The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  Nail was putting the last honing on his blade. He tested it with his thumb. “You jist never know,” he said. He began cutting the cuff of his trousers to unravel thread for a string to hang the blade around his neck. He heard a noise and quickly hid the blade under his bedcover. Fat Gill and Short Leg came to his cell, along with a white trusty whom Nail recognized as the convict barber, carrying a pair of shears, a shaving mug, and a strop. Fat Gill handed the razor to the barber after first handcuffing Nail and warning him to sit absolutely still. With the shears the barber clipped off as much of Nail’s regrown hair as he could; Nail reflected that this was the time of year he ought to be shearing his own sheep, if he still had any; he watched the hair fall into his lap and onto the floor, short shocks of white mixed with blond. Then the barber soaped Nail’s head and shaved his skull. He worked rapidly and not very carefully; Nail felt himself get nicked twice and felt the blood trickling behind his ears.

  “Want a mirror?” Fat Gill asked when the barber was finished.

  Nail raised the middle finger of his manacled hand and held it stiffly upright for Fat Gill to sneer at.

  When they were gone, Ernest’s voice came: “What did they do to ye?”

  “Shaved my head,” Nail said.

  “What’d they do thet fer?”

  Nail realized the boy didn’t have much of a conception of how the electrocution process worked, and he debated with himself whether to explain it. Would it help Ernest get ready? Or would it just make him more scared than he was already, although he tried so hard to seem not to be? A thought suddenly occurred to Nail: tomorrow when they took Nail upstairs, they would take Ernest too, as a witness, and Nail’s would be the first execution that the boy would see. He also realized that if Fat Gill and Short Leg were able to restrain Nail so that he couldn’t reach his knife, Ernest would reach it and do to Fat Gill and the other men exactly what he had done to Fat Gabe. Nail didn’t want that. Since they were going to kill the kid in Old Sparky anyway, Ernest would probably figure it made no difference if he died trying to help Nail take as many with them as they could. Nail could not allow that.

  “Son,” Nail said to Ernest, “I’m gonna tell ye exactly what they’re gonna make you watch at sundown tomorrow. I want ye to know jist what you’ll see, includin how I’m gonna kill a few of ’em first, specially Warden Burdell and that executioner, a son of a bitch named Bobo. But before I tell ye, I want ye to promise me one thing: you’ll jist sit there and not lift a finger to help or git in the way or git yoreself in any more trouble than you already got. Will ye promise?”

  On

  But Ernest Bodenhammer was not allowed to witness the execution of Nail Chism. Tom Fletcher told her later that the warden had wanted to include Ernest because it was customary to have a condemned man watch all of the electrocutions in order to give him a clear foretaste of his own, but that the warden had made an exception this time because in view of the way Ernest had killed Gabriel McChristian over Nail, the young man might very well create a disturbance during the execution. And besides, the warden pointed out to Tom, there wasn’t really any room: the witness area was filled. All twelve of the chairs were taken up by reporters. Warden Harris Burdell had even had to turn away a few latecomers, including Viridis herself, who was late not because it had taken her that long to persuade Tom Fletcher to give her a press card, nor because she had needed more time to steel herself, but because she’d attempted unsuccessfully to convince Warden Burdell that she wanted to attend as a bonafide journalist, not as the condemned man’s “sweetheart,” as the warden insisted on referring to her. He had refused to admit her, but he had used as his excuse the crowded presence of reporters from, in addition to the Arkansas Gazette and its rival the Arkansas Democrat, the Houston Chronicle, the Post-Dispatch and the Globe-Democrat (both of St. Louis), the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Kansas City Star, Associated Press, and, the farthest that any reporter had journeyed, the Atlanta Constitution. She had hoped to get at least one representative from the East, but the Washington Star’s man had missed his train connection, and the Philadelphia Inquirer had decided at the last moment that there were bigger stories in Pennsylvania.

