The Choiring Of The Trees

by Donald Harington

  “Dat sho am sweet,” a voice said, and Nail realized that the other death cell was occupied. They introduced themselves. His companion was Percy James, called Fleas, or Fleece, Nail would never be sure which. Fleas had carved up his wife with a razor while drunk at Christmas, believing she had been unfaithful to him. He was scheduled to sit on Old Sparky in just a few more days, he wasn’t sure whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday. He wasn’t too scared; an uncle of his had also had an appointment with Old Sparky, and, oddly enough, for the same offense. Nail and Fleas got acquainted until both of them grew sleepy.

  Before falling asleep, Nail focused his mind away from the gashes on his buttocks to a spot nearer the front, that fleshy little mound where the skin of his scrotum joined his crotch, wherein the paper wad was nestled, which, both then and moments later in sleep, he imagined was the gentle thumb of Viridis.

  The only light the death cells ever got was a wedge of early-morning sun that hit a small basement window and bathed the interior of the cells for an hour or so in a glow that in autumn and winter had seemed cold and menacing but now, in spring, was warm and promising, and lit the floor as well as the wall. Nail sat in that light and ate all of the hunk of rock-hard cornbread they gave him for breakfast. And drank his tin cup of water. He remembered his neighbor and called out, “Good mornin to ye, Mr. James.” There came in reply a chuckle, followed by: “Moanin to you, Nails. Aint no wat man eber call me mistah befo.”

  Then Nail reached down to where the thumb still touched, and took out and gently unfolded the wad. He unfolded it once, twice, thrice, a dozen times: it was a sheet of ordinary white writing-paper, now turned grayish by the tiny pencil markings written in a fine hand with a fine point all over it, on both sides. He had to hold the paper very close to tell one line from another, and he had to squint to tell one word from another and he had to reread to tell one letter from another. There were no margins. To save space, she had omitted the date and the greeting and the closing and their names, but these were not necessary.

  This must be a poor substitute for at least fifty pages I have written you since my last letter. Nice Mr. Cobb says that he will try to get this to you if I am able to abbreviate it to only one page, and I must ask myself which of those thousands of words that I wrote at more leisure I need most to say here. I feel like writing in quick, three-word sentences: “All is well. Please be happy. You will live. Don’t give up. Gardez la foi. We shall prevail. Truth will out. Justice will triumph. I love you.” There, but don’t you see how I can’t say that in only three words? Yet I can’t say it in one page either. Please believe I tried several times to visit you, but each time I was told that you were being punished for stealing food and were not allowed to have visitors. The last time I made an attempt, the guard, Gabriel McChristian, said he would let me see you if I would “step out” with him, which, I gathered, meant meeting him somewhere outside The Walls for some illicit purpose. I considered exposing his despicable bribe to the authorities, but these days I have very little faith in any authorities, as you can imagine, after my experience with the governor, which, I am the first to admit, I bungled by stupidly permitting myself to become irritated and indignant with “His Excellency.” But he is such a mean-spirited, small-minded little politician, probably the worst governor that Arkansas has ever had. Your dear friend and mine, young Latha Bourne, went to great trouble to collect the signatures of nearly 2,000 Newton County women to add to my petition of registered voting males, with a wonderful letter (she sent me a copy) in which she beseeched His Excellency for clemency and reminded him, “None of us females can vote, Governor, but we can sure influence the men who do.” As far as I know, Gov. Hays didn’t read her letter or give her petition any more of his precious attention than he gave mine. But if he and the people of Arkansas are blind and deaf to the hideous injustice of your wrongful conviction and punishment, perhaps Americans in general will not be. I am trying very hard to find a publisher for one or more of several articles I’ve written about the case. So far, I’ve placed one in the Houston Chronicle and one in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which isn’t much of an accomplishment, but at least it means that there are some editors who are interested in you, which is more than can be said, unfortunately, for the editors of Little Rock, including my former boss, Mr. Thomas Fletcher, to whom, I’m both sorry and happy to say, I’ve submitted my resignation. I am very hopeful that Associated Press, a national news service, will accept the best of my articles so that it will appear all over the country. Now, if you are interested in Dorinda, the pitiful origin of this whole mess, she is reasonably happy living here at my father’s house and attempting to attend Fort Steele Elementary School, where, I am told, she is having problems with reading and comprehension as well as “ability to get along with others,” but is making progress. She sends you her best wishes, her continuing (that is, lifelong) regrets, and her “bedtime prayers.” Sometimes I feel inclined to prayer myself. You are right, I don’t know you and I never asked you where you stand in regard to a Supreme Being, but I learned enough about you on my trip to Stay More to have the impression that you are not exactly a praying man yourself. If there is a God, He (or She) would at least have allowed Governor Hays to listen to Dorinda’s story, but he (and He) would not. I don’t believe in Governor Hays, either. I believe in you, Nail. I believe that men as good and as brave and as strong and as passionate as yourself are the highest manifestation of life on this earth…next to, of course, trees. If we were trees, if we were all rooted, and still, and swaying gently in the spring breeze, would we be happy? Perhaps, but we could still be cut down. Nobody is going to cut you down, my dearest. Not as long as I am still standing.

