“He has ways of killing that look legal. Like my momma. He never even had to touch her to kill her. And he’ll find a way to do it to us,” I said, rubbing my belly.
We had lots of ideas. I always fell back to the arsenic in the tobacco.
“First of all,” Della said impatiently, “where in the hell are you gonna find arsenic? And secondly, it can be traced! They trace that stuff on TV all the time! You got a baby to raise. Both its parents can’t be locked away in jail.”
I winced. Since my promise to the baby that I wouldn’t choke it with grief, I had tried not to think about its daddy, locked away in jail. The baby stirred and I thought that I could feel her gasp. So I whispered her song. A song that Della had learned now too, she had heard it so many times.
“Well what do you suggest?” I asked.
“I say we get somebody else to do it. Make it look like a robbery. Let ’em ransack the place, and beat him ’til he’s dead,” she said evenly.
“Who?”
“We’ll hire somebody. There’s lots of desperate people that are willing to do anything. Even kill an old man.”
“But we don’t have any money, Della. We’ve spent it all on diapers and black jelly beans!”
“There’s other currencies,” she said. “You know that by now.”
“No, that’s your momma’s type of money. And it just leaves everybody more broke. Besides, this job is too important. I can’t trust it to nobody else. It’s going to have to be me.”
I thought about how surprised he would be when I didn’t dance around him. I was going to dance with him, through him, over him, until he was dead.
“Well how are you going to do it?” she asked.
“I’m going to drown him. There’s a stream, not too far into the woods. It used to have wild morning glories growing around it. I’m going to drown him in it.”
“How on earth are you going to hold that man under-water?”
“Sleepy tea. Mamma Rutha drugs him all the time. I’ll make sure he’s stone dead asleep. Then I’ll drag him to the stream and lay him facedown. I’ll bring his fishing pole too and lay it in his hand. It’ll look like he’s been fishing and just keeled over dead. It’s perfect.”
“You think you can drag him?” she asked.
“To keep my baby safe, I could drag this mountain.”
I walked home that night with new energy. Finally, I had a plan to protect my baby. I started tracing the path to the stream every night. Memorizing its curves. Pushing back its brambles. Making it a smooth death walk.
Chapter XXXVI
After Father Heron left for church, I started crushing Mamma Rutha’s hidden crumbles into a fine powder. I stared out the windows, at the dark clouds of a storm brewing. And I thought it was a sign. The stream would surely be full from the rain.
I brewed some extra-sweet tea. It was death tea. “Shall we dance, Father Heron?” I whispered as I slid it into the fridge.
But someone else wanted to dance with me that day. Tapped out with the pulsing rhythms of my womb. Curl graze snap. Twirled around the blood of my body. At first I thought I had just spilled the tea. A gushing flow down my legs. But the tea was still steady, not a drop had spilled.
You can’t come yet! I wanted to scream to my baby. It’s not safe. Just give me one more day. I felt her tug at my womb. She was itching to dance.
“You’ve got to stop,” I whispered to her. “You’ve got to give me more time. Just one more day.”
I laid down in my bed, willing my body to get control of itself and make those dull pains disappear. “It’s okay. There’s no pain there. You’re not having this baby,” I whispered to myself. When the pains would leave I would celebrate. That’s it. Just a warning. Like a fire drill.
But the alarm kept going off, and as the pain grew stronger I knew that it wasn’t a drill. I got out of bed and began to pace. Back and forth I walked for hours. I counted the tiles in the ceiling. One two three . . . fifteen, sixteen . . . twenty, twenty-one. And then the pain would come and I would brace myself against my bed, moaning into my pillow. Then, one two three . . . fifteen, sixteen . . . More pain. Harder, longer. It was a hot pain, like the seventh son’s hands but longer and sharper. One two three . . . five six . . . oh God the pain. I was in bed again. Flat on my back. Chewing on my hand as I stifled my screams. Blood trickled down my wrist. The taste of copper filled my mouth. There wasn’t time to count between the pains.
“I can’t survive this. God, protect my baby,” I whispered.
