It was way past bedtime when a knock came at the door, and Viridis opened it, and there stood Judge Sull Jerram. He didn’t have any of his henchmen or cronies with him. He just pointed past Viridis…at Rindy, who was sitting on the bed, and said, “I want to talk to her.” Viridis said she was sorry but he hadn’t even had the courtesy to introduce himself and she wasn’t in the mood to entertain strangers at this late hour. Sull looked like she had spit in his face, and he said, “Lady, they tell me yo’re from Little Rock. Okay, that’s where that nuthouse is, aint it? That’s whar she belongs. Rindy is rampin tetched in her haid, and ary fool thing she says to ye won’t be but some lie-tale she jist imagined. Now send her out here before I come in thar and git her.” But Viridis stood in the doorway and told him that if Dorinda was mentally unsound it would not be wise for her to talk with a man who was both mentally deficient and irascible. From where I sat I could tell that it took Sull a while to figure out those words, and then he got even more irascible. “I swear to God, lady, I’ll make ye wush ye was never born! You don’t know who yo’re talkin to. You might be some big somebody down thar to Little Rock, but this yere is Jasper, Newton County, by God, and I’m the by-God county jedge! Now, I got some words to say to Rindy aint nary bit of yore be-ness, and I aim to say ’em to her! Rindy! You thar now, Rindy! Gitch yore hide out chere!” Poor Dorinda was trembling something terrible and making little motions as if she were trying to obey him by getting up out of the bed, but she couldn’t really move. Viridis told him to leave or she’d call the manager. “Call him, goddammit!” Sull hollered at the top of his voice. “He’s a good friend of mine lak everbody else in this town! Call him and see what he does to ye! Snoopin meddler bitch!” Viridis put her hands up on his chest and gave him a shove that pushed him clean to the other side of the hall, and then she slammed the door and bolted it. She motioned for us to get back into the bed, and she took a step in our direction just in time to avoid the bullets that came blasting through the door. Sull fired three shots real quick that left three big holes in the door panel and broke the mirror on the dresser. Rindy screamed, and I guess I must have hollered myself. Viridis tilted the whole bed up on its side and got us down behind it, so it partly shielded us from the door. She crawled on her stomach to reach where she’d left her purse, and she opened that purse and took out her big six-shooter and cocked it and kept it pointed toward the door. But Sull didn’t fire any more shots. Some other people in the hotel down the hall must have come out to see what was happening and were yelling at him, and then a man, it must have been the owner, was yelling at him, “Jedge! Jedge, have you done gone crazy?” I couldn’t hear all the words out there in the hall, but finally the man said, “Git out of here, Jedge!” and repeated it a few times. Sull stepped back to the door, and his voice came through those bullet holes: “Rindy, now you lissen a me, gal! You jist keep yore trap shut, hear me? You keep that trap shut or I’ve got a bullet with yore name writ all over it!” Then it got quiet. After a while there was a knock and the manager asked if everything was okay. Viridis wouldn’t open the door. She asked the manager to summon the constable. The manager said there wasn’t no constable, just the sheriff. “Snow?” she said, and the manager called back through the door, “Yes ma’am. Want me to git him?” “Never mind,” she said, and she straightened up the bed and turned off the lamp and we tried our best to sleep.
But of course none of us could sleep. By and by Viridis asked, “Do you know any good stories you could tell?” and I told the best ghost story I could remember, and that passed some time. “Rindy?” Viridis said. “Do you know any stories?”
For a minute I thought she might have already fallen asleep, but she hadn’t. “Could I tell a real story?” she finally asked. “Not a tellin-story, no, not a windy, but the pure fack?” We didn’t tell her she couldn’t, so she did. “I’ll tell you’uns how it come about that Sull Jerram ruint me.”
From that night on, Dorinda and I were best friends again. We hardly had time to enjoy it, though, before Viridis took her off to Little Rock. Most people thought that Viridis took Dorinda to Little Rock as a kind of “living signature” on that petition to the governor. It looked to everybody as if all the governor would need in order to give Nail a full pardon would be a complete confession from Dorinda, in person. But a big part of the reason Viridis took her to Little Rock was to save her from Sull: Viridis was convinced that Sull would kill Dorinda to silence her if he had the chance.
