The World Made Straight (22 page)

In a few minutes a man came in carrying a cardboard box. He introduced himself as Mr. Atwell and passed out pencils and the first test before going over the instructions so meticulously Travis felt like an idling engine about to overheat. Finally Mr. Atwell set a stopwatch on the Formica desk. “Open your booklets and begin,” he said.

Travis did what Leonard told him to do—read each question slow and not guess unless he'd narrowed the answer to two possibilities, focus on each question the same way he'd focus before casting a lure or squeezing a trigger. Most of the questions were so easy Travis wondered if some were trick questions that merely seemed obvious. He finished every test but the math, three problems to go when Mr. Atwell called time.

“How'd you do?” Leonard asked as they walked outside to Travis's truck.

Travis rolled his head in a slow circle and heard a soft crackling in his neck. The sun was so bright he lowered his gaze. It felt like he'd spent the morning chained up in a dungeon.

“The math was pretty tough, but I tried to do what you said, narrow to two and guess. I was pretty nervous at first.”

“That's natural.”

“At least I got the one right about two points being equidistant from a central axis.”

“I'm glad we went back over that one last night,” Leonard said.

They got in the truck. Three pages stapled together lay on the passenger seat,
State Employment Application
at the top of the page, beside it a brown paper bag.

“That the application for the library job?” Travis asked.

“Yes, I filled it out while I waited.”

Leonard opened the bag.

“I went and got you some lunch,” he said, and handed Travis a hamburger and Coke. “Go ahead and eat. You have to be hungry after four hours in there.”

He ate the hamburger while Leonard perused the application. The farmer came out of the building and sat on a bench, took out a pack of rolling papers and a tobacco tin. He tapped out his tobacco and expertly rolled a cigarette.

Travis finished the Coke and drove out of the parking lot. Travis thought about a question he hadn't been able to answer. It was the one formula he and Leonard had not gone over, one that dealt with consecutive positive integers. Too late to fret over it now, he told himself.

“How long before you get the results?” Leonard asked.

“Mr. Atwell said since there were just five of us he'd have them graded by the end of the afternoon, but the results wouldn't be mailed till next week. That big farmer was about to bust a gut to know how he did. He fussed so much about having to wait a week that Mr. Atwell finally said we could call him at home.” Travis pulled the piece of paper from his pocket with the number written on it. “We can call after six.”

The temperature was only in the mid-sixties, but as they drove out of the lot Travis rolled down the window. He smelled the plowed earth and wondered if he would ever stand in a tobacco field again or spend minutes with his hands under a spigot rubbing off tobacco resin. His daddy was one of the
few growers who still wove his plants into thirteen-leaf bunches, what the old-timers called hands. Near any jackleg can grow corn and the like, his daddy often said, but there's got to be pride in you to grow tobacco right. Spread on the market floor, those knit bundles had been irrefutable testimony to their devotion and hard work,
their
pride, his as well as his father's. The buyers from Winston-Salem and Durham who gathered in the auction barn acknowledged as much, always paying a little more for his daddy's crop. Some of the older buyers claimed they could pick out Harvey Shelton's burley blindfolded, that it had a richer smell.

If he'd passed the test, Travis could have pride in something else, not just for graduating high school but how he'd done it living on his own and holding down a full-time job. The old man might not care about the degree, had never cared much for what he'd called book learning, but he'd have to admire the effort it took.

“You mind if we stop by the library?” Leonard asked when they came to the Mars Hill turnoff. “I got to drop off this application.”

“Fine by me,” Travis said.

The librarian nodded at them familiarly when they came inside. The main library in Marshall contained a lot more books, but Travis liked this library better because it was less crowded. He could wander the stacks without bumping into other people, find a corner and not hear so much as a whisper while he read. It made him feel like every book had been placed on the shelves just for him.

“Did you bring your paperwork?” the librarian asked Leonard.

Travis was in the stacks, but he peered through an empty shelf as Leonard laid the papers on the desk.

“It's not a great job, mainly shelving books and haggling over fines,” the librarian warned, “but like I said last week, if you're willing to take some library science classes over at Western Carolina it could lead to a good position, one with full benefits.”

“Anything else I need to do?”

“No, just be ready to start May fifteen.”

The librarian placed the papers in a drawer.

“Have you talked to the folks at Western?”

“Yes,” Leonard said. “They offer a class this summer which meets once a week, in the fall a night class that does the same.”

“Good. That will make it easy to work them around your library schedule.”

“I appreciate all your help,” Leonard said, “not just getting this job but the other things.”

“Did the phone numbers I got you help any?” the librarian asked.

“Yes,” Leonard said. “They were very helpful.”

“Well, if you're going for a visit down under, make sure you're back by the fifteenth.”

“I'll do that,” Leonard said.

“I'd think a plane ticket to Australia would be awfully expensive,” Travis said when they were back in the truck.

“I've got enough money saved up,” Leonard said. “Now that I have the library job I can put in my week's notice at the store.”

“How long you plan to be gone?”

“I don't know for sure but I'll be back by May fifteenth. I figured you could take care of the dogs while I'm gone.”

“I guess I can,” Travis said. He wondered if Leonard was going to bring his daughter back for the summer and, if so, whether he'd still be welcome at the trailer. Leonard's daughter coming didn't seem real likely—after all, who'd look after the girl while Leonard worked—but he couldn't be certain, especially close-mouthed as Leonard got whenever Travis asked about her.

Leonard was changing, changing in good ways, but somehow it still bothered Travis. He glanced out the window, the trees a green blur. The winter had been slow, as if cold weather could clog up time, but now everything was speeding up. Not just Leonard but everything was changing. In two months Lori would be out of high school, and she was talking more and more about starting Tech not in the fall but this summer. His passing the GED, if he'd passed it, was another good thing, maybe the best thing he'd ever done in his life. But the sheer unfamiliarity of all that was happening felt like more than he could get hold of.

