The song in the church ended, and I heard a man’s voice speaking. Prayer, I figured. “What color is the sap?”
“Bloodred. It ain’t an oak no more. It’s freaky.”
My lips trembled into a smile at the modern term coming from my brother’s mouth. And I remembered the roots that Occam had cut from my body. They had bled. The sapling on my own land had bled, thorned and bloody. I had changed this one, giving it access to my blood, mutating it during the process of healing. Ephraim had gotten here through the ground in which he was trapped. And had used the tree on the church grounds to learn how to grow his own tree at the site of his death. Maybe to mutate it again, to grow something even more different. I had changed Ephraim too, when I killed him. We were all linked now, somehow. And I needed to find a way to destroy the Brother and his evil trees. “Yeah, I reckon I can see how that might be so,” I said, knowing I had fallen back into the church-speak of my youth, and realizing that here, at this time and in this place, it spoke to the bonding of family. Of true sibs. Despite the tree Daddy thought I had cursed. “What’s the long-term plan for getting rid of it?”
“We’uns hired Kobert’s Earthmovers and Mining to bring in a bulldozer, one of the kind that does top-down mining. We’uns going to drill a hole in the trunk, put a stick of dynamite in, and set it off. Then we’ll dig up the roots, haul the whole thing out, every leaf and limb and stick of it. And burn it until nothing’s left but ash.”
I nodded, remembering the branches I had burned last night, feeling the chill and wet, as oversized snowflakes settled on my head and shoulders and melted onto my scalp, wetting myclothing. “Cut off the branches first so nothing goes flying with the dynamite.”
Sam nodded, pursing his lips slightly as he considered why that might be a smart thing to do. “Freaky,” he said again.
“Don’t leave anything on the ground for long. When you dig up the roots, don’t let the rootlets or the cut branches touch the ground. Load every branch and leaf and root up on to something made of metal, maybe a metal-bed truck or dump truck. Cart it to a place that’s stone, like the quarry, with no soil or water. And drench it fast with gasoline. Burn it hot until it’s nothing but ash. Then make sure you police the grounds here and there twice a day, every day, and dig up and burn anything that looks remotely like it. Fire. Fire will kill it.”
Sam nodded, staring at the branch that hung over the wall. It seemed to be growing even as we watched, the leaves, which never fell on a live oak, thick and heavy, a green so deep it appeared to have hints of red in it. “What is it, Nell?”
“I don’t know.” I tilted my head to Sam. “But I got a sapling that looks somewhat like it on my property. No leaves, just bare wood. No real bark either. I cut off the branches last night and they bled, and when I left them on the ground for a bit, they rooted. Too fast to be normal. But when I burned them, they burned true. I’ll be cutting it down and burning it when I get back.”
“You’un need help, you call. I’ll bring some gas.”
“You always did like fire.”
He slid a look my way. “Begging your pardon, Nellie?”
“Um-hummm. That campfire that took off and burned down a field of hay on the Vaughn farm when you was maybe fifteen, sixteen? Even John and Leah and I heard about that event. I always figured that fire for you.” When Sam didn’t reply I said, “You ever confess?”
“I did. Got my backside tanned right good.” He sounded rueful, and at the same time almost proud. “I had to work a whole summer of twelve-hour days to pay the Vaughns for the hay I ruin’t.”
I shivered hard and knew I couldn’t postpone this anymore, so I changed the subject to the important part of my visit. “I need to touch the tree, Sam,” I said.
“Why’s that, Nellie?”
“You might not want to know the answer to that.”
Sam stared at the tree for a while, thinking that over. Likely thinking about Mud and her telling him the tree wanted blood. Looking from the tree to me, his expression told me he was remembering my gifts with growing things when I was a child. How the church wanted to burn me at the stake. Adding in my comment about him being a fire bug when he was a kid. The things sibs knew and accepted and kept quiet about.
The fall of snowflakes thickened and landed on my uncovered head with soft plops. Melted snow dripped down my scalp and neck and into my collar. In spite of the snow and the heavy clouds, the day lightened. I wiped my head, but I didn’t move otherwise, giving my brother time to think. This was too important. “You’uns ain’t no witch,” he said firmly, the syllables steeped in church patois. “The mamas had the townie witches test you.”
“They did. I’m not.”
“How much does this have to do with you’un making most anything grow? How much does it have to do with the way Mindy can do the same thing?”
My brother had decided to take the bull by the horns, as I had with Daddy. I wasn’t sure if I was happy he had grown some or disappointed that he decided to grow now, about this tree and Mud and me. “Can you handle the truth?”
Sam chuckled softly at the movie reference, which he actually got, and shoved down on his fists, buried in his jacket pockets. “After the things I saw with the colonel and his progeny, I reckon I can handle most anything, sister of mine.”
“Then yes. I’m not human. Mindy might not be human.”
He made a softmmmmsound, not surprised at all. “What about the rest of us?”
“So far as I know you’re all mundane and boring.”
“Tell that to my SaraBell. She thinks I’m amazing.”
“Ick andeww. TMI, brother,” I said, wondering if he knew that reference.
“TMI. Listen to us culturally aware adults talking in a God’s Cloud compound. So. You’un need to touch the tree. What’s that all about?”
“I can tell things about plants. Can’t explain it.” I pointed to myself. “Still not a witch.”
