The World Made Straight (23 page)

That's what I was trying to do, Travis wanted to say. You're the one bringing up other stuff. Travis glanced over at the cardboard boxes that served as his chest of drawers. He wondered if there might be a pack of cigarettes in the bottom of one. He hadn't smoked a cigarette in months, but his mouth and lungs ached for one now.

June
17, 1863,
Clinch River, Tennessee

William Pendley. Emesis. Eat goldenseal root every four hours.

Hubert McClure. Phthisic. Continue to smoke jimsonweed twice
daily.

Percival Flowers. En route to Alabama for furlough. Applied
fresh dressing to amputated arm. Poultice of peach leaves for
stone bruise.

Insisted I take his yellowhammer feather for my hat as act of
gratitude.

Ezra Blankenship. Bloody flux. Tea of blackberry leaves and
roots. Tincture of valerian.

Robert Caldwell. Shot in forehead. Deceased.

Joshua Candler. Shot in lower bowel.

Much pain as God is just. Refuse anodynes. Want mind clear to
pray for my soul, ask forgiveness for what cannot be hidden
from my Maker. In Articule Mortis.

On Friday night when he went to pick up Lori, Mrs. Triplett hugged Travis and said how proud she was of him, though all the while making clear she believed it was Lori's doing as much as his. Travis supposed she couldn't help doing that, Lori being her daughter, but he'd been the one who'd sat all Saturday morning in the classroom and figured out the answers. Whenever he'd screwed up in his life, no one had ever stepped forward to share the blame, but now that he'd done something good, folks lined up to take credit.

“Lori's dressing up special pretty for you,” Mrs. Triplett told him. “You might mistake her for one of them catalog models.”

When Lori came out from the back room, Travis saw Mrs. Triplett wasn't exaggerating. Lori turned around slowly so he could see the emerald-green dress that matched her eyes,
brightened her red hair. Lori's hairstyle was different too, bundled up but not in an old-lady way like his mother's, more like how Miss Davis, the prettiest teacher at the high school, wore hers. The lifted hair revealed her neck's whiteness. Lori's bare neck aroused him like seeing a partially exposed breast or thigh.

“Momma and I finished this dress last week,” Lori said. “I wasn't going to wear it till the prom, but I decided tonight was too special not to.”

As they were leaving, Mrs. Triplett handed him a five-dollar bill. “A graduation present,” she said. “You buy you some fishing line and such so you can catch me another mess of trout.”

When they got in the truck Lori slid close and kissed him, her tongue finding his. She shifted slightly, her left hand reaching up to press the back of his head so she could kiss him harder.

“There will be more of that later,” she promised.

They drove down Highway 25 toward Marshall. The sun hid behind Brushy Mountain now, but enough light lingered to see redbuds and dogwoods blooming in the understory. The older fishermen swore trout didn't bite good until the dogwood petals fell off. Not too long, he thought. The five dollars would buy him new line and a couple of Panther Martins. Or maybe instead something to fish with for the big browns, like a Rapala or Johnson Silver Minnow.

When they pulled into the restaurant's parking lot, Travis saw his father's Dodge pickup parked beside Leonard's Buick.

“I invited your momma and daddy and sister, as a kind of surprise,” Lori said. “Leonard said he thought that would be OK.”

When Travis didn't respond Lori touched his shoulder.

“It is, isn't it?”

“Did you talk to Daddy or Momma?” he asked.

“Your momma. She was real nice on the phone, said she'd been wanting to meet me.”

“And she said Daddy was coming too?”

“Yes. She said her and your sister and your daddy. Said they'd all come together.”

Travis wondered if the old man would finally give him some credit, perhaps say he was proud of Travis or even apologize for slapping him. Not likely, Travis reckoned, for that wasn't his father's way. He'd no more admit being wrong about Travis than he'd admit being wrong about some particular of tobacco curing. But he'd come tonight, and that in itself said almost as much as any words. Maybe that was all the old man would ever give him.

