The Killing Tree

by Rachel Keener

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

It's the summer after Mercy Heron graduates from high school, and she's living in the household of her domineering grandfather and a grandmother whose behavior has always been erratic -- some folks even call it crazy. They've raised Mercy since her mother died giving birth to her under the June apple tree, after Father Heron locked her out and ignored her pleas for help. Mercy's days are spent working at the local diner, and hanging out with her wild best friend Della. Unlike Della, she's never seriously considered leaving the insulated community on Crooked Top mountain. Not until that summer when she meets Trout, a man who opens Mercy's eyes to a world beyond what she's known -- both physically and emotionally. Their relationship must be kept secret, because Father Heron won't approve of his granddaughter being involved with a migrant worker. But when Mercy tries to escape, she'll learn just how powerful, and ruthless, her grandfather can be. And the truth of her past will threaten to forever bind her to the mountain.

Release date: March 3, 2009

Publisher: Center Street

Print pages: 340

Sample

The chickens began to creep on a steamy day in June. They were used to walking and pecking. But on that day, they learned the
same thing that I had. You have to creep around the silence to survive it.


My grandfather, Father Heron, sat and stared out the front-room window. His black eyes searched the gravel road that wound
around Crooked Top Mountain, Crooktop to the locals. It was a twisted road that cut through squirrel-filled trees, blackberry
hollers, and past his house, the one he was born in. The one that I was born behind.


I had studied his silence many times. And learned that people speak the loudest when they’re quiet. They create words, even
conversations, just with the twitch of their brow or the grit of their teeth. Sometimes his silence screamed so loud I wanted
to cover my ears. “Be quiet!” I wanted to shout at his unmoving mouth. But I didn’t, because I knew that he was telling me
things. About locked doors, blood, and murder.


I spent my time waiting for a look, a sign, that would tell me what to do to survive. I was born waiting on him. My momma
didn’t live long enough to teach me anything herself, so I had to soak up my lessons from her in the womb. And she taught
me that her daddy, my grandfather, was a man that women should dance around, but never with.


“She say when she’s coming back?” he asked without looking at me. His words were simple. But the dance wasn’t.

“Yes sir. Not ’til you promise not to kill any more of her chickens.”

“Her chickens?” he asked, leaning forward.


“Your chickens, sir, ’til you promise not to kill any more of your chickens.” Around . . . dance around, not with.

“And why? Why does that crazy woman think I shouldn’t kill my own chickens?”

“ ’Cause she’s sick and tired of making your chickens happy just to have to chop off their heads and fry ’em,” I whispered,
my eyes lowered to the ground.


“God gave man dominion over every creeping thing on the earth,” he hissed.

I nodded my head.

“Mercy, does a chicken creep?”

I knew that chickens could walk, strut, peck, and scurry. But from that day on, they would creep too. Because the silence
told them to.


“Yes sir, I reckon it does,” I said with perfect rhythm. I knew his dance.

He jerked his eyes off of me and turned them back to the road, daring the sun that squinted them to tell him that chickens
don’t creep. I hurried outside of the house that rose defiantly on the side of the mountain. It was a crooked mountain. Like
its top was broken. Not its peak, there weren’t any mountain peaks in the Appalachians. Just slopes that rose rounded and
wide. Like giant hills really.


But the people there didn’t mind. It didn’t bother them to live on a broken mountain. Most of them were born there. Some left
in their youth, but most returned. Not for the jobs. When the boom of coal left Crooktop, so did most of its jobs. There was
still a little for truckers to haul away to other sites. Just enough to cover the town with its dust. Coal was the god we
could all see. It had built our little town in the valley. And it’s why the most fundamental rule of Crooktop etiquette was
to take your shoes off before you walked on carpet. Otherwise, all the rugs of Crooktop would quickly turn black.


People didn’t stay on Crooktop for its entertainment either. Its valley had two clothing stores, Ima’s Boutique and the Discount
Family Shopper. The nearest shopping center was over the mountain, at the Magic Mart. And Crooktop only had three restaurants.
A hamburger joint, a meat and three, and a barbecue diner. Only the diner served beer. There was no theater. No swimming pool.
No skating rink. And if you bought a radio you wasted your money. The mountains blocked reception so the only stations that
could be picked up were ones from nearby mountains. And those were only AM bluegrass or gospel stations. If you wanted to
listen to FM music, then you had to buy tapes. You had to guess at what music was new and cool, because the radio couldn’t
tell you. So young people stuck with the safe bets. Lynyrd Skynyrd and Aerosmith were always new and cool on Crooktop.


People stayed on Crooktop because it was a way of life that couldn’t be found outside the mountains. And it was protected.
Hidden by the giant hills from the eyes of the world. Hidden by its poverty from the interest of the world. Outsiders never
knew of the love or wars that festered on the side of that crooked mountain.


