The Killing Tree

by Rachel Keener

  I listened to these stories about Marta, and tried to smother my questions. Was she beautiful? What if she came back from Mexico one day?

  “He loves you more,” an old woman leaned over to whisper to me. They called her Madre. She had worked the fields for decades, and earned the respect of everyone. If the rows at this camp had a leader, it was her. “I saw him with Marta,” she said. “And after her, there was no other ’til you. You are the great one for him.”

  “Thank you, Madre,” I whispered, as my face flushed with emotion. It didn’t matter if Marta was beautiful. I was the great one.

  I found other mothers in the tentworld too. Women that were happy to teach me things that no other woman ever had. Like how to season foods. How to take simple, earthy ingredients like beans and tomatoes and give them full interesting flavors with some fresh peppers and a little salt. Or how to wash my clothes by hand, using only river water and a smooth rock. They taught me how to make a man comfortable, with a good meal and a cozy tent. They even tried to dress me up. They braided my hair with red ribbons, and called me their Mercia. I wasn’t white to them anymore. I was their daughter, their sister. The blisters in my palms proved it.

  There were even a handful of children. Always giggling and begging Trout to teach them to fish. They were lost to any world outside of the fields. They never went to school. Or to a doctor. Most were born among the rows, their mommas’ labor assisted by Madre’s capable hands. They spent their days under a shade tree, where Lila, a fourteen-year-old girl, watched them and taught them how to draw letters in the dirt.

  Our world was one of order. Where women tended to meals, while men fished, brought firewood, and carried water. It was a safety I had never known. The only thing that made me uneasy was Boss. I hadn’t told Trout about what happened with him. I just made sure I pinched all of my tomatoes. I passed over the ones that even hinted of not pressing back. And I met my quotas. No matter how hard it was. I didn’t eat, not even a bite of overripe tomato, until I met that quota. My body was suffering for it too. My hunger left me. When morning came I would smell those tomatoes, the same scent that I loved at night, and vomit.

  “Too skinny,” Madre told me. “Bring a tortilla to the rows.”

  “It’s my stomach,” I said. “Boss has got me tied up in knots.”

  She nodded her head. “Camp almost over. Big Boss in Florida is nice. You like him. You be safe there.”

  I’m safe, I thought. For the first time in my life, it was clear how to avoid the danger. Just meet my quota.

  But one day, my stomach wouldn’t settle. I crouched between tomato plants and heaved. I tried to force myself to eat a tomato. But as soon as I pressed its skin to my mouth, I would gag. I couldn’t stop heaving. I looked at the dirt, and when no one was looking, I tasted it. Just a few grains pressed between my teeth. Salty grit. I stopped shaking. My body grew calm.

  “Been out here two hours already, don’t have a crate yet,” Boss hollered down the row. I nodded at him and started pinching tomatoes.

  But I was weak. My body worked too hard to lose the little food I gave it. I dragged crate after crate to the loading docks. But by evening, I only had fourteen. The quota had been twenty-one.

  “What’s wrong?” Trout asked when he saw my quota sheet. “You sick or somethin’?”

  “No. Yes. I mean I was this morning. And then I just couldn’t do it anymore. What’s Boss gonna do?”

  “Nothin’ too bad. Just look down at the ground and say Sir to him.”

  He was coming toward me. Marching with straight shoulders, his gut pushed out. “What’d I tell you, Mercy? First day I hired you, what’d I say? I said I wouldn’t cut you no breaks. And now you’re a full third short of what you were ordered to pick.”

  “Sorry sir.”

  “Well, it may be nighttime, but you ain’t finished. You get back out there, and you pick seven more crates. And don’t come back ’til you’re done.”

  “Sir,” Trout said. “It’s dark, she can’t tell what’s rotten and what ain’t.”

  “She can once she brings ’em to me. You pick ’em, bring ’em here, and I’ll throw out the bad and you can go get more to replace ’em. Now go. And you, Trout, I don’t want to see you sneaking into them fields to help. You do and I’ll send you both on your way and keep your week’s wages for trespassing.”

