The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [125]
“Of course! I was dying to!”
“Gosh,” he said again. He reflected, “I would’ve sure enjoyed that. Yes, that would’ve been the best time of my life. But it’s terrible messy and stinky down here. No place you could even sit down without ruinin your dress.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “If I could just be with you…”
Nail slammed himself on the brow. “I aint introduced ye to my pal.” He pointed at the wall. “Timbo Red…Ernest Bodenhammer is right in there.” He called out, “Ernest! Here is Viridis!”
“Howdy, ma’am,” said a voice from the darkness.
Viridis turned and tried to move toward the adjoining cell, but Gillespie Gorham blocked her way. “You’re just supposed to visit Chism. The other one aint none of your business.”
“Couldn’t I say hello?” she asked.
“Say hello,” Gillespie Gorham told her, but would not move to let her nearer the boy’s cell.
She called out, “I’m pleased to meet you, Ernest. Nail has told me so much about you.”
The young man called back, in a voice so much like those she had heard in Newton County, “He’s shore told me a lot about you too.”
“I want to see your drawings,” she said.
“Aw, they aint much,” Ernest protested.
Nail said, “Ernest, give her your drawings.” And to her: “I reckon you couldn’t see ’em too good in the dark, though. He’s done filled up that pad you gave him, front and back every page. It’s time he got him another pad, if you could manage it.”
“Certainly, I’ll get him one,” Viridis said.
“Heck,” Ernest said, “I’m due to sit on Ole Sparky myself in just a few more days. I wouldn’t have time to use up a whole new pad.”
“Could I borrow the one you’ve finished?” she asked him. “To look at in good light?” She wished she could see at least the outline of his form in the dark, but she saw nothing of him.
His voice said, “Wal, yeah, I reckon, but they shore aint nothin to brag about.”
At the edge of the sphere of feeble light from the lantern she saw the sudden protrusion of a square thickness that she recognized as the corner of the drawing pad being offered to her. She reached for it, but Sergeant Gorham stayed her hand. “You aint supposed to touch nothing,” he told her.
“It’s only a sketchbook, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “Search it if you want. There aren’t any secret messages in it.”
“Jim, hold up that light,” Sergeant Gorham said, and he took the sketch-book, flipped through it, gave it a shake, and then presented it to her. “Looks harmless,” he said.
“Thank you, Ernest,” she said. “I’ll get it back to you, along with a new-pad. Do you need some more pencils? Erasers?”
“I thank ye kindly, ma’am,” Ernest said.
Another square intruded into the lantern’s light, and Nail said, “Mr. Gorham, sir, I’d like her to have this too. It’s just as harmless as that drawing-pad.”
It was a book. A thick, heavy book. Sergeant Gorham took it and submitted it to the same treatment he’d given the sketchbook. Nothing fell out. It contained no letters or words other than the printed words. The guard gave it to her. He asked Nail, “What’s it for?”
“It’s just a ole book I’d like her to have. I won’t be needin it no more.”
“Nail,” she said intently. “I’m going to save you. Ernest too.”
“Well,” he said, “there’s just a part of that book I thought you might find interestin.”
“Time’s up, now,” Gorham said, and put his hand on her shoulder. She shivered at the man’s touch.
“Did you get my letter?” she asked Nail.
“Yeah, I sure did, and it was wonderful. I reckon you didn’t get mine, but it wasn’t much compared with yours.”
“You know what I tried hardest to say in that letter?”
“It’s hard to say,” he acknowledged.
“I mean it,” she said. “I can’t say it again right here and now, but I mean it. Three words.”
“Three words,” he returned.
They took her back upstairs, and she picked up her purse at the warden’s office. She gave T.D. Yeager the sack of cookies and said, “Share these with your wife.”
“I don’t have a wife, ma’am hee hee, but say, thanks a lot.”
“I’ll be seeing you again,” she said, and offered him her hand. “And possibly