The Choiring Of The Trees

by Donald Harington

  Then he wrote:

  I reckon you know that if they try to electercute me I aim to kill as many as I can beforehand and I reckon you also know how I aim to do it. But I have been thinking (which of course is what we all of us do too much of around this place) and have decided that if I’m going to die in that way, I might as well make one honest attempt at getting out of here before they even put me back in the death hole, which it don’t look like they plan to do until the week before the electercution date. Before they put me back in the death hole, I think I know a pretty good way to break out of here, and I can do it all by myself if you could find some way to do just one thing for me. I need a little bit of mustard oil, just enough of it to smear on my feet to throw the dogs off my scent when I light out for the country. If there was some way you could smuggle me just a tiny bottle of that mustard oil.

  But if you can’t, and I have to go sit down in the chair on the 20th, I want you to promise me that you won’t come and watch. I couldn’t stand that. I sure would like to see you again before I close my eyes for the last time, and to tell the honest truth I’d like to still see nothing else except your beautiful face behind my closed eyes for eternity, but I don’t want that to be the last thing I see before I close my eyes, I want to imagine it, I want to create you, I want to be able to take your face with me to eternity because I made it up all by myself.

  There is one more request, if you can bear one. Then I won’t bother you with any more of them. When I am gone I hope you will take the trouble that you would ordinarily spend on grief and instead do whatever you can for this boy, Timbo Red. He will make a great artist one of these days. Not nearly as good a one as you, but a great one, still, if he gets the chance and maybe some lessons and enough of those drawing materials. He ought to get out of here on parole before too very long. The only thing he ever done wrong was steal a horse, and they can’t keep him long for that. If you could watch out for him when he gets out, I’m going to tell him a lot of things that I wanted to tell you so that he can go on for a long time telling you those things almost like I was still around to do it myself, and if you want to, you can pretend his voice is mine, just the same way you brought all of those Stay More voices with you so I could hear them.

  If you was with me right now, you would be laughing because what I’m thinking about is, wouldn’t it be funny if you was to introduce old Timbo Red to Rindy and they become good friends? Live happy ever after, and all that?

  On second thought, maybe it ain’t funny. But you, dear Viridis, please live happy ever after. Get me that mustard oil if you can. If you can’t, don’t let it bother you none. You done your best, you done more than any woman or man either could ever have done, and I and the trees will love you for it for ever more.

  Then he could only wait and watch for Cobb, to smuggle this letter out. Every day that passed was a day lost he’d need to work out some way to get that mustard oil; he had the rest of it pretty well planned: getting over the wall at the right time in the right way. He didn’t even tell Timbo Red of his plan, although he considered that the kid himself might need to escape sometime. But he did tell Timbo Red, day after day when they could talk, about Viridis Monday. Timbo Red had to admit he’d never known any female anything like her, and not because Nail was bragging on her or making her out to be better than she was; he was telling Timbo Red exactly everything that Viridis had done that he knew about, and just what she looked like. Of course he didn’t tell Timbo Red to expect that Viridis was going to take care of him when he got out of the pen, but Nail was setting him up for it so he wouldn’t be absolutely flabbergasted when it happened. But he did tell Timbo Red he hoped the boy would meet up with her if anything ever happened to Nail that he wasn’t alive anymore, because then there were a few things he wanted Timbo Red to tell her, if he could remember them.

  Timbo Red could remember them all. He could especially remember the directions to a few spots west of Stay More where you could look down into the valley and paint the most wonderful pictures of it. Timbo Red allowed as how he himself would sort of like to go and see some views like that, and even paint them, if he ever got aholt of some paints and learned how to use them.

  “You’ll git ye some paints, son,” Nail told him. “Jist take my word fer it.”

  One evening at supper Nail was working on his second helping of cowpeas and cornbread when somebody crowded in to sit beside him on the bench, and even before he turned to see the face, he recognized the smell: the barbershop talcum powder of Attorney Farrell Cobb. Nail was both elated and irritated. He didn’t have any more use for Cobb, except as a messenger, but that was essential. Cobb shook hands with him, which he hadn’t done before, and Nail instantly detected something in their pressing palms. “A letter from her,” Cobb whispered. “All folded up into a wad. Hide it. Enjoy it later.”

