The Choiring Of The Trees Part 16

They weren't given any time after supper to sit around on the porch and shoot the breeze or watch the hound dog chew his tail. Warden Yeager returned, accompanied by Fat Gill, Short Leg, and a couple of armed black trusties. Was it time already to go upstairs? Warden Yeager said, "Well now, gentlemen hee hee, not that I don't take your word for it that you'll be orderly during these proceedings, but just to be safe hee hee we are going to have to search you. Take off your hee hee clothes."

They opened the cell doors and made Nail and Ernest strip down naked. Of course Nail had antic.i.p.ated this and had nothing around his neck except the tree charm. Warden Yeager fingered the tree charm, turning it over and even squinting at the inscription on the back of it. He decided to let Nail wear it but nothing else. They took away his clothes and turned the cell upside down looking for his blade. They tore up his Bible and ripped up the bed. It was Warden Yeager, maybe not so numbskulled after all, who realized it was inside the harmonica, where it had originated; he took the harmonica apart and removed the dagger and held it up in front of Nail's face and said, "Mister, does this belong to you, any chance hee hee?" Nail did not answer. The warden began to shake-out of checked anger, Nail thought at first, but then decided the warden was shaking the way you do when you've had a narrow escape. "Maybe we'll make you go first hee hee," the warden said, and Nail realized something else: whenever the warden made that sound "hee hee" it wasn't because he didn't know whether to laugh or to cough but because he was just real nervous. Yeah, T.D. Yeager was sure one nervous feller.

Jimmie Mac returned and said it was time for them to leave their cells. "Why, howdy, Nail," Ernest said at the sight of naked Nail standing handcuffed outside his door. "I aint seen you in a c.o.o.n's age. Do I look as bad as you do?" Yes, it had been all of a month since they'd last laid eyes on each other, although they had talked so much they hardly had anything left to say, and yes, Ernest looked pretty awful with his red hair all gone except around his p.e.c.k.e.r. Now it was Ernest who began to protest to the guards, "Hey! Aint you gonna give us our clothes back? We caint go up thar nekkid as the day we was born! What if they's a lady present?"

"They aint no lady present," Fat Gill a.s.sured them. Nail sighed with relief, and soon saw what he meant: among the few witnesses there was no woman, no Viridis, not yet anyhow, and he hoped she would never come. Even if she did, they wouldn't let her into the room as long as he and Ernest had their p.e.c.k.e.rs a-hanging down. There wasn't no governor neither. Just five strangers...well, one of them he had seen before, a newspaperman who'd been here the last time. He was the only one of the five who looked like he cared, and he was raising his eyebrows at the sight of these two convicts stark-naked. The death room was still illuminated only by the light from that one green-shaded bulb up near the ceiling, so it wasn't as if their genitals were exposed to harsh spotlight. In such darkness Nail didn't even feel naked.

Warden Yeager explained to the newspaperman, "We aint takin any chances this time hee hee. Were you here when the last warden had a little problem?"

"Yes, I was," the newspaperman said. "Well, 'Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither.'"

"What's that from?" the warden asked.

Jimmie Mac b.u.t.ted in. "The Bible. Book of Job, one and twenty-one. 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' And the Good Book goes on, next chapter, 'Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.'"

The warden looked at Jimmie Mac uncertainly and asked, "Are you supposed to say a lot?"

"Just the final prayer," Jimmie Mac informed him, clearly liking the position of telling the new warden what was what.

"I aint been through this before," the warden declared, as if anybody needed to be told. "Do you say the final prayer now, or do we wait till Bobo gets here?"

The newspaperman spoke up. "We ought to wait till the governor gets here." He'd hardly said those words when the turnkey opened the guests' door, and in walked a man who surely was the governor, with another man who looked like he must be the local sheriff, and a third man who must be the governor's bodyguard.

"Good heavens!" said the man who must be governor, and accosted the warden, demanding, "Why are these men naked?"

"We found that blade, Your Honor hee hee," Yeager said. "I thought we would, and we stripped 'em and searched 'em to be sure, and Chism had a blade. I found it hee hee."

"Well, why are they just standing around like that?" the governor asked. He was more nervous than the warden, and looked like he was hunting for a place to relieve himself. "Why don't you do something?"

"We will, Your Honor," Yeager said. "We were just waitin for you to get here."

The governor looked around at the others in the room, squinting in the semidarkness to see how many were there. "If I'm saying there shall be only six witnesses," the governor said, "then there can be only six witnesses. Some of you men will have to go. Like you, Fletcher. Why don't you take off?"

