The Killing Tree (7 page)

“The magic is wonderful, Mercy,” she would tell me. “It’s one of the only things in the world in which the woman is totally
powerful. We can cast our spell over a man and make him do more tricks than any white rabbit in a hat.”

I always listened, but I secretly believed that Della’s powerful magic was a spell that only she could cast. There was nothing
magical about me.

“Why don’t you go to his house, I mean, he has one doesn’t he? He
is
the manager.”

“That’s where his wife is,” she whispered, leaning forward.

“Married! Della DeMar what in the hell are you thinking?” I shouted.

“SHHH!” she said. “ She’s practically
forcing
us to have an affair. She treats him just awful. Spends all of his money on her eighteen cats. She feeds them steak and she
won’t even let Randy sleep in her bed. No room for him and all the cats. Besides, he’s good to me. I told him about a dream
I had, and, you are gonna die when you hear this, Mercy,” she said, leaning forward, “he had the
same
dream. The same one on the same night. He wasn’t lying either. I can smell lies on the breath of men, and he wasn’t lying.”

“Nothing’s as dangerous as a woman who knows the name of her husband’s lover,” I said.

She stared at the table and twisted her napkin. “I know it may be dangerous. And I know it sounds real sinful to a deacon’s
granddaughter. But I reckon I
am
sinful, Mercy. I know the way people talk about me. So why stop and care about what they say now? If my love for this man
is some real bad sin, it’s just because it comes from my black heart. But I found a man that dreams my dreams, a man that
satisfies me, not my mind or even my body, but satisfies me right here,” she said, placing her hand on her chest.

I couldn’t help but smile. And I told her that Randy was lucky that she dished out love the way grandmas are supposed to dish
out oatmeal. She had dished it out to the shy and scared Mercy Heron she found hugging a brick wall outside of the high school,
to the old blind dog she adopted, to her mother that had tried to swallow her whole, and now to this tortured husband.

She finished her beer and told me about her new perm and I told her about the jelly jar jeans I was going to buy. Sitting
there with her I felt like an invisible thread was sewing me together again. I felt like the old Mercy Heron. And then she
unraveled me all over again.

“You remember that mater migrant, Trout?” she asked me, carefully eyeing my reaction. “He is one crazy man.”

“Really?” I shrugged, doing my best to hide my interest. I was scared that he had told her about our walk in the woods. I
had never told Della about the name I was supposed to have had. And I couldn’t bring myself to describe how it felt to hear
him say it.

“Randy’s wife insisted that he bathe all them cats last night, so I went down to the docks to hang out,” she said. “Anyway,
we were all sitting around when Trout walks up. Daryl sort of knew him, so Trout sat down with us. Pretty soon Daryl starts
complaining how there’s nothing to do here. And Trout told him he just didn’t know his mountain. Daryl got a little smart,
and said, ‘You mean the way you know maters?’ And Trout didn’t say anything. I felt bad for him too, ’cause he seemed sad
after Daryl said that. So I suggested that we should all name one Crooktop thrill that other people might not know about.
Daryl said, ‘I
would
say laying with Della DeMar, but everybody already knows about that.’ He can be such an ass. I can’t believe I ever dated
him. Then Trish said Daryl’s daddy’s pot patch. I said stealing makeup out of the drugstore. As long as you unwrap it before
you put it in your pocket, the clerk can’t be sure it’s not really yours.”

“But why’d you say Trout was crazy?” I asked, trying to focus her. “What did he say?” I hoped that he hadn’t shared the secret
of the fire trout with them, like he had with me.

“Nothing for a while. It was his turn, but he just sat there. Daryl got after him, asking him what Crooktop thrill he knew
about if he knew our mountain so well, and telling him that mater women didn’t count. All the sudden Trout looked up and said,
‘I guess it’d be holdin’ death but not dyin’.’ Just like that, all low and quiet. It gave me the shivers. Daryl asked him
what the hell he was talking about. And Trout told him you could hold death and not die on Crooktop. Sure we were drunk, but
it was strange. Daryl said he didn’t believe him. Thought Trout was stoned out of his mind and talking nonsense. So Trout
said he’d show him if he wanted. Before I knew it, me and Trish and Daryl were all piled into the bed of Trout’s truck, heading
off into the night.”