It was full dark now, and stars winked above. For a few moments Travis did not move but studied the sky. The science book he'd read had a section on astronomy, and some of what he'd learned came to him now as he found Orion and the red dot below that was Mars. Lori took his hand and urged him toward the entrance.

Inside the light was muted, his eyes adjusting slowly. It took him a few moments to find the large table near the rear, brightly wrapped packages heaped at the table's center.
Leonard sat across from his mother and older sister. The chair at the head of the table was vacant and Travis wanted to laugh out loud at himself for thinking his father would come.

“There they are,” Lori said, leading him to the table.

His mother and sister hugged him and told him how proud they were.

“Your daddy wanted to be here,” his mother added soon as they sat down, “but you know how much farmwork there is this time of year.”

The lie was so transparent Travis wondered why she even bothered to tell it.

“How come you-all drove his truck?” he asked.

It was Connie who answered.

“My car's in the shop.”

“I'd of figured with all that farmwork he would have needed it,” Travis said.

“He's mending fence,” his mother said, not meeting his eyes.

“Must be hard to mend fence in the dark,” Travis said.

No one spoke again until the waiter came to take their orders. Jackson's was the nicest restaurant he'd ever been in, candles on the tables and waiters dressed in white shirts and black vests. His mother and sister wore dresses and Leonard wore khakis and a maroon dress shirt. But he had on jeans and a flannel shirt. Travis figured everybody in the restaurant thought him some ignorant hick who didn't know any better.

“Why don't you open your presents,” Lori said, and handed him two brightly wrapped gifts. He unwrapped the packages, found inside a blue dress shirt and a pair of brown
slacks. He thought briefly of going into the bathroom and changing into the new clothes, but that seemed a stupid idea. People would notice he'd changed. He'd have no belt on either. The food finally came and his steak had no more flavor than a wad of kleenex. He wanted to ask for some ketchup, but that would be just one more way to make himself look backward.

“Let's go,” Travis said, though Leonard and his mother still ate. “There's something I got to do.”

His mother lowered her fork. “Long as it's been since me and you and your sister has set down together, I'd think you'd want to stay awhile.”

“Your momma's right,” Lori said, her face flushed red.

“Got to go now,” Travis said, and gripped Lori's upper arm. He thought she might resist but she rose, telling his mother and sister how good it was to see them, about to say more except he pulled her away.

“That's a rude way of acting,” Lori said as they got in the truck. “They did a special thing for you.”

He shoved the truck into gear and headed up Highway 25.

“Where are we going?” Lori asked.

“To see my father, the one that has to work all day and all night. There's something I need to tell him.”

“I know he hurt your feelings, but I don't think that's a good thing to do,” Lori said.

“Well, I'm damn well doing it anyway,” Travis said, not bothering to soften his voice.

They did not speak again until Travis drove onto the grass in the front yard, the truck's high beams aimed at the front door.

“Please don't do this,” Lori said. She held her hands in her lap and her voice trembled.

The light was off in the living room but Travis could see the television's blue glow. He blew the horn and the front door opened. His father stepped onto the porch in his socks and a tee-shirt, suspenders hanging from the sides of his pants like lariats. Travis cut the engine but kept the lights on. The old man squinted to see better, craning his neck forward like an old tom turkey. Even got those saggy neck wrinkles, Travis thought. Just an old tom turkey strutting around trying to act big and important.

“I came to tell you something,” Travis shouted, leaning his head out the window.

“Have you now,” his daddy said, straightening up, stuffing hands in his back pockets. “Well ream it out then. I'm listening.”

Lori touched his arm. “Please, Travis, let's go. I've got a gift I want you to open.”

“I've done something you couldn't do,” Travis shouted. “Did it on my own too.”

“I expect you're ever so right about that,” his daddy replied. “But I've got more pride than to hang my hat with some half-ass drug dealer.” The old man paused. “I was of a mind to come haul you out of that trailer, but it wouldn't have done no good. Trash always settles back to the same place.”

