Broken Branch (2 page)

Mouthing the words had been the start of it all, Trudy realized as James shifted from “The Old Rugged Cross” to “Amazing Grace.” That and the fervor she had seen in Otto and James on that Sunday morning so long ago.

The war had just ended, and Trudy was only fifteen, still living with her father, a deeply conservative man who had demanded they be at church every Sunday. The church had been a traditional one, full of ritual and liturgy. As a young girl, Trudy remembered sitting there wishing she understood it all, wishing she could feel something when it was time to sing other than the dread of another long-winded and dry hymn. Once, she had asked her father about the prayers they had to recite. She'd wanted to know what they meant, why they said them.

He was a taciturn man, seemingly without a personality, though she'd heard some of her aunts and uncles say he had only grown that way in the years since Trudy's mother died. That didn't do Trudy any good because she could no more remember his happier years than she could her mother. Yet she loved her father and wanted deeply to understand the things that motivated him, made him tick. Church was an easy one. It had to be important if he went every Sunday, if he said every prayer and stood and knelt on time with a reverence Trudy could only hope to emulate.

They'd been walking home from church on a nice spring day when she asked him. He looked at her for a moment like he thought it an odd question, then stopped walking.

“I don't really know,” he said.

“So why do you say them?”

He cocked his head, and Trudy was excited to see that he was really considering her question. Usually, the most she got from him was a shrug or a monosyllabic answer that could be negative or affirmative.

“I suppose I'm afraid not to.”

Then he began to walk again, not waiting for her to catch up.

That was when she'd stopped saying the words in church, and instead only moved her mouth, pretending to say them, which she did only to keep up appearances.

•   •   •

A few years later, her father lay on his deathbed in a Birmingham hospital. He held her hand and cried. He told her that he was afraid because you had to believe in God or go to hell, but the truth—the deep, deep truth that he'd never told anyone—was that he had never believed in any of it. He'd wanted to, but wanting to believe wasn't the same as really believing.

It was an admission that at first confused Trudy and later haunted her. How could someone fake it for so long? At what point did that kind of lie start to corrode a person from the inside out?

She made up her mind right then, as she continued to clasp his lifeless hand, not to ever live a lie like he had.

•   •   •

After her father's death and she had received her sizable inheritance, she went on to the university as planned but felt uninspired by the choice of majors available to her. She settled on nursing, though she often caught herself looking longingly at the religious studies building. The fact was, she was still searching for something, and her father's admission to her made it seem even more urgent that she find it.

This was when she started writing in the back of one of her nursing notebooks. It started innocently enough, just a line or two here and there, but soon she was writing pages about her inner life, her thoughts, her struggles over what she believed and why she believed it. When she dropped out of college a few months later, the notebook came with her. When that one was filled with ink, she replaced it with others.

For a while, those notebooks were her life. Her past, present, and future spilled out in black cursive. She rarely went back to reread any of the entries, but writing them became a kind of catharsis for her, and each entry, no matter how mundane or short, always seemed to come around to her search. For what? the pages asked.

For something larger than me.
This, always the vague answer.

When she'd met Otto and James singing their spirituals just outside of Montgomery, something inside her had shouted that this could be it. She'd volunteered to accompany some of the nursing students to a poor region of the state where they were to offer free care for the rural farmers and their families. But Trudy had quickly wandered away, drawn by the sounds of singing and guitars that she heard across the river. There, she found a small crowd of people gathered outside a barn. James and Otto were in the front singing spirituals. James played the guitar like it was some appendage God had sewn to him at birth, just so He might be more glorified. And when he strummed it, each vibrating note was filled with the passion that had been so absent in her father's church. And Otto—Lord, Otto had been the one she fancied first—had sung like an angel, and spoke in mysterious tongues when the spirit moved him, and testified in fever about the redeeming blood of the lamb.

She left the university the next week and traveled with them, town to town, revival to revival. Now she saw her foolishness, but then she was too blind, too hopeful that what they sang about was real.