“Where did he take you?” I asked, feeling like I was about to learn something big.

“A place like none other. He was right. There’s a place on Crooktop where people hold death but don’t die.”

“Well, tell me,” I said, growing impatient. “Where did you go?”

“It was dark outside,” she continued. “But I was sober enough to know we weren’t on a real road. He was driving straight enough,
but the three of us back there were getting tossed every which way. Trish was starting to cry and Daryl said he was gonna
get sick. We had to hold our hands up over our face, to keep branches from smacking us. Trish cried out that she wanted to
go home. Then Daryl hollered up at Trout to stop the truck, but Trout wouldn’t, he just kept on driving into the trees. I
was covering my face with my hands, when all of the sudden I saw light flashing between my fingers. Then everything grew still,
and I heard it. My skin began to crawl and Trish started screaming.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“People moaning and wailing. Some laughing. Some shouting. It was like every noise in the world, all mixed up together. Light
was pouring out the doors of a little shack in the woods. And I swear, Mercy, that building was moving. It was smaller than
your house and the whole thing seemed to breathe. Inhaling and exhaling, shaking with its noise.”

“Where were you?”

“I will never be able to tell you. If I had a thousand years to figure that out, I couldn’t find my way back there. It was
like trees were growing out the side of the building, like trees were growing on it. We got out of the truck and Trish screamed
that they had better take her home. She was crying and saying how her daddy would get them good if they didn’t take her home.”

“Didn’t you want to leave too?” I asked her, noticing how flushed her face was becoming.

“Don’t get me wrong, Mercy, I was scared to death. Them people, they were screaming like they were dying. But I couldn’t move.
All I could do is stand there and look at that shack.”

“What’d Trout do?” I asked.

“He was like me. Standing there watching it. Daryl asked him how he found that place. ‘Just did,’ he said. Like we were the
strange ones for not knowing it was there.”

“Did he tell you what was inside?”

“He showed me,” she said, her eyes growing wide. “I told Trish to lock herself in the truck and we walked towards it. I knew
I shouldn’t. But I couldn’t stop myself. My feet just kept carrying me closer, and I figured finding out what was in there
just might be worth my life. I was so scared I don’t see how I was standing. I had one hand on Trout’s arm and another on
Daryl. Kind of funny now that I think about it. A few minutes earlier I was thinking Trout was going to kill us all. And then
later I was grabbing on to him for protection. At first all I saw was the doors. Somebody had carved crosses into ’em, and
they were open wide. Then I started to hear this thumping noise. Boom. Boom. Boom. Just like that,” she said tapping her hand
on the diner table. “Boom. Boom. Boom.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“I didn’t know. I thought somebody might be chopping them people up in there, you know. Boom. Boom. Boom. And as I got a little
closer I heard the clicking noise. Like a thousand woodpeckers were hammering away inside there. I felt like running but I
was right in front of that shack. And I saw it all.” She stopped to catch her breath.

“Them people were crazy. Hollering and screaming and twitching. And that thumping noise, that was them jumping. Boom. Boom.
Up and down. Moaning like they were in such pain. I watched them but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was happening
to them. Nobody was touching them.”

“People don’t just scream out over nothing,” I said.

“That’s what I thought. And I couldn’t find what that clicking noise was. ’Til I saw ’em crawling all around. In between their
legs as they jumped. Over the pews. Twisted around their arms. And they weren’t woodpeckers.”

“What?” I asked her.

“Rattlers. Big ones too and their babies. That shack was a church. And them people were snake handlers.”

It was a mountain myth, spoken of in whispers. People that believed they were ordered by God to hold poisonous snakes as a
testament to their faith. Della’s story had the effect she had aimed for. I was amazed that there was a place like that on
Crooktop. And that a stranger would be the one to know of it.

“I hope you got outta there fast,” I told her. “One bite from one of ’em and you’re dead.”

