The Killing Tree (9 page)

“Yes sir,” I said lowly.

“Look at you,” he said with disgust. “Standing here in your church clothes, but didn’t go to evening services. May Flours
is telling everybody she saw you hop in a truck with a man. Said she thought he might be a mater migrant.
A mater migrant, Mercy
,” he repeated through gritted teeth.

May Flours was a bitter little prune of a woman, with a shriveled-up face and bluish hair. A spiteful gossip who stirred up
more trouble for new preachers than the devil himself could ever hope to. She had spread rumors about preachers having affairs
with the woman who kept the nursery or pocketing change from the offering plate. And now I was her target. I imagined the
sense of joy she must have felt, seeing me get into his truck. Knowing that for once she had a scandal she could spread that
was actually true.

“You will not disgrace our name,” Father Heron said sternly.

In his narrowed black eyes and set jaw I recognized danger. Tick tick ticking. Ready to explode with the slightest spark.

“No, I won’t. I don’t sneak around with mater migrants. I also don’t listen to gossip from the likes of May Flours. Just as
you taught me to, sir,” I said, not daring to look him in the eye. “If you want me to explain why I’m dressed the way I am,
if you need me to show you how May Flours is wrong, well, I can. If you believe the things she says.”

Father Heron couldn’t stand there and say he believed May Flours. Every good person in our church had rallied against
the lying lips
of May Flours.
Lying lips are an abomination
, Father Heron had declared.

He looked startled, a bit confused even.

“I don’t need any explanations from the likes of you. And I don’t need any of May Flours’ rotten tongue either. I’m just letting
you know what we stand for and what you will respect.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and wondered what he would have done if I had said yes. I was out with a mater migrant
.
Yes, we drove together,
all by ourselves
, to the middle of six and twenty mile holler. Yes, we stood in the wilderness
together
. Yes, he was half naked.
Yes, I loved every single moment with him.

I went inside and crawled into bed. The little details, hidden by the big events, surfaced in the darkness. We hadn’t spoken
of our first night together looking for the fire trout. And I hadn’t felt embarrassed as I had thought I would. It had all
disappeared in his carefree admission that he was waiting there for me. And what had he called me, a different kind of woman?
Different from what? From pretty, popular girls? With swingy blonde hair and round full breasts? Or was I like the holler?
He had called that a different kind of mountain. A wild one.

The next morning I felt like more of a woman, if not a different kind. I paid new attention to the soft curve of my calf and
to the way breathing made my chest rise and fall in the shower. I studied myself in the mirror. Eyes the color of coal. Hair
that no amount of Breck shampoo could ever make bounce. Lips sparkling with Plum Passion. Teeth just a little crooked on the
bottom row, but fine on the top. Small breasts, shaped like Hershey’s kisses.

“Mercy baby,” Mamma Rutha called to me through my closed door. “I have something to show you.”

“Just a minute,” I cried as I pulled on my cutoffs and T-shirt.

We walked behind the shed where she reached into a tattered boot box and pulled out a bloodied baby squirrel, with a horrible
gash in its back leg.

“Wallace’s dogs killed its momma and about killed it too. I came out here and right underneath my feet was its poor mangled
momma and this little thing. I’m gonna have to go hunt up a good salve for its little leg.”

The squirrel was shaking and bleeding. I was certain it wouldn’t live. At least, it wouldn’t without Mamma Rutha to care for
it.

“I need your help,” she said seriously.

“What?” I asked, fearful of what she would say.

Once when I was sixteen, she had asked me to help her paint the house sun yellow so it would blend in with “God’s design”
for the mountain. For two weeks I carried her a bucket of paint each day, until nearly every shadowy place in her garden was
hiding a little bit of sunshine. Then, as soon as she had drugged Father Heron and he had stumbled to bed, we began painting.
We painted without stopping through the night, until the next afternoon. When Father Heron woke up and saw the house, you
would have thought we had painted curse words on it he was so choked with anger. It did look ridiculous. But I didn’t care,
it wasn’t like anybody I knew, except for Della, ever came close to the house. Father Heron hired a whole crew of men to come
repaint the house that very day. So before sunset, it was clean and white again.