Mamma Rutha was there now, singing and moving her hands over my belly. But I only saw pain. I breathed it. I screamed it. I ate it. She started yelling for me to do something, but I couldn’t hear her. Because with every pulse of my womb my baby was singing her song. She was there all along, through all the losses. Pain. Hot coals, filling my belly. It is filled with Eyes that see. Fingers that clutch. A Heart that pulses. Pain. Gnawing my insides, ripping my body. She feeds off my bones. My blood. My breath. My soul. Pain. Spilling my blood over the bed. She has eyes like sunflowers floating on deep river pools. Pain. Tearing away the life that had rooted inside of me. She is love. She is her father. She is my new song. My Song Baby.
There was a cry that was really a laugh. A pain that was really a joy. As she clawed her way out of me, I saw bars swinging open. I saw the Fire Trout, free and swimming away. I heard his voice in her cry. You got glory all around you, Mercy. As she laid upon my stomach, with red hands covered in our blood, I saw him. He lived again. Because of her. I lived again too.
“Thank you. Oh thank you,” I whispered. She was my feast. After all the great losses.
Mamma Rutha was standing over me. Blessing my baby and rubbing her down. We were loving her cry. So full of life. Little lungs belting an angry song. My beautiful Song Baby.
“She needs a name. What have you chosen?”
I hadn’t chosen a name. She had picked it herself. Her father had picked it. I just whispered it over her. “Glory. Glory Trucha Price.” A holy moment.
“That’s a fine name, Mercy baby. A real fine name.”
Mamma Rutha was smiling, and her eyes were shining. My Song Baby was a healer too. Easing our soul hurts. But we were still in danger. There was a noise outside of an old truck pulling in the driveway. And Glory was still screaming her song.
“Shhh. Shhh. Glory, please. We aren’t safe. Please be quiet,” I begged.
Mamma Rutha’s eyes flashed wild and dangerous. She began grabbing bloody sheets and stuffing them under the bed. She half carried me into my closet and pulled the clothes around me and Glory. I was a jelly jar secret.
“You stay here ’til I get him sleepy. Then we’ll get you and Glory to the top of the mountain. You’ll be safe there ’til we figure something else out.”
We hid in the closet. The smell of old pig smoke surrounding us. Glory was making soft little gurgling noises. Whispering her song. She sensed the danger that stood silent on the other side of the wall.
“Have some tea, Wallace,” I heard Mamma Rutha say.
“Not thirsty, Rutha.”
Glory made a sharp, squealing noise.
“What was that?” he asked.
“What?”
“That noise?”
“Oh, a bird. There was a bird’s nest fell out of the oaks this morning,” she said.
He walked into the living room. Heavy footsteps on an old wood floor.
“Didn’t sound like no bird to me.”
“Shhh, Glory,” I whispered. “Sing around him, not at him.”
But Glory wasn’t like me, she was free. She opened her little mouth and sang. Loud and strong. Daring the silence to come find us. Comefind us, she sang. I am not afraid of the silence, she screamed.
It was all a blur. The smell of rotted apples on old hands reaching out for me. Reaching for my Glory. “Shame!” he screamed. “Your bastard!”
“No!” I cried.
I ran out the back door. Just like I had run with my Sa
lly doll. I was still half naked, blood running down my legs. But I didn’t feel the pain, I just smelled the fear that swallowed me. Please don’t burn my Sally doll!
I fell. Letting my shoulder smash into the ground to protect my Glory. She was screaming so loud. Or was that me? I started crawling away from him. My hands gripping wet grass, dragging my broken body up the death path. A boot pushed down on my back. Pinning me to the ground. My body pressed full against my screaming Glory.
“Hand her to me,” he said.
“No,” I cried. “I won’t let you kill her like you killed Momma. Like you killed Naomi.”
His boot pressed firmer.
“Hand her to me,” he said. “I won’t have this kind of sin in my house.”
