Laura Furman - The O Henry Prize Stories 2005

Two men came out of the woods. They walked toward him with no more hurry or concern than men come to check their tobacco for cutworms. Lanny knew the big man in front was Linwood Toomey and the man trailing him his son. He could not remember the son's name but had seen him in town a few times. What he remembered was the son had been away from the county for nearly a decade and that some said he’d been in the marines and others said prison. The younger man wore a dirty white T-shirt and jeans, the older, blue coveralls with no shirt underneath. Grease coated their hands and arms.

They stood above him but did not speak. Linwood Toomey took a rag from his back pocket and rubbed his hands and wrists. Lanny wondered if they weren’t there at all, were nothing but some imagining the hurting caused.

“My leg's broke,” Lanny said, figuring if they spoke back they must be real.

“I reckon it is,” Linwood Toomey said. “I reckon it's near about cut clear off.”

The younger man spoke.

“What we going to do?”

Linwood Toomey did not answer the question, but eased himself onto the ground beside the boy. They were almost eye level now.

“Who's your people?”

“My daddy's James Burgess. My momma was Ruthie Candler before she got married.”

Linwood Toomey smiled.

“I know who your daddy is. Me and him used to drink some together, but that was back when he was sowing his wild oats. I’m still sowing mine, but I switched from oats. Found something that pays more.”

Linwood Toomey stuffed the rag in his back pocket.

“You found it too.”

“I reckon I need me a doctor,” Lanny said. He was feeling better now, knowing Linwood Toomey was there beside him. His leg didn’t hurt nearly as much now as it had before, and he told himself he could probably walk on it if he had to, once Linwood Toomey got the trap off.

“What we going to do?” the son said again.

The older man looked up.

“We’re going to do what needs to be done.”

Linwood Toomey looked back at Lanny. He spoke slowly and his voice was soft.

“Coming back up here a second time took some guts, son. Even if I’d figured out you was the one done it I’d have let it go, just for the feistiness of your doing such a thing. But coming back up here a third time was downright foolish, and greedy. You’re old enough to know better.”

“I’m sorry,” Lanny said.

Linwood Toomey reached out his hand and gently brushed some of the dirt off Lanny s face.

“I know you are, son.”

Lanny liked the way Linwood Toomey spoke. The words were soothing, like rain on a tin roof. He was forgetting something, something important he needed to tell Linwood Toomey. Then he remembered.

“I reckon we best get on to the doctor, Mr. Toomey.”

“There's no rush, son,” Linwood Toomey said. “The doctor won’t do nothing but finish cutting that lower leg off. We got to harvest these plants first. What if we was to take you down to the hospital and the law 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.”

Linwood Toomey's words had started to blur and swirl in Lanny s mind. They were hard to hold in place long enough to make sense. But what he did understand was Linwood Toomey's words weren’t said in a smart-ass way like Leonard Hamby's or Lanny s teachers or spoken like he was still a child the way his parents did. Lanny wanted to explain to Linwood Toomey how much he appreciated that, but to do so would mean having several sentences of words to pull apart from one another, and right now that was just too many. He tried to think of a small string of words he might untangle.

Linwood Toomey took a flat glass bottle from his back pocket and uncapped it.

“Here, son,” he said, holding the bottle to Lanny's lips.

Lanny gagged slightly but kept most of the whiskey down. He tried to remember what had brought him this far up the creek. Linwood Toomey pressed the bottle to his lips again.

“Take another big swallow,” he said. “It’ll cut the pain while you’re waiting.”

Lanny did as he was told and felt the whiskey spread down into his belly. It felt warm and soothing, like an extra quilt on a cold night. Lanny thought of something he could say in just a few words.

“You reckon you could get that trap off my foot?”

“Sure,” Linwood 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 pain rose up Lanny's leg again but it seemed less a part of him now. It seemed to him Linwood Toomey s words had soothed the bad hurting away.

“That's got it,” Linwood Toomey said.

“Now what?” the son said.

“Go call Edgar and tell him we’ll be bringing the plants sooner than we thought,” Linwood Toomey said. “Bring back them machetes and we’ll get this done.”

The younger man walked toward the house.

“The whiskey help that leg some?” Linwood Toomey asked.

“Yes, sir,” Lanny mumbled, his eyes now closed. Even though Linwood Toomey was beside him the man seemed to be drifting away along with the pain.

Linwood Toomey said something else but each word was like a balloon slipped free from his grasp. Then there was silence except for the gurgle of the creek, and he remembered it was the speckle trout that had brought him here. He thought of 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.

from Zoetrope

ICAN still hear the satisfaction in Roberto's voice: he’d talked Miguel into shepherding Rosario on her trip to the seashore. And the roguish-ness: “Everybody knows about Miguel.”

Not long after he began taking lessons from me, Roberto one day looked up from the keyboard and asked: “Do you like Rosario?”

“Rosario? What Rosario?”

He said her full name.

“She's a student of mine.”

“I’m going to marry her.”

At the period I remember best, Roberto and Rosario had a little girl, Lilí, and lived in an apartment looking out on the mountains. French windows opened onto a dramatic wrought-iron balcony, which Roberto had designed himself. The apartment smelled of geraniums. I always associated this with Rosario's sense of order. Everything in its place, immaculate.

Though I generally required my students to come to me I made an exception as often as possible for Rosario, since being away from Lilí impaired her concentration. She was preoccupied with every aspect of her daughters well-being. This concern extended to Roberto, even to myself. She always had waiting for me a draft of her “magic immunizer”-an orchard squeezed into one tall glass-and entreated me to drink every drop. Something majestically selfless lent a becoming gravity to her solicitude.

Late one sultry afternoon I arrived to find Roberto-lank, tan, with the nose of a Caesar-lounging in an armchair. At the piano, Rosario was helping Lilí, in her lap, pick out a tune. They all looked fresh and trim- congenitally undisheveled. Rosario put the child down: “If you’re quiet-quiet, you can stay.” With a smile to Roberto: “You, too.” Lilí pondered for a moment, chin in fist, then parked herself in a miniature chair. She sat through the entire hour without a peep. Rosario leapt up afterward and cuddled her. “You were so good! Let's play our game.” She pinched her ears, nuzzled her neck, pulled faces at her. To each sally Lilí responded in kind, with squeals.