The Choiring Of The Trees Read online

  The Choiring of the Trees

  By the Author

  The Cherry Pit (1965)

  Lightning Bug (1970)

  Some Other Place. The Right Place. (1972)

  The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks (1975)

  Let Us Build Us a City (1986)

  The Cockroaches of Stay More (1989)

  The Choiring of the Trees (1991)

  Ekaterina (1993)

  Butterfly Weed (1996)

  When Angels Rest (1998)

  Thirteen Albatrosses (or, Falling off the Mountain) (2002)

  With (2004)

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 1991 Donald Harington

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonEncore

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN: 978-1-61218-123-3

  For Llewellyn Howland III

  Once a great editor; still a great friend

  The novelist wishes to thank Bob Razer, librarian, his perennial advocate among Arkansas readers, who once upon a time invited the novelist to serve as a judge for the essay contest of the Pulaski County Historical Association, one entry to which was a biography of a courageous Arkansas woman who sought to rescue an Ozarks mountaineer condemned to the electric chair. The author of that entry (which alas did not win the contest despite the novelist’s admiration for it) was Marcia Camp, who further assisted him by furnishing the original manuscript of that Arkansas woman’s memoirs, and by suggesting that he should convert the woman from a novelist, which she was, into an artist, which she is herein.

  Some of the people in this work of fiction are as “real” as the places. The governor of Arkansas during 1913–1917 was George Washington Hays, who may actually have been as bad or as good as he seems to appear here, and he was replaced in 1917 by Charles Hillman Brough, who was better. The state penitentiary at Little Rock was a place called The Walls, and conditions there were just as terrible as the novelist has attempted to depict them here.

  Steve Chism offered the novelist access to numerous materials that enabled him to stick close enough to the facts to give this story the semblance of life and truth. And copy editor Douglas Woodyard took the novelist’s words and gave them syntax, style, and sense.

  The mind, that ocean where each kind

  Does straight its own resemblance find;

  Yet it creates, transcending these,

  Far other worlds, and other seas,

  Annihilating all that’s made

  To a green thought in a green shade.

  —Andrew Marvell “The Garden,” stanza 6

  Constable said that the superiority of the green he uses for his landscapes derives from the fact that it is composed of a multitude of different greens. What causes the lack of intensity and of life in verdure as it is painted by the common run of landscapists is that they ordinarily do it with a uniform tint. What he said about the green of the meadows can be applied to all the other shades.

  —Eugène Delacroix Journals

  Contents

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  About the Author

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  At sundown, when they led him to the chair, Nail Chism began to understand the meaning of the name of his hometown, Stay More. Down through the years, citizens have theorized about the origin of the name, but Nail Chism had always taken it for granted: it was just a name, like you call a tree a pine: you don’t wonder if the tree’s name is a behest too, telling you to yearn or to long or something. But now it suddenly dawned on Nail that the name of the village of his birth and rearing might contain some kind of message, urging him not to go to the chair but to hang around awhile and see what the world was a-coming to.

  How could he do that, in the last few yards of walking space left to him? Now they were trying to budge open the rusty iron door that led into Old Sparky’s room. The hinges needed grease, and the thing hadn’t been opened since they had cooked that colored boy, Skip, on Halloween. Fat Gabe spoke: “Chism, lean your shoulder into that. That’s the ticket, here she goes.” The iron door creaked open. The guests had already come into Old Sparky’s room from their designated door.

  But there weren’t twelve of them. Nail Chism stopped thinking about the meaning of the name Stay More just long enough to squint into the dark room and take a head count. There weren’t but nine, including Fat Gabe and Short Leg, his guards, and Bobo, at the switch. The law said you were required to have twelve witnesses. Nail himself had been brought in to stand witness for Skip the colored boy, and before him for that mother-killer Clarence Smead, who sure enough had at least eleven other witnesses besides Nail.

  Could this be a sign? Could it be that the presence of only nine witnesses indicated that it wouldn’t happen, that Nail would stay more? Or maybe they just hadn’t all arrived yet? Or maybe in the dark corners he’d missed one or two? Maybe they’d have to wait awhile for the others to show up, and that would be long enough for Nail to determine if they really intended to go through with it, before he made up his mind to do what he had to do, if it was clear that he wasn’t going to stay more.

  What he had to do, at the last minute, if it became clear they intended to make him sit and tried to tie the straps, was take as many as he could with him. Beneath his dirty gray jacket, on a string around his neck, hidden by his jacket collar being buttoned, was the blade: a common steel table knife purloined two weeks ago from the mess hall, and then slowly sharpened on the concrete floor, hour upon hour, silently, until it was pointed like a dagger and razor-sharp on both sides. He was going to get Fat Gabe first, then Short Leg, and then take their guns out of their holsters and shoot the rest of the witnesses. He was going to save Bobo for last, right after shooting the warden. He wanted to watch Bobo sweat. He wanted to be sure that Bobo was sober enough to understand what was happening to him, and then he would make Bobo sit down in the chair and get a few low-voltage jolts of his own medicine. He would make Bobo learn a few things before he died.

