The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [106]
try to get this to you if I am able to abbreviate it to only one page, and I must ask myself which of those thousands of words that I wrote at more leisure I need most to say here. I feel like writing in quick, three-word sentences: “All is well. Please be happy. You will live. Don’t give up. Gardez la foi. We shall prevail. Truth will out. Justice will triumph. I love you.” There, but don’t you see how I can’t say that in only three words? Yet I can’t say it in one page either. Please believe I tried several times to visit you, but each time I was told that you were being punished for stealing food and were not allowed to have visitors. The last time I made an attempt, the guard, Gabriel McChristian, said he would let me see you if I would “step out” with him, which, I gathered, meant meeting him somewhere outside The Walls for some illicit purpose. I considered exposing his despicable bribe to the authorities, but these days I have very little faith in any authorities, as you can imagine, after my experience with the governor, which, I am the first to admit, I bungled by stupidly permitting myself to become irritated and indignant with “His Excellency.” But he is such a mean-spirited, small-minded little politician, probably the worst governor that Arkansas has ever had. Your dear friend and mine, young Latha Bourne, went to great trouble to collect the signatures of nearly 2,000 Newton County women to add to my petition of registered voting males, with a wonderful letter (she sent me a copy) in which she beseeched His Excellency for clemency and reminded him, “None of us females can vote, Governor, but we can sure influence the men who do.” As far as I know, Gov. Hays didn’t read her letter or give her petition any more of his precious attention than he gave mine. But if he and the people of Arkansas are blind and deaf to the hideous injustice of your wrongful conviction and punishment, perhaps Americans in general will not be. I am trying very hard to find a publisher for one or more of several articles I’ve written about the case. So far, I’ve placed one in the Houston Chronicle and one in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which isn’t much of an accomplishment, but at least it means that there are some editors who are interested in you, which is more than can be said, unfortunately, for the editors of Little Rock, including my former boss, Mr. Thomas Fletcher, to whom, I’m both sorry and happy to say, I’ve submitted my resignation. I am very hopeful that Associated Press, a national news service, will accept the best of my articles so that it will appear all over the country. Now, if you are interested in Dorinda, the pitiful origin of this whole mess, she is reasonably happy living here at my father’s house and attempting to attend Fort Steele Elementary School, where, I am told, she is having problems with reading and comprehension as well as “ability to get along with others,” but is making progress. She sends you her best wishes, her continuing (that is, lifelong) regrets, and her “bedtime prayers.” Sometimes I feel inclined to prayer myself. You are right, I don’t know you and I never asked you where you stand in regard to a Supreme Being, but I learned enough about you on my trip to Stay More to have the impression that you are not exactly a praying man yourself. If there is a God, He (or She) would at least have allowed Governor Hays to listen to Dorinda’s story, but he (and He) would not. I don’t believe in Governor Hays, either. I believe in you, Nail. I believe that men as good and as brave and as strong and as passionate as yourself are the highest manifestation of life on this earth…next to, of course, trees. If we were trees, if we were all rooted, and still, and swaying gently in the spring breeze, would we be happy? Perhaps, but we could still be cut down. Nobody is going to cut you down, my dearest. Not as long as I am still standing.
“Nails, mah fren, does I heah yo weepin? Do de sadnesses got you too? It aint no hep to cry. We got to be brabe, man. We got to face de music. You dry yo eyes now, heah