Just as Crooktop had its hour of tricks, I had one too. And I had been stuck in mine. Waffling somewhere between life and death. Plastic and flesh. I couldn’t make the decision the way the mountain did every morning, choosing sunny or cloudy, dead or alive. All I could do was lay there beneath the peonies, feeling plastic.
Someone else decided, though. Rough hands and bitter herbs pulled me from beneath the peonies. My limbs were bent and stretched until they could feel the blood pumping through them. Colors were flashed before my eyes, making them blink. I stopped gagging and began to swallow. All of it, proof that I wasn’t plastic. When my eyes began to see again, I couldn’t help but wonder. Look at it all, I thought. Legs. Arms. Chest. Belly. I had felt it disappear, but it was all still there.
I didn’t know where I was. Treetops swayed over me, and clouds peeked through the leaves. I could hear the rustling of animals nearby. And birds were singing all around me. I’m in heaven, I thought at first. Heaven is a mountain with no pain. But soon my back began to ache from laying on the hard ground, and my skin shivered from the chill in the air. I knew then, I was still on Crooktop.
I sat up and saw Mamma Rutha kneeling by a tree, whispering softly. I watched as her lips mouthed my name, and wondered what she prayed for.
“Mamma Rutha,” I said, my voice breaking from lack of use. I watched as she inhaled slowly, and then sighed.
“Oh Mercy baby.”
“What is this place?”
“Where wounded things go to heal.”
I looked around more carefully, searching for the healing. I noticed that I was in a nearly perfect circle of emptiness. Just dried leaves on hard mountain ground. While large old trees pressed together to frame me, like they were holding hands.
“How’d you find me?” I whispered.
“Heard you.”
“You weren’t close enough.”
She shrugged her shoulders gently. “I’m very old, Mercy baby. My ears don’t work so good anymore. I’ve learned to listen other ways.”
“And what about him? Can you hear him?” I begged. She shook her head, and I could see the pity on her face. It was like looking in a mirror. I was the picture of misery.
I rolled over, a weak effort to hide myself. I was angry with her for no reason. Except maybe that she didn’t leave me to die. Or maybe that she was able to find me with her crazy ways, but couldn’t tell me where Trout was.
“I know you met him,” I whispered. “That night in the garden. He told me all about it.”
“I remember.”
“He thought you were beautiful. He said he hoped I’d look just like you one day.” I started sobbing.
“Shhh. Don’t fight the healing.”
I looked down at my hands. I had to stare a long time before I could see any red. “I’ve been here a long time, haven’t I?”
“Can’t measure grief in weeks.”
“No,” I whispered. “I’ve got a whole life’s worth.”
“That’s why I brought you here.”
“But we’re still on the mountain,” I said defiantly. “Don’t know exactly where, but I can feel it, Crooktop sucking away my breath. This mountain will strangle me one day.”
“It’s different here. Found it when I was a little girl. I’d come across a doe with buckshot through its hind leg. And I followed her up the mountain, dragging her useless leg, a trail of blood dripping to the ground. I wished she would stop fighting her death. I’ll ease the death pain, I promised her. But up the mountain she drug herself. ’Til she came to this clearing. She laid down in the middle, her breathing slowed, and I thought she died. But I walked to her and saw the soft rise of her belly. She was alive. I watched her through the evening. And into the dawn of the next day. I went home, gathered some bandages, some salve for her. But when I got back, she was gone. All that was left of her was the dried blood on the fallen leaves.”
Mamma Rutha picked up a handful of leaves and scattered them around us.
“I knew then she didn’t drag herself here to die,” she continued. “She came here to heal. To hide in the tree circle, and lay on the soft bed of leaves. Wasn’t a month later, I became that doe. My momma had just pulled a pone of cornbread from the oven. I was hungry, and too little to know the danger of a hot iron skillet. When I wrapped my fist around the handle I heard my flesh melt before I felt it. The singe and sizzle. And when I dropped the skillet, the skin of my palm stayed on the handle. See that?” she asked, holding up her left palm, which even after all the years was several shades darker than the other. “Weren’t no doctors to come by. Didn’t know of any healers then. Poor Ruthie, I heard folks whisper. That hand won’t never heal. I asked my momma to fix it, when the pain nearly drove me crazy. Ain’t nothing can fix that kind of burn, she said. Then I remembered that doe. And I pulled myself up the mountain, and laid down in my crazy pain on this soft bed of leaves.”
