The Killing Tree Read online

  Mamma Rutha looked up, eyes open and sobbed, “On the day you were born you were not washed in water to cleanse you, nor wrapped in cloths. You were thrown out into the open field. And when I passed by you, and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you, Live! Yes, I said to you in your blood, Live!”

  Kids covered their giggling mouths and grown-ups coughed to hide theirs. Father Heron’s face turned purple with anger. Mine turned purple with shame. The preacher didn’t know whether to laugh or shout. He didn’t know she was Crazy Rutha, he was too new.

  He wiped his brow with his sleeve and said, “Yes Sister Rutha, you’re right. There’s more to God than wrath. Those scriptures from Ezekiel show us some powerful mercy too. We all need to pray for such mercy.” Then he quickly moved on to the next verse.

  Father Heron was happy to leave Mamma Rutha at home, but he wasn’t willing to let me stay behind too. He didn’t want to be the only deacon with a pagan family. So every Sunday we were there together, dressed up on the third pew. A nice picture.

  I pulled myself out of bed and into the shower. I wanted to wait longer, to let more hot water build up, but I knew better than to push Father Heron on Sundays. After my shower I picked out a dress. One of my three church dresses. Since one dress had to be worn twice in a month, I had a careful rotation system, to make sure that it wasn’t the same one month after month. My closet wasn’t empty. But most of my clothes were grubby diner clothes spotted with barbecue stains and still smelling like smoke. Since I had been working more after graduation I bought that third dress. The rest of the money I made went to gas for Della’s mom’s car, my girl stuff—since I would rather die than write “tampons,” “Soft and Dri deodorant,” and “Plum Passion lipstick” on Father Heron’s grocery list—and a jelly jar hidden in the corner of my closet. So far that jelly jar had all of forty-three dollars in it. Pretty good considering my average tip was somewhere between zero and ninety-nine cents. There was an unspoken code on Crooktop that tips should never be paper money. If someone left me a dollar, I knew that they were an outsider.

  Every other Friday people could hear me rattling with change as I walked down to the Miners’ Credit Union to trade the coins in for bills. I loved having that money. I loved being able to walk into the Valley Pharmacy and look at all the different colors of lipsticks and know that I could buy forty-three dollars’ worth. I never did. I always stuck with Plum Passion, but if I ever wanted to try Burnt Sunset I knew that I could.

  I wasn’t really sure what I was saving that money for. I knew that I’d be old or dead before it would be enough for college, or a car. I guess I just liked seeing that glass jar stuffed with thin green paper knowing that it was mine. My work earned it. My thriftiness saved it. My closet hid it. It was my jelly jar secret.

  I pushed some clothes back over the jelly jar and put my dress on. It was the new one. I had gotten it on sale at Ima’s Fashion Boutique, the only dress shop in the valley. It was a warm dusty rose. The kind that was cut just below the knee and swirled when I spun around. And it made my skin just glow, Della had said. With that compliment, and the half-off price tag, I took sixteen dollars from my jelly jar. I didn’t have any shoes that looked right with it, so I put on a little extra lipstick—to keep people’s attention on my face and off my feet. I looked at myself in the mirror. Della is right, I thought, my hair is boring. Long straight and brown. But highlights? Or a cut? It just seemed so drastic. My figure was boring too. By the time Della was sixteen she was bursting out of her shirt and amply filling the seat of her jeans. But not me. I had the head of an eighteen-year-old, stuck on the body of an overly tall twelve-year-old. Della always laughed when I said that.

  “You’re slender and graceful,” she would say. “Besides, it’s pretty darn hard to look classy with boobs up to your neck. And you’re too classy for big boobs.” Looking in the mirror that morning, I preferred to be a little less classy.

  Occasionally, during the week Father Heron and I could have a strained conversation about the garden, or work. But never on Sundays. We would ride listening only to the gospel music station. If his eye caught a glaring sin on the way, he would point it out to me.

  “See that Sabbath-breaker mowing his lawn?” he would ask.