  “It’s all right,” I said to Trout. “I ain’t that tired, I can do this. I’ll just be a few hours.”

  He looked at me, unsure of whether to believe me. “Really,” I said. “It’s fine.”

  But when the campfires went out and the tentworld fell asleep, everything looked different. The rows no longer seemed like my love garden. I couldn’t see the worms that bit me. And the only thing I could smell was rot. Hours dragged by and I filled my crates slowly. I thought about Trout asleep back in the tent. I thought about Della, looking for me, wondering where I was. And then I thought about Crooktop.

  I stood up and looked around. Though I couldn’t see it, I knew the land stretched out far and wide. For one moment, I missed my mountain. It was high above those rotten tomatoes. And it hid me from the greatness of that sky. I remembered Father Heron’s house, jutting off the land. And lost in those dark rows, the bitter thought occurred to me that everything there hadn’t been bad. The work had been easy. Now, my body was breaking. And I had always had a warm bed at night. Now, I was standing in the rows, being bitten by green worms.

  “You like to work hard, don’t you,” a voice called out through the darkness. It was him. Boss.

  “Used to it,” I answered, wondering which row he was in.

  “How many crates you filled now?”

  “Three.”

  “They back at the docks?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll check ’em over, see how you’ve done.”

  “I’ve pinched them all, they’re good. Even if I can’t see rot, I’ve learned how to feel it.” I could hear the plants moving. He was coming toward me.

  “Never had a white woman in trouble before.”

  “I was sick,” I said lowly. “You never had people get sick before?”

  “Them Mexicans are made of steel.”

  “Well, I’m finished with the fourth. Gonna take it back now,” I said, even though my crate wasn’t full. I hurried my pace until I reached the docks, hoping Trout would still be there. He wasn’t, and I turned to see Boss behind me.

  “Let me see here,” he said as he started thumbing through the tomatoes. He began grabbing them and tossing them away, without really looking at them. He didn’t care about rot, he just wanted to torture me.

  “You’re throwing good tomatoes away,” I said.

  “You think you know better? This your family’s field?”

  “No sir.”

  “Well, let’s see here, I believe you’ve got two full crates now, instead of four. That means you still owe me five.”

  I returned to the rows. I didn’t bother pinching the tomatoes. I tossed anything I could find into the crates. But at the docks, he played his game again. He tossed out half of my tomatoes. I now had four full crates. I still owed him three.

  I couldn’t stop shaking. I had been awake and working hard for nearly twenty-four hours. And I hadn’t eaten. My heart started to beat funny. I even began to see things. Father Heron’s shadow. The chicken whose head he chopped off. I needed water. I considered eating a tomato, or sucking it for its juice. But my hands were covered with rot, and I had been bitten by so many green worms. I couldn’t bring myself to taste them. I walked down to the river. The water looked like black glass. I waded in, and shivered with its pleasant coolness. I thought about swimming away.

  “One more, then you’re done,” he said after I brought him three more crates. “I’m going home, you can just set it up here.”

  I don’t remember picking that last crate, or setting it up by the docks. All I could see was the light spreading across the sky. The sky seemed to smirk with
it. And all I could feel was amazement, as I found myself standing in the rows again. Facing a new day’s quota.

  Nina, the woman that first warned me about Boss, came to me and looked in my crate.

  “No good, Mercy,” she whispered. “You must meet today’s quota. You will never come back to us at night. He will make you pick every night ’til you meet your quota.”

  Why is she talking to me like this? I wondered. I met my quota. I picked seven crates. How many more do I need?

  I started picking tomatoes. But before I had finished stripping one plant, Nina returned. Without speaking she quickly swapped her full crate for my nearly empty one.

  “To the loaders,” she whispered. “Go!”

  I stared down at that full crate of tomatoes. It was like she handed me a box of gold. It didn’t seem real, and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. She picked up the crate and shoved it into my hands.