When the word got around Stay More that we had spent the night at the Buckhorn and been fired upon by Sull, some people were of the mind that Viridis should have known better than to spend the night in Jasper, right in the hornet’s nest, you might say. If it had been them, some people said, they would have groped in the dark on hands and knees to get back to Stay More rather than spend the night in Jasper. But the Chisms, at least, protested that Viridis had no idea what she was getting into and was smart to hole up in the Buckhorn instead of risking her neck and ours on the road after dark.
Waymon Chism was fit to be tied, and that’s what they should have done to him. As soon as he heard what had happened, he disappeared. His wife Faye looked all over Stay More for him, and we heard from her how angry he was. Waymon didn’t own a horse or other conveyance; remember, he’d had to rent those mules and that wagon from Willis Ingledew to go to Little Rock for Nail’s body, which wasn’t yet available. This time Willis said he hadn’t rented any mule or horse, either one. He just disappeared, and later word came that he had been seen, on foot, walking into Jasper. It’s an all-day hike if you leave early in the morning. He must have been too tired when he got there to do anything that would require physical strength, like wringing Sull’s neck. Which was, apparently, what he intended to do. He had no gun. A cousin in Jasper who gave him a bed for the night said that he had tried to persuade Waymon to borrow his pistol. Waymon refused and set out from the cousin’s house right after breakfast to walk the few blocks to Sull’s house. The cousin stalked him, from a distance, to see what was up. It was worse than walking into the hornet’s nest, except for one thing: the hornet was alone. He didn’t have Waymon’s sister sleeping with him anymore, he didn’t have children, he didn’t have an old mother to fight for her wayward son, and, best of all, he didn’t have Sheriff Duster Snow and his deputies to be his bodyguards and sidekicks, not that early in the morning. All he had was his gun. And Waymon got to him before he could even remember which pocket he’d left it in, in the clothes he took off the night before. Waymon got to him before he could get dressed. Waymon got to him before he could get word to God. The cousin described it: “Ole Waymon jist kicked the door down and walked right on in thar. Purty soon he had drug that jedge out to the front porch, whar he commenced to toss him amongst the furniture and reduce it to kindlin and flinders. Shore, ole Sull hit him back, or tried to. Sull got in a couple of licks, one of ’em a lucky round arm swing that knocked Waymon off the porch, but Waymon jist reached back up thar and grabbed Sull by his laig and flang him out into the yard, whar he really set in to clobberin the daylights outen that feller. I swear, I don’t see how Sull ever got off the ground again. He was jist laid plumb out, purt nigh boggy and half-dead, while Waymon stood thar and guv him a leetle lecture, a sermon I couldn’t hear on account of I was standin behind a tree too fur off, but Waymon hollered at him fer a good little bit, and Sull jist had to lay there and listen to it. Finally Waymon turned and stomped off. He was headin the opposite way from me, was the reason he couldn’t hear me when I hollered. He’d done already got too fur off and guv Sull time to git up and dash in the house for his shootin-piece and come back out and run right up behind pore Waymon, when I hollered as loud as I could, but he was too fur off from me to hear me. I reckon he did hear me, but by the time he commenced to turn around, Sull had done already shot him in the back.”
The bullet entered Waymon low in the backbone. Sull’s second shot missed, and by then Waymon had turned and grabbed the automatic by the barrel
and yanked it right out of Sull’s hand and then hammered him atop his head with the butt of it, nearly fracturing Sull’s skull. By the time the cousin reached them, they were both unconscious. He ran for a doctor. The doctor summoned another doctor. They tended to Sull first, because he was the county judge, the leading citizen of Jasper, well known to them both. After they had revived Sull, and Sull was busy telling his friend Sheriff Snow how he had shot Waymon in clear self-defense, the doctors decided to carry Waymon into one of the doctors’ houses, where they operated. Between the two of them, after several hours of cutting and gouging, they managed to get the lead bullet out without completely ruining Waymon’s spine. But they had to keep Waymon there in Jasper for the rest of the week and more.
