The World Made Straight

  “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.”

  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.

  THIRTEEN

  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 n
o 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.