And in the middle of all the festering rose the Heron house. It was a small two-bedroom-one-bath house, painted white and
topped with dingy green shingles. Built in a nearly perfect square, it seemed to say, “Every angle of the Heron family fits
neatly together.” But it was a lying house. It was his house. And though I spent all my days and nights there, it never felt
like mine.


Sometimes to escape it all I would go to Mamma Rutha’s tomato patch, touch the prickly leaves, and breathe the heavy scent—an
earthy mix of moist dirt, sweet ripeness, and green, green, green. It was a smell that soothed me nearly as much as the smell
of seng on Mamma Rutha’s hands made me ache. At age six, when I learned Mamma Rutha was crazy, I saw her standing fierce-eyed
and naked in the garden, with the stain and mystery of ginseng on her hands. Hair as thick and shiny brown as molasses spilled
down her back in wild tangles. Small breasts, shaped like fists, barely rose away from the ribs that jutted from her chest.
Her legs were scraped and scarred from running through thorn-filled woods. Her small wiry frame burned such an image in my
mind that when I think about that night I have to remind myself that she was a speck of a woman and not the tower I remember.



Why I consider that the day I learned about Mamma Rutha, I really don’t know. Looking back, it seems she had always been crazy.
Planting her peonies haphazardly through the yard, like some sort of random connect-the-peony-dot game. Or religiously watching
the early spring moon to know when to plant her garden, carefully sowing the seeds and then refusing to harvest it. When I
was little she poured a dizzy, heated sort of love on me, crowning me with honeysuckle headbands and then forgetting to feed
me supper. She was a woman who talked to the moon, who took her clothes off and stood naked amidst her pile of seng, who forgot
to make sure that I had clean clothes for the first day of school, who never noticed when I went barefoot well past Indian
summer. But she loved me breathlessly. Clung to me. Cradled my head and sang to me, strange songs about dragonflies and june
bugs. Cried when I cried. Scoured the mountainside for a soothing remedy for my every complaint. My crazy Mamma Rutha, a woman
who fell in love with her chickens and couldn’t kill them anymore.


Folks down in the valley whispered that Mamma Rutha hadn’t always been crazy. Father Heron, though, he had never changed.
He was raised on Crooktop, graduated high school down in the valley, took a wife, and began establishing himself as a hardworking,
levelheaded man. He was the sort of man that made a list of the things he must accomplish in life and then set about to check
them off. Graduate—check. Wife—check. Deacon in church—check. Raise granddaughter—check. He felt humiliated by Mamma Rutha,
until he realized that staying with his crazy wife made him look like a martyr in the eyes of the valley. His fellow deacons
muttered their sympathies and called him loyal for staying with her, and brave for trying to raise me. So it was stay with
crazy wife—check, and continue raising granddaughter—check.


But raising is different than loving. So different that it sent me running to my mirror searching for a sign that I belonged
to another family, even though the whole valley still talked about how my momma had died and my daddy ran off. But my eyes
were always there staring back at me with the same black of Father Heron’s. I could avoid my lips, that twisted into the same
slightly crooked smile of Mamma Rutha. Or my nose that was a little too round—like my momma’s, Mamma Rutha always said. But
I could never avoid my eyes. Proof that I belonged, even when I didn’t want to.


Why Mamma Rutha fell in love with her chickens was a mystery. Early in their marriage Father Heron would proudly take her fried
chicken to his deacon fellowship dinners. She said the secret to her recipe was to raise a happy chicken, and then use an
iron skillet to fry it in. And she spent many hours making sure her chickens were happy. She sang to them, petted them, and
fed them more often than she fed herself.


The day she sobbed over her iron skillet was the day I knew that her chickens would soon be as sacred as her unharvested garden.
Her eyes were red and swollen as she served supper that night. Father Heron noticed too. But we were too busy stuffing ourselves
to care. She paced the length of the kitchen, wringing her hands and murmuring beneath her breath.


“Sit down and eat,” Father Heron growled. “Or at least get out of here so I can eat in peace.”

Her red eyes flashed wild and she began to murmur again. Father Heron picked up a drumstick and slowly took a bite. He smiled
at her, bits of happy chicken peeking from between his teeth. She put her hands over her face and strangled a sob. I laid
my fork down, but I didn’t go to her. Even though I knew that I should cradle her head the way she had so often cradled mine.
But what did she want? To take away the only decent meal we had had after weeks of living off barbecue from the diner I worked
at?


“Shhhhhh,” she said to our silent room before running out the back door. She had heard our thoughts, or felt them at least.



We finished our supper. Savoring the chicken. I knew that it was seasoned with her tears. And I knew that it would probably
be the last happy chicken I ever ate. A suspicion which was confirmed later that night, when I awoke to see her pale blue
eyes staring down on me.


