“To bark. To tell you’un when company’s here.” She looked at me as if I was stupid.
“I had dogs . . .” I stopped. The churchmen had killed my dogs, leaving the dead bodies on my front porch, about where Mud was standing. If I looked closely at the grain, I could still see the blood. Was Mud too young to know that? I decided not. “The churchmen killed them as a warning that I had to come back to the church and marry in.” When she only frowned at me and hunched her shoulders harder, I asked, “Why are you here without a coat? And how did you get here?” I leaned out to verify that there was no car in the drive, no dust hanging in the air. “What happened?”
“I walked over the hill. It’s gotta be some ten miles,” she hyperbolized. “And your’n tree happened,” she said.
She had to be talking about the vampire tree. The one that used to be an oak. When I got shot the tree had access to my blood and recognized my imminent death. The oak had healed me. Had changed me somehow. And my blood had changed it, making it . . . something more. Something scary.
“It killed another dog,” Mud said, leaning in toward me, pugnacious, truculent. Truculent was one of Daddy’s words. “It was a puppy,” Mud shouted. Tears gathered in her eyes, welled up, and spilled over, down her cheeks. “One a the Jenkinses’ puppies. Mama said I could have it. And your’n tree killed it!” She screeched the last two words. Tears splashed on her dress.
And . . . I realized her hair was up. Bunned up. High on her head. Like a woman grown.
“Ohhh,” I whispered. “Oh no.” I held the door wide and Mud rushed inside. I stared out into the glare of day. My mind blank. Empty.
Mud had started her menstrual cycle today. That was the only reason she would have her hair up. According to the way the church used to be run, that meant Mud was now old enough to enter the marriage market. Mud was only twelve. Had the church changed enough that she would be safe? Were the church elders still marrying off young girls in what was legally and morally statutory rape? Would Daddy say no? Defend her? Daddy was sick. What if he died? Who would protect the young Nicholson girls?
Moving woodenly, I closed the door. Followed Mud into the house, my feet icy on the wood floor. I put wood in the firebox, on top of a few glowing coals. Put on water to heat for tea. Wrapped an afghan and a warm blanket around Mud on the couch and tucked it in tight on her legs. Gave her one of John’s old handkerchiefs. It was soft and neatly folded, frayed around the edges. She blew her nose, honking like a goose. I almost reached out and touched her bun, the way I might touch a thorn that could prick me. Jerked my hand back and raced to my room, threw on clothes. Trying to think. Trying to figure out what to say. What to do. The tree. The puppy. Mud with her hair bunned up.
I pulled on wool socks. For the first time in forever, I put my hand on the wood of the floor and said a prayer, to God, this time. Not to Soulwood. Asking for wisdom. Trees, no matter how ancient, weren’t good with words. Maybe the Divine would be better.
SEVEN
I sat on the couch next to Mud. Pulled the blanket over my feet. Caught a glimpse of my fingernails. I had leaves growing out of the tips. I curled my fingers under. I had read the earth a lot lately. It had been two days since I’d clipped my leaves. I reached back to my hairline at my nape and encountered the peculiar sensation and shape of leaves sprouting there too. They were small yet. I could hide them. For a short while.
“Mud. Did you see the tree kill the puppy?”
She sniffled and wiped her nose again, holding herself stiffly away from me. “Yes. Dagnabbit,” she said, cursing in church-speak. “It reached out and stabbed him with a thorny vine. And squished him until he stopped screaming. Stopped breathing. And then it raised him up and dropped him in the crook of a branch. Leaves”—she sucked in a breath that was more sob—“leaves covered his li’l body.” She leaned to me at last and put her head on my shoulder. “His name was Rex. He was a bluetick hound. A runt. Too little to hunt.” She blew her nose again. “Rex was gonna be my dog—my dog—’acause I became a woman today.
“And I got an offer of marriage.”
I didn’t stiffen. Didn’t alter anything about my posture. But my voice was grating and hoarse when I asked, “Who offered for you?” A twelve-year-old child. I’d find him and I’d feed him to the land, even if it meant claiming the church compound and everyone and everything in it.
Mud didn’t answer.
Marrying a twelve-year-old child was statutory rape. The state was supposed to have stopped the practice when they raided the church. There was supposed to be ongoing oversight. Girls were supposed to be safe now. “Mud?”
“Daddy wouldn’t say. He jist told him I was too young. That they had to wait till I was fourteen to come courtin’. And sixteen to marry.” She looked up at me, her hazel gray eyes worried, her tone stark. “Sixteen is the age for marriage in Tennessee, with parental consent, and even though we’uns is still gonna have sister-wives, the church is gonna abide by the age law from now on.”
“Fourteen is way, way too young for courting,” I said, “and sixteen for marriage is abominable. You shouldn’t have to deal with men until you’re eighteen. Or older.”
“I know. I been thinking. ’Bout what you’un said. That if I stayed in the church, I’d never put my hands into any soil but my husband’s. That I’d have baby after baby, and have to share a home with bunches of people. That I wouldn’t be able to claim trees or land. Or feed it with my soul, sharing back and forth. I’m not completely sure what you’un meant by all that. But . . . but it sounds wonderful. And I want to be able to have it.”
I tightened my arm around her and eased her close to me. “Have you . . . sat with a tree and talked to it? Taking its peace and sharing its power? Deep underground?”
Mud took a slow breath and whispered, “Yes. Is that a sin?”
“No. It isn’t a sin. Have you claimed land on the compound? You do that by—” I stopped abruptly, trying to remember how I had claimed the small plot of land behind the house where the married trees were, the roots of the huge poplar and massive sycamore intertwined. I used to cling to them when I was tired or distraught, sharing and communing with them, back and forth. I had a feeling that they were mine long before I claimed the whole land that was Soulwood. Had I bled on them?