The Choiring Of The Trees Part 13

"Let him talk!" everybody else said, and the warden shrugged his shoulders and fished out his timepiece.

"The other convicts call him Timbo Red," Nail Chism went on, "because we've all got nicknames, like it would be bad for a feller to go by his real name. I reckon we figger a man's real name was what got him into trouble, and as long as he's got a play-like name he can pretend he's innocent. Now, you boys know that I don't have to pretend I'm innocent. But it's Timbo Red, or Ernest Bodenhammer, that I want to tell ye about, and I hope you'll write up his story. He aint innocent of killing a guard, because he really did kill that guard, name of Fat Gabe McChristian, who murdered more men than that electric chair ever done."

"Now that's enough, Chism," Warden Burdell insisted, and said to the witnesses, "I'm very sorry, gentlemen, but if you gave him a chance he'd talk to you from now until midnight."

The Commercial Appeal's man stood up from his chair and declared, "We've got until midnight, then. Let him talk."

The warden held up his pocket watch and turned the face toward them. "He has to be executed at sundown, and it's nearly time."

The man from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch stood up and pretended to read from his notes: "'Warden Harris Burdell refused a legitimate request from the press to allow the condemned man a minute to finish a thought-provoking statement.'"

"All right, dammit," Burdell said. "But watch your tongue, Chism. Watch what you say and don't go spreadin a pack of lies."

"It aint no lie that Ernest Bodenhammer does not deserve to die for puttin an end to the life of that murderin son of a b.i.t.c.h Fat Gabe McChristian!" Nail said, with the only flare-up of emotion they were to witness. Then, more calmly, he resumed, "Now, maybe you fellers think that this don't make no difference, but I just hope you can get a chance to see some of his pitchers that he drew, and then tell Miss Viridis Monday that I hope she will do what she can for him, and I sh.o.r.e appreciate what she done for me."

There was a silence then. The reporters waited for him to continue, but he did not. Warden Burdell asked him, "Was them your last words, Chism?"

"No," he said. "It's these: tell her that I and the trees will love her forevermore."

"Okay, boys, strap him in," Warden Burdell said to the two guards, and they took him to the electric chair and made him sit down, and the guard named Gorham unlocked his handcuffs while the guard named Fancher secured one of his arms with an old black strap of leather that seemed to have been cut from mule harness. Chism made a brief move as if to struggle, but the warden himself nervously helped them hold him until the strapping of his arms, and then his legs, was completed. The warden whispered to the condemned man something that the reporters could not hear. Then he looked at the executioner and asked, "Ready, Bobo?"

Mr. Irvin Bobo, despite his intoxication, was lucid enough to point out something to the warden: "You aint put the cap on him yet, boss."

"Oh," said Burdell. "Right." He motioned to the guard with the short leg to set the metal cap atop the head of the condemned man and strap it in place beneath his chin. "There, now." Tom Fletcher experienced a sympathetic shiver as the steel cap touched the man's shaved head. The warden and the guards stepped away from the chair. Mr. Bobo raised a hand to hold the switch-handle.

The man from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch stood up again and began to read: "'The State of Arkansas last night put to death in its electric chair an innocent man, Nail Chism, twenty-seven. He had been tried and convicted of a.s.saulting a young white woman who later confessed that he was wrongly convicted on her testimony. Appeals to Governor George W. Hays failed to gain a pardon or even to stay the execution. Last-minute appeals were made by a delegation of newspapermen directly to the warden of the state penitentiary, Harris Burdell, but Mr. Burdell remained unconvinced that the unfavorable publicity resulting would probably cost him his job...'"

