The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [124]
“Couldn’t I just visit with him awhile, under supervision? Couldn’t I just give him these cookies?” She held up the paper sack containing three dozen oatmeal, chocolate, and pecan cookies.
The warden glanced at the sack. He said, “You’re just another one of them women that latch on to convicts and make boyfriends out of them, like they’re toys or cuddly bears or something. All of you ladies are crazy. You think you can turn them into nice little boys, and you’re mistaken. You think you can save their souls or mend their manners or something, and you’re wrong, and it’s gonna kill you to find out how wrong you are. I been workin in prisons since I was a kid, and you wouldn’t believe the number of broken hearts I’ve seen you ladies get.” Again he slipped into his politeness and softly said, “I’m not gonna let nobody break your heart, darlin hee hee.”
“Could I please see him for a while in the visitors’ room?”
As if reading from a book, he said, “Condemned inmates of the death cells may not be transmitted to the visiting quarters.”
“Then couldn’t you, as a consolation for disappointing me, take me down to the death hole and let me talk to him through his bars?”
“It’s awful down there, ma’am. I wouldn’t want to go down there myself.”
“I can stand it.”
“Sorry. It’s against the rules. We do everything by the rules here.”
“May I use your telephone?”
“Help yourself. What for?”
“I’m going to tell the governor that you won’t even let me see Nail Chism after tricking me into thinking I could get into his cell.”
“Well, durn, I never tricked you. How long did you want to stay down in the death hole?”
“As long as you’ll let me.”
“Well, the visit rules say fifteen minutes in the visit room. Would fifteen minutes down there suit you?”
“Not as much as staying all night, but it’ll do.”
“You can’t take them cookies. The prisoners have a strict diet hee hee. Leave them and your handbag here in my office.” The warden summoned the guard, James Fancher, and asked him, “Hey, Jim, is that electric light bulb wired up down in the death hole yet?” The guard shook his head. “Well, you go get Gill, and you boys take a lantern and show this lady down there, for fifteen minutes, and let her talk to Chism. Watch ’em, and don’t you let her touch him nor give him nothing nor do anything ’cept talk.”
So Viridis got to see Nail. Indeed, as the warden had said, it was an awful place. Couldn’t they at least keep it reasonably clean? Did there have to be earth clinging to the walls? Weren’t there any windows or holes that could be opened for a little ventilation? The oppressive darkness and dankness and cramping were accentuated by the feeble glow from the one smoking kerosene lantern that Fancher carried, holding it down at his side, not raising it, so that the light came up from below and gave Nail’s face a ghostly and sinister cast. Guards Fancher and Gorham flanked her closely, standing a little behind her as if they were holding her back, and they would not go away.
“Strike me blind,” Nail said softly. “Don’t this beat all? How did ye do it?”
“I’ve got a little influence with the governor.”
“You sure must. You must almost have as much influence with him as you had with all them newspaper fellers. It was you, wasn’t it, who got them to come to my fryin party?”
“I suggested it,” she said. “And it worked. It saved you, for the time being, but I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of influence with our governor.” She told him of her invitation to the governor’s mansion the night before, what they had talked about, and the governor’s “calling her bluff” by pretending to arrange for her to be locked in with Nail.
Nail was speechless. “Gosh” was all he could finally say.
“But they’ll only let me see you for a little while.”
“Fifteen minutes,” said Gillespie Gorham. “Nope. There’s only about ten minutes left.”
“That was a mean thing for them to do, to rue back on ye like that,” Nail said