When Mamma Rutha showed up at dinner that night,
she was sun yellow.
Everything, except her blue eyes that looked even more washed out by the contrast of her neon skin. When Father Heron asked
what in God’s name had she done to herself
, she looked at him calmly and said, “This is your house, paint it what you like. My body is my house. And I will paint it
what I like.”

Father Heron didn’t seem to mind at first. He just hoped she’d get poisoned and die from it all. But she didn’t. And she even
touched up any nicks or chips that she had. When she needed something from the valley, she just took her yellow self right
on down there. That was the worst for me. Father Heron may have been called righteous for staying with Mamma Rutha, but I
just felt hot shame when my classmates started calling me Sunny. As if I were the yellow one.
Hey Sunny, make the rain go away.
She stayed yellow for a long time, until finally one day she decided that she scared her animals. So she bathed, leaving a
permanent tinge of yellow in the bottom of our bathtub.

“I need your help with his dogs. They torture my chickens. They mangle the squirrels, possums, and mice. They’re unnatural.
They don’t even eat what they kill half the time,” she said.

Father Heron’s dogs were not pets, but hunting tools. He usually kept them in cages during the day, and set them loose at
sunset. They were almost wild, obedient to Father Heron only half the time.

“What do you want to do?” I asked her. “Kill ’em?”

She looked shocked.

“Oh no. They can’t help the way they are, how they’ve been raised. But this part of the mountain, where we live, I’ve worked
hard to make it safe,” she said, motioning to the woods as though she could see all of her beloved creatures. “And I’m not
going to let them dogs destroy that. I want to take ’em far away, up the mountain. Let ’em be a part of what they try to destroy.
Let ’em kill away from here and for a reason, a natural reason.”

“How we gonna do all that?”

“Tonight, after he’s asleep, we’ll lead them away. Dogs can make maps in their heads, so we’ll have to blindfold ’em. And
we can’t take the truck, it’d wake him. Today in the valley, get me some rope or chain to lead by. I’ll fry him one of his
chickens, slip some sleepy into his tea, and when he’s asleep we’ll put our walking shoes on. I already know where we’ll be
going, so you just be ready, okay?”

Fried chicken and sleepy tea, Mamma Rutha’s famous mischief cocktail. She kept a small jar filled with a crumbly substance,
hidden behind the cornmeal. I didn’t know what it was. All I knew was that she returned from the mountain with it, and that
whenever I saw a residue of crushed powder on the counter and the table loaded with Father Heron’s favorites, I should brace
myself for trouble, Mamma Rutha style. There were a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t have agreed. But then there was Mamma
Rutha, the reason I said yes.

When my shift at the diner ended, it was time for me to pick up the supplies. I went to the Ben Franklin to see Della and
look for some rope. There was just one register open, and a small girl with a pimply face and shifty eyes working it. When
I asked her if Della was working, she motioned toward the back and shrugged her shoulders.

I wasn’t halfway through the store before I heard her teasing giggle. As I neared the back of the store, where the words “MANAGER’S
OFFICE” hung importantly above a door, I heard a man’s voice too. Nasal and pleading.

I could see him. Through a little slat window carved into the side of the door that helped him keep a better eye on the store.
He was very skinny, and tall. Tufts of hair around his ears and neck, but none on top. He had a handsome face, with high cheekbones.
But it was still a shock to picture Della with him. Della wasting all of her glow on
that
?

Since Della was busy, I started to leave and go search for my rope when he saw me.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” he called after me.

“Mercy?” Della said.

I stopped and slowly turned around, flushed with embarrassment. I had been caught spying on my best friend while she flirted
with her boss.

He looked worried, and I guessed that he was wondering what I saw, whether I knew his wife.

“It’s okay, Randy. She’s my best friend,” Della said, grinning at me.

His high cheekbones locked. “Call me Sir when we’re at work!” he snapped. Then he turned to me. “You know?”

“Rope,” I said. “I just need some rope.”

“You’ve been spreading this around?” he asked Della.

“Not spreading it around, just telling my best friend. I tell her everything. She is my magic student!” she said, giggling
again.

“Do you have any idea what this could do to me? Me, a married man? The boss of this store? Screwing around with an eighteen-year-old
cashier, and you spread it around!” he asked, the top of his slick head turning scarlet.

