MT FATHER BROUGHT WINTER
9
small green living hate wasn't strong enough to pry its way through
this
thing that seemed so soft when you read about it or heard it
spoken of, but was as hard as r6ck. I would think of myself as old,
walking the roads, telling the people the things they had believed in
weren't true. I would go about the house shouting in my throat:
Preach pity to the people! Stop up their ears with it, stop the
leaks in the roof with it, the draft under the door, the broken window–
panes! Swallow it for food, choke on it, go to sleep under it, and lie
with it carved in hard words on the hard stone over you while the
feathers of an owl barred black and white drift down, and the strong
green shoots of hate come through at last and laugh in the sun!
Some nights I couldn't stay in the room with them. I knew that
if I did, I'd be as old as they, wanting no more than they wanted.
And so I'd leave them by the fire and go outside. The road were
almost always too muddy to walk, but I'd stand out in the yard and
look up at the sky. I thought a lot about God. I'd pray he would
trample me in the mud-that would give me something to fight
against. I even dared him one night, I double-dared him. . . . You
can't fight God.
An old mulberry tree grew by the corral fence. I hadn't noticed
it
until it lost its leaves, then it was so ugly I had to. It grew straight
enough' but its trunk was almost girdled by rot. Its branches hung
down like broken and twisted fingers. One year they said a hurricane
had splintered it. Every summer it was stripped clean by caterpillars
and spent its strength putting on new leaves in the wrong season.
Often no other tree on the place would be touched, they said, not
even the other
mulberri~.
In January we butchered a calf and slung
it to a single-tree, running a rope over one of the stouter branches
and pulling the carcass up out of reach of the dogs. It hung there
swaying from the broken branch like some sort of horrible fruit,
scenting the air with blood. We degraded the tree.
In February we had a heavy sleet. All day through the. window
I watched ice form on the old mulberry tree by the corral fence. What
branches remained to it hung lower and lower. I )mew they would
break before morning if something weren't done. I put on my coat and
got the rake from the barn. I beat at the branches and the ice fell in
a shower. I worked so hard I sweated under my coat, and all the time
I was crying "You've got to live, you've got to live!"
I looked up once and saw my father standing at the window.
He had been watching me. He was laughing. "You fool," his face
said, "why waste your strength on something that doesn't matter?"
I beat off the ice with the back of my rake until I'd cleaned the