  As their hands came apart, Nail withdrew his with the precious wad in it and tucked it into his waistband, then took from the other side of the band his letter for Viridis. It was not wadded up, but there were only four pages, folded three times. He kept it under the table and placed it on Cobb’s leg. “Kindly get that to her.”

  “Wait. No. I can’t,” Cobb protested, feeling the letter.

  “Just stick it in your pocket,” Nail insisted.

  “No, really, they’d—” Cobb said, darting a glance around the room. “Sshh! They’re watching us!”

  Nail looked around. Fat Gabe and Short Leg were over at the end of the mess hall, but they weren’t watching. The only one watching was the mess trusty, a black man. But he was watching the two of them intently, and he could clearly see Nail’s hand on Cobb’s leg.

  “Take it, quick!” Nail said.

  “No, take it back!” Cobb said. “Move your hand!”

  The black trusty yelled, “GIT DE WADDEN!” Fat Gabe and Short Leg came over. The black trusty said to them, “Dem two done passed some paper,” and pointed at Cobb. “Marse Buddell he say to watch dat man. Git de wadden.”

  Nail had taken back his letter and thrust it back into his pants band but in doing so had jarred loose the wad of Viridis’ letter so that it fell down into his trouser leg. Fat Gabe said, “On your feet, Chism!” and as Nail stood up he felt the wad of Viridis’ letter slide down his leg to the floor. Without looking down, he covered it with his shoe. Fat Gabe held out his hand, and said, “Whatcha got there? Le’s have it!”

  Nail held out his empty hands. “I aint got nothin.”

  Fat Gabe looked at Farrell Cobb and demanded, “He hand something to you?”

  “Well…no, he…I don’t have anything,” Cobb said.

  “Search ’im,” Fat Gabe told Short Leg, who reached inside Farrell Cobb’s suit coat and searched his pockets and then the pockets of his trousers.

  “He’s clean,” Short Leg announced.

  “Search Chism,” Fat Gabe said. Nail wondered, Am I gonna have to use my knife before it’s time? He hoped Short Leg wouldn’t find his knife. But Short Leg went immediately to his trousers and, knowing that no convict’s trousers ever had pockets, felt inside the waistband and brought out the letter. “Well, well,” Fat Gabe said, snatching the letter out of Short Leg’s hand and holding it up high. “What have we here?” He turned to Farrell Cobb and waved the letter under his nose. “He try to pass this to you? Or did you give it to him?”

  “Well, not exactly,” Cobb said.

  “What do you mean, Mister Cobb?” Fat Gabe demanded. “Is this yours or his?”

  “It isn’t mine, I assure you,” Cobb said. “I’ve never seen it before.”

  “Get the fuck out of here, Cobb,” Fat Gabe said. Cobb hastily departed, and Fat Gabe said to Short Leg, “Get the boss.”

  Warden Burdell was summoned, and came, and Fat Gabe handed him the letter. The warden took out his spectacles and put them on. He unfolded the sheets, giving Nail a glance to indicate he recognized the writing-paper as the same he had given Nail to write his mother at Christmastime. He read the letter, gr
inning. Nail stood helpless, the sole of his shoe pressing down on the wad of Viridis’ letter. Would he ever get a chance to read it? Finally the warden looked up and said to Nail, “So this was intended for Miss Monday of the Gazette, huh? As I suspected, she’s sweet on you. Right?” Nail did not answer. The warden flapped the letter. “You say here that you’d like to kill the governor. Is that true?” Nail would not answer. “Answer me, or do you need Gabe to give you some persuasion?” Nail gave a semblance of a nod. “And it says here you’re planning to kill a few of us before we electrocute you. You want to tell me how you’re planning to do that?” Nail could not answer. The warden removed his spectacles and looked at Fat Gabe and Short Leg and said to them, “Maybe he thinks he can do it with his bare hands!” and both of the sergeant-guards laughed. “If you’re so impatient to give it a try, Chism, your date with Old Sparky is right around the corner. I think we’d better put you back in the death hole to wait for it. But first…” (the warden inclined his head in the direction of Fat Gabe) “…first I believe my assistant here, ole Gabe, would like to inflict an appropriate punishment for your stupid attempt to smuggle this letter out of here. Is that right, Gabe?”

  “Just let me get my hide,” Fat Gabe said. “We’ll do it right here in the mess hall.”

