The Choiring Of The Trees (17 page)

Nail lost track of time. He couldn’t remember having had anything to eat, he couldn’t recall ever being able to get up and go with the others to the mess hall, but he didn’t have any memory of anybody bringing him anything to eat. Probably he didn’t eat at all, for a week or so. But he didn’t have any memory of having to get up and go to the slop bucket either. Or use the floor. Strange, he didn’t know thirst even. His bunkmates began to try their best to pretend he wasn’t there. Toy said to him once, wonderingly, “Did you really truly rape a little girl?” All that Nail could manage was to mumble, “She wasn’t little.” And when it occurred to him to add, “And I didn’t rape her neither,” Toy had disappeared, and never spoke to him again after that. Another time, in the night, someone—he figured it was Thirteen—tried to insert a penis into his mouth. Nail had just enough strength to raise a hand to stop the action. The owner of the penis said, and it sounded like Thirteen, “You did it to that little girl, didn’t you?”

Nail discovered that if he tried hard enough he could shut out entirely the Arkansas State Penitentiary in bitter December and make it into a hillside of Stay More in the middle of June with his sheep all around him. He could do anything he wanted to, with those sheep. They would gambol into square dances when he played the right tunes on his mouth organ. The fescue was cropped a bronze-green by their grazing, but the orchard grass was still like emerald, and behind the green meadow rose the turquoise mountain, and beyond it the blue-green hills, and beyond those the light smoky blue of faraway Reynolds Mountain. When the sheep finished their dancing, they would crawl up leaf-dappled under the green shade of the big oaks at the edge of the meadow, and there they would kneel and nap, and Nail would nap with them, long in the summer afternoon, listening to the clear spring gurgle down the talus. When they woke up from their nap, they were whole and sound and sane and ready to play some more, and Nail would play his harmonica for them and feel almost well.

His bedclothes were often damp with blood and pus, and he couldn’t understand why, because his wounds seemed to have scabbed over enough not to be bleeding. Eventually he was able to determine that the blood and pus were coming from his bedmate, who was now Stardust, and he didn’t know if it was because they were flogging Stardust too; he tried not to listen when they were flogging somebody and the poor devil was screaming his head off. Stardust was not one to talk, anyway. But then Stardust began noticeably to take leave of his senses, as if he had not already left them long ago: he could be observed standing beside the bunk, moving his hands in the air as if building imaginary trees, root to bough, twig to trunk. That’s all he did, when he was not crooning. He would stand for hours making trees until Fat Gabe would come and cut him down and dump him in beside Nail, where he would bleed and ooze. Finally Stardust and his few belongings were gathered up and taken away to the state hospital for the insane…which, I have good reason to know, was not a better place.

As soon as Stardust’s spot was empty, they filled it with a new man, or a kid, rather, a boy maybe fifteen, sixteen at the most, whose hair reminded Nail of that woman’s, what was her nice lady name who came and what was it she pretty girl had hair that same reddish sort of, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, yes her name was Monday,
that
lady, this boy his hair is like hers, red, he could pass for her kid brother only she was too nice a lady to have a kid brother to get hisself in trouble and thrown in the pen. This boy had stolen a horse. Nail listened, which was all he did these days and nights, when he wasn’t running off to those sheep-cluttered hills in Stay More. The boy’s name was Ernest something, but they were calling him Timbo Red because he came from Timbo, Arkansas, up in the hills of Stone County. Timbo Red talked more or less the same way that folks up home talked. Most of these fellers in here sounded like east Arkansas or downstate somewheres or probably outlanders from some other state, but Timbo Red sounded nearly just like Nail’s kid brother Luther, and Nail took an interest in what he was doing and saying, and he took a special interest that first night when Thirteen tried to seduce the kid. Nail still couldn’t talk very strong, but he had enough strength to raise himself up and say to Timbo Red, “Boy, don’t ye let this here feller show ye his jemmison, or you’ll hate it.”

Thirteen turned on Nail. “My
what
?” he said.

“Keep yore pecker in yore pants, Thirteen,” Nail said.

