The Choiring Of The Trees (43 page)

“I thought as much. My next improvement to this facility—possibly my last improvement—will be to have movies shown, each Saturday night, and to suggest that violators of prison rules be punished not by the strap but by being forbidden to attend the picture show.”

“The picture shows will be done at night?” Nail asked.

“Of course. The barracks will have to be dark.”

“And somebody who knows something about electricity will have to help ’em run the projector?”

“You catch on very quickly, Brother Chism, but shall we change the subject?”

“Yeah. Tell me what it’s like in Colorado. Do they raise a lot of sheep out there?”

A general prison announcement was made that the following Saturday at sundown there would be a performance of
The Absentee,
a great allegorical photoplay. The movie was projected onto four bedsheets sewn together on a wall of the barracks, from three reels on an old Edison donated by The Crystal, a Little Rock theater that was updating its equipment. It was the greatest event since Christmas. Nobody from the death hole was allowed to attend, but midway through the motion picture all of the power went out, and the old Edison began to smoke, and Fat Gill was sent down to get Nail and see if he could find out what was wrong. Nail was taken up to the engine room, without handcuffs, and guarded as he checked the generator and the fuses and the circuits. After replacing one of the fuses that had blown, he was taken into the barracks to check the projector. Nail found a wire loose in the Edison and twisted it back onto its contact, but not so tight that it wouldn’t come off and short again before long. Then, because of the service he had performed, he was permitted to watch the rest of the picture show, in handcuffs. The show was difficult. As near as he could figure, it was about some character named Might, who took over a factory and lowered the wages of the workers, pocketing the difference for the betterment of his daughters, named Extravagance and Vanity. It was real strange, watching the people actually run around and do things, and move their mouths like they were talking, only their words would appear in letters when the screen went dark, and their words didn’t mean very much. The workers went on strike, led by a man named Evil, but Evil got a heart attack and the strike fizzled out, and in the end the owner of the factory, Power, came home and discovered what a mess Might had made, and had him arrested.

Although the plot was confusing and the names of people ridiculous, the movie held the audience spellbound, and at the end the men applauded and stomped their feet and hollered and demanded another showing. Warden Yeager himself, who had enjoyed the movie along with his prisoners, got up and made a little speech and told them that if they all behaved themselves there would be another movie the following Saturday night. Almost immediately Nail could detect the men beginning to behave themselves.

Back in his cell, Nail reported to his fellow death-holers on the movie. None of them had seen a picture show before either, and Dewey and Joe said it sounded like one of their nightmares, while Ernest was somewhat apprehensive that motion pictures could make art obsolete, while Sam Bell said it sounded very interesting and tempting but he would probably see heaven or hell, one, before he saw a motion picture. But all of them, Nail knew, wished they had seen the movie and could be allowed to behave themselves too.

Nail spent a lot of time thinking about the way he had fixed the Edison projector and wondering if he had given the wire on its contact enough twist to hold it in place until the next movie started shaking the projector. He also spent a lot of time thinking about what Lee Tomme had told him of Colorado: a truly beautiful country with big mountains and lots of space, and thousands of sheep of all kinds.

He had pretty much made up his mind to go to Colorado when he broke out. Then he got a letter from me. Much, much later I learned that it was one of the few letters they had let him read, uncensored, in the original envelope. I have promised not to put myself into this story any more than is absolutely necessary, but I have the feeling my letter may have changed Nail’s mind about going to Colorado.

Dear Nail,

Viridis told me I should write to you. She writes to me all the time and tells me everything that is happening, or not happening, to you. And then I tell everybody else in Stay More. It makes me feel important to stand around on the porch of Ingledew’s store and tell everybody the news about you. You know, the Jasper newspaper doesn’t say much, and that’s because I guess Judge Jerram and them still run everything in Jasper. But that is changing. Which is what I’m writing to you about now.

Judge Jerram likes to sit on his brother Tilbert’s storeporch as if he was still somebody important around here, but there is not one of us does not despise him and sneer at him and even his brother Tilbert does not like him because he’s bad for business, Tilbert says to anybody who will listen. There’s room on Tilbert’s storeporch for Sull and Sheriff Snow and a deputy or two, and that’s all, because nobody else will bother with them.