"Awright, G.o.ddammit!" Burdell yelled, and grew very red in the face and stood in front of the press gallery with his hands on his hips and said, "You guys are makin it very difficult for me to exercise my sworn duties! Time and time again I've told you that I don't have any power whatsoever to stop this execution, and I'm not goin to stop it!" He turned and gestured. "Bobo, put your hand back on that switch!" The warden pointed his trembling finger at the condemned man. "Y'all keep talkin about him bein so innocent! Let me just show you gentlemen how innocent he is! That business he kept yappin about, about his punk pal Timbo Red Bodenhammer killin one of my men, was on account of a letter he tried to smuggle out of my prison, tryin to get it out to that same sweetheart of his he keeps talkin about, Miss Viridis Monday, in which he told her, and I quote!" The warden fished into each of his coat pockets before he found the letter he was looking for, then began to read from it, first fumbling with his spectacles to get them into place. "'I reckon you know that if they try to electercute'-that's sic, gentlemen, sic-'electercute me I aim to kill as many as I can beforehand and I reckon you also know how I aim to do it.' Now, gentlemen, we managed to intercept this threatening letter, at the sacrifice of the life of my best guard, and I have been careful to keep a close watch on this man Chism and attempt to determine just how he intended to kill as many of us as he could. That means you too, gentlemen. He intended to kill as many of you as he could. And how did he intend to do it?"

The warden let his rhetorical question hang in the air defiantly for a long moment. Several of the reporters were attempting to write down the warden's words as fast as he spoke, and he was speaking very fast: "I'll tell you how! We discovered that the past several days he has been sharpenin a piece of metal in his cell, a plate of steel, this long, taken out of a mouth organ, a big harmonica. His young punk Timbo Red killed my good man McChristian with a previous dagger that Chism had been wearin on a string around his neck for quite some time, probably since the last time we tried to electrocute him. So we suspected that Chism might try to make himself another dagger. Unbeknownst to him, and to his punk pal Bodenhammer, we've been spyin on 'em this past week. Nail Chism went and sharpened a piece of metal into a dagger, which he then tied to a string around his neck, intending at the last moment to get that dagger out and kill me and you and as many of us as he could! Now, is that man innocent?"

It was so quiet in the room that you could hear the electric dynamo hum. At least, Tom Fletcher thought it was the dynamo, but he wasn't so sure.

n.o.body answered the warden, who looked defiantly around him as if expecting an answer. "We all knew what was coming next," Tom said. Warden Burdell moved toward Chism, saying, "Fortunately, we got him strapped into the chair before he could get his knife out and use it on us. But let's have a look at it and see how lethal it is!"

With a flourish the warden reached out and grabbed Nail Chism by the collar of his shirt and literally ripped the shirt completely away, exposing Nail Chism's bare chest and the string around his neck. But there was no dagger on the string-just some kind of small medallion, or ornament, which looked like a watch fob in the form of a...perhaps of a tree.

And what he had thought was the hum of the dynamo, Tom Fletcher decided, wonderingly, was some peculiar kind of remote, faraway singing, as if a choir were down the hill outside The Walls, or, no, not down the hill but somewhere up in the trees.

The gentleman from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch stood up for a third time and finished reading his story: "'A display of last-minute theatrics by the overwrought warden failed to convince the members of the press that the innocent man was in fact a desperate cutthroat. The warden seemed completely dumbfounded when the dagger he intended to reveal failed to materialize. He looked unbelievingly at Nail Chism's bare chest, then even looked behind Mr. Chism, as if the missing dagger might be hanging down his back. Then the warden looked at the reporters in consternation. Most of those present were laughing at him. Apparently, laughter would militate against any order for the execution to be carried out, and it was not. The fl.u.s.tered warden fled from the room, declaring, as his last words, that he wanted to talk to the governor.'"

Off.

Off they trooped to the Monday house on Arch Street and had a party. She had planned it well in advance-planned it twice, in two different ways: If the execution took place, they would bring the body here, and she would wash it and dress it in a suit of her father's clothes and prepare it for burial in a plot she'd bought in Mt. Holly Cemetery, just a few blocks down the street. If the execution did not take place, and it did not, the men responsible for preventing it would come here to this house to celebrate, to see the suit of her father's clothes draped over the sofa and hear her explanation of it, and to put that into their stories if they wished. Wasn't that the sort of "local color" they sought?

