The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [44]
“Yeah, I guess,” he admitted.
“Could you tell me what was going through your mind during those last minutes?” she asked, and added, “If it’s not too hard.”
“Well,” he said. He thought. Both of them were looking not at each other but at Old Sparky sitting there forlorn and cheated but vengeful. He did not know quite how to say it, or even whether to try to tell her. Would she think he was nuts? Or just misunderstand? “I wasn’t really thinkin,” he said. “I was just listenin to the trees singin.”
Her mouth fell open. She thinks I’m crazy, he said to himself, and cursed himself for having tried to tell her. She asked, very quietly, almost whispering, “What did you say?”
“Never mind,” he said.
“No, tell me. Did you say—?”
“Forget it,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was sayin.”
“You said,” she said, “didn’t you? that you were listening to the trees singing? Did you say that?”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “I been feelin awful, tell you the truth, I don’t know what I was sayin.”
She laid a hand on his arm. “That’s strange, because—”
“Don’t touch the prisoner!” Fat Gabe hollered. “No con-tack allowed!”
She removed her hand and continued her sentence: “Because I was hearing the same thing. Trees. I heard trees singing. I swear.” She laughed, and observed, “I didn’t even know trees can sing.”
A strange lady. He smiled at her and waited for her to ask something else.
“Can they?” she asked.
“Can who what?” he said.
“Trees. Sing.”
“These were.”
“What kind of song?”
“Want me to play it for ye on my harmonica?”
“Yes! Would you?”
“Fat Gabe, would you fetch my harmonica?” he asked, grinning so Fat Gabe would know he was just funning.
Fat Gabe snarled, “I’d like to shove that mouth organ up your—Listen, Chism, why don’t y’all jist shut up this love song and git your goddamn talkin finished?”
“Do you really have a harmonica?” the lady asked Nail.
“Yes’m, I do,” he said.
“I hope—” she said. “I hope sometime I can have a chance to hear you play it.” Then she held out her hand. “My name is Viridis Monday.” He did not take her hand, and then she must have remembered that Fat Gabe had forbidden their touching, for she withdrew her hand.
“I reckon you know my name,” he said. “Pleased to meet ye. And you know, don’t ye? that I wouldn’t be alive right this minute if you hadn’t drew that pitcher.”
She smiled. She had such a nice, pretty, clean smile, teeth real good and straight and white. She didn’t use a whole lot of lip-rouge either, the way most women did these days. She said, “Mr. Chism, I’d like to help you. I’d like to do some investigating. I’m not really a reporter, I suppose you know. I’m just an illustrator. But I know how to do what reporters do, such as checking into facts. There’s one fact I’d like to determine: whether or not you…you actually did what they said you did, to that thirteen-year-old girl.”
Nobody had made any reference to Rindy in a long time, and at the mention of her Nail clenched his jaw, narrowed his eyes, and took an involuntary deep breath. “Lady,” he said, “there’s only three people on this earth who honestly and truly believe that I’m innocent. One of ’em is me, of course. The other’n is my mother. And the third one—” he paused, and gritted his teeth to pronounce her name: “is Miss Dorinda Whitter, the so-called victim.”
“I would like,” Miss Monday announced, “to talk to all three of you. Right now I’m talking to you. Why do you think the girl would have falsely accused you?”
“Now, that’s a real long story,” he said. “Fat Gabe aint et his supper either, and he aint gonna want to hang around and let me tell it to you. Right, Fat Gabe?”
“Boy,” Fat Gabe snarled, “I’ve tole you before: you don’t never ask me no questions. I do the askin, you hear me?”
“Yes, boss,” Nail said, knowing that Fat Gabe was going to get real mean with him as soon as this lady left. Again he flirted with the notion of killing Fat Gabe now and taking this lady hostage, but this lady, he decided, was too nice