“Mercy baby,” she whispered.

“Mamma Rutha? What’s wrong?”

“Please don’t eat no more of my chickens!” she gushed, her eyes glowing with intensity.

Strangely, I asked her why. I had stopped asking that question a long time ago. Her eyes began searching me, asking me why
I didn’t know better than to eat the chickens she loved. She expected me to understand her, and I couldn’t.


I sighed. “I won’t eat ’em no more.”

The next morning I found her burying the chicken bones under the June apple tree.

“Morning, Mamma Rutha.” She didn’t answer. “Looks like it’s going to be a hot day, huh?” I asked. Still no answer.

I sat down across from her and watched. Her dress was covered with the dirt that her hands were slinging. Beads of sweat began
to form on her face as she feverishly clawed the ground. She was silent. But it was a different sort of silence than Father
Heron’s. Sometimes she just felt things too deeply for conversation. Or she felt them as they really were, hot emotions too
jumbled to organize into words.


After she had clawed a hole a foot deep into the ground she gently placed the bones side by side, making sure each had its
own resting place before covering them over with dirt.


“Let’s pray now,” she said as she reached for my hands. I bowed my head.

“God,” she said with her face uplifted, “please take care of my dear friend. Don’t forget to feed him. He likes dried corn
a lot. Pet him a little too. His favorite song is ‘Turkey in the Straw,’ but when you sing it to him, could you change the
words to ‘chicken in the straw’? And Lord, please forgive Mercy baby, for she knew not what she eateth. Amen.” She squeezed
my hands. “Say a blessing verse.”


Mamma Rutha knew all the blessing verses by heart, the ones in the Bible and the ones she made up herself. Sometimes she spoke
them as though they were her own special language, which always disgusted Father Heron.


“Holy scripture ain’t meant to be used by the likes of a crazy woman and her peonies,” he would mutter when he would see her
singing them to her flowers. What bothered him the most was that she knew every word of those verses by heart. They were a
part of her. I loved to hear her whisper them over me as I slept, or over the picture of my momma that she kept by her bed.
I loved to watch her kneeling in the middle of her garden whispering, “The mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come the cypress tree, and instead of the briar shall come the myrtle tree.” And her garden always produced an unharvested bounty, the envy of all other gardeners.


“What should I say, Mamma Rutha?”

“I think the one about bones would do nicely,” she said as she ran her hand over the patch of fresh dirt.

The bone blessing. It was the one she had taught me to say anytime we came across death. When my baby possum died, we whispered
the bone blessing. When Father Heron’s dogs killed a stray cat, we whispered the bone blessing. And now that the happy chicken
was buried, it was time to whisper the bone blessing.


“The Lord will guide you continually,” I said solemnly, “and satisfy your soul in drought. And strengthen your bones. You
shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of waters, whose waters do not fail.”


“Amen,” she whispered as she leaned forward and pressed her forehead on the ground. I heard her kiss the grave.

After that day, things were peaceful for a little while. I kept bringing home barbecue and Mamma Rutha kept her chickens happy.
But even hickory-smoked pork becomes unappetizing after several meals. Especially to Father Heron, who always had to swallow
a Tums after he ate. So one evening he took my brown bag filled with barbecue, dumped it in the trash, walked outside, and
chopped off the head of a happy chicken.


Mamma Rutha was sitting in her garden, singing to her okra when it happened. We both heard the noise. The whack, the shrill
squawk, the sudden silence. Her eyes grew wide and wild. We both ran to him. As he tossed the limp chicken head to his dog,
the body jerked violently and hopped around the yard for a few more seconds. I can still smell the hot blood that squirted
from that headless chicken. And I will always hear the wild scream that escaped from that tiny bit of a woman. It scared me.
It scared him too.


She chased the chicken’s body until she cradled it in her arms. “You’re okay. You’re okay,” she cried to it. Her face and
neck were flecked with warm blood. She ripped the mangled chicken head from his dog. “You’re going to be okay. You’re okay,”
she said to the head. The dog didn’t protest, she scared him too. Then she ran far and fast, up the mountain. Long after the
woods had swallowed her body we could still hear her.


She didn’t come home that night or the next. It wasn’t the first time she had disappeared. There were rumors about families
living high on the mountain, back in the thickest part of the woods. Families that never came down in the valley, not even
to send their children to school. Some said they were remnants of the Cherokee tribe that used to live there. Nobody had actually
seen anyone, but I believed Mamma Rutha had. There was a reason why she would come down from the mountain carrying a pint
of shine, or carry supplies back up and return without them.


When a week passed with no Mamma Rutha I went to look for her. More out of desperation for some real noise, some laughter
and song, than out of concern for a woman who seemed to need only the mountain to survive. I heard her blessing verse before
I saw her. She sang to the trees about knowing the wind, the rain, and the secrets of the owl.


