The Killing Tree

The Killing Tree Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: The Killing Tree Read Online Free PDF
Author: Rachel Keener
Tags: FIC000000
another?”
    He shook his head, still looking out at the water.
    “You looking for something?” I asked, trying to sound casual. Trying to be Della.
    He nodded. “Fire trout.”
    Father Heron frequently fished, bringing home rainbow trout and brown trout. And occasionally, Crooktop Baptist would have
     a fish fry, and the tables would be loaded with catfish, brown trout, and rainbow trout. He didn’t look crazy. I
lived
with crazy. But there was no such thing as fire trout.
    “You mean rainbow?” I offered. “Those can’t be caught in this dirty lake. You gotta go up to the mountain streams, or even
     down to the riverbottom.”
    “Huh-uh, I mean fire trout,” he said evenly.
    “No such thing.”
    He shrugged his shoulders and stepped up to the edge of the dock again. He moved so close to the water that if I looked at
     him just from the waist up, I could see water rising out from him, rippling all around him.
    “Well, what’s a fire trout then anyway?” I asked, my voice trying to make peace, trying to become a thing he wouldn’t shrug
     off. He turned and looked at me. His eyes were a troubled mixture of green and brown, like dark sunflowers floating on green
     river pools. I held up my pack of Camels again. He took one and I waited.
    “You ever hear of foxfire?” he asked, once he was half finished with his cigarette.
    I nodded. Foxfire was a strange glow in the woods at night. A pale yellow light that outshone the moon. Some said it was ghosts,
     my high school biology teacher said it was a fungal reaction on the wood, and Mamma Rutha said it was the soul of the mountain,
     revealed to a chosen few. Not many people had ever seen it on Crooktop. But I had once when I was thirteen, after the worst
     thunderstorm I could remember. I hid in my room as the lightning lit up the sky and ripped through the trunks of old, mighty
     trees. When it was over I looked out my window and saw the glow in the woods. I crept through wet weeds and bur briars until
     I was standing in front of a twisted hickory slain by the storm. Its exposed wood glowed. So bright that I could see the tears
     shining on Mamma Rutha’s face on the other side of the tree.
    “It’s the soul of the mountain, Mercy baby. You’ve seen its soul,” she whispered with reverence.
    The sound of his voice when he spoke again was so even that he seemed quiet, even when he wasn’t. It was like river water.
     A constant flow that you can forget you’re hearing if you don’t pay close attention.
    “I was fishin’,” he said. “Fell asleep, got woke up by the light.” He paused and kicked a pebble off the end of the dock.
     “Light where there ain’t supposed to be.”
    “I’ve seen it too,” I said. “Once, in the woods.”
    He looked at me again, and I saw the subtle stir of his eyes. The mixing of the green and brown.
    “You touch it?”
    “No. You?”
    He nodded his head. “Made sure I wasn’t dreamin’.”
    “What’d it feel like?”
    “Nothin’. Just rotted wood fallin’ in my hand,” he said.
    “It wasn’t hot?”
    “Huh-uh.” I had been scared to touch it. The soul of the mountain should have been hot, the same way that it looked.
    “I always figured it’d burn.”
    “Nah, it just set in my hand a shinin’,” he said, holding his hand out over the water.
    “You keep it?” I asked.
    “Dropped it in the water. Lit it up too.”
    “It still glowed in the water?”
    He nodded, “Yup. ’Til an old brown trout ate it.”
    “A fish ate it?”
    He nodded, “A big ’un. Swam up, and ate it all.”
    “Well, what happened then?”
    “Still saw the light,” he answered, his voice rising like a swell in the river. “That brown swam away with a belly of fire.
     Been lookin’ for him ever since.”
    He smiled.
    “Hey Trout! Burger’s ready, man, c’mon!” someone yelled from the crowd.
    He looked over his shoulder and nodded his head.
    “Thanks for the smoke.”
    “No problem,” I called out as he walked
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