The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [156]
Nail protested. “I aint fixin no electrical equipment with these here cuffs on me.”
“Warden’s orders,” Fat Gill announced. “He says if you can’t fix whatever’s wrong with the cuffs on, we’ll just have to forget it.”
“Well, shit, let’s go,” Nail grumbled, and let Fat Gill lead him upstairs into the engine room. Nail had to get Fat Gill to do things for him because his hands were cuffed. “Reach up there and open the lid on that box…Now jiggle that little knob there and let’s see what happens. Nope. Must be the other box.” Purposely he led Fat Gill on a false trail of increasing difficulty until he was in a position to suggest, “If you’d jist take these cuffs off of me, we could git finished a lot faster.”
“Sorry,” Fat Gill said. “I’m just doin what the warden told me.”
“Well, give that there knob—no, the next one—give it a sort of one-quarter turn anticlockwise.” Fat Gill did as he was instructed and loosened the fuse to the projector’s circuit, and of course nothing happened, not then. “I reckon we’d better go look at the projector,” Nail suggested, and Fat Gill escorted him out of the powerhouse and up into the barracks, where the men were fidgeting until the show resumed. Warden Yeager himself was there, with Short Leg and some of his best black trusties surrounding his seat.
“What’s the problem, Chism?” Warden Yeager demanded. “What’s takin so long?”
“He put these here cuffs on me,” Nail protested. “How the hell can I fix anything when I have to explain to somebody else what to do?”
“Take ’em off,” the warden told Fat Gill. “He aint gonna try nothin with all of us around.”
Fat Gill removed the handcuffs, and Nail went to work on the old Edison, opening it and fanning away the remaining fumes of the scorched short. Sure enough, it had shorted exactly in the spot where he had twisted that wire before, and the wire’s end had dissolved. He turned to the warden and guards. “Any of you fellers got a pocketknife I could borrow for jist a secont?”
The guards looked uncertainly at the warden, and Yeager said to them, “Well if y’all have one hee hee then give it to him hee hee.” Short Leg produced a pocketknife. “Just take it easy with that thing hee hee,” the warden said to Nail.
Nail scraped the ends of the wire and twisted it tight and firm around its contact. He stepped back dramatically as if expecting something to happen, but nothing did. He jiggled the projector’s switch. He pulled out the plug, turned it around, reinserted it. Nothing happened. “Must be still a fuse or something down in the engine room,” he declared.
By now the prisoners were whistling, clapping, and shouting, “Put a nickel in it!” and “Crank it up!” and “Turn on the steam!” and “Spit on it!” and they were stomping their feet and jumping up and down.
“Well, go fix the fuse hee hee,” the warden said, and Fat Gill escorted Nail back downstairs.
Back in the engine room, Fat Gill wanted to put the cuffs on him again, but Nail protested, “The warden didn’t tell you to.”
“Aint takin no chances,” Fat Gill said, and was holding the manacles open with one hand while he summoned with the other. “Come on, hold out your hands.”
“Well, shit, here,” Nail said, and brought his wrists together and thrust his hands right at Fat Gill, then suddenly raised them under his chin, snapping the guard’s head back and stunning him long enough to throw a punch that caught him on the side of the head and slammed him against the wall. Nail didn’t want to get into a boxing match. Before Fat Gill could recover from the blow, Nail picked up a length of lead conduit and brought it down on the guard’s head, knocking him out. Then Nail took away his key-ring and opened the door leading down into the death hole. There were so many keys on the ring, and he didn’t know which one would fit.
He turned out the lights in the death hole, groped his way down the stairs, and counted past the cells of Dewein and Strong and his own empty cell to Ernest’s. He found the keyhole with his fingers and began inserting one