The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “How will you unlock his cell?”

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

  “I’m so excited,” she said.

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

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

  “Did you read the books?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Who cares?” said Sam Bell.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Jist makin sure,” Nail said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I’m sorry they sacked you,” Nail told Lee.

  “Who told you that?” Lee asked. Indeed, it wasn’t mentioned in this issue of the Gazette.

  “Yeager,” Nail said, wondering if there was any chance that Lee himself hadn’t been told. “Yesterday,” he added.

  “Then he had already told you about Saturday night?”

  Nail nodded. “Yeah, he told me.”

  “The bastard,” Lee said. “He promised to wait and let me tell you. How did you take it?”

  Nail shrugged. “I’m an old hand at this now, ye know. It didn’t trouble me.”

  Lee looked at him oddly, then moved closer and lowered his voice to say, “But the Saturday night movie is scheduled for after the executions.”

  “You think they’d go ahead and show a movie with the same juice they jist used to cook three fellers?” Nail asked.

  “The men want that movie,” Lee said. “They haven’t been talking about anything else this week. All they’re waiting for is that movie, and they’re on their best behavior in order to see it.”

  “But the warden is cuttin back on all the privileges and improvements that you brought in,” Nail pointed out. “Don’t you reckon it’s likely he’ll do away with the picture shows too?”

  Lee shook his head. “Not right away. If he tried to do it for this movie this Saturday, the men would go on strike or stage a riot. Sure, he’ll abolish movies soon, but not this week. I went to a lot of trouble to persuade the theater people in Little Rock to loan us that first-run film.”

  “Well,” Nail said. He didn’t know much else to say. Out of genuine concern as well as politeness, he asked, “What are you fixin to do after you leave this job? Have you got another one?”

  “Next week I’m interviewing for the position of chaplain in the Tennessee prisons,” Lee said. He smiled wryly. “I seem to keep moving eastward, in the direction of civilization.”

  “I imagine you’ll stir things up over there, too,” Nail observed.

  “I hope they won’t need it as much as Arkansas does,” Lee said. “This place really begs for help.”

  “It’s too bad Hays wouldn’t keep you,” Nail said. “That governor can’t seem to make up his mind about anything.”

  Lee laughed so uproariously that Nail wondered if he had unintentionally made a joke. “You’ve put him in a nutshell. Governor Hays is weak and indecisive. He changes his mind constantly. If only he could reverse himself just once more about executing you this Saturday, but he’s changed his mind so often that now he lets other people change it for him, and the other people, this time, are the judges and the politicians who are raising a fuss about his clemency.”

  “I reckon I’m gone, this time,” Nail allowed, and then he asked, “Lee, you believe in heaven, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes, certainly,” Lee said. “But not with clouds and pearly gates and golden streets and all that.”

  “But with trees?” Nail said. “Are there trees in heaven?”

  “A tree,” Lee declared, “has just as much right to go to heaven as a man does.”

  Nail decided that Lee Tomme was even a better man than he had already figured him to be. “I don’t have no reason to go to hell,” he declared, “so I imagine come Saturday night I’ll be amongst them trees, and all of us singing.”

  “A cappella,” Lee said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “No harps, no lutes, no mandolins, none of that,” Lee said. “Just the trees singing as the voice of God.”

  Nail smiled and narrowed his eyes. “Will God be singin shaller or deep?”

  Lee laughed. “Soprano or baritone? Now, that, Brother Chism, is a very knotty theological problem. But let’s observe that in the very best of choirs, when all voices are loud and together, you don’t notice the pitch of any one.”

  “I like that, Brother Tomme,” Nail declared. “And maybe what you’re sayin is that God aint a woman after all, nor a man neither, but God is all sexes, of all kinds and pitches.”

  “That’s it,” Lee said. “A pitch is a pitch. It’s all the same to us.”

  They both broke up with laughter.

  “Brother Tomme,” Nail requested, “will you be around Saturday at the goin down of the sun to lead us to the chair? I’d ’preciate it if you could. I might even let you pray for me.”

  Lee Tomme abandoned his jovial face for a very sad one, and shook his head. “I promised the warden I’d be out of The Walls by sundown today. I think that for the executions they’re planning to restore my predecessor, what’s-his-name?”

  “Jimmie Mac.”

  “Yes, I believe Reverend McPhee is returning Saturday.”

  “I hate to hear that,” Nail said. He offered his hand, and when Lee took it, he said, “Well, Reverend, I want to wish you good luck and happiness wherever you go. When I see God under those trees, I’ll tell Them to be sure and love you and keep you on this earth for a long, long time.”

  For once Lee was at a loss for words, and his eyes got moist. He did not let go of Nail’s hand. Finally he looked down at their hands, which were just holding, not being shaken, and he placed his other hand on top on the two joined hands and said, “Look, this is my last day here at The Walls. But I think there is one thing more I could do. Yes, before I’m gone for good, I think I could persuade the Little Rock theater people to tell Warden Yeager that due to previous commitments they will have to move up the loan of Tillie’s Punctured Romance from Saturday night to Friday night. How would that do?”

  On

  And behold, that old Edison shorted out right in the middle of the picture show. From his cell Nail could hear the three hundred men over in the barracks hollering, whistling, clapping, and stomping for several minutes before the lights came on in the death hole, and Fat Gill came down and said, “Okay, Chism, there’s one more little job for you upstairs.” He opened the cell door, then p
ut the handcuffs on Nail.

  Nail protested. “I aint fixin no electrical equipment with these here cuffs on me.”

  “Warden’s orders,” Fat Gill announced. “He says if you can’t fix whatever’s wrong with the cuffs on, we’ll just have to forget it.”

  “Well, shit, let’s go,” Nail grumbled, and let Fat Gill lead him upstairs into the engine room. Nail had to get Fat Gill to do things for him because his hands were cuffed. “Reach up there and open the lid on that box…Now jiggle that little knob there and let’s see what happens. Nope. Must be the other box.” Purposely he led Fat Gill on a false trail of increasing difficulty until he was in a position to suggest, “If you’d jist take these cuffs off of me, we could git finished a lot faster.”

  “Sorry,” Fat Gill said. “I’m just doin what the warden told me.”

  “Well, give that there knob—no, the next one—give it a sort of one-quarter turn anticlockwise.” Fat Gill did as he was instructed and loosened the fuse to the projector’s circuit, and of course nothing happened, not then. “I reckon we’d better go look at the projector,” Nail suggested, and Fat Gill escorted him out of the powerhouse and up into the barracks, where the men were fidgeting until the show resumed. Warden Yeager himself was there, with Short Leg and some of his best black trusties surrounding his seat.

  “What’s the problem, Chism?” Warden Yeager demanded. “What’s takin so long?”

  “He put these here cuffs on me,” Nail protested. “How the hell can I fix anything when I have to explain to somebody else what to do?”

  “Take ’em off,” the warden told Fat Gill. “He aint gonna try nothin with all of us around.”

  Fat Gill removed the handcuffs, and Nail went to work on the old Edison, opening it and fanning away the remaining fumes of the scorched short. Sure enough, it had shorted exactly in the spot where he had twisted that wire before, and the wire’s end had dissolved. He turned to the warden and guards. “Any of you fellers got a pocketknife I could borrow for jist a secont?”