He kicked me in the head. I felt the blood squirt across my eyes. I felt Glory leave my hands. I heard her screaming. Or was that me? Where was he taking her? To a fire? Please don’t burn my Sally doll! She was screaming so loud. And then stillness. A murderous silence. I tried to stand up, but I was so dizzy. I could only see out of one eye because of the blood that was pouring over my face. So I started dragging myself toward the silence. I could hear it all. Blood. Murder. Locked doors.
The woods began to hum, as the storm finally settled in on the mountain. Washing the wounds of my body, thrashing the limbs of the apple tree. Through the blood on my eyes I saw him carry Glory to the back door. His hand was on the doorknob. And I screamed for him to wait. I knew that he was taking her inside, to his silent death cage.
His hand started to turn the knob, but it held still.
“What in God’s name is going on here?” he muttered.
“An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A man for a child. A locked door for a locked door,” Mamma Rutha sang as she appeared next to him.
“You’re crazy, Rutha,” he yelled.
“An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A man for a child. A locked door for a locked door,” she sang loudly.
He ran around the house to the front door. It was locked too. He returned to the back door and banged on it. He kicked it. He screamed. Open this door!
Lightning crashed and instinctively he ducked. I started dragging myself toward him. And as lightning flashed again, I saw him run and crouch underneath the apple tree.
Mamma Rutha was screaming her song now, standing in the middle of the rain, arms stretched toward a sun that refused to shine. Glory joined her, and the two of them sang louder than the storm, while I continued to drag myself toward Father Heron.
I was close enough to see him clearly.
“You don’t have to burn her, Father Heron,” I heard myself say. “I don’t love her more than Jesus. She’s our gift from him. Fresh from his lap. Can’t you smell heaven on her?”
He looked up at me, and behind the hatred in his black eyes I saw misery. Killing was never easy.
“She is Mary’s child too,” I whispered, dragging myself closer. “Look at her, the way she screams, already trying to do just as she pleases. Just like Mary. Give her time, she’ll climb trees. Give her time, and she’ll learn to fish.”
He looked down at her and choked back a sob. He laid her gently on the wet ground. The coldness startled her, and she waved her arms as she screamed. I reached for her, pulled her beneath my body, never daring to look up at him. I crawled, slowly to keep the rain off her, into the shed. We hid behind the tiller. I swaddled her in old potato sacks.
It was a long dark night, with a storm even worse than the one when I was thirteen that twisted the old hickory. Glory slept, wrapped tightly in the dusty sacks, our birth blood still smeared across her little body. I shivered as I kept watch. With every crash of thunder I jumped. Wondering if it was him, hunting us down. With every flash of lightning, my eyes hurriedly searched our surroundings to see if he was close. And with every breath I took, I placed my hand upon Glory’s chest to make sure that she took one too.
Eventually, the rain slowed. The wind grew calm. Glory woke and turned in to me, her little mouth open and hungry. I offered her my breast, and felt for the first time the tugging burn that accompanies the sweet joy of nursing a baby. I heard her swallow, and she began to suck greedily, my eyes watering with the burn. I cradled her in that filthy shed, dried blood caked on our bodies, and thought about the pure white milk that flowed freely between us.
“On the day you were born,” I whispered, remembering Mamma Rutha and the withered fig, “you were not washed in water to cleanse you, nor wrapped in cloths. You were thrown out into the open field. And when I passed by you, and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you, Live! Yes, I said to you in your blood, Live!”
Chapter XXXVII
I brought myself to the apple tree that had been fed with so much of our blood. I stood over him and looked at his face, framed by young apple leaves. At his hands, clenching the heavy apple wood that fell across him. At the black eyes opened in surprise. Things look smaller when they’re dead. It’s like breathing gives more than life. It gives size too. And shape. The man whose danger had always loomed so large before me, looked small. As I stood looking down on him, it was hard for me to grasp, that he was what had terrified me. That he was what had killed my momma. Had almost killed my Glory. He was so small.
I looked at the apple tree. Its twisted trunk. The branches broken and scattered. And even though it shouldn’t have, it looked like every other tree. With bright yellow wood, smelling of sap. Gray bark, soggy from the storm. As it lay across my Father Heron, there was nothing unique about that killing tree.