“Shit, mine is better than yours,” Thirteen snarled. “You want to git him to yourself? I claimed him first. He’s good ripe cherry punk, and I got him, and I aint gon let no man mess with my bride.” He put his full palm over Nail’s face and pushed down hard and mashed Nail’s head down into the bunk. Then he resumed his seduction of Timbo Red, telling the kid that it wouldn’t hurt a bit, not anywhere like the way the kid would get hurt if he didn’t get his sweet ass out of those pants real damn fast.

Nail listened. He tried to tell if the kid was scared or eager or what. Some boys liked that kind of thing; there was a big old boy several bunks over who couldn’t seem to get enough of it and would drop his pants for any feller who asked, and sometimes even went around asking them. Nail listened and thought he could hear Timbo Red asking to be let alone. The way Nail’s mind ran away from him these days and wound up in that Stay More meadow faster than he could think, his mind was now beginning to believe that Timbo Red was Miss Friday or Miss Monday herself, asking old Thirteen to leave her be. Nail couldn’t just lie here and let that nice lady be took against her wishes, or even took with her wishes by somebody foul like Thirteen. Now she seemed to be squealing. It wasn’t a very happy sort of squeal. Nail’s fingers were absently fooling with the collar of his jacket, and then slipping inside the jacket and fooling with the string around his neck. And then his fingers touched that steel. It was still there; he had almost forgotten about it in the what? weeks or days or months or whatever time had passed since he had intended to use it. He still had to remember not to roll over onto his stomach at night, or, if he did, to do it carefully so the razor-sharp dagger didn’t cut his chest.

He took a deep breath and somehow got his legs up and under him so he could crouch and use what energy he had left to reach over and fall against Thirteen and pin him down and hold the dagger up to his eyes so he could get a good look at it, and then Nail said to him, “Thirteen, d’ye want to try out the edge of this and see how sharp it is? Or will you jist take my word for it?—it’ll leave a gash from one of your ears to th’other’un in jist one swipe.”

Thirteen scrambled away from the kid and away from Nail. “Where’d you git that shiv?” Thirteen asked.

“Been savin it fer ye,” Nail said. “And I’ll use it on ye if you touch her again.”

“‘Her’?” Thirteen said. “You want ‘her’ for yourself, huh?”

“
Him
,” Nail said, flustered. “He ast ye to leave him alone. I’m askin ye to leave him alone. Or die. You choose.”

“Them guards catch you with that pigsticker, they gon make
you
die,” Thirteen grumbled, but he didn’t bother the kid for the rest of that night, and maybe not for the next few nights either, Nail couldn’t tell how many nights went by, one after the other, without the kid being bothered.

One night Timbo Red just tapped Nail on the shoulder and said, “I thank ye, mister.”

Timbo Red did not lose his virginity before Christmas, but he got the dose of the strap that Fat Gabe measured out to let anybody new know who was boss. Nail, listening, was not able to determine that it had been provoked. Probably not. Timbo Red seemed to be trying his best to get along with people; his lockstep was always right in line, and he tried to be well behaved and inconspicuous. Somewhere he had found a piece of white chalk, the same kind you write on blackboards with, and he would sit on the concrete floor drawing pictures on it. He could draw pretty fair. More than pretty fair, really. He could make an eagle that looked like an eagle and a black walnut tree that looked like a black walnut. The way he would sit and draw also reminded Nail of Miss Monday. Timbo Red’s drawings got walked on, but he didn’t care, and somebody always pissed on the drawings during the night and erased them that way, but Timbo Red would just start a fresh one the next morning. If Timbo Red ever did anything that might have provoked Fat Gabe, it must have had something to do with the way he was arting up the floor.

But more than likely, Fat Gabe just felt it was time to let the kid know what the strap felt like. Coming from a dirt farm in Stone County, Timbo Red probably knew the feel of harness leather on his hide the same way that Nail did, and he took the first ten lashes without even flinching. Fat Gabe was halfway through the second ten, and panting like a horse, before Timbo Red gave any sign that he even noticed what was happening to his behind. But along about the fourteenth lick the boy started to weaken. He whimpered. At the nineteenth lick he was broken and sobbing. Fat Gabe didn’t stop at twenty. Usually, twenty swings of the strap was all that Fat Gabe could manage at one time, but he was mad because the boy had tried to hold out on him like that, and he kept going. The boy kept sobbing like a child.

