The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [129]
She waited to see if the governor was going to say anything else. She told herself to try very hard to be polite, that the least show of anger would defeat her purpose. She took a calm, deep breath and said, as if it were the only thing she had left to say, “He’s only sixteen.”
“So? The state of Arkansas has executed murderers of fifteen and even fourteen. Once several years ago we hanged a thirteen-year-old nigra.” The governor began to wave his forefinger back and forth. “But if you’re asking me to show mercy for someone on account of youth, remember that Nail Chism’s victim was only thirteen.”
Calmly Viridis protested, “She recanted. She’s willing to testify that she lied.”
The governor picked up his telephone. “Martha, bring me that folder on Dorinda Whitter.” Hanging up, he said, “Double perjury doesn’t equal truth. Which is a fancy way of saying two wrongs never make a right.” The governor’s secretary brought to him a file, which he ostentatiously opened and displayed. “As I told you, I like to do a good bit of investigating of my own, in the interests of justice. I’ve attempted to find out all that I can learn about the victim, her background, her family, et cetera.” The governor held up a small item. “I’ve even got her current report card at Fort Steele Elementary. Not doing so well, is she? Lies a lot to her teachers, doesn’t she? And do you yourself have any suspicion that she may have struck the match that burned the school on April 5th? We know it was arson. But what concerns me more is her riffraff family. The girl’s older brother, one Ike Whitter, was a murderer and ruffian who was executed by lynching, a manifestation of that community spirit and mob violence I keep trying to tell you about, Miss Monday, that has to accept capital punishment as a harsh but civilized answer to problems of justice. But the lynching of Ike Whitter isn’t our topic. Our topic is that this girl, victim though she was, and an especially pitiful victim in view of the perverse, grotesque nature of the sexual crimes against her, is yet a girl of very low intelligence, with backward and inbred lines in a pedigree of coarse animals that even nigras would not consider of the human race. The girl has no sense of truth. She may or may not have lied when she told what Nail Chism did to her, but she is lying her head off when she tries to take it back!”
Viridis wanted to tell the governor of her trip to Stay More, she wanted to describe her meetings with Simon and Precilla Whitter, Dorinda’s parents, whose poverty was the result not of inbreeding or lack of intelligence but of a series of misfortunes that had plagued Simon Whitter from his birth. But the governor did not have time to listen to her. She was not even here to rehash the “Chism case,” as such. She knew there was nothing else that could be said to George W. Hays to alter his opinion of Nail Chism as a “moonshining rapist.” She asked, “Would you consider postponing Ernest Bodenhammer’s execution for a week or ten days?”
“Why?”
“I’d like to get an expert from a New York art museum to testify that Ernest’s drawings are the work of a creative genius whose life must be spared.”
“Testify to whom? To the state Supreme Court? They have already considered and rejected the automatic appeal that all capital cases must have. Testify to me? I’ve already told you, I consider Bodenhammer a creative genius. Testify to the people of Arkansas? Your New York expert would have to do more than testify. And you don’t believe he could turn the people of Arkansas into connoisseurs of art in a week or ten days, do you?”
She clutched at a straw: “Governor, if you consider him a genius yourself, why couldn’t you commute his sentence to life imprisonment so that he could go on making his drawings, even in prison? That would surely be preferable to breaking his pencil forever.”
The governor shook his head. “If I did that, we would never again be able to hire a prison guard. This state must have a hidebound law that the