Part 20 (1/2)

”We got a secont?” Ernest requested. ”I want to say good-bye to Old Sparky.”

”That door.” Nail pointed, and Ernest went through it. Nail followed and turned on the one green-shaded overhead light that illuminated the death chamber. The familiar stage seemed strange, empty of all its actors...and its actress. The chair needed dusting. Ernest stood and stared down at it. Old Sparky looked far less menacing than Ernest had depicted it-as harmless, in fact, as some derelict piece of obsolete machinery. Ernest gave its leg a little kick with his shoe and said, ”Mr. Spark, I hope you don't never git another customer. You won't git me.”

”Come on,” Nail urged, leading him out. ”Let's git that ladder.” Nail reached up into the top shelf of the broom closet and found the key Viridis had smuggled in to him, and the whiskey pint bottle filled with mustard oil. He gave the bottle to Ernest and said, ”Carry this. Don't lose it.”

”Can I have a drink of it first?” Ernest asked.

”It aint to drink,” Nail said. ”It's mustard oil.”

”What's it for?”

Nail didn't want to take the time to explain. ”Now look, Ernest,” he said, more severely than he intended, ”you let me do the talkin on this little trip. You jist do what I tell you and keep your mouth shut.”

Nail unlocked the padlocks holding the ladder to the wall. He decided to return Fat Gill's key-ring to his belt. Then he tightened the fuse that ran to the circuit of the projector. They could hear the men in the barracks cheering as the motion picture resumed. It would be a few minutes before the warden or anybody else would begin to wonder why Fat Gill had not returned. And maybe a lot longer, if the movie was really interesting.

”Let's go,” he said. The last thing he did before leaving the powerhouse was to open all of the circuits except the one to the main building, running the projector. The big lights in the guard towers went out. The guards up there would sound an alarm, but now the circuit powering the alarm was open too. By the time the guards could get down from the towers and into the barracks to notify the warden that the searchlights were dead, the searchlights would no longer be needed.

As Nail carried his end of the ladder through his tomato patch, he realized he and Ernest were trampling the young plants, but that couldn't be helped. He didn't mind that he would not be here for the harvest in July and August. When he had planted the tomatoes, he hadn't expected to share in the harvest himself.

The sun was down, but the sky still held some of its light. Nail could hear the guards up in the towers hollering at one another: ”What happened to the lights?” and ”You got a lantern?” and ”Not me. You got one?” Slowly he raised the ladder against the high brick wall. As he had suspected, it did not reach all the way up. That was why he had attached a rope about eight feet long to the top rung: they would have to stand on that rung and reach up and pull themselves up onto the top of the wall and then pull the ladder up after them.

Which they did. Nail went up first and balanced himself carefully on the wall, discovering it wasn't as broad and thick at the top as he had expected. He straddled it and reached down as Ernest handed up to him the end of the rope.

Then came the really tricky part, as they say. Ernest and Nail had to move apart, straddling the wall, so that there would be enough s.p.a.ce between them to pull up the ladder and turn it and lower it to the outside of the wall. Without exchanging a word, they gingerly performed this maneuver, Ernest lifting the bottom of the ladder over his head and pointing it toward the outside, while Nail held the top rung and the rope.

In his months of thinking about the escape, Nail had often wondered if the ground outside the wall, on the east side, would be lower than inside. He had no way of knowing. It stood to reason that the levels would be the same, that the wall stood on firm, flat ground. But from his one trip with Dempsey to the warden's house, Nail had observed how sharply the land on that side, the north side, sloped downward away from the wall, and he was prepared to find that the slope was similar on the east side. But in this darkness they could not see the ground down there beyond the wall.

With Ernest steadying the ladder and letting go of it rung by rung, Nail lowered it until he was holding the end of the rope. The ladder still twisted and swayed. Nail's forehead broke out in sweat. ”G.o.dd.a.m.n,” he said, just loud enough for Ernest to hear him. ”I caint touch ground. The ladder won't reach.”

”Must be a long way down there,” Ernest said in awe.