  Jimmie Mac the preacher stepped up to him and said, “Brother Chism, have you managed to say any prayers?” Jimmie Mac’s breath frosted like smoke in the cold air. Nail shook his head and wondered in what order of execution he would have to kill Jimmie Mac. Maybe right before the warden. Right after he did the lady.

  The lady, wrapped in a double-breasted melton coat but wearing a simple hat without feathers or anything fancy, wasn’t supposed to be there. The law said you got twelve witnesses, and all twelve had to be men. You couldn’t invite your mother or your sister or your girlfriend. It wasn’t decent to make a woman sit through such a thing, to make her hear the hollering and the sizzling, to make her watch the twisting and jerking, to make her smell the awful stink of roasting flesh. It was sure to make her puke, or swoon, or both.

  But this lady worked for the newspaper. She had sat beside Nail when they watched Skip get it, and when Nail himself had screamed at Bobo, “Goddamn you, Bobo, turn up the juice and leave it on!” she ha
d put a hand gently on his arm to calm him down. The hand she had rested on his arm held a drawing-stick, a charcoal pencil she’d been using to make a sketch of the black boy, and in resting her hand on his arm she’d accidentally left a mark of charcoal on the back of his hand, and he had worn that mark for days and days before washing it off, as a reminder of what he’d watched, and what she’d done. She was a cool customer. Probably she wasn’t even a lady. She probably cussed and drank and even smoked cigarettes when nobody was looking. Her red hair wasn’t as long as a lady’s hair ought to be. She drew good pictures, and Nail had never even heard of a lady artist. Maybe he would shoot her between the warden and Bobo.

  The warden, Mr. Burdell, stepped up beside Jimmie Mac and said, “Okay, McPhee, you can say a short prayer for him.”

  “He aint repented,” Jimmie Mac told the warden.

  “Skip the prayer, then,” Mr. Burdell said, and turned to Nail. “Chism, you got any last words?”

  “Yessir, I do,” Nail said. “How come there aint but nine witnesses?”

  Mr. Burdell looked around the room, moving his lips and his index finger as he counted. He spoke the last two aloud: “…eight…nine…” He hesitated, then grinned. “Ten, counting you, Chism. Aint you gonna witness this yourself? And if you want to count Ole Sparky hisself, there, that makes eleven.” Fat Gabe and Short Leg laughed at their boss’s wit.

  “That’s still one short,” Nail protested.

  Mr. Burdell stopped grinning and looked tired and irritated. He said, “It don’t make no difference.”

  “It aint legal,” Nail said. “Also, it aint legal to have that lady there.”

  The warden turned to the woman and smiled. “Miss Monday,” he said. “Are you legal?”

  She did not return his smile. She shook her head.

  The warden glowered fiercely at Nail and said to him, “Okay, Chism, it’s cold in here and the sun’s fixin to go down, and it’s gittin real cold. Let’s git this over with. You want to say anything important? You been actin like you’re just out on a stroll to a picnic or something. You gonna be a real good boy and take this peaceful-like and easy, huh? Or do you want to start hollerin a bit and git it out of your system?”

  Nail looked down at his hands. The trees were singing, Stay more, stay more. His hands were still bound together with cuffs. They would have to unlock the cuffs in order to strap his arms to the chair. In the instant between, he would reach inside his shirt for the razor-sharp dagger. He was conscious of the woman sketching his picture in her drawing-pad. With his head shaved smooth as an egg, he wasn’t much of a sight. The picture she’d drawn of Skip had made him look old and scared to death, although he was just sixteen and real brave for a colored boy. Nail wondered if the picture she was drawing of him was honest.

  “Any last request?” Mr. Burdell asked him. “You aint got time for a cigarette.”

  Nail inclined his head toward the woman. “Could I see the pitcher she’s drawin? That’s all.”

  Mr. Burdell walked over and leaned down and spoke to Miss Monday. She said something to the warden. He returned and spoke to Nail: “She aint finished with it yet.”

  “Could we jist wait jist a second, till she’s done?” Nail requested.

  Mr. Burdell grunted, and hauled out his pocket watch and opened the gold cover of it. He stared at it for a time. He glanced at Miss Monday, and then at Nail. “Law says you got to be dead before the sun disappears,” he said. He walked back over to where Miss Monday was sitting, and stood behind her chair, watching her draw. He looked back and forth between her drawing and Nail’s face, as if he were comparing the two. Nail tried to look pleasant. He stared straight at Miss Monday, and from time to time she raised her head from her work and looked him right in the eye for a long moment. She was a pretty girl, even if she was cold as ice. Her eyes were sort of greenish…it was hard to tell in this light. Her skin was the palest, whitest flesh he’d ever seen. Red hair, green eyes, white skin: she was a picture herself.

  While he posed in the last minutes of his life, he planned every move that he would make, trying to guess exactly what they would do while they were still able, before he took over. Fat Gabe would unlock the handcuffs. Short Leg would push him down into the chair. Fat Gabe would commence strapping his left arm while Short Leg would reach for the strap to do his right, and at that instant Nail would whip out the blade and slash it across Fat Gabe’s throat in one left-to-right motion that, continuing, would bring the point of the dagger in line with Short Leg’s heart, where Nail would thrust it forward, reaching in the same blink of an eye for Short Leg’s holster…

  Oh stay more! sang the trees, and Nail sang back, I’m doing my best! And apart from the singing the only sound in the cold, darkening room was the skritch-skritch of the woman’s charcoal pencil as she drew on and on.