The newspaperman laughed. "There has to be at least one of us poor ink-stained devils here, and it's me," he said.

The governor and his party evicted three of the other witnesses and took their seats, the governor sitting on the front row. The governor glanced at Nail's p.e.c.k.e.r and then at Ernest's, as if he were comparing them. "Do these men have to keep standing like that?" he asked the warden.

"Which one do you want us to do first hee hee, Your Honor?"

"Yeager, I'm not a courtroom judge anymore, you know. I'm not 'Your Honor' now."

The newspaperman, behind his hand but audible to everyone, said to Yeager, "He's 'Your Excellency.'"

"Yeah!" Yeager said. "Hee hee. Your Excellency, which one of these men should we fry-should we electrocute first?"

The governor turned around in his chair to speak to the newspaperman. "Fletcher, where is Miss Monday?"

"I have no idea, Your Excellency," the newspaperman said. "I haven't seen her for several days."

"Hmm," said the governor in a tone of disappointment. "I was hoping she..." The governor did not finish what he was about to say. Was he hoping she'd show up? From what Viridis had told Nail, the governor couldn't even stand the sight of her.

Jimmie Mac spoke up: "Warden, and Your Excellency sir, it's almost sundown. The law says a man has to be dead before sundown, and there's two of them to do this time."

The governor stared at Jimmie Mac. "Who are you?" he asked. "Are you Mr. Bobo?"

"No, he's the chaplain, Your Excellency," the warden said.

"Oh," the governor said. "You're supposed to comfort the men, right? Well, go ahead and comfort them, don't let me bother you." He seemed to expect Jimmie Mac to pat Nail on the back or offer him a handkerchief. After a long silence the governor said, "Well, make them sit down," and the warden motioned for his guards to get Nail and Ernest seated in a pair of the witness chairs.

A longer silence followed. Out of modesty and for the governor's sake, Nail and Ernest kept their handcuffed wrists over their genitals and sat with as much dignity as they could. It was so quiet that Nail began to hear it. He had wondered at what point, this time, he would begin to hear it again: the choiring of the trees. Now it was very faint: the trees were still up there on that mountain top in Stay More, and their voices had a long way to go before they could be heard. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Ernest, to see if Ernest was hearing it too. He had told Ernest all about the trees, to get him ready. Ernest was smiling, and was the calmest person in the room. The faint singing of the trees was interrupted by a spoken observation from the governor: "Well, it appears that...that n.o.body else is going to come." He began to look back and forth between the two condemned men again, comparing not their p.e.c.k.e.rs this time but their faces, as if trying to make a decision between them. Finally his forefinger came up and pointed at Nail. The governor said, "Let's do him first."

Ernest spoke up: "Your Excellency, if it don't make a whole lot of difference one way or the other, I would sure appreciate it if you would do me first."

The governor gave Ernest a look that had a touch of compa.s.sion to it. Certainly, Ernest's words had been well chosen and fine spoken, but his voice had been that of what he was: a boy just sixteen years old. The voice was out of place, out of keeping with the other voices in this dark, still room. But the governor did not understand why Ernest wanted to go first; n.o.body, not even Nail, wanted to try to explain to the governor just how it was. The governor misunderstood. "That's commendable and brave," he said to Ernest, "but Mr. Chism was here first, and he's older, and he's going first." The governor gave an impatient flap of his hand, and the two guards lifted Nail out of his seat and walked him to the electric chair, and this time he was careful not even to show any sign of struggle as they strapped him in. This time they remembered to put the metal cap on top of his head, and this time, given the warmth of the merry month of May, the metal cap wasn't so cold as it touched the raw skin of his scalp.

Jimmie Mac prompted the warden: "Now you're supposed to ask him if he has any last words."

"Right hee hee," the warden said. "Mr. Chism, before we solemnly carry out the sentence of this state which has been imposed on you hee hee, would you care to address the gathering with any concluding remarks hee hee?"

Nail tried to smile. "Yeah. Where's Bobo?"

They had forgotten him. The warden was a bundle of nerves, the governor didn't know whether he was coming or going, Jimmie Mac was intoxicated with his sense of being in charge, and n.o.body but Ernest was still breathing normally. Now the warden really got fl.u.s.tered, and he said to Fat Gill, "Well, just where in h.e.l.l is Bobo?"

Fat Gill shrugged; it was all new to him. Short Leg, the only experienced man here except for Jimmie Mac, spoke up: "He's probably out in the engine room fiddlin with the dynamo. Want me to go look?" The warden nodded, and Short Leg went out through the door that Bobo always came in through, that led to the power plant. Short Leg returned almost immediately, saying, "Here he is."