She had even ordered the champagne, and had a case of it on ice in the kitchen. Call her overconfident. Or at least say that she was so very hopeful and faithful that she had not even paused to consider how to dispose of the champagne if it were not usable. Give it away? Pour it down the sink? Probably after the funeral she would have consumed several bottles of it quickly all by herself, hoping it would kill her, but it is important, gentlemen, to put into your stories that she had not even given a thought to what she would do with the champagne. As it turned out, very happily, she gave it to you, all you could drink.

And they drank past midnight. Only one of them, the Globe-Democrat, was a teetotaler and did not come to the party until it was almost over, when he arrived to report that he had kept watch at the penitentiary until all the lights were out, the warden returned from an unsuccessful attempt to see the governor, and James Fancher informed him, the reporter, for a five-dollar consideration, that the condemned man was safely back in his cell, where he and the young man in the adjoining cell held their own celebration until Mr. Fancher made them shut up.

Cyril Monday, her father, was both proud and uncomfortable to have so many journalists in his parlor and his kitchen and, the night being fair, out on his front porch, where, journalists being what they are, they smoked cigars and swilled champagne and kept the neighbors awake. Her father's occupation had required him to deal with many kinds of men, but he had little experience with journalists, certainly not a dozen of them at once. They were polite and respectful to him. One of them, the Commercial Appeal, interviewed him at length over a bottle of the Mumm's, asking him such questions as: What did you notice in the childhood of your daughter that would have turned her into a crusader and heroine?

Some of these men, after several gla.s.ses of champagne, became excessively gallant and even romantic toward her, and before the evening was over she would receive, and decline, a proposal of marriage from the Houston Chronicle. Flattery flowed like the champagne. Tom Fletcher told her he'd never seen her more "radiant," and he called her "ebullient" and told her she was "tingling." No one had ever used those adjectives on her before.

At the request of the Post-Dispatch she went upstairs to Dorinda, told her to put on her best dress, then led her downstairs and presented her to the newsmen. One of them offered Dorinda a gla.s.s of champagne, which the girl sampled but did not finish. Several of the reporters stimulated the girl into conversation, and before long Dorinda was talking and talking.

When the Kansas City Star, who also happened to be the newspaper's art critic, asked to look at some of Viridis' paintings, she took him upstairs to her studio for a while, and he was quite impressed, or pretended to be. He asked her for her opinion of Ernest Bodenhammer's work, and she said that she was still looking forward to seeing the young man's drawings. The Star suggested that they go together to the penitentiary the next day to interview young Bodenhammer and see his work.

The man from a.s.sociated Press wanted to talk with her about Governor Hays. Was it true, he asked, that the governor considered black people a primitive race of subhumans? Yes, she said. Was it also true that the governor's primary objective in office was to build up a loyal political machine? Quite true, she said. Was Governor Hays using the prohibition issue as a football and playing quarterback simultaneously for both teams? She did not understand football, but yes, the governor had succeeded in making Arkansas almost totally dry while pretending to be sympathetic to the wets.

Her mother and her sister Cyrilla did not join the party, although both she and her father invited them to come downstairs. Cyrilla declined her sister's invitation with "Tonight belongs to you," and would not leave her room; later, however, Viridis looked in and saw the Atlanta Const.i.tution sitting with her and offering her some champagne.

Only one of the reporters, the Times-Picayune, actually broached the possibility that Viridis' great effort to save Nail Chism was motivated by anything other than her humanitarian zeal. "Honey, let me ask you a question," he said to her in the kitchen while she was refilling the bowl of sh.e.l.led nuts. "If they let Chism out of there tomorrow, would you run away with him?"

She paused, and gave a laugh to cover up the discomfort the question caused her. "It's very unlikely they'll let him out of there tomorrow," she said.

"But if they did," the Times-Picayune persisted.

"Oh, sure," she said with irony. "I've always wanted to be a shepherdess."

"No fooling?"

She looked him in the eye. "There are worse things to do with your life."