Your brother Waymon is not the least bit afraid of those fellows.

He will go right up to the edge of the porch, and turn his back to Sull and say over his shoulder, “You want to shoot me in the back again?” and Sheriff Snow will tell him to go away or he will arrest him for loitering, and Waymon will say, “It sure looks to me like you fellows are the ones who are loitering.”

And they know they wouldn’t dare try and arrest Waymon or they wouldn’t be able to take him out of Stay More and put him in the Jasper jail. Your brother is fine and strong. I am sorry about your father, but I guess you know his health has not been good for some time. Your mother and Irene and Luther and all are just fine.

They all miss you, as does every one of us. I think your land misses you too. Yesterday I took me a long hike up through your sheep pastures. The weeds have taken over pretty bad. There’s brambles too. From a distance those pastures are all pretty and green, and rolling, you know, and it’s all so nice and peaceful up there, but when you try to walk through it, it’s overgrown and lonely. The trees sort of sigh.

There’s this one place, way up against the corner of your upper forty, where the two tree lines sort of converge at the edges of the pasture on what looks like a dead corner up against the mountainside, and is a real dark shade of green, like the mouth of a cave, and you feel sucked into it, or drawn up thataway, and when you get into it you see there’s an old road there, just a trail, if you know the spot I mean, and if you follow that trail up through the woods for quite a ways, a mile or more, with the woods growing deeper and darker, you come to this glade where a waterfall comes down off the very top of the mountain, as if it was gushing up out of some powerful spring up there. The glade is sunny, with the sun shining right on the waterfall, but it’s dark all around, and dark in these several sort of half-caves where it looks like Indians must have lived. It was kind of scary, and I didn’t stay up there very long, but while I was there I thought of you, a lot, and I had a strange vision as if I could see you just living and dwelling in that hidden glade.

Of course I’ve had to look up some of these words in my dictionary to spell them right, and some of them to find out just what they mean or how they came to mean what they did, and I have to tell you that “glade” and “glad” are sister-words.

I’m glad that they haven’t killed you, and I don’t think they ever will. The glade and all of us are waiting for you.

Your friend, Latha

It was almost, Nail reflected, as good as getting a letter from Viridis. He considered that the letters Viridis was writing to me must have taught me how to write a good letter, or even infected me with some of Viridis’ way with words. But his main reaction to the letter was one of shock: that I should mention the very spot, the waterfall, where he had considered hiding, where indeed he thought about “living and dwelling.” If I had discovered the spot, wouldn’t other people discover his hiding-place? Not necessarily, because I had accidentally stumbled upon that trail whose beginning was almost concealed in the remotest corner of his highest pasture. The glen (and now I have to admit I was wrong: it was not so much a glade as a glen) is hard to get to, and it was the most secluded spot I’d ever been in, myself, and Nail knew it didn’t lack anything he’d find in Colorado.

But what had I meant, he wondered, about his father? I realize I didn’t word that part too well. I shouldn’t have left it open like that, as if his father was already dead, not just on his way to the hereafter. Nail wanted to ask Viridis what she knew. Had she heard anything about his father dying?

And he got a chance soon: Viridis came for another visit. Once again they leaned across the table, meeting their lips above the dividing-board, and greeting, and sitting, and then Nail said, “I had a letter from Latha. Bless her heart. But why do they let me have her letter and won’t let me have yours?”

Viridis smiled. “I suspect her letter wasn’t nearly as bawdy as mine.”

“Bawdy? You mean you used blackguardy words?”

“Blaggarty?” She laughed. “What kind of blaggarty word is ‘blaggarty’?”

“Black-guardy,” he pronounced it more carefully. “Aw, it just means smutty, you know. Dirty.”

“My letters to you are very white and clean, but also very lurid.”

“I wish I could read them.”

“I’m saving them for you,” she said. “I’m saving everything for you.”

