The Killing Tree (16 page)

“Not unless you’ve met your half quota by noon.”

“You think I will?”

“That was an hour ago, Mercy. You only had six. When you find a mater that ain’t quite perfect, but ain’t all bad either,
eat that.”

I ate two flawed tomatoes for lunch, and began to pick up my pace so that I wouldn’t miss dinner. I cursed myself for complaining
about my diner job. Carrying pork platters was nothing compared to dragging twenty crates of tomatoes to the loading dock.
As the afternoon dragged on, I knew Boss was right. I was too weak for this type of work. And if the Mexicans could’ve told
the truth, they would’ve said they were too. I started dreaming about baths filled with ice chips. And tried not to holler
too loud when a yellowjacket stung me.

Evening came. Trout met his quota and I was four crates behind. He bundled tomatoes from other rows in his shirt and snuck
them into my crates. By nightfall, I was finished. Twenty crates, all approved by Boss.

“Don’t look like you’ll make it back tomorrow.” Boss laughed. “Them maters beat you down.”

I collapsed in Trout’s tent, forgetting to eat supper.

“It won’t always be like this,” Trout whispered, rubbing my aching muscles. “We get to Florida there’ll be other work for
a girl like you. There’s restaurants there, and shoppin’ malls. I hear they even have little huts that sell ice cream by the
ocean. I could see you workin’ a job like that, couldn’t you?”

Before I found the strength to answer, it was a new day. With a new quota.

“At least twenty-two per man today. Gotta finish this field up ’fore frost comes. And there’ll be crate-and-a-half bonus pay
for every crate over. And beer too for any man that hits twenty-five.”

The migrants cheered and ran to get their crates, eager for the extra pay and beer.

“I won’t get twenty-two,” I told Trout. “You go for the bonus, that’s good money we need. Don’t waste your maters on me.”

Trout and some others headed for a far field, where the tomatoes were the heaviest. I stopped at the first row I came to,
and started picking. It was hotter that day than before. And I didn’t worry much about whether the tomatoes were rotten or
not. I passed the time thinking about a little hut by the ocean, where I could spend my days selling ice cream.

“You’re picking rot,” Boss yelled. He picked a tomato out of my crate and threw it at me. As I wiped the rotten juice off
my face, he picked up my entire crate and dumped it beside me.

“Would you eat that?” he yelled. “Here, take a bite of this one! You think that’s fit for eating?” He shoved a black tomato
in my face. I turned my head away and forced myself to hold back my tears. “Don’t put nothing rotten in that crate or I’ll
make you eat it next time.”

I sat down on the ground and began sorting the dumped tomatoes.

“It’s the skin,” a girl whispered to me. I could see her staring at me through the leaves, from the other side of my row.

“Pinch the skin to see if it gives. If it sinks in deep and doesn’t press back at all, it’s too ripe. You want the skin to
push back some.”

“Thanks,” I whispered.

“Here,” she said, pushing several tomatoes on the ground over to me. “Boss don’t want you to make your quota. He likes it
when new girls don’t.”

I started picking again, determined to meet my quota. I no longer thought about my body. Or the bees. I was too busy worrying
over Boss. I dragged crate after crate to the docks. All full of pinched tomatoes. And when I collapsed in Trout’s tent that
night, I couldn’t help but wonder at how the world was still the same. The mountains might have disappeared. But enemies hadn’t.
Neither had fear.

T
he days passed slowly, like my rows of tomatoes. My body learned to struggle through the work. And my heart learned how to
love Trout freely. There was no need to be careful anymore. He kissed me hard in the middle of the tentworld. And at night
he led me to the fields and laid me down among the rows. Our love was as ripe as the harvest.

“It’s always gonna be like this,” Trout whispered one night. The smell of tomatoes curled around us, and I wished that was
all there was. No white bosses. No quotas.

“I mean, you won’t work like this always,” he said. “I’ll do better by you in Florida. But the rest of it, the holdin’ you
in my arms and the havin’ you as my own, none of that’s gonna change.”

“That’s all I want,” I whispered. “If I can have that, I’ll pick these maters forever.”

“Look there,” he said, pointing to the full moon. “That was made for people like you.”

“I can’t see nothing in it. Mamma Rutha could’ve.”

“C’mon,” he said, smiling. “Just try.”