  Or if he saw people headed over the mountain to the new Methodist church he would shake his head and mutter, “Bunch of sprinkling fools. Giving fake baptisms. I’d see you dead, Mercy, ’fore I’d see you a Methodist.” Then he’d eye me suspiciously, as though I might secretly be a Methodist.

  At church Father Heron’s attention would be turned to his matches, papers, and handshaking. I was finally alone. There was no crazy grandmother to protect, no black-eyed grandfather to please. It was just me with my heart full of questions and doubts as I scanned the altar. With my heart full of hope.

  I liked the new preacher, Preacher Grey. He wasn’t as loud as some of the others had been. He seemed smarter too. He didn’t just shout one phrase over and over, and tell everybody to say Amen. You could tell that he thought about his sermons in advance, what he was going to say, what he wanted you to hear. He seemed to know how to survive in a small church like this too. The first Sunday he was here, he invited Mrs. Esther out to lunch. Mrs. Esther was the ninety-one-year-old widow of the man that founded the church, and she held the deed to the land it sat on. If she was on the new preacher’s side, it didn’t matter who wasn’t.

  That Sunday the Lord’s Supper was served. Methodists called it “communion,” but at First Baptist Crooktop it was strictly the Lord’s Supper. As the deacons filed across the front of the church to serve the members stale crackers, I noticed how much alike they all looked. All graying and stout. With somber looks on their faces. Father Heron stood next to the chair of the deacons, Sheriff Barnes. You could always see the bulge of a pistol beneath the sheriff’s suit jacket.

  “It’s a sad day when the law can’t be left behind at the door,” he would shake his head and say, “but the sin of man doesn’t respect the house of God, so you never know when you might need me to be Sheriff Barnes, instead of Chairman Deacon Barnes.”

  When he said that, women got goose bumps, children stared at him with eyes they reserved for heroes, and men became envious. I wanted to laugh. Anybody that read the Crooked Top Herald crime section would know that the most action the sheriff ever got was an occasional pot bust. And according to Della and the gang that hung around the docks even those reports weren’t always real, but were cover-ups for old vendettas and dirty political tricks.

  “The law on Crooktop ain’t the Constitution, or the Congress, or even the governor,” Della would say. “It’s just homecooking, whatever it needs to be within these mountains to serve the powers that be. And Sheriff Barnes is the master chef.”

  I never bought it. Sheriff Barnes was one of the nicest men I knew. He called me Miss Mercy, had a warm smile and a hearty deep laugh. I couldn’t help but smile when I was around him. He reminded me of a storybook grandpa. The opposite of the real one I knew. Besides, pot could be found any night down at the docks, so those crime reports couldn’t be that far-fetched. I figured Della’s “homecooking” theory was one filled with more bang than truth.

  I took my stale cracker and ate it. Then drank my hot, sour grape juice, being careful not to spill it on my new dress. We rose to sing “Blessed Be the Tie That Binds” and then began filing out. I shook Preacher Grey’s hand and told him I enjoyed the sermon. He looked tired and I wondered if it was draining to be filled with the Spirit. To be God’s mouthpiece. His wife stood next to him, dutifully shaking hands too. She looked small standing there. Slightly behind him, stretching her thin hand out to mine. Her husband spent his week praying over and blessing us. I wondered who prayed for her.

  “Lord bless you, Mercy, you tell your Mamma Rutha I said hello now,” she said. During the three weeks she had been there she had never forgotten my name. And she knew about my Mamma Rutha too. But I still didn’t know her name. Not many of us a
t church did. She was just “Preacher’s wife” to everybody.

  I waved to Father Heron, got a change of clothes out of the truck, and started walking to the diner.

  “Running a little late,” Rusty said when I walked in.

  “Sorry, Lord’s Supper today.”

  He nodded, mumbling something about not making a habit of it.

  “New dress?”

  “Yep,” I replied, praying he wouldn’t think I was wearing it for him.

  “Pretty. All swirly too—like that Merlin Munroe. You should wear it today. Bet you’d make good tips.”

