The Killing Tree (17 page)

“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 the
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.

E
verything 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.”

I promised to stay hidden, and started walking through the ditch that ran by the road. Cars would pass me and I’d duck low,
hiding myself in the brush. I was thankful Della lived on the outskirts of the valley, in a trailer park where none of Father
Heron’s people would ever go. She lived in a single-wide, the lowest of all trailers. But it was a mansion in the eyes of
her mom, because Della had spent much of her childhood playing on the dirt floor of a garage. Before Della’s dad died, they
had all lived in a home owned by the coal company. It was a cute little home with blue shutters and a front porch that they
could live in as long as her dad worked the mines. Della couldn’t remember living there, though when we passed it she always
waved to it.
My real home
, she called it. After her dad died, her momma and all five children were homeless. They didn’t have any family on Crooktop
to take them in. So the church did.

For a little while they lived in the sanctuary, earning Della the nickname Church Mouse, at least until she grew up and went
wild. Eventually the preacher convinced a rich man to move his lawn mower and give Della’s mom an old garage. The garage had
originally been attached to the rich man’s home, but he had built a new garage, and cut and moved the old one to the far end
of his property to store his lawn mower in it. Everybody pitched in to divide it into two rooms. One bedroom and a general
room. The rich man agreed to allow electricity to be connected to the garage from his house. So they were able to hook up
an old stove for Della’s mom to cook on. And the folks on Crooktop donated items they no longer wanted—a rusty bed, a dresser
without knobs or handles, a broken radio that would only work when it stormed, an old washtub for bathing. So there were six
people, piled in a bed and on the floor. A dirt floor with two braided rugs. There was no running water, but the rich man
allowed Della’s mom to carry water back from the wash-up sink in his basement. But only if he or his wife was there.

Over the years things had gotten better. Especially after the other four children escaped. They could remember the little
house with the blue shutters. And they had to outrun the garage that stole them away. The three boys found work and started
sending a little money home. It wasn’t enough to change Della and her momma’s life, but they didn’t have to beg for as many
handouts. Della’s momma got a job too. And a boyfriend. And then another boyfriend. And another.

Somewhere between all the boyfriends, the garage was abandoned and Della and her momma moved up in the world, to a single-wide
trailer. They even managed to get a car. But the trailer never fully replaced the little white house with blue shutters.

As I neared the trailer, I noticed a girl sitting on the cinderblocks that were stacked up like steps to the front door. I
walked up and recognized her as Della’s co-worker from the Ben Franklin.

“Hey,” I said. “You here to see Della?”

“Ooohhh,” she said, her eyes growing wide. “I don’t know where she is. Nobody answering the door here, but Boss says I can’t
leave ’til I see her.”

“You need something?”

“Her apron. She left with it and it’s store property. If she’s trying to keep it, why that’s the same as stealing. Boss said
I ain’t to come back without it, but there ain’t no telling where that crazy girl could be. Probably runned off somewhere
by now. I would if I was her.”

“What happened?”

“It ain’t polite to gossip,” she said, ready to explode with her eagerness to tell me.

“Well, it’s not gossip, since we’re Della’s friends. We ain’t trying to hurt her.”

“Okay. Since you’re a friend I guess it won’t hurt nothing. All I really know is that her and the boss were hankying around,
you know? And then one day, the boss’s wife comes in and asks to see him. And Della looked at her and said that he wasn’t
taking any visitors that day. And his wife says, ‘Well, I reckon I ain’t a visitor if I’m his wife.’
And the look on Della’s face!
Why she looked like a ghost! I swear she did! Plum scary, it was. And the wife says, ‘Is something wrong?’ And Della says,
‘Shouldn’t you be shopping for cat food?’ And we all started giggling because that was just a crazy thing to say to the boss’s
wife, now wasn’t it?