  “Nails, mah fren, does I heah yo weepin? Do de sadnesses got you too? It aint no hep to cry. We got to be brabe, man. We got to face de music. You dry yo eyes now, heah me?”

  Nail was not aware that he had made a sound, but he saw that a drop of water had fallen on Viridis’ letter, and it wasn’t sweat. He was almost glad that the letter he’d written for Cobb to smuggle out to her, that was probably right now on the warden’s desk, would never reach her, because it was such paltry, numb, ignorant nonsense compared with her letter. The only thing he’d said that came anywhere near equaling the beauty of her letter was when he almost came as close as she had to coming right out and saying “I love you.” How had he put it, or sneaked around not coming right out and putting it? Yes: he had written, “And I and the trees will love you for it for ever more,” which wasn’t the same as saying “I love you” or even saying “Me and the trees too love you” but just saying “We will” as if it hadn’t happened already but was likely to happen if we just all got a chance to last forevermore. Thinking of trees, he remembered the tree charm and remembered where he had hidden it, and he fished it out and cleaned it off and hid it inside Dr. Hood. To take advantage of the morning light, he read for a while in Dr. Hood, which was written as if a real medical doctor were having a series of informal but educational chats with one of his patients. Nail received advice on what to do while his wife was delivering the baby. He happened to read, “In the event of prolonged labor, the ingestion of a small quantity of mustard oil will increase peristaltic movements of the stomach and possibly advance the contractions of the womb.” Nail wondered who was supposed to drink the mustard oil, himself or his wife? Probably her. He flipped over to the section on Pharmacopoeia and read: “Oil of mustard—an ester of isothio-cyanic acid useful as a rubefacient, counterirritant, emetic, and to disguise one’s scent from bloodhounds while escaping from the penitentiary.” Nail gave his head a brisk shake and reread the definition and found the last part of it missing on the second reading, and told himself that he was beginning to go stir crazy…if he had not already been for quite some time now. It scarcely mattered that Viridis would never read his request for mustard oil; he couldn’t use it now if he had a gallon of it. He would stay in this hole until…but, goddammit, it did matter that she would never read his req
uest not to attend his execution. Somehow he had to get word to her that he did not want her to do that.

  “How you doin there, Fleece Boy? Have you prepared yourself to meet your Maker?” Nail heard a familiar voice he hadn’t had to listen to for quite some time.

  “Yassuh, Reberen McPhee, I sho has. De Lawd say He gwine take me in His ahms and He aint gwine let dat ole sizzle chair hut me one bit.”

  “Well, that’s good, Fleece, I’m real proud to hear that. How ’bout I read you some scripture this mornin?”

  “I sholy ’preciate iffin you did, Reberen.”

  Nail listened to Jimmie Mac visit with Fleas for most of an hour, thinking that his turn would have to come next and he would have to give up the last of the morning sunlight to McPhee, when he’d rather use it to read to himself a couple of those nice love songs that Solomon wrote, especially that one about how beautiful the lady’s feet were with shoes on them.

  “Good to see you back again, Brother Chism. I mean, now, I don’t mean it’s good that you’re back in the death hole, I just mean it’s almost like a kind of homecoming. Right? In my experience I’ve known a number of men to actually prefer being down here to being up there. Up there they’ve got problems you don’t have down here. Down here too it’s kind of quiet and peaceful, don’t you think? Up there it can get anything but. Now, I don’t suppose you’ve had any revelations or second thoughts that might make it easier for me to get you ready to meet the Lord?”

  It took Nail a little while to determine that this was a question, not a simple observation of reality, and at length he said, “Well, Preacher, I’ll tell ye. I’ve done some thinkin, and I believe I can see God. Yessir, I can see the face of God as plain as I can see you a-standin there, and the wonderful thing is, Reverend, that God is a her, I mean She’s a Woman. Did you know that?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Yessir, you are, because what I’m tellin you is, and you’d better believe it, is that here all along folks have been under the mistook impression that God is a man, and a father. But She’s not. No, I’m tellin you, She’s a female, and a mother. She’s the best mother ever there was.”

  Jimmie Mac did not say anything. He seemed to be searching his memory to see if he had ever encountered anybody who had ever said anything like this and, if so, what he had said in reply. But after searching corners of his memory he had forgotten he had, he couldn’t find anything. Finally he said, “Well, Brother Chism, that’s very interesting. But you’re wrong. The Good Book tells us through and through that He’s a him, and a man, and He took the form of a man when He became the Son of Man and died on the cross for our sins. They never hung no female up on a cross.”

  “Yeah, poor Jesus was a man all right, just like me, but God was his mother, not his father.”

  “That’s blasphemy, Brother Chism. It hurts me to hear a man talk sacrilegious.”

  “You don’t have to listen,” Nail pointed out to him.

  “Are you saying I’m not welcome here in your time of torment and travail?”

  “You’re welcome to hear me help you get straight about the sex of God.”