  “And I’d have to use ’em to buy a new dress too with all the stains I’d get on it,” I replied as I headed to the bathroom to change.

  Somewhere that day between sweet teas and pulled platters the lunch crowd disappeared, leaving me with a pocketful of change. I was wiping down tables when I heard Rusty exclaim, “Well well, Miss Della DeMar!” in his best French accent. I grinned to myself, knowing how bad she hated that. New teachers at school would always try to do the same, slurring a “dur” and drawing out a “mah.”

  “It’s day-mar,” she would always say, “like a cross between a mon-day and a Mars bar.”

  “Well hello there, Mr. Rusty Nail,” I heard her reply before breezing past him and plopping herself down in the booth I was cleaning.

  “You have a good time last night?” she asked.

  “Mhmm. You find a replacement for Carl?”

  “Found some potential. No sure bets, but some definite potential,” she replied. “You sure were quiet last night on the way home. Weren’t mad or nothing, were you?”

  “Just tired I guess.”

  “What was the matter, Trout got your tongue?” she asked, smiling.

  I could feel heat burning my face and filling my ears. Had he said something about me? I focused all my attention on a spot of dried barbecue stuck on the table.

  “No reason to be as sour as a yellow SweetTart, Mercy. You know I’m kidding. Besides, you’re too good for Trout. He’s just a mater migrant.”

  Mater migrants were people that traveled every summer to work the tomato and strawberry crops of the mountains’ riverbottom lands. Most of them were Mexicans without green cards. They were a despised people in Crooktop. Living in tents and pop-up campers around the fields they worked. Blistering their hands and warping their backs for a pitiful wage and all the maters they could eat. There were always a few white mater migrants. Men with bright red palms. Hands stained with the juice of the fruits they picked, branding them a lower class than the rest of Crooktop.

  “Yep, those mater migrants,” Della continued, “those are love-’em-and-leave-’em men, you know. Here today, gone by October.”

  I tried to change the subject. “You get that job at the new Ben Franklin?”

  “Uh-huh, gotta start tonight. I get ten percent off on makeup too. My boss, though, he’s gonna need to be tamed. You oughta come see me later tonight. I’ll sneak you a Coke.”

  I told her I might, but I knew that I wouldn’t. Sunday night was Heron yard night. After Father Heron came home from church and I got home from the diner we would weed the gardens, harvest Father Heron’s, and sometimes lightly prune the peonies—just to keep them healthy, not to “force” them into our idea of what the bush should look like. It was our only positive tradition. Mamma Rutha usually worked in her garden. Since we ate from Father Heron’s I focused most of my energy on it. I always began with the potatoes. To see the love knots they made as they grew. Yellow vines twisted beneath thick green leaves. Mamma Rutha caught me pulling them when I was little and told me I was breaking the potato’s heart, by untwisting its love knots.

  I never worked with gloves on. Like Mamma Rutha I preferred to just sink my hands down into that rich mountain earth. Liking the gritty feel of it beneath my nails. I was more cautious working in the corn, where the packsaddles lived. Fat green worms blending in with the stalks and stinging worse than bees. But my favorite was always the tomatoes. Breathing that heavy green scent was my weekly tonic. I secured the ties that held them to their stakes, letting their fuzzy leaves prickle my skin.

  We never talked much while we worked, other than “hand me that hoe” and “have you seen the size of those turnips?” But it was as close as the three of us ever came to complete harmony. Once the need for words was gone, the clank of the hoe and shovel said it all.

  That night I lingered over the tomatoes. Wondered if the plant called to the mater migrants, the way it did me. If I were going to be a crop worker, I’d want to be a mater migrant, I thought. I watched Mamma Rutha and Father Heron. One working passionately, the other fiercely. This is how it will always be, I told myself. Pig-filled weeks, church and dirt-filled Sundays. Holding my breath around Father Heron, and over Mamma Rutha. I wanted something more. Something that stayed silent and unnamed in my heart. And without a name to call it, I knew it would never come.

