The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [104]
In the confusion that followed, nobody paid much attention to Nail for several minutes. All of the trusties were there, including the armed ones. All of the half-trusties, or do-pops, came running, and everybody crowded into a circle about Fat Gabe, who was flopping and coughing up blood, his guts spilled onto the floor. Short Leg was waving his pistol as if somebody else might try to do something, and Timbo Red lay sprawled on his back, his eyes closed but almost a trace of a smile on his mouth. Fat Gabe, with his last bit of strength, pulled the knife blade out of his breast and held it as if to plunge it into Timbo Red. At that instant Warden Burdell came running in and yelled, “Christ, Gabe, what in hell is a-gorn on here?”
Fat Gabe’s eyes clouded over, and he echoed one of the words as if he were already on his way there: “Hell.” Then he collapsed and was dead.
Down in the death hole later that night, Nail lay on his side in the old, familiar, mouldy cot that had been his bed so many months in the autumn. It was almost good to be back. He was careful how he lay, because of the wounds in his buttocks, which still bled. It was absolutely dark, and he would have to wait until morning before attempting to read Viridis’ letter, which was still in a wad tucked snugly into his groin behind his testicles. For now, he was watching again and again that scene in the mess hall, particularly those precious seconds when he had failed to prevent Timbo Red from taking his knife and killing Fat Gabe with it. If only he had acted quicker. The boy should have known that Fat Gabe wasn’t killing Nail, that Nail would survive it, that it wasn’t worth risking his own life to kill Fat Gabe. The boy had practically committed suicide. There was no way now they would ever let him go. If they didn’t electrocute him, they’d keep him in The Walls for the rest of his life or, worse, send him off to Tucker Farm, where the hardcases would rape him to death. Nail was tremendously moved and beholden that Timbo Red would have done something like that for him, would have liked him so much that he would act impulsively to protect or save him, but he was sorrowful beyond all imagining that it had actually happened, and there was no taking it back. The sheriff of Pulaski County had come out to The Walls to arrest Timbo Red and take him off to the county jail, because that’s the way the law worked, and the sheriff and some other men had taken Nail into Warden Burdell’s office and questioned him for an hour, trying to find out if Timbo Red was Nail’s “punk” and if the boy might have done it because he was in love with Nail. Finally Nail had lost his temper and demanded to know why that sheriff had never come out and arrested Fat Gabe for all the murders he’d committed on the inmates. That question had shut up the whole room for a long moment, and then Short Leg had taken Nail down here to his old home in the death hole. Before the heavy iron door clanged shut on him, Short Leg had remarked, “I’m just afraid that whoever the boss gets to replace ole Fat Gabe is going to be a meaner feller than he ever was.” Nail had thought about that for a while, trying to determine if it meant that Short Leg had approved or disapproved of Fat Gabe’s ways.
Before bringing him down to the death hole, Short Leg had let him pick up his stuff: his two books, the Bible and Dr. Hood, and his harmonica, which he hadn’t played since that one time around Christmas. Now he raised it to his mouth, cupped his hands around it, and let his breath escape slowly onto the holes and reeds, and then he made one hand tremble to shiver the sound. The hand trembled pretty well all by itself without his willing it. He was still shook up. He drew in his