The Killing Tree (25 page)

DEAR DADDY,

Happy FatHer’s Day! THank You for being my DaDDy. I Like it wHen we fisH.

Love,

MARY

She had drawn a picture on the front. Three stick people. Her and him and Mamma Rutha. She was in the middle, and all the
stick people held hands. I looked at the words. She called him Daddy. Something much more than Father Heron.

I kept flipping. Through the Old Testament, into the New. Until I found another sheet. This time not construction paper.

Dear Dad,

I never meant to hurt you. But I love him. I really love him. Like Momma loves you. Maybe more. I know he isn’t like the boys
at church. And I know you think I’m too young. But Momma was married younger. Just stop being so angry about it. Just because
I love him don’t mean I quit loving you. I love you both. I wish you’d talk to me. Ever since you found out about us, you
haven’t spoken to me. And Momma’s acting real nervous around you lately. I miss you. Won’t you please let me love him?

Mary

There was another. Tucked in Hebrews.

Dad,

He told me what you did. How you threatened him to make him leave me alone. It won’t work. I love him and he loves me. And
I’m gonna marry him. Even if we have to run away. You haven’t spoken to me for weeks now. So I guess I have to write you to
get you to listen. I love you, Daddy. But if you want me, then you’re just gonna have to learn to live with the fact that
I love him too.

Mary

There were no more letters. But I knew how her story ended. I had always thought he killed her out of his shame and anger.
But maybe it was jealousy too. Because she loved another. He heard her come crawling back.
Daddy, please open the door! Please, Daddy!
But would not move as everything that was Mary lay dying on the other side of his door. Now all that remained was his shame,
her letters, and me.

It wasn’t easy to learn that the man I hated, once loved. That someone once pleased him. I had missed something. After eighteen
years of watching and waiting, his silence still managed to hide things from me.

He had never looked at me the way he looked at her. He had never taken me fishing. I had never told him that I loved him.
I had never thanked him, except out of fear. I lacked something that she had had. Her sparkle, standing there grinning with
her hand on her hip. Her affection, standing there touching him so easy and natural. Her fearlessness, telling him
I’m gonna marry him, even if we have to run away.
I had everything of her death, and nothing of her life.

The car started again and I stashed the letters back in their places and ducked around the corner. I heard him come back in
and sit down. There were so many things I wanted to ask him about her. Mamma Rutha couldn’t answer me plainly. She sang to
me about my momma. But she couldn’t talk about her.

I walked into the kitchen and sat across from him. I was brave, believing that as he stared at her picture he might remember
some of the old love. That he might remember it, even as he stared at me, Mary’s child.

“Is that a picture of Momma?”

He nodded.

“Gosh. She was pretty, huh?”

He nodded.

“Do you mind if I look?”

He placed the picture down on the table and slid it over to me. Our eyes met. One pair black and seeking. The other black
and sad.

“She looks like you,” I said.

He sighed again. “I . . . always.” He stopped.

A dog barked and he stood up and ran outside. I smiled and laughed softly at my luck. It was her birthday, but she’s the one
that gave me a gift. My new weapon against him. She showed me that he was more than my Father Heron. He was her daddy too.

Y
ou killed her.”

I had planned my words carefully.
Father Heron, will you change your mind?
That would never work. I had to make him want to. I had to call upon more than his fear of shaming the Heron name. I had to
call upon his love for Mary.

When I was a little girl, I used to play Mary. I would take my Sally doll to hide in the woods and I would imagine that I
lived there, with Momma. She was more beautiful than the faded picture that Mamma Rutha kept by her bed. With honey-colored
hair that tickled her shoulders and dark eyes that flashed happiness. She would set wild daisies before me. And throw clusters
of ripe blackberries all around me. The daisies would change into a feast of fried eggs. The berries would smear into jam.
Together we would dine, and laugh over how good it was. She would hold my Sally doll and I would wish that I was still small
enough to be held.
Mary is the mother of Jesus
, my Sunday school teacher told me. But the one I craved was the Mary that would feed me. The one that would rock my Sally
doll.
Mary, mother of Mercy.

“I know you killed Mary,” I told him.

He didn’t move, but I sensed the internal jolt of his body. I sensed the way his breath hung still within his lungs. The way
his back felt every inch of his spine straighten and stiffen.

