The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [114]
The strange thing then, Tom said, was that the Atlanta Constitution’s man began clapping his hands. Tom knew him, and had tossed down a drink with him earlier that afternoon, but the man wasn’t intoxicated. Maybe his applause was prompted by the warden’s ridiculous bow. In any case, one by one the other reporters dropped their notebooks into their laps and began clapping too. Tom joined in, telling himself that he was clapping for probably the same reason the rest of them were: that they admired him as a man, knowing he was innocent and was coming to this end bravely, without fear or cowardice or hysterics. The warden seemed stunned at this continuing outburst of applause until finally he himself began clapping. So did one of the guards. The only people in the room who did not were the minister and the executioner, who looked embarrassed, as if they knew they ought to clap but didn’t know how.
Chism did not bow. Tom wouldn’t have been surprised if he had. Tom was surprised at what Chism did do: he spoke to them. “I thank ye,” he said. “I thank ye kindly. I hope you fellers will git a good story for yore papers. I hope—”
“Shut up, Chism,” Warden Burdell said. “You aint supposed to talk to them.”
“Let ’im talk!” yelled the man from the Chronicle, and the others said, “Yeah, Warden, let him talk.”
“Well, okay,” said Burdell. “He’s allowed some last words anyhow. Say your last words to them if you want, Chism.”
And Nail Chism continued. “I hope that while you’re here you’ll trouble yoreselves to find out a few things about a boy name of Ernest Bodenhammer, who’s not but sixteen years old and is downstairs waitin to die in that chair hisself. He’s just a ole Ozarks country boy, like me, but he’s got a talent I couldn’t never hope to have: he can draw like a angel, although there’s only one angel I ever saw do a drawing, and she aint here today, I’m glad to see.”
The warden spoke. “Well now, that’s enough now, Chism now.”
“Let him talk!” everybody else said, and the warden shrugged his shoulders and fished out his timepiece.
“The other convicts call him Timbo Red,” Nail Chism went on, “because we’ve all got nicknames, like it would be bad for a feller to go by his real name. I reckon we figger a man’s real name was what got him into trouble, and as long as he’s got a play-like name he can pretend he’s innocent. Now, you boys know that I don’t have to pretend I’m innocent. But it’s Timbo Red, or Ernest Bodenhammer, that I want to tell ye about, and I hope you’ll write up his story. He aint innocent of killing a guard, because he really did kill that guard, name of Fat Gabe McChristian, who murdered more men than that electric chair ever done.”
“Now that’s enough, Chism,” Warden Burdell insisted, and said to the witnesses, “I’m very sorry, gentlemen, but if you gave him a chance he’d talk to you from now until midnight.”
The Commercial Appeal’s man stood up from his chair and declared, “We’ve got until midnight, then. Let him talk.”
The warden held up his pocket watch and turned the face toward them. “He has to be executed at sundown, and it’s nearly time.”
The man from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch stood up and pretended to read from his notes: “‘Warden Harris Burdell refused a legitimate request from the press to allow the condemned man a minute to finish a thought-provoking statement.’”
“All right, dammit,” Burdell said. “But watch your tongue, Chism. Watch what you say and don’t go spreadin a pack of lies.”
“It aint no lie that Ernest Bodenhammer does not deserve to die for puttin an end to the life of that murderin son of a bitch Fat Gabe McChristian!” Nail said, with the only flare-up of emotion they were to witness. Then, more calmly, he resumed, “Now, maybe you fellers think that this don’t make no difference, but I just hope