Under the Mercy Trees

by Heather Newton

  “He was under a bush, with leaves over him. Still, it’s hard to understand. We must’ve passed by him a dozen times.” Hodge sighed. “Do you want to call Eugenia, or do you want me to?”

  “I’d appreciate it if you would.” Bertie didn’t want to deal with Eugenia. “Tell James to call me.” They hung up, and Bertie sat down at the table and lit a cigarette.

  * * *

  After she and Leon came to their senses and she rode the bus back home to James, there was just one other time that Leon came around. It was during a winter storm, when Bobby was about two. Pine trees loaded with ice eyed the trailer. Branches popped off with a sound like rifle fire, making Bertie jump. It was just her and the kids at home. The storm had come up fast, the temperature dropping thirty degrees in an hour. James, patrolling the plant floor at work, hadn’t noticed until it was too late to get home. He called and said he was going to work the next shift, to make some overtime. The electricity went out, and the trailer got colder. Smoke puffed from the chimney of her mama’s house. Bertie could have bundled up the kids and taken them across the road, where there was a fireplace, except that her daddy tended to drink when he was stuck inside. Dacey thought it was funny when Papaw stumbled and lunged around the house, but Bertie didn’t. It was too cold to smoke outside, but she did anyway. The cold stillness calmed her some, numbing nerves that were raw and bleeding from listening to children fight, smelling baby pee, feeling the trailer shake when three children chased up and down the hall in an animal stampede. Bertie usually didn’t allow running in the house, but she was too tired to fight.

  She felt trapped in the trailer and trapped in her marriage. James ducked his head whenever he talked to her. She just wished he would yell at her, hit her even, treat her like she’d treated him so they’d finally be even and could put things behind them, but he was too gentle a man to act like that.

  She stared out on her ice-covered yard. Pines hurled widow makers. Grass frosted gray. Ice wrapped the bird feeder so that when songbirds tried to land they skidded, indignant, back into the air. And then came a man’s figure tramping up the road. It was Leon, his good shoes sinking in crusted snow. He slipped now and again as he walked and put his arms out to catch his balance.

  Bertie thought, Lord, what is he doing here. She was not in the mood for company. He made it to their porch and grabbed the post for support. His eyebrows and nose hairs had frozen silver, turning him old. He could hardly move his mouth. “Can I come in for a spell?”

  “What in the world.” She put out her cigarette and opened the door so he could get out of the cold. “The heat’s off,” she warned.

  “S’all right.” He kicked snow off his shoes and stepped inside, shedding his coat and leaving a puddle on the floor. He flexed his fingers. “I think I’m frostbit. My hands are burning.”

  She took his hands and examined them. His breath near her face smelled of cigars. His fingers were red, not white, and she let them go. “You’re okay. Blow on them. I’ll get you some warm water to soak them in.” She got a plastic bucket from under the kitchen sink and filled it with the last of the warm water in the pipes. “What were you doing out in this mess anyway?”

  He sat down at the table. “I don’t know.”

  Another man would have had an excuse ready.

  The kids came chasing into the kitchen, Bobby in just a low-riding diaper and pajama shirt, jogging along after his sisters. They didn’t pay any attention to Leon.

  “Out,” she said, but they were already chasing back down the hall. “You want a biscuit, Leon? They’re left over from breakfast, before the electricity went off. I can’t offer you anything hot.”

  “All right.” He dipped his hands in the water.

  She got him a biscuit and a paper towel and set it down on the table in front of him.

  Leon took his hands out of the water and used the paper towel to dry them off. Biscuit crumbs spilled on the table. “I got a letter.” He reached his frozen hands in his coat pocket and fumbled it out. “A fellow I knew down east when I worked there, wants me to come to Kinston and run his sawmill.”

  “That’s something.” She brushed the crumbs off the table into her hand and put them in the garbage, then pulled up a chair and sat down across from him. “You going to go?”

