Brad Watson - The Heaven of Mercury

— What you want? she whispered, hardly able to gather the breath for speech.

— I just want to know the man own this big house need a nigger to work for him around here.

— Get off me.

— Just tell me.

— Get off me, I’ll tell you.

He rolled off her slowly and stood at the edge of the bed, looking ready to spring on her again if she started shouting. She couldn’t speak, thought to run. He made like to come at her again and she said, — He might need somebody to rake leaves and cut the grass. He hires it out whenever he thinks of it but Miss Birdie’s always on him to get it done, he don’t think of it himself.

He stood there a second, then nodded.

— I’ll speak to him in the morning then, he said. -You mind if I stay here tonight? I can sleep on the floor.

She didn’t say anything, but was thinking if he didn’t do what she thought he was going to do before, then she guessed he wasn’t going to do it later, either, and how could she keep him out anyway if he wanted in, and let him out couldn’t go for help as he’d be out there waiting on her, her heart like a bird fluttering the mites out of its feathers and wouldn’t stop. Then calmed again. Something about him, turning away toward the window, like she wasn’t even there. She changed, wasn’t afraid. Something about his face in the pale light from the window, like he was a man too far away in his mind to be a danger. She said, — I’ll make you a pallet with a quilt I got in the chiffarobe.

So she did, and gave him one of her pillows, and lay there wide awake and listening to him breathe and then snore, and at some point fell asleep in spite of herself. When she woke the next morning he was gone and the quilt folded with the pillow resting on top of it on the floor. She washed in the basin and got dressed and went over to the house and was cooking bread and Miss Birdie comes in the kitchen, says, — Creasie, Junius come by sometime, I don’t know when, and took that dummy off, and I know you’re as glad as I am about it, that old thing was evil. She looked at Creasie. -Is your lip busted? What happened to you?

She tasted the dried blood for the first time, ran her tongue over it. Stopped and had turned to Miss Birdie.

— What’d he do with him? she said.

— What?

— What did Mr. Junius do with the dummy?

— I hope you’re not sneaking out and going honky-tonking on me. Now don’t look at me like that.

— No’m. I just bit it, accidentally.

— You start acting like trash, now, I just can’t keep you on.

Miss Birdie looked just like a doll in a store when her eyes got big like that, little doll mouth. She thought maybe she would have laughed at her but she was fixed on what she’d said, about the dummy.

— Yes’m. What did Mr. Junius do with the dummy?

— Sold him or give him away, one, some man took him away. I don’t know where and I don’t care! Listen, she said, and gave her a five-dollar bill, if you go home to the ravine get me some more sassafras for my tea. I’m about out.

— Yes’m.

That evening lying there with the window open again, she had closed it but the room was just too hot, and a warm damp breeze blowing in from the black evening. And sometime late when she’s drifting off, in he comes, a quick shadow upping one bare foot onto the sill, and crosses the room without so much as a word and goes to where she’d left the quilt and pillow and makes up his pallet again and lies down, soon enough she could hear his gentle rasping, no more than a child’s snore coming from such a big man. Come dawn she crept in and looked him over good. He was sleeping with his mouth wide open and the morning light glinted off a gold tooth partway back in his mouth. Who puts a gold tooth way back in his mouth where can’t nobody see it? She stared till his eyes came open and he looked at her and closed his mouth and swallowed. -I’m Frank, he’d said in a hoarse dry voice. She said, — I’m Creasie. -I know, he said. Then she said, laughing kind of to herself, — I got a crazy notion about you.

Looking at her he says in this husky quiet voice like he wasn’t so used to saying much, — What?

She just shook her head.

— I thought you done gone.

He didn’t move, eyes droopy with sleep, and in a minute said in that same voice, — Where to?

— I don’t know. Nowhere. Just a foolish notion I come by.

— Ain’t nobody run me off. Not yet anyway. I’m on see if Mr. Urquhart won’t give me some work.

She looked back toward her little kitchen for moment, nothing but a corner where the cold iron stove sat like a big iron toad frog staring at her, wanting to croak.

— You can use the door next time you come in, unless you just like coming in people houses through the window.

She looked back but he was gone, out the door this time, his bare feet making no more sound than a breeze tippling through last fall’s leaves dry on the ground.

Which he would show up raking later that afternoon.

She watched him out the Urquhart’s kitchen window and whenever he would glance up she would turn quickly away, her face burning. She went out back to rinse some old rags in a washtub. She heard Miss Birdie holler at him from where she was in the kitchen, You there, what are you doing? And he says, Yes ma’am I’m raking the yard. Creasie was listening without looking up from the washtub. Miss Birdie says, Well I see you are raking, who are you? Name Frank, ma’am. Well you talk to my husband about getting paid, I don’t have any money for you. Yes, ma’am, he said, I will. And he did. Mr. Earl, home that afternoon, just looked at him for a long time, his short moustache twitching every now and then and his eyes kind of squinted, then he lights a cigarette and gives one to Frank, goes away. Next day, same thing, Frank weeding the beds, Mr. Earl coming home and standing there looking at him, gives him a cigarette, goes on in the house. Finally he comes out a little later and says to him, — You staying with Creasie now on my property?

— Yes, sir, Frank says.

— No sir! Creasie hollers from the breezeway between the kitchen and garage. -He ain’t staying with me. I’m not like that!

— Well, he says, ignoring her and just looking at him a while longer, I don’t care where you stay, but if you’re going to hang around here you might as well do some work I need done, and jangles his keys and change just like his old papa. And so Frank was on the payroll, such as it was, a dollar a week and sharing the leftovers with Creasie, who always had too much anyway and ended up throwing it out. It was enough for the time being. You couldn’t expect a whole lot more. It was just work and what little bit of pleasure you could find at the end of a day. If Creasie was working late with cooking for the next day, pies or baking a ham, Frank might come over to the Urquhart house and knock on the kitchen door and ask if there was anything he could do, or come fall and winter make sure the fire in the sunporch fireplace was going good, getting the coals so hot he could roll a big round log in there and it’d burn all night, Mr. Earl asleep in a chair across from it after his evening coffee. Then he’d lurk like a ghost in Creasie’s pantry till she was done and walk her back to the cabin.

Even as lonely as she was, it took her a while to find pleasure with a stranger. He was fairly tall, and with a head like a brick, hair kind of squared off on top, and a sleepy, wise look on his face. Not kind eyes but not hard, either, just eyes that would look at her without saying anything, and then turn to the peas and the greens, the pot roast or pork chops, the cold cornbread she brought back from the house. The Urquharts ate well, and so did they on seconds.

— If we they dogs, Frank said one evening, dogs eat well.