  “Carry this to the loaders and tell them to mark it on your quota sheet.”

  I did as she told me, only half understanding what was going on. But soon it all became real. Women were taking care of me. Not just my emotions, like Mamma Rutha would do. But my body. Bringing me their full crates, over and over. Sneaking me bits of food and drink. They saved me. No woman had ever done that for me before. And as I carried my twentieth crate to the docks, full of tomatoes that I hadn’t picked, I thought about my momma. And wondered if the way I felt that day, so protected, was the way my whole life was supposed to have been.

  The next morning, as Trout and I waited to hear our quota for the day, Boss glared at me over the crates. But I felt good. I had escaped spending another night in the fields. And now, with plenty of rest and food in me, I could meet my own quota.

  “Them Mexicans must’ve snuck you their work,” Boss growled.

  “No sir. I just did what you asked. You wanted twenty crates, you got ’em.”

  “Don’t know if it’s good enough.”

  “But I met the quota!”

  “I know about girls like you. You run off from a good family, with some low-class boy. Bet somebody’s looking for you back in them mountains, ain’t they? Bet they’d pay money to get you back.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?” Trout asked.

  “About taking your girl back,” Boss said flatly. “About making me some extra money.” He stepped toward me and tried to grab my arm. Trout pushed himself between us.

  “Watch it, Boss,” Trout said lowly. “She’s mine.”

  “Buddy of mine made five hundred bucks running a white girl out of migrant land.”

  “We’re done married,” Trout growled.

  Boss pulled a pistol from his pocket and let it dangle casually by his side. “Who says?”

  “I’ll go,” I whispered. Trout would’ve taken on a dozen pistols before he’d let Boss take me. “Put your gun away. You wanna take me back, I’ll go. Nobody wants me there, they ain’t gonna pay you nothing.”

  “Get behind me, Mercy,” Trout said firmly.

  “I can run again,” I insisted. “Once I get back, I’ll just run away again.” It was a lie. Even as I said it, I knew that Father Heron would kill me before he’d let me go back to the migrants. Trout knew it too.

  I stepped toward Boss. I even let him grab my arm.

  “Don’t take her,” Trout said. I could see the panic on his face. It was reflected off of mine.

  “Buddies say I could make good money off her. Pretty girl like her, somebody’s gonna be missing her.”

  Trout pulled the keys from his pocket. “Here’s my truck. It’s worth ’bout five hundred.”

  “Got me a good truck already.”

  “How ’bout an Orvis fishin’ rod. Ain’t no better made. Just leave the girl.”

  It was his greatest treasure, that gun-barrel blue fishing rod. It had traveled all around the Southeast with him. Fished in all kinds of streams. It was a part of who he was.

  “Nice rod, but it don’t beat cool cash,” Boss said, shrugging his shoulders.

  Trout nodded slowly. “Reckon, if I picked triple quotas for a week that would. Be the same as havin’ three workers for the price of one. Plus that Orvis rod. That beats anything you’d get paid back in the mountains.”

  Boss nodded slowly, adding sums of crates and money in his mind. It was a good deal.

  “You’ll die trying to pick all that. That what you want?”

  “I just want her.”

  Trout walked into the fields and didn’t return for a week. He slept in the rows and only bathed in the rain that fell. He ate tomatoes or drank the juice. He spent days on his hands and knees shuffling from plant to plant in the farthest field. From that distance, he seemed strong. Picking with speed. Running to the loading docks with his crates.

  But my eyes were lying. He wasn’t strong. He was crazy. Sixty crates a day was impossible. Boss’s words echoed in my head. You’ll die trying to pick all that. And there was nothing I could do. Boss was always watching to make sure nobody helped him. He even stood guard at night, the shadow of his pistol swinging by his side. Every morning I ran to the fields, waiting for the sun to rise so that I could make sure he was still there. When light would hit the far field, there he’d be, stooped back shuffling from plant to plant.

