The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [112]
“Son,” Nail said to Ernest, “I’m gonna tell ye exactly what they’re gonna make you watch at sundown tomorrow. I want ye to know jist what you’ll see, includin how I’m gonna kill a few of ’em first, specially Warden Burdell and that executioner, a son of a bitch named Bobo. But before I tell ye, I want ye to promise me one thing: you’ll jist sit there and not lift a finger to help or git in the way or git yoreself in any more trouble than you already got. Will ye promise?”
On
But Ernest Bodenhammer was not allowed to witness the execution of Nail Chism. Tom Fletcher told her later that the warden had wanted to include Ernest because it was customary to have a condemned man watch all of the electrocutions in order to give him a clear foretaste of his own, but that the warden had made an exception this time because in view of the way Ernest had killed Gabriel McChristian over Nail, the young man might very well create a disturbance during the execution. And besides, the warden pointed out to Tom, there wasn’t really any room: the witness area was filled. All twelve of the chairs were taken up by reporters. Warden Harris Burdell had even had to turn away a few latecomers, including Viridis herself, who was late not because it had taken her that long to persuade Tom Fletcher to give her a press card, nor because she had needed more time to steel herself, but because she’d attempted unsuccessfully to convince Warden Burdell that she wanted to attend as a bonafide journalist, not as the condemned man’s “sweetheart,” as the warden insisted on referring to her. He had refused to admit her, but he had used as his excuse the crowded presence of reporters from, in addition to the Arkansas Gazette and its rival the Arkansas Democrat, the Houston Chronicle, the Post-Dispatch and the Globe-Democrat (both of St. Louis), the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Kansas City Star, Associated Press, and, the farthest that any reporter had journeyed, the Atlanta Constitution. She had hoped to get at least one representative from the East, but the Washington Star’s man had missed his train connection, and the Philadelphia Inquirer had decided at the last moment that there were bigger stories in Pennsylvania.
Tom Fletcher himself had represented the Arkansas Gazette, and afterward came to his car, where Viridis had been required to wait, and told her about it. The deathroom “crew,” he said, had been caught completely by surprise. Warden Burdell had no inkling until the first reporter, from the Times-Picayune, arrived at his office just an hour before the execution was to take place, and requested an interview with the condemned man. Warden Burdell had to explain to him, and to the next eight reporters who knocked at his door, that condemned men were not allowed to speak to anyone other than the minister and the warden himself on the day of execution. It was tradition, if not ironclad rule. So some of the reporters had to content themselves with interviewing Warden Burdell, asking him such challenging questions that he replied to each with “I’m only the warden, doing my duty. I didn’t sentence Chism to death, and it aint my business to pardon him.”
Other reporters cornered the executioner, Mr. Irvin Bobo, age forty-two, who closely resembled the movie actor Charles Chaplin and whose breath reeked of liquor, and attempted to ask him questions. He was not able to invent a stock reply as the warden had, but he was quoted as saying, “I aint gonna kill no more