The Killing Tree (6 page)

The rain surprised me. It was colder and wetter than I had expected. The drops more forceful. Sane people hid indoors. And
I wondered about the sight I must have made.
Mercy Heron’s as crazy as her grandma Rutha
, they would say.
Must run in the family
, they would laugh. They were probably right too. But if that August rain was what crazy felt like, then I was learning what
Mamma Rutha had always known. Sometimes crazy is just the best choice.

And then there was someone else
.
Walking slowly toward me, head down, clothes soaked. I blinked hard in the rain, trying to see through the water. But the
gray and silver masked everything, until I saw the red. Stubborn stains that even a heavy rain couldn’t cleanse. I knew then
that it was him.

I peered through the rain. Liking his hair twisting into wet loose ringlets. His unshaven face. The water that dripped off
the tips of his ears. Liking the way he walked so slowly, as though it were a sunny spring morning.

“Excuse me, miss?” a lady called to me as I followed him into the Credit Union. “Miss, you’re dripping all over our floors,”
she whined.

“Oh. Sorry. I forgot my umbrella today,” I replied, wondering if he had noticed me, or if he even remembered me.

“Mhmm,” she clucked. “Well, if you got business here, hurry it up before you water-spot the new rug.”

As I watched her count out each nickel and dime, he left. I had planned what I would say when he spoke to me, how cool and
easy I would be.
Hey there yourself
, or
Oh yeah, now I remember, I met you at the docks.
I left the Credit Union disappointed that I didn’t get my chance.

But there he was again. Standing under the awning of the Credit Union. His eyes flashing recognition as the rain washed away
my cool speeches. I stood there and looked back. My hair uncombed and tangled, my barbecue-stained clothes clinging to my
wet skin. I was a wreck. Even by a mater migrant’s standards.

“It’s a mess out here,” I said.

“Sure is.”

“Guess it washes the coal dust out, though,” I said. “Makes everything look all shiny again.”

He nodded, his gaze falling to the puddle I was standing in.

“I’m soaked.” I laughed, tossing my hands in the air.

“Look like you’re standin’ on a mirror.”

I looked at my feet, and the silver pool that was growing around them. I could see my knees reflected in it. “Ought not break
it then, huh? That’d be seven years of bad luck.”

“You trust in all that?” he asked, his voice betraying a note of surprise. I looked at the ground again and saw glassy pools
all around us, like the windows of heaven had been broken.

“No. Don’t understand it enough to believe in it. Don’t see how black cats, ladders, or mirrors are supposed to change my
life.” He nodded his head in response, but I couldn’t tell whether he agreed with me or not.

“You scared to be on these mirrors?” I asked.

“Nah. Ain’t got nothin’ to lose.”

“Seven years of bad luck would seem like a loss to me.” I laughed. He watched me laugh, and smiled back.

“Preacher once talked about seven years of famine. And then seven years of feast. Way I figure it, my famine’s been goin’
on so long, ain’t no use in waitin’ for the feast. And if the feast ain’t comin’, no broke mirror’s gonna hurt me.”

I knew of the feasts and the famines. Once in church all of the children had to march forward to say who we wanted to meet
the most when we got to heaven. After a row of Jesus answers, I said Joseph. Not the most famous Joseph in the Bible, not
the Joseph that was Mary’s husband. But Joseph the dream interpreter. The man in the colorful coat that understood dreams
and prophesized of famines and feasts. I wanted to ask him why I was beginning to dream of a crushing body of water that I
had never seen.

“You’re saying a curse can’t hurt an already cursed person,” I said.

He nodded. “I broke one big ol’ mirror a long time ago. Reckon I can do what I want now. Can’t put that mirror back whole
again. There’s no changin’ my luck, but at least I’m free.”

“Free to be a mater migrant?” I asked, wishing I had said “field hand” or “crop worker” instead. He held his hands palms up
and looked at them.

There was a long silence, and I began to feel a deeper chill from the rain. He looked back up.

“Free to quit waitin’ on the feast. And let any good thing shake me up, no matter how small.”

“Like the fire trout?” I asked.

He smiled then. “That’s right. Like seein’ a fire trout and hopin’ every day to get to see it again. Wanna see where he was?”

I didn’t have to answer yes. There were some things that even the rain couldn’t hide.