“I know you killed my momma. Your own daughter, and you killed her.”

He looked up at me, as I stood, shaking but powerful, looking down upon him. His eyes held murder in them. They were cold
and unrelenting, like a metal knob that won’t budge when you try to turn it.

“Get out,” he said lowly.

I shook my head no, and backed up a step to place the kitchen table between us.

“You killed her. She loved you. You made her smile, and you killed her.”

He stood up, and I saw how his hands trembled. I backed up another step and showed him the picture from his Bible.

“Look at Mary, Father Heron. See how she smiles standing next to you. See how her eyes loved you,” I whispered.

His eyes fell to the picture, and they grew weary. With her silly grin and mocking eyes, she spoke to him. I was her baby
girl. And she was his. He reached for the picture and cradled it in his palm.

“You don’t know anything,” he whispered. “You don’t know anything about that day.”

“I know you can still make it right,” I said, beginning to sob. “She will forgive you if you make it right.”

He knew what I was asking for. Not his approval. Not his love. Just his help. My body felt too weak to pull in air to breathe.
But the prayers still came. I was speaking without breath. I was speaking without ribs, or lungs. Without a mouth, a tongue,
or lips. The words called from me.

“If you will help me, it will all be right again,” I whispered.

He stood in the doorway, his hand still cradling the picture that I had stolen.

“She wants you to help me,” I cried. “I stole them dogs, Father Heron. Me and Mamma Rutha. Not the mater migrant. Let him
go. Help me, Mary’s daughter.”

“You are not her daughter,” he whispered.

“I am,” I cried.

“You are nobody’s,” he said, never pulling his eyes from her picture.

“I am Mary’s,” I sobbed. “And you can help her, by helping me. Change your mind. Set him free. We’ll disappear, we’re already
married. You’ll never be shamed by me again. I am Mary’s.”

“You have nothing of her.”

“I have her nose,” I cried. “Look at it, Father Heron. And I think I have her hands. Look.”

I turned my face toward him and held my hands before him. Praying that he would find something to love. Praying that he would
see her nose, her hands, when he looked at me. I gently took the picture from his hand.

“Look,” I whispered. “See the way her nose is a little too round? Now look at mine. They’re the same, aren’t they? And look
there at her hands. Look at the one she’s holding on her hip. See how little it is? With its narrow palm and slender fingers?
But then look at how her thumb is wide at the knuckle. Now look at mine. Almost the exact same, aren’t they? And look at my
eyes, Father Heron. Look at how they’re shaped like beechnuts. And the color of coal. They’re yours. You’re looking at your
eyes. I’m from you too.”

He took the picture from my hand and looked at me, looked through me. I focused all of my strength on summoning the image
of her. I thought of her, barefoot in the woods, with her honey hair and eyes snapping with color. I thought of her, and I
hoped that my hair looked lighter, and that my eyes flashed happiness.

“Please help Mary’s child. You can make it as if that day never happened.”

“Don’t you pretend you know anything about her,” he said, his voice breaking. “And don’t ever speak of that day again. If
you value your skin, don’t ever. You know nothing about that day.”

“Maybe,” I whispered. “But I’ll die without him. And then you’ll have killed me too. For Mary’s sake, help me.”

He sighed, and I almost sensed a breaking point. There was such power in her name. There was such strength in the ability
of those letters to sweep a tide of misery over us. Grief over the fact that she died. Hate over being left behind, alone.
Anger, that all either of us had left of her was her name. Her name joined us together. More than our eyes ever had. More
than our blood ever could.

“Please,” I whispered. “Tell them it was all a big mistake.”

There was nothing left to say or do. If I would ever be his child, if he would ever look at me and see her, it would be then.
If he would ever do just one kind thing for her name’s sake, that was the moment.

His back was to me, and still I knew that his eyes sought comfort in the weathered wood of his shed, and hid from the aching
limbs of the apple tree. His eyes sought anything that wasn’t Mary’s nose, Mary’s hands, his eyes. His back was to me, but
I still heard his cage close tight again. He didn’t speak a word, and yet I understood everything. Mary was dead, and I might
as well be too.

“I don’t need you,” I sobbed. “I will tell them that I did it. And Mamma Rutha will tell them too. I may go to jail, but he
won’t.”

