The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [69]
She saw him again at the age of nine, alone, building his play roads beneath the maple. Alone because, Nancy Nail Chism had told her, the nearest kid his own age, E.H. Ingledew (always called E.H.), now the village dentist (who’d sat Viridis in his chair while he answered her questions because that was the only way he could talk to anyone), lived a long way off and was from a better family that didn’t “mix” with the Chisms.
A precious one of their fifteen allotted minutes escaped while Nail reminisced about the trees in his yard and Viridis again pictured him there. She was hoping he wouldn’t ask about his brother Waymon so that she wouldn’t have to tell him.
“Well,” he said at length, “didje git to talk to Latha Bourne?”
“Oh, yes!” Viridis exclaimed. “You told me once there were only three people who really know you are innocent: yourself, your mother, and Dorinda. That’s a very conservative estimate. Everyone in Stay More believes you are innocent, but Latha Bourne knows you are innocent. She’s a remarkable young lady. She is, as you told me, honest and smart and kind. I’m very fond of Latha Bourne.”
Nail shook his head. “What I could never figure is how come a nice girl like her become chummy with Rindy Whitter in the first place.”
She looked at him. She did not know how to say this, but she tried: “Dorinda Whitter is not totally bad. She’s not very intelligent, and what little sense she has is corrupted by her greed and selfishness, but she is not hopelessly malignant.”
“Oh, so you talked to her too?”
“I talked to everyone, Nail.”
“Everyone? That’s an awful lot of people.”
Their allotted time was running out. She opened her purse and took out the bundle of pages and peeled off the top sheet. “Let me read the beginning,” she said, and read: “‘To His Excellency Governor George W. Hays. We, the undersigned, residents and voters of Newton County, Arkansas, do hereby solemnly petition Your Excellency to consider the sentence of death under which our friend, Nail Chism, has been placed, wrongly we feel. We each and severally believe him to be innocent of the crime of which he was charged, and we humbly entreat Your Excellency to wield your authority to pardon him, or at least to commute the sentence of death.’”
Viridis held up the many sheets so that Nail could see the signatures. “There are 2,806 names here, in all,” she said. “Of course, many of them are just X’s, but in each case where the person was unable to write his or her name, I have filled it in beside the X. See?” She held up page after page for his scrutiny.
Nail peered at the sheets as closely as the screen would allow. “I declare, you’ve got everbody on there!” he exclaimed. And she did, and she knew it: people from all over Newton County but particularly the Stay Morons: all the Ingledews, Duckworths, Plowrights, Swains, Coes, Chisms, Bullens, Bournes, Murrisons, Cluleys, Dinsmores, Kimbers…yes, even the Whitters. Of course all of the names were male; a voteless woman’s name carried no weight with the governor. But there was one female name, and Viridis held her forefinger on it and said, “Now, here’s an X, but beside it there’s an attempt to spell out the name. Can you make out the letters?”
Nail slowly read and spoke each letter. “D,” he said. “O, and R, and I, and N, and—” He stopped, he looked up at Viridis, and his eyes were questioning so that what he said next sounded almost like a question but was actually a statement, just whispered: “It’s her.”
Viridis nodded. “Now, listen, Nail. Our time is almost up. I’m going to go home and try to write you some of the things that I don’t have time to tell you, and I’ll get Farrell Cobb to bring you the letter within a week. There’s so much I have to tell you about my trip to Stay More. I have to tell you about Judge Jerram…”
“Don’t tell me you