She lovingly placed her thin hand upon each of their trunks. I longed to be one of those trees. To be content with the love
she offered, without hoping for anything more.


“Mamma Rutha,” I whispered, like we were in church. She looked at the tree as though it had spoken.

“Mamma Rutha, it’s Mercy.”

“Hi Mercy baby,” she said, still looking at the tree. She didn’t ask why I had come, or how I found her. She never took her
hand from that tree or her eyes off its bark. She simply gave me her message for Father Heron and then walked further into
the woods, sending me home alone to dance around him over her chickens.


I did her bidding. I gave Father Heron her message, and the chickens began to creep. But she waited for a sign that her chickens
were safe. Waited for a reaction from a man who rarely reacted. I began to fear that she might have to wait forever.


I picked up double shifts at the diner so that my only hours at home were spent sleeping. It was the diner in the valley.
The only one that served beer, earning it the reputation of being a place where men hid out from their families on Saturday
night and then ushered them in after church on Sunday. And the smokers were always going full speed on the weekends, sending
me home smelling like a smoked pig. No matter how much detergent or fabric softener I used, it was a smell that married my
clothes.


After I graduated high school the month before, the diner became a welcome escape for me. Between serving up pulled-pork platters
and mugs of beer, I felt connected to something outside of that tidy little house up on Crooktop. When groups of rowdy teenagers
came in on Saturday night, there were brief moments when I actually felt like I was a part of their world. One where everyone
ached to be older. So as the boys smoked and the girls showed off their push-up bras, I ran to smear on Plum Passion lipstick
before sneaking them half mugs of beer. They would roll their eyes, swear about curfews or being forced to go to college in
the fall. And then I would feel our difference. As they strolled out arm in arm, whispering, “Thanks for the brew, Mercy,”
I knew how different we were. While they raced home to beat their curfew and count the days until classes began at the community
college over the mountain, nobody waited at home for me and I had never even seen a college application. Though my grades
were fairly decent, I knew college wasn’t an option for me. I didn’t have any money and it had never crossed my grandparents’
minds to send me. And even if money hadn’t been a problem, I had no idea how to go about getting into college. All the things
I heard the Saturday night crew groan about—the tests, the application fee, the campus tour, picking a “major”—it was all
foreign to me. So the highlight of my graduation was “picking a shift schedule” at the diner, since school no longer interfered
with my work.


I wasn’t angry. Anger is the child of surprise, and the fact that Father Heron never spoke the word “college” to me didn’t
surprise me. As my black eyes stared back at me in my mirror, I knew that Crooktop had its fist around me.


On Sundays the diner would become respectable. After attending First Baptist of Crooktop on the arm of Deacon Heron I would
change into my grease-stained apron. The tipsy teens and seeking adults of Saturday night were replaced by children in pastel
frills, mothers with hot-rolled hair, and fathers tugging at their neckties. The beer was exchanged for sweet tea. On my break
in between shifts I would sit and watch them. The wife playing with the curl on her husband’s neck, the sleepy baby starting
to cry. Sometimes I would imagine what it would feel like to go home with them. To be safely tucked away in the backseat of
a four-door family car.


The Sunday after Mamma Rutha ran away the diner was especially crowded. My boss, Rusty, was busy barking orders while we waitresses
were busy taking them. When the crowd finally began to thin, I took a seat at the bar to count my tips. But my eyes drifted
from my skimpy pile of change to a family in a back booth, and I soon lost count. There were three of them. And they sat together,
on the same side of one booth. The man had his arm wrapped around the woman as she nursed a baby beneath a blanket. It was
a picture so intimate that I felt both embarrassed to spy and forced to at the same time.


“Pretty gross ain’t it,” Rusty said. “If the lunch rush wasn’t over, I’d tell her to step into the ladies’ room. You can get
away with that stuff in a lot of places, but this here is a respectable eating establishment. The last thing families want
to see is swollen nipples and hot milk right before they eat.”


His words tried to sully the moment I had stolen from them. I asked him why, if this was an eating establishment, that little
baby couldn’t eat right along with everyone else. He looked surprised, started to reply, but saw the look on my face and decided
not to.


“Well, simmer down, Miss Sass, and come have a smoke.” He grinned.

“Can’t. Got one table I’m still waiting on to leave.”

“See, Mercy, that’s the difference between having just anybody ask you to come and smoke, and having your boss ask you to,”
he said as he called for another girl to watch my table.


I never enjoyed my daily smoke session with Rusty. He was sweaty, fat, out of breath, and always calling himself the boss.
But for the sake of a decent shift schedule I puffed away on his Camels and forced some conversation. Besides, I had seen
Rusty get angry, seen . . .