Could there be, Nail wondered, some kind of dry moat running around that end of the wall? The eight-foot rope was attached to a ladder of about thirty feet. So was it over forty feet down to the ground? He kicked out behind him with his legs until he lay on his stomach flat across the ridge of the wall. ”Hold me down,” he told Ernest, and he leaned and stretched as far down the outside of the wall as he could, with the rope in his fist...until finally it seemed he could feel, through the rope, that the shoes of the ladder had touched ground. He tugged the rope end against the wall, but the contact he'd made with the shoes seemed to vanish. He could only hope the shoes would hit ground and the side rails would lean the right way against the wall when he let go of the rope. He let go and waited.

Then, after a time, they heard the ladder crash to the ground.

”YOU HEAR THAT?!?” a voice in the tower called, and another voice answered, ”THERE'S SOMEBODY OUT THERE!” and from a third tower another voice tried to subst.i.tute for the dead alarm bell by yelling at top volume, ”JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK!” The lights in the barracks, on the same circuit as the projector, came on, and Nail knew the movie was aborted.

”Lord G.o.d!” said Ernest. ”What do we do now?”

”We sh.o.r.e caint jump fer it!” Nail said. ”We'd break our fool necks.”

”We gonna jist sit here till they come and git us down?”

Nail pointed. ”See that?” Down toward one of the guard towers, about five feet out from the wall, there was the silhouette of a smooth cypress pole of the electrical system, carrying power to and from the engine room. It occurred to Nail that this pole, intended to help bring in the current that would have extinguished his life and Ernest's, now offered the only hope of saving them. ”Jist watch me,” Nail told Ernest, ”and see if you caint do what I do.” Nail raised himself and stood up on the wall, balancing carefully, trying to feel the slightest warning in the delicate balance mechanisms within his ears as he placed one foot in front of the other until he was as close to the power pole as he could reach; he bent at his knees as if about to squat, then sprang up and out toward the cypress pole, slamming his body against it painfully but throwing his arms around it, and then his legs. Slowly he slid down the pole until his feet touched ground.

He wanted to kneel and kiss the ground, the free earth of the outside world, but he stood and watched Ernest teetering along the top of the wall toward the same leaping-spot. Ernest swayed and nearly toppled but caught himself, fighting the air with his arms for balance. ”Come on,” Nail called. ”You can do it, son.” Ernest reached the spot of springing but hesitated, as if trying to measure the distance, to determine consciously what had been instinctive for Nail moments before: the exact amount of effort necessary to reach the power pole without slamming into it and knocking yourself out.

Still unsteady, Ernest hesitated as he stared at the power pole and then pantomimed the first tentative flexing of his knees in order to leap. Nail realized that it might have been like this if he had gone first to the chair: watching Nail get electrocuted might have made it all that much harder for Ernest. Here Nail only wanted to show him how it was done. But was he leading the boy to attempt an act beyond his strength and ability?

Nail wanted to pray. But he did not. He heard the trees praying for him. Out there, beyond The Walls, they were all over: real trees, saplings and old ones, hickories, oaks, scrub pine and white pine, blackjack, all kinds of trees crooning to Ernest the song to get him out to that pole and down to the ground.

The singing stopped. Light shone on Ernest. The tower guards had obtained lanterns. ”THERE HE IS!” a guard yelled, and another guard yelled, ”HOLD THAT LIGHT STEADY AND LET ME GIT A SHOT AT HIM!”

”Jump!” Nail yelled up at the boy. ”For G.o.dsakes, jump and grab the pole!”

Ernest flexed his knees once again and sprang out for all he was worth.

For more than he was worth: he jumped much too hard and almost caused the pole to bend with the force of his body slamming into it, stunning himself so brutally that he could only make the most clumsy grabs at the pole with his hands before he fell the forty feet to the ground, flat out.

Nail knelt quickly beside him. Ernest moaned. He was alive and conscious. Nail smelled something and realized it was the mustard oil: Ernest's fall had broken the bottle. ”Can you move?” Nail asked, and tried to get him to sit up or roll over.

