The Killing Tree

by Rachel Keener

  “Why’d you do that? I told you not to,” I said, as color flooded my face.

  “I was jealous. There was a part of you hid up on that mountain. And I wanted that part too. You went inside, through the back door. And then I saw her. Naked in the moonlight. Skin shinin’ like dew. Hair swingin’ down to her waist. Like you, all growed up. ‘Chop down the apple tree,’ she sang to me. I looked to where she pointed but I couldn’t see a tree. The night was too black. ‘Chop down the apple tree,’ she sang again. The only thing I could think to say is, ‘Yes ma’am, bring me an axe.’ Then she smiled. Lord that woman took my breath. Beautiful. Like you are, like you will be.”

  He circled me in his arms. “Yes, Mercy, you are that woman’s daughter. No denyin’ it. Never could figure what she meant about the apple tree, though.”

  “This,” I whispered. “Saving me from him. That apple tree wants my blood.”

  Chapter XIV

  They’re here, Mercy. They done found us.”

  I sat up quickly and listened. We’d only set up our tent a couple hours before. I heard a bird singing in the distance, and the sound of the stream running past us. I heard Trout’s breath, slow and even.

  “Don’t hear nobody,” I said.

  “Shhh. There,” he said, pointing toward the road.

  “Him?” I asked, beginning to shake with fear.

  He shook his head. “Huh-uh. The boys that run this place.” He stood up and turned in their direction.

  “What do they want?”

  “To know why we’re trespassin’.”

  They moved quietly, but quickly. I was surprised by how fast they reached us. There were six of them, four young men and two old.

  “Mornin’, Trout,” one of them spoke.

  “Mornin’. This is Mercy,” Trout said.

  I smiled and tried to appear friendly, though I felt threatened. I looked from face to face, seeing if anyone would return my smile. And then I saw him. Jericho Chapman.

  “Hey Jericho,” I said. “We was in school together, eight grades, and then even some at Valley High.” He looked at me, and I couldn’t tell whether he knew me or not. All I could see was the piercing blue of his eyes. They made the sky seem dull.

  “You from the valley, ain’t you?” he asked. “That redhead girl, Della, you’s the one always runnin’ ’round with her?”

  “Yep. That was me,” I said, wishing I had a memory of him to prove that I had noticed him too. “Been runnin’ around with the mater migrants lately, though,” I said, pointing to Trout. It was the first time I had ever used that word with pride. In that holler, being a mater migrant was so much better than being a Heron.

  “What you doin’ up in here, Mercy?” Jericho asked. “These ain’t your parts.”

  “She’s here with me,” Trout said. “I brought her here.”

  “Bet your valley folk wouldn’t like that none,” one of the men said with a smirk. “No point in bringin’ your troubles on us. We don’t mean no disrespect, Trout, we never did mind you fishin’ our streams or worshipin’ in our church, but we don’t want no valley trouble.”

  “Jericho,” I said lowly. “You and I spent eight years of school together, and we never spoke ’til this day. But it wasn’t ’cause I wanted to stick with my own kind. I ain’t got my own kind.”

  “What is it you’re wantin’ from us?”

  “Just a couple days to catch our breath,” Trout said. “I’m takin’ her off this mountain. Maybe into Tennessee or Kentucky.”

  “Who’s comin’ fer you?” the old one asked.

  “My grandfather,” I said. “ ’Cause he’d see me dead ’fore he’d see me love a boy that ain’t from his valley.” It was the right thing to say. I could sense their approval as I glanced from face to face, gazing with shock at each new set of piercing eyes. The deepest blues. The most striking greens. If I hadn’t been working so hard to gain their trust, I would have thought them all beautiful. In an unearthly sense. Like I was standing before little mountain gods.

  “Ever been up Thorny Ridge?” Jericho asked Trout.

  “Been to it,” Trout nodded. “Downstream a ways, then north, up the mountain, right?”

  “Yep. There’s a gatherin’ there tonight. Youns come by, ’round sundown.”

  Trout nodded. “We’d be obliged to.”