Drunk as usual-no, drunker than usual-Bobo shuffled in carefully as if trying to make sure he was putting his feet in the right place. The governor, for one, was shocked. "Is that man drunk? Has Mr. Bobo been drinking?"

Jimmie Mac, all-knowing, explained to His Excellency, "Yessir, he's always like that. It's a pardonable sin, wouldn't you say? Considering what he has to do..."

Bobo could barely lift a hand to the switch, but did, and stood there in a hurry to get it over with.

Jimmie Mac prompted the warden again: "Last words."

"Okay, here we go," the warden said, rubbing his hands together. "Last words, Chism?"

The trees were singing Nail's last words for him. They were in full voice now, rising and soaring in song. Anything he might say would be so feeble and earthly by comparison. He shook his head.

"No last words?" The warden looked to Jimmie Mac for guidance.

Jimmie Mac was mumbling the end of the Lord's Prayer, but he interrupted himself to say, "You're supposed to ask Bobo, 'Ready, Bobo?'"

The warden turned. "Ready, Bobo?"

Bobo nodded.

Jimmie Mac said, "You're supposed to raise your hand like this, and then drop it, like this."

Bobo did not wait for the warden to copy Jimmie Mac. Drunk and blind, Bobo took Jimmie Mac's gesture as his authority and threw the switch and closed the circuit.

But nothing happened. The governor, the newspaperman, all of the men in the room jumped an inch in their chairs and cringed and shivered, but nothing happened. The green-shaded ceiling light did not dim, the dynamo did not whine. In the silence-only it wasn't complete silence, because of the trees-the governor asked, "Who's singing?" and looked around trying to locate the choir. Everyone stared at Bobo. Nail turned his head and stared at Bobo, who still had the switch turned on but was looking down at his feet as if ashamed of his failure to make any current come to the chair. Then he staggered toward the chair itself and began fiddling with the wires one by one.

As Bobo began to examine the metal cap on Nail's head, Nail thought he heard him whisper into his ear, "I love you."

Nail was startled to hear this, and perplexed to find himself suddenly remembering that time in the visit room when Viridis had quoted his father's words 'Boy, don't ye never fergit, yo're a Chism, and Chisms don't never quit,' and almost exactly in the sound of his father's voice. Now it was as if Irvin Bobo had spoken those three words in the voice of Viridis! He turned to stare at Bobo, but Bobo was disappearing through the door into the engine room.

"Now what's the problem?" the governor asked in a quivering voice.

"Bobo's gone to check the dynamo, I guess," Yeager said.

They waited and waited, but Bobo did not return. Short Leg was sent to look for him. After a long while Short Leg returned alone. "It sure looks to me like he's done gone home," Short Leg said. "He aint anywhere around the powerhouse." He was shaking his head back and forth. "But he sure did f.u.c.k up that dynamo before he left."

"Fire him!" the governor said. He turned on the warden. "G.o.ddammit, Yeager, there are going to be some changes made in this inst.i.tution, and I am going to make them!"

"I've already made a few hee hee," Yeager protested.

Off.

One of the first things they did was fire Jimmie Mac. Or, rather, since Jimmie Mac had been just a volunteer to begin with, they replaced him with a paid, nearly full-time chaplain, an honest-to-G.o.d man of the cloth, the real Reverend Mr. Lee Tomme, formerly of the Colorado State Correctional System, who started in from his first day on the job correcting everything in the Arkansas system. Whether or not they fired Irvin Bobo, Nail couldn't find out right away. But one of the first "improvements" that the Reverend Tomme accomplished was getting the prisoners the privilege of reading magazines and newspapers, and just a few days after his third execution was aborted, Nail read an item in the Gazette, new electrician hired at penitentiary, which explained that G.H. Dempsey, of Arkadelphia, electrician for the past seven years at the Arkadelphia Milling Company, who had done the wiring at the Little Rock City Hall eight years ago, had been hired to replace Irvin P. Bobo, who was resigning for personal reasons. Near the bottom of the article Mr. Bobo was quoted as saying, "My memory isn't what it used to be. Sometimes lately people say I did things which I don't even recall ever having done." The new electrician, Dempsey, said he would have no objection to electrocuting any man whether that man was black or white. "A switch is a switch," he said. "It's all the same to me."

A day after that, the next issue of the Gazette was personally delivered to Nail's cell by the Reverend Tomme, who also offered Nail a cigarette. Nail almost accepted, but he said, "Preacher, I've gone this long without smokes, I can go awhile longer. Thank ye just the same. You go ahead and have one if ye want."

