The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [157]
“Nails?” said Sam Bell. “Is that you, Nails? What’s up?”
It seemed it was the very last key on the ring that finally opened the bars of Ernest’s cell. He felt Ernest’s arm and gave it a tug. Only after he passed his own empty cell did he remember he’d intended to pick up the copy of Fletcher’s poems, but he did not turn back for it.
“Nails!” hollered Sam Bell. “Is this a bust? Are you coppin a lam? What’s goin on? Take us too! Dewey! You still there? Joe? Timbo Red? Who’s bustin out? Who’s stayin?” Dewey’s and Joe’s voices joined in and followed them all the way up the stairs. Nail shut the door on them.
Ernest looked at Fat Gill lying on the floor. “You kill him?” he asked Nail.
“Naw, I jist give ’im a knot on his head.”
“We got a secont?” Ernest requested. “I want to say good-bye to Old Sparky.”
“That door.” Nail pointed, and Ernest went through it. Nail followed and turned on the one green-shaded overhead light that illuminated the death chamber. The familiar stage seemed strange, empty of all its actors…and its actress. The chair needed dusting. Ernest stood and stared down at it. Old Sparky looked far less menacing than Ernest had depicted it—as harmless, in fact, as some derelict piece of obsolete machinery. Ernest gave its leg a little kick with his shoe and said, “Mr. Spark, I hope you don’t never git another customer. You won’t git me.”
“Come on,” Nail urged, leading him out. “Let’s git that ladder.” Nail reached up into the top shelf of the broom closet and found the key Viridis had smuggled in to him, and the whiskey pint bottle filled with mustard oil. He gave the bottle to Ernest and said, “Carry this. Don’t lose it.”
“Can I have a drink of it first?” Ernest asked.
“It aint to drink,” Nail said. “It’s mustard oil.”
“What’s it for?”
Nail didn’t want to take the time to explain. “Now look, Ernest,” he said, more severely than he intended, “you let me do the talkin on this little trip. You jist do what I tell you and keep your mouth shut.”
Nail unlocked the padlocks holding the ladder to the wall. He decided to return Fat Gill’s key-ring to his belt. Then he tightened the fuse that ran to the circuit of the projector. They could hear the men in the barracks cheering as the motion picture resumed. It would be a few minutes before the warden or anybody else would begin to wonder why Fat Gill had not returned. And maybe a lot longer, if the movie was really interesting.
“Let’s go,” he said. The last thing he did before leaving the powerhouse was to open all of the circuits except the one to the main building, running the projector. The big lights in the guard towers went out. The guards up there would sound an alarm, but now the circuit powering the alarm was open too. By the time the guards could get down from the towers and into the barracks to notify the warden that the searchlights were dead, the searchlights would no longer be needed.
As Nail carried his end of the ladder through his tomato patch, he realized he and Ernest were trampling the young plants, but that couldn’t be helped. He didn’t mind that he would not be here for the harvest in July and August. When he had planted the tomatoes, he hadn’t expected to share in the harvest himself.
The sun was down, but the sky still held some of its light. Nail could hear the guards up in the towers hollering at one another: “What happened to the lights?” and “You got a lantern?” and “Not me. You got one?” Slowly he raised the ladder against the high brick wall. As he had suspected, it did not reach all the way up. That was why he had attached a rope about eight feet long to the top rung: they would have to stand on that rung and reach up and pull themselves up onto the top of the wall and then pull the ladder up after them.
Which they did. Nail went up first and balanced himself carefully on the wall, discovering it wasn’t as broad and thick at the top as