The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [58]
Timbo Red did not lose his virginity before Christmas, but he got the dose of the strap that Fat Gabe measured out to let anybody new know who was boss. Nail, listening, was not able to determine that it had been provoked. Probably not. Timbo Red seemed to be trying his best to get along with people; his lockstep was always right in line, and he tried to be well behaved and inconspicuous. Somewhere he had found a piece of white chalk, the same kind you write on blackboards with, and he would sit on the concrete floor drawing pictures on it. He could draw pretty fair. More than pretty fair, really. He could make an eagle that looked like an eagle and a black walnut tree that looked like a black walnut. The way he would sit and draw also reminded Nail of Miss Monday. Timbo Red’s drawings got walked on, but he didn’t care, and somebody always pissed on the drawings during the night and erased them that way, but Timbo Red would just start a fresh one the next morning. If Timbo Red ever did anything that might have provoked Fat Gabe, it must have had something to do with the way he was arting up the floor.
But more than likely, Fat Gabe just felt it was time to let the kid know what the strap felt like. Coming from a dirt farm in Stone County, Timbo Red probably knew the feel of harness leather on his hide the same way that Nail did, and he took the first ten lashes without even flinching. Fat Gabe was halfway through the second ten, and panting like a horse, before Timbo Red gave any sign that he even noticed what was happening to his behind. But along about the fourteenth lick the boy started to weaken. He whimpered. At the nineteenth lick he was broken and sobbing. Fat Gabe didn’t stop at twenty. Usually, twenty swings of the strap was all that Fat Gabe could manage at one time, but he was mad because the boy had tried to hold out on him like that, and he kept going. The boy kept sobbing like a child.
Nail didn’t bring out his dagger, although he was tempted. Instead, he brought out his harmonica. He had never played it before where anybody could hear him. He had played it all the time when he was alone in the death hole, but not once since then, and he missed it. Now he wasn’t even sure he could get the tune right, but from the first note he blew into it, he knew he could do a fair job. He played “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” He played it loud, he played it lively, he played if with his tongue and lungs and heart. He played it loud enough to drown out Timbo Red’s crying. He played it louder than the crack of Fat Gabe’s strap.
Everyone listened. A few men tried to hum in tune. From several bunks away a good tenor voice picked up at: “…above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by…”
“Pack it up, Chism!” Fat Gabe hollered, and he stopped beating Timbo Red and started swinging at Nail, who scooted over to the far side of the bunk so Fat Gabe couldn’t reach him without going around. Nail finished the carol and started playing “Deck the Halls.”
One by one or in groups of several, the men of the hall joined in singing the words, and the blacks joined the chorus with: “Deck de haws wif baws ob holly!” One man at the end of the barracks climbed to an upper bunk and stood up and began to conduct the choir, waving his arms as if he’d once been a high-school band director. Everyone was singing.
Fat Gabe stopped beating on Timbo Red and shyly tried to sing, “Fa la la? La la? La la LAH LAH!”
Nail Chism played “Good King Wenceslaus.” He played “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” The three hundred voices singing, or trying to, drifted beyond the wall and reached the warden’s house, the big two-story Victorian on the downslope to the highway. When the warden arrived at the barracks, Nail was playing “Silent Night,” which was the last one that he knew. Mr. Burdell arrived in time to contribute “Sleep in heavenly peace,” twice.
Then he smiled. No one had seen Mr. Burdell smile before. He said, “Well, gentlemen, it looks like you’re already in the spirit of