“What was it?” I asked.
“I didn’t know. I thought somebody might be chopping them people up in there, you know. Boom. Boom. Boom. And as I got a little closer I heard the clicking noise. Like a thousand woodpeckers were hammering away inside there. I felt like running but I was right in front of that shack. And I saw it all.” She stopped to catch her breath.
“Them people were crazy. Hollering and screaming and twitching. And that thumping noise, that was them jumping. Boom. Boom. Up and down. Moaning like they were in such pain. I watched them but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was happening to them. Nobody was touching them.”
“People don’t just scream out over nothing,” I said.
“That’s what I thought. And I couldn’t find what that clicking noise was. ’Til I saw ’em crawling all around. In between their legs as they jumped. Over the pews. Twisted around their arms. And they weren’t woodpeckers.”
“What?” I asked her.
“Rattlers. Big ones too and their babies. That shack was a church. And them people were snake handlers.”
It was a mountain myth, spoken of in whispers. People that believed they were ordered by God to hold poisonous snakes as a testament to their faith. Della’s story had the effect she had aimed for. I was amazed that there was a place like that on Crooktop. And that a stranger would be the one to know of it.
“I hope you got outta there fast,” I told her. “One bite from one of ’em and you’re dead.”
“I wanted to. But Trout started walking into the church. I grabbed hold of his arm to try and stop him, and he pushed my hand off. You should of seen him, Mercy. Imagine a man walking into a pit of rattlers surrounded by people dancing with the Holy Ghost.”
“What happened to him?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager.
“The people never even saw him. They were too busy jumping up and down and hollering. The preacher was standing up front, a Bible in one hand and a thick snake in the other. Trout walked up to him and took it right out of the preacher’s hand. Then he turned to me and Daryl, calm as he could be. He held it up, its tail just rattling away in his hands, and he looked at Daryl and smiled. He was holding death, and he was crazy as a man ever was. He makes your Mamma Rutha look sane.”
Chapter VII
Preacher Grey’s sermon was about heaven. A topic that disappointed many in the congregation. Most people enjoyed a good hellfire sermon much more than one about heaven. But I liked those sermons, though I could never really understand them. About streets of gold and a gate of pearl. What did all that have to do with happiness? Beauty didn’t guarantee peace, Della was proof of that. But as I watched the preacher’s face glow and listened to his voice break with emotion as he described it all, I knew that to him, it was everything.
I thought about the snake handlers. How shocked everyone around me would be to learn of it. If Father Heron thought Methodists were the devil’s tool, I could only imagine what he’d think of the snake handlers.
Nobody went forward during the invitation. They always did after the hell sermons. It was easier to run from hell than it was to run toward heaven. And when nobody went forward, the preacher always looked sad. Like he had failed. Sometimes I was tempted to go forward and make up a need, just to make him feel better.
I was on my way to the diner after church when I saw the truck. It was an old brown Ford, with worn tires, rust spots on the door, a dented bumper, and a missing tailgate. It was the type of truck that should have been retired years ago, but since it wasn’t, had pledged itself to drive to the death. He was sitting in the back, his legs swinging out where the tailgate should have been, looking up the road that I was walking down.
“Hopin’ I’d find you here,” he said.
“What are you up to?” I asked.
“You gonna work?” he asked, looking at the apron I was clutching.
I told him I had to. That my boss was mean and that he’d throw a fit if I didn’t show up. I told him that there was nobody that could cover my shift, and that Sunday was the diner’s busiest day. And I told myself that I didn’t really know this man. Then I hopped in his truck to go fishing. There were some things I couldn’t talk myself out of. Trout Price was one of them.
He drove toward six and twenty mile holler. It was one of nature’s strongholds, where she was winning the war against man. The people that lived up there were primitive too. Primitive at least in the eyes of the rest of Crooktop because they were so poor. That’s what happens when cousins marry cousins, Father Heron would grumble about the six and twenty milers. But they took care of their own. Growing and hunting for most of their own food. Coming down the mountain only if they wanted to attend school, or sell pot at the docks. The six and twenty mile boys were valued by the coaches and ignored by the teachers. They were bigger than most men, with well-ripened muscles. The girls rarely finished high school before disappearing back up the holler with swollen bellies. On the first day of school the line for the free government lunch program was always joked to be six and twenty miles long, an unfair statement since nearly half of the school qualified for free lunch and were considered poor by any outsider’s standard. But the six and twenty mile poverty was of a completely different level, even to us mountain people. It was a level defined by crude shacks pasted together on the side of the mountain, leaning with the direction of the wind.
I had lived on Crooktop all of my life, but I had never been to six and twenty mile holler. Most Crooktop folks hadn’t. In school I had stared at their dirty clothes and the orange free lunch passes. I stared, but I didn’t join in the laughter. As a child my own clothes were often dirty, and I would long for an orange pass when Mamma Rutha forgot to pack me any lunch. Sometimes I even envied their sense of belonging. They were outside of everything, but they were outside together. I was outside alone.
