The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [111]
Nail cleared his throat. “No, I guess not.”
“Didje ever have a womarn?”
Nail pondered. He said, “Yeah. I did.”
“Tell me what it’s lak.”
“You never did?”
“I got real close one time, but she changed her mind. Was the one ye had willin?”
“She was willin.” Nail remembered, and smiled. “Matter of fact, it was her idee.”
“Tell me all about it so’s I can draw a pitcher.”
“You want a pitcher of ’em doin it?”
“Yeah, tell me how she set or laid down or whar she put her knees and her hands, and all lak thet. Tell me how you got down or knelt, and all. Did ye have yore clothes on?”
So Nail talked and described and narrated, and he heard Ernest’s charcoal pencil going skritch-skritch. Ernest occasionally interrupted with questions. Was it dark? How far off was that coal oil lamp? What kind of covers was under them? Did they pull any covers over them? What color was her hair? Could you tell if the hair down there was the same color, or lighter? Ernest had a hundred questions before they were both finished.
“I wish I could see yore pitcher,” Nail remarked.
“It aint my best one,” Ernest reflected. “But it’ll do. Looks jist lak ye. Or jist lak I remember ye. Have you changed any since I seen you last?”
“A mite older, is all.”
And sometime in the night, Nail, insomnia filling his head with thoughts of the day after tomorrow, listened to Ernest making love to his imagination and to himself. It went on awhile. Nail reflected that there was at least a ghost of a chance that the boy might get his execution stayed. He was only sixteen, and maybe that governor would take pity and commute Ernest in a way he couldn’t for a grown-up convicted rapist like Nail. Ernest was real smart, and if he got commuted to life and got sent to Tucker, he might be smart enough to escape someday and maybe become a sheep farmer in some faraway place where he and Rindy could live happy ever after. Nail told himself to go ahead and finish telling Ernest all the things he wanted him to tell Viridis, just in case he ever got the chance.
On the 19th, the day before his scheduled execution, he did. Ernest listened carefully, remembering it all, for a long time before he interrupted: “What makes ye think I’ll ever git the chance to tell her any of this? Ole Sparky’s gonna cup my butt on the first day of May.”
Nail was putting the last honing on his blade. He tested it with his thumb. “You jist never know,” he said. He began cutting the cuff of his trousers to unravel thread for a string to hang the blade around his neck. He heard a noise and quickly hid the blade under his bedcover. Fat Gill and Short Leg came to his cell, along with a white trusty whom Nail recognized as the convict barber, carrying a pair of shears, a shaving mug, and a strop. Fat Gill handed the razor to the barber after first handcuffing Nail and warning him to sit absolutely still. With the shears the barber clipped off as much of Nail’s regrown hair as he could; Nail reflected that this was the time of year he ought to be shearing his own sheep, if he still had any; he watched the hair fall into his lap and onto the floor, short shocks of white mixed with blond. Then the barber soaped Nail’s head and shaved his skull. He worked rapidly and not very carefully; Nail felt himself get nicked twice and felt the blood trickling behind his ears.
“Want a mirror?” Fat Gill asked when the barber was finished.
Nail raised the middle finger of his manacled hand and held it stiffly upright for Fat Gill to sneer at.
When they were gone, Ernest’s voice came: “What did they do to ye?”
“Shaved my head,” Nail said.
“What’d they do thet fer?”
Nail realized the boy didn’t have much of a conception of how the electrocution process worked, and he debated with himself whether to explain it. Would it help Ernest get ready? Or would it just make him more scared than he was already, although he tried so hard to seem not to be? A thought suddenly occurred to Nail: tomorrow when they