The World Made Straight

by Ron Rash

“Because I’m a low-risk kind of guy. It’s getting too chancy unless you have a place way back in some hollow.”

  One of the Plotts nudged Leonard’s leg and Leonard scratched the dog’s head. The dog closed its watery brown eyes, seemed about to fall asleep. Not very fierce for a bear dog, Travis thought.

  “Where’s Shank?” Leonard said. “I thought you two were partners.”

  “I don’t need a partner,” Travis said. He lifted the first sack from the truck bed, pulled out each stalk carefully so as not to tear off any leaves and buds. He placed the plants on the ground between them. It was a good feeling, knowing everything on his end was done. A lot like when he and the old man unloaded tobacco at the auction barn. Even his daddy would be in a good mood as they laid their crop on the worn market-house floor.

  As Travis emptied the second sack he imagined the old man’s reaction if he knew what Travis was doing. Probably have a fit, Travis figured, though some part of his daddy, the part that had been near an outlaw when he was Travis’s age, would surely admire the pluck of what his boy had done, even if he never said so. Travis nodded at his harvest.

  “That’s one hundred and twenty dollars’ worth at the least,” he said.

  Leonard stepped closer and studied the plants a few moments. He pulled the billfold from his pocket and handed Travis five twenty-dollar bills. Leonard hesitated, then added four fives.

  Travis stuffed the bills into his pocket but did not get back in the truck.

  “What?” Leonard finally said.

  “I figured you to ask me in for a beer.”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t much want to play host this afternoon.”

  “You don’t think I’m good enough to set foot in that roachy old trailer of yours.”

  Leonard settled his eyes on Travis.

  “You get your hackles up pretty quick, don’t you?”

  Travis did his best to match Leonard’s steady gaze.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” Travis said.

  Leonard shifted his gaze lower and to the right as though someone sat in a chair beside Travis. Someone who took Travis’s words no more seriously than Leonard did.

  “After the world has its way with you a few years, it’ll knock some of the strut out of you,” Leonard said, no longer smiling. “If you live that long.”

  A part of Travis wanted to clamp a hand over his own mouth, keep it there till he was back in Marshall. He had the uneasy feeling that Leonard knew things about him, things so deep inside that Travis himself hadn’t figured them out, and every time he opened his mouth Leonard knew more.

  “I ain’t wanting your advice,” Travis said. “I just want some beer.”

  “One beer,” Leonard said, and they walked into the trailer. While Leonard got the beers Travis went down the hall to the bathroom. The bedroom door was shut and he hoped it stayed so. If the woman came out she’d surely have some more sass words for him. When he came back Leonard sat in the leather recliner, a beer in each hand. He handed one to Travis. Travis sat on the couch and pulled the tab. He still didn’t much care for the taste, but the beer was cold and felt good as it slid down his throat.

  “You got a lot of books,” Travis said, nodding toward the shelves.

  “Keeps me from being ignorant,” Leonard said.

  “I’ve known plenty of teachers without any sense,” Travis said. “They didn’t even know how to change their own car tire.”

  Leonard leaned back a little deeper in the chair.

  “Stupidity and ignorance aren’t the same thing. You can’t cure someone of stupidity. Somebody like yourself that’s merely ignorant there might be hope for.”

  “What reason you got to say I’m ignorant?”

  “That tee-shirt you’re wearing, for one thing. If you’d worn it up here in the 1860s it could have gotten you killed, and by your own blood kin.”

  Travis had drunk only half his beer but Leonard’s words were as hard to grasp as wisps of ground fog.

  “You trying to say my family was yankees?”

  “No, at least not in the geographical sense. They just didn’t see any reason to side with the slave owners.”

  “So they weren’t on either side?”

  “They had a side. Nobody had the luxury of staying out of it up here. Most places they’d fight a battle and move on, but once war came it didn’t leave Madison County.”

  Travis took a last swallow and set the empty can at his feet. He wondered if the older man was just messing with him, like when Shank had asked about the music. But it didn’t seem that way. Leonard looked to be serious.