“They’ll never believe you.”

“When Mamma Rutha confesses too they will. Mamma Rutha will agree with everything I say. That will be two people saying they
stole them dogs. The judge will listen. Trout will be freed. You don’t have to help me. I can go to jail to free him. All
I need is Mamma Rutha.”

“You can’t have her,” he said lowly.

“Yes I can. She loves me.”

“You can’t have her,” he repeated.

“She isn’t yours. She hasn’t been since you killed her child,” I cried. “She will confess.”

“If you ask her to confess to the dogs, you will lose her forever.”

“She isn’t afraid of you. You can’t hurt her,” I cried.

“Ask her to confess to the dogs, and I will tell.”

“Tell what?”

“The truth.”

“About what?” I whispered.

“That she killed your momma.”

T
here was another mirror. That’s what happened when Father Heron spoke those words.
She killed your momma.
He held up his mirror before me. I didn’t want to look, and yet I couldn’t close my eyes. They locked upon her, the twisted
ugly one within his mirror.

She’s not real
, I told myself.

“I don’t believe you,” I whispered to him.
Lies lies. Mary lies.
“You’re lying,” I said. “Because I heard her.”
Daddy, please! Please let me in, Daddy!
“That day, in her belly, I heard you kill her.”
Please open the door!
“And you have no proof,” I whispered. “If you tell them, they won’t believe you. Just like I don’t. You have no proof.”

“Ask her. She’ll tell you. Just like she’d tell them if they asked. Ask her how she killed your momma.”

I began going over everything I had always known about my momma’s death. I sang to myself the songs I had heard Mamma Rutha
sing to the moon.
With Sorrow’s eyes her daughter cried. With stolen blood my daughter died.

I found Mamma Rutha by the stream where the morning glories once grew. I sat next to her and looked at her. I couldn’t see
murder in her, like I did in Father Heron.

“How did she die?” I asked, knowing that she would understand who I spoke of.

“Under the apple tree,” she said.

“Father Heron killed her?”

“Yes,” she said, her hand dropping to feel the cool water.

“Because she was having me. He says you did it.”

Her hand stirred the water.

“I know,” she said calmly.

“How can he say that?”

She looked at me, and for the first time I began to see the death in her eyes. Not murder, like I heard in Father Heron’s
silence. But a death of great anguish.

“How did she die?” I asked again. She looked back to the water and pulled her hands from it. Her fingers ran over the earth,
and into it. Feeling the grit of blackness between them. She shivered, and then grew still.

“Without a soul, a body is just waiting to die. Needing to die. In misery ’til it does.” She stopped and looked at me. Her
hand touched my face, and she smiled.

“She loved trees,” she said. “Was blessed by ’em. As soon as she could walk on her own, she headed for the trees. Watching
how they stretched their limbs. Watching how they’d reach for the sun. She’d raise her tiny arms above her head.
Look, Momma, I’m a tree
. And I’d call her my little sapling. Mary, my baby sapling.”

She wasn’t looking at me anymore. Her head was tilted up, her eyes following the lines of the trees near us.

“All of the mountain loved her,” she continued. “All of the mountain sang to her. And she would sing to you in her belly.
Rock my baby in the treetops.
Maybe you remember? She laid herself beneath a tree, you know. Ran to it when he killed her. It was her love for him that
made the killing hard. When he stared at her from the other side of the door, she loved him. And prayed for him to love her
enough to open it. And when prayer didn’t work, she begged him. Maybe you heard her? His hate choked her soul. But she knew
where she wanted to be buried, and she ran to the closest tree she could find. The apple tree. I found her body there. He
chopped her down. My baby sapling. All of her was shaking. And cold. Her eyes were white all over. They never even saw me.
Blood was everywhere. On the bark of the tree. On the apples that rotted on the ground. Her lips, soggy with pain. Her body
cried out for its soul. And there was nothing left of my Mary. Just a body that couldn’t hold in its own blood. A body that
couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe for the hate that smothered it. I called to her soul. I sang to it. But it had been choked.
All that was left was white eyes wild with agony. Eyes that didn’t know me. They asked me to make it stop. They knew the soul
had been killed. I pulled you from her. And I held you up to the sky.
Look Mary
, I screamed.
Your baby, Mary, reaches for the sun!
”