The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [152]
“My God, Viridis!” he exclaimed. Bird looked up at them. Nail lowered his voice and asked, “What do I need all that money for?”
“You never know,” she said. “You’ll run out of food and need to stop and buy some more.”
Nail thought of something. “Yeah, I might have another mouth to feed. For a while. You don’t think I would go off and leave Ernest, do ye?”
“I didn’t think you would,” she said. “That’s one reason I’m going to ask him, when we visit this afternoon, to give me all of his finished drawings, to take with me, since he can’t take them with him, or leave them behind.”
“But he don’t know, yet, that I’m plannin to go,” Nail pointed out to her. “I aint even asked him if he wants to go with me. I caint talk to him about it because of them other fellers down in the death hole. I don’t want them hearin us, ’cause then they’d want to go too, and I shore don’t aim to take everbody.”
“You wouldn’t want to take Sam Bell,” she said. “He’s a psychopath.”
“A what? No, I don’t want to take nobody. Just me and Ernest, and I wouldn’t even take him except I cain’t leave him here to die or rot, whichever came first.”
“I’m so glad you’re taking him,” she said. “Maybe I should put some extra clothing into the bag. At least some caps to cover your bare heads.”
“But I caint tell him what I aim to do, not without them hearin us. So you’ll have to tell him this for me. Tell him this Saturday night. Tell him Fat Gill will come down to git me to fix the fuse or whatever, and for Ernest to start countin, and when it’s five minutes after Fat Gill takes me upstairs, for him to be ready to go without nobody else in the death hole seein us. It will be dark. I’m gonna kill all the power. He’ll have to jist follow me upstairs in the dark without any word when I come down to git him.”
“How will you unlock his cell?”
“Let me worry about that. Like I say, I aint even sure he would want to go. He’d be a fool not to, but maybe he’d rather take his chances with life at Tucker. If he does go over the wall with me, he caint go home with me. When we git out of Pulaski County, we split up: he can go home to Timbo or wherever, or go to Paris to study art like you did, or whatever he wants to do. But you better say your good-byes to him this afternoon, because you might not never see him again. So you jist tell him this: tell him that if he wants to go with me, for him to say, when we’re back in our cells together, for him to say, ‘Yes, it might be clear Sunday,’ and I’ll know he wants to go. Okay?”
“I’m so excited,” she said.
“I’m so bored,” said Bird, and they looked up at the trusty-guard looming over them. He added, “Y’all’s time is about up.”
“I wanted to thank you for the basket you brought last time,” Nail said to her. “I ’preciate ever bit of it.”
“Did you read the books?”
“Ever word,” he said. “Except in Dr. Hood, I couldn’t read all them words, and Dempsey give me this here electrical book to memorize that’s givin me eyestrain. I’ll need spectacles before long.”
“Did you—did you have any trouble with Gertrude Stein, or the Fletcher poems?”
“Not a bit. That lady can really use words. I read some of it two or three times, just to make sure it was as good as I thought the first time. And you tell your ole boss, when you see him, to thank Mr. Fletcher for what he wrote to me in his poetry book, and to tell him that I think he ought to be back home in Arkansas where he belongs instead of over there in London.”
Viridis laughed. “I agree. I’ll