The Killing Tree by Rachel Keener Page A

quit scratchin’ it. I’m thankful too. Had a good lunch of stewed maters with cornbread. My truck’s still kickin’
     along, and then I found you walkin’ down the same road that I was comin’ up. That’s a lot of things, but it sure ain’t fine.
     How ’bout you?”
    How about me?
He was right. I was more than fine. “Fine” was the answer that I had always given. It was the answer I expected back. Hiding
     what made my feet ache or my heart sing, was all I’d ever known.
    “I was up real late last night,” I said. “With my Mamma Rutha. So I’m sleepy. And I didn’t have supper last night, or breakfast
     today except for some raw beans, so I’m hungry. My boss makes me nervous. My job is dull on Tuesdays. But right now, I feel
     really good.”
    He drove down the mountain, toward the low river-bottom land. It was a place where most white people would go only to buy
     fresh vegetables or to hire people for odd jobs. White women certainly never went down there, where
Lord knows what might be done to them
. The land was a deeper, richer green than on the mountain. Filled with trees and grasses that were never thirsty. The air
     was thicker too, and moister. It smelled like unearthed potatoes. Or a mud puddle after a heavy rain.
    There were more clouds and blue in the sky than up on Crooktop. It still looked like a puzzle, but down there the blue and
     white pieces were almost equal with the green and brown. And there were vegetables. Not like a garden. Or even like a crop.
     We were in a sea of green and red, with rows of tomatoes stretching far and wide. And mixed in between the rows were little
     clusters of gray tents. He had brought me home.
    “So this is where you work?” I asked, wanting him to tell me about his life.
    “See those rows over there?” he asked. “Those were mine today.” I nodded and tried to imagine him there, his day filled with
     the fruits of my temptation. I thought it was a wonderful job, to lose yourself amidst rows of fuzzy plants.
    There were small campfires built in the middle of the tent clusters, with huddles of brown men and women standing around them.
     They were laughing and smiling. And though they spoke Spanish, it was easy to tell when they spoke of happy things and funny
     things. They were beautiful. With caramel skin and black shiny eyes, not dull as coal dust like mine and Father Heron’s. I
     surprised them. A white woman down in mater migrant land. And for the first time in my life, I felt white.
    Crooktop was a mountain made of many colors, settled only by one. In school I was surrounded only by white children. At church,
     only whites. In the diner, only whites. And though most of us had distant Cherokee relatives, we were still “white.” I had
     occasionally seen the Mexicans, when they dared make a trip to town. And once an old black man, a biologist, moved to Crooktop
     to study its wildlife. But he didn’t stay long, and most of Crooktop was glad. My world was filled with people that looked
     just like me, and only occasionally was I aware of anything else.
    As I followed Trout through them, they looked at me and I felt what lay between us. And it was new to me. Not that they were
     brown, I knew that. But I hadn’t known how much my whiteness meant to them. It had never been anything more to me than a paleness
     that stared back in the mirror. But it meant something to them. It separated me from their happy laughter. From their warm
     caramel skin. It lay between us. Wider than the river.
    “
¡Mi Trucha!
” an old man said in a thick accent, as he embraced Trout.
    “This is my friend Mercy,” Trout said. “Mercy, I’d like you to meet Mr. Miguel.”
    “Welcome to our home,” he said, smiling an almost toothless smile.
    Trout led me to a blanket laid across the ground. I sat down and stared. I felt like I was in a different time and a different
     country. I wondered if it had been there all along. That little world, so different from the