The Killing Tree (11 page)

“
¡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 old 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.

“You fished any lately?” he asked.

“Not since the other day with you. Not like I was really fishing then either. I guess I’d have to catch something before I
could say that.”

“You fished just fine,” he said. “Specially in that fancy fishin’ outfit.”

“Don’t tease me about that,” I said, wishing my face would blush again, just so he would touch it.

“I ain’t,” he said. “You was like a mornin’ glory, all white and purple. You ever seen one?”

I had. People would plant them around their fences or mailboxes. The hardware store sold the seeds. But sometimes they would
grow wild in the strangest places. Like weeds that didn’t know they were beautiful.

“My momma used to grow ’em up the side of the porch. More like vines than flowers, ain’t they? Twistin’ and curlin’ all around
the posts, clean up to our roof. It’s like she was hangin’ little white and purple flags off our house. And then there was
you. A fishin’ mornin’ glory.”

We were close. I could feel the rise and fall of his breath.

“There wasn’t much glory in my fishing, Trout. Not much at all,” I said.

“That’s crazy talk. You got glory all around you. Saw it on you at the docks. I had a light. I just wanted to see glory.”

Glory. It was a strange word for someone to use to describe me.
I wasn’t conceived in glory.
I filled my momma’s belly with shame and embarrassed my grandfather.
I wasn’t born in glory either.
Father Heron was so angry with my momma’s swollen belly that he ordered her to take her sin out of his house. So she went
to find my daddy. She was going to marry him, she said. But he wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere.
He
was gone.
She got so upset she went into labor right there. And as pain gripped her body, she didn’t know where to go. Except home.
To her momma, my Mamma Rutha. To her daddy, my Father Heron. She ran as best she could up the mountain. Blood spilling down
her legs as I tore her apart from inside. She ran to that little square white house with the dingy green shingles.
It was her home too.
She put her hand on the back doorknob and tried to turn it. She pulled. She twisted. She screamed. She cursed. But the door
wouldn’t open.

I was locked inside her belly, trying to rip my way out, and I’m sure that I heard her scream. Heard her beg.
Daddy, please. Please! Oh
God,
please! Just let me have my bed, Daddy! Daddy, it’s killing me! It’s killing me, Daddy!
Please, God! Oh please open the door! Please let me have my bed!

That doorknob never turned. It would never turn for her again. While Father Heron sat silent, locked inside his house, Mamma
Rutha pulled me from within her daughter. My momma lay sprawled and naked on the ground, her blood, our blood, soaking the
grass and the dirt as I entered the world. I was born in blood and dirt and a dying girl’s screams. There was no glory there.

“Where you standin’?” he asked gently.

I was quiet for a long time. I listened to the river, the sound of water, cleansing water.

“I don’t know if I am. I’m sinking. Or floating. But there’s not much ground for me to stand on. You don’t see me really.
You see somebody standing in glory. What was it you said, a different kind of woman? Maybe I am. But not in a good way. Not
the way you think.”

“We ain’t from the same place,” he said. “Ain’t no use in pretendin’ we are. But just ’cause I pick maters don’t make me a
blind man.”

“I wasn’t saying that. I wasn’t saying it’s because of your work. I’m just saying you don’t really know me. You just see me
as part of the rest of Crooktop, but you don’t see how I can never be that. You don’t see the things that have been done that
will keep me from ever knowing glory.”

“I saw how you believed in the fire trout. And how you looked at me the same way after seein’ my hands. Nobody like you has
ever done that before. And that’s a different kind, Mercy. That’s glory.”

“Well, I like how you see me,” I whispered, my face feeling flushed again.

“You’re standin’ on a bad mirror. Starin’ at somethin’ that ain’t really you. We oughta go on and break it.”

I wouldn’t tell him about the mirror I was standing on. About my daddy leaving, for God knows where. About the doorknob that
wouldn’t turn. Long ago I had locked my secrets away, safe as the jelly jar. But every time I walked through the back door,
I was surprised that it opened for me. And sometimes I felt sure I could smell the hot blood of my birth in the backyard.

T
he next morning, a car pulled up to the house. One that didn’t rattle or sputter. A sheriff’s car. Always clean and always
fast. Father Heron walked out of the woods and shook Sheriff Barnes’ hand. I walked over to the back porch to string and break
beans, so that I could listen.

