IT WAS SIX-THIRTY BEFORE TRAVIS TURNED INTO THE ABANdoned Gulf station and parked window to window beside Shank’s Plymouth Wildebeast.
“You won’t believe what I got in the back of this truck.”
Shank grinned.
“It’s not the old prune-faced bitch that fired you, is it?”
“No, this here is worth something. Get out and I’ll show you.”
They walked around to the truck bed and Shank peered in.
“I didn’t know there to be a big market for willow branches and feed sacks.”
Travis looked around to see if anyone was watching, then pulled back enough of a sack so Travis could see some leaves.
“I got five of them,” Travis said.
“Holy shit. Where’d that come from?”
“Found it when I was fishing.”
Travis pulled the sack back over the plant.
“Reckon I better start doing my fishing with you,” Shank said. “It’s for sure I been going to the wrong places.” Shank leaned against the tailgate. “What are you going to do with it? I know you ain’t about to smoke it yourself.”
“Sell it, if I can figure out who’ll buy it.”
“I bet Leonard Shuler would,” Shank said. “Probably give you good money for it too.”
“He don’t know me though. I’m not one of his potheads like you.”
“Well, we’ll just have to go and get you all introduced,” Shank said. “Let me lock my car and me and you will go pay him a visit.”
“How about we go over to Dink Shackleford’s first and get some beer.”
“Leonard’s got beer,” Shank said, “and his ain’t piss-warm like what we got last time at Dink’s.”
They drove out of Marshall, following 25 North. A pink, dreamy glow tinged the air. Rose-light evenings, Travis’s mother had called them. The carburetor coughed and gasped as the pickup struggled up High Rock Ridge. Travis figured soon enough he’d have money for a carburetor kit, maybe even get the whole damn engine rebuilt.
“You’re in for a treat, meeting Leonard,” Shank said. “There’s not another like him, leastways in this county.”
“Wasn’t he a teacher somewhere up north?”
“Yeah, but they kicked his ass out.”
“What for,” Travis asked, “taking money during homeroom for dope instead of lunch?”
Shank laughed.
“I wouldn’t put it past him, but the way I heard it he shot some fellow.”
“Kill him?”
“No, but he wasn’t trying to. If he had that man would have been dead before he hit the ground.”
“I heard tell he’s a good shot.”
“He’s way beyond good,” Shank said. “He can hit a chigger’s ass with that pistol of his.”
After a mile they turned off the blacktop and onto a dirt road. On both sides what had once been pasture sprouted with scrub pine and broom sedge. They passed a deserted farmhouse, and the road withered to no better than a logger’s skid trail. Trees thickened, a few silver-trunked river birch like slats of caught light among the darker hardwoods. The land made a deep seesaw and the woods opened into a small meadow, at the center a battered green and white trailer, its back windows painted black. Parked beside the trailer was a Buick LeSabre, front fender crumpled, rusty tailpipe held in place with a clothes hanger. Two large big-shouldered dogs scrambled out from under the trailer, barking furiously, brindle hair hackled behind their necks.
“Those damn dogs are Plott hounds,” Travis said, rolling his window up higher.
Shank laughed.
“They’re all bark and bristle,” Shank said. “Them two wouldn’t fight a tomcat, much less a bear.”
The trailer door opened and a man wearing nothing but a frayed pair of khaki shorts stepped out, his brown eyes blinking like some creature unused to light. He yelled at the dogs and they slunk back under the trailer.
The man was no taller than Travis. Blond, stringy hair touched his shoulders, something not quite a beard and not quite stubble on his face. Older than Travis had figured, at least in his mid-thirties. But it was more than the creases in the brow that told Travis this. It was the way the man’s shoulders drooped and arms hung—like taut, invisible ropes were attached to both his wrists and pulling toward the ground.
“That’s Leonard?”
“Yeah,” Shank said. “The one and only.”
“He don’t look like much.”
“Well, he’ll fool you that way. There’s a lot more to him than you’d think. Like I said, you ought to see that son-of-a-bitch shoot a gun. He shot both that yankee’s shoulders in the exact same place. They say you could of put a level on those two holes and the bubble would of stayed plumb.”
“That sounds like a crock of shit to me,” Travis said. He lit a cigarette, felt the warm smoke fill his lungs. Smoking cigarettes was the one thing his old man didn’t nag him about. Afraid it would cut into his sales profits, Travis figured.
“If you’d seen him shooting at the fair last year you’d not think so,” Shank said.
Leonard walked over to Travis’s window, but he spoke to Shank.
“Who’s this you got with you?”
“Travis Shelton.”
“Shelton,” Leonard said, pronouncing the name slowly as he looked at Travis. “You from the Laurel?”
Leonard’s eyes were a deep gray, the same color as the birds old folks called mountain witch doves. Travis had once heard the best marksmen most always had gray eyes and wondered why that might be so.
“No,” Travis said. “But my daddy grew up there.”
Leonard nodded in a manner that seemed to say he’d figured as much. He stared at Travis a few moments before speaking, as though he’d seen Travis before and was trying to haul up in his mind exactly where.
“You vouch for this guy?” Leonard asked Shank.
“Hell, yeah,” Shank said. “Me and Travis been best buddies since first grade.”
Leonard stepped back from the car.
“I got beer and pills but just a few nickel bags if you’ve come for pot,” Leonard said. “Supplies are low until people start to harvest.”
“Well, we come at a good time then.” Shank turned to Travis. “Let’s show Leonard what you brought him.”
Travis and Shank got out. Travis pulled back the branches and feed sacks.
“Where’d you get that?” Leonard asked.
“Found it,” Travis said.
“Found it, did you. And you figured finders keepers.”
“Yeah,” said Travis.
“Looks like you dragged it through every briar patch and laurel slick between here and the county line,” Leonard said.
“There’s plenty of buds left,” Shank said, lifting one of the stalks so Leonard could see it better.
“What you give me for it?” Travis asked.
Leonard lifted a stalk himself, rubbed the leaves the same way Travis