The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [83]
Surely I had the sense to at least nod my head before I could find my voice? Maybe not. Maybe I couldn’t even find my voice, because she went on and said, “My name is Viridis Monday, and I’m from Little Rock. I work for a newspaper. We’re doing a story about Nail Chism of Stay More, who has been condemned to die in the electric chair, and I was told that you could give me some information that would help us.”
Still I couldn’t find my voice, except to say to Rouser, our dog, “Hush, Rouser! You jist hush!” His barking soon brought my father and mother and my sisters Barb and Mandy out of the house. Paw kicked old Rouser off the porch, and that shut him up. Momma said, and I could have died of mortification, “We caint buy nothin today, thank ye.”
The lady smiled. She was the most beautiful lady I’d ever seen even a picture of, and she had the nicest smile I’d ever thought a body could have, and I’ve been practicing it ever since. “I’m not selling anything,” she said, and then she repeated word for word what she’d just said to me, and she added, “Nail Chism suggested that I might talk with your daughter Latha about the circumstances of the case. He feels that she can tell me the truth.”
“Wal, come on in and set by the far,” Maw invited her, and we all went into the house, into the front room that was my parents’ bedroom but also served as our parlor, so to speak, because you could sit on a divan as well as the bed, and the divan was up anent the fireplace. They gave her Paw’s chair, and Paw had to sit on the divan with Momma, and all three of us girls sat side by side on the edge of the bed, with me in the middle, until Momma said, “Latha, why don’t ye brew us up a pot of that coffee I save for the preacher?”
And I jumped up and started for the kitchen, but the lady said, “No, thank you, please, I’ve been drinking coffee all day up at the Chisms’.”
“Oh,” Momma said. “You’ve done talked to them, have ye?”
“Yes,” Viridis said, and she was wondering how she could politely get me alone to herself, so she added, “and I’m trying to talk to as many people as I can while I’m in Stay More. I’d like to talk with each one of you, but I’d like to talk to you one at a time, if that’s all right, and I want to start with Latha.”
Paw gave Momma the elbow in her ribs, and a severe look. Mandy and Barb looked at each other like they’d just remembered it was Friday and they had something to do to get ready to go into Jasper tomorrow. Momma was the last to leave the room, and said, “But don’t ye be a-rushin off, ma’am. Better jist take supper with us, and stay all night.” By this time Viridis was beginning to understand that that was just what everybody said, all the time, whether they wanted you to or not.
The lady did stay to supper, but only because it was already getting cold on the table before she got done talking with me and she couldn’t very well walk out and leave it to get even colder after they’d waited for us. We talked from right then, when my parents and sisters went out of the parlor and left us alone, until suppertime and then some past, before Viridis finally knew what to say the third or fourth time my mother asked her to spend the night, and even then she didn’t know that you’re supposed to counter it by saying, Come go home with me, so she just said, finally, that she was expected back by the old woman living in Jacob Ingledew’s house, where she’d left her horse, and had to return this team and buggy to Willis Ingledew’s livery. We were relieved, I guess, because we wouldn’t have had anyplace for the lady to sleep, although I’d have been more than pleased to fix myself a pallet on the floor and let her have my place in the bed with Mandy and Barb. That’s how much I loved her, by then.
But all