The Killing Tree (31 page)

“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. C
ome
find 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 Sally 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
!”

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 been, 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.

1. 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?
   
2. Was Mamma Rutha a good mother figure for Mercy?
   
3. 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.”
   
4. Were you surprised to learn that Father Heron was once a beloved “daddy” to Mary? Why do you think he locked the door?
   
5. 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?
   
6. 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?
   
7. 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?
   
8. 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?
   
9. Father Heron says Mamma Rutha killed Mary, and Mamma Rutha says Father Heron killed her. How do you think Mary died?
   
10. Why did Father Heron lay Glory down under the apple tree? Did it make you feel more sympathetic toward him?
    
11. Della says, “Love don’t run,” while Mercy believes that love comes in many different forms. What circumstances in their
    lives cause them to define love the way they do? Whose definition do you agree with more?
    
12. Mercy describes Crooktop ominously (“I knew that Crooktop had its fist around me”). How is Trout’s perspective of the
    mountain different? Why is it different? Do you think Mercy’s relationship with Trout changed her perspective of Crooktop?
    
13. Did you agree with Mercy’s decision to “be Rusty’s girl”?
    
14. Mercy often felt alone and that she didn’t belong, despite the crowds around her. Della talked about feeling similarly,
    yet she “glowed” among the crowds and behaved very differently from Mercy. Why? Who suffered more from her lack of belonging?
    Have you ever felt alone, despite the crowds around you? Do you hide like Mercy or work to “glow” like Della?
    
15. Why do you think the author didn’t resolve Trout’s story? What do you think the future holds for Trout? For Mercy?