The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [165]
Usually when she rode out to Pinnacle, she would rest the mare and herself at the foot of the mountain for a while before returning to town. She told herself this time to take it easy, that she wouldn’t need to start for the sycamore southwest of the penitentiary until midafternoon at the earliest, but she was too impatient and eager. If nothing else, she could spend the rest of the day finishing her letter to Nail, which she would enclose in the canvas bag, even if it was already too long and, she feared, too candid.
She scarcely gave Rosabone time to dry her sweat before heading back for town. More than once she met or passed an auto painted with the insignia of the Pulaski County Sheriff or the Little Rock Police, and more than once an officer waved at her; one time a deputy honked his horn at her before waving. They all grinned as if they would like to give chase but had more important things to do. She did not think there was anything unusual about so many lawmen being on the roads on Saturday morning, but later she would remember them.
When she returned to her house, her father was sitting on the porch in his favorite wicker chair, reading the Gazette, as he always did Saturdays and Sundays. He motioned her to sit in the wicker chair next to his, but she said, “No, thank you, Daddy. I’ve got an awful lot to do today.”
“Meeting someone?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I’m not meeting anyone.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, and then he turned the paper so that she could see the front page. There was her original drawing of Nail, with his head shaved for his first appointment with the chair, with a caption: NOTED CONVICT WHO MADE ESCAPE. Her eyes shifted to the headline to the left of it: NAIL CHISM SCALES WALLS AT ‘PEN’ AND ESCAPES. Viridis snatched the paper out of her father’s hands and sat down with it in the other wicker chair.
There were no fewer than four subheadlines, one right under the other: NOTED NEWTON COUNTY MAN, CONVICTED RAPIST PREPARED THREE TIMES FOR ELECTRIC CHAIR, TAKES FRENCH LEAVE, and the second one: ACCOMPLICE IN ESCAPE, YOUNG BODENHAMMER, THWARTED AND CAUGHT, and the third one: $100 REWARD OFFERED FOR CHISM’S RECAPTURE, and the fourth one: NEWTON COUNTY ALERTED; FULL MANHUNT PROMISED.
The accompanying story pointed out that Nail Chism was only the second man ever to escape from The Walls since it was erected; but the first one, J.F. McCabe, had made his escape long before the recent “improvements” that had supposedly rendered the prison escape-proof.
The article even carried a reference to her, not by name, in its fifth paragraph: “A Little Rock woman who had conducted a long campaign to liberate Chism, whom she felt had been unjustly accused of the crime, will be sought for questioning later today by the sheriff’s office.”
“Well, thanks for warning me!” Viridis said aloud.
“I wasn’t warning you,” her father protested. “That story has already done it.”
“I was talking to the story,” Viridis said. She resumed listening to it; it told her that Ernest Bodenhammer was in St. Vincent’s Infirmary, where doctors had been required to place most of his body in a plaster cast. It was feared that he might be permanently paralyzed, although his neck was not broken. Apparently, he had sustained his injuries in an attempt to imitate Chism’s successful leap from the top of the prison wall to a power pole. While Chism had evidently slid down the pole to freedom, the youth, only sixteen, had missed the jump and fallen to the ground.
“Oh, damn!” Viridis said.
“Where are you meeting him?” her father asked.
“St. Vincent’s Infirmary,” Viridis answered.
“Not him,” her father said. “Not the boy. Aren’t you meeting the man somewhere today? Or is it the boy you’re really interested in?”
“Daddy, listen, I’ve got to—” she started to tell her father, but they were interrupted. Two autos pulled to a stop in front of the Monday house. The first one contained two men she recognized, Sheriff Bill Hutton