The Killing Tree (12 page)

“He’d kill me. Or Trout,” I said.

“But he’ll find out eventually, you know that, right?”

“Why?” I asked, feeling panicked.

“Well when the mater migrants pack up and Trout stays, talk will probably spread. You know how Crooktop is when there’s a
newcomer. Trout will have to find a job. A place to live. People will notice. People will talk,” she replied. “Where will
he stay?”

Staying.
It was a detail we hadn’t thought to cover. We were loving as though there were no October.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Oh Mercy.
Pull your heart back in.
Don’t give it all to a man that may take it and run. You’ve got to get some control.”

I lied and said I would, then asked her about Rusty to change the subject. “I haven’t encouraged him. Honestly, I don’t know
where he got it into his head that I would be interested.”

“Some men just live in lies. They ain’t like women. Women see
too much
of the truth in themselves. They see too many dimples in their thighs and too much sag in their breasts. But some men are
just the opposite. They lie and tell themselves that they aren’t really fat. Or bald. Or that tight white jeans actually look
good on them. And they’ve lied so long they think it’s the truth. Rusty’s just told himself that sweet little Mercy adores
him, aches for him, needs him.”

“How do I fix it?” I asked.

“Gently,” she said. “We need to make him think that if you could have any man, you’d have him, but there’s just some reason
why you can’t.”

“And what would that reason be?” I asked.

“It’s gotta be something that he can’t try and fix. Something he won’t want to chat with Father Heron about. Maybe . . . maybe
I’ll tell him you’re sick. With female trouble. Men always hate to talk about that. He won’t even ask questions. I’ll just
say you have female trouble real bad and that the doctors have told you to stay away from men for at least a year, ’til you’re
better.”

“I don’t know. You’re gonna tell him I got a disease? Like the kind girls get from the docks? What if that spreads around
to Father Heron?”

“It won’t. He won’t want to admit to knowing something like that. If he blabs to the deacons, won’t they wonder how he knows?
Besides, I’ll tell him that you’re waiting only for him. That way, he’s not been refused, just delayed,” she said.

“And what happens this time next year?”

“Why you’ll be Mrs. Mater Migrant of course, silly!” She laughed.

I laughed too. Della thought of everything in beginnings and endings. Her only concern was the once upon a time, and the happily
ever after. But I was losing myself in the middle chapters. And discovering that’s where all the love is held.

There were no romantic getaways or kisses beneath fireworks. No feuds or jealousies. There was just a hot thick love that
shook me, but not the earth.

Our only struggle came from my refusal to take him home. I had promised him the red ropes from my closet, to better secure
his tent. And he asked if he could swing by to pick them up.

“I’ll bring them to you,” I insisted. “ ’Cause you can’t ever come to my home. Ever. It’s just the way things have to be.”

“Just get on home then,” he said angrily. “Why’d you say you chose me, when all along you was still gonna live for them?”

“It’s not that I want to live for them. It’s that I’m scared of what’ll happen if I don’t.”

“I don’t know what your home is like or how bad it gets up there for you. But I’d rather be dead than scared all the time.
Ain’t no freedom in that. Ain’t no sense in not being able to love who you want,” he said, his eyes flashing trouble.

“I don’t know what you want from me. You think going to my home, meeting my grandparents, will change everything?”

“It’s time you learned that sometimes a three-legged dog was meant to be a three-legged dog. And maybe you was meant to love
a man with red hands. You want me to make ’em smooth and white again? You wouldn’t love me if I did,” he said, walking back
down the riverbottom with a look of disgust on his face. “You just go on home, and dream about a perfect life that ain’t got
no trouble in it. Think about how maybe you wouldn’t be you, here with me now, if you hadn’t been raised by your grandparents.
Maybe what you think is all messed up is the reason why I saw glory all over you. Maybe the things you’re always runnin’ from
are what you oughta be runnin’ to.”

I did run. But only to him. And it was perfect enough. Not completely perfect, because it was love and fear. The fear of being
discovered. The fear of what we would do when the harvest ended. Like our love, September was a subtle month on the mountain.
The wind became a little cooler, day by day. Gardens began to pant, winded and out of breath. Yellow schoolbuses dotted the
roads again. All of them baby steps toward winter. A thieving winter, that would steal the sun, the crops, and the tentworld.

