Upstream, trees blocked most of the sun and the water he waded cooled him off. At the waterfall, an otter slid into the pool. Travis watched its body surge through the water as straight and sleek as a torpedo before disappearing under the bank. He wondered how much otter pelts brought and figured come winter it might be worth finding out, maybe set out a rabbit gum and bait it with a dead trout. He knelt and cupped his hand to drink, the pool’s water so cold it hurt his teeth.
He climbed the left side of the falls, then made his way upstream to the sign. If someone waited for him, Travis believed that by now the person would have figured out he came up the creek, so he left it and climbed the ridge into the woods. He followed the sound of water until he’d gone far enough and came down the slope deliberate and quiet, stopping every few yards to listen.
He was almost to the creek when something rustled to his left in the underbrush. Travis did not move until he heard pleased pleased pleased to meetcha rising from the web of sweetbrier and scrub oak. When he stepped onto the sandy bank, he looked upstream and down before crossing.
The marijuana was still there, every bit as tall as the corn Travis and his daddy had planted in early April. He pulled the sacks from his belt and walked toward the closest plant, his eyes on the trees across the field. The ground gave slightly beneath his right foot. He heard a click, then the sound of metal striking bone. Pain flamed up his leg like a quick fuse, consumed his whole body. The sun slid sideways and the ground tilted as well and slapped up against the side of his face.
When he came to, his head lay inches from a pot plant. This ain’t nothing but a bad dream, he told himself, thinking if he believed hard enough that might make it true. He used his forearm to lift his head and look at the leg. The leg twisted slightly and pain slugged him like a tire iron. The world darkened for a few moments before slowly lighting back up. He looked at his foot and immediately wished he hadn’t. The trap’s jaws clenched his leg just above the ankle. Blood soaked his tennis shoe and Travis feared if he looked too long he’d see the white nakedness of bone. Don’t look at it anymore until you have to, he told himself, and laid his head back on the ground.
His face was turned toward the west now, and he guessed mid afternoon from the sun’s angle. Maybe it ain’t that bad, he thought. Maybe if I just lay here awhile it’ll ease up some and I can get the trap off. He kept still as possible, taking shallow breaths. A soft humming rose inside his head, like a mud dauber had crawled deep into his ear and gotten stuck. But it wasn’t a bad sound. It reminded Travis of when his mother sang him to sleep when he was a child. He could hear the creek and its sound merged with the sound inside his head. Did trout hear water? he wondered. That was a crazy sort of thought and he tried to think of something that made sense.
He remembered what Old Man Jenkins had said about how just one man could pretty much fish out a stream of speckled trout if he took a notion to. Travis wondered how many speckled trout he’d be able to catch out of Caney Creek before they were all gone. He wondered if after he did he’d be able to find another way-back trickle of water that held them. He tried to imagine that stream, imagine he was there right now fishing it.
He must have passed out again, because when he opened his eyes the sun hovered just above the tree line. The humming in his head was gone and when he tested the leg, pain flamed up every bit as fierce as before. He wondered how long it would be until his parents got worried and how long it would take after that before someone found his truck and folks began searching. Tomorrow at the earliest, he figured, and even then they’d search the river before looking anywhere else.
Travis lifted his head a few inches and shouted toward the woods. No one called back. Being so close to the ground muffled his voice, so he used a forearm to raise himself a little higher and shout again.
I’m going to have to sit up, he told himself, and just the thought of doing so made bile rise into his throat. He took deliberate breaths and used both arms to lift himself. Pain smashed against his body and the world drained of color until all of what surrounded him was shaded a deep blue. He leaned back on the ground, sweat popping out on his face and arms like blisters. Everything was moving farther away, the sky and trees and plants, as though he were being slowly lowered into a well. He shivered and wondered why he hadn’t brought a sweatshirt or jacket with him.
Two men came out of the woods, and seeing them somehow cleared his head for a few moments, brought the world’s color and proximity back. They walked toward him with no more hurry than men come to check their plants for cutworms. Travis knew the big man in front was Carlton Toomey and the man trailing him his son. He couldn’t remember the son’s name but had seen him in town. What he remembered was the son had been away from the county for nearly a decade, and some said he’d been in the Marines and others said prison and some said both, though you wouldn’t know it from his long brown hair, the bright bead necklace around his neck. The younger man wore a dirty white tee-shirt and jeans, the older man blue coveralls with no shirt underneath. Grease coated their hands and arms.
They stood above him but did not speak or look at him. Carlton Toomey jerked a red rag from his back pocket and rubbed his hands and wrists. The son stared at the woods across the creek. Travis wondered if they weren’t there at all, were just some imagining in his head.
“My leg’s hurt,” Travis said, figuring if they spoke back they must be real.
“I reckon it is,” Carlton Toomey said, looking at him now. “I reckon it’s near about cut clear off.”
The younger man spoke.
“What we going to do?”
Carlton Toomey did not answer, instead eased himself onto the ground beside the boy. They were almost eye level now.
“Who’s your people?”
“My daddy’s Harvey Shelton.”
“You ain’t much more than ass and elbows, boy. I’d have thought what Harvey Shelton sired to be stouter. You must favor your mother.” Carlton Toomey nodded his head and smiled. “Me and your daddy used to drink some together, but that was back when he was sowing his wild oats. He still farming tobacco?”
“Yes sir.”
“The best days of tobacco men is behind them. I planted my share of burley, made decent money for a while. But that tit has done gone dry. How much your daddy make last year, six–seven thousand?”
Travis tried to remember, but the numbers would not line up in his head. His brain seemed tangled in cobwebs.
“He’d make as much sitting on his ass and collecting welfare. If you’re going to make a go of it in these mountains today you got to find another way.”
Carlton Toomey stuffed the rag in his back pocket.
“I’ve done that, but your daddy’s too stubborn to change. Always has been. Stubborn as a white oak stump. But you’ve figured it out, else you’d not have stole my plants in the first place.”
“I reckon I need me a doctor,” Travis said. He was feeling better, knowing the older man was there beside him. His leg didn’t hurt nearly as much now as before, and he told himself he could probably walk on it if he had to once the Toomeys got the trap off.
“The best thing to do is put him down there below the falls,” the son said. “They’ll figure him to fallen and drowned himself.”
Carlton Toomey looked up.
“I think we done used up our allotment of accidental drownings around here. It’d likely be more than just Crockett nosing around if there was another.”
Toomey looked back at Travis. He spoke slowly, his voice soft.
“Coming back up here a second time took some guts. Even if I’d figured out you was