. From several bunks away a good tenor voice picked up at: "...above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by..."

"Pack it up, Chism!" Fat Gabe hollered, and he stopped beating Timbo Red and started swinging at Nail, who scooted over to the far side of the bunk so Fat Gabe couldn't reach him without going around. Nail finished the carol and started playing "Deck the Halls."

One by one or in groups of several, the men of the hall joined in singing the words, and the blacks joined the chorus with: "Deck de haws wif baws ob holly!" One man at the end of the barracks climbed to an upper bunk and stood up and began to conduct the choir, waving his arms as if he'd once been a high-school band director. Everyone was singing.

Fat Gabe stopped beating on Timbo Red and shyly tried to sing, "Fa la la? La la? La la LAH LAH!"

Nail Chism played "Good King Wenceslaus." He played "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear." The three hundred voices singing, or trying to, drifted beyond the wall and reached the warden's house, the big two-story Victorian on the downslope to the highway. When the warden arrived at the barracks, Nail was playing "Silent Night," which was the last one that he knew. Mr. Burdell arrived in time to contribute "Sleep in heavenly peace," twice.

Then he smiled. No one had seen Mr. Burdell smile before. He said, "Well, gentlemen, it looks like you're already in the spirit of the season." He took from his pocket a letter, which he unfolded. "This year Governor Hays has seen fit to grant Christmas pardons to a total of thirty men. As follows." One by one the warden read the names, pausing after each to allow time for the men to whoop and holler and slap backs and carry on. Of course the two hundred and seventy men who were not pardoned were feeling low, and this included Nail, although he hadn't expected to hear his name on the list.

But his Christmas did not go unnoticed. Farrell Cobb came to visit, and stood beside Nail's bunk for a while, and gave him a present. "The missus fixed it," Cobb explained. "Hope you like fruitcake, although it's such a tiny one." Nail sampled a few bites, his first ever. Before the lawyer left, saying he hoped to bring good news from the state Supreme Court when he came again in January, he elaborately looked all around them to see if anybody was watching. n.o.body was. n.o.body cared what Cobb was doing there, or who he was speaking to. The nearest black trusties were shooting dice against the wall. "You can read, can't you?" Cobb asked, and when Nail nodded, the lawyer reached inside his coat and brought out an envelope and handed it to him. The lawyer put his finger to his lips and said "Shhh," and then he winked and departed.

Nail tried to sit up in his bunk to open the envelope. It contained several sheets of paper and something very small wrapped in tissue. Nail read the signature first and, thrilled, backed up and read each word with deliberate slowness.

December 22, 1914 Dear Mr. Chism, They haven't let you see any of my previous letters, have they? I asked your attorney, Mr. T. Farrell Cobb, if it might be that the "authorities" are not allowing you to receive your mail. He said that it is a common practice for the warden and his a.s.sistants to open and read letters to check for contraband, inflammatory statements, scurrility, or information damaging to the morals and well-being of inmates. None of my previous letters to you contained any of these things.

Shortly after I last saw you, I attempted to visit you at the penitentiary, but I was told that you are permitted to have only one visit per month, and that you had already had your December visit, so I will have to wait until January. I went straight home (I live here in Little Rock) and wrote to you.

Have you, I asked myself, chosen not to reply to my letters? That is possible, and you certainly have no obligation to respond. I did not ask you anything that required an answer, with the exception of my request for the whereabouts of your hometown, Staymore. I have, without any vanity, reread the first drafts of my letters to you several times, in order to discover what they might have contained that could have accounted for your silence. I have not been able to determine anything possibly untoward or disagreeable in them. Thus, I like to think, and I do not like to think: they wouldn't let you have my letters.

So I am resorting to this expedient of asking Mr. Cobb to "smuggle" this letter to you. He said that he would. He seems a kind and well-meaning person, and I say this not to flatter him in case he is reading it too (Mr. Cobb, if you are reading it, please honor our agreement and deliver it as promised) but because there are so few decent, humane, compa.s.sionate men in this world. You are one yourself, Nail Chism, and you are rare, and that is the reason I have chosen to burden you with my attentions and devotion. If I have little else in the way of qualifications for existence, I have the ability-some would call it talent-to draw and paint the human likeness, and in the process to "read" the...whatever you wish to call it: soul, psyche, spirit, essence, of the subject, sitter, victim, poser, person. I am not bragging, and I do not boast that the finished work of art conveys this inner character of the person (or even that it is a "work of art," whatever that is), but I am sure of my knack for seeing it, and when I saw your spirit in those terrible moments that were presumed to be your last, there in that awful room with that hideous chair, I knew you, and I understood you, and I intuited you, and I appreciated you in a way that I have not been allowed to feel toward another human being.