Nail didn’t bring out his dagger, although he was tempted. Instead, he brought out his harmonica. He had never played it before where anybody could hear him. He had played it all the time when he was alone in the death hole, but not once since then, and he missed it. Now he wasn’t even sure he could get the tune right, but from the first note he blew into it, he knew he could do a fair job. He played “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” He played it loud, he played it lively, he played if with his tongue and lungs and heart. He played it loud enough to drown out Timbo Red’s crying. He played it louder than the crack of Fat Gabe’s strap.

Everyone listened. A few men tried to hum in tune. From several bunks away a good tenor voice picked up at: “…above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by…”

“Pack it up, Chism!” Fat Gabe hollered, and he stopped beating Timbo Red and started swinging at Nail, who scooted over to the far side of the bunk so Fat Gabe couldn’t reach him without going around. Nail finished the carol and started playing “Deck the Halls.”

One by one or in groups of several, the men of the hall joined in singing the words, and the blacks joined the chorus with: “Deck de haws wif baws ob holly!” One man at the end of the barracks climbed to an upper bunk and stood up and began to conduct the choir, waving his arms as if he’d once been a high-school band director. Everyone was singing.

Fat Gabe stopped beating on Timbo Red and shyly tried to sing, “Fa la la? La la? La la LAH LAH!”

Nail Chism played “Good King Wenceslaus.” He played “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” The three hundred voices singing, or trying to, drifted beyond the wall and reached the warden’s house, the big two-story Victorian on the downslope to the highway. When the warden arrived at the barracks, Nail was playing “Silent Night,” which was the last one that he knew. Mr. Burdell arrived in time to contribute “Sleep in heavenly peace,” twice.

Then he smiled. No one had seen Mr. Burdell smile before. He said, “Well, gentlemen, it looks like you’re already in the spirit of the season.” He took from his pocket a letter, which he unfolded. “This year Governor Hays has seen fit to grant Christmas pardons to a total of thirty men. As follows.” One by one the warden read the names, pausing after each to allow time for the men to whoop and holler and slap backs and carry on. Of course the two hundred and seventy men who were not pardoned were feeling low, and this included Nail, although he hadn’t expected to hear his name on the list.

But his Christmas did not go unnoticed. Farrell Cobb came to visit, and stood beside Nail’s bunk for a while, and gave him a present. “The missus fixed it,” Cobb explained. “Hope you like fruitcake, although it’s such a tiny one.” Nail sampled a few bites, his first ever. Before the lawyer left, saying he hoped to bring good news from the state Supreme Court when he came again in January, he elaborately looked all around them to see if anybody was watching. Nobody was. Nobody cared what Cobb was doing there, or who he was speaking to. The nearest black trusties were shooting dice against the wall. “You can read, can’t you?” Cobb asked, and when Nail nodded, the lawyer reached inside his coat and brought out an envelope and handed it to him. The lawyer put his finger to his lips and said “Shhh,” and then he winked and departed.

Nail tried to sit up in his bunk to open the envelope. It contained several sheets of paper and something very small wrapped in tissue. Nail read the signature first and, thrilled, backed up and read each word with deliberate slowness.

December 22, 1914

Dear Mr. Chism,

They haven’t let you see any of my previous letters, have they? I asked your attorney, Mr. T. Farrell Cobb, if it might be that the “authorities” are not allowing you to receive your mail. He said that it is a common practice for the warden and his assistants to open and read letters to check for contraband, inflammatory statements, scurrility, or information damaging to the morals and well-being of inmates. None of my previous letters to you contained any of these things.

Shortly after I last saw you, I attempted to visit you at the penitentiary, but I was told that you are permitted to have only one visit per month, and that you had already had your December visit, so I will have to wait until January. I went straight home (I live here in Little Rock) and wrote to you.

Have you, I asked myself, chosen not to reply to my letters? That is possible, and you certainly have no obligation to respond. I did not ask you anything that required an answer, with the exception of my request for the whereabouts of your hometown, Staymore. I have, without any vanity, reread the first drafts of my letters to you several times, in order to discover what they might have contained that could have accounted for your silence. I have not been able to determine anything possibly untoward or disagreeable in them. Thus, I like to think, and I
do not
like to think: they wouldn’t let you have my letters.