Under the Mercy Trees by Heather Newton Page B

forked it was four to five feet deep, deep enough to play in, with a gentle current that pulled at their legs as the water debated whether to flow left or right. The water was freezing. Long grass softened the bank. The warped hardwoods screened them from anyone walking through. Younger trees, wild cherry and mulberry, bent over the water, some trailing their fingers in it. In warm weather, Liza and the boys went there whenever they could sneak away. Having no mother meant Liza got to do what she pleased. The first time she swam there, her body was straight and long legged. By the beginning of their senior year, a woman’s curves showed under her modest bathing suit, and Martin and Hodge had hair on their chests.
    When they got there that afternoon, she and Martin went right into the water, heads under, to take the sting out of the cold. Hodge stepped in up to his ankles, then stopped, with his arms crossed over his chest. His belly, painfully white, stuck out over the band of his cutoff dungarees.
    â€œCome on in, Hodge. It’s not going to get any warmer.” She blew water out of her nose and turned over on her back to float.
    â€œDidn’t seem this cold last time.” Hodge ventured out a little farther but stopped before the drop-off, the water now up to his shins.
    â€œGet in or I’ll pull you in,” Martin said.
    Hodge worked up his nerve and finally eased in up to his shoulders but kept his hair dry.
    â€œGet your head wet, Hodge,” Martin said.
    â€œNaw, I gotta leave soon. I told the preacher I’d help him set up for the revival this evening. I don’t need wet hair.”
    â€œAnother revival?” Liza and her father went to the Episcopal church in Whelan. Things Baptist fascinated her. “Didn’t you just have a revival?”
    â€œYeah, Hodge, how many times you gonna get saved?” Martin said.
    Hodge was too good-natured to take offense. “Oh, Lord, save me from these heathens.”
    They paddled around until Hodge said he had to go. He got out, shook himself like a dog, and went behind a tree to change into dry overalls. He emerged and walked to the edge of the water to wring out his cutoffs. “Come by the house later if your daddy will let you,” he said to Martin. Hodge rarely got to spend time with Martin without Liza.
    â€œYeah.” Martin didn’t sound hopeful. Once he got home his father would put him to work.
    â€œBye, Liza,” Hodge said.
    â€œEnjoy your revival.” She lifted her toes out of the water in front of her.
    Hodge turned and walked down the path that led back to the school. “Pray for our souls,” Martin called after him, and swam over to Liza. “Are you getting too cold?”
    â€œNo.”
    He dove down to the creek bottom. She leaned back against tree roots that stuck out into the water, letting her legs float on the water’s surface in front of her, her eyes half-closed. Martin surfaced, holding a handful of the rich gray clay that lay beneath the sand on the creek bottom. He dribbled some of it onto her bare thigh. It beaded where it landed, like mercury from a broken thermometer. She gave him a look and closed her eyes.
    â€œMr. Samuels seems all right.” Martin let more clay squeeze from his fist to her leg.
    She opened her eyes and lowered her legs into the water to wash the mud off. “He’s bound to be better than Miss Yates.” Miss Yates, the woman who had taught them since the eighth grade, had left to marry a lawyer in Asheville. “I feel like I hardly learned anything last year, she spent so much time scolding the younger kids. We need somebody who can get us ready for college.”
    â€œCollege,” Martin said. “Not sure I’ll be able to go.”
    â€œOf course you’ll go, silly.” She lifted her feet out of the water and put them on his chest and pushed him over backward. He came up sputtering. She stood up from her nest in