  “Depends.” He kind of bowed his head, creasing and recreasing the letter, then he looked up and held the envelope out to her. His Adam’s apple rose and fell in a long swallow. “We could go together.” His mouth drew up and held still. Outside, the sky turned from white to gray with late afternoon. Leon’s blue eyes squinted in the dimness of the kitchen, waiting for her answer.

  What she mainly felt was mad. Mad at the loneliness that had made her run off with him in the first place. Mad that their time together hadn’t been real. Mad that she’d ruined things with James. Mad at the smell of diaper bucket that surrounded her. Mad at Leon for pretending that they could start over, when it was so clear they never could. Anger rolled up out of her. Her hands started to shake, and it was hard to breathe. “Are you crazy?”

  Leon reached for her hand, grabbing it hard, pleading. “Come with me, Bertie. Please, girl. I think about you all the time.” He had tears in his eyes.

  “No, Leon. No. Absolutely no.” She pulled her hand away. Down the hall something crashed—the kids had broke something. Pain stabbed behind her eyes. She pressed the sides of her head. Leon’s shoulders sagged. She saw that half of him had expected her refusal.

  “Go home, Leon,” she said.

  He got up and went, picking up his coat as he left, not putting it on until he got outside. She sat at her table for a long time after he left, staring at his uneaten biscuit.

  * * *

  Leon didn’t go to Kinston. As far as she knew he never went anywhere again. He never said another word to Bertie about the two of them. When they talked after that, she watched for some hint in his eyes, any suggestion that he held on to a memory of her. There was nothing and that was fine by her.

  She pondered it at her kitchen table now. How one man could be many. First young and spirited, worth sampling at any cost. Then old, swaddled in sameness. Then finally a bundle of bones lying quiet under a bush.

  37

  Ivy

  We are first out of the church after the funeral because we sat in the back, feeling unwelcome. I stand in the churchyard with Trina and Steven. Pine knots swirl under the church’s thin white paint. Steven’s suit is too small. He has split a seam where sleeve meets coat. I paw around in my purse for a safety pin and fix it for him. I watch my relatives file out of the sanctuary. They use different doors, don’t even talk to each other. Martin stands with Liza Barnard under a tree. Hodge makes the rounds, says the right thing to whoever. Eugenia bosses the undertaker, orchestrates the drive to the family plot. James stands under a tree, fiddling with his hearing aid. Bertie holds her new grandbaby. The little girl’s red hair curls all over her head, and Bertie can’t keep her hands off her.

  Steven is about to explode. He can’t take another second with these people. “You want me to go with you to the burial, Mama?”

  “No, I’ll be ready to go home in a minute.” We have driven separate cars. Ghosts mill about, the women stern, the men sniffing for a free meal. Leon is not among them.

  The funeral director escapes from Eugenia and comes up with a clipboard to assign us a place in the car line. He is relieved when we tell him we aren’t going. He shoos other people to their cars, tells them to put their headlights on. Steps out into the street in front of the church and starts to direct traffic.

  “You ready to go, Trina?” Steven says.

  “Yeah. Hey, Mama, I’ll call you later on.” Trina kisses my cheek. They walk to Steven’s truck as the line of cars pulls out of the parking lot.

  I go to my car and leave by a back way. I have never been one for burials. Other people see them as an ending,
but I know better. I drive up the developer’s road that runs along the back of my family’s property, up to my special place. I park near enough that my knees won’t have far to go. I walk down to the creek and knock pine needles and a curled dead spider out of my jelly jar, get me a drink, and walk up to my spot.

  It’s been six months since I was here.

  The last time, I brought a towel to sit on. I heard somebody walking around the old sawmill down below and got up to see Leon down there, sorting through a pile of lumber scraps, stacking what he wanted under a juniper bush. I sat back down. He couldn’t see my car from where he was, and I didn’t have any particular need to tell him hello that day. I listened to the pleasant sound of wood tossed on wood, hollow and springy, like a baseball bat thrown down as a man heads to first base. Each toss sent an echo knocking between hill and creek.