And now I was riding into their land. Crooks and bums were supposed to line the road. But it didn’t look dangerous. It just looked untamed and wretched, with crumpled piles of wood that only slightly resembled homes.
“You know where you’re going?” I asked him. “Into six and twenty mile holler. Ever heard of it?”
“Didn’t know the name. Just knew it ain’t like the rest of your mountain.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just feels like I’m on a whole new mountain. A wild one. It ain’t all carved up like yours. With roads and a shoppin’ valley.”
“I’ve never been up here before,” I said.
“Never knew you was neighbors with all this, huh?”
We drove past a small boy, around five years old. He was standing on the side of the road, naked except for a pair of boots, holding a dead squirrel by its tail. His eyes curiously followed our truck as it climbed further up the holler.
“Did you see him?” I asked. He nodded. “Poor little fella,” I said.
He looked at me, and I could tell he didn’t understand or agree with my statement. It all seemed normal to him.
“Where you from?” I asked, after we had driven for a while in silence.
“Down the riverbottom,” he said, giving me the answer I already knew.
“Have you been up here much?”
“Been fishin’ all summer in these parts. They got trout streams better than any place in these mountains,” he said.
“You met any of the people here?”
“When they first seen me, they just looked at me like they couldn’t figure me. It wasn’t the same as the way your people look at me, though.”
“My people?” I asked.
“Crooktop. The people of your mountain.”
“How do they look at you?”
“Same as a skeeter, I reckon. I’m like a summer bug to y’all.”
He had said “y’all.” He had lumped me together with the rest of Crooktop. He didn’t think that I looked at him like a summer mosquito, did he? I hadn’t, had I?
I wanted to tell him that he was wrong. That I never
knew how to be a part of the “y’all.” But I couldn’t decide which was worse, the assumption in his voice when he said “y’all” or telling him that I had never belonged anywhere, least of all Crooktop.
“Ever fish before?” he asked me.
I nodded. “I always bait my own hook too.”
He smiled. “So you’re a bait fisher, huh? Well you gotta learn somethin’ new, ’cause I don’t bait fish.”
“What do you do, then, just scoop ’em up in your hands?” I laughed.
“Nah, I use a fly. More fair to ’em, rather than just sinkin’ a fat meal down in their home.”
I had never been fly fishing. Father Heron occasionally fly fished. But I was not his chosen company, and I had never gone. I wished that I had. I wished that Trout would look at my skill with surprise and approval.
“C’mon,” he said as he hopped out of the truck and disappeared into the woods.
We walked far, but I don’t know how far because I couldn’t see anything but leaves and branches and briars. The air was thick and heavy with ripe moisture, and gnats bit at my ankles. I was still in my Sunday dress, cream with purple trim, since I left with him before changing. And my feet hurt as I shuffled through the undergrowth in my scuffed pumps, quickly turning black with dirt. Eventually, the thickness of the trees began to thin, and soon I heard the stream.
“Down here,” he said as he walked over to a small clearing on the bank.
He took off his shirt and laid it on the ground so that I could sit down without ruining my dress. I liked what that told me. That he knew I had on a pretty dress.
I tried not to look at him, to stare at his nakedness. My eyes struggled to avoid the rise of his shoulders, the short little hairs around his belly button, the sweat covering his muscles. I watched the stream, the sun, the chain of ants marching onward, anything but that naked man in front of me. I had seen Father Heron without his shirt, an altogether different sight of sagging gray flesh. And I had seen other boys at the docks or at work without their shirts. But I had never been that close or that alone with a man. As he described to me how to hold the rod, how to stand, how to jerk my wrist forwards then backwards, I looked at his face, only his face. His prickly stubble that had tickled my ear. Those sunflowered eyes. And then he told me to watch him as he fished. To watch his arm. To watch his back. How his body worked together with the line and the rod to create one smooth rhythm.
I obeyed my teacher. With his back turned, my eyes satisfied their curiosity. But it wasn’t just his nakedness that captivated me. It was the way he fished. He didn’t hold the rod. He was the rod. It was a part of his arm, curling over the water, grazing the surface, snapping back with a slight whistle. Curl, graze, snap. It was as beautiful and strange as any of Mamma Rutha’s blessings. And the fish couldn’t help but bite.
“C’mon, give it a try,” he said, without turning around or ever losing his rhythm.
As his hands covered mine, placing them where they were supposed to be, I realized that I had never really looked at them. I had looked at the stain, but not his hands. They felt rough, callused by the plants. They were hands that didn’t swallow mine in largeness, but cradled them gently. Hands with little brown clusters of hair at the knuckles. Smooth lines at the joints. Traces of thick veins hidden beneath the skin. They were the hands of a man, a fisher, a mater migrant. And all of them were touching me.
“There you go,” he said as I finally managed to hurl the line over the water after repeatedly getting tangled up in it. “Quit thinkin’ about it, let the fish take over. They’ll tell you what to do,” he coached.