I stared at the rows of tomatoes and prayed that they would last another week. Another month. The rows gave us precious time.
To fish and gather around the fires of the tentworld. To water the sunflower field that was growing in my heart.

T
here was supposed to be beauty. But there was just heat. Ripening the fruit. Withering the men. And sweat. Of more than water,
of the minerals that filled their bones. And pain. As the bees stung them. As their backs humbled themselves. As their flesh
was burned by the leaves that I had imagined tickled. And it was ugly. Maybe even low. With the spitting. The cursing. The
peeing on the plants. And he was a part of it all.

“Hey Trout! Pick up that crate, boy! You got eight more to fill before you rest!” a white man yelled.

My eyes sought the source of the voice and tracked down the row where the man had yelled. Until I saw Trout. His shirt was
off. And I thought back to the first time I saw him that way. How my eyes had traced the lines of his skin. How beautiful
it had all been. Naked shoulders. Naked back. But as I stood on the bank, I saw that he was just a man. Whose shoulders looked
like all other men’s. A man whose naked back was just as humbled as the one next to him.

And I pitied him. Wondering, why did he choose this? And as I watched him curse and sweat, I wanted to pull him away and polish
him. To make him shine the way he had before I learned what it meant to be a mater migrant.

When they stopped I met him at his tent. I really saw him then. I saw how he held his body, a little to the right, because
he had picked the maters on the right of the rows that day. I saw how the red on his palms wasn’t just the juice of red stain,
but was the blister of his skin too. From jerking the frayed ropes that held the plants to their stakes. Rope after rope,
tighter and tighter. I smelled his sweat. Not for the earthy scent that I had originally thought it. But for the scent of
misery. I saw how hungry he was, but how he dreaded the taste of those tomatoes. I saw how hard he worked to keep it all from
me. Teasing me about smelling like pork. Joking about how he’d like to smoke but was scared to ask me for a light.

“Why do you do it?” I asked.

“Do what?”

“This work. This life. Why?”

“Don’t know no other way,” he said, encircling me in his arms. “Got my own tent. And free food. Them coal boys always runnin’
outta work. Not me. Not with this rich mountain dirt. Oughta plant gold here, ain’t nothin’ it can’t grow.”

“I saw you,” I said.

“What?”

“I came after lunch. I watched you all afternoon.”

His arms fell loose and to his side.

“And I just don’t get why you would choose that. It’s such a hard life. I know you can do better,” I said. His eyes left mine
and fell to a place I couldn’t follow. “You spoke of freedom before. And of spinning. And that all made sense and was pretty.
But it can’t cover the hard life you have to chase to have it.”

“I ain’t got a pretty answer,” he said. “Maybe to a fourteen-year-old boy, breakin’ a body is better than goin’ home. Or maybe
I just ain’t never been able to see nothin’ but them rows. Everywhere I turn I see them rows. Nothin’s certain for me, ’cept
rows. Man can’t just walk away from that, without somethin’ else to go to.”

If I could have nestled him beneath my skin and made my body his living shrine, just so those rows could never find him again,
I would have. But all that I could do was look at his palms. Not see past them anymore, but really look at them.

I picked up his hand. I kissed the top, where the thick veins hid. I kissed the little row of hairs at his joints. I turned
his hand over and kissed the calluses that rose just beneath his fingers. I knew the truth. He was a mater migrant. And it
was miserable. Maybe even low. I kissed his palm. Full in the center. I tasted his flesh. I loved all of him. All that was
beautiful. And everything that wasn’t, and would never be.

W
hen a glass falls to the floor, whether it shatters or just chips depends on how thick it is. If it’s a fancy goblet, one
made for celebrations, it will break into a thousand pieces. But if it’s a sturdy jar, the kind made for storing things, it
will hit the ground with a thud. It may chip, but the body of the jar will not break. It’s not as pretty, but it’s ready for
the fall. It was built with the fall in mind.

“What are you so happy about?” I asked him.

“You. Them eyes of yours are the color of this earth. Every time I pick my maters, I see that brown dirt and could swear you’re
lookin’ back at me.”