  Tom Fletcher himself had represented the Arkansas Gazette, and afterward came to his car, where Viridis had been required to wait, and told her about it. The deathroom “crew,” he said, had been caught completely by surprise. Warden Burdell had no inkling until the first reporter, from the Times-Picayune, arrived at his office just an hour before the execution was to take place, and requested an interview with the condemned man. Warden Burdell had to explain to him, and to the next eight reporters who knocked at his door, that condemned men were not allowed to speak to anyone other than the minister and the warden himself on the day of execution. It was tradition, if not ironclad rule. So some of the reporters had to content themselves with interviewing Warden Burdell, asking him such challenging questions that he replied to each with “I’m only the warden, doing my duty. I didn’t sentence Chism to death, and it aint my business to pardon him.”

  Other reporters cornered the executioner, Mr. Irvin Bobo, age forty-two, who closely resembled the movie actor Charles Chaplin and whose breath reeked of liquor, and attempted to ask him questions. He was not able to invent a stock reply as the warden had, but he was quoted as saying, “I aint gonna kill no more white men after this one. I’m only good at killing niggers. If they want to kill any more white men, they’ll have to get somebody else.”

  Reporters managed to locate two of the guards, James Fancher and Gillespie Gorham, and asked them several questions. Their boss had been able to give them only a few moments’ warning, telling them to put on their neckties and comb their hair and not say anything stupid. Gillespie Gorham, thirty-one, a rather corpulent man, formerly a patrolman with the Little Rock police, solved the problem by repeatedly answering questions with “I don’t know nothin.” James Fancher, thirty-seven, who appeared crippled, one leg shorter than the other, was willing to talk and even to describe the condemned man’s last hours, which had been spent in conversation with another condemned man (or youth) in an adjoining cell.

  The reporters had then converged upon the minister, the Reverend James S. McPhee, fifty-two, who explained that he was not affiliated with any particular church and considered himself nondenominational although he was partial to the Baptists. He was a full-time employee of the St. Louis & Iron Mountain Railway, working as a conductor on the Texarkana run, but some years earlier he had received “the call” to make sure that all condemned men, black and white alike, had the final peace of knowing that God loved them and was willing to forgive them their crimes if they confessed and acknowledged Jesus Christ as their Saviour. No, this Nail Chism fellow had not confessed anything. He was an atheist. Well, not exactly an atheist, because he did finally profess some sort of belief in God, but he held the heretical notion that God was a woman. Reverend McPhee had accompanied Nail Chism on his previous “last mile” to the electric chair, and he had accompanied a total of thirteen men, all but two of them of the colored race, on their last mile to the electric chair since its invention, and he had never seen any condemned man approach the chair as coldly as Nail Chism did, which, Reverend McPhee believed, was probably a sign of guilt: Chism knew he deserved what he was getting. And yes, this time the minister hoped the execution would be carried out.

  When Tom Fletcher arrived to take his seat in the witnesses’ area, he noticed that all the other men had their press cards stuck in the hatbands of their felt fedoras, and he had to search for a while through his wallet to find his press card, which he hadn’t flashed, let alone worn, for some years. He put it in his hat and took his seat in the back row of the folding chairs.

  Eventually an iron door creaked open, and guards Gorham and Fancher entered with the prisoner, followed by Reverend McPhee. There was an audible collective gasp among the hardened journalists at the sight of the condemned man, although Tom Fletcher’s first
thought, he confessed to Viridis, was this: what could possibly have attracted Very to this fellow? Chism’s wrists were held together very low, over his groin, as if protecting his private parts. A very tall man, his shoulders were somewhat stooped, probably the result, Tom decided, of long confinement in a bent position, although it appeared that the weight of the handcuffs on his wrists was pulling down his arms and his shoulders.

  Chism looked at the witnesses and moved his eyes from one face to the next, as if he were looking for somebody. “You, probably,” Tom said. His blue eyes, Tom noted, were his only handsome feature, contradicting the gangling frame, the bald, bony skull, the battered face, and the missing teeth…although this last did not become apparent until, after searching the reporters’ faces, he smiled. “Why he smiled, I don’t know. Was he glad you weren’t there?”

  The warden spoke to the prisoner. “Well, Chism, you’ve sure got twelve of ’em this time. Count ’em. They’re all big-time, big-city newspapermen. Look at ’em. You’re a celebrity, Chism!”