  The men walked away as quietly and as quickly as they had come. But they left a deep impression on me. From more than their eyes. It was their cleanliness too. They were wretchedly poor. Soles of boots were split. And on some of them, a couple of toes without socks peeked through. But this was the land of their fathers. And they cleaned up to prove it to us.

  And they were dark, with dusky skin, and black hair. A sharp contrast to their glowing eyes.

  “Are they Indian?” I asked.

  “Everybody’s got Indian in ’em in these mountains.”

  “But they’re different. They’re something else. Not white, or Mexican, or black. Nothing seems to fit ’em.”

  “They’re the mountains’ own race. You can find people the world over that look like us. But you gotta peel back these mountains to find people that look like them.”

  “What are they called?”

  “Some call it melungeon,” he said. “Means abandoned by God, but they ain’t. These mountains are a holy ground, they’re a chosen people.”

  “I been around six and twenty milers all my life, but I’ve never noticed how different they are.”

  “Every six and twenty miler ain’t melungeon. But all them men were. And besides, you’ve always looked at ’em through valley eyes. They look different here in their homeland. Good thing you knew Jericho.”

  “When we went on to high school and everything got bigger, I didn’t see much of him. He dropped out after the first year. You know him?”

  “I seen him ’round. You notice his left hand?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “Missin’ two fingers. His daddy’s the preacher at the snake church.”

  “And he got bit and lost his fingers?”

  “Bunch of ’em have. I reckon tonight we’ll see quite a few people missin’ fingers, or with crippled hands. But it’s a special sorrow to Jericho.”

  “How come?”

  “This church don’t convert people. Nobody just wakes up and says they’re gonna handle snakes at church. It’s the families that keep it goin’. Bringin’ new children into it every year. Jericho can’t quit, but he can’t hardly handle them snakes neither.”

  “But you said a bunch of people have been bit. Why’s it so bad for Jericho?”

  “He’s the preacher’s boy.”

  “Well I don’t see why any of ’em keep doing it if they get bit.”

  “They say the Bible tells ’em to take up snakes. It don’t say they won’t ever get bit. If they do, it’s meant to test ’em or purge some sin. But Jericho gets purged more’n any of the others. He’s been bit so many times I reckon it’s a wonder he has any fingers at all. Everybody takes it real hard, too. They’re all prayin’ for Jericho’s redemption. He was next in line to be the preacher. But them snakes won’t quit bitin’ him.”

  “Do they bite his daddy?”

  “Oh sure. He’s been bit before. But not as much as everybody else. That’s one way he knows he’s called to preach.”

  “Will snakes be at this gathering?” I asked him.

  “No. If I’m countin’ my days off right, tonight is gonna be a moon night for them people.”

  “Never heard of moon nights,” I said, thinking about Mamma Rutha, naked in her garden and singing to the moon.

  “Melungeons live by the moon. Tells ’em when to plant. When to harvest. What to expect out of a comin’ season. It’s their window into God’s mind.”

  As we walked through the dark woods that night, climbing further and further up the mountain, I could hear them singing. Clear voices, in several pitches. Weaving together, and calling us toward them. They were assembled at the top of Tho
rny Ridge, beneath a black sky burning with a full moon. We stood in the woods, watching them.

  “That’s the last call to harvest,” Trout whispered, pointing at the orange moon. “It’s the mountain’s way of givin’ another day to work, even though it’s still night.”

  I looked down and saw that he was right. It was as though I was standing beneath a dim sun. I could see all of my details. The shabbiness of my clothes. My stringy hair.

  A fiddle whined over the voices. One long note held, until everyone hushed with expectancy. People began stomping their feet. And as the music began, they started dancing.

  “What are they doing?” I asked.

  “Flatfootin’.”

  Della used to drag me to high school dances where kids slowdanced and groped each other. But I had never seen anything like the moon dancers of Thorny Ridge. With their arms swinging loose by their sides. And their hips held still, while their feet pounded out rhythms. There were no couples. There was just a single pulsing mass.

  We were spotted. Jericho and his wife came toward us.

  “Hey, Mercy. Trout.” He nodded. “This is my bride, Elsa.”

