“But, Daddy—”
“No. This is not a topic for discussion. You’uns say grace yet? No? This is a Christian household. Sam. Give thanks.” Daddy lowered his head, and that ended any chance for me to speak to Daddy’s health.
I sighed, the breath little more than a whisper. I had been right. Daddy was sick and was being contrary about seeking medical help.
NINE
In the middle of the nearly unbearable silence of breakfast I finally asked, “How are things? How’s the land?” And the most important thing—other than Daddy’s lack of health—“How’s the... the trees?”
Daddy looked up at that, set his fork down, and sipped his coffee, his eyes boring into me, just as they had when I had played hooky from work or lessons when I was a child. Back then Daddy had let silence do his dirty work for him, letting it build until I started crying and confessed. I couldn’t help but remember the whippings that followed. My heartbeat sped, my breath came too fast. But I was far too old to get a whipping. And for that matter, I was too old to fall for the silent treatment. So I frowned at my father. And thought about the tree I had fed with my blood and that had healed me and that was now tied to Brother Ephraim. And waited.
“You’un got a specific tree in mind, Nell?” he asked a couple of aeons later.
“Yes. One behind the church. An oak.”
“And how would you’un know that a tree was acting strange, Nell?” Daddy asked. “Should we’uns have sent for you’un when it started changing?”
“She’un’snota witch,” Mama said, her tone strident. “Nell did not curse that tree.”
“I did not curse anything,” I said calmly, though all I could think of was that if my gift had been made known to the church when I was a child, it was possible that I’d have been burned at the stake. And that I had to protect my sisters from the church finding out. I knew that, yet I had given Mud seeds and told her to make them grow. I was stupid beyond belief. And I had to deal with that soon.
“A little bird told me that there might be problems here,” Ilied. “Law enforcement officers hear things.” The truth in fact, but in context, still a lie. “The tree. Changing how?”
“Some things are best seen in person,” Sam said. He pushed back from the table and stood. “Let’s drive down.” The tree wasn’t far. But Daddy couldn’t walk that distance. Daddy had cowed the family from doing the right thing for him. But I wasn’t part of this family anymore, which gave me lots more leeway to say what needed to be said.Thatwas why Mama had arranged this impromptu, intimate breakfast.
I watched as Daddy struggled to his feet and got the cane beneath him to take his weight. “We’uns is talking about your health. Soon,” I said.
“You’un getting uppity since you joined the police,” Daddy said, affront in his voice.
His hand was white from the stress of standing, his face pale. A slight tremor raced through him, and I thought he might fall. “Sure. That’s as good an excuse as any.” I stood. “Can you drive, Daddy, or are you toosickfor that?”
Without a word, Daddy turned and led the way outside, where he got in his truck and drove toward the chapel.
Sam and I followed, wrapping up in warm clothes, my brother chuckling beneath his breath. “Nellie, you’un got big brass ones, that’s all I got to say.”
I had learned what the saying meant at Spook School, and thought it was silly, as testicles were small, easy to remove, and easily injured. I had seen enough farm animals castrated to know that for a fact, but it sounded like Sam was giving me a compliment, so I just gave him a “Humph” and got in my truck. Sam got in the passenger side.
Oddly, the temperatures had chilled during breakfast and snow fell heavily around us, flakes as big as my fist, drifting down in the still air, settling into a melting white mush on the ground. The sunlight was dim and distant, the world gray and black and white in the headlights. Sam and I drove toward the back of the chapel, the road with a single set of tracks in the layer of white, the porch lights we passed casting glowing circles on the snow.
The headlights of Daddy’s truck caught the chapel in the background, painted white against the white snow, trees black and stark. Bright lights fell from the paned windows onto the pristine expanse in arched, pointed shapes. The sound of voicessinging muffled through, yet were clear as a childhood memory. The notes of “’Tis Winter Now, the Fallen Snow,” seemed proper and appropriate, and for some reason I couldn’t explain to myself, felt sad, melancholy. Maybe because I knew something bad was wrong with Daddy.
The headlights stopped on the garden spot where the tree that healed me grew. A few months ago it was just an oak tree, surrounded by plantings I had rooted or seeded there when I was a child. Now it was surrounded by a cement brick fence, gray and dull in the snowy light. The fence was about ten feet on a side and ten feet tall. There were cracks zigzagging up and down through the mortar, and the top wasn’t level. The bricklaying looked sloppy, unlike the usual careful work of the churchmen, who tended to take pride in craftsmanship. And then I saw the reason why the bricks were out of plumb. Roots grew up through the ground, pushing high and lifting the foundation, making it appear that the wall had been frozen in motion, a blocky lizard or snake. Branches pressed against the walls and poured over the top, draping down the sides, cracking the mortar even more. Thorns gleamed wetly in the headlights, spikes sharper than needles. The leaves looked wrong. Just wrong. The garden spot, with its beautiful flowers, was no more. This was the tree that had healed me when I’d been shot, had grown inside me. It was also what Brother Ephraim’s soul was attached to on the church land.
Daddy sat in his truck, but I turned off the Chevy and Sam and I got out, moving along the line of light to the wall. The roots on this side had been cut through with chainsaws. The draping branches had been clipped and sawn. The tree itself smelled of herbicides and gasoline and soot. Someone had tried to poison it. Burn it. Cut it down. Yet still it grew.
Sam stood in the headlights, his shadow rising up the wall, broad shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets. Staring at the tree. “We’uns had to brick it up,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“It attacked a little girl. Tried to bury her. Mindy said it wanted blood, but we’uns don’t sacrifice to trees.” The last part was spoken with humor, as if he was trying to make a joke out of something that wasn’t funny.
I stared through the snowflakes at the place where I had been healed not so long ago.
“Is Mindy—”
“I’ll take care of Mindy,” I said.
“Good. She may need to come live with you’un someday. To keep her safe.” When I didn’t respond, Sam went on. “The tree. It grew thorns. And the leaves cause a rash, like poison oak. It tries to spread, puts out runners, sends seeds into the air. They come up everywhere. We’ve found thorned saplings and infants as far away as fifty feet. The Perkinses have a small front-end loader. They bring it in and dig ’em up for us. Then we burn them. The tree keeps coming back, no matter what we do to it. The tree just won’t die, not even after we salted the ground.”