  Jimmie Mac did not come again, or, rather, he did not stop by Nail’s cell when he came to visit Fleas, and that didn’t last much longer, because Fleas was taken up to see Old Sparky on April 14th. It seemed as if all they were waiting for was somebody strong enough to take him up there. Sure enough, as Short Leg had feared, Fat Gabe’s replacement wasn’t a bit of improvement on him. For one thing, he was just as fat. His name was Gillespie Gorham, and from the beginning Nail thought of him as Fat Gill, but the first time he called him that, Fat Gill smashed him in the face and broke one of his teeth. Fat Gill did not slap, forehanded or backhanded, the way that Fat Gabe had done. He simply made a fist right alongside his cheek, then rammed it straight into the victim’s face. “Call me fat once more,” he invited. Nail did not.

  Apart from his own execution, Nail had two things to expect: one, he would probably be required to witness Fleas’ electrocution, and two, Viridis might be there too and he could sit next to her. And sure enough, when Fat Gill and Short Leg came to get Fleas before sundown on April 14th, the guards first handcuffed Nail and took him upstairs, then came back for Fleas, who had to be practically carried, he was fighting and screaming so much. Nail took his usual seat in the witness area and waited for Viridis as the other witnesses came. The guards managed to strap Fleas into the chair, but they wouldn’t gag him, which was what he needed most; he was drowning out both Jimmie Mac’s attempt to say “Our Father Who art in Heaven” and Nail’s attempt to correct him: “Our Mother Who art in Heaven…” Viridis never came. Was Fleas’ picture not worth putting in the paper? But then Nail remembered that Viridis had resigned from the paper. Maybe she’d tried to come and they wouldn’t let her in.

  Right before the end, Fleas, who was a very dark colored man of about thirty, seemed to recognize Nail. He stopped begging for life and looked Nail right in the eye and said, “Aint you Nails? I never seed you befo. You Nails, aint you?” Nail nodded. “Nails, could you play on yo mouf foggan fo me? Could you play ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’?”

  “Shut up, nigger,” Warden Burdell said. “You got any last words?”

  “I’se sayin ’em,” Fleas said. “I’se askin Nails to play on his mouf foggan fo me.”

  “He aint got his mouth organ, nigger. Sorry.” Warden Burdell raised his hand and dropped it, and Bobo shoved down the switch, and the light dimmed and the dynamo hummed and Nail watched very carefully every twitch and jerk of Fleas’ body so he would know exactly what to expect of his own body in six more days. When Bobo brought the switch back up a while later, Warden Burdell motioned Doc Gode to see if the victim was still alive. Doc Gode took a stethoscope and put it up against the black man’s hot chest, but before he could listen, all of them heard these words crooning from the black man’s mouth: “…Comin fo to cah me home! Swe hing low, swe heet chah ott!” Warden Burdell shot his finger at Bobo, and Bobo turned the juice on again and left it on.

  As the witnesses were leaving, the warden said matter-of-factly to Nail, “You’re next.”

  “Yeah,” Nail said. He raised his voice so Bobo could hear. “And when you turn that thing on, don’t turn it off until I’m black as Fleas.”

  “Still think you can take a few of us with you?” the warden asked.

  Nail knew he could not, and back in the death hole he thought about that. They never brought him any knife, fork, or spoon to eat with. All he got was cornbread, and the fat meat he had to eat with his fingers, and if there were any cowpeas, they came in a cup he had to hand back. It was doubly unfortunate that Timbo Red’s impulsive gesture had not only doomed the boy but also deprived Nail of the weapon he had intended to take to the chair with him. All the thought that Nail had put into preparing for his last minutes would have to be revised. At least, if it was any consolation, he knew now that Viridis would not be there, not because he’d asked her to stay home but because they wouldn’t let her in. So it would just be him and his eight or nine male witnesses, Fat Gill and Short Leg, the warden, and Bobo. And Jimmie Mac. Nail realized that in order to have any hope at all, he had better try to get on the good side of Jimmie Mac and change God’s sex back to male.

  But Jimmie Mac never came again until his presence was required for the execution. And God remained a woman, an unseen one but a kind one, Who sent to Nail a small blessing in the form of the companionship of Timbo Red for Nail’s last days. Sure, it was a mixed blessing: it meant that Timbo Red had been convicted of the first-degree murder of Fat Gabe and was going to be executed for it (in those days the killing of a police officer or “correctional” officer was considered the worst of all crimes). Almost as soon as Fleas was moved out of his death cell, Timbo Red was moved into it. But the man and the boy were neighbors for two nights before either discovered the other’s presence. One morning Nail listened to the familiar sound for a long time before he finally recognized it for wh
at it was: the skritch-skritch of a charcoal pencil on a piece of paper. Nail’s voice was first: “So they let you keep your pitcher pad?”

  “Nails? That you in thar, Nails?”

  “Yep.”

  “Nails, I shore am sorry I tuck yore knife lak that. Reckon now ye caint use it fer what ye aimed to, kin ye?”

  “Reckon not, Tim. But that’s okay. I’m jist sorry I had the damn thing in the first place. If I hadn’t of had it, you wouldn’t be in the death hole.”