We laid there lazy and warm in his tent until dinnertime when Trout went outside to find us some food. I stayed inside the
tent, staring up at the top, at the blue and yellow of the sky that couldn’t be masked by that thin fabric. I heard his voice.
Happy and light, joking about something in Spanish. And then English. Stiffer, more formal. I sat up to listen more closely.

“No sir, I ain’t seen four dogs. Huntin’ dogs you said? Hmmm. No I ain’t. Sorry I wasn’t much help, but I sure will keep an
eye out for ’em. Two red ’uns and two black ’uns, huh? Yeah, I’ve lived down here all summer and ain’t seen ’em. You been
up on the mountain yet? Folks up there might of seen ’em. If they’re huntin’ dogs they’d probably head for the thick of it.
How ’bout I ask my girl Mercy, she’s from up on the mountain, see if she’s seen ’em.”

I was trapped.
Inside a tiny tent with only one exit, and Trout and Father Heron on the other side.
He knew!
Suddenly I saw what the ending would be. Father Heron would see me. Red palm prints stained across my heart. His hate would
kill me. Or Trout.
Just like it had killed my momma.

“Awright then. I’ll keep a lookout for ’em. Take care now,” Trout said.

I needed a dark closet. I needed to be low and hidden. I crouched in his tent, pulling my knees to my chest, covering my face
with trembling hands.
Where was my dark closet?

“What’s wrong?” he asked in a frightened voice. I wasn’t just scared,
I was scary.
I couldn’t speak. I could only shake my head as tears began to spill.

“Mercy! You’re scarin’ me. Somebody come in here?” he cried.

“No. No. NO!” I moaned. “He knows. It was him. I heard him. He knows. No. No. NO!”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Father Heron. It was him. It was him!” I cried, choking on my panic.

He folded me into his arms and rocked me like a baby. I was a weak infant whose head had to be cradled to keep it from snapping
off.

“Mercy. Mercy. Mercy.”

“You should be scared,” I whispered. “You should be so scared.”

“I ain’t scared of no old man. Don’t you be neither. I ain’t gonna let him do nothin’ to you.”

“He has power. It’s in his hate. He killed my momma. Not with a gun or a knife, but with his hate. And he’ll do it to us.
If we want to live we need to go. Anywhere away from Crooktop. We can take your tent, and we’ll find work somewhere else.”

“Why should we let some old grandpa run us off?”

“It’s the only way there is!” I cried. “It’s the only way I can live. It’s the only way you can save me.”

He grew quiet. Searching out all the things I had never told him. All of my pain, all of my secrets lay stamped across my
face and trembling in my voice.

“All my life I ain’t never had nothin’ worth standin’ for. Hell, my momma didn’t even give me a name to stand for. So I just
spinned round and round. Walkin’ with the earth. And it brought me to you. Now I’ve got somethin’. And I ain’t gonna lose
you.”

“We’ve got to leave. Crooktop ain’t the only place. There’s a whole world out there.”

“There’s only one place for me,” he said softly, his hand tracing the lines of my neck.

“Here? With him chasing us down?”

“Wherever you are. I’m tired of lettin’ the earth spin me wherever it wants. I’m with you.”

I sobbed with relief. “I’m not sure I’m worth all that.”

“You’re more than you know,” he whispered. “I get what the preacher meant about feasts now. ’Cause I found you. Be my feast,
Mercy. Everything’s gonna work out just fine. I’ll go wherever you want me to, if you’ll just be my feast.”

I picked our glass up off the floor and stared at it. Amazed by its thickness. A tiny chip, but no shatters. I was still scared.
But I was a feast. And it’s hard to feel desperate when you’re somebody’s feast.

T
rout was unbinding me again. And not with the whisper of a word, or the embrace of his arms. It was the speed of his truck.
The determined look in his eyes. We were fleeing. Heading straight into six and twenty mile holler, until we could think of
a better plan. And as he drove, I could feel the mountain’s fist unclenching. He was prying Crooktop’s fingers off my neck.

“We’ll hide out here for a couple days,” he said. “He won’t be thinkin’ to look for you here.”

“Then where?”

“Wherever.” He shrugged. “If you want we can move down to middle Tennessee flatland, finish up the crops there and earn some
travelin’ money. Then we can roll on down to Florida and work in the oranges.”