Tom Fletcher was the last to leave. Each of the newsmen, before leaving, thanked her not just for the party but for having invited them to Little Rock. She thanked each of them for having demonstrated the power of the Fourth Estate not simply to report events but to exert an influence on them. Then she was left to deal with Tom. She had drunk too much champagne. And, clearly, so too had he. She was still miffed at him, his earlier abandonment of her project, his refusal to let her or any of the Gazette's other reporters spend any more time on what he had called "a lost cause," and now his Johnny-come-lately enthusiasm and interloping after she had gone to such great lengths to attract the out-of-state journalists to Little Rock. Some of his remarks this evening had clearly betrayed his envy of the larger newspapers represented here. And he had also said things to indicate he still considered Nail Chism an ignorant, grubby peasant. She had overheard him asking Dorinda, "But aren't you glad it wasn't him?" She had not heard Dorinda's reply.

Now Tom, tipsy and hanging back until the others were gone and her family had gone to bed, began to hint that he'd like to stay the night. She was too tired and too intoxicated to care, really, and her room was private enough, with its own entrance (or, rather, exit), for Tom to escape in the morning without anyone else in the house knowing about it. But she couldn't let him. She was still sufficiently sober to be faithful, with the same faithfulness that had saved a man from death tonight. She turned Tom away.

"You're in love with him, aren't you?" he said peevishly but unbelievingly, as he retreated.

She stared at him. She knew he would think less of her if she confessed, but perhaps it was time he began to think less of her. She confessed, "Maybe I am."

She was still nursing a hangover the next afternoon when the Kansas City Star arrived in a taxicab to take her out to the penitentiary, where he intended to demand an interview with Ernest Bodenhammer. She was all excited, riding out there; maybe she'd get to see Nail too. Maybe Burdell would be so intimidated and submissive as a result of last night's incident that he would permit her to visit Nail without the intervening screen of the visitors' room.

But Burdell wasn't there. His office was occupied by the new sergeant, a mere guard, Gillespie Gorham, who impressed Viridis as more repulsive than the guard he had replaced. No, he wasn't taking Burdell's office permanently, he was just holding down the fort until the new warden came up from Tucker. Yes, Burdell had been fired. No, the governor couldn't fire him, but the prison board could, and the governor had appointed the prison board. Until the new warden, Superintendent T.D. Yeager of Tucker Farm, arrived to take over, probably by the end of this week, Sergeant Gorham was not going to let n.o.body do nothing. So for them to even ask to see Ernest Bodenhammer or his "scribbles" was out of the question. The Kansas City Star had to catch a train for home, and said he hoped Viridis would let him arrange a show of her work in a good K.C. gallery.

The Arkansas Democrat, an evening paper, scooped the Gazette with the front-page story under the headline GOVERNOR 'FURIOUS' AT PRESS OVER CHISM INCIDENT; FIRES WARDEN and the subhead CALLS OUTSIDE JOURNALISTS 'MEDDLERS'; THREATENS TO 'THROW THE SWITCH MYSELF.' The Democrat gave a full report of the scene at the aborted execution, including the condemned man's moving appeal, not for himself but for his fellow convict, "less than of age" Ernest Bodenhammer, and his accusation that Bodenhammer's victim, the guard McChristian, had murdered numerous inmates. The reporter, to Viridis' embarra.s.sment, quoted the condemned man's intended-to-be-last words, "Tell her that I and the trees will love her forevermore," and identified "her" as "Little Rock reporter-ill.u.s.trator Viridis Monday, 26, daughter of banker Cyril J. Monday," but was not able to identify the reference to trees.

Tom Fletcher invited her to the Gazette to watch what was coming in on the wires. a.s.sociated Press did not use those quotations or identifications but carried an abbreviated narrative of the drama in the death room, which, to Viridis' delight, was running nationwide, including the huge newspapers on both coasts. And the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, proud that one of its own reporters had been instrumental in stopping the execution, gave an entire page of detailed coverage, in addition to an editorial commending Viridis for her "dedication and bravery in the face of a politician's cronyism and malevolence."

