The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [62]
“Warden Burdell, sir,” Nail managed to say, although his words were nearly drowned by the men tramping the floor with their feet. “I sure do ’preciate you lettin us men have a good Christmas dinner like this. I know I don’t deserve it, and I know I don’t deserve nothin on account of my misbehavior. But I jist want to thank you, sir. It is real good of you. And Merry Christmas to you, Mr. Burdell.”
“Same to you, Chism,” Burdell said, without smiling but without any rancor or malice in his voice.
“Sir, my brother told me that our ole mother is a-dyin, and he ast me could I jist send her a few last words. Sir, would there be any way I could git me some writin-paper and a pencil? Sir, I’d do jist anything if I could have me somethin to write a letter to my dyin mother.”
The line was beginning to move. Nail looked pleadingly over his shoulder at Mr. Burdell, who did not seem to have heard him. But a few days later one of the blacks who waited on the table at dinner wordlessly placed beside Nail’s plate a lead pencil and a penny tablet of lined paper, which, Nail counted, contained twenty sheets. He used a sheet dutifully to write a letter for Mr. Burdell to see, censor, and mail:
Dear Momma,
Waymon told me about you. I hope you are better. You know we are going to meet again in Heaven, where they are saving a special place for you. I’m sorry you did not get to see me again. Waymon said you were not able to come with him to Little Rock, and I understand. You must try to take care of your self better. I wish there was something I could say to make you feel better but all I can say is I love you and do not worry about me. What happens to me is in the hands of some one far better than me. And I aim to see you, all bye and bye, and you can count on it. Please be happy.
Your son with love for ever,
Nail
His mother might puzzle just a little over that—if she got it—but he knew that Waymon would help her understand any of it that she couldn’t, and he would explain the rest of it to her when he saw her, not in Heaven, which was a strange land to him, but in Stay More, one of these days.
Then he used several sheets of the penny tablet to write the following, which he did not give to Mr. Burdell to see, censor, and keep from mailing.
December 29–31, 1914
Dear Miss Monday,
How can I hope to answer? You write like the morning breeze soughing through the cedars, like a hive full of honey, like sun climb on the ridge, you write easy as breathing, like an angel’s sigh, and I am dumb.
How can I hope to thank you? You give me more than a gift, far more than this tiny tree trophy I’m wearing now next to my lungs, far more than any fruit basket or book you want to bring me, even far more than the many hours you’ve done already spent talking to folks on my behalf. You give me hope, real hope, but that is not the greatest gift. You give me your “attentions and devotion,” although you call them a burden and they aren’t, but they are not the greatest gift either. You give me words nice as music singing where my merit hides, but they are not the gift which gladdens me greatestly.
The gift which greatestly humbles me beyond any speaking of thanks is that this world don’t have very many women in it who are able to like themself enough so that they have so much left over they can give some to a man, and you are one of those, you give me some of that self-respect or self-liking that you have left over after you get done helping yourself to it.
I would beg you please don’t misunderstand if I did not think you know what I mean without any insult or accusing you of pride or airs or vanity, which I don’t mean at all. You are not just a uncommon kind woman, Viridis Monday, but a woman more uncommon than that: a smart kind woman. Not a woman who is kind because she is too dumb to know any better and goes around trusting everbody and being sweet and stupid and benevolent because there’s not a thought in her head to keep her from thinking she ought to trust and be sweet. No, you