Under the Mercy Trees Read Online Free PDF Page B

right?”
    â€œPlaywright.” At eighteen, with life stretching before him in all its promise, authorship of a few scenes acted out in the yard of a four-room schoolhouse was enough to make him think he was somebody.
    â€œWe do need writers. Especially writers who know how to use a hammer and paintbrush.” Margaret pushed a sign-up sheet toward him and told him the date of the group’s first meeting.
    At dinner that evening, Mrs. Bowen gushed on about Dr. Vance. “The most intelligent young man I ever had stay here. And such good manners, too.” Her eyes flitted to Martin’s elbows, which were planted on the table. He moved them. The two old salesmen and Mrs. Bowen’s sister ate without talking, their dentures clicking in unison.
    Mrs. Bowen put more mashed potatoes on Martin’s plate without his asking. “And his daughter. What’s her name? Elizabeth?”
    â€œLiza,” he said.
    â€œBeautiful girl.”
    â€œYes, she is.”
    â€œI almost forgot.” Mrs. Bowen got up from the table and rifled through a pile of mail on a sideboard. She handed him a package wrapped in brown paper. “Dr. Vance sent this for you.”
    The old people stopped chewing, watching Martin. He didn’t want to open the gift in front of them, but it seemed he had no choice. He pulled off the paper. Inside was a dictionary, so new the thin pages stuck together. A note in Dr. Vance’s handwriting said, “Something every playwright needs.” Mrs. Bowen beamed. “Didn’t I tell you the doctor was thoughtful?”
    Martin excused himself and went upstairs to his room. He unpacked his few other books and placed them on a shelf above the room’s scratched desk. A Bible from his mother, worn copies of Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel and Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! stolen from the county library and never missed, and a crisp new copy of Eugene O’Neill’s collected works. His high school teacher, Mr. Samuels, had called the O’Neill collection a school prize for the play Martin wrote as his final English paper, but Martin knew Mr. Samuels had paid for it with his own money. Martin put Dr. Vance’s dictionary with the other books and arranged and rearranged them, imagining how they would look to new friends coming to visit him, the conclusions they would draw about him from the titles. When he was satisfied with the display, he opened his billfold and took out the registrar’s receipt for the $123 he had paid for his first semester’s tuition and fees, and tucked it into the Bible, preserving it like a holy thing.
    *  *  *
    The Fasten Seat Belt sign above Martin’s head dinged twice, and the plane lurched under his feet as the pilot began the approach to the Willoby County airport. Foliage and buildings gained definition as they descended. The plane turned and the mountains came into view, red and gold leaves vibrant on the trees near the base but already patchy at the higher elevations, where strands of gray cloud settled on low peaks. Martin’s throat tightened with loss. Dr. Vance had thought him a man of honor and promise. Martin was glad the doctor had died before he could realize that Martin had failed him.

6
    Bertie
    The day after cleaning Leon’s house with Eugenia and Ivy, Bertie sat at her kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, waiting for James to come home for supper. She had a meatloaf in the oven. The trailer was clean, every piece of bric-a-brac dusted, afghans lined up straight with the backs of the chairs and sofa. She had clipped all the articles about Leon out of the paper and set them aside to save for the family, and made her weekly calls to her grown daughters, who both lived near the coast. She was glad not to have to go anywhere.
    She expected James to come home and eat, then head outside to escape the press of the trailer, finding excuses to stay out as long as he could, piddling with