The Choiring Of The Trees Read Online Free PDF Page B

The deputy helped them fix the wheel, and then he said, “I jist hope you fellers aint aimin to bring none of this here corn back to Boone County in another form. The sherf is real sot in his ways and he’d th’ow ye in jail so hard you’d never git out.”
    They drove on and crossed back into Newton County. On the last stretch of road between Parthenon and Stay More they met Judge Sull Jerram in his automobile. Sull didn’t stop. He only waved, and he had a girl with him. The girl was Dorinda Whitter, on her way to Jasper at last. A cloud of thick dust billowed out from the rear end of the Model T and obscured the disappearance of the couple.
    “Rindy,” I said to her later, “you were jist out of your fool haid. Don’t you know that everbody in Stay More is talkin about ye?” I guess I knew better than anyone else, except Miss Blankinship, just how dumb Dorinda could be.
    “You should’ve seen them boys over to Jasper,” she said. “They hung their mouths open like they never seen a pair of tits before! And I jist wiggled my bosom at ’em! And Judge Sull, he jist took me ever place like he owned the town, and I do believe he does!”
    There were some folks, later, who speculated that Nail Chism had had a crush on Dorinda for a long time. If that was true, he was certainly keeping it to himself. As far as I know, he never spoke to her before that June. Some folks were inclined to wonder if he had been “following” her, or at least itching for her. The fact that he was, at twenty-seven, still a bachelor did not of itself raise any eyebrows; we had plenty of single men in Stay More. It ran in families, even: all of the sons of banker John Ingledew were unmarried, six of the most eligible and handsome bachelors in town, and not one of them could get up his nerve to court a girl, let alone propose to one, and all six of them were past marrying age, except for maybe Raymond, the youngest, and I had my eye on him and was cooking up ways to get him to speak to me, or at least notice me. Nail Chism wasn’t like the Ingledew brothers, who were congenitally so shy of any female they couldn’t talk to their own sister Lola; at least Nail was able to talk to Irene…and he did talk to her and asked her if she knew that Sull Jerram was fooling around with Dorinda Whitter, and Dorinda not but thirteen. Irene told her brother that all she knew was what everybody else seemed to be talking about.
    Nail found Sull at the courthouse, and right there in the lobby, within earshot of lawyer Jim Tom Duckworth and Sheriff Duster Snow and whoever else was paying them any attention, Nail told Sull, “I aint runnin any more goods fer ye.”
    “That so?” Sull said. “Got skeert bad this run, huh?”
    “Naw, but me and Luther did have a little talk with a Boone County deppity.”
    Jim Tom and the Sheriff moved a little closer, to hear better, but Nail didn’t elaborate upon his conversation with the deputy. Sull said, “Well, Nail, son, I’m sorry to tell ye, but you aint got any choice. Everbody’s dependin on ye to run that stuff.”
    “Find somebody else to depend on,” Nail said calmly, but he was beginning to get angry.
    “Aint nobody else with a wagon full of wool,” Sull said.
    “I want ye to stop sparkin Dorinda,” Nail said.
    Sull laughed. “You sweet on her?”
    “Naw, but I’m sweet on Irene, and I don’t want ye treatin her like that.”
    “Yo’re welcome to Irene,” Sull said. “Nobody else wants her.”
    Nail hit Sull. According to Jim Tom, who told it later around Stay More, Nail just clenched a fist and lifted it faster than anybody could watch and caught Sull under the chin with it and lifted him about a foot off the floor and slammed him up against the wall. Just one punch, and Sull sort of peeled down the wall and into a heap on the floor. Nail turned and walked off, and Jim Tom and Duster Snow lifted Sull into a chair and worked him over to get him awake, and to pacify him Sheriff Snow said