The World Made Straight. Ron Rash
young’un. You’re old enough to know better.”
“I’m sorry,” Travis said.
Carlton Toomey reached out his hand and gently brushed some of the dirt off Travis’s face.
“I know you are, son, just like every other poor son-of-a-bitch that’s got his ass in a sling he can’t get out of.”
Travis knew he was forgetting something, something important he needed to tell Carlton Toomey. He squeezed his eyes shut a few moments to think harder. It finally came to him.
“I reckon you better get me to the doctor,” Travis said.
“We got to harvest these plants first,” the older Toomey replied. “What if we was to take you down to the hospital and folks started wondering why we’d set a bear trap. They might figure there’s something up here we wanted to keep folks from poking around and finding.”
Carlton Toomey’s words started to blur and swirl in Travis’s mind. They were hard to hold in place long enough to make sense. He tried to remember what had brought him this far up the creek. Travis finally thought of something he could say in just a few words.
“Could you get that trap off my foot?”
“Sure,” Toomey said. He slid over a few feet to reach the trap, then looked up at his son.
“Step on that lever, Hubert, and I’ll get his leg out.”
The younger man stepped closer. Travis stared hard at the beads. They were red and yellow and black, a dime-sized silver peace sign clipped on the necklace as well. Hubert raised his head as he pressed and afternoon sun glanced the silver, momentarily blinding Travis. The pain rose up his leg again but it seemed less a part of him now, the way an aching tooth he’d had last fall felt after a needle of Novocain. Travis kept staring at the beads, because they were the only thing now that hadn’t been drained of color. There was a name for those beads. He almost remembered but then the name slipped free like a balloon let go, rising steadily farther and farther away.
“That’s got it,” Carlton Toomey said and slowly raised Travis’s leg, placed it on the ground beside the trap. Toomey used spit and his rag to wipe blood from the wound.
“What’s your given name, son?” he asked.
“Travis.”
“This ain’t near bad as it looks, Travis,” Toomey said. “I don’t think that trap even put a gouge in the leg bone. Probably didn’t tear up any ligaments or tendons either. You’re just a pint low in the blood department. That’s the thing what’s making you foggyheaded.”
“Now what?” the son said.
“Go call Dooley and tell him we’ll be bringing him plants sooner than we thought. Bring back them machetes and we’ll get this done.” He paused. “Give me that hawkbill of yours.”
Hubert took the knife from his pocket and handed it to his father.
“What you going to do to him?” Hubert asked.
“What’s got to be done,” the elder Toomey said. “Now go on and get those damn machetes.”
Hubert started walking toward the farmhouse.
“I’m sorry I have to do this, son,” Carlton said.
The knife blade made a clicking sound as it locked into place. Travis squeezed his eyes shut. For a few moments the only sound was the gurgle of the creek, and he remembered how it was the speckled trout that had brought him here. He remembered how you could not see the orange fins and red flank spots but only the dark backs in the rippling water. And how it was only when they lay gasping on the green bank moss that you realized how bright and pretty they were.
August 12, 1852
A.M.
Summoned to Franklin Farm.
Nance Franklin, age 34.
Complaint: Female bleeding.
Diagnosis: Excessive uterine haemorrhage.
Treatment: Tincture of valerian. Black haw tea. Cold cloths applied to abdomen.
Twelve P.M.
Haemorrhage lessening. Continue to apply cloths and minister with valerian, black haw tea.
One P.M.
Bleeding arrested. Pallor improved. Pulse firm.
Treatment: Bed rest for week. Dose of Dover’s Powder once daily. Black haw tea twice daily.
Fee: Four dollars. Days work repairing my roof by two oldest sons.
P.M.
Dewy Morton, age 10.
Complaint: Arm hurt in fall from barn loft. Diagnosis: Fracture of tibia, left arm.
Treatment: Laudanum to set arm.
Splint, cloth sling. Wear four weeks.
Return to confirm salutory mending.
Fee: One dollar, twenty-five cents. Paid with shoeing of horse.
Royce McCall, age 31.
Complaint: Fits, frothing at mouth.
Diagnosis: Epilepsy.
Treatment: Half-dram solution of iodine and iodide potash twice daily. Avoid excessive agitations of body and mind.
Note: Next time in Asheville order Dunglison’s Treatise on Special Pathology and Therapeutics.
Fee: One dollar. Paid with eight pounds butter.
Attended lecture in Asheville by Doctor Justice on Botanic Medicine. Confirmed my views on eschewing cupping and blistering of patients and felicitous use of plants. Must devote further study to injurious symptoms of mineral preparations.
TWO
When he woke there was so little light he thought it must be night. The inside of his mouth felt tacked over with sandpaper. His ankle and head throbbed and his mind was stirred up like murky water. But it soon began to clear. Travis heard at first what he thought his own heart but soon realized the sound was the ticking of a clock. His eyes began adjusting to the dim light and he found himself in a room. He lay in a bed and a frayed quilt covered him to his neck, above a bare yellow lightbulb. Venetian blinds allowed in a few dim, motey stripes of sun. Enough to realize it was not full dark but early evening.
Travis raised up on his elbows and the leg caught fire, not just where the trap had bit into his leg but lower. He remembered feeling the knife blade settle not on his throat but his heel. Carlton Toomey had worked almost delicately, using a slow, sawing motion. At first it hadn’t hurt enough to override the pain from the trap. Then he’d felt the Achilles tendon snap apart like a thick rubber band. Travis didn’t remember anything after that.
A voice came from the room’s far corner.
“I’d not try to move much.”
Travis looked toward the voice, trying not to move anything below his neck.
Carlton Toomey sat in a ladderback chair, dressed in the same work clothes he’d had on earlier. Travis remembered more quickly now, scattered images and thoughts put back in proper sequence. He remembered scaling the falls, the click of the trap, everything up to the moment he’d passed out the last time.
Travis’s throat was so dry his voice was nothing more than an unintelligible raspy whisper.
Carlton Toomey left the room and came back with a quart