“What happened?”
“Still got my hand, don’t I?” she said, laughing. “When I come back home, the fire had left me. My hand had scarred up nicely and was ready to heal. Over the years I’ve tracked many a wounded animal to this place. They don’t always live. But this is the ground for last battles.”
“No mountain ground can put out my fire,” I whispered.
I spent the next few days sleeping, and eating the food and herbs that Mamma Rutha brought. My body was recovering from the hard work of the rows. But my heart wasn’t healing. And I didn’t even hope it would. Mamma Rutha was always singing around me. Touching me and blessing me. It was like we were holding church. Only I didn’t want to be saved.
“Come here,” she told me. “There’s one more thing to try.” She was losing hope too. She led me outside the clearing, to a great oak tree. I could have hugged it three times over and still not measured it’s width.
“Terebinth tree,” she said, as she touched it gently.
“It’s an oak,” I said. “Biggest one on the mountain, probably.”
She shook her head. “It’s a terebinth tree.”
“Never heard of it.” I double-checked the leaves. Broad ovals with scalloped edges. Definitely an oak.
“You know, Mercy baby, from the holy scriptures.”
“I don’t know ’em like you do.”
“ ‘I will make an altar to God who answered me in the day of my distress,’ ” she whispered lowly. “ ‘And Jacob took his foreign gods and buried them under the terebinth tree.’ ” She knelt to the ground and began clawing the dirt. She motioned for me to join her. “Terebinth trees are made for burying.”
I noticed a spot that seemed groomed, almost like a grave. And then I made out the shape of a cross, formed from a pile of pebbles.
“What’s buried there?” I whispered.
“Your momma’s killing,” she said without looking at me.
When the hole was about a foot deep, she stopped digging. “Now speak it,” she said.
“Speak what?”
“The things you need to bury.”
“I won’t bury him,” I said. “I won’t.”
“Mercy’s grief,” she called out loudly, her eyes focused on the hole in the ground. “Mercy’s momma being killed. Her granddaddy’s cruel heart. Her love gone missing. All of it, we bury here. Amen.”
Then she covered up the hole quickly, like she could trap her words in the ground. She took a handful of pebbles and formed the letter M over the spot. I shuddered. I was staring at my own gravesite, freshly dug and marked with my initial.
Later that night, I woke up to see the woods on fire. Every tree glowed. Bright and strong.
“Mamma Rutha!” I called. “Foxfire!”
She was sitting next to me, watching me. I could see her smile clearly, from the light of the trees.
“It’s done this every night since I brought you here.” She laughed.
“What is it? What is it really?” I asked, springing to my feet. “Is it just fungus?” Deep down I wanted her to say no. I wanted her
to tell me again that it was the mountain’s soul. And that I was part of the chosen few.
“The mountain’s trying to make you strong again.”
“Every night it’s like this?”
“Since you’ve been here. It’s not just for you, though,” she said slowly.
“I know,” I answered. “The mountain loves you.”
“No. It’s not for me.”
“There something else wounded here?”
“Yes.”
“A deer or something? Where?”
“It’s choking on grief,” she said solemnly. “And it lives here.” Her pale skin glowed with the burn of foxfire, and my eyes easily followed the direction of her hand. I gasped and shook my head in disbelief. Her hand cradled my stomach.