Folks in Stay More were just about ready to declare war on Jasper. The Ingledews themselves were furious, and before you get an Ingledew riled up, you’d better have kinfolks two counties over who can keep you awhile. John Ingledew, our leading citizen, the same man who ten years before had assembled the lynch mob that took care of that desperado Ike Whitter, and who owned one of the two automobiles of Stay More (his brother Willis owned the other), was in favor of organizing the men of Stay More into an army, marching into Jasper, and taking control of the county government and law enforcement in a coup d’état. It was the time of year when most men didn’t have anything to do anyway: too early to plow, nothing to raise except Cain, and the chess-players around the stove in Willis’ store imagined they knew a way to capture the sheriff and checkmate the county judge.
One morning when Viridis was just a day short of one full week in Newton County, and had just about finished collecting all the signatures she could get for her petition, she was standing on the porch of the old woman’s house, with her sketchbook held in one arm and her drawing-pencil in the other hand, making a picture of the scene of activity on the storeporch across the road: the men of Stay More assembling, each with his best firearm, rifle, or shotgun, and even a flintlock or two, and the storeporch filling up with men, their wagons parked in the road and the yard, or the horses and mules tethered to trees and the porch posts. I was watching Viridis make her drawing, amazed that she could “freeze” that bustling motion of all the men and animals. Dorinda and the old woman were with me, the three of us silently admiring the drawing that Viridis was making. Viridis stopped drawing when she heard the noise; we stopped looking at her drawing and turned our ears toward the north, and the men around the storeporch stopped in their tracks too and listened. The noise grew to a roar, and we could see the cloud of February dust before we could see the vehicles coming into view, down the road from the north, with all the town’s dogs chasing them: the first car was Sheriff Snow’s Oldsmobile with deputies standing shoulder to shoulder on the running-board, followed by Sull Jerram’s Ford so loaded that feet were hanging out the doors, followed by a third car bringing that circuit judge, Lincoln Villines, who had sentenced Nail to the chair. As soon as the first car came to a stop in the middle of the road in front of Willis Ingledew’s store, all of the deputies jumped down and pointed their rifles and shotguns at the men of Stay More, who, we were told later, were kept from firing at the intruders only by the presence of us four females in the line of fire across the road.
The men of Stay More had to lay down their arms. Then the two judges, county and circuit, followed by the sheriff and his men, mounted the storeporch and took a commanding position in its center. Sull’s head was so wrapped up with bandages that his hat would barely stay on. We four females stood on the old woman’s porch and watched and waited. Sull looked around him as if he owned not just the store but the whole town, and then he held up his arms for silence and began to speak.
“Gentlemen,” Judge Jerram said, “lend me yore ears. It’s a right smart of pleasure fer me to come back home to Stay More on sech a fine mornin and see all you’unses once again. Sounds lak I’m a-startin one of my campaign sermons, don’t it? I aint, though. No, friends, the ’lection aint till November, and I spect I’ll be back here again afore then, but I shore do hope I don’t never have to come back before campaign time in the fall.” Judge Jerram paused and looked around to see if everybody got his meaning: that only two things would ever bring him to Stay More: one, campaigning for reelection, and two, restoring law and order. “Do I make myself real clear? You over there, John Ingledew, do you understand me? All you Ingledews! Now, I got jist as much respect for a Ingledew as I got for ary man, and I don’t stand second to none when it comes to reverence and esteem for the Ingledews, but I am a-standin here to remind you that Stay More is still part of Newton County, and I am still in charge of Newton County!” Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Viridis was drawing again, and I stopped watching Sull act big and started watching her sketch him: she was doing him in his most grandiloquent oratorical pose, with one hand pointed heavenward and the other to the turf of Stay More, and his face twisted into an unctuous parody of a country politician. He went on, “Do I make myself real clear? You can vote against me come autumn if you so desire, and I’ll be out in the cold a year from now, but meantimes I have been elected to run this yere county and I aim to run this yere county, and these men…” (his hand indicated the sheriff and his deputies and even the circuit judge) “…these men are my duly sworn confederates and partners, and we have all got to work together and stand shoulder to shoulder and be in cohorts together! I will not brook no insurgence! Hear me? If ary man but raise ary finger to stand in my way, I will leave no stone unturned to flush him out! In the parlous state of affairs that this yere vale of tears has done come to, I stand here proud afore ye and I do solemnly tell ye: walk the strait and narrow path or I will bar the door! Now, does ary of you’unses not know what I’m a-sayin?”
