Chapter VIII
I went inside the diner. Chairs were turned up on the tables, and it smelled of dirty bleach water mingled with barbecue. It was quiet, except for water running in the kitchen where the dishes were being washed.
“Rusty?”
There was no answer, but his truck was still there. I guessed that he was out smoking so I hurried and scribbled a note. I wrote that something had come up with Mamma Rutha that I had to take care of, and that I would be in for work tomorrow. Then I called Della and told her to pick me up down at the Credit Union.
Her questions were relentless. As soon as she pulled up she knew I hadn’t been at work.
“You’re still dressed up! Where have you been?” she demanded. I tried to act cool and calm. I told her I had just been taking care of errands.
“Errands, my ass! You have a clean apron in your hand, your shoes are filthy, and that’s not how you go to the grocery!”
I didn’t want to tell her. Not until I had a chance to sort it all out, like Father Heron’s greeter papers, into neat little boxes of conversations, looks, and laughter. But I felt important, girlishly important. For the first time ever, it was me who had the story.
“It’s not what you think,” I began. “We just went fishing. That’s all.”
“Who, Mercy? Who!” she demanded.
“Trout. I ran into him on my way to work, and I like to fish so I went along with him. No big deal.”
“Trout mater migrant? The snake handler! That’s almost as bad as something I’d do!” she teased. “And fishing? I’ve known you forever and I don’t remember you ever hankering to go fishing. The fish you were after just happened to be named Trout, huh?” She laughed. “Well, tell me what you did, what he said, how he looked!”
I gave her a very boring story. About a man that fished and fed me. As I talked I felt flushed and confused every time I thought about that curl, graze, and snap, about those hands with thick veins and smooth lines, about the salty smell of that smoked trout.
“Be careful, Mercy,” she said before dropping me off. “Remember who you are. You’re playing a dangerous game.”
There weren’t any lights on in the house. It was Heron garden night. In the moonlight I saw neat little rows of vegetables, with leaves that looked silvery black in the darkness. Sounds, smells, and thoughts stirred within me. Like Polaroids. The image of his back. Of fish guts thrown into the woods. Of scuffed pumps.
“Young lady, I need a word with you,” Father Heron’s voice broke through the quiet night.
A word with me. Hello. That’s a word. How was your day, Mercy? Five whole words. But I knew that none of them would be Father Heron’s word with me. Father Heron never spoke a word with me in kindness.
He saw me riding home with Della, I told myself. Della is a whore. Those will be his words. Your momma was a whore. You will not be a whore like Della and your momma.
“Yes sir,” I said lowly.
“Look at you,” he said with disgust. “Standing here in your church clothes, but didn’t go to evening services. May Flours is telling everybody she saw you hop in a truck with a man. Said she thought he might be a mater migrant. A mater migrant, Mercy,” he repeated through gritted teeth.
May Flours was a bitter little prune of a woman, with a shriveled-up face and bluish hair. A spiteful gossip who stirred up more trouble for new preachers than the devil himself could ever hope to. She had spread rumors about preachers having affairs with the woman who kept the nursery or pocketing change from the offering plate. And now I was her target. I imagined the sense of joy she must have felt, seeing me get into his truck. Knowing that for once she had a scandal she could spread that was actually true.
“You will not disgrace our name,” Father Heron said sternly.
In his narrowed black eyes and set jaw I recognized danger. Tick tick ticking. Ready to explode with the slightest spark.
“No, I won’t. I don’t sneak around with mater migrants. I also don’t listen to gossip from the likes of May Flours. Just as you taught me to, sir,” I said, not daring to look him in the eye. “If you want me to explain why I’m dressed the way I am, if you need me to show you how May Flours is wrong, well, I can. If you believe the things she says.”
Father Heron couldn’t stand there and say he believed May Flours. Every good person in our church had rallied against the lying lips of May Flours. Lying lips are an abomination, Father Heron had declared.
He looked startled, a bit confused even.