Chapter XXII
I woke up alone. Mamma Rutha had done all she could, and she saw no reason to stay. What am I gonna do now? I thought. I couldn’t stay there. I wasn’t like my grandmother or Trout. I didn’t know how to live off the land. I’ll go back to the migrants, I thought. They’ll take care of me. I liked that idea. I even let myself wonder if I would find him there. But then it flashed through my mind. Mamma Rutha’s hand holding my belly. What if she was right? I had been sick, vomiting in the rows. And then sick outside Della’s trailer. I tried to remember the date of my last period, and couldn’t. I ran my hands over my breasts. They were much too heavy. I’m gonna have his baby.
I sat down and hugged my knees close to my chest and sobbed. I wished she hadn’t left me. I wanted someone to tell me what to do. There’s nothing I can do, I thought. I didn’t know how to find the new rows without Trout. And even if I could have, everything was different. I had barely survived them before. How could I survive, large and clumsy? And later, how would my baby survive that life? I shoved my hand in my pocket and pulled out all the money I had. Seven dollars and forty-seven cents. Trout had the rest of my wages from the rows.
As daylight faded, everything settled into two choices for me. I could leave Crooktop. Or I could go home. I wanted to leave. But I couldn’t figure out how without a car or money. Or a place to go. Or Trout to lead me. I thought about myself, broke, hungry, and pregnant in some strange land.
Soon it was dark. And as the night grew cold, I learned the same lesson my momma had. An abandoned pregnant woman craves the familiar. Even if it’s dangerous. Even if it kills her. I knew Father Heron. And the only thing I could think to do was choose the danger I knew best. And run from the ones I didn’t.
It was a long walk home. It was my momma’s walk. I traced her steps, the same ones she took after my daddy went missing. I took one step after the other, not thinking about how far the distance was, or how my feet ached. I looked up the mountain. He was up there. And deep within me, I believed he knew that I was coming. That he had always known I would be back.
I knew what I had to do. Deny my Trout. Look Father Heron in the eye and tell him it’s over. Tell him that Trout left me. I didn’t know at first that he was a mater migrant, I would lie. He tricked me, I would say. And then I wondered if at least that much was true. Was it all a trick?
My hand touched the back doorknob. And fear froze it. What if it is locked? I remembered the story his silence screamed. Of blood, murder, and locked doors. I couldn’t turn the handle.
“Come in, Mercy,” his voice called through the door.
It only made sense to run. That’s what my legs screamed at me as I forced them to walk through the door.
“Hello, Father Heron.” His back was to me. There weren’t any lights on in the house. It was a dark shadowy place, filled by his lumpy silhouette as he sat in his chair, facing the window.
“What do you need to tell me?” he asked. It was one of his favorite games. Confession. My judge would sit on high and force me to confess the sins he already knew.
“Nothing you would be interested in.”
He rose from his chair and turned toward me.
I was trembling. Angry at that man, that old gray man, who was eyeing my love, toying with it, tossing it to the devil.
“I didn’t think you would be interested in love. Real, honest-to-God love!” I screamed.
I was shaking with rage. Rendered foolish by my anger. Dancing everywhere but around him. The silence began to scream. Wailing, screeching silence. Blood, murder, locked doors. BLOOD MURDER LOCKED DOORS!
I didn’t feel the blow. I just heard it. Like a tree, dead and dry, being broke in two. And then I heard the ringing. The sharp ringing in my ears, as though a thousand mosquitoes swarmed above my head. I disappeared. Swallowed by a forest of dead and dry trees. Swarming with mosquitoes. Snap. Ring. Snap. Ring. And then a grip, at the nape of my neck, jerking my knotted hair, lifting my eyebrows high.
“Please, no!” I heard myself beg as my eyes met his.
“It’s over, Father Heron. He left me. Same as my daddy did. I swear to you. It’s over. I’ll never see him again. Please don’t kill me. Don’t kill me,” I cried.
“You will show the world your stain. I will not let them gossip about our name anymore. You will show them that it’s your sin. That I have nothing to do with the whore you are. And they will hate you. But not me. Because your sin isn’t mine. You were born in sin. It’s what you are, Mercy. You will pour it out at the altar. This Sunday.”
“I will,” I sobbed.
