The World Made Straight Read Online Free

show us some of that fancy shooting of yours,” Shank said.
    â€œNot 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.
    â€œGood night,” Leonard said, turning to go back inside the trailer.
    â€œEmpathy 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.
    â€œBoy, 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.”
    â€œI figured to give you ten,” Travis said, “for hooking me up with Leonard.”
    â€œNo, 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.
    â€œYou better let me drive,” Shank said. “I was hoping to stay out of the emergency room tonight.”
    â€œI’m all right,” Travis said, but he slowed down, thinkingabout what the old man would do if he wrecked or got stopped for drunk driving. Better off if I got killed outright, he figured.
    â€œAre you going to get some more plants?” Shank asked.
    â€œI expect I will.”
    â€œWell, 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 satinback. 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, probablysomebody 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