Tom Fletcher shook his head and said, "Don't be surprised if you hear from the governor." So she was not surprised when she did, except by her treatment: she was not called to the capitol to wait for hours in His Excellency's marble-walled, marble-floored, marble-ceilinged anteroom and then to stand on the carpet in front of his huge desk and listen to his rantings. No, he invited her to dinner at the governor's mansion, which, although the governor belittled it as "just an old-fashioned big old pile of dark-red bricks," was one of the city's finer homes. The governor himself met her at the door and shook her hand with both of his, and introduced her to his wife Ida and his sons Grady and Bill, eighteen and ten years respectively. The five of them sat down evenly s.p.a.ced around a dining-table that could seat thirty, lit by candles, and attended by eight black waiters. Later Viridis could not even remember what the food had been; it had not been outstanding, nor had the wine, a sweet red that would have been all right with the dessert. The governor and his family ate very rapidly, scarcely pausing between bites to make conversation about insignificant things: as near as she could recall, they had talked about the latest improved pa.s.senger cars on railroads and the opening of the new movie theater at Eighth and Main, the Crystal, where they were showing a gripping oriental mystery story, Bombay Buddha; everyone had seen it except poor Billy, whose mother wouldn't let him. They argued about whether or not the movie was dangerous for a ten-year-old boy. When they finally asked Viridis her opinion, she replied that she couldn't say, since she hadn't seen it herself.

Trying to be nice, she noted that young Grady was not much older than Ernest Bodenhammer and would perhaps be interested in meeting the boy and seeing his artwork. "Artwork?" Grady asked, with a belligerent frown, and then: "Who's Ernest Bodenhammer?"

"A convict," the governor told his son. "Miss Monday, you see, makes a hobby of convicts."

"Oh," said Grady. "Why does he do artwork?"

"A hobby," Viridis said.

As soon as the dinner was finished, the governor dismissed his family and moved from his chair at the head of the table to sit next to Viridis at the side. "Now," he said, when they were alone, and only one waiter remained, to bring them some peach brandy. "Now, I want us to be friends. I have been thinking a lot about the last time we got together, and I think I owe you more than just an apology for my rudeness. I want you to understand that I was preoccupied with the Hot Springs business. Have you been keeping up with this matter of legalized gambling?"

She shook her head. "I've been preoccupied myself."

The governor laughed. "You certainly have! Trying to save that moonshiner must have been a full-time occupation for you! But anyway, some of my best friends want to legalize pari-mutuel betting at the racetrack over at Hot Springs. Would you want me to let them do a thing like that?"

"They've been doing that at Longchamp for centuries," she said.

"Where is Lone John?"

"Longchamp," she p.r.o.nounced it more carefully. "In Paris. A racetrack in the Bois de Boulogne."

"You've been to Paris?"

"I lived there for four years."

"My, my," the governor said. "Well now, I'll be." He didn't say what he would be. "And your father gave you his blessing?"

"He didn't stop me."

"Well, that's amazing. But you know, I'm all in favor of taking the reins and bridle off of womenfolk and letting them run free. During my administration the lot of the fair s.e.x has improved one hundred percent. I've reduced the women's working hours to a nine-hour maximum for a maximum of six days of week; that's only fifty-four hours a week. And my legislature has given you the right to enter into contracts and to own property in your own names."

"We're grateful, I'm sure."

"And one of these days soon we're going to submit to the voters a women's-suffrage amendment and see if we can't get you ladies a bigger voice, at least in the local polls."

"The fair s.e.x will be your slaves."

"I'm only acting on my sense of what I think the people want. I very strongly believe, Miss Monday, that the State is the sum total of the will of the people. And now, that is why I must give my full support to capital punishment, however barbarous it may seem. Personally, I do not condone capital punishment. No, I do not. At best, it is a relic of mankind's slow, painful rise out of the Dark Ages. But if the State did not take upon itself the awesome responsibility for executing murderers and rapists, the people themselves would resort to mob violence and lynching."

"Did you know, Governor, that Arkansas is one of the very few states that still punish rape with the death penalty?"