“Four dogs. Champion line too,” I heard Father Heron say. “And I paid good money for those dogs. No telling what they’d be
worth now that I’ve trained ’em.”

Sheriff Barnes was listening. Shaking his head. Stroking his beard. He looked like the law.

“Way I figure, it’s a pretty big crime,” Father Heron continued. “And somebody’s got to pay. Can’t have that kind of stuff
going on up here on Crooktop. Never happened when we was growing up.”

“Glad you called the law,” Sheriff Barnes said. “I’m gonna do my best to get your dogs back, or catch the bastard that took
’em. But I don’t want to inspire false hope in you. Four dogs are hard to track. I’ll do my best.”

Father Heron had called in the police. Over four missing dogs. And it wasn’t because he loved them, or craved their wagging
tails. It was because he wouldn’t be beaten. At his own home, on his own land, with his own dogs. I laughed right into my
bean bowl. Because I knew there was no dog bandit. Just a wife and a granddaughter. And we wouldn’t be caught. Father Heron
wouldn’t allow it. The Herons had a whore, craziness, and a bastard baby already. No need to add criminals to that.

The two men stood in the driveway and discussed their strategy.

“I’ll ask some questions around town. Meanwhile you keep looking. Take care now, Wallace. Tell Rutha I said hello. And Mercy,”
Sheriff Barnes said as he drove away.

“Coon! Here boy! Come on Coon! Fox!” Father Heron began to shout. But his voice lacked hope. His shoulders were slumped and
his hair mussed. But he wouldn’t stop calling those dogs. The hate called from within him. He didn’t need the hope.

But my heart held enough hope for the both of us, as I entered the first happy time of my life. I started meeting Trout nearly
every day, even if it was just for a few minutes of conversation in his truck, before heading to work. Della liked to gossip
about love. Girls at school had declared it. But this was different. It wasn’t something that was scribbled across a locker
or passed in a note.

“Tell me,” Della begged. “Give me all the details!”

But it wasn’t “magic” that Trout and I shared. It was love. And the difference between the two made me realize that I had
something too special to talk about.

“But I tell you everything!” she said, pouting. “You love him, Mercy? You do. A girl always loves her first boy. Just remember,
save room in your heart for others. You don’t know what else is out there yet, something better always comes along.”

“No,” I whispered.

“You can’t say that yet. You ain’t never spoken to another boy besides Rusty. Don’t quit looking around.”

“And how about you? You’re looking in someone else’s garden.”

“Yeah, I can’t wait ’til he divorces his wife. Imagine it, Mercy, I’m gonna be the wife of the manager,
the manager
, of Ben Franklin. I know it’ll just burn up all those priss misses from high school. I’ll wear pretty clothes and cook nice
dinners, and we’ll have a big house. And maybe one day, once my figure’s starting to fade, we’ll have babies. I’ll have real
class. Real respect. Folks will forget about my old dirt floor.”

“When is he going to divorce her?” I asked.

“Soon. He’s afraid of what she’ll do when he leaves her. She’s a real nutcase. Even though he hasn’t said it, I know he’s
really worried that she’ll try and hurt me. Which he shouldn’t be. Della DeMar can handle any kooky cat woman. I was raised
on kookiness, I know every trick it can pull. But it really stresses him out to talk about it, so I don’t bring it up much.
You know, he’s different than most men. The other night we were looking up at the stars. I said the stars over these mountains
shined brighter than anywhere else in the world because of the coal here. When the miners stripped it all out, the only place
it had to run to was the sky, and the moon and the clouds pressed against the coal so much that it all turned into diamonds.
And you know what he said to me? He didn’t tell me I was full of nonsense, or hurting his head with all of my stupid ideas,
he said he liked to listen to me. That I had pretty talk. Not that I was pretty, lots of people have told me that, but that
my ideas were. Who knows, Mercy, what if you’re right after all?
This may be it.
One day when we’re forty we may look back and laugh at us, sitting here now talking about the men we love. We may be married
to those men, and sick of ’em by then. This summer may have been the start of it all. Does Father Heron know about Trout?”