The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [113]
Reporters managed to locate two of the guards, James Fancher and Gillespie Gorham, and asked them several questions. Their boss had been able to give them only a few moments’ warning, telling them to put on their neckties and comb their hair and not say anything stupid. Gillespie Gorham, thirty-one, a rather corpulent man, formerly a patrolman with the Little Rock police, solved the problem by repeatedly answering questions with “I don’t know nothin.” James Fancher, thirty-seven, who appeared crippled, one leg shorter than the other, was willing to talk and even to describe the condemned man’s last hours, which had been spent in conversation with another condemned man (or youth) in an adjoining cell.
The reporters had then converged upon the minister, the Reverend James S. McPhee, fifty-two, who explained that he was not affiliated with any particular church and considered himself nondenominational although he was partial to the Baptists. He was a full-time employee of the St. Louis & Iron Mountain Railway, working as a conductor on the Texarkana run, but some years earlier he had received “the call” to make sure that all condemned men, black and white alike, had the final peace of knowing that God loved them and was willing to forgive them their crimes if they confessed and acknowledged Jesus Christ as their Saviour. No, this Nail Chism fellow had not confessed anything. He was an atheist. Well, not exactly an atheist, because he did finally profess some sort of belief in God, but he held the heretical notion that God was a woman. Reverend McPhee had accompanied Nail Chism on his previous “last mile” to the electric chair, and he had accompanied a total of thirteen men, all but two of them of the colored race, on their last mile to the electric chair since its invention, and he had never seen any condemned man approach the chair as coldly as Nail Chism did, which, Reverend McPhee believed, was probably a sign of guilt: Chism knew he deserved what he was getting. And yes, this time the minister hoped the execution would be carried out.
When Tom Fletcher arrived to take his seat in the witnesses’ area, he noticed that all the other men had their press cards stuck in the hatbands of their felt fedoras, and he had to search for a while through his wallet to find his press card, which he hadn’t flashed, let alone worn, for some years. He put it in his hat and took his seat in the back row of the folding chairs.
Eventually an iron door creaked open, and guards Gorham and Fancher entered with the prisoner, followed by Reverend McPhee. There was an audible collective gasp among the hardened journalists at the sight of the condemned man, although Tom Fletcher’s first thought, he confessed to Viridis, was this: what could possibly have attracted Very to this fellow? Chism’s wrists were held together very low, over his groin, as if protecting his private parts. A very tall man, his shoulders were somewhat stooped, probably the result, Tom decided, of long confinement in a bent position, although it appeared that the weight of the handcuffs on his wrists was pulling down his arms and his shoulders.
Chism looked at the witnesses and moved his eyes from one face to the next, as if he were looking for somebody. “You, probably,” Tom said. His blue eyes, Tom noted, were his only handsome feature, contradicting the gangling frame, the bald, bony skull, the battered face, and the missing teeth…although this last did not become apparent until, after searching the reporters’ faces, he smiled. “Why he smiled, I don’t know. Was he glad you weren’t there?”
The warden spoke to the prisoner. “Well, Chism, you’ve sure got twelve of ’em this time. Count ’em. They’re all big-time, big-city newspapermen. Look at ’em. You’re a celebrity, Chism!”
It was clear to Tom Fletcher that the warden was enjoying the scene and would probably milk it for all it was worth. The warden even faced the reporters and “presented