“I don’t need any explanations from the likes of you. And I don’t need any of May Flours’ rotten tongue either. I’m just letting you know what we stand for and what you will respect.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and wondered what he would have done if I had said yes. I was out with a mater migrant. Yes, we drove together, all by ourselves, to the middle of six and twenty mile holler. Yes, we stood in the wilderness together. Yes, he was half naked. Yes, I loved every single moment with him.
I went inside and crawled into bed. The little details, hidden by the big events, surfaced in the darkness. We hadn’t spoken of our first night together looking for the fire trout. And I hadn’t felt embarrassed as I had thought I would. It had all disappeared in his carefree admission that he was waiting there for me. And what had he called me, a different kind of woman? Different from what? From pretty, popular girls? With swingy blonde hair and round full breasts? Or was I like the holler? He had called that a different kind of mountain. A wild one.
The next morning I felt like more of a woman, if not a different kind. I paid new attention to the soft curve of my calf and to the way breathing made my chest rise and fall in the shower. I studied myself in the mirror. Eyes the color of coal. Hair that no amount of Breck shampoo could ever make bounce. Lips sparkling with Plum Passion. Teeth just a little crooked on the bottom row, but fine on the top. Small breasts, shaped like Hershey’s kisses.
“Mercy baby,” Mamma Rutha called to me through my closed door. “I have something to show you.”
“Just a minute,” I cried as I pulled on my cutoffs and T-shirt.
We walked behind the shed where she reached into a tattered boot box and pulled out a bloodied baby squirrel, with a horrible gash in its back leg.
“Wallace’s dogs killed its momma and about killed it too. I came out here and right underneath my feet was its poor mangled momma and this little thing. I’m gonna have to go hunt up a good salve for its little leg.”
The squirrel was shaking and bleeding. I was certain it wouldn’t live. At least, it wouldn’t without Mamma Rutha to care for it.
“I need your help,” she said seriously.
“What?” I asked, fearful of what she would say.
Once when I was sixteen, she had asked me to help her paint the house sun yellow so it would blend in with “God’s design” for the mountain. For two weeks I carried her a bucket of paint each day, until nearly every shadowy place in her garden was hiding a little bit of sunshine. Then, as soon as she had drugged Father Heron and he had stumbled to bed, we began painting. We painted without stopping through the night, until the next afternoon. When Father Heron woke up and saw the house, you would have thought we had painted curse words on it he was so choked with anger. It did look ridiculous. But I didn’t care, it wasn’t like anybody I knew, except for Della, ever came close to the house. Father Heron hired a whole crew of men to come repaint the house that very day. So before sunset, it was clean and white again.
When Mamma Rutha showed up at dinner that night, she was sun yellow. Everything, except her blue eyes that looked even more washed out by the contrast of her neon skin. When Father Heron asked what in God’s name had she done to herself, she looked at him calmly and said, “This is your house, paint it what you like. My body is my house. And I will paint it what I like.”
Father Heron didn’t seem to mind at first. He just hoped she’d get poisoned and die from it all. But she didn’t. And she even touched up any nick
s or chips that she had. When she needed something from the valley, she just took her yellow self right on down there. That was the worst for me. Father Heron may have been called righteous for staying with Mamma Rutha, but I just felt hot shame when my classmates started calling me Sunny. As if I were the yellow one. Hey Sunny, make the rain go away. She stayed yellow for a long time, until finally one day she decided that she scared her animals. So she bathed, leaving a permanent tinge of yellow in the bottom of our bathtub.
“I need your help with his dogs. They torture my chickens. They mangle the squirrels, possums, and mice. They’re unnatural. They don’t even eat what they kill half the time,” she said.
Father Heron’s dogs were not pets, but hunting tools. He usually kept them in cages during the day, and set them loose at sunset. They were almost wild, obedient to Father Heron only half the time.
“What do you want to do?” I asked her. “Kill ’em?”
She looked shocked.