The Reverend Tomme (it was p.r.o.nounced "Tommy") laughed. "I don't smoke, Brother Chism, but I want you men to be able to have a few pleasures in this life if you are able to obtain them. Look," and he handed the newspaper to Nail, pointing to an item. "Do you need me to read it for you?"

"I can read just fine," Nail said. The headline, a big black one, read: GOV. HAYS DEMANDS SWEEPING CHANGES IN PRISON SYSTEM. There was a smaller headline underneath: APPOINTS PRISON EXPERT AS NEW CHAPLAIN, and below that: WILL APPOINT COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE CONDITIONS.

"The best place to start improving this prison is right here," the Reverend Tomme said, pointing at the dirt floor of Nail's cell. "The best person's condition to change is yours. I'm going to see if we can't find you a job upstairs."

"My G.o.d!" Nail exclaimed. He knew there was a law against requiring-or even permitting-condemned men to work.

"Yes, your G.o.d," the Reverend Tomme said, and smiled. "I'd like to think it's my G.o.d too, but I'll settle for your G.o.d."

Nail studied the minister. He had a pleasant face, not that of a man who couldn't take a joke. He wasn't much older than Nail, maybe thirty at most. Nail said, "My G.o.d is a Lady." He waited to see if this man would be different from Jimmie Mac.

The man didn't blink. "A beautiful One, I'll bet," the Reverend Tomme said. "And She must really love you. That G.o.d in Her goodness saved you three times from the electric chair. Would you tell me your thoughts about that?"

"Thoughts?" said Nail. "I think it's jist wonderful."

"Can you tell me what it's like," the minister requested, "to sit there one minute and think your life is over, and in the next minute to know that you'll live? I really can't imagine being in that chair. n.o.body who has never been through that terrible experience could possibly imagine it. And n.o.body but you, Brother Chism, has ever cheated death three times."

"Well, sir," Nail began, and found himself becoming more talkative than he'd ever been in his life. He'd waited a long time to have somebody to tell it to. He would have liked to tell it to Viridis, but he never got a chance. He hadn't wanted to tell it to Ernest. Now Nail talked for a solid hour to the preacher. The preacher had a very lively face: he would smile or frown or scowl or laugh or just look like he understood completely what Nail was saying.

The preacher would sometimes say, "I see," as if he really did, or "Go on," as if he really enjoyed listening, or "Is that right?" or "No!" or "Yes yes," or whatever was required by what Nail was saying, but he didn't interrupt with any real comment until Nail was finished, and then observed, "It looks to me as if G.o.d in His wisdom-Her wisdom, I'm sorry-has got something for you to do in this life that She wants to preserve you for, keep you for, let you do."

Nail smiled. "All I want to do, Reverend, is raise my sheep and watch after 'em as best I know how."

"That's just what our friend Jesus once said," Lee Tomme observed. "'I am the good shepherd,' he said; 'the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.' You've come close three times to giving your life, but Jesus, or G.o.d the Mother if you think that way, has saved you from death because He or She, or both of them as One, has been put to death and knows what it's like and doesn't want you to have it, not just yet."

"That's fine spoke, Reverend," Nail said.

"Will you call me Lee?" he asked. "Just Lee. And I'll call you Nail? Good. We have much work to do."

"I aint had any work to do," Nail observed. "That's been my main problem. The whole time I've been in this prison, they've never given me a chance to do a lick of work."

Lee shook his head in sympathy. "It's an idiotic law that says a man condemned to die cannot be made to work, or even allowed to work. But that's their law, and I can only try to change it. Nail, would you tell me anything else you don't like about this place?"

Nail laughed. "Have you got all day?"

"I've got all day," Lee said, "and all night too, if need be."

The Reverend Mr. Lee Tomme did not spend the entire day and night with Nail Chism, but he stayed past suppertime and insisted on eating supper with Nail, the same cornbread and cowpeas. A couple of days later there was a front-page article in the Gazette, NEW PRISON CHAPLAIN BLASTS CONDITIONS.

"The food is not fit to eat, the living conditions are unhealthy beyond belief, and the unprovoked punishment is a hideous infliction of unspeakable pain," the Reverend Mr. Tomme was quoted as saying. "It is the same story at Tucker, the white men's prison farm, and at c.u.mmins, the farm for black men and women. The whole prison system in the state of Arkansas is begging for change, and we are going to change it, even if we have to abolish the machine politician!