Yes, I know you may be telling yourself: here is one more of those many lonely ladies who like to cultivate convicts, and who visit or correspond with prisoners, especially those condemned to die, and play upon the men's desperate need for sympathy in order to gratify their own wish for an imaginative relations.h.i.+p safe from entanglement, safe from physical contact, and above all safe from permanence. Some of these women see themselves as subst.i.tute mothers or nurses or sisters, and they think they are purely altruistic and they glory in their charity, while other women-widows, spinsters, the jilted and the frustrated-who have had unpleasant experiences with men who were free to touch them and free to hurt them, are craving a liaison which now permits them to have the upper hand, to be free to say no, free to manage and schedule every aspect of the a.s.sociation, and free to quit at any moment.

Please believe that I have never before written to a prisoner...or, for that matter, written a letter as long as this one to anybody. And please believe that my only interest in you is a deep certainty of your innocence, and a consuming desire to prove it.

When I first knew you, I was disposed to hate you. Do you remember our first meeting? We were both members of the "audience" at an execution. Before I was permitted to enter that room, I was lectured by Mr. Harris Burdell, the warden, who only with great reluctance had acceded to the request of my employer, Mr. Thomas Fletcher, managing editor of the Arkansas Gazette, that I be allowed to make a drawing of the condemned man, a young Negro. Mr. Burdell warned me that I would be sitting next to you, and he told me the crimes of which you had been accused and convicted and for which you had been sentenced to die. I suppose that Mr. Burdell was simply trying to frighten me, having failed to dissuade me from experiencing the horrors of the execution itself. But I was not afraid of you, because I despised you so intensely. The Gazette had carried a story of your original trial, and although the details had struck me as a ludicrous miscarriage of rustic backwoods justice, there was no mistaking the nature of the offense itself: a girl of only thirteen brutally abused and raped. Mr. Burdell personally checked my hair to make sure that I was not wearing a long hatpin with which I might stab your heart or put out your eyes. But I had not even seen you! When you were led into the room and given your seat beside me, I steeled myself to behold in your eyes the corruption and savagery which would have permitted you to commit such an abomination, and thus I was greatly surprised to detect such gentleness, such goodness, and such compa.s.sion as would preclude your hurting anyone, let alone a thirteen-year-old girl.

And you remember, I'm sure, how you inveighed against that butcher of an executioner, Mr. Irvin Bobo, when the first charge of electricity failed to remove the poor Negro from this world. You called upon G.o.d to d.a.m.n Mr. Bobo, and although I had the feeling that you were spontaneously invoking G.o.d without any real belief in Him, you conveyed exactly the words that I would have spoken myself if I had not temporarily closed myself off from all feeling.

Often at night when I am trying to fall asleep I hear your voice shouting those words. And when you yourself sat down in the chair and the warden lifted his hand and Mr. Bobo placed his hand upon the switch, I said aloud, "G.o.dd.a.m.n you, Bobo, turn up the juice and leave it on!"

But you were spared! Although you weren't pardoned or your sentence commuted, you were not murdered. I have learned as much as I can about the reprieve: I've talked to Mr. Cobb (h.e.l.lo again, Farrell!), I've talked to Judge J.V. Bourland and Judge Jesse Hart; I've even had a short audience with His Excellency George W. Hays Himself (although the governor, I regret to say, doesn't even seem to know who you are), and I know that you are still very much in peril of having another date set for the electrocution. I intend to do whatever I can to prevent this.

I have received permission from my employer, Thomas Fletcher (who is another of the rare breed of gentle and kind men), to investigate the case completely. As I told you, I'm not one of the Gazette's regular reporters, only a member of the layout and design department, where I am usually found trying to enliven the margins of inner pages with my little sketches. But I have written for the Gazette in the past-the longest thing I ever wrote, before this letter, was an article, "An Arkansawyer in Calcutta," a place where I saw some of this world's most unkind and uncompa.s.sionate men. Mr. Fletcher has promised to free me from my usual duties long enough to permit me to finish my investigation.

Only these severe winter storms we've been having have prevented me from attempting to find and to visit Staymore. But when we get a thaw in January, I'm going to locate it...even if I can only reach it on horseback! (I should have said I have two talents: the other one is that I am a "cowgirl.") I have three requests, if you will be so kind: 1. Where is Staymore? I have a map showing Newton County but cannot locate your town. Is it north of Jasper? What kind of roads lead to it?