  “You go out to Shelton Laurel much?” Leonard asked.

  “Just for family reunions when I was a kid.”

  “And your kin never talked about what happened in 1863 or said anything about Bloody Madison?”

  “What’s Bloody Madison?”

  “The name this county went by during the Civil War.”

  Travis thought back to church homecomings and family reunions in the Laurel. Most of the talk, at least among the men, had been about tobacco. But not all of it.

  “Sometimes my daddy and uncle talked about kin that got killed in Shelton Laurel during the war, but I always figured the yankees had done it.”

  The Plotts began barking, and a few moments later Travis saw a red Camaro rumble up to the trailer, its back wheels jacked up, white racing stripe on the hood. Two men with long black hair got out. One threw a cigarette butt on the ground and didn’t bother to grind it out with his boot heel. They stood beside the car, both doors open, the engine catching and coughing. When Leonard didn’t come out, the driver leaned into the car and blew the horn. Both dogs barked furiously but stayed near the trailer.

  Leonard lifted himself wearily from the chair. He went to the kitchen and came back with two plastic baggies filled with pills. The car horn blew again.

  “The worst thing the nineteen sixties did to this country was introduce drugs to rednecks,” Leonard said. He laid the baggies on the coffee table and went to the refrigerator.

  “You don’t seem to much mind taking their money,” Travis said.

  Leonard’s lips creased into a tight smile.

  “True enough,” he said, taking another beer from the refrigerator. “Here,” he said, holding the can out to Travis. “A farewell present. It’s best if you don’t come around here anymore.”

  “What if I get you some more plants?”

  “I don’t think you better try to do that,” Leonard said. “Whoever’s pot that is will be harvesting in the next few days. You better not be anywhere near when they’re doing it either.”

  Travis left the couch and stepped into the kitchen. The first faint buzz from the alcohol made his scalp tingle.

  “I ain’t scared,” Travis said.

  “Well, maybe you should be in this instance.”

  Leonard’s words were soft, barely audible over the roar of the Camaro. He wasn’t talking down to him the way the teachers or his father might. For a moment Travis thought he saw something like concern flicker in Leonard’s eyes. Then it was gone.

  “But what if I do get more?” Travis asked as he reached for the beer. Leonard did not release his grip on the can.

  “Same price, but if you want any beer you’ll have to pay bootleg price like your buddies.”

  THE NEXT DAY AFTER LUNCH, TRAVIS TOOK OFF HIS CHURCH clothes and put on a green tee-shirt and a pair of cutoffs instead of regular jeans. That meant more scrapes and scratches but he’d be able to run faster if needed. The day was hot and humid, and when he parked by the bridge the only people on the river were a man and two boys swimming near the far bank. By the time Travis reached the creek, his tee-shirt was soggy and sweat stung his eyes.

  Upstream, trees blocked most of the sun and the water he waded cooled him off. At the waterfall, an otter slid into the pool. Travis watched its body surge through the water as straight and sleek as a torpedo before disappearing under the bank. He wondered how much o
tter pelts brought and figured come winter it might be worth finding out, maybe set out a rabbit gum and bait it with a dead trout. He knelt and cupped his hand to drink, the pool’s water so cold it hurt his teeth.

  He climbed the left side of the falls, then made his way upstream to the sign. If someone waited for him, Travis believed that by now the person would have figured out he came up the creek, so he left it and climbed the ridge into the woods. He followed the sound of water until he’d gone far enough and came down the slope deliberate and quiet, stopping every few yards to listen.

  He was almost to the creek when something rustled to his left in the underbrush. Travis did not move until he heard pleased pleased pleased to meetcha rising from the web of sweetbrier and scrub oak. When he stepped onto the sandy bank, he looked upstream and down before crossing.

  The marijuana was still there, every bit as tall as the corn Travis and his daddy had planted in early April. He pulled the sacks from his belt and walked toward the closest plant, his eyes on the trees across the field. The ground gave slightly beneath his right foot. He heard a click, then the sound of metal striking bone. Pain flamed up his leg like a quick fuse, consumed his whole body. The sun slid sideways and the ground tilted as well and slapped up against the side of his face.

