Ron Rash: Chemistry and Other Stories

When he came to, he was on the ground, his face inches from a pot plant. This ain’t nothing but a bad dream, he told himself, thinking that if he believed it hard enough it might become true. He used his forearm to lift his head enough to look at the leg and the leg twisted slightly and the pain hit him like a fist. The world turned deep blue and he thought he was going to pass out again, but in a few moments the pain eased a little.

He looked at his foot and immediately wished he hadn’t. The trap’s jaws clenched around his leg just above the ankle. Blood soaked the tennis shoe red and he could see bone. Bile surged up from his stomach. Don’t look at it any more until you have to, he told himself and lay his head back on the ground.

His face turned toward the sun now, and he guessed it was still early afternoon. Maybe it ain’t that bad, he told himself. Maybe if I just lay here awhile it’ll ease up some and I can get the trap off. He lay still as possible, breathing long, shallow breaths, trying to think about something else. He remembered what Old Man Jenkins had said about how one man could pretty much fish out a stream of speckled trout by himself if he took a notion to. Lanny 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 must have passed out again, because when he opened his eyes the sun hovered just above the tree line. When he tested the leg, it caught fire every bit as fierce as before. He wondered how late it would be tonight before his parents got worried and how long it would take after that before someone found his truck and people started searching. Tomorrow at the earliest, he told himself, and even then they’d search the river before looking anywhere else.

He lifted his head a few inches and shouted toward the woods. No one called back, and he imagined Linwood Toomey and his son passed-out drunk in their farmhouse. Being so close to the ground muffled his voice, so he used a forearm to raise himself a little higher and called again.

I’m going to have to sit up, he told himself, and just the thought of doing so made the bile rise again in his throat. He took deep breaths and used both arms to lift himself into a sitting position. The pain smashed against his body but just as quickly eased. The world began draining itself of color until everything around him seemed shaded with gray. He leaned back on the ground, sweat popping out on his face and arms like blisters. Everything seemed farther away, the sky and trees and plants, as though he were being lowered into a well. He shivered and wondered why he hadn’t brought a sweatshirt with him.

Two men came out of the woods. They walked toward him with no more hurry 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 that 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 replied they must be real.

“It may well be,” 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. 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 your daddy. 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 have 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 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’ were. 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 was 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 plants sooner than we thought. 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.