  It was clear to Tom Fletcher that the warden was enjoying the scene and would probably milk it for all it was worth. The warden even faced the reporters and “presented” Chism to them, holding his hand out, palm up, beneath Chism’s waist and making a little bow toward the reporters, like a circus ringmaster presenting his star performer. Tom said he wouldn’t have been surprised if Chism had begun doing some tricks at that moment…but the trick came later.

  The strange thing then, Tom said, was that the Atlanta Constitution’s man began clapping his hands. Tom knew him, and had tossed down a drink with him earlier that afternoon, but the man wasn’t intoxicated. Maybe his applause was prompted by the warden’s ridiculous bow. In any case, one by one the other reporters dropped their notebooks into their laps and began clapping too. Tom joined in, telling himself that he was clapping for probably the same reason the rest of them were: that they admired him as a man, knowing he was innocent and was coming to this end bravely, without fear or cowardice or hysterics. The warden seemed stunned at this continuing outburst of applause until finally he himself began clapping. So did one of the guards. The only people in the room who did not were the minister and the executioner, who looked embarrassed, as if they knew they ought to clap but didn’t know how.

  Chism did not bow. Tom wouldn’t have been surprised if he had. Tom was surprised at what Chism did do: he spoke to them. “I thank ye,” he said. “I thank ye kindly. I hope you fellers will git a good story for yore papers. I hope—”

  “Shut up, Chism,” Warden Burdell said. “You aint supposed to talk to them.”

  “Let ’im talk!” yelled the man from the Chronicle, and the others said, “Yeah, Warden, let him talk.”

  “Well, okay,” said Burdell. “He’s allowed some last words anyhow. Say your last words to them if you want, Chism.”

  And Nail Chism continued. “I hope that while you’re here you’ll trouble yoreselves to find out a few things about a boy name of Ernest Bodenhammer, who’s not but sixteen years old and is downstairs waitin to die in that chair hisself. He’s just a ole Ozarks country boy, like me, but he’s got a talent I couldn’t never hope to have: he can draw like a angel, although there’s only one angel I ever saw do a drawing, and she aint here today, I’m glad to see.”

  The warden spoke. “Well now, that’s enough now, Chism now.”

  “Let him talk!” everybody else said, and the warden shrugged his shoulders and fished out his timepiece.

  “The other convicts call him Timbo Red,” Nail Chism went on, “because we’ve all got nicknames, like it would be bad for a feller to go by his real name. I reckon we figger a man’s real name was what got him into trouble, and as long as he’s got a play-like name he can pretend he’s innocent. Now, you boys know that I don’t have to pretend I’m innocent. But it’s Timbo Red, or Ernest Bodenhammer, that I want to tell ye about, and I hope you’ll write up his story. He aint innocent of killing a guard, because he really did kill that guard, name of Fat Gabe McChristian, who murdered more men than that electric chair ever done.”

  “Now that’s enough, Chism,” Warden Burdell insisted, and said to the witnesses, “I’m very sorry, gentlemen, but if you gave him a chance he’d talk to you from now until midnight.”

  The Commercial Appeal’s man stood up from his chair and declared, “We’ve got until midnight, then. Let him talk.”

  The warden held up his pocket watch and turned the face toward them. “He has to be executed at sundown, and it’s nearly time.”

  The man from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch stood up and pretended to read from his notes: “‘Warden Harris Burdell refused a legitimate request from the press to allow the condemned man a minute to finish a thought-provoking statement.’”

  “All right, dammit,” Burdell said. “But watch your tongue, Chism. Watch what you say and don’t go spreadin a pack of lies.”

  “It aint no lie that Ernest Bodenhammer does not deserve to die for puttin an end to the life of that murderin son of a bitch Fat Gabe McChristian!” Nail said, with the only flare-up of emotion they were to witness. Then, more calmly, he resumed, “Now, maybe you fellers think that this don’t make no difference, but I just hope you can get a chance to see some of his pitchers that he drew, and then tell Miss Viridis Monday that I hope she will do what she can for him, and I shore appreciate what she done for me.”