She switched from Otto to James because Otto didn't seem interested in anything but the Lord. James, though, was kind to her and sometimes she caught him staring at her when he should have been praying or focusing on worship. She figured this meant he fancied her, although she couldn't really make out how she felt about him. But since she wasn't really looking for a man as much as she was looking for God, she didn't think on it too much and just let herself be swept up in the majesty of giving her life to God completely. The only way that seemed possible was to give herself to James completely as well.

The rest had happened quickly, like nightfall at the end of a winter's day. She'd used the money left from her father to purchase the land for Broken Branch. All of it. She could tell herself that at the time she'd believed the land would be blessed by God and they would isolate themselves in purity from the rest of the world, a world that Otto had explained to them was ate up with war and hatred and perverted sexual desire.

“Here,” he had said, standing under the big oak tree in the clearing, “We will make a life for ourselves and our children. A godly life, untouched by the outside world.” He'd looked around then, as if really seeing the place for the first time. He looked up at the outstretched branches of the oak. One branch was broken, hanging down, supported by other limbs. Otto stood on the tips of his toes and clutched a part of it, pulling it toward him. Once he got his hands around the thick part of the branch, he twisted it hard and pulled it free. “Like this branch, we were once a part of the world, but now we are broken free and will become our own tree, watered and tended in the spilled blood of the Lamb.”

He smiled broadly. “Here in Broken Branch, we will find refuge from the storm.”

But he'd been wrong, Trudy realized, as James struck up the next hymn. Sooner or later, the storm always finds you.

That evening after she'd seen the children to bed, Trudy sat thinking about those old notebooks. She'd put them somewhere in the cellar, far out of sight, in a place she hoped James would never look. But even if he did, he was unlikely to read them. They weren't the Word, and James had long ago established that he felt reading anything besides the Bible was a worthless endeavor, a waste of the time God had given you. Maybe she'd go down and pull them out sometime. Maybe, she thought, feeling just the tiniest ripple of excitement, she'd even start writing again.

It was a nice thought, but she knew it wasn't going to happen. Not with Rodney and Mary to take care of. Not with what was happening in Broken Branch. Still . . . the urge was strong.

She shook her head, dismissing the thought. She needed to talk with James. He was outside, smoking on the porch. This was his ritual, and he always sat out there no matter the weather. Sometimes, if she was feeling lonely, Trudy joined him. Lately, she chose to stay inside, lonely or not. She'd become honest enough to admit to herself that she didn't love him, that she had in fact never loved him. Still, she'd made a commitment before God that had to be honored so she carried on as best she could.

For James's part, he didn't seem to mind the coldness that had come into their bed. After the children had been born, he seemed to grow less enthusiastic about those things, claiming he felt awkward doing such in front of the Lord.

Trudy had gained weight, but she was still pretty. She kept her hair shorter now than she had when she'd met James, but it was still dark and thick, and when she found time to wash it in the creek, she'd even call it luxurious. The weight she'd added in the last few years wasn't too bad because she was tall enough to carry it well. She'd often caught other men—like Ben Turner for one—staring at her. Despite the satisfaction she gained from knowing other men still found her attractive, James's lack of desire hurt her in ways she couldn't explain.

So she grew used to being lonely, and on this evening, her decision to join him had less to do with loneliness than curiosity. She wanted to see how James felt about Otto's sermon from earlier.

“It's cold out,” she said, placing a blanket over him.

He smiled. “You are a good wife, Trudy.”

She wanted to tell him he was wrong, that not only was she not a good wife anymore, but she wasn't even sure she wanted to continue being a wife at all, at least not his wife. Instead, she put on the smile she thought he'd like to see and sat down in the chair next to him.

“What did you think of Otto's message this morning?” she said.

He shrugged. “The man speaks the truth. Always has. It's why I wanted to settle here when he bought the land.”

Trudy resisted correcting him. Otto hadn't bought the land.
Trudy
had bought it. Sure, Otto had handled the paperwork, but Trudy had written the check to the bank. She owned it, yet she knew reminding James of such a thing would be useless.

“Of course,” she said.

“Something on your mind?”

“It's just that . . .” she hesitated, fearing she might be making a mistake. Her faith was weak, and she hated to reveal the weakness to James, but she couldn't help it. Not this time.

