The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [7]
“Yeah, I reckon ye could say Sull’s cookin up mischief,” Jim Tom Duckworth told Seth Chism when Jim Tom dropped by to get his demijohn refilled. Jim Tom was Stay More’s own native-born lawyer, our representative to the courthouse, our spokesman and champion before the bar of justice. “But jist whut-all mischief he’s into, I couldn’t tell ye. I do know that he’s aimin to see if he caint git hisself elected ass-essor, and I tell ye, once a man gits to be ass-essor, next thing you know he’s runnin fer treasurer, and then watch out if he don’t run fer sherf, or even jedge.”
Whatever Sull Jerram was running for, it didn’t claim any of the attention he devoted to pursuing Irene Chism, or to trying to get Nail to leave them alone for a little bit. Nail couldn’t be bribed. He couldn’t be threatened. He could be cajoled, that is, he would politely listen to cajolery, but he wouldn’t necessarily respond to it.
The first words Sull Jerram ever spoke to Nail Chism were: “Go tell yore momma she’s a-lookin fer ye.”
And young, green Nail actually took several steps in the direction of carrying out this request before it dawned on him that it was a trick, a foolery of words; Sull and Irene were laughing at him. Some time later Nail was wary when Sull told him he’d seen a man just back up the road a little ways giving away puppies. “Hurry, and you’d catch him,” Sull suggested, and Nail was almost out of sight, this time, before he realized it was just another trick.
Once, eventually, Sull Jerram told Nail that he and Irene and Nail, just the three of them, were going to walk up to a glade on the side of Ledbetter Mountain where there were a lot of snipes. A snipe is a kind of bird, Sull explained, although Nail wondered why a town boy would claim to know more ornithology than he himself knew, and he knew there weren’t any snipes, not of the sandpiper sort, in the vicinity of Ledbetter Mountain. Sull explained that these snipes only migrated through at certain seasons, and there was this glade up yonder where them snipes liked to visit. Sull gave Nail a towsack made of burlap. “Now what we’re gonna do is,” Sull explained when they got to the glade, “is me and Irene are gonna go over thar in that bresh and wave our arms about and flush ’em out of thar, and you stand over yere with this yere sack, and when they come a-runnin, you jist herd ’em into the sack. See?”
“Birds don’t run,” Nail said. “They fly.”
“Not these yere snipes,” Sull said. “Now you jist do like I tell ye, and we’ll have us a mess of good eatin fer supper tonight.”
Nail watched them disappear, or almost. It is very bad luck to watch someone walk all the way out of sight. He had never seen anybody walk out of sight, least of all his sister Irene, who had rarely ever been out of his sight before, except when she’d gone out to the bushes on a call of nature. Maybe, he thought, waiting and turning aside so as not to watch them disappear, she’s on another call of nature, kind of.
They did not return, nor were there any snipes or other birds, except a pair of prothonotary warblers. After half an hour Nail began to look for Irene and Sull, and then to call for his sister, but he got no answer. That night she apologized for the trick Sull had played on him.
“Where did you’uns go?” Nail asked. “What didje do?”
“Oh, honey,” she said in her musical voice, “sometimes I jist need to git away from you.” She asked him not to tell anybody else what had happened.
He was careful not to let her out of his sight again, and he was within earshot when he heard his mother start in to faulting Irene for being “knocked up,” whatever that was. He listened. His mother began hollering. Then she called for him, and he came, and she said, “Nail, chile, you was sposed to keep a eye on her and Sull, and watch ’em, and pick gooseberries, and take keer of her.”
“I did,” Nail lied.
His mother slapped him. It was the first time she