“Where’s Shank?” Leonard said. “I thought you two were partners.”
“I don’t need a partner,” Travis said. He lifted the first sack from the truck bed, pulled out each stalk carefully so as not to tear off any leaves and buds. He placed the plants on the ground between them. It was a good feeling, knowing everything on his end was done. A lot like when he and the old man unloaded tobacco at the auction barn. Even his daddy would be in a good mood as they laid their crop on the worn market-house floor.
As Travis emptied the second sack he imagined the old man’s reaction if he knew what Travis was doing. Probably have a fit, Travis figured, though some part of his daddy, the part that had been near an outlaw when he was Travis’s age, would surely admire the pluck of what his boy had done, even if he never said so. Travis nodded at his harvest.
“That’s one hundred and twenty dollars’ worth at the least,” he said.
Leonard stepped closer and studied the plants a few moments. He pulled the billfold from his pocket and handed Travis five twenty-dollar bills. Leonard hesitated, then added four fives.
Travis stuffed the bills into his pocket but did not get back in the truck.
“What?” Leonard finally said.
“I figured you to ask me in for a beer.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t much want to play host this afternoon.”
“You don’t think I’m good enough to set foot in that roachy old trailer of yours.”
Leonard settled his eyes on Travis.
“You get your hackles up pretty quick, don’t you?”
Travis did his best to match Leonard’s steady gaze.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Travis said.
Leonard shifted his gaze lower and to the right as though someone sat in a chair beside Travis. Someone who took Travis’s words no more seriously than Leonard did.
“After the world has its way with you a few years, it’ll knock some of the strut out of you,” Leonard said, no longer smiling. “If you live that long.”
A part of Travis wanted to clamp a hand over his own mouth, keep it there till he was back in Marshall. He had the uneasy feeling that Leonard knew things about him, things so deep inside that Travis himself hadn’t figured them out, and every time he opened his mouth Leonard knew more.
“I ain’t wanting your advice,” Travis said. “I just want some beer.”
“One beer,” Leonard said, and they walked into the trailer. While Leonard got the beers Travis went down the hall to the bathroom. The bedroom door was shut and he hoped it stayed so. If the woman came out she’d surely have some more sass words for him. When he came back Leonard sat in the leather recliner, a beer in each hand. He handed one to Travis. Travis sat on the couch and pulled the tab. He still didn’t much care for the taste, but the beer was cold and felt good as it slid down his throat.
“You got a lot of books,” Travis said, nodding toward the shelves.
“Keeps me from being ignorant,” Leonard said.
“I’ve known plenty of teachers without any sense,” Travis said. “They didn’t even know how to change their own car tire.”
Leonard leaned back a little deeper in the chair.
“Stupidity and ignorance aren’t the same thing. You can’t cure someone of stupidity. Somebody like yourself that’s merely ignorant there might be hope for.”
“What reason you got to say I’m ignorant?”
“That tee-shirt you’re wearing, for one thing. If you’d worn it up here in the 1860s it could have gotten you killed, and by your own blood kin.”
Travis had drunk only half his beer but Leonard’s words were as hard to grasp as wisps of ground fog.
“You trying to say my family was yankees?”
“No, at least not in the geographical sense. They just didn’t see any reason to side with the slave owners.”
“So they weren’t on either side?”
“They had a side. Nobody had the luxury of staying out of it up here. Most places they’d fight a battle and move on, but once war came it didn’t leave Madison County.”
Travis took a last swallow and set the empty can at his feet. He wondered if the older man was just messing with him, like when Shank had asked about the music. But it didn’t seem that way. Leonard looked to be serious.
“You go out to Shelton Laurel much?” Leonard asked.
“Just for family reunions when I was a kid.”
“And your kin never talked about what happened in 1863 or said anything about Bloody Madison?”
“What’s Bloody Madison?”
“The name this county went by during the Civil War.”
Travis thought back to church homecomings and family reunions in the Laurel. Most of the talk, at least among the men, had been about tobacco. But not all of it.
“Sometimes my daddy and uncle talked about kin that got killed in Shelton Laurel during the war, but I always figured the yankees had done it.”
The Plotts began barking, and a few moments later Travis saw a red Camaro rumble up to the trailer, its back wheels jacked up, white racing stripe on the hood. Two men with long black hair got out. One threw a cigarette butt on the ground and didn’t bother to grind it out with his boot heel. They stood beside the car, both doors open, the engine catching and coughing. When Leonard didn’t come out, the driver leaned into the car and blew the horn. Both dogs barked furiously but stayed near the trailer.
Leonard lifted himself wearily from the chair. He went to the kitchen and came back with two plastic baggies filled with pills. The car horn blew again.
“The worst thing the nineteen sixties did to this country was introduce drugs to rednecks,” Leonard said. He laid the baggies on the coffee table and went to the refrigerator.
“You don’t seem to much mind taking their money,” Travis said.
Leonard’s lips creased into a tight smile.
“True enough,” he said, taking another beer from the refrigerator. “Here,” he said, holding the can out to Travis. “A farewell present. It’s best if you don’t come around here anymore.”
“What if I get you some more plants?”
“I don’t think you better try to do that,” Leonard said. “Whoever’s pot that is will be harvesting in the next few days. You better not be anywhere near when they’re doing it either.”
Travis left the couch and stepped into the kitchen. The first faint buzz from the alcohol made his scalp tingle.
“I ain’t scared,” Travis said.
“Well, maybe you should be in this instance.”
Leonard’s words were soft, barely audible over the roar of the Camaro. He wasn’t talking down to him the way the teachers or his father might. For a moment Travis thought he saw something like concern flicker in Leonard’s eyes. Then it was gone.
“But what if I do get more?” Travis asked as he reached for the beer. Leonard did not release his grip on the can.
“Same price, but if you want any beer you’ll have to pay bootleg price like your buddies.”