“Oh no. They can’t help the way they are, how they’ve been raised. But this part of the mountain, where we live, I’ve worked hard to make it safe,” she said, motioning to the woods as though she could see all of her beloved creatures. “And I’m not going to let them dogs destroy that. I want to take ’em far away, up the mountain. Let ’em be a part of what they try to destroy. Let ’em kill away from here and for a reason, a natural reason.”
“How we gonna do all that?”
“Tonight, after he’s asleep, we’ll lead them away. Dogs can make maps in their heads, so we’ll have to blindfold ’em. And we can’t take the truck, it’d wake him. Today in the valley, get me some rope or chain to lead by. I’ll fry him one of his chickens, slip some sleepy into his tea, and when he’s asleep we’ll put our walking shoes on. I already know where we’ll be going, so you just be ready, okay?”
Fried chicken and sleepy tea, Mamma Rutha’s famous mischief cocktail. She kept a small jar filled with a crumbly substance, hidden behind the cornmeal. I didn’t know what it was. All I knew was that she returned from the mountain with it, and that whenever I saw a residue of crushed powder on the counter and the table loaded with Father Heron’s favorites, I should brace myself for trouble, Mamma Rutha style. There were a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t have agreed. But then there was Mamma Rutha, the reason I said yes.
When my shift at the diner ended, it was time for me to pick up the supplies. I went to the Ben Franklin to see Della and look for some rope. There was just one register open, and a small girl with a pimply face and shifty eyes working it. When I asked her if Della was working, she motioned toward the back and shrugged her shoulders.
I wasn’t halfway through the store before I heard her teasing giggle. As I neared the back of the store, where the words “MANAGER’S OFFICE” hung importantly above a door, I heard a man’s voice too. Nasal and pleading.
I could see him. Through a little slat window carved into the side of the door that helped him keep a better eye on the store. He was very skinny, and tall. Tufts of hair around his ears and neck, but none on top. He had a handsome face, with high cheekbones. But it was still a shock to picture Della with him. Della wasting all of her glow on that?
Since Della was busy, I started to leave and go search for my rope when he saw me.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” he called after me.
“Mercy?” Della said.
I stopped and slowly turned around, flushed with embarrassment. I had been caught spying on my best friend while she flirted with her boss.
He looked worried, and I guessed that he was wondering what I saw, whether I knew his wife.
“It’s okay, Randy. She’s my best friend,” Della said, grinning at me.
His high cheekbones locked. “Call me Sir when we’re at work!” he snapped. Then he turned to me. “You know?”
“Rope,” I said. “I just need some rope.”
“You’ve been spreading this around?” he asked Della.
“Not spreading it around, just telling my best friend. I tell her everything. She is my magic student!” she said, giggling again.
“Do you have any idea what this could do to me? Me, a married man? The boss of this store? Screwing around with an eighteen-year-old cashier, and you spread it around!” he asked, the top of his slick head turning scarlet.
“It’s not like that, Randy,” Della said softly. “She’s the only one I’ve told. And she understands, I told her about your wife.”
He turned toward me. “And how can I know, how can I be sure that you’ll keep your mouth shut?” he asked.
“ ’Cause she loves me. And ’cause she’s as bad as me. Dating a mater migrant is no better than dating a married man.” Della laughed with a good-natured wink.
I protested, my ears burning red. I was not dating a mater migrant.
“Rope’s on aisle four,” he interrupted as he started walking back to his office. “And Della, I need to see you in my office.”
“Oh, yes sir,” Della said in her most sexy breathless voice.
“Not like that,” he said, shooting her an angry glance.
“It’s okay, Mercy. He’s just so high-strung, you know? It’s his wife. Any man would be high-strung living with the likes of her. Anyway, I’d help you pick out your rope, but duty calls, you know? I’ve got to put my forty hours in if I expect to draw a paycheck,” she said as she grinned and whirled toward his office, skillfully bouncing all of her curves.
I made my way over to aisle four, vowing to wring Della’s neck for telling him that I was dating a mater migrant. I had seen the look in his eyes when she said that. A look of victory.