  “Very good. Everybody can watch,” the warden said. “Except me. I wouldn’t have much fun watching you get strapped, Chism. But I expect I’ll have some pleasure watching you fry. Unless you find some mustard oil.” Before walking away, the warden shook his head and said again, “Mustard oil!” and snorted a laugh.

  Inmates hate to have to watch a flogging right after supper; several of them are sure to puke. The wheelbarrow was not brought in as a rack for Nail’s body; he was just spread out right there face down on the dining table, with three trusties holding his arms and legs, while Doc Gode got ready to take his pulse.

  There were three things Nail saw, in succession, before the blows started: first, the wad of Viridis’ letter, still there on the floor, nobody noticing it or thinking anything of it, or at least not bending down to pick it up and find out what it was; second, the face of Timbo Red, who was looking at him with mingled terror and fierce indignation, whose sixteen-year-old eyes were already beginning to acquire some of the keen look of having seen too much of this world and having tried without success to make sense of it; and third, as Nail shut his eyes, that face with its caressing green eyes and frame of fire-red hair, that face he would always see whenever he shut his eyes until the very last time he shut them. He tried to fix that face in the darkness as the brass-studded lash opened up the skin of his ass. And when they sponged salt water into the wounds, he did not scream. He bit his tongue and gritted his teeth and hoped that maybe he would faint before the pain got too bad. The only sound he could hear at first, other than the loud slapping of the leather against his skin, was the heavy breathing of Fat Gabe exerting himself as he had never done before, almost as if he’d found a woman who was his match in bed and needed every bit of breath and thrust he could give her. And then Nail heard a man retching and heaving up his supper. And then another. Nail’s own double-supper had risen in his craw and was threatening to choke him. Better to drown in his own vomit than be beaten to death. But he held it down, as he held back his screams that were begging him to let them beg.

  He was not counting the blows. It was somewhere past thirty, but he wasn’t counting. He was thinking how sad it was that Viridis would never see that last letter he wrote to her. No chance the warden would let her have it.

  Fat Gabe seemed to be getting a bit frustrated. “Goddamn you, Chism, if you die, it’s gonna be me who does it, not Ole Sparky.” Nail made no response. There was a longer interval before the next blow, and when it fell Nail knew why: Fat Gabe must have hauled off and reared back as far as he could with that strap before giving it all he had. And all he had was not enough to bring a scream out of Nail, only a groan. And Fat Gabe cursed the trusty: “Nigger, goddamn you, squeeze some of that salt in there!”

  Suddenly Nail felt someone tearing at his chest. He opened his eyes to see Timbo Red, who said, “Let me have that knife!” and grabbed the string inside Nail’s shirt and pulled it out, and tore the knife off it, tearing off too the gent’s tree charm, which flew out and landed on the floor not far from the wad of Viridis’ letter.

  “No!” Nail hollered at Timbo Red, but before anyone could lay a hand on the kid he had stuck the knife into Fat Gabe’s belly and pulled upward with all his might, tearing right up through the middle of his guts. Fat Gabe screamed and dropped the strap and clutched himself in the middle, and Timbo Red slashed the knife across Fat Gabe’s throat, from ear to ear. Short Leg had his gun out, but before he could fire it, Timbo Red had plunged the knife into Fat Gabe’s chest.

  The trusties holding Nail had let go of him, and he too was up and watching as Short Leg, instead of shooting Timbo Red, decided to cock him over the head with the butt of his gun, and knocked the boy unconscious to the floor, right beside the wad and the tree charm. Nail sprang down beside him, and, while making sure the boy was okay, or at least pretending to care for him, he palmed the wad and the tree charm. A moment later, while everyone was watching Fat Gabe roll and toss and buck, Nail concealed his treasures by thrusting his hand down into his pants and tucking the wad up under the space behind his testicles and then hiding the tree charm in his anus.

  In the confusion that followed, nobody paid much attention to Nail for several minutes. All of the trusties were there, including the armed ones. All of the half-trusties, or do-pops, came running, and everybody crowded into a circle about Fat Gabe, who was flopping and coughing up blood, his guts spilled onto the floor. Short Leg was waving his pistol as if somebody else might try to do something, and Timbo Red lay sprawled on his back, his eyes closed but almost a trace of a smile on his mouth. Fat Gabe, with his last bit of strength, pulled the knife blade out of his breast and held it as if to plunge it into Timbo Red. At that instant Warden Burdell came running in and yelled, “Christ, Gabe, what in hell is a-gorn on here?”

