The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [14]
But Nail refused to make any promises.
“Oh, Latha, he loves me!” Dorinda exclaimed to me one morning in June on our way to school. It was the last week of the seventh grade for us, and Miss Blankinship was quitting after that, and we’d get us a new teacher the next year, and we could hardly wait to see her go, and meanwhile the weather was beautiful and cool for that time of year, although it was very dry and hadn’t rained since May 4th and wouldn’t rain again for the rest of the summer.
“Who does?” I asked. I wasn’t sure but what she might have heard some of the gossip about Nail Chism having a crush on her, as his motive for hitting Sull Jerram.
“Sull!” she said. “The judge! He told me so! Well, he didn’t come right out and use that word, but he said to me, says, ‘Rindy, sugar babe, you shore make my ole heart beat fast!’ and guess what? He plans to up and leave that Irene for good!”
“Rindy honey sister sweety dear,” I said as nicely as I could, “you have just got to be careful, I know in my bones that a feller like Sull Jerram just wants to get under your dress.”
“So?” she said. “I aint skeert. He’d do it real nice, and I’d even enjoy it myself, I bet ye.”
“And you’d find yourself swole up with a woodscolt!”
“Then he’d dist have to marry me!”
“He’s already married, you fool!”
But trying to talk some sense into Dorinda Whitter was like teaching a kitten to eat apples. She didn’t give a hoot what the world thought of her, and I doubt she cared for my opinions either. When we were still children, she had said to me, “You’re whole lots smarter than me, and that’s how come I lak ye so, but dist don’t never try to tell me what to do.” No use trying to convince her that she was pretty enough to get the best husband in the country if she’d only take her time and behave herself instead of chasing after the first man with an auto to come to town. Sure, Sull Jerram was handsome and sightly, and smart and smooth, and now he was rich to boot, but I wouldn’t have gone into the bushes with him if he’d had three silver balls!
A few days later, after school let out, Dorinda and I were taking a shortcut up through the woods toward our playhouse on the south slope of Ledbetter Mountain. There’s an old cowpath runs up through that copse of chanting walnuts, and we were just tripping along one behind the other up that cowpath when here come Nail Chism, nearly running over us, except he wasn’t running, just walking the way he did, with long, gangling strides.
“Howdy, girls,” was all he said, and grinned bashfully in that woman-shy way that bachelors have.
Rindy and I were so astonished to find somebody on that old cowpath in the woods that we didn’t say anything, and he walked around us and went on his way, and we went on ours, but Rindy kept looking back over her shoulder, as if he might have turned, and once when she did that I challenged her: “You think he’s follerin us?”
“Shhh,” she hushed me, and whispered, “I know he’s follerin us!”
I said, “Why would he do that?”
“Shhh! Why do you think, you silly?!” she whispered, and said, “Ess go!” and began running. We ran all the way up the hill out of the woods and into the meadow and kept running until we reached our playhouse. We got ourselves inside of it, and Rindy knelt at the one little window and peered out, panting and watching, panting and watching. I looked around me, at the poor interior of our old playhouse, and realized that we had outgrown it and would soon be having to give it up.
“Nail Chism wouldn’t foller us,” I declared.
“You don’t think so?” she demanded. “Then tell me who’s that, Miss Smarty! Santy Claus?” She pointed, and there, down at the edge of the woods, edge of the meadow, far off, stood a man. He was just looking up the hillside toward our playhouse. My heart skipped a couple of beats. Was it Nail? He wasn’t close enough to tell for sure, and you couldn’t tell by his clothes: the men all dressed alike in blue denim overalls and a store shirt and a felt hat. Even those courthouse politicians dressed that way. He