Ernest shook his head and groaned weakly, ”I reckon I've done busted ever bone in my body.” Nail tugged at his arm. ”Ouch! Naw, I caint move. I've had it, Nail. You git on. Git on out of here.”

Nail fished the bottle of mustard oil out of the waistband at the side of Ernest's trousers. The bottle was only cracked, and there was a good bit of oil left. He began smearing it on Ernest. ”I'll rub this stuff on ye so the dogs caint smell ye, and I'll drag ye off in the woods and-”

”You aint got time!” Ernest protested. ”Please, Nail, git yoreself out of yere while ye still got a chanst!”

”I caint jist leave ye!” Nail told him.

”The h.e.l.l ye caint! You'd be a d.a.m.n fool not to. You'd regret it all the rest of the days they'd keep ye back in those walls before they fried ye! Go, G.o.dd.a.m.n ye, git and go!”

Nail heard the warden's bloodhounds, who already knew Ernest's scent, being taken out of their pens. Nail said, ”I sh.o.r.e hate this.”

”Don't make me baig again,” Ernest begged. ”Jist go.”

Nail began to smear the mustard oil on his shoes and legs and arms and hands. Then it was all gone. ”Ernest...” He tried to say some last words.

Then the lanterns of the tower guards found them, and he heard a guard yell, ”THERE HE IS! THERE'S TWO OF THEM!”

”Go,” Ernest said, weakly. ”Go, go, go on and go.”

”Good-bye, son,” Nail said. ”Somebody will take care of you.” Then he sprang up and began running.

He heard the rifles firing. Were they shooting at Ernest? Would they kill a fallen boy?

In the dark, Nail could not keep running. It had been a long time since he had taken a good walk, and much longer since he had run. The dogs would be able to outrun him because they could see much better in the dark. But finding Ernest would slow them down. He hoped the guards handling the dogs would stop them before they started into gnawing on Ernest...if they hadn't already shot him.

Nail paused at the edge of the swamp to catch his breath and listen. He heard the dogs behind him, in the distance, trying to find his trail. He had so much mustard oil on him they couldn't possibly sniff him out unless the scent of him in the night vapors was enough to give them a lead. He turned and skirted the edge of the swamp and began looking for the sycamore tree. He hoped he was pointed in the right direction, to the southwest of The Walls. He could still see the penitentiary looming high on its knoll in the distance, and he saw how the ground dropped off sharply on every side. That was why the G.o.dd.a.m.n ladder hadn't reached.

If he could find the sycamore and get that revolver loaded (or maybe she had already loaded it for him), he could shoot those dogs if any of them traced him, and shoot any man who tried to come after them. He plunged onward, and in the dark he could not keep the edge of the swamp clearly in view. He made a misstep and suddenly found himself up to his waist in water. For a moment the shock of the water took his breath away, but then he laughed, because it was the first time he'd been in water since his arrest nearly a year ago. This was his first bath in ages, and he loved deep water. He splashed briefly and then swam hard and fast until he reached the opposite bank of the swamp, and climbed up, and found himself within view of the tall sycamore tree splas.h.i.+ng the sky with its fingers, shaking its dark-green mane.

He shook the water from himself; he was wet all over but would soon be in dry clothes. He was concerned that the water might have washed away the mustard oil, but a deep breath told him he still stank of it. He wanted to run up and hug that tree. So he did.

Viridis had told him there was only one tree in the vicinity; this one certainly dominated all the others around it, and at its foot he found the flat rock she had described to him: an ideal place for hiding something. But nothing was underneath it, and his groping did not discover any other flat rock nearby. Nail heard the dogs-running closer, he thought-and the distant voices of men.

Abruptly he remembered that this was Friday night, and Viridis had not planned to hide the cache until Sat.u.r.day afternoon. If this had been Sat.u.r.day night, he might not be alive. He was alive, but there was no cache: no canvas bag, no gun, no food, no money. He thought how hard it was going to be without those things that Viridis had meant for him to have. Would all of his planning, and all of hers, come to nothing?