Part 14 (1/2)
She did not sleep that night. Her insomnia made her confront the question: what if she had been deluded about Nail? What if he actually was a rapist? She even imagined a scene in which he confessed that he had raped Dorinda and that he couldn't help himself. She antic.i.p.ated that he was only an apparition of the man she had loved: he smelled abominable and the cell was the filthiest place she'd ever been. Such sleeplessness forced her eventually to picture (or did she actually sleep, and dream?) the act of love they tried to make, and it was not good at all.
In the morning, as she dressed and got herself ready for the day, and then as she baked three dozen cookies (oatmeal, chocolate, and pecan) to take with her, she told herself that the dream, or the conscious fantasy if that's what it had been, was just an attempt to consider, and dismiss, the worst contingencies. It would not be like that, at all. She and Nail would not even consider s.e.x. It would defeat their purpose. They would talk, and talk, and talk, and possibly hold hands, maybe even, yes! they would kiss, although Nail himself would be very self-conscious and ill at ease because of his appearance (but it will be dark, remember?) and the fact that they hadn't let him take a bath in ages. She would do a good job of ignoring the unsavory atmosphere.
She told no one where she was going. She told her mother that she wouldn't be home for supper and might be gone overnight. At 2:30 P.M. she telephoned for a taxicab and rode it to the penitentiary. She was met at the visitors' room by the sergeant with the short leg, Mr. Fancher, who escorted her out of the room across the outside length of the wall to another door, the one she had used several times before. It was a heavy, arched wooden door upon which Mr. Fancher rapped the familiar trite code, the beats of ”Shave and a haircut, two bits.” A trusty opened it and admitted them to the fenced corridor leading across the Yard to the powerhouse and the main building. In the upper windows of the main building, open to the late-April air, men whistled and howled, ”Hey, babe!” and, ”Up here, sweetie!” and, ”Sugar, come and git it!”
Mr. Fancher escorted her to the warden's office. The new warden, Travis Don Yeager, met her at his door and invited her in. He was about fifty, and her first impression of him was slightly more favorable than that of Harris Burdell: he seemed cut from the same mold, and she guessed that he, like Burdell, must have spent countless hours in front of a mirror practicing a look of fierce determination and strength. But he tried to be polite, at first. ”Welcome to the Arkansas State Penitentiary, Miss Monday!”
”I've been here before,” she said.
”Yeah. Right. I didn't think.” He made a mouth that might have been intended as a smile but came out as a smirk. ”We oughta send you up to Jacksonville hee hee, our state farm for women hee hee, but we understand you prefer the company of males hee hee. I see you didn't bring your suitcase hee hee.”
”I don't expect to stay long,” she said.
”You gonna sleep in that dress hee hee?”
”If I sleep.”
”Hee hee! Baby, you got the right idea. If you sleep, that's right, if you sleep hee hee. Well, are you all ready to go down and meet your roommate hee hee?”
”I've met him.”
”You have? Well, that's nice. Did he tell you what he's gonna do to you? Aint you just a little bit scared hee hee?”
”No.”
”Man's a convicted rapist. Did a job so awful on a little girl they gave him the chair, only the second white man ever to get the chair in history hee hee.”
”I'm familiar with all the facts of the case,” she said. ”I'm ready to go.”
”Are you now? Real eager and rarin to go? Hot to trot hee hee. You got it bad, sister.”
”If you don't mind.”
”Don't mind what?”
”I didn't come here to listen to your jokes. I came to see Nail Chism.”
He dropped his light tone. ”Sit down, lady,” the warden ordered her, gesturing to a chair.
”Why? Do I have to submit to an interview or make out an application?”
”SIT DOWN, Miss Monday,” he commanded, and put a hand on her shoulder and made her sit. Then he went around behind his desk and sat down. He studied her for a moment, and when he spoke again there was a remnant of the original politeness. ”You honestly amaze me. You really came in here expectin us to let you move in with that rapist. You really truly meant to go through with it.”
”What are you telling me?” she demanded. ”Aren't you going to let me do it?”
”Do you think I'm crazy, girl?”
”I don't care whether you are crazy or not. The governor told me I could do it. In fact, it was his suggestion.”
