The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [81]
Dorthlee’s father decided to move to Oklahoma, where some of the good Indian lands were being opened to settlement, and the McCoys left Stay More. “Not too fur along after that,” Nancy told Viridis, “in August I reckon it was, I happent to look out the winder and I seen little Nail out yonder there again in my flar gyarden. I snuck up behind ’im and susprised ’im.” Nancy paused, wearing a great smile of fond reminiscence and wonder, and then she finished: “And Nail looked up at me, holdin this yere bouquet of flars, and he said, ‘Miz Chism, Nail’s a-pickin yore flars.’”
Viridis laughed, although a tear touched the edge of her eye, and said, “And you were so tickled you didn’t punish him that time?”
“That’s right. I jist busted out laughin. The funniest thing was, was the way he said it. He sounded jist exactly lak Dorthlee!”
Seth Chism too told some stories of his experience with the young Nail. One of these stories, he said, was famous all over Newton County: When Nail was just seven or eight, and hadn’t yet started helping out at the still but knew where it was, he was playing out under his maple tree one day—he spent nearly all his time a-cootering around beneath that old maple out in the front yard—when a stranger rode up, a man on a big horse. Others who had seen the man said later that they couldn’t tell whether or not the man was a government agent but it sure was a government horse. Anyway, he asked Nail where his daddy was, and Nail come right out and said, “Oh, Paw’s down in the holler, makin whiskey.” And the man asked, “Well, where’s your mother?” and Nail said, “Maw’s down there a-holpin him.” “Sonny,” said the man, “I’ll give ye fifty cents if you’ll tell me how to get to where your father and mother are at.” Young Nail just held out his hand for the fifty cents, but the man said, “No. No. I’ll give ye the money when I git back.” Nail shook his head and continued holding out his hand. “You aint a-comin back,” he said.
At noon Nancy Chism stepped on the porch to sound a dinner triangle, and the ringing of it brought Waymon Chism and his wife Faye up from the house below, and they all had dinner together. Nail’s older brother, Viridis observed, didn’t look much like him; he wasn’t as tall, or as sinewy, and his eyes didn’t have the quality that Nail’s had, of seeming to understand everything at a glance with not simply intelligence but tolerance and quiet understanding. Like his parents and Irene and Luther, Waymon was eager to talk about Nail. Just a few more hours would pass before I would discover for myself what it was about Viridis Monday that could get Waymon Chism to open up and talk in a way that he wouldn’t talk with strangers, let alone women: not just that he sensed she was there to help, or honestly intended to do everything she could to help; possibly she even had the power to help. In this regard she impressed Waymon in a way that Farrell Cobb had not.
But Viridis’ presence in the Chism household almost started a family quarrel. If there was only one quality of Nail’s that his brother Waymon possessed, it was a sense of outrage, a quick temper that bridled at injustice. The Chisms may have been lawbreakers, in that moonshining was illegal, but Seth Chism had taught his sons principles of honesty and justice from childhood. Seth had taught his boys never to start a fight but, if the other fellow started it, to finish it quickly to the other fellow’s sorrow. Waymon Chism had told so many people that he intended to kill Sull Jerram if anything happened to Nail that word of this threat had reached Sull, and now Sull was threatening to kill Waymon