  There was a silence then. The reporters waited for him to continue, but he did not. Warden Burdell asked him, “Was them your last words, Chism?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s these: tell her that I and the trees will love her forevermore.”

  “Okay, boys, strap him in,” Warden Burdell said to the two guards, and they took him to the electric chair and made him sit down, and the guard named Gorham unlocked his handcuffs while the guard named Fancher secured one of his arms with an old black strap of leather that seemed to have been cut from mule harness. Chism made a brief move as if to struggle, but the warden himself nervously helped them hold him until the strapping of his arms, and then his legs, was completed. The warden whispered to the condemned man something that the reporters could not hear. Then he looked at the executioner and asked, “Ready, Bobo?”

  Mr. Irvin Bobo, despite his intoxication, was lucid enough to point out something to the warden: “You aint put the cap on him yet, boss.”

  “Oh,” said Burdell. “Right.” He motioned to the guard with the short leg to set the metal cap atop the head of the condemned man and strap it in place beneath his chin. “There, now.” Tom Fletcher experienced a sympathetic shiver as the steel cap touched the man’s shaved head. The warden and the guards stepped away from the chair. Mr. Bobo raised a hand to hold the switch-handle.

  The man from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch stood up again and began to read: “‘The State of Arkansas last night put to death in its electric chair an innocent man, Nail Chism, twenty-seven. He had been tried and convicted of assaulting a young white woman who later confessed that he was wrongly convicted on her testimony. Appeals to Governor George W. Hays failed to gain a pardon or even to stay the execution. Last-minute appeals were made by a delegation of newspapermen directly to the warden of the state penitentiary, Harris Burdell, but Mr. Burdell remained unconvinced that the unfavorable publicity resulting would probably cost him his job…’”

  “Awright, goddammit!” Burdell yelled, and grew very red in the face and stood in front of the press gallery with his hands on his hips and said, “You guys are makin it very difficult for me to exercise my sworn duties! Time and time again I’ve told you that I don’t have any power whatsoever to stop this execution, and I’m not goin to stop it!” He turned and gestured. “Bobo, put your hand back on that switch!” The warden pointed his trembling finger at the condemned man. “Y’all keep talkin about him bein so innocent! Let me just show you gentlemen how innocent he is! That business he kept yappin about, about his punk pal Timbo Red Bodenhammer killin one of my men, was on account of a letter
he tried to smuggle out of my prison, tryin to get it out to that same sweetheart of his he keeps talkin about, Miss Viridis Monday, in which he told her, and I quote!” The warden fished into each of his coat pockets before he found the letter he was looking for, then began to read from it, first fumbling with his spectacles to get them into place. “‘I reckon you know that if they try to electercute’—that’s sic, gentlemen, sic—‘electercute me I aim to kill as many as I can beforehand and I reckon you also know how I aim to do it.’ Now, gentlemen, we managed to intercept this threatening letter, at the sacrifice of the life of my best guard, and I have been careful to keep a close watch on this man Chism and attempt to determine just how he intended to kill as many of us as he could. That means you too, gentlemen. He intended to kill as many of you as he could. And how did he intend to do it?”

  The warden let his rhetorical question hang in the air defiantly for a long moment. Several of the reporters were attempting to write down the warden’s words as fast as he spoke, and he was speaking very fast: “I’ll tell you how! We discovered that the past several days he has been sharpenin a piece of metal in his cell, a plate of steel, this long, taken out of a mouth organ, a big harmonica. His young punk Timbo Red killed my good man McChristian with a previous dagger that Chism had been wearin on a string around his neck for quite some time, probably since the last time we tried to electrocute him. So we suspected that Chism might try to make himself another dagger. Unbeknownst to him, and to his punk pal Bodenhammer, we’ve been spyin on ’em this past week. Nail Chism went and sharpened a piece of metal into a dagger, which he then tied to a string around his neck, intending at the last moment to get that dagger out and kill me and you and as many of us as he could! Now, is that man innocent?”

  It was so quiet in the room that you could hear the electric dynamo hum. At least, Tom Fletcher thought it was the dynamo, but he wasn’t so sure.