  Somebody hollered for Leon. I recognized James’s voice. I could hear all that they said, the fall air was that clear.

  “Whatcha looking for?” James said.

  “Wormy chestnut.” Wood slid down the pile as Leon picked through it.

  “Ain’t much of that around. Remember that big tree Pop had over by the barn that died? You could make some money off that if you had it today.”

  “I’m hoping they’s some pieces of it under here, to finish a cradle I’m making for Bobby and Cherise.” Leon’s breath came fast from his efforts.

  There was a silence. I stretched up on my knees so I could see. James stood a few feet from Leon while Leon worked. He held a pair of tin snips in his right hand, and he looked a little puzzled. “Cradle? You know something I don’t?”

  Leon straightened up and faced James. From above I could see the top of Leon’s balding head, count the strands of the hair he had combed over. He looked like he was thinking hard on something. “Look here, I got something to say.” He dropped a last board on the stack he had salvaged and ground the toe of his shoe into the dirt. “I got to make it right. When Bertie left you that time—”

  “We don’t talk about that,” James said.

  “It was me.”

  James adjusted his hearing aid, like he wanted to be sure what he’d heard. “What was you, Leon?”

  “I’m the one ran off with her. If Bobby ain’t yours, he’s mine.”

  Leon was always the bigger, meaner brother, but James got in a lucky hit. The arm with the tin snips came up fast, crashed into the side of Leon’s head, sent him down into wood chips and sawdust. A single cry tore from James’s throat, the length of half a breath. He turned and stalked away toward the house.

  I saw Leon get up. I think I did. Saw him rise from where he fell, his legs bending too far at first when he tried to walk, then steadying up. Saw him stop and wipe his shoes one at a time on the back of his pants legs. Heard the soles crack dry leaves as he walked into the brush away from me. Smelled the drift of a cigar he’d lit. But that’s not all I saw, and it’s the also-sawed I’m never sure of. Did I see him keep lying there, still as a sleeping child while James raged up the hill? Did I see October wind flick back wisps of his hair, like a mother tickling him to wake up? Did deep leaves really gossip in a whisper, quilting him a cover, burying him with his wood scraps? I told myself I would tell the sheriff if he came to me and asked, tell him both tales and let him sort out which was real.

  But nobody ever asked me anything.

  WILLOBY NEWS & RECORD, April 9, 1987

  Leon Owenby of Solace Fork died on an undetermined date in October, at age 65. Mr. Owenby was an army veteran of the Second World War, during which he fought in the European theater. He worked many years for Oakley Mills and also farmed. He is survived by his sister Eugenia Nash and husband, Zebulon; sister Ivy Owenby; brother James Owenby and wife, Bertie; brother Martin Owenby; and numerous nieces and nephews. Arrangements are by Ferris Funeral Home.

  38

  Bertie

  They buried Leon in the family graveyard, lowering the casket into a rectangular hole in the hard red clay. Woods and kudzu surrounded the graveyard on three sides. Bertie and James stood up front with the rest of the family and close friends, Eugenia and Zeb, Hodge and Claudie, Bobby and Cherise with the baby, Martin standing with Liza Barnard. The other thirty or so people who had come had to find a place as best they could. The graveyard was old enough that the family couldn’t remember the names of everybody buried there. Round rocks marked the graves of babies who’d died too fast to claim a name. The older markers were split by time and weather, the carved names long worn off. Bertie looked at the other grave markers and imagined future years, when the words would be worn off Leon’s stone and whatever family came up here would have to remember him by story.

  Eugenia stood to Bertie’s right, tearful. “I know it’s the Lord’s will, but I just wish we had an answer.”

  Hodge put his arm around her. “It’s a shame the autopsy came back inconclusive.”

  Bertie looked over at Bobby and Cherise, standing to her left with the baby. For Bertie the autopsy was a prayer answered. She would have to live the rest of her life knowing what Bobby and Cherise had done to Leon, but at least her son wasn’t going to prison and Haylee would have a father. The baby started to fuss. Cherise shifted her from one arm to the other. Bertie reached for Haylee, and for once Cherise handed the baby to her without arguing. Bertie put Haylee over her shoulder, patting her back, enjoying the feel of the little head against her cheek.