I laid back on the dirt, my face turned up to the sky, and stared hard into the moon. I noticed for the first time the shades
of gray swirling in with the light. And how even those dark spots glowed.

“I see us by the ocean,” I whispered. “And when we kiss we can taste the salt in the air. Nobody knows that you’re a mater
migrant. Or that I’m the deacon’s granddaughter. Nobody cares that we’re in love.”

“Any babies in that moon?” He laughed.

I laughed too.

“It’s a big moon, Mercy. Too big for just us,” he teased.

“Don’t know about babies, but right there,” I said, pointing to the moon, “that dark spot there, you see it? That’s you catching
a big ocean fish and making up some story about how you set its belly on fire.”

Sometimes we stayed in the rows until we fell asleep, like Adam and Eve lost in the garden. But we found happiness back in
the tentworld too. It was a place where everyone tried to make up for hard days by being as jolly as possible. Most of the
migrants understood some English, and I was quickly learning the most necessary Spanish phrases. Like,
Maldiga el diablo blanco al infierno
for “Damn the White Devil to hell.” White Devil, that’s what we called Boss.

Many of the migrants had known Trout for years. Trout would sit and talk with them about old times—the fields they used to
work, the bosses they loved or hated. I listened and learned more of his secrets. Like how he cried the first time he left
the mountains. He was a young boy frightened to learn that his world didn’t go on forever.
Trucha que llora
, they called him, the Weeping Trout. I learned about his first love too, Marta.
She made you weep again, Trucha
, the migrants teased. He had been sixteen when he loved her. Neither one understood the other’s language. They spent hours
sitting by each other, smiling and staring. When her family went back to Mexico and took her with them, Trout’s heart was
broken.

I listened to these stories about Marta, and tried to smother my questions.
Was she beautiful? What if she came back from Mexico one day?

“He loves you more,” an old woman leaned over to whisper to me. They called her Madre. She had worked the fields for decades,
and earned the respect of everyone. If the rows at this camp had a leader, it was her. “I saw him with Marta,” she said. “And
after her, there was no other ’til you. You are the great one for him.”

“Thank you, Madre,” I whispered, as my face flushed with emotion. It didn’t matter if Marta was beautiful. I was the great
one.

I found other mothers in the tentworld too. Women that were happy to teach me things that no other woman ever had. Like how
to season foods. How to take simple, earthy ingredients like beans and tomatoes and give them full interesting flavors with
some fresh peppers and a little salt. Or how to wash my clothes by hand, using only river water and a smooth rock. They taught
me how to make a man comfortable, with a good meal and a cozy tent. They even tried to dress me up. They braided my hair with
red ribbons, and called me their Mercia. I wasn’t white to them anymore. I was their daughter, their sister. The blisters
in my palms proved it.

There were even a handful of children. Always giggling and begging Trout to teach them to fish. They were lost to any world
outside of the fields. They never went to school. Or to a doctor. Most were born among the rows, their mommas’ labor assisted
by Madre’s capable hands. They spent their days under a shade tree, where Lila, a fourteen-year-old girl, watched them and
taught them how to draw letters in the dirt.

Our world was one of order. Where women tended to meals, while men fished, brought firewood, and carried water. It was a safety
I had never known. The only thing that made me uneasy was Boss. I hadn’t told Trout about what happened with him. I just made
sure I pinched all of my tomatoes. I passed over the ones that even hinted of not pressing back. And I met my quotas. No matter
how hard it was. I didn’t eat, not even a bite of overripe tomato, until I met that quota. My body was suffering for it too.
My hunger left me. When morning came I would smell those tomatoes, the same scent that I loved at night, and vomit.

“Too skinny,” Madre told me. “Bring a tortilla to the rows.”

“It’s my stomach,” I said. “Boss has got me tied up in knots.”

She nodded her head. “Camp almost over. Big Boss in Florida is nice. You like him. You be safe there.”

I’m safe
, I thought. For the first time in my life, it was clear how to avoid the danger. Just meet my quota.

But one day, my stomach wouldn’t settle. I crouched between tomato plants and heaved. I tried to force myself to eat a tomato.
But as soon as I pressed its skin to my mouth, I would gag. I couldn’t stop heaving. I looked at the dirt, and when no one
was looking, I tasted it. Just a few grains pressed between my teeth. Salty grit. I stopped shaking. My body grew calm.

