The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [67]
He didn’t have to yell at Bobo this time. The other witnesses came, but Viridis Monday wasn’t one of them. Burdell came. Fat Gabe came, bringing Ramsey, who was twisting and screaming at the top of his lungs and begging Jesus to save him. For a minute there Nail couldn’t believe it was Ramsey, who had been so silent and withdrawn. But it was him, changed into a wild lunatic. At one point he broke loose from Fat Gabe and fell down at Mr. Burdell’s feet and wrapped his arms around the warden’s legs and begged and pled and said everything he could think of that might move him, but Mr. Burdell just motioned for Fat Gabe and Short Leg to get him back up and into the chair, and they did. Jimmie Mac tried to say the final prayer, but his words were drowned out by Ramsey trying to get people to believe that if he had just one more chance he’d be the best man the world ever knew since Jesus Himself.
Bobo seemed to be relieved to shut out that noise; he seemed to be pushing down a lever that would turn off all that screaming and pleading, and he left that lever down. He left it down too long, and the room filled up with the choking fumes of blackened flesh. One of the witnesses fainted and knocked over another one while he was falling. Another witness vomited all over himself and one of the others.
It was just as well Miss Monday hadn’t been there.
February came. He imagined the buds were a-swelling. The trees were not going to sing for another month or more, but the buds swole up as if the trees were humming in practice and tune-up. The grimy windows of the barracks seemed to be admitting more sunlight. Timbo Red took to drawing daffodils on the floor, not just stick figures with ball flowers stuck on them but real convincing daffodils that you could almost touch, that looked as if they were bright-yellow although they were black-and-white, that smelled like daffodils although they really smelled like piss.
The men who had “sweethearts” among the other men, the punks and queers, had a Valentine’s party and exchanged modest gifts or sentiments. A lucky few men got to go to the visit room to see their real female sweethearts.
The powers of observation of men in prison take one of two directions: either they become oblivious to all but the most glaring sights around them, or they develop an ability to notice the most insignificant and inconspicuous little details. Nail one day noticed that Fat Gabe’s belt had small notches cut along the upper edge, and he counted them, eighteen, and one day after another one of the beaten prisoners had passed away Nail counted again and there were nineteen notches.
One night in bed Timbo Red whispered into Nail’s ear, “Sometimes I git so pruney and itchy I got a mind to go ahead and let Thirteen have me. Unless you want me. I druther it was you.” Nail could not answer that, or respond, but later in the night, when it was clear the boy was not going to be able to sleep, Nail used his hand to get the boy over the mountain.
Often Nail asked himself why it was that he hadn’t been returned to the death hole. If another date had been set for his delayed execution, April 20th, and he was once more condemned, then why wasn’t he back in his old cell in the basement of the power and light? He preferred it there. It was dark and solitary and even scary, but he didn’t have to put up with anybody except whoever was in the other cell, like Ramsey or Skip, who had been all right, for a couple of murderers. Sometimes he was tempted to request that Mr. Burdell return him to the death hole. Only two things kept him from it: one was he was genuinely fond of Timbo Red and wanted to keep an eye out for the boy and help him in whatever way he could, even if it meant what he had done that one night, which wasn’t a