“It’s not like that, Randy,” Della said softly. “She’s the only one I’ve told. And she understands, I told her about your
wife.”

He turned toward me. “And how can I know, how can I be sure that you’ll keep your mouth shut?” he asked.

“ ’Cause she loves me. And ’cause she’s as bad as me. Dating a mater migrant is no better than dating a married man.” Della
laughed with a good-natured wink.

I protested, my ears burning red.
I was not dating a mater migrant.

“Rope’s on aisle four,” he interrupted as he started walking back to his office. “And Della, I need to see you in my office.”

“Oh, yes sir,” Della said in her most sexy breathless voice.

“Not like that,” he said, shooting her an angry glance.

“It’s okay, Mercy. He’s just so high-strung, you know? It’s his wife. Any man would be high-strung living with the likes of
her. Anyway, I’d help you pick out your rope, but duty calls, you know? I’ve got to put my forty hours in if I expect to draw
a paycheck,” she said as she grinned and whirled toward his office, skillfully bouncing all of her curves.

I made my way over to aisle four, vowing to wring Della’s neck for telling him that I was dating a mater migrant. I had seen
the look in his eyes when she said that. A look of victory.

Aisle four had three kinds of rope. Thin purple rope, the kind used in Vacation Bible School crafts, medium yellow rope, and
thick red rope. I tugged on the medium yellow rope. It seemed sturdy, but those dogs were so big. I decided on the thick red
rope and bought four lengths.

The distance to my house from the valley wasn’t even two miles, but it was steep enough to give my calves a deep-down-in-the-bone
burn. As I watched the sun slowly fizzle into darkness, I knew there was little time to waste. So I walked briskly, jogging
at times, probably looking as crazy as Mamma Rutha, with four long pieces of red rope trailing behind me. When I arrived home,
it was dark outside and smelled of fried chicken. After I hid the ropes beneath Mamma Rutha’s potato plants, she met me on
the back porch.

“Mercy baby,” she whispered, “good news. The baby’s doing okay. I put a salve on its wound, and I think its gonna be fine.
But the dogs still must be moved. Your grandfather is drinking his tea now. Go change into something warm and stay back in
your bedroom ’til I come and get you.”

When Mamma Rutha had a plan, she could execute it with perfect sanity. She was calm and in control, while my hands shook as
I tied my sneakers. I thought about how calculated she must have been that evening. Killing the chicken, frying it, brewing
his tea, crushing the powder that she stirred with extra sugar into his glass, plotting a map in her head of where we would
walk that night.

“He’s been asleep for an hour now, so I don’t think he’ll wake up,” Mamma Rutha whispered as she motioned me to follow her.

“Are you scared?” she asked me once we were outside.

“No. But I am hungry, got any more chicken?”

“I put it in the compost pile for the garden,” she said matter-of-factly. Just like Mamma Rutha. Worried that I was scared,
but forgetting that I hadn’t eaten supper.

It took us longer than she had planned to round the four dogs up. They were too busy having fun, tearing up the night. We
called them softly.
Wolf! Here boy! Bear! Here boy! Coon! Come here! Fox!
I was wildly running around with my two red ropes. Diving for their thick bodies, falling facedown in the dirt.

Finally, we managed to slip a rope around each one’s neck. Then ripped T-shirts were bound around each dog’s eyes. They seemed
so different, tied up and blinded. They were nervous, skittish pups.

We began our journey. Mamma Rutha in the lead, pulling her two dogs behind her. I followed her and led the red dogs, Fox and
Coon.

We walked, climbing upward and upward until my legs grew numb. I tried not to think of all the snakes, coyotes, and mountain
lions that were watching me. Or maybe even bears. The dogs occasionally would growl, low and threatening. I knew they smelled
things that my eyes couldn’t see. I had never seen the mountain like that. We were traveling to its heart, deep into the woods.
It was crawling, rattling, and shaking with life. The mountain itself seemed to breathe.

Mamma Rutha never stopped to rest. I followed her soft rustling as she passed through leaves and branches. The four dogs and
me huffed and puffed and struggled to keep up. She didn’t even seem winded as we climbed and climbed. I wondered how old she
was. Maybe as old as her mountain.