Don’t think, I told myself. But it didn’t work. I was stiff and self-conscious, silently counting one two three under my breath. I cast and cast, but the fish weren’t fooled. Finally when my arm burned with fatigue, I let the line fall limp and tangled at my feet.
“I guess I’m not much of a fisher,” I said as I walked over and sat next to him.
“Nah, you were great,” he said, smiling. “You was lyin’ about not knowin’ how to fly, weren’t you?”
I laughed and reminded him that I didn’t catch a single fish.
“All the same, you got flyin’ in you. Must be your fancy fishin’ outfit. I figured the fish would just leap out to you.”
I blushed, knowing how ridiculous I must have looked, standing on the banks of wilderness in my cream and purple dress and bare feet. He looked at me, and his red hand softly touched my red face.
“Hungry?” he asked.
I nodded, rendered speechless by the moment that had just passed between us.
“Sit down and I’ll see about rustlin’ up somethin’.” He pulled out a pocketknife and began filleting the fish he’d caught. One hand grasping the slippery skin, while the other skillfully carved its flesh.
“I’d ask for a light, but I’m afraid it might make you sassy like down at the docks,” he joked as he pulled a lighter from his pocket and began building a small fire. He laid the fillets on wide slabs of bark that he had soaked in the stream, and placed them just at the edge of the fire where they could slowly roast.
The air filled with a delicious smell. It was a full salty scent, one of roasted meat mingling with burning wood. By the time he slid the pieces of bark away from the edge, my mouth was watering.
“This ain’t no roasted pig or nothin’, like you’d have if you weren’t with me,” he said shyly as he served me a fillet.
We ate with our hands. Greedy hands filling hungry mouths. Della would have been shocked and alarmed to see me, filling my mouth with that smoked trout, not caring about the pieces of dirt or bark that still clung to the skin.
“Never, never eat ’til you’re full in front of a man that you’re not related to or don’t despise,” she had instructed me. “Sexy women are hungry women, Mercy. It’s hard for a man to see a woman as mysterious and erotic if he just watched her gulp down a whole rack of ribs. You gotta save your appetite for when you’re out with other girls, or at home by yourself. Otherwise, you’ll be a woman in the prime of your looks pigging out without a man anywhere around.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe Della’s lesson on men. I knew as I stuffed my mouth with fish that I wasn’t attractive or feminine. But my hunger and the adventure of eating fish that had been swimming just a few minutes ago overwhelmed any feminine wisdom that I had acquired. I ate several fillets, never waving off any that he offered me.
“C’mon,” he said, after we finished the last fillet.
I followed him to the edge of the stream and knelt beside him. He leaned forward and scooped water into his hands. I leaned forward too, cupped my hands together, and let the stream fill them. The water was cold, colder than I expected on that muggy summer day. It slid down my throat, more cool and comforting than sweet tea could ever be.
We were satisfied. We sat on the bank and talked about his job. How he was careful not to bruise the fruits he picked, how he was sad that he couldn’t smell the plants anymore because he had worked in them so long. I wanted to ask him why he was a mater migrant, but I didn’t. I was afraid he would think I looked at him like a mosquito. So we talked about my job, and Della. I told him she was my best friend. And I asked him about the snakes.
“You never done it?” he asked.
“I didn’t even know places like that were around here. How did you?”
“You and me, we ain’t the same,” he said simply.
“I don’t understand.”
“You walk in your valley, people see Mercy Heron. You don’t gotta go no other place for people to look at you. I walk through your valley and people see red hands. It don’t bother me none, I ain’t shamed by my hands. But that don’t mean a man don’t need to go places where people ain’t always lookin’ for ’em. Those places are out there, hidin’ in these mountains. And when I find ’em, I ain’t a mater migrant no more. I’m just a man.”
We traced our way back to his truck.
“Where you live?” he a
sked.
“Up from the valley, on the mountain.”
“Do I take a left at the end of the holler?”
“Oh, no. No. Just drop me off at the diner,” I told him, careful to disguise the edge in my voice. He didn’t answer me, and though I stared out the window as hard as I could, I could tell he was trying not to look at me. I was ashamed of myself.
“I have to face my boss eventually, and I might as well go ahead and do it tonight,” I lied coolly.
He was quiet. And I wondered what questions he was asking himself. If he struggled between wanting to believe me and his suspicion that I didn’t want my family to see me with a mater migrant. Did he think he couldn’t take me home because I was a part of the “y’all”? Was he right?
“I had a lot of fun today, with the holler and the fish. I had a real good time. Thank you,” I stammered as he pulled up to the diner.
I awkwardly stared at my scuffed pumps as I spoke, not sure of how or what to say, but knowing that it just wouldn’t be right not to thank the man that drove me to the wilderness, entertained, and fed me.
“Good,” he said, still not looking at me. The easiness was gone. His silence had changed into something stiff.
“I really do have to see my boss tonight. I’m not what you think. I’m not like everybody else here.”
“No,” he said, before driving away. “You’re a whole different kind of woman.”
The Killing Tree Page 6
