The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [138]
Nail tried to smile. “Yeah. Where’s Bobo?”
They had forgotten him. The warden was a bundle of nerves, the governor didn’t know whether he was coming or going, Jimmie Mac was intoxicated with his sense of being in charge, and nobody but Ernest was still breathing normally. Now the warden really got flustered, and he said to Fat Gill, “Well, just where in hell is Bobo?”
Fat Gill shrugged; it was all new to him. Short Leg, the only experienced man here except for Jimmie Mac, spoke up: “He’s probably out in the engine room fiddlin with the dynamo. Want me to go look?” The warden nodded, and Short Leg went out through the door that Bobo always came in through, that led to the power plant. Short Leg returned almost immediately, saying, “Here he is.”
Drunk as usual—no, drunker than usual—Bobo shuffled in carefully as if trying to make sure he was putting his feet in the right place. The governor, for one, was shocked. “Is that man drunk? Has Mr. Bobo been drinking?”
Jimmie Mac, all-knowing, explained to His Excellency, “Yessir, he’s always like that. It’s a pardonable sin, wouldn’t you say? Considering what he has to do…”
Bobo could barely lift a hand to the switch, but did, and stood there in a hurry to get it over with.
Jimmie Mac prompted the warden again: “Last words.”
“Okay, here we go,” the warden said, rubbing his hands together. “Last words, Chism?”
The trees were singing Nail’s last words for him. They were in full voice now, rising and soaring in song. Anything he might say would be so feeble and earthly by comparison. He shook his head.
“No last words?” The warden looked to Jimmie Mac for guidance.
Jimmie Mac was mumbling the end of the Lord’s Prayer, but he interrupted himself to say, “You’re supposed to ask Bobo, ‘Ready, Bobo?’”
The warden turned. “Ready, Bobo?”
Bobo nodded.
Jimmie Mac said, “You’re supposed to raise your hand like this, and then drop it, like this.”
Bobo did not wait for the warden to copy Jimmie Mac. Drunk and blind, Bobo took Jimmie Mac’s gesture as his authority and threw the switch and closed the circuit.
But nothing happened. The governor, the newspaperman, all of the men in the room jumped an inch in their chairs and cringed and shivered, but nothing happened. The green-shaded ceiling light did not dim, the dynamo did not whine. In the silence—only it wasn’t complete silence, because of the trees—the governor asked, “Who’s singing?” and looked around trying to locate the choir. Everyone stared at Bobo. Nail turned his head and stared at Bobo, who still had the switch turned on but was looking down at his feet as if ashamed of his failure to make any current come to the chair. Then he staggered toward the chair itself and began fiddling with the wires one by one.
As Bobo began to examine the metal cap on Nail’s head, Nail thought he heard him whisper into his ear, “I love you.”
Nail was startled to hear this, and perplexed to find himself suddenly remembering that time in the visit room when Viridis had quoted his father’s words ‘Boy, don’t ye never fergit, yo’re a Chism, and Chisms don’t never quit,’ and almost exactly in the sound of his father’s voice. Now it was as if Irvin Bobo had spoken those three words in the voice of Viridis! He turned to stare at Bobo, but Bobo was disappearing through the door into the engine room.
“Now what’s the problem?” the governor asked in a quivering voice.
“Bobo’s gone to check the dynamo, I guess,” Yeager said.
They waited and waited, but Bobo did not return. Short Leg was sent to look for him. After a long while Short Leg returned alone. “It sure looks to me like he’s done gone home,” Short Leg said. “He aint anywhere around the powerhouse.” He was shaking his head back and forth. “But he sure did fuck up that dynamo before he left.”
“Fire him!” the governor said. He turned on the warden. “Goddammit, Yeager, there are going to be some changes made in this institution, and I am going to make them!”
“I’ve already made a few hee hee,” Yeager protested.
Off
One of the first things they did was fire Jimmie Mac. Or, rather, since