When they pulled up to the trailer, Travis did not get out. It was a cool day for spring, the kind of day older folks called redbud winter. The sun was out though, and inside the cab the sun soaked him like a warm bath. He'd taken the whole day off from work and thought he might drive up to Spillcorn Creek. He hadn't fished since fall, and it would be good to feel the water pulsing against his legs, even better to feel that moment a trout hit, that jolt running from his wrist up his arm and all the
way to his brain, as if the current was not water but electricity. At that instant, before you could measure the heft by how much the rod bent or the whir of the drag, you didn't know if that trout was no longer than your hand or the biggest of your life.

But this felt good too, just being in a truck that wasn't going anywhere. Not having to do a thing but sit and feel the sun. Travis closed his eyes and soon heard water. He stood before a creek, one he'd seen before but never fished. Speckled trout swam in the stream, some over a foot long, the red spots on their flanks big as buttons. Travis knew this somehow, but when he peered into the water he couldn't see them.
Where are they?
he asked aloud, because he knew there was someone with him, someone who could see the trout.
You need these,
the boy beside him said, and handed him the glasses.
Put them on and close your left eye, like as if you was a-sighting something to shoot.
Travis saw them then, the speckled trout curving their bodies with the current as though they had been woven into the water the same way a bright design was woven into a wool bedspread. The boy spoke softly.
You'd have not likened them to be that pretty, would you?

When Travis awoke the sun had disappeared behind Brushy Mountain. For a few moments he thought he still heard the creek, but it was only wind whispering through the trees. His neck ached from slumping against the driver-side window. He checked his watch and went inside. Leonard was reading but closed the book when Travis came in.

“I came out there, but you looked so sacked out I didn't want to wake you,” Leonard said. “A test that long would exhaust anyone.”

“I guess so,” Travis said.

“You plan to call right at six?” Leonard asked.

“Yes.”

“Good, because I have to be at the store by seven. I'd like to know before I leave.” Leonard checked the alarm clock beside the couch. “I guess I'll have to buy one of those since I'll soon be working mornings.”

“Wouldn't hurt to have a calendar either,” Travis said. He sat down on the couch and untied his tennis shoes. “I'm going to take a shower. I was sweating like a stuck pig in that classroom.”

He took his time, let the warm spray massage his stiff neck. For a few moments Travis was able to close his eyes, let his mind drift as if on a slow, easeful current. He remembered the speckled trout in his dream, how it seemed it wasn't water that made the stream flow but the trout themselves, the water merely a larger fluid skin the fish carried with them.

After getting dressed, Travis came back into the front room and picked up a magazine, but his mind strayed from the words. His earlier fears that some of the questions had only appeared to be easy returned. The fifth time he checked his watch it was finally six o'clock. He dialed the number and got a busy signal. Bet that farmer is on the line, he told himself. The second time he got through.

“I passed,” Travis said when he'd put down the phone.

“Congratulations,” Leonard said. “This is something you should be real proud of.”

They exchanged an awkward handshake.

“I'm going to drive down to the café and tell Lori,” Travis said, already getting up from the table.

Leonard smiled.

“You could call her as easily.”

Travis blushed.

“I guess so. I kind of wanted to tell her in person.”

“I'm just teasing you,” Leonard said. “You should tell her in person.”

Travis took the truck keys from his pocket.

“We'll need to celebrate,” Leonard said, his smile widening. “Lori too. You know you wouldn't have done this without her whipping you into shape. Right?”

“I guess,” Travis said.

“We'll go eat at Jackson's tomorrow night,” Leonard continued. “Lori could get off, couldn't she?”

“Probably. Amy owes her a night.”

“Good,” Leonard said, looking out the window. “By the way, when I went over to Western Carolina last week I didn't just talk to the people in library science. I talked to an admissions counselor about you. You can get in with a GED, even get financial aid and work-study money. That and a Pell grant and you could go to Western next fall. Lori could do the same.”

“That's supposing I'd want to go, ain't it,” Travis said. He gripped the keys tighter. Not even one night to celebrate the GED without somebody expecting more. Travis wondered if there'd ever be one time in his life when someone would just say “great job” and leave it at that.

“Of course,” Leonard said, sounding like the decision made no difference to him one way or another.

The casual tone made Travis angrier, as if the older man didn't think him smart enough to catch on, wouldn't remember
that Leonard had brought it up in the first place. Travis realized that it might well be the same if he went to see Lori, her talking about A-B Tech. Or maybe Western Carolina. For all Travis knew Leonard and Lori had already been talking together about Western. He thought of how Leonard had made plans to take classes come summer, Lori talking about going to summer school at Tech as well. It was like he'd just crossed the finish line in one race, a long hard race, and Leonard and Lori were already in a new race, expecting him to catch up.

“You're right,” Travis said, putting the keys back in his pocket. “No sense driving all the way down there when I can call. Anyway, it ain't no big deal.” Travis waited for Leonard to correct his grammar, but Leonard didn't. Instead, he turned from the window and looked directly at Travis.

“Look,” Leonard said, “I'm not trying to push you into something, but you need to know some things are possible you might not have realized. If you decide you don't want those possibilities, that's fine. I just want you to be aware they're out there.”

“OK,” Travis muttered. The math workbook lay on the coffee table. He had only needed to do the problems in the first third of the workbook. Those had been hard enough. One night he'd tried to solve some of the problems in the last chapter. A bait-cast reel's backlash would have been easier to untangle.

“Regardless, not many people could have passed the GED without classes, and not that quickly either.” Leonard smiled. “Western Carolina isn't something you have to think about tonight. Tonight just enjoy what you've accomplished.”