  Chapter V

  I was eager for fall, when everything would smell better and feel more alive even as it started to die. Kind of like the mountain’s last hurrah, before a long gray winter. But the coming season change also filled me with dread, or maybe desperation. For as long as I could remember, fall signaled not only the end of heat, but a change of pace and scenery as a new school year began. But that year my routine would stay the exact same. All the days of my life seemed to stretch out before me in one long, straight path. I was only eighteen years old, but that path made my feet ache.

  I was grateful when the last August weekend brought rain, a sneak peak of the coming cooler weather. It wasn’t an afternoon cloudburst or an evening storm, but a good steady rain. A potato-making rain, Mamma Rutha would call it. And though I hadn’t brought an umbrella to work, I was still determined to walk to the Miners’ Credit Union before five. I was almost a rich woman. My jelly jar was crammed with over a hundred dollars, and I was going to celebrate my wealth. Perhaps buy some new jeans. Some nice ones, maybe even Calvins. I wanted jeans that would hug my hips in the right places, making me seem like I had more curves than a straight sapling. Girls with money used to wear those kinds of jeans to school, driving the boys mad. The rest of us wore the cheap kind. Jeans made straight and square that made our bodies look straight and square, or even worse, straight, square, and wide. But I was close to buying some jelly jar jeans, so close that I could almost feel them cinching in my waist and shaping my hips as I headed out the diner door.

  The rain surprised me. It was colder and wetter than I had expected. The drops more forceful. Sane people hid indoors. And I wondered about the sight I must have made. Mercy Heron’s as crazy as her grandma Rutha, they would say. Must run in the family, they would laugh. They were probably right too. But if that August rain was what crazy felt like, then I was learning what Mamma Rutha had always known. Sometimes crazy is just the best choice.

  And then there was someone else. Walking slowly toward me, head down, clothes soaked. I blinked hard in the rain, trying to see through the water. But the gray and silver masked everything, until I saw the red. Stubborn stains that even a heavy rain couldn’t cleanse. I knew then that it was him.

  I peered through the rain. Liking his hair twisting into wet loose ringlets. His unshaven face. The water that dripped off the tips of his ears. Liking the way he walked so slowly, as though it were a sunny spring morning.

  “Excuse me, miss?” a lady called to me as I followed him into the Credit Union. “Miss, you’re dripping all over our floors,” she whined.

  “Oh. Sorry. I forgot my umbrella today,” I replied, wondering if he had noticed me, or if he even remembered me.

  “Mhmm,” she clucked. “Well, if you got business here, hurry it up before you water-spot the new rug.”

  As I watched her count out each nickel and dime, he left. I had planned what I would say when he spoke to me, how cool and easy I would be. Hey there yourself, or Oh yeah, now I remember, I met you at the docks. I left the Credit Union disappointed tha
t I didn’t get my chance.

  But there he was again. Standing under the awning of the Credit Union. His eyes flashing recognition as the rain washed away my cool speeches. I stood there and looked back. My hair uncombed and tangled, my barbecue-stained clothes clinging to my wet skin. I was a wreck. Even by a mater migrant’s standards.

  “It’s a mess out here,” I said.

  “Sure is.”

  “Guess it washes the coal dust out, though,” I said. “Makes everything look all shiny again.”

  He nodded, his gaze falling to the puddle I was standing in.

  “I’m soaked.” I laughed, tossing my hands in the air.

  “Look like you’re standin’ on a mirror.”

  I looked at my feet, and the silver pool that was growing around them. I could see my knees reflected in it. “Ought not break it then, huh? That’d be seven years of bad luck.”

  “You trust in all that?” he asked, his voice betraying a note of surprise. I looked at the ground again and saw glassy pools all around us, like the windows of heaven had been broken.

  “No. Don’t understand it enough to believe in it. Don’t see how black cats, ladders, or mirrors are supposed to change my life.” He nodded his head in response, but I couldn’t tell whether he agreed with me or not.

  “You scared to be on these mirrors?” I asked.

  “Nah. Ain’t got nothin’ to lose.”