The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [103]
“Very good. Everybody can watch,” the warden said. “Except me. I wouldn’t have much fun watching you get strapped, Chism. But I expect I’ll have some pleasure watching you fry. Unless you find some mustard oil.” Before walking away, the warden shook his head and said again, “Mustard oil!” and snorted a laugh.
Inmates hate to have to watch a flogging right after supper; several of them are sure to puke. The wheelbarrow was not brought in as a rack for Nail’s body; he was just spread out right there face down on the dining table, with three trusties holding his arms and legs, while Doc Gode got ready to take his pulse.
There were three things Nail saw, in succession, before the blows started: first, the wad of Viridis’ letter, still there on the floor, nobody noticing it or thinking anything of it, or at least not bending down to pick it up and find out what it was; second, the face of Timbo Red, who was looking at him with mingled terror and fierce indignation, whose sixteen-year-old eyes were already beginning to acquire some of the keen look of having seen too much of this world and having tried without success to make sense of it; and third, as Nail shut his eyes, that face with its caressing green eyes and frame of fire-red hair, that face he would always see whenever he shut his eyes until the very last time he shut them. He tried to fix that face in the darkness as the brass-studded lash opened up the skin of his ass. And when they sponged salt water into the wounds, he did not scream. He bit his tongue and gritted his teeth and hoped that maybe he would faint before the pain got too bad. The only sound he could hear at first, other than the loud slapping of the leather against his skin, was the heavy breathing of Fat Gabe exerting himself as he had never done before, almost as if he’d found a woman who was his match in bed and needed every bit of breath and thrust he could give her. And then Nail heard a man retching and heaving up his supper. And then another. Nail’s own double-supper had risen in his craw and was threatening to choke him. Better to drown in his own vomit than be beaten to death. But he held it down, as he held back his screams that were begging him to let them beg.
He was not counting the blows. It was somewhere past thirty, but he wasn’t counting. He was thinking how sad it was that Viridis would never see that last letter he wrote to her. No chance the warden would let her have it.
Fat Gabe seemed to be getting a bit frustrated. “Goddamn you, Chism, if you die, it’s gonna be me who does it, not Ole Sparky.” Nail made no response. There was a longer interval before the next blow, and when it fell Nail knew why: Fat Gabe must have hauled off and reared back as far as he could with that strap before giving it all he had. And all he had was not enough to bring a scream out of Nail, only a groan. And Fat Gabe cursed the trusty: “Nigger, goddamn you, squeeze some of that salt in there!”
Suddenly Nail felt someone tearing at his chest. He opened his eyes to see Timbo Red, who said, “Let me have that knife!” and grabbed the string inside Nail’s shirt and pulled it out, and tore the knife off it, tearing off too the gent’s tree charm, which flew out and landed on the floor not far from the wad of Viridis’ letter.
“No!” Nail hollered at Timbo Red, but before anyone could lay a hand on the kid he had stuck the knife into Fat Gabe’s belly and pulled upward with all his might, tearing right up through the middle of his guts. Fat Gabe screamed and dropped the strap and clutched himself in the middle, and Timbo Red slashed the knife across Fat Gabe’s throat, from ear to ear. Short Leg had his gun out, but before he could fire it, Timbo Red had plunged the knife into Fat Gabe’s chest.
The trusties holding Nail had let go of him, and he too was up and watching as Short Leg, instead of shooting Timbo Red, decided to cock him over the head with the butt of his gun, and knocked the boy unconscious to the floor, right beside the wad and the tree charm. Nail sprang down beside him, and, while making sure the