“I wanted to. But Trout started walking into the church. I grabbed hold of his arm to try and stop him, and he pushed my hand
off. You should of seen him, Mercy. Imagine a man walking into a pit of rattlers surrounded by people dancing with the Holy
Ghost.”

“What happened to him?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager.

“The people never even saw him. They were too busy jumping up and down and hollering. The preacher was standing up front,
a Bible in one hand and a thick snake in the other. Trout walked up to him and took it right out of the preacher’s hand. Then
he turned to me and Daryl, calm as he could be. He held it up, its tail just rattling away in his hands, and he looked at
Daryl and smiled. He was holding death, and he was crazy as a man ever was. He makes your Mamma Rutha look sane.”

P
reacher Grey’s sermon was about heaven. A topic that disappointed many in the congregation. Most people enjoyed a good hellfire
sermon much more than one about heaven. But I liked those sermons, though I could never really understand them. About streets
of gold and a gate of pearl. What did all that have to do with happiness? Beauty didn’t guarantee peace, Della was proof of
that. But as I watched the preacher’s face glow and listened to his voice break with emotion as he described it all, I knew
that to him, it was everything.

I thought about the snake handlers. How shocked everyone around me would be to learn of it. If Father Heron thought Methodists
were the devil’s tool, I could only imagine what he’d think of the snake handlers.

Nobody went forward during the invitation. They always did after the hell sermons. It was easier to run from hell than it
was to run toward heaven. And when nobody went forward, the preacher always looked sad. Like he had failed. Sometimes I was
tempted to go forward and make up a need, just to make him feel better.

I was on my way to the diner after church when I saw the truck. It was an old brown Ford, with worn tires, rust spots on the
door, a dented bumper, and a missing tailgate. It was the type of truck that should have been retired years ago, but since
it wasn’t, had pledged itself to drive to the death. He was sitting in the back, his legs swinging out where the tailgate
should have been, looking up the road that I was walking down.

“Hopin’ I’d find you here,” he said.

“What are you up to?” I asked.

“You gonna work?” he asked, looking at the apron I was clutching.

I told him I had to. That my boss was mean and that he’d throw a fit if I didn’t show up. I told him that there was nobody
that could cover my shift, and that Sunday was the diner’s busiest day. And I told myself that I didn’t really know this man.
Then I hopped in his truck to go fishing. There were some things I couldn’t talk myself out of. Trout Price was one of them.

He drove toward six and twenty mile holler. It was one of nature’s strongholds, where she was winning the war against man.
The people that lived up there were primitive too. Primitive at least in the eyes of the rest of Crooktop because they were
so poor.
That’s what happens when cousins marry cousins
, Father Heron would grumble about the six and twenty milers. But they took care of their own. Growing and hunting for most
of their own food. Coming down the mountain only if they wanted to attend school, or sell pot at the docks. The six and twenty
mile boys were valued by the coaches and ignored by the teachers. They were bigger than most men, with well-ripened muscles.
The girls rarely finished high school before disappearing back up the holler with swollen bellies. On the first day of school
the line for the free government lunch program was always joked to be six and twenty miles long, an unfair statement since
nearly half of the school qualified for free lunch and were considered poor by any outsider’s standard. But the six and twenty
mile poverty was of a completely different level, even to us mountain people. It was a level defined by crude shacks pasted
together on the side of the mountain, leaning with the direction of the wind.

I had lived on Crooktop all of my life, but I had never been to six and twenty mile holler. Most Crooktop folks hadn’t. In
school I had stared at their dirty clothes and the orange free lunch passes. I stared, but I didn’t join in the laughter.
As a child my own clothes were often dirty, and I would long for an orange pass when Mamma Rutha forgot to pack me any lunch.
Sometimes I even envied their sense of belonging. They were outside of everything, but they were outside together. I was outside
alone.

And now I was riding into their land. Crooks and bums were supposed to line the road. But it didn’t look dangerous. It just
looked untamed and wretched, with crumpled piles of wood that only slightly resembled homes.

“You know where you’re going?” I asked him. “Into six and twenty mile holler. Ever heard of it?”