The Killing Tree

by Rachel Keener

  “Mercy baby.”

  I turned and looked at her. Her eyes shining victorious, no sign of exhaustion.

  “You are happy,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” my sleepy voice asked.

  “I can feel it. It’s new.”

  “I’m just really tired. That’s what you see,” I murmured, not daring to meet her eyes.

  I was too tired to think anymore. Too tired to ask myself what Mamma Rutha saw. I fell asleep fully clothed on top of my bed, curled around my pillow, hands clenched to pull and tug my two blind red dogs.

  Chapter IX

  M y hunger woke me. It was a painful gnawing in my stomach. My body had soaked up a few hours of rest and then demanded something more. It needed food. I climbed out of bed, looking nearly the same as I did when I left the night before, only dirtier and more wrinkled. Mamma Rutha and Father Heron were nowhere in sight. I rummaged through the cabinets, searching for something quick to eat. But all I found was flour, cornmeal, some canned beans, and molasses.

  I walked outside, to Father Heron’s garden. I grabbed a handful of beans and popped them in my mouth. Sweet and crisp, they only made me more hungry. I needed something to bite and chew. A raw potato wouldn’t do. I inspected his tomato plants, and found them lacking too. Green, and orangey red at best, they were mere shadows of the ruby gems that hung in Mamma Rutha’s garden. I glanced at them, but I didn’t dare taste one.

  I had done that once. At age twelve, after Mamma Rutha had forgotten to pack my lunch for school, my stomach had growled with the thought of them. How their sweet and tangy flesh would make my cheeks pucker and my mouth sing. I am a creature too, I told myself. I am from this mountain too, I said to her garden. I stood there in the middle of it and checked to see if I was being watched. I inhaled the fermented smell of an overly ripe, unharvested garden. My fingers burned with lust while my eyes searched for the perfect fruit. At the bottom, low to the ground, there it was. About the size of an apple, shaped to fit perfectly in the palm of my hand. I touched it. Timidly at first. Then my hand closed around it and I pulled. My teeth pierced its skin and its juice trickled down my chin.

  But without ever asking me she knew. And for weeks she didn’t bless me. Finally, I broke down, confessed and repented. Whywon’t you bless me anymore? I cried. What must I do? And that’s when she told me that I must hunger. I had stolen the mountain’s blessing, and so I had to give it mine. For two days I laid all of my food, my biscuits, my peanut butter sandwiches, my fried chicken beneath the June apple tree.

  It was bad. Even though it was for just two days. I was so tempted to take a bite. Just one bite, one chew, one swallow of my food. But somehow, she would have known. So I hungered. Hungered so bad I crept out at night and ate dirt. Filled my mouth with the soft brown earth that smelled so good in her garden. It’s not food, I told myself. It doesn’t count, I whispered through my dirt-filled mouth.

  The strangest thing is that the taste of dirt never left me. There were times when I still craved it. Working in the garden on a Sunday night. When there was no food in the house. When I wanted to feel low and hidden from the world. I would crawl into the wild closet of Mamma Rutha’s garden, and fill my mouth with dirt. I stood there, the morning after leading the dogs away, and eyed that rich brown dirt. Thinking about its musky taste and crunchy grit. I wanted to eat it. But eighteen-year-olds don’t eat dirt. So I hungered instead. Wishing I was still twelve.

  “Coon! Here Coon! Hey Fox! Here Fox!” Father Heron’s voice pierced the woods. I walked to the back porch, listening to him call those dogs. Secretly laughing at him. He walked out of the woods after about an hour and noticed me there.

  “Mercy, you seen my dogs?” he asked.

  “Last night when I came home from work I saw ’em running around out here, after you set ’em loose.”

  “No, after that, today, you seen ’em today?” he asked anxiously.

  “No sir, I haven’t seen ’em today. They run off some-place?”

  “March out into them woods and call them dogs, while I head down the mountain to see if they’ve wandered down thataways,” he said.

  “Yes sir,” I replied as I walked to the edge of the woods, choked back my laughter, and called “Coon! Wolf! Bear!” until Father Heron left.

