The World Made Straight (27 page)

“OK,” Leonard said. “Follow me and I'll take you to her.”

“No,” Carlton said, “you ride with us.” His right hand latched onto Leonard's wrist, held it firm while his left took the
bag. Toomey stuffed the roll of bills in his front pocket, gave the empty bag back to Leonard.

“I rechecked my math and realized I'd forgot to add a surcharge for the pain in the ass this has all been,” Carlton said. “And one more thing. You make damn sure that boy
never
threatens to put the law on me again, because if he does I will kill him.”

Leonard got in the truck, the Toomeys' wide shoulders hemming him in as they drove down to the blacktop. The windshield wipers had worn off their rubber coating, and they made a steady rasping that reminded Leonard of another sound he could not immediately place. Then he knew—a knife blade being stroked across a whetstone. Hubert turned left and downshifted as they began the climb toward Shelton Laurel.

“Think we ought to try and replant?” Hubert asked.

“No. That pot's more trouble than it's worth,” Carlton replied. “We'll make do with the pills.”

The road steepened and curved, wrapped itself tighter to the mountain, the drop-offs like falling off the world. A soft steady rain smudged the windshield, rain that was in no hurry. They turned left on White Rock Road. A car pulled out in front of them and Hubert slowed. They rode the car's bumper until the blacktop straightened. Hubert pulled into the other lane, halfway around the car before he saw a gray pickup coming from the other direction. Hubert swerved in front of the car, forcing it to brake. The pickup blared its horn.

“Damn, boy,” Carlton said. “You about laid us out in our coffins for sure.”

“The truck was hard to see,” Hubert said. “It blended right in with the fog.”

The road fishhooked left before straightening again. They drove past the house where Leonard had parked in January, beside it a freshly planted cornfield. A scarecrow, ragged black coat billowed by the wind, appeared to levitate above the broken soil. They followed the blacktop another mile until it looped back and ran beside the meadow. Hubert stopped next to the historical marker, directly behind Travis's truck.

Dena jumped out of the truck and ran toward the creek. Hubert jerked the pickup back into gear and drove into the meadow. He reached through the open window, grabbed Dena's hair, not letting go until she fell to the ground, leaving a hank of hair in his hand. Hubert braked the truck and got out as Dena slowly rose to her feet. She didn't try to run but waited in a half crouch.

When Hubert got close, Dena's right hand slashed out. The nail on her index finger broke the skin on his neck, then the necklace. A small shattered rainbow spilled off the thread. Hubert grabbed her right arm and Dena raked her left hand's nails across his face, four reddening furrows opening in his left cheek. One nail broke off, embedded in the younger Toomey's cheek like a sliver of glass.

Leonard got out of the cab and watched as Travis ran into the meadow to help her. Carlton pulled the hawkbill from his pocket, let the boy see the blade.

“Come any closer and I'll cut on you some more,” he said.

Dena kept slashing at Hubert until he slapped her hard enough to knock her to the ground. She tucked her knees to her chest and did not move.

Hubert prodded her with his boot.

“Get up,” he said. “We're going home.”

But she didn't rise, remained instead tightly curled, letting her weight be a last resistance as the Toomeys dragged her to the truck as if she were nothing more than a feed sack.

“You lied to us,” Travis shouted as he walked toward Leonard. “You said we'd be safe here.”

Leonard saw that Travis had grown an inch since summer, fleshed out some as well in the shoulders and chest. His face had assumed a squarer, fuller shape. No longer a boy but a man. Leonard wondered how he hadn't noticed until this moment.

“Why did you lie?” Travis said when he stood directly in front of Leonard. “Why don't you do something?”

Because I never have any other time in my life, Leonard almost replied.

The Toomeys lifted Dena into the passenger side of the cab, then came around to where Leonard and Travis stood. The right side of Hubert's face was a red smear, several of the slashes deep enough to need stitches. Hubert touched his face and looked at the blood on his fingers as if unsure it had really happened.

Carlton closed the hawkbill and stuck it in his pocket. His eyes settled on Travis.

“You keep getting yourself ass deep in trouble and then wait for somebody else to save you. You probably figure yourself to be a cat with nine lives. Well, messing with me you've done used up eight of them.”