"Our prison system is at least fifty years behind the national standard, which is bad enough. The penitentiary and the farms are not self-sustaining, when they easily could be. The only mode of punishment known to the keepers, for any violation, real or imagined, of the rules, real or imagined, is the strap. And a terrible strap it is, which beggars description, although I intend to describe it if it is not immediately abolished.

"There is no self-respecting poor dirt farmer in the state of Arkansas who would permit his animals to dwell in the filth and the horror that surround these human beings, or who would flay them as these men are flayed. There are fewer deaths from natural causes than from preventable disease and from this corporal punishment which is in fact an illegal form of capital punishment.

"Where does the blame lie? The guards are only doing what they think is expected of them. The new superintendent, Warden Yeager, is an experienced penal administrator who is open to change, experiment, and improvement. The governor...ladies and gentlemen, I would not have the freedom to make these criticisms if the governor had not appointed me pastor to the poor oppressed captives.

"Who, then, is to blame? You are. And I am. Any one of us who learns of the brutal injustices of this system and does not act to stop them is in collusion with them! Let us put a stop to them now."

The very next day, Fat Gill escorted Nail upstairs into the engine room of the powerhouse and interrupted a big fellow almost as tall as Nail but thicker-muscled, who looked as if he could eat Fat Gill for breakfast and want a second helping. "Here he is," said Fat Gill.

"Take the cuffs off," the man said.

"But he's dangerous," Fat Gill said.

"s.h.i.t. He won't hurt me. Take the cuffs off and get out of here." Fat Gill obeyed. As soon as the guard was gone, the big fellow offered Nail a cigarette, and when Nail declined, he offered him a swig from a pint bottle, which Nail knew he could not successfully decline, so he made no attempt. While he was wiping his mouth with one hand, the big man grabbed his other hand and shook it, and said, "I'm Guy Dempsey, and one of these days I'm gonna burn your a.s.s, but meanwhile you're gonna be my helper. You know anything about electricity?"

Nail shook his head. "The closest I come to learnin anything was when the feller who had your job let his hand slip and gave me a little charge before I was supposed to get the full dose."

"Okay, here's where we start," Dempsey said. "Pay close attention, and they might even name something after you. They named the volt after a guy named Count Volta, they named the watt after James Watt, they named the ohm after a German physicist, and they named the ampere after Andre Ampere. They might decide to call the dose it takes to electrocute a man a chism. Unless you invent something better. Pay attention."

Beginning that day, and continuing every day afterward, G.H. Dempsey taught Nail Chism everything he knew about electrostatics, electrodynamics, and electromagnetics. At the end of that first day, Dempsey gave him a copy of Rowland's Applied Electricity for Practical Men and told him to memorize it. It wasn't nearly as thick as Dr. Hood, but it was twice as difficult. Thinking of Dr. Hood, Nail wondered if Viridis had ever noticed the "message," such as it was, that he had tried to smuggle out to her in Dr. Hood, wherein, on the page defining mustard oil, he had used his own blood to underline the definition. It wasn't fair of him, he realized, to have expected her to figure out what that meant. Even if she saw the smear of blood and read the definition, she wouldn't know that he was asking her to smuggle some mustard oil in to him.

He didn't have to wait for the morning light to read the Rowland book. Now he could read anytime because Dempsey had wired and illuminated the dungeon of the death hole, thanks to Warden Yeager, who had also put Ernest to work painting the walls of it. The job took him only a week, but he was allowed outside his cell all day in order to do it. That freedom and employment were a rare novelty to him, so Ernest happily painted while Nail did odd jobs upstairs in the engine room and took in Dempsey's lectures and demonstrations on electricity. Sometimes Dempsey had Nail come with him to the main building to do a job, or up to the guard towers to work on the new searchlights. Once Dempsey even took him into the warden's house outside The Walls to repair some wiring, and Nail reflected that he could have gained his freedom if he had overpowered Dempsey, something he didn't want to try. In the evenings Nail read Rowland while Ernest drew pictures with his new art kit. The ladies of the Arkansas Federation of Women's Clubs had put together for Ernest a box containing every conceivable type of artist's pencil, crayon, chalk, and a set of forty-eight colored pastels, including six shades of green: emerald, moss, olive, viridian, terre verte, and Paris; and he had enough paper, he told Nail, to wallpaper his cell, which he just might do if they didn't electrocute him soon.

Afer a week of this decent treatment, Warden Yeager himself came down into the death hole one Sat.u.r.day morning and pa.s.sed inspection on the new paint job, and then said, "Well, gentlemen, can I do anything else for you?"

"I want another one of them steaks," Ernest said.

"Yeah, and some more chicken'n dumplins," Nail said.