  Suddenly I shivered with fear. The red ropes, still attached to the dog collars. Where were they? Mamma Rutha had wisely left hers with the dogs. But I brought mine back home, and I couldn’t remember hiding them or throwing them away. I ran through the woods, circling the trees. Looking by rocks and in briars.

  It was almost time to leave for work. I gave up, hoping Mamma Rutha had gotten rid of them. I showered and walked into my bedroom, where on the floor, curled like scarlet snakes, lay two lengths of thick red rope. I stuffed them in my closet, next to the jelly jar, to wait for a safe time to get rid of them.

  It was Tuesday, and Tuesdays were always slow at work. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday guaranteed a crowd. Monday was spent recovering and cleaning up from the weekend. Wednesday and Thursday were spent getting ready for it by finding the right pigs, having them killed, and getting them ready to smoke. But Tuesday was the lull. We served only a smoked pork shoulder. Never a whole pig.

  Rusty had tried to pep business up on Tuesdays with his Terrific Tuesday Specials. Buyone pork sandwich, get barbecue beans for free! But that didn’t work. So he tried music. He paid for some of Crooktop’s best “pickers” to come and play. They picked the banjo and the guitar. Outsiders called it bluegrass or country, but up on Crooktop there were only two types of live music—gospel and picking. At first it had worked. People left their Tuesday casseroles at home for the music. But Rusty eventually realized that they weren’t eating enough to cover the cost, so Picking Tuesday became ordinary Tuesday again. I never made any money on Tuesdays. I never really had to work on Tuesday, though I was scheduled to. I would spend my time cleaning, reorganizing the silverware, or taking smoke breaks with Rusty. But on that Tuesday, I spent my time thinking about Trout. Wondering how much more time was left in the growing season. Whether I would see him again.

  “Let’s smoke,” Rusty called from the kitchen.

  I nodded, even though I dreaded spending time with him. It was strange that I was so drawn to a man that Crooktop despised, while Rusty, one of its most respected young men, made my stomach turn. Rusty made a decent living, came from a good family, and he went to church. Check, check, check—it was almost a complete list.

  “How’s your family?” he asked as he lit his cigarette.

  “Pretty good. Yours?”

  “Same as always, I reckon. Listen, I’ve been thinking about making a little visit to your place. Maybe taking your grandparents some pig. I know what a time your grandpa must have outta your grandma.”

  “I don’t know about that. I mean, it’s awfully nice of you, but Father Heron’s awfully busy, and he just lost his dogs, so now is probably not the best time.”

  “But I worry about y’all. I worry that your grandpa needs a helping hand,” he said, with smoke pouring out of his nostrils. “You couldn’t even come into work the other day ’cause of something going on with your crazy grandma. I’d like to ask your grandpa if I could, well, if I could help take care of you a little. So that he won’t have to worry about you too.”

  “I take care of myself. Always have,” I replied, wondering if Della could get me hired at the Ben Franklin.

  “Just the same, you reflect a spell on it. I’ve got a lot to offer,” he said as he walked back inside.

  I needed that diner job. There were so few jobs available for girls in the valley. I was too young to be hired by the bank, I refused to be a cafeteria lady at the school. But how could I refuse a man, without making him feel rejected? Only Della could answer. At the end of my shift I started walking toward the Ben Franklin.

  I felt him coming even before I heard his truck round the top of the hill. That clanky roar and sputter. I knew that he was coming for
me.

  “Hey,” he said smiling. “Where you headed?”

  “Ben Franklin. How about you?”

  “I was hopin’ you could give me a bite of some of that pig you serve up,” he said. “But now I’m thinkin’ Mexican sounds better.”

  “Like tacos?” I asked.

  “Somethin’ like that. Hop in,” he said, never asking me if I wanted to, just knowing that I did. He leaned over and opened the door. His arm stretched out long, and my eyes met the curve of his shoulder and the smooth tan skin that was covered with bristly hairs. I sat inside his truck. There in the middle of town, knowing that I was making May Flours’ day.

  The windows were rolled down and the wind whipped my ponytail around and pulled loose hairs across my face. The air smelled fresh and pulled away the smoke that clung to me. I breathed deeply and felt happy. In that moment, I was exactly where I wanted to be.

