Leonard looked amused.
“Are you sure? They used to be the warm-up act for Lynyrd Skynyrd.”
“Well, it still sucks,” Shank said.
“That’s probably because you fail to empathize with his view of the region,” Leonard said.
“Empa what?” Shank said.
“Empathize,” Leonard said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shank said. “All I know is I’d rather tie a bunch of cats together by their tails and hear them squall.”
Travis knew Leonard was putting down not just Shank but him also, talking over him like he was stupid. It made Travis think of his teachers at the high school, teachers who used sentences with big words against him when he gave them trouble, trying to tangle him up in a laurel slick of language. Figuring he hadn’t read nothing but what they made him read, never used a dictionary to look up a word he didn’t know.
Travis got up and made his way to the refrigerator, damned if he was going to ask permission. He pulled the metal tab off the beer but didn’t go back to the couch. He went down the hallway to find the bathroom.
He almost had to walk slantways because of the makeshift shelves lining the narrow hallway. They were tall as Travis and each shelf sagged under the weight of books of various sizes and shapes, more books than Travis had seen anywhere outside a library. There was a bookshelf in the bathroom as well. He read the titles as he pissed, all unfamiliar to him. But some looked interesting. When he stepped back into the hallway, he saw the bedroom door was open. The woman sat up in the bed reading a magazine. Travis walked into the room.
The woman laid down the magazine.
“What the hell do you want?”
Travis grinned.
“What you offering?”
Even buzzed on beer he knew it was a stupid thing to say. Ever since he’d got to Leonard’s his mouth had been like a faucet he couldn’t shut off.
The woman’s brown eyes stared at him like he was nothing more than a sack of manure somebody had dumped on the floor.
“I ain’t offering you anything,” she said. “Even if I was, a little peckerhead like you wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
The woman looked toward the open door.
“Leonard,” she shouted.
Leonard appeared at the doorway.
“It’s past time to get your Cub Scout meeting over,” she said.
Leonard nodded at Travis.
“I believe you boys have overstayed your welcome.”
“I was getting ready to leave anyhow,” Travis said. He turned toward the door and the can slipped from his hand, spilling beer on the bed.
“Nothing but a little peckerhead,” the woman repeated.
In a few moments he and Shank were outside. The last rind of sun embered on Brushy Mountain. Cicadas had started their racket in the trees and lightning bugs rode an invisible current over the grass. Travis tried to catch one, but when he opened his hand it held nothing but air. He tried again and felt a soft tickling in his palm.
“You get more plants, come again,” Leonard said from the steps.
“I was hoping you’d show us some of that fancy shooting of yours,” Shank said.
“Not this evening,” Leonard said.
Travis loosened his fingers. The lightning bug seemed not so much to fly as float out of his hand. In a few moments it was one tiny flicker among many, like a star returned to its constellation.
“Good night,” Leonard said, turning to go back inside the trailer.
“Empathy means you can feel what other people are feeling,” Travis said.
Leonard’s hand was on the door handle but he paused and looked at Travis. He nodded and went inside.
“Boy, you’re in high cotton now,” Shank said as they drove toward Marshall. “Sixty damn dollars. That’ll pay your truck insurance for two months.”
“I figured to give you ten,” Travis said, “for hooking me up with Leonard.”
“No, I got a good buzz. That’s payment enough.”
Travis drifted onto the shoulder and for a moment one tire was on asphalt and the other on dirt and grass. He swerved back onto the road.
“You better let me drive,” Shank said. “I was hoping to stay out of the emergency room tonight.”
“I’m all right,” Travis said, but he slowed down, thinking about what the old man would do if he wrecked or got stopped for drunk driving. Better off if I got killed outright, he figured.
“Are you going to get some more plants?” Shank asked.
“I expect I will.”
“Well, if you do, be careful. Whoever planted it’s not likely to appreciate you thinning their crop out for them.”
TRAVIS WENT BACK THE NEXT SATURDAY, TWO FLAT-WOVEN cabbage sacks stuffed into his belt. After he’d been fired from the Pay-Lo, he’d about given up on paying the insurance on his truck, but now things had changed. He had what was pretty damn near a money tree and all he had to do was get its leaves to Leonard Shuler. An honest-to-god money tree if there was ever such a thing, he kept thinking to himself when he got a little scared.
He climbed the waterfall, the trip up easier without a rod and reel. Once he passed the NO TRESPASSING sign, he moved slower, quieter. From the far bank’s underbrush a warbler sang a refrain of three slow notes and three quick ones, the song echoing into the scattering of tamarack trees rising there. Travis’s mother had once told him the bird was saying pleased pleased pleased to meetcha.
Soon cinnamon ferns brushed like huge green feathers against his legs, thick enough to hide a copperhead or satin-back. But he kept his eyes raised, watching upstream for the glimpse of a shirt, a movement on a bank. I bet Carlton Toomey didn’t even plant it, Travis told himself, probably somebody who figured the Toomeys were too sorry to notice pot growing on their land.
When he came to where the plants were, he got on all fours and crawled up the bank, raising his head like a soldier in a trench. A Confederate flag brightened his tee-shirt, and he wished he’d had the good sense to wear something less visible. Might as well have a damn bull’s-eye on his chest. He scanned the tree line across the field and saw no one. Travis told himself even if someone hid in the tulip poplars they could never get to him before he was long gone down the creek.
Travis cut the stalks just below the last leaves. Six plants filled up the sacks. He thought about cutting more, taking what he had to the truck and coming back to get the rest, but figured that was too risky. On his return Travis didn’t see anyone on the river trail. If he had and they’d asked what was in the sacks, he’d have said galax.
When Travis pulled up to the trailer, Leonard was watering the tomatoes. He unlatched the tailgate and waited for Leonard to finish. Less than a mile away, the granite north face of Price Mountain jutted up beyond the pasture. Afternoon heat haze made the mountain appear to expand and contract as if breathing. God’s like these hills, Preacher Caldwell had said one Sunday, high enough up to see everything that goes on. It ain’t like stealing a cash crop like tobacco where a man’s shed some real sweat, Travis reminded himself, for marijuana was little more bother than a few seeds dropped in the ground. Taking the pot plants was just the same as picking up windfall apples—less so because those that grew it had broken the law themselves. That was the way to think about it, Travis decided.
“How come you grow your own tomatoes but not your own