“It won’t be long,” he said.

Her eyebrows went up. “How long?”

Nail glanced at their tablemates, a couple sitting a few chairs away and engrossed in each other. Bird wasn’t paying any more than his usual bored attention. Nail whispered, “Probably next Saturday night.”

“Really?”

In a normal voice he asked, “Viridis, what did Latha mean in her letter when she said she was sorry about my dad? He’s not left this world yet, has he?”

“No. Did Latha say that? He’s very ill and ought to be in the hospital, but he won’t go. I think the only thing keeping him alive is he wants to see you again.”

“He’ll see me soon,” Nail whispered.

She whispered too: “No, Nail, his house is the first place the lawmen will watch for you.”

“I’ll find some way to see Paw,” Nail reaffirmed.

“And me?” she said. “Will you find some way to see me?”

“I’ll see you,” he said, and realized it sounded as if it were just a polite leave-taking, and he didn’t mean it that way. He said it again as if he really meant it: “I will see you.”

“You were going to draw me a map, remember?”

He smiled. “No need of that. Just ask Latha.”

“She knows?”

“Tell her she knows.”

Viridis laughed. “I love the way you put that: ‘Tell her she knows.’ We would all like to be told that we know.”

“Be told, then, that
you
know.”

“Thank you. Now, here is something you should know.” She lowered her voice to the point he had to watch her lips and try to keep one eye on Bird. “One mile southwest of The Walls, beyond the swamp, is a great big old sycamore tree. The newspaper mentioned it in connection with that awful story about how they demonstrated the bloodhounds on poor Ernest. That’s the tree Ernest climbed to avoid being bitten by the dogs, but it’s where they treed him and caught him. That’s how I know about it, and that’s how I found it. It’s the only sycamore tree in the neighborhood, and it’s so tall you’ll see it silhouetted against the night sky, so you can’t miss it, even if you don’t hear the beautiful song it sings. At the base of that tree there is a flat rock, not too heavy for me to lift. Next Saturday afternoon I’m going to place beneath that rock a canvas bag containing a Smith
&
Wesson revolver, a box of bullets, a hunting knife, a harmonica, a pocketknife with a can opener attachment, and a few cans of food, corned beef and beans and such. I thought of including some sandwiches with fresh meat, but the scent would attract animals who might take the bag away before you got to it. I will also put in a hundred dollars in cash. Is there anything I’ve forgotten?”

“My God, Viridis!” he exclaimed. Bird looked up at them. Nail lowered his voice and asked, “What do I need all that money for?”

“You never know,” she said. “You’ll run out of food and need to stop and buy some more.”

Nail thought of something. “Yeah, I might have another mouth to feed. For a while. You don’t think I would go off and leave Ernest, do ye?”

“I didn’t think you would,” she said. “That’s one reason I’m going to ask him, when we visit this afternoon, to give me all of his finished drawings, to take with me, since he can’t take them with him, or leave them behind.”

“But he don’t know, yet, that I’m plannin to go,” Nail pointed out to her. “I aint even asked him if he wants to go with me. I caint talk to him about it because of them other fellers down in the death hole. I don’t want them hearin us, ’cause then they’d want to go too, and I shore don’t aim to take everbody.”

“You wouldn’t want to take Sam Bell,” she said. “He’s a psychopath.”

“A what? No, I don’t want to take nobody. Just me and Ernest, and I wouldn’t even take him except I cain’t leave him here to die or rot, whichever came first.”

“I’m so glad you’re taking him,” she said. “Maybe I should put some extra clothing into the bag. At least some caps to cover your bare heads.”

“But I caint tell him what I aim to do, not without them hearin us. So you’ll have to tell him this for me. Tell him this Saturday night. Tell him Fat Gill will come down to git me to fix the fuse or whatever, and for Ernest to start countin, and when it’s five minutes after Fat Gill takes me upstairs, for him to be ready to go without nobody else in the death hole seein us. It will be dark. I’m gonna kill all the power. He’ll have to jist follow me upstairs in the dark without any word when I come down to git him.”