“Let's go ahead and be done with them both,” Hubert said.

“Damned if I'd need much persuading,” Carlton said. “But
you pretending to be Richard Petty made sure everybody in this valley noticed our truck, and piece of shit that it is they'd likely figure it to be us.” Carlton Toomey shook his head. “There'll be another time. These two can't seem to help themselves.”

Travis's eyes remained on Leonard as the Toomeys spoke. The boy was shivering, his eyes wide and wild. Leonard stepped closer, reached out his right hand, and let it rest on Travis's shoulder.

“It wouldn't end up any different for her,” Leonard said gently. “Only a different place, different people.”

For a few moments Travis just stared at him, then broke free of Leonard's grasp and ran to his pickup. He reached behind the seat and brought out the .22. As he walked toward them, he thumbed back the safety.

“You ain't about to make it easy on yourself, are you, boy,” Carlton said.

“Give me the rifle, Travis,” Leonard said.

“Why didn't you tell me you were a Candler?” Travis shouted. The rifle had been aimed at the gap between Leonard and Carlton, but now it pointed in Leonard's direction.

“Because it doesn't matter.”

“If that was true you wouldn't have hidden it from me,” Travis said, his voice almost a sob. The rifle trembled in his hands.

“Damned if it don't look like he's going to shoot the whole covey of us,” Carlton said to his son. The two men laughed.

“Because it would have changed things between us,”
Leonard said. “It shouldn't. You and I weren't here when the killing happened. But it would have.”

“Take that popgun away from him, Hubert,” Carlton said. “I'm tired of standing in the rain like some barnyard rooster.”

Travis aimed the rifle at Hubert.

“You little prick,” Hubert said. “If it had been up to me I'd of killed you last summer.”

“Damned if I haven't come around to your way of thinking on that, son.” Carlton turned to Leonard. “A nit always makes a louse, right professor?”

Leonard stared at Carlton Toomey. For a few moments no one spoke or moved, as if each awaited some cue from the others as to what to do next. The rain fell harder, a pale curtain that blurred everything outside the meadow.

Leonard stepped between Hubert and Travis.

“Get out of my way,” Travis said, aiming the barrel at Leonard's chest.

Leonard walked straight toward him, put his hand on the barrel, and lifted the rifle from Travis's hands. The .22 felt light and flimsy compared to his Winchester, and it struck Leonard as nothing short of remarkable that such a shoddy piece of wood and steel could send lead deep enough into a man to kill him. For a few moments he held the rifle loose in his hands, thinking how the barrel was like a compass needle he could point in all sorts of directions.

“You better give that rifle to me,” Carlton said.

That was easily enough done, everything back to where it had been just minutes earlier, back to what Leonard had decided an
hour ago on the trailer's steps. But things were different now. He remembered words written during the Civil War, not by his ancestor but by a Union private the morning of the battle of Cold Harbor. The man's entry was one line:
June 3, Cold Harbor. I was killed.
The soldier had indeed died that day, the bloodstained diary found in his pocket after the battle. Terrible to know you were going to die, but a kind of freedom as well, Leonard believed, because you decided it before anyone or anything else could. Your life became something more than just a life, a kind of embodied language with no present or future tense.

“I'll keep it,” Leonard said, and pointed the rifle at Carlton. He turned to Travis, speaking soft so the Toomeys could not overhear.

“Get Dena and drive to the nearest house. Don't call the sheriff. Call the Highway Patrol and tell them to get up here. Not Crockett, the Highway Patrol. Then take Dena straight to the bus station. Get her on a bus.”

Leonard pulled out his billfold. He looked briefly at the Toomeys, who leaned against their truck, waiting. “Here,” Leonard said, handing him what bills were inside. “It's enough to get her to Greensboro.”

“I don't want to leave you here with them,” Travis said.

“I'm fine,” Leonard said. “I'm the one who's got the rifle.”