  When he came to, his head lay inches from a pot plant. This ain’t nothing but a bad dream, he told himself, thinking if he believed hard enough that might make it true. He used his forearm to lift his head and look at the leg. The leg twisted slightly and pain slugged him like a tire iron. The world darkened for a few moments before slowly lighting back up. He looked at his foot and immediately wished he hadn’t. The trap’s jaws clenched his leg just above the ankle. Blood soaked his tennis shoe and Travis feared if he looked too long he’d see the white nakedness of bone. Don’t look at it anymore until you have to, he told himself, and laid his head back on the ground.

  His face was turned toward the west now, and he guessed midafternoon from the sun’s angle. Maybe it ain’t that bad, he thought. Maybe if I just lay here awhile it’ll ease up some and I can get the trap off. He kept still as possible, taking shallow breaths. A soft humming rose inside his head, like a mud dauber had crawled deep into his ear and gotten stuck. But it wasn’t a bad sound. It reminded Travis of when his mother sang him to sleep when he was a child. He could hear the creek and its sound merged with the sound inside his head. Did trout hear water? he wondered. That was a crazy sort of thought and he tried to think of something that made sense.

  He remembered what Old Man Jenkins had said about how just one man could pretty much fish out a stream of speckled trout if he took a notion to. Travis wondered how many speckled trout he’d be able to catch out of Caney Creek before they were all gone. He wondered if after he did he’d be able to find another way-back trickle of water that held them. He tried to imagine that stream, imagine he was there right now fishing it.

  He must have passed out again, because when he opened his eyes the sun hovered just above the tree line. The humming in his head was gone and when he tested the leg, pain flamed up every bit as fierce as before. He wondered how long it would be until his parents got worried and how long it would take after that before someone found his truck and folks began searching. Tomorrow at the earliest, he figured, and even then they’d search the river before looking anywhere else.

  Travis lifted his head a few inches and shouted toward the woods. No one called back. Being so close to the ground muffled his voice, so he used a forearm to raise himself a little higher and shout again.

  I’m going to have to sit up, he told himself, and just the thought of doing so made bile rise into his throat. He took deliberate breaths and used both arms to lift himself. Pain smashed against his body and the world drained of color until all of what surrounded him was shaded a deep blue. He leaned back on the ground, sweat popping out on his face and arms like blisters. Everything was moving farther away, the sky and trees and plants, as though he were being slowly lowered into a well. He shivered and wondered why he hadn’t brought a sweatshirt or jacket with him.

  Two men came out of the woods, and seeing them somehow cleared his head for a few moments, brought the world’s color and proximity back. They walked toward him with no more hurry than men come to check their plants for cutworms. Travis knew the big man in front was Carlton Toomey and the man trailing him his son. He couldn’t remember the son’s name but had seen him in town. What he remembered was the son had been away from the county for nearly a decade, and some said he’d been in the Marines and others said prison and some said both, though you wouldn’t know it from his long brown hair, the bright bead necklace around his neck. The younger man wore a dirty white tee-shirt and jeans, the older man blue coveralls with no shirt underneath. Grease coated their hands and arms.

  They stood above him but did not speak or look at him. Carlton Toomey jerked a red rag from his back pocket and rubbed his hands and wrists. The son stared at the woods across the creek. Travis wondered if they weren’t there at all, were just some imagining in his head.

  “My leg’s hurt,” Travis said, figuring if they spoke back they must be real.

  “I reckon it is,” Carlton Toomey said, looking at him now. “I reckon it’s near about cut clear off.”

  The younger man spoke.

  “What we going to do?”

  Carlton Toomey did not answer, instead eased himself onto the ground beside the boy. They were almost eye level now.

  “Who’s your people?”

  “My daddy’s Harvey Shelton.”