  Back in the tentworld, people whispered around me and gave me sad looks. Like I was already a widow. I walked around, mumbling a prayer with every breath. Strong back, I would whisper, when I would think about how he had to lift heavy crates. Full belly, when I would think about how he didn’t eat.

  But there was more to him than his back or his belly. There was our love. And that week, it was bigger than the fields. Stronger than the rows. He finally collapsed, but he had met his triple quota. I mothered him like he was a small child. Feeding him broth and milk. Shushing children outside the tent, so that they wouldn’t wake him. I bandaged his bleeding hands and rubbed his muscles. His body became more than flesh to me. It was the price he bought me with.

  When a new week began, I returned to the rows humbled. If Trout could pick sixty crates a day for me, then I could pick twenty for him. My hands turned red with stains and blisters. I became more than a worker, I was a mater migrant. Dependable with my quota. Careful with the plants. And wise about rot and worms.

  I began a life of sharp contrast. But the good was so good, I learned to swallow the ugly. I broke my body during the day, but I received the care of a dozen mothers at night. I buried my anger when Boss called me the palest wetback he’d ever seen. And I kept my mouth shut when he cheated me of full crates I had picked. Because at night, Trout called me his feast and rewarded me richly.

  And when it all ended one morning, when I awoke to the sound of tractors turning the earth under, I felt proud. The rows had made me ugly. Bones jutting out from my body. Wild hair spilling in tangles down my back. But Boss hadn’t beaten me. Neither had the heat, the rot, or the bees. I stood in the middle of an empty field. A red-handed skeleton of Mercy. I had never been stronger.

  “No work today,” Trout said when he joined me in the field. “Camp’s over.”

  “We made it,” I whispered. “Remember that first day, me asking about breaks and lunches?”

  Trout laughed. “You sure changed. You’re as good out there as any of us old-timers.”

  “Don’t hold up as well,” I said, looking down at my body, at my ugly blistered hands.

  “You’re prettier than you ever were. Look more like her, the way she was that night I followed you home.” He was right. I looked like Mamma Rutha. Nature had tanned me, scratched me, weathered me.

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “Say our goodbyes. Then I guess you have to get Della?”

  I met his worried eyes and nodded.

  Every fire roared with a kettle of food. Fried fish, tortillas, stewed peppers. But no tomatoes. It was the only day that nobody ate any tomatoes. We played games for the beer Boss had left behind on the loading dock. All of us racing through th
e fields in search of a green tomato. Trout found one, and shared his beer with me. After weeks of boiled river water, I thought it was delicious.

  Everyone was happy. We had received our last wages. I listened as they sang songs in their language, and felt like I understood. I looked at my body, the one that matched theirs, and decided maybe it wasn’t so ugly after all. It marked me as one of them. And they were beautiful.

  When the sun set, the mood grew calm and quiet. People were packing up their tents and whispering goodbyes. Women began to come to me. Pressing things in my hands.

  “For your pretty hair,” Nina said. I looked in my hand and saw the ribbons she had loved to braid in my hair.

  “But they’re your best ribbons . . .” I began, before she hugged me and walked away.

  “For your garden,” Susa said, as she handed me a bag of dried pepper seeds.

  “For new starts,” Lara said, holding out a green tomato.

  “From old Mexico,” Madre whispered, as she handed me a scrap of paper. I read the scribbled title. Tortilla. “Family secret,” she said. “Don’t share with outsiders.”

  And then it hit me, as I clutched that scrap of paper to my chest. I knew why Trout stayed. Why he never wanted to leave. I lost my body in the rows, but I found something more precious. My fairy-tale family.

  Chapter XVII

  Everything back at the Crooktop camp was dead. The plants were tilled back into the ground. Even the rot was gone. Only a few migrants were left. The ones that had stayed behind to prepare for next spring.

  “We’ll meet back at the fire trout stream,” Trout said. “Nobody should be expectin’ us back now. Stay off the mountain. Don’t go near your grandpa, or any place he likes to be.”