The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [43]
“Well, Chism, you son of a bitch, what do you have to say?” the warden demanded.
“I,” said Nail. It was all he could get out for a moment, as if he had said “aye.” And at last he said the rest of it: “I’m right glad of that.”
“You better be ‘right glad,’ you bastard,” the warden commented. “Gabe, put the cuffs back on him. Take his stuff out of that death cell and throw him in with the others in the stockade. Let me know how he likes that.”
The two guards took his arms once again and started to lead him out of Old Sparky’s room. Fat Gabe was fit to be tied, he was so disappointed that Nail hadn’t got it. Nail was going to be in real trouble with Fat Gabe.
“Wait, Mr. Burdell,” said the lady from the newspaper, the one called Miss Monday. “Would it be possible for me to interview the prisoner before you return him to his cell?”
“Interview him?” said the warden. “What for?”
“Well,” she said, “I’d just like to write up how it feels to escape death.”
The warden snorted. “You jist heard him say he’s ‘right glad,’ didn’t you? What else could any man say?”
“Could I just ask him a few questions?” she requested.
The warden looked back and forth between the lady and Nail. “Okay,” the warden said. “Here he is. Ask him.”
“Do you mind?” she said. “He’s not going to feel free to talk with everyone standing around like this.”
“Well, I aint gon let y’all use the visit room,” Burdell told her. “We don’t let condemned men use the visit room.”
“He isn’t condemned anymore, is he?”
“He aint been pardoned, Miss Monday. He’s only been reprieved.”
The lady gestured at the witnesses’ chairs, two rows of wooden folding chairs at one side of Old Sparky’s room. “Couldn’t we just sit here a few minutes?” she asked.
Again the warden needed time to make up his mind. His brains is real slow, Nail reflected. “Well, okay, I guess,” he said finally. “I’ll have to leave Gabe here with y’all, and let me remind you, ma’am, this person is a convicted rapist and is dangerous. I ought to hang around too, but, hell, I’m late for my supper already.”
“Mr. McChristian can handle it,” the lady said, calling Fat Gabe by his proper name.
“Mister McChristian, huh?” the warden said, as if he’d never heard nobody call ole Gabe that before. “Well, Mister McChristian, you watch ’im, and if he tries any funny stuff you beat the everlastin sh—horse hockey out of him.”
The warden and the others left the room. Nail sat down in the same chair he’d sat in to watch Skip get electrocuted, and Miss Monday sat in the same chair where she’d been sitting. Fat Gabe watched them as if they were getting ready to pull something funny. A sudden inspiration occurred to Nail: he could reach inside his jacket, take his blade, kill Fat Gabe with it, then take the woman hostage and break out of here. He would have to handle it carefully: right now Fat Gabe was far enough away to pull his gun beforehand. Nail would have to get him closer. But with these handcuffs back on his wrists, he wasn’t sure that he could handle it, even if he got Fat Gabe close enough and moved fast enough. He hadn’t even had a chance when he’d tried to reach his blade as Fat Gabe and Short Leg were putting him into the chair. They hadn’t even given him enough time to—
“Hello.”
The lady had spoken to him. He realized he wasn’t paying her much attention. He looked at her. She had her notepad out, and a broken piece of charcoal pencil, which was all she had to write with, the same pencil she’d made that mark on his hand with before, the same pencil she’d used to draw that portrait of him that made him look so awful, the pencil now broken. “Howdy,” he said.
“How does it feel?” she asked. “Or is that a stupid question? Were you all prepared to die?”
“No, ma’am,” he answered her. “I’ll never be prepared to die, until I’m real old and there aint nothin to live for no more.”
She wrote this down, or tried to, the dull charcoal pencil making big clumsy letters, with few to a sheet before she had to turn the page over. Then she asked, “Did you really think