The Choiring Of The Trees by Donald Harington Read Free Book Online Page A

saplin, and he took a deep breath and grunted hard and somethin broke, and there was blood, and he had that thing, this long, all the way up in me, as fur as he could git…”
    When it came time for Jim Tom Duckworth to ask her questions, Jim Tom wanted to know only two things: One, he said, was she real hundred-percent sure about that sharp rock business? because it seemed to Jim Tom, “and you grand gentlemen of the jury has got to agree, that a big stout powerful feller like Nail Chism wouldn’t need no sharp rock to threaten her with, he could manage her with his bare hands, or leastways with that there bowie knife that he always carried on his belt, so jist what is this here rock business?” And Dorinda swore it was a sharp, heavy rock, this big. Well, secondly, was Dorinda absolutely certain that she “had never been done like that afore,” because, after all, here she was, what? thirteen years of age, “and as everbody knows that’s kind of old not to have no experience whatsoever in the loss-of-virginity business, at least not where I come from, which is Stay More, same place where she comes from, and her with six brothers…”
    “Objection!” hollered Mr. Thurl Bean, and began to rant that it was a crime to say such things, and the defense attorney had better watch his mouth or he’d find himself in-dited for public indecency and obscenity, and Mr. Bean didn’t know about Stay More, but where he came from, Mt. Judea east of here where folks is God-fearing and moral and law-abiding, it wasn’t at all uncommon to find virgins who were fourteen or even fifteen.
    Doc J.M. Plowright of Stay More was called to testify. He had been one of our two physicians as long as I could remember, since he’d assisted at my birth and looked at me when I’d had measles and diphtheria and impetigo. He had, he said, examined the young lady immediately after the alleged misfortune had occurred, that is to say, as soon as Simon Whitter had come and got him, less than an hour after the said violation had happened, and he found her in a condition of near-shock as a result of the imputed assault and discovered that “she still had, no doubt about it, some feller’s jism a-tricklin down her laig, and she had a sure-enough lump on her haid like from a rock bouncin offen it, and yes, it sure did look like her maidenhead had been took, she sure wasn’t no virgin no more, and the blood was still fresh all over the gash.”
    “Gash?” said Mr. Thurl Bean, and became indignant. “You mean that monster there done went and inflicted a cut on the pore gal?”
    “Naw,” Doc Plowright said, turning crimson. “I was jist referrin to her slit, I mean, her, you know, her natural openin.”
    When I was summoned, I had to put my hand on the Bible and take an oath, and give my name and age and address, and please tell the court how long I’d known the victim. Then Mr. Thurl Bean asked me to tell what had happened that afternoon in my own words to the best of my ability and recollection, and I told everything I knew, except the precise location of our playhouse. When I finished, Mr. Thurl Bean said, “Now, gal, this yere man that you saw from the winder of yore dollhouse, is he a-settin anywheres in this room?”
    I looked around. “He could be,” I said.
    “Which’un is he?” asked Mr. Bean.
    I pointed at Jim Tom Duckworth. “It could’ve been him.” I pointed at Nail Chism. “Or it could’ve been him.” Then I pointed at Judge Sull Jerram, who was sitting in the audience, and left my finger sticking in his direction. “But for all I know, it was jist as likely him. ”
    He asked me some more questions, trying to get me to say for sure that it was Nail, and making me tell over again that it had been Nail we’d seen in the woods not long before. But he couldn’t get me to swear that it was Nail who had been looking at our playhouse, and as I was leaving the stand to return to my seat, Sheriff Duster Snow said to me out of