"Of course I know it! You mean, still punishes white men with death. Every state still executes nigras for rape. Young lady, don't try to tell me about Arkansas in relation to the other states. That's the main reason I wanted to see you. This past week the state of Arkansas has become the b.u.t.t of national derision and even contempt because of this Chism business. Just at a time in our history when we're making some progress toward correcting the country's notion that Arkansas is nothing but a barnyard full of rustic buffoons, along comes this moonshining rapist out of the Ozarks and sets us all back into ridicule!"

"Pardon me, sir, but I don't believe it's Nail Chism they're ridiculing. They have focused their scorn on a chief executive who refuses to listen to overwhelming evidence that Nail Chism is innocent."

The governor slammed his palm down on the table so forcefully that both their gla.s.ses of brandy toppled over. A black waiter hastened to handle the problem, which the governor ignored. "WHAT EVIDENCE?" he thundered, "The babble of the victim? The poor, frightened, illiterate backwoods child, driven out of her senses by a vicious a.s.sault and the most despicable rape and s.e.xual perversion I've ever heard about in my long legal career, trying pathetically to undo this hideous act simply by recanting her testimony? Please, Miss Monday! It's perfectly obvious that that pathetic waif you went to such pains to recruit to your cause is not of sound mind and not capable of testifying for or against anybody."

"Governor, if you would let her talk to you for five minutes, you wouldn't say that."

The governor softened his voice. "Let me tell you a little story, Miss Monday. Not so very long ago my wife Ida and I received here at our house late one afternoon a Mrs. Ramsey, who had her little boy with her. It was not long until sundown, when the woman's husband was scheduled to die in the electric chair at the state penitentiary. The woman wanted me to listen to her little boy, and wanted my wife to listen too. The boy gave the most touching speech about how he loved his daddy and what a good man his daddy was. Ida, who gave him a piece of bread and b.u.t.ter and a gla.s.s of milk, had tears running down her face, and she looked at me with such reproach as I had never seen from her before, and she asked, 'George, doesn't this little boy move you at all?' and I said, 'Yes, Ida, but his father moves me much more, because the man committed such a cold-blooded, brutal murder, with no extenuating circ.u.mstances whatsoever, that I still seethe to think of it.' And at sundown they electrocuted Ramsey, the first white man I have refused to save from the electric chair. Nail Chism is the second. Let me finish. You think that I am deaf to the entreaties of good people, as my wife thought I was deaf to the little boy. But I tell you what I told her: that it devolves upon me as governor to investigate meticulously every last one of these crimes. I do not take death lightly. I will not allow a citizen of the state of Arkansas to die for any reason, unless and until I have satisfied myself that that man-and notice, dear girl, that I say 'man,' because I have never allowed the fair s.e.x to be executed, and I will never permit it as long as I live-that that man is guilty beyond any shadow of doubt!"

"But the shadows of doubt are all around Nail Chism," she said.

The governor sighed and pa.s.sed his hand across his eyes. "Are you aware," he asked, "that for seven years before becoming governor, I was a circuit judge myself? I know the burdens that Lincoln Villines faced, and I know how carefully he had to proceed in that lower court. But before I became a circuit judge, I was a farmer. I grew up on an impoverished farm in the scrub of Ouachita County, and until I was the age of Nail Chism, I was, like him, a simple farmer. Although I did not resort to the illegal manufacture of liquor to supplement my modest income, I saved my money to finance a legal education at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. No, I have not been to Paris, but I have been to Virginia, a civilized place, the home of such men as George Mason and Thomas Jefferson, men who, despite their ownership of slaves, opposed slavery and favored abolition, but who believed, as I believe, that abolition can only be accomplished very slowly and gradually, not all at once, as we learned to our regret. It is the same with capital punishment."

