The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [93]
Viridis and the old woman had a talk while Rindy and I were saying our good-byes. After I had said all I could to tell Rindy I hoped she would have a good time in Little Rock and how much I admired her and all, there was nothing more to say, so I listened to Viridis and the old woman. The old woman said she was sorry that Viridis had not received a more favorable impression of Stay More. Viridis assured her that the people of Stay More were just fine. The old woman said she hoped Viridis would want to come back. Viridis said there was no doubt whatsoever that she would be coming back. She wanted to come back in the spring, and in the summer, when all the shades of green would be in their glory and she could paint them. The old woman said that any time Viridis wanted to come back she would be very welcome to stay here at this house.
Then Viridis turned to say good-bye to me. She shook my hand. I guess tears were running down my face. And I didn’t cry easy. “Latha, I’ll miss you,” she said, and I knew she wasn’t just being polite. “You were a wonderful help to me, and I’ll never forget it. You be good to yourself, and I’ll see you again in the spring.”
“Miss Monday—” I tried to say, choked.
“Oh, please just call me Viridis, or Very,” she said.
“Very…Viridis…” I tried, but it didn’t sound natural or mannerly. “You are the nicest lady I’ve ever known.”
On
One minute he is looking at the best girl on this earth, the next minute he is face to face with the worst one. Nail could not look at her. He looked at the guard for help, or some sign of fellow-feeling, but the guard, a white trusty called Bird, just looked bored and stupid, and had no idea that Nail’s visitor was none other than the selfsame little trollop whose lies had put Nail in this hell.
She wasn’t looking at him either. She had given him just a glance and then was watching the door behind him as if she were still waiting to see the person she was expecting to come in through that door. She didn’t even know it was him. She don’t even recognize what she’s done to me, he realized. She just stood there uncertain and scared-looking, waiting for somebody who looked like what she remembered Nail Chism looked like, but that guy never showed up, so after a while her eyes came to rest on him long and careful, and then she just said one word, in hardly a whisper: “Nail?” He didn’t nod his head or say anything to her. But she finally must have got it through her silly head that it was indeed him, because the next thing she did was to fall down on her knees and clasp her hands together as if she were praying to him. “Oh, Nail!” she wailed, the way some ladies at a revival holler, “Oh, God!”
He didn’t say a word. He just looked down at her there on her knees. Somebody had spent some more money on some more clothes for her. She wasn’t wearing that white thing she’d worn at the trial, that had made her look like her own idea of an angel. Now she had on a real nice wool coat, dark-green, and even a little hat on her head like she would wear to Sunday school, and a little purse in her hand, and fancy shoes that went up her legs. She even looked older than what she had been. Well, maybe she had done turned fourteen since that summer that seemed so many years ago. Nail realized that Viridis had brought her here, and that she had put her name on that petition, which meant that she was ready to admit that she had wrongly accused him.
“Nail, oh Nail, Nail, Nail,” she said. “Please fergive me. Say you’ll fergive me, please please oh please.” The tears were running down her face and messing up the powder and rouge that somebody had put on her face.
He honestly did not know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. Bird threw him a curious look as if he’d done something awful to the poor girl to make her get down on her knees and bawl her eyes out like that. He wanted to say to Bird, This here little old girl is the reason I’m in The Walls—now watch and hear her tell me she’s sorry she done it. But he honestly did not know what to say.
“Oh, what