“Been out here two hours already, don’t have a crate yet,” Boss hollered down the row. I nodded at him and started pinching
tomatoes.

But I was weak. My body worked too hard to lose the little food I gave it. I dragged crate after crate to the loading docks.
But by evening, I only had fourteen. The quota had been twenty-one.

“What’s wrong?” Trout asked when he saw my quota sheet. “You sick or somethin’?”

“No. Yes. I mean I was this morning. And then I just couldn’t do it anymore. What’s Boss gonna do?”

“Nothin’ too bad. Just look down at the ground and say Sir to him.”

He was coming toward me. Marching with straight shoulders, his gut pushed out. “What’d I tell you, Mercy? First day I hired
you, what’d I say? I said I wouldn’t cut you no breaks. And now you’re a full third short of what you were ordered to pick.”

“Sorry sir.”

“Well, it may be nighttime, but you ain’t finished. You get back out there, and you pick seven more crates. And don’t come
back ’til you’re done.”

“Sir,” Trout said. “It’s dark, she can’t tell what’s rotten and what ain’t.”

“She can once she brings ’em to me. You pick ’em, bring ’em here, and I’ll throw out the bad and you can go get more to replace
’em. Now go. And you, Trout, I don’t want to see you sneaking into them fields to help. You do and I’ll send you both on your
way and keep your week’s wages for trespassing.”

“It’s all right,” I said to Trout. “I ain’t that tired, I can do this. I’ll just be a few hours.”

He looked at me, unsure of whether to believe me. “Really,” I said. “It’s fine.”

But when the campfires went out and the tentworld fell asleep, everything looked different. The rows no longer seemed like
my love garden. I couldn’t see the worms that bit me. And the only thing I could smell was rot. Hours dragged by and I filled
my crates slowly. I thought about Trout asleep back in the tent. I thought about Della, looking for me, wondering where I
was. And then I thought about Crooktop.

I stood up and looked around. Though I couldn’t see it, I knew the land stretched out far and wide. For one moment, I missed
my mountain. It was high above those rotten tomatoes. And it hid me from the greatness of that sky. I remembered Father Heron’s
house, jutting off the land. And lost in those dark rows, the bitter thought occurred to me that everything there hadn’t been
bad. The work had been easy. Now, my body was breaking. And I had always had a warm bed at night. Now, I was standing in the
rows, being bitten by green worms.

“You like to work hard, don’t you,” a voice called out through the darkness. It was him. Boss.

“Used to it,” I answered, wondering which row he was in.

“How many crates you filled now?”

“Three.”

“They back at the docks?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll check ’em over, see how you’ve done.”

“I’ve pinched them all, they’re good. Even if I can’t see rot, I’ve learned how to feel it.” I could hear the plants moving.
He was coming toward me.

“Never had a white woman in trouble before.”

“I was sick,” I said lowly. “You never had people get sick before?”

“Them Mexicans are made of steel.”

“Well, I’m finished with the fourth. Gonna take it back now,” I said, even though my crate wasn’t full. I hurried my pace
until I reached the docks, hoping Trout would still be there. He wasn’t, and I turned to see Boss behind me.

“Let me see here,” he said as he started thumbing through the tomatoes. He began grabbing them and tossing them away, without
really looking at them. He didn’t care about rot, he just wanted to torture me.

“You’re throwing good tomatoes away,” I said.

“You think you know better? This your family’s field?”

“No sir.”

“Well, let’s see here, I believe you’ve got two full crates now, instead of four. That means you still owe me five.”

I returned to the rows. I didn’t bother pinching the tomatoes. I tossed anything I could find into the crates. But at the
docks, he played his game again. He tossed out half of my tomatoes. I now had four full crates. I still owed him three.

I couldn’t stop shaking. I had been awake and working hard for nearly twenty-four hours. And I hadn’t eaten. My heart started
to beat funny. I even began to see things. Father Heron’s shadow. The chicken whose head he chopped off. I needed water. I
considered eating a tomato, or sucking it for its juice. But my hands were covered with rot, and I had been bitten by so many
green worms. I couldn’t bring myself to taste them. I walked down to the river. The water looked like black glass. I waded
in, and shivered with its pleasant coolness. I thought about swimming away.