  Fat Gabe’s eyes clouded over, and he echoed one of the words as if he were already on his way there: “Hell.” Then he collapsed and was dead.

  Down in the death hole later that night, Nail lay on his side in the old, familiar, mouldy cot that had been his bed so many months in the autumn. It was almost good to be back. He was careful how he lay, because of the wounds in his buttocks, which still bled. It was absolutely dark, and he would have to wait until morning before attempting to read Viridis’ letter, which was still in a wad tucked snugly into his groin behind his testicles. For now, he was watching again and again that scene in the mess hall, particularly those precious seconds when he had failed to prevent Timbo Red from taking his knife and killing Fat Gabe with it. If only he had acted quicker. The boy should have known that Fat Gabe wasn’t killing Nail, that Nail would survive it, that it wasn’t worth risking his own life to kill Fat Gabe. The boy had practically committed suicide. There was no way now they would ever let him go. If they didn’t electrocute him, they’d keep him in The Walls for the rest of his life or, worse, send him off to Tucker Farm, where the hardcases would rape him to death. Nail was tremendously moved and beholden that Timbo Red would have done something like that for him, would have liked him so much that he would act impulsively to protect or save him, but he was sorrowful beyond all imagining that it had actually happened, and there was no taking it back. The sheriff of Pulaski County had come out to The Walls to arrest Timbo Red and take him off to the county jail, because that’s the way the law worked, and the sheriff and some other men had taken Nail into Warden Burdell’s office and questioned him for an hour, trying to find out if Timbo Red was Nail’s “punk” and if the boy might have done it because he was in love with Nail. Finally Nail had lost his temper and demanded to know why that sheriff had never come out and arrested Fat Gabe for all the murders he’d committed on the inmates. That question had shut up the whol
e room for a long moment, and then Short Leg had taken Nail down here to his old home in the death hole. Before the heavy iron door clanged shut on him, Short Leg had remarked, “I’m just afraid that whoever the boss gets to replace ole Fat Gabe is going to be a meaner feller than he ever was.” Nail had thought about that for a while, trying to determine if it meant that Short Leg had approved or disapproved of Fat Gabe’s ways.

  Before bringing him down to the death hole, Short Leg had let him pick up his stuff: his two books, the Bible and Dr. Hood, and his harmonica, which he hadn’t played since that one time around Christmas. Now he raised it to his mouth, cupped his hands around it, and let his breath escape slowly onto the holes and reeds, and then he made one hand tremble to shiver the sound. The hand trembled pretty well all by itself without his willing it. He was still shook up. He drew in his breath slowly, changing the notes of the sound, making them more mournful, and he discovered he was playing a very slow and elegiac version of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Mine. Eyes. Have. Seen. The. Glory. Of. The. Coming. Of. The. Lord! The confines of the dank cell gave a special resonance to the haunting voice of the Hohner, so that the hymn was not one of praise but of loneliness, sadness, yearning. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored! The measured cadence of the poignant notes was molded by his hands, his lungs, and his lips into an expression of nostalgia and regret. He hath loosed the fatal lightning of His terrible swift sword! Nail made love to the instrument the way he’d sometimes had fancies of kissing Viridis. His! Truth! Is! Marching! ON! He stopped and took his lips away from the harmonica and said aloud to himself, “On?” and then he asked also, “Truth?” and he just lay there in dazed thought for a long time before he could again raise the instrument to his mouth. Then he played a few old ballads. He played a couple of his favorite love songs, “On Top of Old Smoky” and “Down in the Valley,” the latter filled with the sound of the wind blowing through the valley, the loneliness of jail, the hope of knowing and seeing love. And then, to test the harmonica’s range of perky and jolly tunes, he played “The Old Chisholm Trail.” That was about an old cattle-driving road running from Kansas to South Texas, which, his daddy had told him, had been named for a kinsman, Jesse Chisholm, who didn’t know how to spell his last name. It runs on through twenty-three verses, with the chorus of Come-a-ti-yi-yippy after each one, but twenty repetitions was all he could tolerate before he grew very sleepy and quit.