”Yeah, but he never thought you would. He told me to see if you showed up, he said he'd bet me that you wouldn't show up, but if you did, to find out if you really wanted to do it. You honestly want to do it, don't you?” The warden began shaking his head slowly back and forth as if he still couldn't believe it. ”Maybe you're the crazy one hee hee. Don't you know you'd never get out of there alive? That man's got a dagger hidden somewhere down in his cell, and he'd slash your throat as soon as he got finished rapin you hee hee.”
”I'll take the chance,” she said. ”Isn't that what this is supposed to be about? Taking the chance? Proving to all of you that he won't rape me, he won't kill me?”
The warden shook his head. ”Too much of a risk. Maybe you're right. But if you was wrong, and anything happened to you, the newspapers would really haul us over the coals, and your family would sue the state of Arkansas.”
She could only repeat, feebly, ”The governor told me I could do it.” ”You still don't get it, do you? He was just testin you, ma'am. The governor told me not to let you under no circ.u.mstances get nowhere near that rapist.”
”Couldn't I just visit with him awhile, under supervision? Couldn't I just give him these cookies?” She held up the paper sack containing three dozen oatmeal, chocolate, and pecan cookies.
The warden glanced at the sack. He said, ”You're just another one of them women that latch on to convicts and make boyfriends out of them, like they're toys or cuddly bears or something. All of you ladies are crazy. You think you can turn them into nice little boys, and you're mistaken. You think you can save their souls or mend their manners or something, and you're wrong, and it's gonna kill you to find out how wrong you are. I been workin in prisons since I was a kid, and you wouldn't believe the number of broken hearts I've seen you ladies get.” Again he slipped into his politeness and softly said, ”I'm not gonna let n.o.body break your heart, darlin hee hee.”
”Could I please see him for a while in the visitors' room?”
As if reading from a book, he said, ”Condemned inmates of the death cells may not be transmitted to the visiting quarters.”
”Then couldn't you, as a consolation for disappointing me, take me down to the death hole and let me talk to him through his bars?”
”It's awful down there, ma'am. I wouldn't want to go down there myself.”
”I can stand it.”
”Sorry. It's against the rules. We do everything by the rules here.”
”May I use your telephone?”
”Help yourself. What for?”
”I'm going to tell the governor that you won't even let me see Nail Chism after tricking me into thinking I could get into his cell.”
”Well, durn, I never tricked you. How long did you want to stay down in the death hole?”
”As long as you'll let me.”
”Well, the visit rules say fifteen minutes in the visit room. Would fifteen minutes down there suit you?”
”Not as much as staying all night, but it'll do.”
”You can't take them cookies. The prisoners have a strict diet hee hee. Leave them and your handbag here in my office.” The warden summoned the guard, James Fancher, and asked him, ”Hey, Jim, is that electric light bulb wired up down in the death hole yet?” The guard shook his head. ”Well, you go get Gill, and you boys take a lantern and show this lady down there, for fifteen minutes, and let her talk to Chism. Watch 'em, and don't you let her touch him nor give him nothing nor do anything 'cept talk.”
So Viridis got to see Nail. Indeed, as the warden had said, it was an awful place. Couldn't they at least keep it reasonably clean? Did there have to be earth clinging to the walls? Weren't there any windows or holes that could be opened for a little ventilation? The oppressive darkness and dankness and cramping were accentuated by the feeble glow from the one smoking kerosene lantern that Fancher carried, holding it down at his side, not raising it, so that the light came up from below and gave Nail's face a ghostly and sinister cast. Guards Fancher and Gorham flanked her closely, standing a little behind her as if they were holding her back, and they would not go away.
”Strike me blind,” Nail said softly. ”Don't this beat all? How did ye do it?”
”I've got a little influence with the governor.”
”You sure must. You must almost have as much influence with him as you had with all them newspaper fellers. It was you, wasn't it, who got them to come to my fryin party?”
”I suggested it,” she said. ”And it worked. It saved you, for the time being, but I'm afraid I don't have a lot of influence with our governor.” She told him of her invitation to the governor's mansion the night before, what they had talked about, and the governor's ”calling her bluff” by pretending to arrange for her to be locked in with Nail.
Nail was speechless. ”Gosh” was all he could finally say.