The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [51]
The gong clanged to signal the end of suppertime. The men stood as one, executed a right face—except Farrell Cobb, who turned the wrong way—and marched out in lockstep. Mr. Cobb got himself in line and attempted the lockstep in following after Nail, continuing to talk into his ear from behind but having to crane his neck to do so: “Judge Bourland said, and I quote him, that your defense was ‘butchered.’ Without naming names, he as much as called your James Thomas Duckworth a dolt and a bungling idiot who ought to be disbarred. I know that if we get the case to the full court when it meets again in January, we can convince them that Duckworth didn’t take the proper steps for appeal, not to mention that he made a perfect shambles of the trial itself.” At the door to the barracks, which Farrell Cobb could not enter, he quickly asked, “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything you need?”
“You said you’d get me home for Christmas,” Nail reminded him.
“Well, I am always an optimist,” Cobb said. “In this profession you must be constantly hopeful and confident. What say let’s shoot for Valentine’s Day, at the latest?”
Later Fat Gabe came to his bunk, with Short Leg and two of the Negro trusties, whose job, he discovered, was restraint more than anything else. “Uh-oh,” said Toy, and Stardust looked off into the next century, and Thirteen pretended he didn’t exist.
Fat Gabe said to Nail, “Who told you to talk to that man?”
“He did most of the talkin,” Nail replied.
“You think you’re some kind of privileged person? You think just because you beat the chair you can have special treatment? You think you can have company at supper?”
“I didn’t invite him,” Nail pointed out. “He’s a lawyer.”
“You talkin back to me?” Fat Gabe yelled.
“Nope, I’m jist tellin ye who’s who and who’s what.”
“That lawyer was Farrell Cobb, the biggest ass-licker in Pulaski County,” Fat Gabe said.
“You may be right,” Nail said.
“You sayin I’m not right?” Fat Gabe said.
“Naw, I said you may be right.”
“That’s what I thought you said, Chism. You think you’re somebody important, don’t you, just because you beat the chair? The chair couldn’t kill you, but I’ve got a notion to do it. Take down your pants.”
“Huh?” Nail said. “It’s too cold.”
“TAKE DOWN YOUR PANTS!” Fat Gabe yelled into his face. Nail did nothing. Fat Gabe looked at the two Negro trusties, each in turn. “What are you coons just standin there for? Take off his pants.”
While one of the Negroes and Short Leg held him, the other Negro pulled off his pants and then ripped off his underwear. “Turn ’im around,” Fat Gabe said, and they turned him to face the bunk and held his arms along the upper bunk. Nail could not see the instrument of punishment, but as soon as the first blow had fallen, he could picture it exactly: a strap of harness leather two and a half feet long by two and a half inches wide, attached to a wooden handle sixteen inches long, held in Fat Gabe’s hand, and swung back as far as he could reach. The other convicts made way to give Fat Gabe swinging room. Nail’s father Seth had tanned his hide, the last time, with a length of plow harness, when Nail was eleven years old and had refused to get up in the middle of the night to stoke the boiler in the still. Nail could still remember it, and he remembered counting the blows: ten in all, which had been enough to persuade him to obey his father the next