Part 13 (2/2)
”A hobby,” Viridis said.
As soon as the dinner was finished, the governor dismissed his family and moved from his chair at the head of the table to sit next to Viridis at the side. ”Now,” he said, when they were alone, and only one waiter remained, to bring them some peach brandy. ”Now, I want us to be friends. I have been thinking a lot about the last time we got together, and I think I owe you more than just an apology for my rudeness. I want you to understand that I was preoccupied with the Hot Springs business. Have you been keeping up with this matter of legalized gambling?”
She shook her head. ”I've been preoccupied myself.”
The governor laughed. ”You certainly have! Trying to save that moons.h.i.+ner must have been a full-time occupation for you! But anyway, some of my best friends want to legalize pari-mutuel betting at the racetrack over at Hot Springs. Would you want me to let them do a thing like that?”
”They've been doing that at Longchamp for centuries,” she said.
”Where is Lone John?”
”Longchamp,” she p.r.o.nounced it more carefully. ”In Paris. A racetrack in the Bois de Boulogne.”
”You've been to Paris?”
”I lived there for four years.”
”My, my,” the governor said. ”Well now, I'll be.” He didn't say what he would be. ”And your father gave you his blessing?”
”He didn't stop me.”
”Well, that's amazing. But you know, I'm all in favor of taking the reins and bridle off of womenfolk and letting them run free. During my administration the lot of the fair s.e.x has improved one hundred percent. I've reduced the women's working hours to a nine-hour maximum for a maximum of six days of week; that's only fifty-four hours a week. And my legislature has given you the right to enter into contracts and to own property in your own names.”
”We're grateful, I'm sure.”
”And one of these days soon we're going to submit to the voters a women's-suffrage amendment and see if we can't get you ladies a bigger voice, at least in the local polls.”
”The fair s.e.x will be your slaves.”
”I'm only acting on my sense of what I think the people want. I very strongly believe, Miss Monday, that the State is the sum total of the will of the people. And now, that is why I must give my full support to capital punishment, however barbarous it may seem. Personally, I do not condone capital punishment. No, I do not. At best, it is a relic of mankind's slow, painful rise out of the Dark Ages. But if the State did not take upon itself the awesome responsibility for executing murderers and rapists, the people themselves would resort to mob violence and lynching.”
”Did you know, Governor, that Arkansas is one of the very few states that still punish rape with the death penalty?”
”Of course I know it! You mean, still punishes white men with death. Every state still executes nigras for rape. Young lady, don't try to tell me about Arkansas in relation to the other states. That's the main reason I wanted to see you. This past week the state of Arkansas has become the b.u.t.t of national derision and even contempt because of this Chism business. Just at a time in our history when we're making some progress toward correcting the country's notion that Arkansas is nothing but a barnyard full of rustic buffoons, along comes this moons.h.i.+ning rapist out of the Ozarks and sets us all back into ridicule!”
”Pardon me, sir, but I don't believe it's Nail Chism they're ridiculing. They have focused their scorn on a chief executive who refuses to listen to overwhelming evidence that Nail Chism is innocent.”
The governor slammed his palm down on the table so forcefully that both their gla.s.ses of brandy toppled over. A black waiter hastened to handle the problem, which the governor ignored. ”WHAT EVIDENCE?” he thundered, ”The babble of the victim? The poor, frightened, illiterate backwoods child, driven out of her senses by a vicious a.s.sault and the most despicable rape and s.e.xual perversion I've ever heard about in my long legal career, trying pathetically to undo this hideous act simply by recanting her testimony? Please, Miss Monday! It's perfectly obvious that that pathetic waif you went to such pains to recruit to your cause is not of sound mind and not capable of testifying for or against anybody.”
”Governor, if you would let her talk to you for five minutes, you wouldn't say that.”
The governor softened his voice. ”Let me tell you a little story, Miss Monday. Not so very long ago my wife Ida and I received here at our house late one afternoon a Mrs. Ramsey, who had her little boy with her. It was not long until sundown, when the woman's husband was scheduled to die in the electric chair at the state penitentiary. The woman wanted me to listen to her little boy, and wanted my wife to listen too. The boy gave the most touching speech about how he loved his daddy and what a good man his daddy was. Ida, who gave him a piece of bread and b.u.t.ter and a gla.s.s of milk, had tears running down her face, and she looked at me with such reproach as I had never seen from her before, and she asked, 'George, doesn't this little boy move you at all?' and I said, 'Yes, Ida, but his father moves me much more, because the man committed such a cold-blooded, brutal murder, with no extenuating circ.u.mstances whatsoever, that I still seethe to think of it.' And at sundown they electrocuted Ramsey, the first white man I have refused to save from the electric chair. Nail Chism is the second. Let me finish. You think that I am deaf to the entreaties of good people, as my wife thought I was deaf to the little boy. But I tell you what I told her: that it devolves upon me as governor to investigate meticulously every last one of these crimes. I do not take death lightly. I will not allow a citizen of the state of Arkansas to die for any reason, unless and until I have satisfied myself that that man-and notice, dear girl, that I say 'man,' because I have never allowed the fair s.e.x to be executed, and I will never permit it as long as I live-that that man is guilty beyond any shadow of doubt!”
”But the shadows of doubt are all around Nail Chism,” she said.