“It's just that the Watsons were good people. No different than anyone, James. You remember Horace. He used to sit and smoke with you at night. And Cecily was always ready to lend a hand when someone needed it. I just don't—”

He turned on her suddenly. James was not a man to anger easily, so she was taken aback when she saw it flash in his eyes. “Let me ask you something, Trudy. Are you God?”

“James, of course I'm not God. It's just—”

“Then you don't have nothing to say about it.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “I can't have an opinion because I'm not God?”

“It's not that, Trudy.” He softened a little and touched her arm gently. “The fact is we don't know what was in their hearts. The sin that reigned in there.”

“Exactly!” she said. “We don't know.”

“You didn't let me finish,” he said calmly, and suddenly she wished he was still angry. His stubborn adherence to calmness and kindness made her crazy. It made her want to give in to the demon she felt inside her, so she could lash out at him in anger.

“Finish,” she said sharply.

“We don't know their hearts exactly, but God has provided plenty of evidence through his storm that they were not pleasing to him. We shouldn't dwell on things like this, Trudy. It leads to discontent, and discontent leads to sin, and sin leads to the devil, and—”

This time, Trudy interrupted him. “The devil leads to God's wrath.”

She'd heard him say such things so many times, and she realized that the order and comforting familiarity of such a statement somehow was an anodyne to James, a soothing pacifier for a man who was afraid to be a man.

Two more storms came, neither as bad as the one that took the Watsons, but bad enough. Three homes were damaged, and one of the Newtons' dogs had been crushed beneath their porch when a branch from the oak tree slammed into the front of their house. Worse, the second storm had taken the roof off the church, something people claimed in whispers was a sign.

Trudy helped with the cleanup, just thankful that no one had been hurt this time. She tried not to think about the possibility that the whispers were true and that God was displeased with them all.

The last two storms gave rise to the inevitable. People began to talk of leaving. It wasn't discussed in front of Otto or James or a few other men, like Earl Talbot and Franklin Meyers, but the women who washed clothes at the creek discussed it openly enough. After a quick glance around to make sure Rachel, Otto's wife, wasn't with them, Trudy joined in enthusiastically. She even volunteered that she'd consider leaving without James, which caused the other women to look at her sternly as if she'd just committed some unforgivable sin. After that, they worked in silence, dipping their husbands' work shirts in the cold water and scrubbing them with rocks until the darkest stains were almost gone, though no amount of scrubbing, Trudy realized, would ever remove them completely.

She kept one eye on Rodney as she worked. Since the attacks started, she tried to never let him out of her sight and that meant bringing him along with her when she worked. The other women questioned her about it at first, but eventually became accustomed to his presence. Rodney was mouse-quiet and usually played off to the side by himself, never disturbing any of them. In fact, the only time his presence seemed to cause any of the women any consternation was when one of them tried to engage him in conversation. He was nearly eight, an age when a child was expected to respond. When he didn't, the women took it for a slowness, or worse, a kind of calculated rudeness. Trudy understood it was neither. Rodney was quiet and different, but he was still only a boy, and he had plenty of time to grow up. He clung to her fiercely, and the attacks only made this worse. The other women just didn't understand, she thought.

Since bringing him along, she'd only had to leave twice when she saw the signs of an attack coming. Both times, she managed to get him away from the other women in time. When she returned, she told them he went to play with some of the other children. No one seemed suspicious so far, and she hoped her luck would hold out.

It was only as she was packing up her basket at the end of the day that Trudy saw Rachel a few yards down from them. The drooping branches of a willow tree had concealed her from the other women as they'd talked, and Trudy knew she'd be all too eager to report to Otto exactly what the women had said.

She hated Rachel for many reasons, both petty and worthwhile. She hated her for being beautiful, for always looking polished and attractive, even after having two children, even after a long day's work in the fields. She hated her for her voice, which always sounded sweet and made men turn their heads away from their tasks to see her. She hated her because their eyes always lingered, taking in her femininity, which seemed to pour off her in waves. But most of all, Trudy hated Rachel because of her attitude. Her smugness, and the delight she seemed to take in the misery of others.

Yes, she would certainly report all of it to Otto.

Let her,
Trudy thought, but the sentiment sounded more confident than she genuinely felt.