The World Made Straight (14 page)

“Even when I was little I loved to find a place like this on a cold day,” Lori said, as if she too thought of the coming winter. “I'd close my eyes and it was like being inside a cocoon. That Christmas after Daddy left was a bad time. Not just Daddy being gone but Momma so upset. I went out and found a warm place in the pasture. I had me a couple of oranges, and feeling that sun and eating those oranges made things not so bad.”

“Were those the oranges Slick Abernathy gave you?”

“You remember that?”

“You held on to that bag like you didn't want anyone to know what was in it, but I saw bulges so I knew it was fruit.”

“Did I hold it like I was ashamed?”

Travis was unsure how to answer.

“I don't know, maybe a little.”

“I was, but not too ashamed to take them. About all any of us got that Christmas was those oranges.” Lori looked up at him, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. “Which is why I'm going to Tech. That way I won't ever have to do something like that again. Or ever be in the fix Momma was in.”

“You don't want a good man to look after you?” Travis meant it as a joke but Lori did not smile.

“Momma and Sabrina taught me better than that. Momma says men are like cats. Don't count much on them because they come and go as they please.”

“Not all men,” Travis said.

“That's pretty much what I've seen until now.”

“I can show you different,” Travis said, trying to sound confident.

“If I didn't think you could I wouldn't be here right now.” Lori paused. “I remember something about you in school, what I remembered that first day I saw you in the hospital.”

Travis grimaced.

“I hope whatever it is ain't too bad.”

“Mrs. Rodgers was checking out my library books when Mr. Abernathy came in and saw you in the magazine section. He asked Mrs. Rodgers if you were causing any trouble, and she said you were never trouble. She told him you were smart.”

“I guess Slick had something to say to that,” Travis said.

“He said he knew you were smart from your test scores but you'd never use your intelligence for anything except getting into trouble. Mrs. Rodgers said she didn't believe that.”

Travis remembered how Mrs. Rodgers let him keep books he'd checked out longer than she was supposed to, let him read magazines before school when the library wasn't officially open. She'd picked out books for him, taken them off the shelves herself and put them in his hands. Try this one, she'd say, and give him Jesse Stuart's
The Thread That Runs So True
or Hemingway's
Nick Adams Stories.
Books he'd never have picked up on his own but always enjoyed.

“She's a nice lady,” Travis said.

“I told her last week about you getting a GED and she said one day you'd prove a lot of people wrong. I believe that too. I wouldn't be here with you if I thought otherwise.”

Travis slipped off his vest. Lori lay on her back now, eyes closed as she let the sun settle on her face. He lay beside her, the sun like a warm dry rain, the broom sedge cushioning the backs of their heads.

“When you went to live with Leonard I almost decided not to see you anymore,” Lori said. “I thought he'd change you for the worse, have you doing what he does. But he's never tried to do that, has he?”

“No,” Travis said.

“He's doing bad things but he's not a bad person. I've never known anybody like that.”

“Maybe he doesn't see what he's doing as wrong,” Travis said. “If they don't get drugs and beer from him they'll get them from somebody else.”

“Then how come he never gives you any or lets you buy them? You know it's not the reason he says.”

“So what's the reason?” Travis asked.

“Because Leonard's like me. He cares about you.”

The broom sedge made a raspy whisper as Lori settled her head deeper. For a few minutes they lay still. The sun's light rose slowly up Sugarloaf Mountain, leaving a widening shadow beneath. Travis guessed one o'clock, then remembered to adjust for the end of daylight savings time. He knew he'd gained an hour but it didn't seem that way. He felt he'd lost time, much more than just an hour, and he could never get it back.

Travis turned to Lori so they could kiss again. He felt her tongue on his, her arms against his back. They held the kiss a long time, Lori's breasts flattening against his chest, her thighs
and his pressed close. Travis slipped his hand under the sweatshirt, rubbed the small of her back with his palm. He let his hand slide upward and settle on her bra strap.

“Enough of that, boy,” Lori said, sitting up, brushing twigs and straw from her hair.

