Under the Mercy Trees Read Online Free PDF

the window. The plane was flying west over North Carolina’s flat Piedmont toward the mountains. Through holes in the clouds he could see the land below. Towns in this part of the state respected one another’s space, spreading themselves out like strangers at a picnic ground, each centered on a miles-wide quilt of tobacco fields and curing barns.
    *  *  *
    In August 1954 he had taken a Trailways bus out of the mountains into the Piedmont, feeling the heat rise and wrap itself around his neck. Until that morning, when he’d climbed on the bus with his clothes and books packed into a mildewed duffel bag Leon had brought back from the war, Martin had never been out of Willoby County. He pressed his face to the grimy window. The bus zigzagged between stops, stitching a ragged line along patched and broken two-lane. An old woman in the seat behind him gave him a boiled egg, then moved forward to pester the driver. Diesel exhaust filled his nostrils, the smell of adventure.
    The bus depot was in Whelan, the closest town to Solace Fork big enough to host a bus station. It was Liza who took him to the depot that day, one last ride in the Sunliner convertible that had elevated them to royalty as seniors at Solace Fork School. Liza’s father, Dr. Vance, who bought her the car, also gave Martin the money to attend college at Chapel Hill. Martin’s own father thought education was useless and had disappeared into the fields that morning without saying good-bye. His mother had felt too poorly to come with him to the station.
    â€œDo you mind your family not seeing you off?” Wind rolled Liza’s hair along her neck as she drove.
    â€œNo.” His answer was honest. Greed for newness had banished fear, and he couldn’t get out of Willoby County fast enough.
    At the depot, Martin handed his duffel bag to the bus driver to throw into the underbelly of the bus, then turned and hugged Liza.
    â€œYou’ll come over to Greensboro to see me at college, won’t you?” she said when they separated. She blinked back tears.
    Martin touched a finger to the corner of her eye. “Now, don’t start that.”
    She tried to smile. “I know.”
    He kissed her good-bye. Her lips tasted of mint folded into tea and ice cream churned on a hot day, the slightest lacing of rock salt.
    From the bus station in Chapel Hill, he walked north to Mrs. Bowen’s boarding house, where Dr. Vance had lived as a student thirty years before. The doctor had written and secured him a room. The house, like the landlady herself, had not aged well. Gray paint peeled off the wide porch. Bricks had worked themselves free and fallen into weedy flowerbeds. Young men who would once have taken a place at Mrs. Bowen’s table now lived more comfortably in university dorms. The only other residents were two old men, retired salesmen with no families, and Mrs. Bowen’s own sister. In Martin’s room, water stains mapped continents on the ceiling, but he didn’t mind. To have his own room, after sweltering with snoring brothers in the triangular space under his father’s tin roof, was a luxury.
    On campus, he joined a swell of students moving toward the gym for registration. The young men were confident, dressed in new khakis and saddle oxfords. The girls wore clothing in textures he had never seen before, linen and cashmere. He resisted the urge to reach out and touch them. He took his place in a line of students picking up course cards. Two men ahead of him were returning from Korea on the GI Bill. Martin felt like a baby beside them. He tightened his jaw and stood up straighter.
    Once registered, he wandered toward tables set up along the gym walls, where student groups advertised for recruits. A thin, plain girl with a name tag that said “Margaret” manned the table for the Carolina Playmakers, the university’s drama group. She eyed him as he approached. “Actor,