Inside his truck, I guessed that it was his home. Dirty clothes were piled around cans of Skoal that lay on the floorboard.
Fishing line and little packets of feathers and animal fur were scattered on the seat. The air was filled with heavy, damp
scents. The sweat and tomatoes of his dirty clothes, the yeast of warm beer, the wintergreen of Skoal, and the rain sitting
on our skin. The vinyl of the seats was ripped in several places, exposing the wires that lay beneath. And there was a patch
of rust growing in the floorboard through which I saw flashing bits of the road beneath. Realizing that our only conversation
had skipped proper introductions, I asked him if his name was really Trout. He told me it was, since it was the only name
he could remember being called.

“So it’s not your birth name?” I asked.

“Huh-uh,” he said. “I didn’t ever get one of ’em.”

“How could somebody not have a birth name?”

“If they got a young momma, I reckon. Mine’s fourteen when she had me. And she was dead set against bringin’ me into the world
a bastard. She told my daddy that I was gonna have his name whether I was a girl or a boy and he’d better go on and claim
me and marry her. So while I was in her belly they called me Earnest Grover Price. Good thing I was a boy, huh? Can’t hardly
see a girl being called Earnest Grover,” he said, laughing. “But ol’ Earnie ran off with Momma’s sister, and set out for California
to try and be in pictures. After that, Pap Red, man that lived next door, said she’d cuss anybody that’d say my daddy’s name
around her. She hollered that he’s worse than dead to her. Swore he’d never even lived to her. But for all her hollerin’ she
couldn’t keep his baby from comin’. Once I did, I didn’t have a daddy’s name to take. I’m the bastard son of a man that ain’t
ever lived. They all called me ‘baby’ for a while, and then ‘boy.’ Then one day at a river baptism, Pap Red said I started
walkin’ out in the river. Preacher saw me, and I reckon he thought I was bein’ called to baptism. He started hollerin’ about
how even a child knows the curse of sin enough to fear hell and started yellin’ for me to let the Holy Ghost carry me through
the water to joy. I waded out a little ways to a pool, no higher than my knees. Then I reached right down and scooped up a
little rainbow in my hands. Even Preacher was shocked at me, a little tike, scoopin’ up a trout with my bare paws. That day
on, they all called me Trout. Trout Price. It’s the only one I know, so I reckon it’s my name, even if my momma didn’t give
it to me,” he said, studying my reaction.

“Pap Red took me home and cooked that rainbow up for me. Made me eat it all too. Eyes, brains, everything but the chokin’
bones. He said the trout chose me, had claimed me. And I had to eat it all so I could think like one, so that I could see
the things they see. Worked too. Was the best thing anybody ever done for me.”

Maybe he was crazy after all. I had expected to hear that his name was John or Bob and that his friends just called him Trout.
But instead I learned that the man who spoke of fire trout, feasts, famines, and broken mirrors
believed he was part trout
.

“How about you, what’s your name?” he asked.

“I’m Mercy. Just plain ol’ Mercy Heron. And that’s my birth name. Though while I was in my momma’s belly it was Naomi. She
had wanted to call me Naomi, but my Father Heron refused. Said I shouldn’t be named after a lady in the Bible when I was born
of sin.”

He looked at me, and I could tell he didn’t quite understand, but was hesitant to ask.

“I’m a bastard too,” I said, only half laughing. “Just like your momma wouldn’t give you your daddy’s name, my Father Heron
wouldn’t let me have a Bible name, or take my daddy’s last name. So it was Mercy Heron.”

As he pulled his truck off the road, he joked, “Just a couple a bastards ain’t we, on our way to hunt the fire trout.”

It was hard for me to smile, even though a great deal of people in my mountains were bastards. In a part of the world where
the closest movie theater, skating rink, or bowling alley was at least two hours away, dating for most teens meant having
sex. There was little else to do to fight the boredom. But it was still hard for me to grin and call myself a bastard, the
insult reserved for despised, worthless people. He must have sensed that too, because he asked me if I liked my name.

“What do you mean? It’s my name. It’s just what people call me, it’s not anything to like or dislike,” I said. I could tell
he disagreed.

“When a momma picks one word, out of all them words out there, it means somethin’. Somethin’ near holy. I ain’t got that kind
of name. My momma didn’t pick a word for me. It had to pick me. I reckon luck traded me up.”

