The Choiring Of The Trees (26 page)

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.

“Hey, yo’re under arrest, ma’am,” the sheriff reminded her. “You caint go makin pitchers of people when yo’re arrested.”

“Indeed, what air ye doing?” Judge Villines timidly inquired. And then he requested, “May I see?” She turned the sketchbook so he could see it. “Wal, I doggies!” he exclaimed. “That’s shore a clever resemblance of ole Duster! Looks jist lak ’im. Don’t it, boys? And I shore wush Mary Jane could see this yere one of me.” He looked beseechingly at Viridis, and said, “I don’t suspose you could be persuaded to part with it?”

“No,” she said. “This is for the front page of the
Gazette
.”

“The
Gazette?!
” the men said in unison, and Judge Villines wanted a clarification: “The
Arkansas Gazette
?”

Viridis nodded and resumed putting the finishing touches on Judge Villines, who was busy whispering in the ear of Judge Jerram.

Sull gave Villines a grudging look, as if the circuit judge had made an unpleasant suggestion, and then Sull glowered at Viridis and pretended politeness: “Did ye take the trouble to record my speech, ma’am, ye prob’ly wrote down that I didn’t say nary a word about the Chism be-ness. I jist came out here peaceable to say hidy to my friends and cool down the ruckus. I don’t have no personal involvement in the Chism be-ness.”

Viridis made a sort of laugh and stopped drawing. She looked Sull in the eye. “Then maybe you’ll explain why you shot Waymon Chism in the back.”

All of the men tried to speak at once, but the sheriff’s voice was loudest: “Goddammit, it was self
dee
-fense!”

Viridis ignored him and continued looking Sull in the eye. “Waymon Chism was shot
in the back,
” she repeated herself, “by the same pistol that fired four shots at me in the Buckhorn Hotel.”

“It was pervoked,” the sheriff said lamely. “I mean, naw,
you
didn’t pervoke him, and thar weren’t no excuse for thet Buckhorn misbehavior, but Waymon Chism shore enough incited and aggervated and brung it on hisself.”

Viridis turned and looked coldly at the sheriff, but she pointed her finger at Sull. “Why isn’t this low-life coward in jail?” she demanded.

“Ma’am!” said the sheriff. “Watch who yo’re talkin about! He’s the county
jedge
! We aint about to put
him
in no jail!”

Sull said, “Duster, why don’t we put
her
in jail like we was fixin to?”

“Now, now, boys,” Judge Villines said. He was saying “boys” the same way everybody does in this part of the country, meaning any male even eighty or ninety, but I couldn’t help feeling these “boys” weren’t any older than me; they certainly weren’t behaving any better than rowdy children. “Let’s us not be rude to a representative of the
Arkansas Gazette.
Don’t we want to show ourself in the best light and present a favorable front to the rest of the world? We caint go around arrestin gentlemen and ladies of the public press.”

Sheriff Snow said, “We jist come over yere to git Rindy Whitter fer a little talk, Jedge. That’s all we come over fer, but then this yere lady started makin trouble.”

Judge Villines asked Viridis, “Couldn’t these men simply have a few words with little Miss Whitter here, ma’am?”

“Not him.” Viridis pointed at Sull again.

“Why, how
come,
ma’am? He’s got a personal interest in this matter too.”

“He certainly does!” Viridis said. I had the feeling she was losing her temper, and then, sure enough, she lost it. “He viciously tricked Dorinda Whitter into submitting herself to a sexual assault which he performed upon her himself, and he inflicted unspeakable pain upon her, and then forced her into blaming innocent Nail Chism for what he had done!” Not a word or utterance of reply was made to these words by anybody, not by the accused, not by the accused’s confederates. The only sound to break the silence, finally, was a small, stifled sob from Rindy.