  “You doin’ all right?” he asked.

  “Fine. You?”

  “Worn out,” he said. “Boss raised the quota to thirty crates of maters today. Got stung by a hornet, and now the sting’s dried up I can’t quit scratchin’ it. I’m thankful too. Had a good lunch of stewed maters with cornbread. My truck’s still kickin’ along, and then I found you walkin’ down the same road that I was comin’ up. That’s a lot of things, but it sure ain’t fine. How ’bout you?”

  How about me? He was right. I was more than fine. “Fine” was the answer that I had always given. It was the answer I expected back. Hiding what made my feet ache or my heart sing, was all I’d ever known.

  “I was up real late last night,” I said. “With my Mamma Rutha. So I’m sleepy. And I didn’t have supper last night, or breakfast today except for some raw beans, so I’m hungry. My boss makes me nervous. My job is dull on Tuesdays. But right now, I feel really good.”

  He drove down the mountain, toward the low river-bottom land. It was a place where most white people would go only to buy fresh vegetables or to hire people for odd jobs. White women certainly never went down there, where Lord knows what might be done to them. The land was a deeper, richer green than on the mountain. Filled with trees and grasses that were never thirsty. The air was thicker too, and moister. It smelled like unearthed potatoes. Or a mud puddle after a heavy rain.

  There were more clouds and blue in the sky than up on Crooktop. It still looked like a puzzle, but down there the blue and white pieces were almost equal with the green and brown. And there were vegetables. Not like a garden. Or even like a crop. We were in a sea of green and red, with rows of tomatoes stretching far and wide. And mixed in between the rows were little clusters of gray tents. He had brought me home.

  “So this is where you work?” I asked, wanting him to tell me about his life.

  “See those rows over there?” he asked. “Those were mine today.” I nodded and tried to imagine him there, his day filled with the fruits of my temptation. I thought it was a wonderful job, to lose yourself amidst rows of fuzzy plants.

  There were small campfires built in the middle of the tent clusters, with huddles of brown men and women standing around them. They were laughing and smiling. And though they spoke Spanish, it was easy to tell when they spoke of happy things and funny things. They were beautiful. With caramel skin and black shiny eyes, not dull as coal dust like mine and Father Heron’s. I surprised them. A white woman down in mater migrant land. And for the first time in my life, I felt white.

  Crooktop was a mountain made of many colors, settled only by one. In school I was surrounded only by white children. At church, only whites. In the diner, only whites. And though most of us had distant Cherokee relatives, we were still “white.” I had occasionally seen the Mexicans, when they dared make a trip to town. And once an old black man, a biologist, moved to Crooktop to study its wildlife. But he didn’t stay long, and most of Crooktop was glad. My world was filled with people that looked just like me, and only occasionally was I aware of anything else.

  As I followed Trout through them, they looked at me and I felt what lay between us. And it was new to me. Not that they were brown, I knew that. But I hadn’t known how much my whiteness meant to them. It had never been anything more to me than a paleness that stared back in the mirror. But it meant something to them. It separated me from their happy laughter. From their warm caramel skin. It lay between us. Wider than the river.

  “¡Mi Trucha!” an old man said in a thick accent, as he embraced Trout.

  “This is my friend Mercy,” Trout said. “Mercy, I’d like you to meet Mr. Miguel.”

  “Welcome to our home,” he said, smiling an almost toothless smile.

  Trout led me to a blanket laid across the ground. I sat down and stared. I felt like I was in a different time and a different country. I wondered if it had been there all along. That little world, so different from the rest of Crooktop. And so close to it. I had always known they lived there. That they spoke Spanish and lived in tents. But that they were a community? A family even? That they loved and were loved? I had been raised to believe that their way of life was miserable. So I believed the people always were too. But joy could be found in the tentworld. Pain too. Stooped backs, blistered hands, and homesick children. But there was family there. More family than I had ever known.

  Trout saw the look on my face, and he understood.

  “Never seen the likes of it, have you?” he asked. “First time I saw ’em, I was just a fourteen-year-old boy fishin’. I heard ’em first. Singin’ in their tongue. Never heard nothin’ like that. I couldn’t make out any of the words. It’s like they was callin’ me.”