He dropped his grip and I fell loose and ragged to the floor. It was smooth and dusty, smelling of mold and dirt. It felt cool against the heat of my skin. And supportive. Lifting the weight of my body. The dead, dry, broken tree. The feast of Trout.
Sometime during the night, I heard my song.
“I awakened you under an apple tree, la la la . . . There your mother brought you forth, la la di di la . . . Now set her as a seal upon your heart, for love is as strong as death.”
It was really the Song of Solomon, the song of the Shumalite to the Beloved. But as I lay there feeling some of the pain my momma must have felt, thinking about Trout, asleep on his back, mouth open, I knew that it was still my song.
As Mamma Rutha sang to me she rubbed balm over my bruises. Singing and rubbing, until her hands and throat must have ached. Until the sun was shining bright and full.
“Thank you,” I said when I had enough strength to sit up.
“You will be okay, Mercy baby,” she said, gently touching my face.
I went to bed and studied my life. This is it, I said to myself. I had imagined a life of love. By the ocean, with my Trout. “A silly dream,” I whispered. I would never escape Crooktop. I would always be caged in that house. And just so that I could go on living, so that my baby could go on living, I would confess on Sunday. It was the sacrifice the monster demanded.
Chapter XXIII
I barely stood. My feet felt unattached to the trembling body that hid behind a dingy white dress with purple trim. I was trapped between pine pews covered in scratchy brown cloth. My ears were filled with the humming buzz of a bored congregation. “I Surrender All,” they sang.
“This may be your last chance, brethren. Your last chance to surrender all,” the preacher said, his Bible stretched out toward us, inviting us. My feet began to move. Scuffed cream pumps shuffling down a worn center aisle. Preacher Grey’s face betrayed his surprise. Everyone else was surprised too. Their singing grew louder. Carrying me to the altar. Mercy surrenders all.
“Yes Mercy, thank you for coming forward, how can the Lord help you today?” Preacher Grey whispered. He looked at me, and his eyes dimmed with concern. “Honey, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know how to say this, Preacher Grey.”
“You can tell me. You can trust me,” he whispered softly.
“I have sinned,” I said, staring at his unpolished shoes.
“Well, I’ve got good news. God rejoices when we ask for His forgiveness. It’s a gift that He paid dearly for, and He wants us to use it. Mercy, all you have to do is use the gift.”
I stared at him. The fe
rvor in his eyes. It was more than belief, it was a knowing. And I envied him that.
“I’ll kneel with you and pray. Just confess in your heart and ask for forgiveness. It’s that simple.”
“But I have to confess to everybody.”
“Our sin just has to be between us and God. Nobody else has to know,” he said, smiling.
“But Father Heron knows about my sin. And he, he wants me to confess to everybody.”
“God’s the only one you gotta deal with, Mercy.”
“But Father Heron, he said I have to.”
“He’s just misunderstanding. Let’s kneel here, and then when you’re finished I’ll tell everyone that you came forward to confess some personal sin and to make right your relationship with God. That should be enough to satisfy him.”
I knelt there at the altar. My lips murmuring words my heart never heard. Everything was so still there, crouched low to the ground. I could feel Trout all around me. His eyes filled with sunflowers. His hands filled with the mountain’s fish. His heart filled with foxfire. And I had lost it all.
Preacher Grey stood with me. “My friends, rejoice with Mercy today. For she has found forgiveness and reconciled with God.” I nodded my head.
“And as I dismiss in prayer, I want to remind you of the fellowship supper after church next week. Pray with me please,” he began. But the prayer never came.
“Pardon me, Reverend, but these good people need to know how bad she wronged them. Tell ’em Mercy,” Father Heron’s voice called out.
“Deacon Heron, that isn’t necessary. Mercy only has to ask God, nobody else. She is already forgiven.”
“That may be true. But the Bible also says to honor thy father and mother.”
“And is your way of having Mercy honor you public humiliation?” Preacher Grey asked.
The Killing Tree Page 17