The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [82]
While Viridis was talking to Nancy Chism at the dinner table, she kept hearing mention of a gun in a conversation among Waymon, Seth, and Irene. She attempted to eavesdrop more closely, but every time she and Nancy stopped talking the others would hush.
It was Nancy who spoke up: “What’s this here about a shootin arn?”
Irene started to speak, but Waymon shushed her. “No, Waymon,” Irene blurted, “Maw oughta know it. Sull has got him one of these here automatic pistols, a Colt .45, and he carries it around with him. If Waymon don’t keep away from him, Sull might jist use it on him.”
“He’ll have to draw it first,” Waymon said. “He don’t carry it in no hip-holster like the sherf does. If he started to pull that thang on me, I’d strangle him before he could git his finger to the right place on it.”
“Son, you’d jist better git yoreself a arn,” Seth said to Waymon, and the argument resumed as if Viridis were not listening to it. She sat and listened and tried to figure it out. Waymon refused to carry any weapon other than a pocketknife, which every man carried, not as a weapon but a tool, a utensil. Waymon wasn’t planning to do any violence to Sull Jerram unless something happened to Nail, and now it looked as if maybe this lady Miss Monday could stop them from killing Nail.
But Waymon’s parents and Irene were convinced that Sull Jerram intended to kill Waymon, not so much in actual self-defense as in prevention of Waymon’s ever placing him in a position of having to defend himself. They tried to get Waymon to remember that the sheriff was on Sull’s side, and in fact Sull’s being county judge made him the sheriff’s boss, even if they weren’t such good buddies. But Waymon insisted he wasn’t afraid of no sheriff neither.
After Waymon and Faye had gone home, Nancy and Irene put on their winter wraps and took Viridis out to look at the place. After a big midday dinner they needed a hike, and they walked all the way down into the holler where the big Chism still was perched beside the spring branch on a ledge beneath a bluff. It wasn’t in operation at that time, but Nancy gave Viridis an explanation of how it worked, and Viridis wanted to know which part of the procedure Nail had been responsible for, and they showed her. Then Viridis wanted to see Nail’s sheep pastures, and they took her to them, although they were bare of sheep and even of most grass, just patches of snow melting in the afternoon sun on the hillsides. Coming back to the house, they showed Viridis the maple tree at one corner of the front yard, its branches doing their best to wave at her because she couldn’t quite hear its gentle singing. Viridis stood at the base of the tree and looked at the roots over which Nail had built highways for his toy wagons, and she could almost see his tin soldiers fighting on the parapets of the roots’ knees.
Then Viridis was exposed awkwardly to her first experience of what we all of us take for granted: the traditional ritual of leave-taking and exchanging of polite, conventional invitations and counterinvitations.
Viridis said she had to find the Bourne place and talk with young Latha, as Nail had suggested.
Nancy looked properly stricken and said, “Don’t be a-rushin off! Better take supper with us and stay all night.”
Viridis was supposed to counter by asking Nancy to come and go home with her, but Viridis didn’t know this. She just said she’d be back the next day, or soon, and she thanked Nancy for the hospitality and the generous heaping of Nail she’d served up. Nancy told her which turns to take to get to the Bourne place.
And here she came! I was just home from school and doing my chores, redding up the front porch with a broom, when here came that Ingledew phaeton (although I didn’t know that’s what it was; the last time the governor had driven it was before my time) a-turning into our yard. You could have swept me off the porch with a feather. Later, long after she’d