  “Is that when you joined them?” I asked.

  “I started spyin’ on ’em. Through the briars and weeds, I laid on my belly and watched ’em. One day Mr. Miguel found me. The way I am with trout, he’s with the maters. He knows when to plant ’em and when to pick ’em. He knows what bugs will hurt ’em and what won’t. I felt linked to that old Mexican right then and there. He felt about maters like I felt about trout. I reckon he could tell by lookin’ at me that I didn’t have any sort of home to go back to. So he let me join ’em. He may be a Mexican, and I ain’t. But he’s been more daddy to me than ol’ Earnie ever was. He’s a wise man. Even the bosses listen to him. Still dreams of Mexico. Reckon he always will. It’d be about like us leavin’ the mountains for the flatland. Couldn’t ever get it out of our blood.”

  “I could leave the mountains,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to see the ocean.”

  “But they wouldn’t leave you. They’re in you. Same as trout’s in me,” he said.

  He was right, the mountain was in me. And parts of it would be hard to leave. Like the view of my living sky. But there were other parts, that soaked up Heron blood, that I would do anything to shed.

  “You come here every summer?” I asked.

  “We go where the biggest crops are. One mountain valley or another. When it gets cold we head to Florida to work other crops. We don’t stay the same, either. There’s new people every year. Some leave to settle down, others go back to Mexico. But a few of us don’t. We just keep on movin’ around.”

  “Don’t you ever just want to stay put?” I asked, my mind thinking about the coming winter. About him leaving and never returning. He sighed, and I sensed that he had asked himself the same question before.

  “Teacher told me once that the earth is just a ball that’s always spinnin’. Round and round. Spinnin’ the people that stand on it. But I walk with it. I ain’t gonna wait for it to spin me. I spin myself.”

  “That’s a lot of moving. Ever get tired?” I asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “You ever get tired of standin’?” he replied.

  Yes. I grew tired. Tired of standing in the middle of a lying house. Of standing by Mamma Rutha. Standing before Father Heron. Standing with smoked pork in my hands, and nickels and dimes in my pocket.

  “Where you standin’, Mercy?” he asked.

  Hadn’t he heard? About the silent o
ld man and the crazy old woman? About the random peonies, the unharvested garden, the sun yellow house, the sun yellow body. My life wasn’t like his pretty fairy tale, of a little boy lost in the woods rescued by a loving family. I was still lost in the woods.

  “¡Vengan, es tiempo de comer!!” called a plump woman with glossy, inky hair.

  “Grub time,” he said, as he stood up and walked toward the woman. I looked around and noticed that the tents were organized in clusters, with central campfires and meals.

  He returned with a heaping plate of food that smelled like summer. There were corn, beans, and tomatoes mixing in a little river of broth on the plate. And a pile of warm tortillas covering the top. We ate with our hands. Scraping the vegetables onto the tortillas with the fork we shared, sopping up the broth, and then stuffing them into our mouths. This was my second meal with him, and I was learning that using my hands to eat always made the food taste better.

  “You eat like this every day?” I asked, when I slowed down enough to talk.

  He looked at me and smiled. “Messy, ain’t it.”

  “Yes.” I laughed and held up my broth-covered hands.

  “Let’s wash up at the river,” he said, guiding me toward the bank.

  The river was wide. Like ten mountain streams mingling together. And it was dark. The color of the earth. It was warmer than the streams on Crooktop. And muddier. I could feel my shoes sinking as I crouched to wash my hands. I looked up and saw Trout sitting on the bank watching me. I grew conscious of how I walked, how my body moved under his gaze.

  “Here,” he said as his hand showed me where to sit.

  I sat next to him and we watched the river, the sound of it gentle and cleansing. I looked at his worn shoes, the ones that I had noticed that night on the docks. Mine looked nearly the same, the mud from the river beginning to dry on them. I knew that he was poor. He couldn’t offer me money or security, or even a life with him if he had to spin with the earth. But there was still something about him that made me glad to be me. I had never felt that way before.