  They finished lowering the coffin and that was that. People started to move, coming up to the family to say one more time that they were sorry before picking their way down the dirt road to where they’d parked.

  Bertie touched Martin’s arm. “I’d like to get those family papers back from you, if you’re done with them.”

  “I am. Your folder’s in my briefcase, in the truck.” Martin started to go get it.

  “We’ll get it. We’re going now anyway,” James said.

  Bertie gave Haylee back to Cherise and followed James out of the graveyard to where Martin’s green truck was parked, taking up half the road. James reached in the open passenger side window and fished Bertie’s folder out of Martin’s briefcase, and they went to their own truck. James was quiet, had been since they’d found the body. Bertie wondered when he would start to talk to her again.

  At the house she went in the bedroom to change into comfortable clothes, pants and a sweater and shoes that didn’t pinch. “Do you want me to make you a sandwich?” she called. James didn’t answer. She finished getting dressed and went into the kitchen.

  James was standing by the kitchen table with his head bowed. His face was stricken. She thought the day had just caught up with him, but then she looked down. The folder of family papers lay open on the table. A stack of little square black-and-white photos were spread out in a crooked fan on top of the other papers. She reached to straighten them, then saw what they were. Her. Her and Leon.

  She looked up. James turned without saying a word and pushed through the door, out to his truck. His engine started up. She ran out of the trailer after him.

  It was too bright outside. She banged on the truck hood as James drove past her, but he didn’t stop. She ran back in the house and dragged her fingers through the kitchen drawer looking for the extra keys to her parents’ car, a rusting brown Buick that sat under the sweet gum tree across the road. She found the key and ran outside. She drove only when she had to. The Buick’s pedals felt strange under her feet. She prayed the car into starting and it did. She backed out of her parents’ driveway, then put the car in drive and sped off after James, honking her horn. He ignored her. He headed out into the country, in the direction of the home place. She followed him up the winding road, the car bouncing hard in the ruts. James parked in the yard of the home place and got out.

  She stumbled out after him. “James!”

  He swung around. “Go home, Bertie.”

  “Let me e
xplain.”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  “I didn’t love him, James. I never did. I had gone invisible, is all.”

  His head hung down. His voice was a whisper. “I should have done better by you.”

  James the martyr. Suddenly she was so angry at him she could have killed him.

  “Jesus Christ, James, will you just go ahead and get mad at me for it? I slept with your brother. Don’t you care enough about me to get mad?”

  James turned away and looked at the sky, then turned toward her again and let out a breath that he seemed to have been holding forever. “How could you go and do it?” he hollered. “Leave me with those sweet little girls and just walk off! With him!” He turned around and kicked at the porch’s rotting post, making the whole house shake. He kicked it again and again, then turned back around to Bertie. “I had to tuck the girls in those nights and explain away why their mama didn’t love them enough to stay, didn’t love me enough to stay. Dacey cried the whole time. You put us through hell, woman.” He commenced kicking again. Hornets whose nests held the post together came out to see what the commotion was about. “I was a good husband to you, Bertie Owenby,” he yelled, kicking slower now and breathing harder. “I am a good husband to you, and you are just a woman who will never be happy with what you’ve got.” The porch post gave way, and James backed into her as part of the porch roof fell down in a splintering of wood and a buzz of surprised insects. She caught him in her arms, and they both sat back hard on the ground. The house stood stunned by James’s assault.

  The air seemed clear, cleansed by James’s fire. Bertie breathed it in, laid her cheek on the top of James’s head and breathed him in. “I am happy with what I’ve got.”

  They watched hornets circle the house in confusion. Finally, James moved. He got up and walked over to the end of the porch and picked something up, a baby cradle, partly finished. He held it up, running his hands over the unsanded parts, examining the dovetails that held the sides together. “I need to do the rest.”