  I looked at Elsa and felt myself wince with envy. She was made of the mountain’s best colors, with black wavy hair down to her hips, blue eyes to match her husband’s, and warm dusky skin.

  Trout and Jericho started talking about the harvest. And how the mater migrants were clearing out and getting ready to move to other sites or head south. I stood and stared at Elsa, and tried to think of something to say.

  “This dancing sure is something,” I said, knowing that I sounded like a tourist. But Elsa didn’t seem to mind.

  “I know,” she said proudly. “When my momma was alive, she could dance it like no other. Her name was Mabel. Everybody called her Dancin’ Mabbie. That woman had a song in her feet. She’d be drawin’ water from the well, and her feet would be a tappin’ out a dance. No one’s as good as her.”

  “Well, your people sure know how to have a party,” I said.

  “Oh it ain’t a party,” she said seriously. “It’s a prayer. We always come to this ridge on the harvest moon. We come to show we’re thankful for the summer. For the warmth and the food we scraped out of the ground. An’ we come to pray for mercy on us through winter. Preacher’ll have a meetin’ soon.”

  I looked at the moon dancers, a bouncing mass. It was a strange prayer.

  “Watch the moon,” Elsa said. “If it don’t disappear at dawn, if it just melts into a hot and high sun that never had to rise, that means our harvest is strong. But if that moon goes away, and like any other ol’ day we have a sunrise, then it don’t look so good for us. Means our harvest moon went cold. Means our harvest might not be enough to withstand a long hard winter.”

  “You believe it?”

  “Some young folk don’t. They say its just the ramblin’s of old-timers. But I’ve been fat and happy through winters when the harvest moon turned into a hot sun. And then I’ve seen my starvin’ days too, when that moon goes cold.”

  It was a story Mamma Rutha would believe in. I wished that I could see the moon become the sun. Just so that one day, I could tell her about it.

  “You wanna learn to dance?” she asked, smiling.

  “If you think you can teach someone like me.” I laughed.

  She did her best. She began by showing me the way to stand. With relaxed arms and feet. Tense knees. And hips locked in place. I felt silly. Shaking my feet in a directionless shuffle. I blushed when I noticed Trout watching me. I let Elsa pull me into the crowd. And surrounded by dozens of expert flatfooters, I absorbed their rhythm. In my mind at least, I became a good dancer. I had never felt so free in the middle of a crowd of people. I felt the Heron in me slipping away. I felt my eyes become a piercing blue. For a second, I nearly believed—I was one of the mountain’s chosen.

  Then I saw her. From the corner of my eye, dancing as though she were a young girl. Mamma Rutha. I started running toward her. “Mamma Rutha!” I cried out. But my voice was smothered in the crowd. “Mamma Rutha!”

  I came to the spot where she was dancing. She was gone. I looked in every direction, and realized that she didn’t want me to find her. Maybe she didn’t want to be Mamma Rutha there, any more than I wanted to be Mercy Heron.

  Elsa led me over to a blanket on the grass and brought me a cup of what she called “corn.”

  I took a sip. It was bitter fire. I coughed and gagged.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Homemade corn. Your people might call it shine.”

  I sipped my corn slowly and soon found myself talking to Elsa about things I never told anyone. I told her about my dreams of the ocean. And how sometimes I wondered if God had messed up.

  “Maybe I was supposed to be born by the ocean. Not on this mountain,” I said.

  “Why’d you say a thing like that?”

  “ ’Cause why would God plan it out like this? Put me on a mountain, without a momma or a daddy. Give me to a grandfather that I won’t ever be holy enough to belong to. And then fill my head with dreams about a land I’ve never seen.”

  “Maybe he put you here so that he could call you to him there,” she whispered. “He can’t call a person if there’s no place for them to go.”

  I nodded. “Like your Jericho. I hear he has a burdensome call.”

  She smiled sadly. “My poor Jericho. He was born a prince in these parts. That’s what being the preacher’s boy means up in here. An’ everybody always expects him to have dreams and visions and prophecies. They want him to lead them to a higher place. But even this mountain’s got a top on it. Jericho can’t get ’em past that.”