The governor sighed and pa.s.sed his hand across his eyes. ”Are you aware,” he asked, ”that for seven years before becoming governor, I was a circuit judge myself? I know the burdens that Lincoln Villines faced, and I know how carefully he had to proceed in that lower court. But before I became a circuit judge, I was a farmer. I grew up on an impoverished farm in the scrub of Ouachita County, and until I was the age of Nail Chism, I was, like him, a simple farmer. Although I did not resort to the illegal manufacture of liquor to supplement my modest income, I saved my money to finance a legal education at Was.h.i.+ngton and Lee University in Virginia. No, I have not been to Paris, but I have been to Virginia, a civilized place, the home of such men as George Mason and Thomas Jefferson, men who, despite their owners.h.i.+p of slaves, opposed slavery and favored abolition, but who believed, as I believe, that abolition can only be accomplished very slowly and gradually, not all at once, as we learned to our regret. It is the same with capital punishment.”
The governor pointed out the lone black waiter who was still blotting up the brandy, and George W. Hays began to talk about him as if the man could not hear. ”Do you think this man is ready for complete freedom? Do you think he is capable of making the wise decisions that are required by the responsibilities of citizens.h.i.+p? This particular individual, I happen to know, is not the low-grade type of nigra who crowds our penitentiary and our charitable inst.i.tutions, but he is still quite primitive and in a childish stage of progress, not yet intelligent enough to hold public office or aspire to one of the professions, or...”
Viridis discovered that she was not paying close attention; her mind was wandering, and her gaze was straying from the governor's face-he looked so much like an older version of Tom Fletcher, with his protruding eyeb.a.l.l.s and thick lips-to the wallpaper, and to her own hands in her lap. The governor seemed to have arrived at the notion that there was some connection between the plight of Nail Chism and what the governor called ”the most serious problem of the nigra question.” At least he did not say ”n.i.g.g.e.r,” as so many did. If Viridis tried very hard, and did not drink any more peach brandy, she could focus on his words and detect that he was now discussing the achievement of his administration in separating the white and colored convicts. One of his first acts as governor was the purchase of the Tucker plantation to serve as a ”white-convict farm,” wherein the exclusively white inmates could pursue their agricultural labors free from any contact with ”culluds.” This, the governor attempted to explain to her, was in keeping with his ”concept of the age, and well-advanced civilization.”
She interrupted. ”And how would the execution of Nail Chism fit into a well-advanced civilization?”
”It would manifest the sentiment of the community that the community will not tolerate the violation of the s.e.xual sanct.i.ty of the fair s.e.x!”
”But the community,” Viridis pointed out, ”that is, Nail Chism's community, has given you pet.i.tions signed by four thousand people, more than half the population of Newton County, who do not believe that he violated the s.e.xual sanct.i.ty of anyone.”
The governor was fiddling with the silverware. He picked up a dinner knife and held it as if to stab her with it and said, ”Miss Monday, if I were to murder you right now, and later fifty thousand residents of Pulaski County signed a pet.i.tion that I had not done it, would that make me innocent of the crime?” The governor did not wait for her answer. ”No: pet.i.tions never exonerate, they only beg, and I will not lend an ear to beggary.”
”Nor will you lend an ear to anyone's protestation that Nail Chism is innocent.”
The governor sighed again and leaned back in his chair and regarded her for a few moments before saying, ”Let me ask you. You seem so convinced of the man's absolute guiltlessness. Would you want to find yourself alone with him in that child's playhouse, or wherever it was he raped her?”
”I would feel perfectly safe with Nail Chism.”
The governor snorted in disbelief. ”You would? I'm going to call your bluff, young lady. What if I threatened to throw you into his cage?”
”Do you mean put me alone into his cell?” she asked.
”Not just that,” he said. ”The man is occupying the so-called death hole down in the dungeon of the powerhouse out at the pen. It's like solitary confinement. And it's very dark most of the time, Miss Monday. Very dark and scary. Would you want to be locked in there with him?”
”For how long?”
”Long enough for you to beg to be let out. Long enough for you to realize just how 'innocent' he is. Long enough for you to cease and desist this humiliating campaign to save him from the chair.”
”Are you saying that if I shouted, somebody would come and rescue me?”
The governor chuckled. ”Not quickly. Not too quickly,” he said, and let the implication sink in. ”When Nail Chism tries to harm you, it will take a while for you to summon the guards. We hope. Yes, I am going to call your bluff, Miss Monday, and I am going to have you locked up with that man.”
”When?”
”I'll talk to Warden Yeager in the morning, and-I think it probably begins to get very dark in the death hole about the middle of the afternoon. Can you go to Warden Yeager's office at three P.M.?”
”Yes.”
The governor was startled by the quickness of her reply. ”Are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this?”
”Are you sure you would let me?”
”You bet I am. I just want you to promise me that as soon as we let you out of there, you'll leave us alone. I would even be willing to wager that you'll be so changed in your opinion of that hillbilly pervert that you'll gladly attend his execution, which I intend to carry out at the earliest opportunity, if I have to pull the switch myself.”
Viridis stood up. ”Three P.M. Warden Yeager's office,” she said, taking her leave.
At the door he said, ”You won't need your nightgown or your toothbrush. Good night, Miss Monday.”
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