2. What people should I talk to? Can you give me the names of any witnesses who can account for your whereabouts at the time of the crime? Also, any character witnesses. Who was your best friend?

3. Before I go, is there anything I can do for you? Is there anything you need? Will they allow me to send you a basket of fruit and some cookies? May I smuggle you a book or two? Do you enjoy reading? Any favorite authors? Are you well clothed? Do you need any personal articles? Please do not hesitate to respond to these requests, and do not think of the expense. Meanwhile please accept the enclosed trifle as a token, a talisman, a keepsake, a subst.i.tute for a real Yuletide. Merry Christmas, and many more.

Sincerely,

Viridis Monday.

Nail Chism read this a second time before he opened his present. In due course he would come to know it by heart. He would unfold it and read it when no one else was looking (and no one else ever was), again and again, until its creases broke and it began to turn dirty and frayed. But for now he read it only twice, and then he picked open the tiny wad of tissue paper.

Inside was a gent's charm, the kind of chain ornament you hook on one end of your watch chain, if you have a watch, but Nail didn't. It was made of gold and must have cost her several dollars. But she must have had it special-made by some jeweler, because it didn't look like a store-boughten gent's charm. It was in the shape of a tree. Not a Christmas pine or a cedar, nor a hardwood you'd be able to recognize, but just a tree tree, no mistake. Nail turned it over. She'd had the trunk on the backside of the tree engraved in tiny letters: To N.C. from V.M. XMAS 14.

Even if he'd had a watch, and a watchpocket to put it in, he wouldn't have worn this on a chain for all the world to see. Instead, he attached it to the string around his neck that held his dagger, and wore them both hidden inside his s.h.i.+rt and jacket. It was the nicest Christmas present he'd ever gotten. He could hear that little tree singing to him.

And on Christmas afternoon the Salvation Army was permitted to come into the building and serve a soup that actually had some chicken in it, and with real biscuit besides. The men were required to sit through a long sermon before they were allowed to drink the soup, which was cold by then, but Nail was able to make it to the mess hall on his own legs, for the first time in weeks, and to drink his soup.

Afterward, as the men were waiting to leave the mess hall, required to keep lockstepping in place until the line could move again, Nail discovered that he was lifting and setting his feet right beside the standing figure of Mr. Harris Burdell, who was observing the Christmas festivities.

"Warden Burdell, sir," Nail managed to say, although his words were nearly drowned by the men tramping the floor with their feet. "I sure do 'preciate you lettin us men have a good Christmas dinner like this. I know I don't deserve it, and I know I don't deserve nothin on account of my misbehavior. But I jist want to thank you, sir. It is real good of you. And Merry Christmas to you, Mr. Burdell."

"Same to you, Chism," Burdell said, without smiling but without any rancor or malice in his voice.

"Sir, my brother told me that our ole mother is a-dyin, and he ast me could I jist send her a few last words. Sir, would there be any way I could git me some writin-paper and a pencil? Sir, I'd do jist anything if I could have me somethin to write a letter to my dyin mother."

The line was beginning to move. Nail looked pleadingly over his shoulder at Mr. Burdell, who did not seem to have heard him. But a few days later one of the blacks who waited on the table at dinner wordlessly placed beside Nail's plate a lead pencil and a penny tablet of lined paper, which, Nail counted, contained twenty sheets. He used a sheet dutifully to write a letter for Mr. Burdell to see, censor, and mail: Dear Momma, Waymon told me about you. I hope you are better. You know we are going to meet again in Heaven, where they are saving a special place for you. I'm sorry you did not get to see me again. Waymon said you were not able to come with him to Little Rock, and I understand. You must try to take care of your self better. I wish there was something I could say to make you feel better but all I can say is I love you and do not worry about me. What happens to me is in the hands of some one far better than me. And I aim to see you, all bye and bye, and you can count on it. Please be happy.

Your son with love for ever,

Nail.

His mother might puzzle just a little over that-if she got it-but he knew that Waymon would help her understand any of it that she couldn't, and he would explain the rest of it to her when he saw her, not in Heaven, which was a strange land to him, but in Stay More, one of these days.

Then he used several sheets of the penny tablet to write the following, which he did not give to Mr. Burdell to see, censor, and keep from mailing.

December 2931, 1914 Dear Miss Monday, How can I hope to answer? You write like the morning breeze soughing through the cedars, like a hive full of honey, like sun climb on the ridge, you write easy as breathing, like an angel's sigh, and I am dumb.