The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [121]
“But the shadows of doubt are all around Nail Chism,” she said.
The governor sighed and passed his hand across his eyes. “Are you aware,” he asked, “that for seven years before becoming governor, I was a circuit judge myself? I know the burdens that Lincoln Villines faced, and I know how carefully he had to proceed in that lower court. But before I became a circuit judge, I was a farmer. I grew up on an impoverished farm in the scrub of Ouachita County, and until I was the age of Nail Chism, I was, like him, a simple farmer. Although I did not resort to the illegal manufacture of liquor to supplement my modest income, I saved my money to finance a legal education at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. No, I have not been to Paris, but I have been to Virginia, a civilized place, the home of such men as George Mason and Thomas Jefferson, men who, despite their ownership of slaves, opposed slavery and favored abolition, but who believed, as I believe, that abolition can only be accomplished very slowly and gradually, not all at once, as we learned to our regret. It is the same with capital punishment.”
The governor pointed out the lone black waiter who was still blotting up the brandy, and George W. Hays began to talk about him as if the man could not hear. “Do you think this man is ready for complete freedom? Do you think he is capable of making the wise decisions that are required by the responsibilities of citizenship? This particular individual, I happen to know, is not the low-grade type of nigra who crowds our penitentiary and our charitable institutions, but he is still quite primitive and in a childish stage of progress, not yet intelligent enough to hold public office or aspire to one of the professions, or…”
Viridis discovered that she was not paying close attention; her mind was wandering, and her gaze was straying from the governor’s face—he looked so much like an older version of Tom Fletcher, with his protruding eyeballs and thick lips—to the wallpaper, and to her own hands in her lap. The governor seemed to have arrived at the notion that there was some connection between the plight of Nail Chism and what the governor called “the most serious problem of the nigra question.” At least he did not say “nigger,” as so many did. If Viridis tried very hard, and did not drink any more peach brandy, she could focus on his words and detect that he was now discussing the achievement of his administration in separating the white and colored convicts. One of his first acts as governor was the purchase of the Tucker plantation to serve as a “white-convict farm,” wherein the exclusively white inmates could pursue their agricultural labors free from any contact with “culluds.” This, the governor attempted to explain to her, was in keeping with his “concept of the age, and well-advanced civilization.”
She interrupted. “And how would the execution of Nail Chism fit into a well-advanced civilization?”
“It would manifest the sentiment of the community that the community will not tolerate the violation of the sexual sanctity of the fair sex!”
“But the community,” Viridis pointed out, “that is, Nail Chism’s community, has given you petitions signed by four thousand people, more than half the population of Newton County, who do not believe that he violated the sexual sanctity of anyone.”
The governor was fiddling with the silverware. He picked up a dinner knife and held it as if to stab her with it and said, “Miss Monday, if I were to murder you right now, and later fifty thousand residents of Pulaski County signed