“Why?” Travis said. “It feels good, doesn't it?” He tried to match her lighthearted tone but couldn't. Three months and nothing but some kisses. It was another thing that Shank and the other guys would laugh at. He reached for her arm to pull her back down but she slipped his grasp.

“That's the problem,” Lori said. “It does feel good. It felt good to Sabrina too.”

So I have to have the blue balls because your sister was stupid enough not to make some guy use a rubber. That was what he was thinking, but saying such words to Lori didn't seem possible, anymore than showing her the rubber in his billfold. Travis felt ashamed just thinking about sex around her, which only made it more frustrating.

“We best be getting home,” Lori said. “I got to cover for Mandy and her shift starts at four-thirty.” She kissed him on the cheek, the same sort of kiss his aunt or grandma might give him. He put his fishing vest back on and picked up the rod.

“Don't go getting sulky on me,” Lori said, telling him one more thing not to do.

WHEN TRAVIS GOT BACK TO THE TRAILER, LEONARD'S CAR WAS
gone. Dena sat on the couch, an ashtray and near-empty bottle of Boone's Farm strawberry wine balanced on the armrest. On
the coffee table an array of pills filled a plastic baggie. The television was going, some show about doctors.

“Where's Leonard?”

“Went to the county library,” Dena said. “Gone to get more books for you. Evidently a trailerful ain't enough.”

Travis picked up the science book he and Leonard were using and sat in the recliner. Dena watched him read, a smirk on her face. Her eyes were glassy, their blue opaque like the color in cat-eye marbles.

“What?” he finally said.

“You and him are quite a pair,” Dena said. “You quit school and he gets fired from one, so you all set up your own school in this shit hole of a trailer. It's one of the most screwed-up things I ever seen in my life.”

A cigarette smoldered in the ashtray. Travis felt a need strong as thirst or hunger. A month now since Lori had nagged him into quitting but it didn't seem to be getting any easier.

“He got fired because of pissants like you,” Dena said.

“What do you mean?”

“He caught some students cheating. One of them put some pot in his car and then called the cops. He can't teach anymore because of that, leastways in a school. What's worse is that conviction got his wife full custody of their kid.”

“He has a kid?”

“Oh, yeah, only he don't never see her. His wife took her off to Australia.”

Travis tried to envision some physical feature of the child but nothing came. There was no photo on Leonard's wall or night table, no letter ever in the mailbox from or to her. No
phone call. Her existence seemed something Leonard should have mentioned to him. Travis felt betrayed, though he could not say exactly why.

“How come he never talks about any of this?”

“Because he has to be bad drunk first. He ain't been that way for a while.”

Dena drank the last of the wine and set the empty bottle on the floor.

“Where's your little honey?”

“She's covering for another waitress tonight.”

“Too bad. I bet you were hoping to get something sweet from her.”

Dena's words reminded Travis of what had happened in the meadow. They were like a taunt, and he wanted to be out of the trailer.

“How long ago did Leonard leave?” he asked.

“Not long. He won't be back for at least a hour.”

Dena cut off the TV.

“Nothing but boring shit on,” she said, and let her hand brush his knee as she went to the back room.

Travis finished the chapter in the science book, then walked into the narrow hallway to put it on the shelf.

“Come here,” she said, calling him to the back room.

He stood at the doorway but did not go in. Dena lay on the bed naked. She faced him and he could see the heavy breasts, the dark patch of hair between her legs. He lowered his eyes.

“You want to lay with me?” she said. “You can if you want to.”

Her voice wasn't gentle, but it wasn't mocking either.

“Come here,” she said, patting a spot on the bed beside her.

“I can't,” Travis said.

“Why not, big boy?” she said, mocking him now. “Afraid?”

Maybe he was a little afraid, but it was more than that. He didn't look at her but at the window Leonard had painted black. Travis had once asked Leonard why he'd done this and Leonard said he'd been drinking, as if that were explanation enough.

“Because it wouldn't be right,” Travis said, his eyes still on the window as if he could see through the black paint.