Aisle four had three kinds of rope. Thin purple rope, the kind used in Vacation Bible School crafts, medium yellow rope, and thick red rope. I tugged on the medium yellow rope. It seemed sturdy, but those dogs were so big. I decided on the thick red rope and bought four lengths.
The distance to my house from the valley wasn’t even two miles, but it was steep enough to give my calves a deep-down-in-the-bone burn. As I watched the sun slowly fizzle into darkness, I knew there was little time to waste. So I walked briskly, jogging at times, probably looking as crazy as Mamma Rutha, with four long pieces of red rope trailing behind me. When I arrived home, it was dark outside and smelled of fried chicken. After I hid the ropes beneath Mamma Rutha’s potato plants, she met me on the back porch.
“Mercy baby,” she whispered, “good news. The baby’s doing okay. I put a salve on its wound, and I think its gonna be fine. But the dogs still must be moved. Your grandfather is drinking his tea now. Go change into something warm and stay back in your bedroom ’til I come and get you.”
When Mamma Rutha had a plan, she could execute it with perfect sanity. She was calm and in control, while my hands shook as I tied my sneakers. I thought about how calculated she must have been that evening. Killing the chicken, frying it, brewing his tea, crushing the powder that she stirred with extra sugar into his glass, plotting a map in her head of where we would walk that night.
“He’s been asleep for an hour now, so I don’t think he’ll wake up,” Mamma Rutha whispered as she motioned me to follow her.
“Are you scared?” she asked me once we were outside.
“No. But I am hungry, got any more chicken?”
“I put it in the compost pile for the garden,” she said matter-of-factly. Just like Mamma Rutha. Worried that I was scared, but forgetting that I hadn’t eaten supper.
It took us longer than she had planned to round the four dogs up. They were too busy having fun, tearing up the night. We called them softly. Wolf! Here boy! Bear! Here boy! Coon! Come here! Fox! I was wildly running around with my two red ropes. Diving for their thick bodies, falling facedown in the dirt.
Finally, we managed to slip a rope around each one’s neck. Then ripped T-shirts were bound around each dog’s eyes. They seemed so different, tied up and blinded. They were nervous, skittish pups.
We began our journey. Mamma Rutha in the lead
, pulling her two dogs behind her. I followed her and led the red dogs, Fox and Coon.
We walked, climbing upward and upward until my legs grew numb. I tried not to think of all the snakes, coyotes, and mountain lions that were watching me. Or maybe even bears. The dogs occasionally would growl, low and threatening. I knew they smelled things that my eyes couldn’t see. I had never seen the mountain like that. We were traveling to its heart, deep into the woods. It was crawling, rattling, and shaking with life. The mountain itself seemed to breathe.
Mamma Rutha never stopped to rest. I followed her soft rustling as she passed through leaves and branches. The four dogs and me huffed and puffed and struggled to keep up. She didn’t even seem winded as we climbed and climbed. I wondered how old she was. Maybe as old as her mountain.
“Almost there, just a little further,” she called back to me after hours of following.
The dogs were worn out and thoroughly confused by the time she suddenly stopped and announced that we had walked far enough. The six of us sat down. Not caring whether we sat on unseen anthills. The dogs stretched their tired limbs and began breathing deeply. I wanted to stay like that forever. The six of us, in a half circle, in the heart of the mountain. The hunger, the fatigue, my aching muscles and rope-burned hands all held me to the ground.
I dozed in and out, until I became aware of Mamma Rutha gently pulling the blindfolds and red rope from the dogs. She stroked the tops of their heads and told them to live a good, peaceful life. She told them that she could not bless them after what they had done to the baby squirrel, but that she wished good things for them. She took my hands and pulled me from the ground. I followed her back toward home, dragging my two loose red ropes, feeling much lighter walking downhill without Fox and Coon to pull along.
As we neared home there was no yellow or orange light in the sky yet, but night was beginning to fade from black, to navy, then to a purplish blue. I was beyond tired. I was floating toward home and my bed. The woods began to thin and suddenly stopped. I was standing at the edge of Mamma Rutha’s garden.
The Killing Tree Page 7