“I'm not trash. I never have been,” Travis shouted back.

“I knowed you'd amount to nothing when you started getting into trouble in junior high, boy. If it hadn't of been for your momma I'd of kicked you out when you was sixteen. As
for Leonard Shuler, he carries no more man inside him than a dog-turd butterfly.”

“He's a better man than you,” Travis said. “He's treated me better than my blood kin have.”

“Please, Travis,” Lori said, tugging his arm more insistently. “Let's go. You've said what you came to say.”

A smile creased his father's face, the same look the old man might give a county agent offering advice on how to better grow his tobacco. “That's kindly ironic, ain't it,” his daddy said, “him being a Candler and all. Educated as you are now, I'd figure you to know all about what happened up in the Laurel during the Confederate War. His momma's great-granddaddy helped kill off near every member of your family, but I don't guess he mentioned that to you, did he?”

For a few moments Travis's mind rejected his father's words. Then he remembered the name Candler on the 64th regiment's roll and how Leonard had never mentioned his mother's last name. Other things quickly surfaced as well—how Leonard had reacted when he'd first found out Travis was a Shelton and the fact that he knew so much about the massacre in the first place. It suddenly seemed obvious and Travis wondered if on some level he had suspected all along. It doesn't matter, he told himself, because it wasn't Leonard who'd done the killing. But if it didn't matter, why had Leonard not told him? Travis remembered the first time they'd discussed what had happened in Shelton Laurel, Leonard talking about the cold and snow and other hardships the killers had endured, like he was defending what they'd done.

“I don't understand,” Lori said. “What's he talking about?”

The old man stepped closer to the porch edge.

“I didn't figure you to have no back sass to that,” his father said. “I reckon the cat's got your tongue and run clear out of the county with it.”

“He's still a better man than you and I am too,” Travis shouted. “I'm a better man than you'll ever be and I've proved it by getting a GED. There's nothing you can say or do to change that either.”

For a few moments Travis felt good, because unlike every other time in his life, he hadn't just taken what his father had dished out. He revved the engine so any reply the old man made would be drowned out. This time he'd have the last word.

They drove back toward Lori's but a mile from her house Travis turned off at the overlook where they had first kissed. He parked facing where the land broke off, opening to a deep far fall. A mile below, house lights flickered like stars reflected in the bottom of a well. For a few minutes he didn't say anything and for once Lori just let him be. He looked down at the lights in the valley. Fifteen miles by road but just one mile if you were a bird. Travis imagined how good it would feel to be a hawk and make a long circling drift down to those lights, leave behind everything tonight had laid on him.

Lori opened her pocketbook.

“Here's your present,” she said. “The way you've been acting tonight I've a mind not to give it to you.”

Travis didn't much care for her upbraiding him like that, but he accepted the small box wrapped in red and green Christmas paper.

“Sorry about the paper,” Lori said. “It's all we had at the house.”

Travis tore off the paper and opened the cardboard box. A silver cross and chain lay inside.

“It's to protect you when I'm not around,” Lori said, clasping the chain to Travis's neck.

“You got anything else for me?” he asked, his arms keeping her close.

She kissed him, letting her tongue find his.

“More than that,” Travis said, and cupped his hand on her breast. Lori didn't move his hand this time. She made a soft sound deep in her throat as he kissed her harder. It was only when he placed his hand on her inner thigh that she tensed and pushed him away.

“Now don't get rowdy and ruin a good night for us, boy,” Lori said, her hands straightening her dress.

“It's been ruined already,” Travis replied, “and it's more your fault than mine. You're the one invited him to the restaurant. You're the one who gave him another chance to show me up.”

“I thought your daddy would be proud,” Lori said. “He should have been.”

“If you'd asked me I'd have told you better,” Travis replied. “You think you always know what's best, don't you?”

“Why are you so mad at me?” Lori asked. “I was just trying to make tonight special for you.”