I left him, my felled Goliath. And when spring warmed the mountain I bought packets of seeds to sow at Father Heron’s grave. Sunflowers and morning glories. I laughed when I read the inscription on the stone. The preacher had picked it. Eternal Peace in Glory.
The last time I saw Mamma Rutha was the same morning I found Father Heron. She waved to me from the edge of the woods.
“I’m going home now,” she said. “I love you, Mercy baby.”
I nodded, my hand still raised in the air long after she had disappeared. When she had been gone for two months, the police decided that nobody could survive that long in the wilderness. Especially not Crazy Rutha. Since I was the sole Heron survivor, I owned the square white cage. And I sold it. I waved goodbye to the apple tree trunk and the two gardens and tucked a twenty-seven-thousand-dollar check in my pocket.
Then I made the long walk down to the riverbottom, one last time. Things had changed so much since I walked it last. I wasn’t a new bride anymore. I was a momma. Glory was in my arms, and Della was by my side.
We found the old brown truck. It was still parked in the same spot Trout left it. I searched around in the bed, where I knew he hid the spare key. It started on the first try, and headed smoothly off the mountain. It was as ready to leave as I was.
“What are you doing?” Della asked, when I slowed to a stop.
“One thing left. Watch Glory, I’ll be back soon.”
I walked straight into the woods and headed back up the mountain. My mind was buzzing with memories. And I was humming my song, the one that Mamma Rutha always sang for me. It all made sense then, why it said that love is just as strong as death, but not stronger. I had my living Glory, but I lost her daddy. Love goes on after death, but love can’t stop it from coming.
I walked up the mountain until I saw it. The terebinth tree. I looked at the grave that held my momma’s dying. It was still neatly groomed. Mamma Rutha had been by, maybe she was even watching me. I fell to my knees and started digging. Deeper and deeper. Until the earth became too hard and I couldn’t dig any more. I leaned over the grave.
“Mercy,” I cried out. “Mercy. Mercy!”
Then I ran as fast as I could off that mountain. Trees, animals, dirt, all blurred past me. I heard the call. Loud and strong. And I thought of Elsa. Maybe he put you here, so he could call you to him there.
Della was dancing around the truck with Glory in her arms.
“Where you be
en, little momma?”
“Saying goodbye to someone,” I said, as I started the truck again. “By the way, did I ever tell you where we’re going they got little huts on the beach that sell ice cream?”
I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Crooktop looming behind me. I thought about how I really was looking in Trout’s mirror after all. I searched deeper, and saw my own black eyes staring back at me. Call me Naomi, I whispered. I am Naomi.
Reading Group Guide
As Mercy walks through the August downpour to the Miners’ Credit Union she wonders whether she looks crazy and decides “sometimes crazy is just the best choice.” How is this statement true as her journey continues? In your life, has “crazy” ever been the best choice?
Was Mamma Rutha a good mother figure for Mercy?
What did Trout mean when he said to Mercy, “Maybe what you think is all messed up is the reason why I saw glory all over you”? Compare this to Mercy’s earlier comment about wild morning glories’ being “weeds that didn’t know they were beautiful.”
Were you surprised to learn that Father Heron was once a beloved “daddy” to Mary? Why do you think he locked the door?
Mercy spends her childhood being punished for not living up to the “holy” standards set by Father Heron. Yet Mercy arrives at church with her “heart full of hope” and continues to ponder God’s design and call throughout her journey. Why is Mercy able to separate her fear and hatred for Father Heron from her feelings and questions about God?
Why was twelve-year-old Mercy so desperate for Mamma Rutha’s blessings that she was willing to give up food for two days in order to earn them back? Which hunger do you think was worse, the one for blessings or the one for food?
If she hadn’t gone into labor, do you think Mercy would have murdered Father Heron? If so, would that have changed your feelings toward her?
How do some of the characters’ names further explain the characters (Mercy, Trout, Mary)? Why does Mercy call her grandmother Mamma Rutha and call her grandfather Father Heron?
The Killing Tree Page 24