The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [216]
“We’d have to be real keerful, wouldn’t we?” he will allow. I will observe that just the talking about it, just the implication that we might do it again sometime, has given him a noticeable bulging in the fork of his overalls, which I will recognize from having seen on another male just the day before. For a moment I will be possessed of a wild urge to grab his hand and lead him off to the barn, until I recall that I am custodian of twenty-four pots of chicken and dumplings and have not yet decided how I am going to transport even one of them up to the glen of the waterfall. And I will realize that, possessed as I am by this urge, I have not been listening carefully, and that Every has asked me a question.
“What did ye say?” I will ask.
“I ast ye, when?” he will say. “When can we?”
I am about to reply, when we are interrupted by the arrival of the twenty-fifth bowl of chicken and dumplings. It will come by automobile, the first one to enter our yard in quite a spell. The driver of the car will be a man I haven’t seen in quite a longer spell, but I will remember him from his trip to Stay More with the sheriff and Judge Jerram, and I will certainly remember him from his courtroom, where I had to testify. It will be Judge Lincoln Villines, alone again like the time he came to pay a call on Viridis and the old woman.
He will stand in the yard, holding the fancy china serving-dish and looking at me and then at Every. “Howdy,” he will say, and then squint his eyes at me again. “You shore are Latha Bourne, aint ye? I seem to recall you from once I seen you afore.” When I nod my head in acknowledgment, he will say, “I was tole that you was the one could take this yere bowl of victuals up to Nail Chism and his ladyfriend.” When I nod again, taking the bowl from him and setting it among the others, he will glance at Every and say, “But I don’t believe I know you.”
“I was just leavin anyhow,” Every will say, and start shuffling off. “See you later, Latha,” he will say.
I will be a little put out with Every, that he has taken off like that and left me alone to deal with the judge, who will now watch as Every disappears and turn back to me to ask, “Your brother?”
“My beau,” I will say.
The judge will snort a laugh but then cover his mouth with his hand. “Aint you kind of young to carry that bowl way off through the woods to where they’re hidin?”
I will point at the hodgepodge of bowls filling the porch. “No, but I reckon I’m too young to figger out some way to get all them other bowls up to ’em.”
The judge will finally notice the great assortment of other bowls and look at them like a suitor appraising the crowd of fellow suitors for a lady’s hand. “What’s in them?” he will ask.
“Same as what’s in yourn,” I will say.
“Chicken’n dumplins?” he will ask.
“Yep,” I will say.
“My, my,” he will say, and will meditate upon the fact, like a suitor discovering that his competition is just as strong and handsome and rich as he is. “News shore travels fast, don’t it?” Then he will ask, “Wal, how air ye figgerin on gittin even one of them bowls up the mountain to ’em?”
“I got two hands, aint I?”
“Yeah, but it’s a fur ways off,” he will say. “Real fur off.”
I will begin wondering how he happens to know just how far off it is. His reference to “the woods where they are hidin” and “up the mountain” will indicate to me that he has a pretty good idea of where they are. I will wonder if the news traveling fast has told the whole world not only that Nail Chism has a hankering for some chicken and dumplings but also just where he’s hiding. But nobody else will know, except me and Doc Swain, who surely will not have told anybody.
It will suddenly dawn on me why, or rather how, Judge Lincoln Villines knows where Nail and Viridis are. But I will pretend ignorance and innocence and will tell him, “The reason I aint taken any of these bowls up