The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [159]
Still unsteady, Ernest hesitated as he stared at the power pole and then pantomimed the first tentative flexing of his knees in order to leap. Nail realized that it might have been like this if he had gone first to the chair: watching Nail get electrocuted might have made it all that much harder for Ernest. Here Nail only wanted to show him how it was done. But was he leading the boy to attempt an act beyond his strength and ability?
Nail wanted to pray. But he did not. He heard the trees praying for him. Out there, beyond The Walls, they were all over: real trees, saplings and old ones, hickories, oaks, scrub pine and white pine, blackjack, all kinds of trees crooning to Ernest the song to get him out to that pole and down to the ground.
The singing stopped. Light shone on Ernest. The tower guards had obtained lanterns. “THERE HE IS!” a guard yelled, and another guard yelled, “HOLD THAT LIGHT STEADY AND LET ME GIT A SHOT AT HIM!”
“Jump!” Nail yelled up at the boy. “For godsakes, jump and grab the pole!”
Ernest flexed his knees once again and sprang out for all he was worth.
For more than he was worth: he jumped much too hard and almost caused the pole to bend with the force of his body slamming into it, stunning himself so brutally that he could only make the most clumsy grabs at the pole with his hands before he fell the forty feet to the ground, flat out.
Nail knelt quickly beside him. Ernest moaned. He was alive and conscious. Nail smelled something and realized it was the mustard oil: Ernest’s fall had broken the bottle. “Can you move?” Nail asked, and tried to get him to sit up or roll over.
Ernest shook his head and groaned weakly, “I reckon I’ve done busted ever bone in my body.” Nail tugged at his arm. “Ouch! Naw, I caint move. I’ve had it, Nail. You git on. Git on out of here.”
Nail fished the bottle of mustard oil out of the waistband at the side of Ernest’s trousers. The bottle was only cracked, and there was a good bit of oil left. He began smearing it on Ernest. “I’ll rub this stuff on ye so the dogs caint smell ye, and I’ll drag ye off in the woods and—”
“You aint got time!” Ernest protested. “Please, Nail, git yoreself out of yere while ye still got a chanst!”
“I caint jist leave ye!” Nail told him.
“The hell ye caint! You’d be a damn fool not to. You’d regret it all the rest of the days they’d keep ye back in those walls before they fried ye! Go, goddamn ye, git and go!”
Nail heard the warden’s bloodhounds, who already knew Ernest’s scent, being taken out of their pens. Nail said, “I shore hate this.”
“Don’t make me baig again,” Ernest begged. “Jist go.”
Nail began to smear the mustard oil on his shoes and legs and arms and hands. Then it was all gone. “Ernest…” He tried to say some last words.
Then the lanterns of the tower guards found them, and he heard a guard yell, “THERE HE IS! THERE’S TWO OF THEM!”
“Go,” Ernest said, weakly. “Go, go, go on and go.”
“Good-bye, son,” Nail said. “Somebody will take care of you.” Then he sprang up and began running.
He heard the rifles firing. Were they shooting at Ernest? Would they kill a fallen boy?
In the dark, Nail could not keep running. It had been a long time since he had taken a good walk, and much longer since he had run. The dogs would be able to outrun him because they could see much better in the dark. But finding Ernest would slow them down. He hoped the guards handling the dogs would stop them before they started into gnawing on Ernest…if they hadn’t already shot him.
Nail paused at the edge of the swamp to catch his breath and listen. He heard the dogs behind him, in the distance, trying to find his trail. He had so much mustard oil on him they couldn