The governor pointed out the lone black waiter who was still blotting up the brandy, and George W. Hays began to talk about him as if the man could not hear. "Do you think this man is ready for complete freedom? Do you think he is capable of making the wise decisions that are required by the responsibilities of citizenship? This particular individual, I happen to know, is not the low-grade type of nigra who crowds our penitentiary and our charitable inst.i.tutions, but he is still quite primitive and in a childish stage of progress, not yet intelligent enough to hold public office or aspire to one of the professions, or..."

Viridis discovered that she was not paying close attention; her mind was wandering, and her gaze was straying from the governor's face-he looked so much like an older version of Tom Fletcher, with his protruding eyeb.a.l.l.s and thick lips-to the wallpaper, and to her own hands in her lap. The governor seemed to have arrived at the notion that there was some connection between the plight of Nail Chism and what the governor called "the most serious problem of the nigra question." At least he did not say "n.i.g.g.e.r," as so many did. If Viridis tried very hard, and did not drink any more peach brandy, she could focus on his words and detect that he was now discussing the achievement of his administration in separating the white and colored convicts. One of his first acts as governor was the purchase of the Tucker plantation to serve as a "white-convict farm," wherein the exclusively white inmates could pursue their agricultural labors free from any contact with "culluds." This, the governor attempted to explain to her, was in keeping with his "concept of the age, and well-advanced civilization."

She interrupted. "And how would the execution of Nail Chism fit into a well-advanced civilization?"

"It would manifest the sentiment of the community that the community will not tolerate the violation of the s.e.xual sanct.i.ty of the fair s.e.x!"

"But the community," Viridis pointed out, "that is, Nail Chism's community, has given you pet.i.tions signed by four thousand people, more than half the population of Newton County, who do not believe that he violated the s.e.xual sanct.i.ty of anyone."

The governor was fiddling with the silverware. He picked up a dinner knife and held it as if to stab her with it and said, "Miss Monday, if I were to murder you right now, and later fifty thousand residents of Pulaski County signed a pet.i.tion that I had not done it, would that make me innocent of the crime?" The governor did not wait for her answer. "No: pet.i.tions never exonerate, they only beg, and I will not lend an ear to beggary."

"Nor will you lend an ear to anyone's protestation that Nail Chism is innocent."

The governor sighed again and leaned back in his chair and regarded her for a few moments before saying, "Let me ask you. You seem so convinced of the man's absolute guiltlessness. Would you want to find yourself alone with him in that child's playhouse, or wherever it was he raped her?"

"I would feel perfectly safe with Nail Chism."

The governor snorted in disbelief. "You would? I'm going to call your bluff, young lady. What if I threatened to throw you into his cage?"

"Do you mean put me alone into his cell?" she asked.

"Not just that," he said. "The man is occupying the so-called death hole down in the dungeon of the powerhouse out at the pen. It's like solitary confinement. And it's very dark most of the time, Miss Monday. Very dark and scary. Would you want to be locked in there with him?"

"For how long?"

"Long enough for you to beg to be let out. Long enough for you to realize just how 'innocent' he is. Long enough for you to cease and desist this humiliating campaign to save him from the chair."

"Are you saying that if I shouted, somebody would come and rescue me?"

The governor chuckled. "Not quickly. Not too quickly," he said, and let the implication sink in. "When Nail Chism tries to harm you, it will take a while for you to summon the guards. We hope. Yes, I am going to call your bluff, Miss Monday, and I am going to have you locked up with that man."

"When?"

"I'll talk to Warden Yeager in the morning, and-I think it probably begins to get very dark in the death hole about the middle of the afternoon. Can you go to Warden Yeager's office at three P.M.?"

"Yes."

The governor was startled by the quickness of her reply. "Are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this?"

"Are you sure you would let me?"

"You bet I am. I just want you to promise me that as soon as we let you out of there, you'll leave us alone. I would even be willing to wager that you'll be so changed in your opinion of that hillbilly pervert that you'll gladly attend his execution, which I intend to carry out at the earliest opportunity, if I have to pull the switch myself."

Viridis stood up. "Three P.M. Warden Yeager's office," she said, taking her leave.

At the door he said, "You won't need your nightgown or your toothbrush. Good night, Miss Monday."