  “You ain’t much more than ass and elbows, boy. I’d have thought what Harvey Shelton sired to be stouter. You must favor your mother.” Carlton Toomey nodded his head and smiled. “Me and your daddy used to drink some together, but that was back when he was sowing his wild oats. He still farming tobacco?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “The best days of tobacco men is behind them. I planted my share of burley, made decent money for a while. But that tit has done gone dry. How much your daddy make last year, six—seven thousand?”

  Travis tried to remember, but the numbers would not line up in his head. His brain seemed tangled in cobwebs.

  “He’d make as much sitting on his ass and collecting welfare. If you’re going to make a go of it in these mountains today you got to find another way.”

  Carlton Toomey stuffed the rag in his back pocket.

  “I’ve done that, but your daddy’s too stubborn to change. Always has been. Stubborn as a white oak stump. But you’ve figured it out, else you’d not have stole my plants in the first place.”

  “I reckon I need me a doctor,” Travis said. He was feeling better, knowing the older man was there beside him. His leg didn’t hurt nearly as much now as before, and he told himself he could probably walk on it if he had to once the Toomeys got the trap off.

  “The best thing to do is put him down there below the falls,” the son said. “They’ll figure him to fallen and drowned himself.”

  Carlton Toomey looked up.

  “I think we done used up our allotment of accidental drownings around here. It’d likely be more than just Crockett nosing around if there was another.”

  Toomey looked back at Travis. He spoke slowly, his voice soft.

  “Coming back up here a second time took some guts. Even if I’d figured out you was the one I’d have let it go, just for the feistiness of your doing it. But coming a third time was downright stupid, and greedy. It ain’t like you’re some shit-britches young’un. You’re old enough to know better.”

  “I’m sorry,” Travis said.

  Carlton Toomey reached out his hand and gently brushed some of the dirt off Travis’s face.

  “I know you are, son, just like every other poor son-of-a-bitch that’s got his ass in a sling he can’t get out of.”

  Travis knew he was forgetting something, something important he needed to tell Carlton Toomey. He squeezed his eyes shut a few moments to think harder. It
finally came to him.

  “I reckon you better get me to the doctor,” Travis said.

  “We got to harvest these plants first,” the older Toomey replied. “What if we was to take you down to the hospital and folks started wondering why we’d set a bear trap. They might figure there’s something up here we wanted to keep folks from poking around and finding.”

  Carlton Toomey’s words started to blur and swirl in Travis’s mind. They were hard to hold in place long enough to make sense. He tried to remember what had brought him this far up the creek. Travis finally thought of something he could say in just a few words.

  “Could you get that trap off my foot?”

  “Sure,” Toomey said. He slid over a few feet to reach the trap, then looked up at his son.

  “Step on that lever, Hubert, and I’ll get his leg out.”

  The younger man stepped closer. Travis stared hard at the beads. They were red and yellow and black, a dime-sized silver peace sign clipped on the necklace as well. Hubert raised his head as he pressed and afternoon sun glanced the silver, momentarily blinding Travis. The pain rose up his leg again but it seemed less a part of him now, the way an aching tooth he’d had last fall felt after a needle of Novocain. Travis kept staring at the beads, because they were the only thing now that hadn’t been drained of color. There was a name for those beads. He almost remembered but then the name slipped free like a balloon let go, rising steadily farther and farther away.

  “That’s got it,” Carlton Toomey said and slowly raised Travis’s leg, placed it on the ground beside the trap. Toomey used spit and his rag to wipe blood from the wound.

  “What’s your given name, son?” he asked.

  “Travis.”

  “This ain’t near bad as it looks, Travis,” Toomey said. “I don’t think that trap even put a gouge in the leg bone. Probably didn’t tear up any ligaments or tendons either. You’re just a pint low in the blood department. That’s the thing what’s making you foggyheaded.”

  “Now what?” the son said.

  “Go call Dooley and tell him we’ll be bringing him plants sooner than we thought. Bring back them machetes and we’ll get this done.” He paused. “Give me that hawkbill of yours.”