Travis helped Dena into the truck and they left. Leonard knew an hour could pass before the Highway Patrol arrived. Even then they might defer to Sheriff Crockett, figure it his affair more than theirs. Nothing short of murder would force Crockett to do anything besides shrug his shoulders and look
the other way. Leonard stepped a few feet into the meadow. The safety was off and six bullets filled the clip.

Carlton leaned against the truck, as if he and Leonard were friends who had stopped to banter. Hubert raised a handkerchief to his cheek and dabbed blood oozing from the slashes. The three of them stood there in silence, their hair matted, faces streaked with rain. Leonard felt goose bumps prickle his skin. The older Toomey crossed his arms, his fingers rubbing the backs of his biceps. Cold as well, Leonard knew, but not wanting to show it. Hubert alone seemed comfortable, the rain sliding off his nylon jacket.

“We got us a real fix now, ain't we, and there's no easy setting it right,” Carlton said. “Though I figure giving me that rifle would be a good start.”

Carlton took a pack of Camels from his pocket and a silver lighter. He shielded the flame from the rain and lit his cigarette.

“Killing a man is no easy thing,” Carlton said. “If we was to rush you I doubt you'd get both of us, especially with that twenty-two.”

Hubert stuffed the handkerchief in his front pocket, his eyes on Leonard now.

“You won't get away with murdering,” Hubert said.

“I figure as much,” Leonard said.

“A man no bigger than you would have a time of it in prison,” Hubert said. “You'd likely not last six months.”

Leonard said nothing, just stood there with the rifle pretending he could shoot them. He wondered how long it would take for Carlton Toomey or his son to realize he was bluffing.

“Neither of them is nowhere near worth it,” Carlton said. “I had every right to kill that boy last summer.”

Carlton shifted his body so he no longer touched the truck. The tee-shirt was soaked now, white skin visible under the material. Carlton's body was succumbing to gravity, Leonard realized, belly leaning over his pants like a short apron, breasts sagging. The water dripping down his flesh heightened the effect, as though his body were melting away like a candle. Except in the arms. There the muscles remained firm.

“Don't move,” Leonard said, and trained the rifle on Carlton's chest.

“I'm just standing up,” Carlton said, hands at his sides and open-palmed as if to show he hid no weapons.

Russian farmers still unearthed cartloads of bones in their fields each spring, bones planted outside Stalingrad in the winter of 1942. Blood-rich ground, good for growing crops. Here too, Leonard supposed. He imagined the broom sedge in this meadow the summer after the massacre, how it would have been taller and thicker, tinged a deeper gold. And now more blood to be spilled in this meadow. At least fifteen minutes had passed, a good enough head start for Dena and Travis.

“She tore into you good, boy,” Leonard said to Hubert. “Your face will look like a baseball by the time they're through stitching you up.” Leonard smiled. “How does it feel to have a hundred-pound woman kick your ass? I wouldn't know so I'm kind of curious.”

“If you weren't holding that rifle I'd kill you,” Hubert said.

“You haven't got the guts to kill anybody,” Leonard said.

“Give me half a chance,” Hubert said softly. “Put that rifle
on the ground. Just so you'll have to pick it up before you can shoot. That's all I ask.”

“I'll do better than that,” Leonard said. “I'll throw it on the ground between us.”

“He's baiting you, son,” Carlton said. “Trying to set up some kind of self-defense.”

“No, I'm not,” Leonard said, “I'm just seeing if your boy's all talk.”

Leonard tossed the rifle out before him, the gun was still in the air when Hubert broke for it. Leonard didn't move. He let Hubert pick it up, raise the rifle and fire. The bullet clipped his arm, just enough to draw blood. Leonard stood still as Hubert took more careful aim, but Carlton jerked the barrel downward just as his son squeezed the trigger. The second bullet made a spitting sound as it struck the soggy earth at Leonard's feet.

Carlton wrested the rifle from his son.

“Can't you see the son-of-a-bitch
wants
you to kill him?”

The elder Toomey settled his eyes on Leonard.

“I know what you're doing, and I wouldn't mind obliging you. But not right now.” Carlton paused. “Where's that boy taking her?”

Leonard didn't say anything.

Carlton flicked the safety on, held the rifle in front of him as he stepped closer to Leonard. When he spoke his voice was weary.