  Off

  Up on the lilting mountain far above the village is a farmplace so old the trees still sing of it, but nobody else does. The trees, a fat maple and a gangling walnut, left to grow for shade a hundred years ago when they were already old, about the time Nail Chism was born, don’t really talk each other’s language, but they sing a tune together, a kind of soughing ballad, a ditty maybe just of fragrances, leaf-smells in the sunlight that drop an octave in the moonlight, heard or smelled attentively by owls who roost there, and a nightingale, wondering at a treesong about people named Chism, whose farmplace it was when sheep still grazed the orchard grass, yarrow, and sweet-scented vernal, now grown to scrub, tangled with emerald vines and turquoise nettles. The leaning house behind the tilted white-paling gate was lived in for a few years just recently by some young people from another state who raised goats and marijuana, distant echoes of the sheep who had once grazed there and the corn whiskey moonlighted in the hollow down below.

  Nail Chism helped his older brother Waymon and his kid brother Luther in the making of Chism’s Dew when the moon was right, but neither brother helped Nail in the keeping of the sheep, who were his alone, or even in the shearing of them, when the moon was right, in its waxing. There were a hundred and sixty acres on the Chism place: eighty downhill plowed to corn for the making of vernacular bourbon, eighty upland sown to timothy, meadow foxtail, white clover, and fescue, with a good bit of parsley mixed in among the yarrow and the sweet-scented vernal, to feed Nail’s flock, which numbered rarely less than a hundred or more than two hundred, including three or four rams to service.

  The colors of the pasture grasses rose from deep jade and Kelly to light Nile and spring green, and each midsummer Nail sowed the bare spots of the fields with a bushel of mustardseed, the mustard adding sulphur to the diet of the sheep and adding yellow-green to the colors of the pasture, intensifying them in keeping with the heat of the sun and Nail’s keeping. The rape was sown in July and August for a fall feeding.

  Rape, a primitive cabbage, Brassica cousin to mustard, is a purplish shade of green at its base, but the leaves are an intense phthalo green (pronounced without the ph, which reminds me of the one they used to tell about Nail in his schooldays: the new schoolmarm steered clear of questions that might get an argument out of him, and she wouldn’t protest when he told her right off that he didn’t intend to spell “taters” with a p, regardless of what the book says). Two pounds of rapeseed sown to the acre is enough; too much rape will cause the sheep to bloat. Some folks who didn’t like the word “rape” called it colza, but the rest of us never knew what they were talking about.

  But it is the other kind of rape that dwells at the heart of this story, so it won’t do to confuse the issue by describing all that rape out in Nail’s pastures. He also grew a lot of turnips, because his sheep liked both the tops for forage and the pulverized roots as a main treat in the winter, and turnips never got anybody thrown into the penitentiary. The turnip top is a light, whitish green, not very intense, cool, a gentle shade that belies its pungent taste. Of course Nail never broadcast the turnip seeds but grew them separately in a fenced-off garden.
/>   He grew a different kind of turnip for his mother to cook for greens with sowbelly, or mashed up like taters, or baked into a pie (yes, with sorghum sweetening, turnip pie is the best there is). In the Ozark Mountains garden truck is generally the womenfolk’s work, and some people raised an eyebrow at Nail Chism out yonder under his felt hat in the garden patch a-chopping weeds out of the ingerns, or onions, but most folks just said that was the least of his peculiarities, and better to let it go.

  The sheep were his principal peculiarity. Not that sheep were so rare in the Ozarks (they weren’t at all in those days), but that a genuine shepherd was. If a man wanted to make a dollar or two every April from selling the wool, he’d keep a ewe (anybody who had one pronounced it “yo”) out behind the house where the dogs couldn’t get it. He wouldn’t think of eating it; nobody ate mutton, let alone lamb, in the Ozarks, where “meat” meant only pork, nothing else. (Pork can be salted and cured and preserved, but mutton cannot.) When the ewe got too old to be sheared, fourteen or so, and hadn’t died of natural old age, its owner would just let it go to rot or rust through neglect, and bury it, or take down the fence separating it from the dogs.

  Nail Chism was the only man anybody knew, or even heard of, or read in the papers about, who kept a whole pastureful of sheep, and he spent most of his time, when he wasn’t tending the vegetable patch or helping his brothers with the whiskey still, living with the sheep and watching after them. We could hear him up there a mile off calling, “Sheep! sheep! sheepsheepsheep!” He knew everything there was to be known about sheep. He knew how to get the yolk just right—for anybody else, that meant the yellow part of an egg, but Nail would explain it was the soapy or greasy stuff on the fleece: too little yolk, and the sheep wasn’t getting the right mix of greens or else had been sired by an inferior ram, and the fleece would be dry and coarse; too much yolk, and twenty pounds of sheared fleece would weigh only four pounds after the first washing.