The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [66]
But, as always, Farrell Cobb was not disposed to hang around for chitchat or complicated stories. He drew a piece of paper out of his pocket and said, “Sign this, please. It’s a shot in the dark, a hundred-to-one chance, but it’s all we can do. Do you understand what a habeas corpus is?” When Nail shook his head, the lawyer explained, “The writ might get you out of here and into a courtroom for a hearing. But as I say, probably not. And if not, your execution has been reset for April 20th.”
Before Cobb could leave, Nail remembered Dr. Hood and got the book from under the bunk and took out the letter for Miss Monday. He looked around. Nobody was watching or paying any attention except Timbo Red, and he was a friend. “Mr. Cobb, could you deliver this for me?” Nail asked his lawyer. “Or someway get it to her? It’s my answer to what she wrote.”
Cobb grinned, winked conspiratorially, took the letter, and put it inside his coat. “I feel like Cupid,” he remarked.
“Look,” Nail said, “if they’re gonna go ahead and electercute me in April, I don’t guess there’s anything she could do to stop them. So tell her that, would ye?”
“She already knows,” Cobb said. “But I think she’s still determined to save you. How, I don’t know.”
When Cobb had left, Timbo Red said to Nail, “Now I reckon I know why you carry that blade around yore neck. You aim to use it if they try to kill ye. Just hurtin ye aint enough, but if they try to kill ye, you’ll take a few to Hell with ye.”
For the rest of January, Nail waited to see if Cobb would come again with more news or another letter from Viridis Monday. He did not. Just as Viridis Monday had reread her earlier letters to Nail to determine why he hadn’t answered them (when in fact he hadn’t received them), Nail began to call up the words he had written to her and wonder if he had said anything that might have offended her or put her off. All he could find in his memory of his letter was that business about his sheep having a better smile than hers. Maybe that insulted her. But maybe she was planning to come see him instead of write to him again. Nail was owed a fifteen-minute trip to the visit room this month, and he kept hoping that Short Leg would come and take him there, but Short Leg did not.
Most of the men who were not taken out each day to work were transferred to the new prison farm at Tucker downstate, where conditions were supposed to be even worse than here, and there were afternoons when Nail had the barracks practically all to himself, because even Timbo Red was out somewhere working. The only ones besides Nail who didn’t get sent out to work were those too sick or too frostbitten or too injured from floggings to be able to move. Nail wasn’t sick anymore, but they wouldn’t send him out, because of the law.
He never left the building until, late in the afternoon on January 30th, Short Leg came and got him. Nail’s low spirits soared up, and he walked so briskly that Short Leg had to grab him at one point when he was heading toward the visit room and say, “Not that way, Chism. This way,” and then led him into the power and light building where Old Sparky was. For one terrible moment Nail thought perhaps he’d misunderstood the lawyer and that Farrell Cobb hadn’t said April 20th but January 30th, or maybe it was already April 20th and Nail hadn’t been paying good attention.
But it was just that he was required to witness again. It was time for Ramsey. Nail was the first witness to sit, and before the others came he had to sit a long time, expecting and hoping that any minute the door would open and in would walk Miss Monday to do her drawing of Ramsey. Nail looked at the window and calculated that sundown was maybe still half an hour off, and maybe Viridis Monday could come and sit beside him and they could talk for a while, and if no one was looking he’d even sneak her a peek at his tree-shaped gent’s charm. He’d thank her again in a way he couldn’t do in writing because he couldn’t express himself that way. He’d thank her most for wanting