  “I know what he’s feeling,” I said. “I don’t handle snakes. But I know what’s it’s like to not live up to expectations.”

  “Nobody understands that he’s just a man,” she said. “Nobody but me and the snakes. With every fang in their little mouths, they show him how earthly he really is.”

  “He should just quit the snake church.”

  Elsa sighed. “He is the church, Mercy. He’s its baby. He never had one momma and daddy. He had dozens of ’em. Watchin’ him. Makin’ sure he was doin’ what’s most holy. He’ll die tryin’ to win their love.” She shook her head slowly and held up her hands before her. “He used to have beautiful hands. But they bite my Jericho more’n anybody else. ‘Elsie,’ he cried once. ‘I’ve got a blackness in my heart that I can’t find. It’s in there, the snakes see it. But I swear to you, Elsie, I don’t know what it is. What have I done? What blackness sits in my soul?’ So I set out to that church and freed every single one of them snakes.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I said.

  She sighed again. “But it just made him think I might be the blackness. I won’t hold them snakes. Now folks is always talkin’ ’bout how them snakes wouldn’t be bitin’ him if it weren’t for me. And you know somethin’? If I thought my leavin’ him would free him up for his callin’, I’d do it.”

  I finished my glass of corn, and Elsa brought us some more. The sounds around me were starting to blur. The stomping, the laughing, the fiddles.

  “I can help Jericho,” I whispered, with numb lips. “You gotta feed him a snake. A whole one. Everything but the choking bones. The head, the heart, the rattles. Everything.”

  “Why?” she asked, with wide eyes. “Is it like a spell or somethin’?”

  “It’s how a man becomes animal. Your Jericho needs to think like them snakes. And he needs them snakes to know that he is a part of them. You feed him one. And them snakes will never touch him again.”

  Elsa nodded slowly, and started telling me the details about the last time Jericho was bit. I nodded my head and pretended to listen. But my mind was buzzing with my own thoughts. I realized I didn’t hate the mountain anymore. I had escaped Father Heron. I had escaped the June apple tree. I let that wild mountain embrace me and claim me as its daughter.

  It would be the first night in m
y life that I hadn’t slept under Father Heron’s roof. And as chill bumps crept up my arms I realized it would be the first night that I would spend with Trout. It was real. I was free.

  Trout pulled me to him, and we walked to the singing, dancing crowd. I let him kiss me, in the middle of the crowd, and never once felt afraid of being seen.

  Jericho’s daddy went to the middle of the circle and started praying about the coming winter. He called for people to testify to the blessings the harvest had brought them. There were stories of new babies born and old people healed. Stories of food that lasted when it shouldn’t have. Of rain that came, just when it was most needed.

  “It’s our harvest night, Mercy,” Trout whispered lowly. “We’re startin’ a whole new life.”

  I nodded and reached for his hand.

  “Jericho,” Trout said. “You called to preach, ain’t you?”

  Jericho looked down at the ground and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Don’t worry, we ain’t in need of snakes,” Trout said.

  He led me to the center of the circle, the moon shining down on my head like a crown of glory. And with Jericho’s prompting, we made our promises real. Wherever you go, I’ll go. Your people are my people. And your God is my God.

  I was trembling while I said it, and while I listened. Trembling when he took my hand and led me deeper into the woods. Trembling when I heard the sound of water, the sound of a pure mountain stream nearby. The whole time we walked, his eyes stayed on me, looking in me. I let his eyes search me out, until my body felt no surprise when it felt his touch. Not like the sweet kisses in the tentworld or on our fishing dates. But a touch simply because he knew that my skin, my very being, was now his.

  His callused fingers gently, so gently, touched the side of my face. Softly pushing back my wind-tangled hair. His red palm lifted my chin. Another touch. The prickle of his beard was like tomato leaves rubbing against my skin. Was he holding me down in the water? Is that why my skin burned so? Was he whispering love? Or was that just the wind in the trees? Another touch. Red palms on cool pale skin. A gentle invitation. And still another. His eyes, eyes that no longer asked, held mine. I was drowning. Drowning in deep green river pools. And there were sunflowers everywhere. Floating past me. Floating on me. Within me.