Judge Jerram waited a long minute for anyone to answer his rhetorical question, but no one did. All of the Stay Morons just looked sad and beaten, or sad and sullen, one. Later the men around the stove in Willis’ store remarked that Sull Jerram could have recited the Gettysburg address and it wouldn’t have been any different; it wasn’t what he said that mattered, or even how he said it, but the fact that he had come out here to Stay More with all those men behind him just to say something and let us know that he was still the boss.
When the speech was over, Sull Jerram and Sheriff Snow came walking right down into the crowd, through it, and across the road to where we were standing, and Sheriff Snow said to Rindy, “Now, little lady, you’d better jist come along with us.” He and Sull and a deputy came up onto the porch of Jacob Ingledew’s house.
Poor Rindy got herself behind Viridis and the old woman, as if they could protect her, and Viridis tried to. “Are you arresting her?” she asked. “What’s the charge?”
Sheriff Snow attempted a smile. “No, ma’am, I wouldn’t call it a arrest exactly. We’d jist lak to have us a little talk with her.”
“If she’s not under arrest, she’s not required to go with you if she doesn’t want to,” Viridis said.
The sheriff exchanged looks with Sull, and Sull said, “Ma’am, you are re-quired to answer one question: how long are you stayin in this yere town?”
“I’m not required to answer anything for you, mister,” she said to Sull.
“No?” he said. “I’ll give ye a secont chance. You can answer this or face the consequences: how long are you plannin to stay?” Viridis just coldly looked him in the eye and did not answer. “Okay,” he said to Sheriff Snow, “you kin arrest her.”
“You’re under arrest, ma’am,” the sheriff said to Viridis.
“You can’t do this,” she said. “What are you arresting me for?”
“Obstructin justice,” he said, and took her arm and tried to lead her down from the porch.
The old woman placed herself in front of the sheriff and slapped his face. “You had better arrest me too, Mister Snow,” she said to him when he had recovered.
He held his sore jaw. “Who the heck are you?” he asked.
“If failure to
answer questions is obstructing justice, then arrest me too,” the old woman said.
“I jist might,” the sheriff said. “You caint go around hittin on the high sherf of Newton County!”
“I can’t?” the old woman said. She slapped him again, harder, on the other cheek.
For a second it looked as if Duster Snow might haul off and hit her back, but he got his emotions under control, at the expense of a beet-red face, and said, “All right, dammit, you’re under arrest too.” But Judge Lincoln Villines came up on the porch and whispered something into Sheriff Snow’s ear. The sheriff looked at the old woman and then up at the porch ceiling over his head, and spoke as if addressing it: “So you live here in Governor Ingledew’s house?”
Viridis still had her sketchbook open and was doing a trio of quick portraits: Sull, the sheriff, and Judge Villines, grouped together like a pack of rats, each of them rendered unflatteringly, almost in caricature. When I failed to suppress a giggle, Sull stepped around to take a look at what she was doing.
She had done him first, in a few quick lines that perfectly expressed the coarse bluster and bullying of the man, with those bandages around his head making him look like a clown, but perhaps he was too stupid to realize how unflattering the interpretation was, and his first response was cocky: “Hey! That’s me!” But then he changed his tone and demanded, “What are you drawin me fer?” Viridis ignored his question and went on finishing her quick sketches of the sheriff and the judge. Judge Villines seemed addled; he seemed to be aware that his portrait was being done, but he couldn’t decide whether to protest or pose, though he inclined to the latter, trying to get his best profile into position and his nose tilted properly. Sheriff Snow had dropped his mouth open, and Viridis decided that he looked more characteristic that way, and she quickly redrew his face with a slack-jawed expression.
The Choiring Of The Trees Page 20