“Yep, I think Trout’s better than Earnest Grover,” I said.

“Maybe you was traded down.”

“How?” I asked.

“Your momma chose a word. And maybe that word’s what fits you. But it didn’t fit your grandpa so he traded you down. To Mercy.
’Cause it’s what he figured suits a bastard.”

I looked away. Staring out the truck windows at anything that couldn’t see my emotion.

“Mercy’s a good name. But maybe it ain’t your holy name,” he said. “And a name’s like walkin’ shoes, if it don’t fit, it’s
gonna blister.”

I followed behind him while he held back briars and branches for me to pass through, wondering what he expected me to do,
just tell people to start calling me Naomi? For the first time, I focused on my name. I whispered it to myself and listened
to the way it sounded. Did it mark me as a child of sin? Is that why Mamma Rutha had never called me Mercy, but always Mercy
baby? Would being called Naomi feel holy? It couldn’t melt my cages. My cages were born of a birth, murder, and a locked door.
Letters weren’t strong enough to build those cages. Letters weren’t strong enough to trade me down to where I was.
Were they?

I heard the creek before I saw it. The rain had slowed to a misty drizzle, and little of it touched us beneath the shelter
of the woods. He sat on a rock and motioned for me to join him.

“That’s where light was comin’ out,” he whispered. “And I dropped it in the water here, watched that brown swim up and eat
it.”

The mood of excitement that had swept over him at the docks when he spoke of the fire trout didn’t come. Instead he was quiet,
almost reverent. We sat for a long time, neither of us speaking, watching the water. I felt privileged. He had taken me to
the place where the fire trout was born. And for the moments I sat on that rock staring into the water I was a believer,
the fire trout was real.

It gets dark more quickly in the woods. As though there are two sunsets. The first when the light becomes too weak to pierce
through the leaves. The second when the sun actually disappears for the night. Soon I could only sense the heat off of his
body, I couldn’t see him.

“Say it,” I whispered.

“What?”

“My holy name. I just want to hear what it sounds like,” I said, thankful he couldn’t see that my face was hot with the flush
of blood.

“Naomi,” he said, in a voice that washed over me as though he were holding me down in that stream. “Naomi,” he whispered,
his mouth brushing my ear. He was so close that I was sure I could smell the scent of crushed tomato vines.

I felt dizzy. Emotions swept through me so hot and jumbled I couldn’t even name them. I tried not to cry, but tears spilled
from my eyes. His arms slipped around me as I struggled for control. But it was no use. He had unbound me, and I ached to
show him more of my bruises.

Later that night, in the safety of my bed, I wondered about my flood of tears. I whispered
Naomi
to myself in the dark. And then I knew. It wasn’t the name that made me cry. It was the man who whispered it. It was the way
he said it. Like it meant something.

I
broke three glasses at work. Spilled one pitcher of tea and turned my new apron red with barbecue. I kept hearing it. The
word he spoke to me. Five little letters that sounded so different when he spoke them. Like a whole new word. I kept smelling
him. The smell of those crushed tomato vines. My skin kept feeling him. The graze of his lips across my ear. My eyes saw him
everywhere. In the tomato that I sliced for a sandwich. In the stain of barbecue that spilled over my hands. In the bathroom
mirror that was slightly cracked at the corner.

I needed Della. I could always count on her to distract me. She came to see me that day at work, with a soft new crinkle in
her hair.

“How’s Ben Franklin?” I asked her as I filled her tea glass with beer when no one was watching. She tossed a lemon in it to
complete the disguise.

“Wonderful,” she said, grinning. “I’m in love with Mr. Ben himself. He’s perfect. Steady but with a wild streak, stable but
still exciting, and cute, of course.”

“What’s his name?”

“Well, in front of the other employees it’s Sir. When it’s just the two of us it’s Randy, though sometimes I still call him
Sir, you know?” She winked. “But I’ll tell you one thing, I am tired of having to drive down to the damn docks to do it.”

Della was an expert on sex. And she knew more than any book could teach, because Della earned her knowledge the hard way—through
old fashioned hands-on experience. My first week in high school she told me more about men in fifteen minutes than I had learned
in fourteen years with my grandparents. And besides being a general expert on the subject, Della also considered herself my
teacher. Knowing that if she didn’t teach me nobody else would, she felt it her duty to inform me of all the details of what
she called “the magic.”