He expected Dena to jeer at him more but she didn't. She lifted the bedsheet and covered herself. He looked at her now.

“I guess not,” she said. She stared at him intently, as though trying to memorize his features. “Last summer you wouldn't have said that. You about got me believing people can change.”

He didn't know how to answer her, or even if he was expected to. He wanted not just out of the trailer but to be miles away. He'd go and find Shank. Dena tugged the sheet until it covered most of her head as well. She looked like a creature peeking out of its lair.

“I'm going down to Marshall,” he said.

“You know where I'm going?” Dena asked.

She didn't give him a chance to respond.

“I'm going to hell. I've known that since I was seven years old.”

She said it the same way she might look out a window and say it was raining.

“You can't know something like that,” Travis said. He knew
there were Bible verses to support him, but he couldn't think of one. He stepped back from the door, wanting to leave.

“Yes, you can,” she said. “You learn it early and you ain't allowed to forget. You even get to spend time there when you're still alive. Just to give you a little taste of what's waiting.”

She turned, facing the wall when she spoke.

“Go on now,” she said.

Travis saw the purple scar on her back shoulder and knew that, as with him, someone had taken a knife to her flesh. He also believed that she'd deserved that blade less than he had. His jeans were almost dry now but the tennis shoes and socks were soggy, so he sat on the couch and changed socks and put on his boots. Dena had left the pills on the coffee table. At least fifty in the bag, enough that a few wouldn't be missed. He picked three of the shiny black ones that looked like licorice, the ones he'd heard Dena call black beauties. He wasn't sure what they'd do but that didn't matter as long as they made him feel different from the way he felt right now. He washed them down with a glass of water and went out to the truck.

Travis headed south toward Marshall and in a few minutes drove past the Harbin Road turnoff that led to his parents' farmhouse. He passed a harvested tobacco field that was nothing now but stubble. There were people who could drive by this field and have no idea how much work had been done here, Travis knew, recalling how he and his father had planted seeds in February before laying down sheets of black plastic anchored by creek rocks. Come April they'd removed those rocks and lifted the plastic sheets careful as they'd pull
a bandage from a wound. He and his daddy had knelt in front of the plants and gently freed the stem and roots from the soil, then laid the plants on a burlap sack before putting them back in the ground with tobacco setters. That had been just the beginning, watering and worming and topping and suckering still to come. Finally the cutting, which was the sweatiest fieldwork of all. Now those plants hung from the barn's rafters, muted to a brittle dusty gold, a smell like old leather musking the air. The barn would be shadowy, except for early mornings and late afternoons when sunlight slipped through the slats and the tobacco leaves brightened and shimmered as if tinged with fire.

By the time he crossed the river into Marshall, the pills had taken hold. It was like a lamp had been turned on inside his head. Everything was brighter, more defined. His heart raced and he imagined blood rushing through his veins like white-water. He wished he had a tape player so he could hear some fast hard music like Skynyrd or Black Oak Arkansas.

He found Shank and a few of the other guys at the Gulf station, their cars and trucks facing the passing traffic. Travis pulled beside Shank and cut the engine. The good feeling he'd had just minutes before was gone. His heart pounded even faster and thoughts came almost too quick for his mind to organize them. Like a truck in the wrong gear, everything felt out of sync. In the rearview mirror Travis saw the same glassy stare he'd seen in Dena's eyes. He put on his sunglasses.

“Damn, boy,” Shank said loudly. “Lori loosened the leash on you a few minutes?”

“She's working.”

“Lucky us,” Shank said, and winked at the others.

Travis got out of the cab and set himself on the Ford's hood, all of them perched on car and truck hoods. Travis knew each face and name and they nodded back at him familiarly. He and Shank were close enough that Shank leaned toward Travis, punched him in the shoulder. Not a hard punch, but he'd had enough of people hitting on him the last few months. He hit Shank back hard, ready to trade a few more punches if that was what Shank wanted. Shank rubbed his shoulder where the blow had landed.